by Paige Tyler
He stifled a groan and tried to put a little space between his hard-on and her very warm, very soft ass, but it was impossible. Even though she seemed to be completely zonked out, she scooted back even more and rotated her hips in a very sexy dance that made his cock poke her in certain places completely on its own.
Mackenzie stirred.
Ah, hell. He might be dead tired, but apparently certain parts of his anatomy weren’t. Reaching for the box of condoms, he couldn’t think of a better way to start the day.
***
Mac snuggled into the pillow with a sigh. Was that bacon and eggs she smelled? She inhaled deeply. Damn, it was. Gage was making breakfast for her. Which meant he must have run to the store because she hadn’t bought bacon and eggs in…forever. Normally, she didn’t eat stuff like that, but she was starving. Not surprising. She and Gage had worked up quite an appetite last night. Not to mention this morning. She smiled at the memory.
She had been awakened at an insanely early hour by Gage’s very hard cock slowly sliding into her very wet pussy. He’d made slow, teasing love to her as they spooned together in bed. He had moved in and out of her from behind while one hand caressed every inch of her body—her face, her neck, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, her clit…oh yes, her clit. It was, without a doubt, the most romantic sex she’d ever had in her life. And afterward, all she could do was pull his arm around her and go back to sleep.
Now he was making breakfast for her? What had she done to deserve this man?
It was hard to leave the cozy nest of blankets, but she forced herself to climb out of bed. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, then pulled on the first piece of clothing at hand—Gage’s uniform T-shirt. But if she was wearing his T-shirt, what was Gage wearing? Eager to find out, she ran a brush through her hair and hurried out of the bedroom.
The sight that met her as she walked into the kitchen was even better than she’d imagined. Her big, strapping lover was at the stove wearing nothing but those really tight boxer briefs of his. Wow, he had a great butt.
Mac went up behind him and wrapped her arms around his stomach, pressing herself against him as she kissed the warm skin of his back.
He smiled over his shoulder at her. “You could have stayed in bed. I was planning to bring this in to you.”
She ran her hands over the muscles of his chest and abs as she rested her cheek against his back. “As much as I like the idea of breakfast in bed, I don’t think we would have gotten to the bacon and eggs part if you served them to me dressed like this.”
He chuckled as he finished cooking the eggs—half a dozen over medium by the looks of them—and transferred them to plates where the bacon and toast were already waiting. She couldn’t help but shake her head as she watched him work. He moved with the quick grace of a person who’d been working a grill for years. She couldn’t flip an egg to save her life, which was why she always made scrambled, when she had them at all.
“I can go put some more clothes on, if you think you’ll be distracted,” he said as he carried the plates to the table. The coffee was already poured and steaming.
She shook her head as she sat down. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble. I’ll just have to control myself.”
He slanted her a sexy grin. “You can always give me back my T-shirt.”
“I could, but I prefer you the way you are.”
Gage attacked his food. It took her a little longer to get her eggs and bacon cut up, but when she finally took her first bite, she found herself eating almost as fast as he was.
“This is really good.”
“It’s just bacon and eggs.”
She took another forkful of both, then followed it with a bite of the toast he’d already buttered for her. “It’s better than anything I could make.”
Gage took a swallow of coffee. “I could give you a few lessons if you’re interested.”
She wouldn’t mind getting some lessons from him in the kitchen, just not the kind he was talking about. “I have a better idea. If you keep making breakfast for us, I’ll make sure you always wake up hungry. How’s that?”
The heat in his eyes almost made her swoon. “Deal.”
She took another bite of toast. “So, what’s on the agenda today? If we assume that you’re planning to follow your doctor’s order and get some rest?”
He wiped up his plate with the rest of his toast, then popped it in his mouth, devouring her with his eyes as he chewed. She wondered if he was envisioning all the different ways they could have sex together for the next two days.
If so, she liked the way he thought.
“I thought we might just hang out together. If that’s okay with you?” he said when he was done chewing. “Though I guess I need to run by my place and grab some clothes and stuff.”
She eyed him over the rim of her mug. “Seems like you have all the clothes you need, if you ask me.”
He chuckled. “While I don’t have a problem with that, I think we’ll have to leave your apartment at least once. You don’t have enough food in here to keep us both going for a whole weekend.”
Mac thought about how much he’d eaten last night, and this morning. He’d consumed about three days’ worth of food in less than twenty-four hours. Yeah, maybe they’d need to go out and shop some.
“Okay,” she agreed. “But I’m coming with you. I want to see where you live.”
“Sounds good. Just don’t hold what you see there against me. I don’t spend a lot of time at my place, so it’s not as nice as yours.”
She steeled herself. When a guy said something like that, it usually meant he hadn’t cleaned in a month.
It turned out that Gage’s place was nothing like what he’d described and a lot cleaner than she’d expected. It was a first-floor, one-bedroom apartment with a tiny eat-in kitchen, an equally small living room, and a guest bathroom. It was probably less than eight hundred square feet total. But while there wasn’t much in the place, what was there was neat, organized, and dust-free. She couldn’t say the same for her apartment.
“I’m going to pack a bag,” Gage said as he headed for the bedroom. “There’s some soda in the fridge if you want it.”
She didn’t really want a soda, but she did want to check out the fridge. You could learn a lot about a man from what he had in there.
Like the rest of his place, Gage’s refrigerator was clean and organized, and way better stocked than hers. In addition to soda, beer, and bottled water, there were a variety of lunch meats, cheeses, and condiments. Gage was obviously big into sandwiches. But a look in the freezer showed a distinct lack of TV dinners. There was plenty of meat, though. Maybe the two of them should hang out over here—they’d definitely eat better.
She grabbed one of the bottles of water and wandered into the living room. Gage’s apartment lacked that cozy feminine touch. It was sparely furnished with a utilitarian-looking sofa and matching chair. It was also sparsely decorated, with the exception of one wall that held a dozen framed photographs and a few military-themed knickknacks sitting on a shelf in the bookcase. She found herself smiling at the pictures of Gage in various military and police settings.
He was younger in the military ones, but she still recognized him. Most of them were of Gage with eight other men, usually hamming it up for the photo, with their arms around each other or with their various weapons held casually in their hands. Gage looked really happy in all the pictures.
The clothing had obviously changed in the more recent pictures, with Gage wearing the standard police uniform in some, civilian clothes in others, and his SWAT gear in the most recent. She couldn’t help noticing that while the poses were very similar in all the recent photos, Gage wasn’t smiling in any of them. It made her feel as if she was witnessing a loss of innocence one frame at a time.
She noticed something else, too. While Gage was easily the biggest man in any of the military photos, it didn’t compare to how much larger he seemed in the more recent picture
s. She moved back and forth, comparing him over the years. It looked like he’d not only put on muscle after leaving the Army, but grown a few inches as well.
Running out of stuff to see in the living room, she meandered toward the bedroom. Gage was standing naked in front of a tall dresser, going through a drawer of underwear.
Mac stopped and let herself enjoy the view. Out of the corner of her eye, she took in several other facets of the room—a big bed, another dresser with its drawers hanging half-open, a wall closet holding mostly uniforms, and a black duffel bag sitting on the floor half-full of clothes and toiletries.
But mostly, she looked at Gage and that amazing naked body of his.
She bit her lip as heat pooled between her thighs. It shouldn’t be possible to be aroused. They’d made love so many times last night she should have been satisfied for the next month. But that wasn’t the case at all. As she enjoyed the play of muscles over his tight ass and broad back, she felt herself getting wet. She was definitely going to have to change her panties when they got back to her place.
How the hell did Gage do this to her?
He stopped, his head coming up sharply. Then he turned to her with a smoldering smile. The hungry expression only served to make her wetter, and left her wondering if he’d picked up on her arousal.
“I’m almost ready.”
Against her will, her eyes drifted down to the perfect, thick cock at the junction of his muscular thighs. His shaft pulsed slightly, then slowly hardened.
“You most certainly are,” she murmured, only realizing after the fact that she’d said it out loud.
He closed the distance between them in two strides, yanking her fully clothed body against his completely naked one and kissing her hard. It felt so wicked and so perfect, and it took her breath away. He tasted so good, and felt even better. Damn, she was practically vibrating with need. This must be what they meant when they said two people were sexually compatible because right now, she couldn’t imagine another man in the world who could make her feel like this.
The sensation of his now rock-hard cock pressing against her stomach was enough to almost drive her crazy, and she would have dropped to her knees in worship to it, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead he picked her up and carried her over to his bed. He yanked off her flip-flops and jeans and yet it still wasn’t fast enough to suit her.
A tiny part of her—the part that had nothing to do with helping Gage strip off her panties so he could flip her over on her hands and knees—wondered how she could possibly go from not even thinking about sex to wanting it so badly she didn’t care if he ripped her clothes to tatters. But one look at him as he took a condom packet out of the bedside table and rolled it on told her everything she needed to know.
Gage made it possible for her to act like this. She wanted him so badly because that was exactly the same way he wanted her. Like she was the only thing he could think about. Like she was as important to his survival as air.
When he pulled her ass closer toward the edge of the bed and plunged into her wetness, they both released groans of pure pleasure. His was a deeper—almost possessive—growl, but hers wasn’t any less animalistic. She wanted him to possess her completely, make her his in every way possible.
His hands firmly grasped her hips as he slowly moved inside her. With each thrust, he pumped harder and harder until he buried himself all the way to her very core. She was panting so hard she was almost dizzy.
The rush of her approaching orgasm didn’t surprise her. She’d learned last night that Gage could make her come almost anytime he wanted—and right now he wanted her to come right away.
Her teeth clamped down on the blanket covering his bed and she swore she could taste him on it. That thought, however crazy, only brought her climax on faster. She screamed into the bed, clutching the covers as her whole body shuddered violently. And when the first waves of orgasm passed, she got an even firmer grip. Because there was something else last night had taught her. Gage wouldn’t stop with making her come only once. He would take her like this until she was sure she’d pass out—then he’d make her come even harder.
***
Mac cuddled against Gage’s chest, running her fingers over the muscles and lightly tracing his tattoos. She’d never been into guys with tats, but he made them work. She’d seen the wolf-head SWAT tattoo during PT and when they’d made love the previous night. But she hadn’t gotten a good look at the other tattoo—the one he called his Ranger Scroll—until now. She traced her fingers along the black ribbon outline with its red inner line. Inside both lines were letters and numbers.
“Second Ranger, I get,” she said softly. “What’s BN stand for?”
It took Gage a minute to answer—he was pretty much comatose beneath her in his own post-orgasmic bliss. “Battalion. I was in the 2nd Ranger Battalion out of Fort Lewis.”
He said the words so quietly she wasn’t sure if she should ask him anything else about it. She remembered how he’d smiled in all the military pictures out on the wall, but looked almost somber in every photo after that. She wanted to know more about Gage, though. Hell, she wanted to know everything about him there was to know.
“I remember seeing in your public relations bio that you spent six years in the Army. Was all of it with the 2nd?”
“Not counting Basic and initial schooling, yeah, I was in the 2nd the whole time. I came in right after Desert Storm kicked off and was out by the middle of ’97.”
“I saw the pictures out on the wall. Were they your friends in the 2nd?”
Of course they’d been his friends—he’d taken pictures with them. But he seemed to understand what she was asking.
“They were more than that. They were like my family,” he said quietly. “First Platoon, First Rifle Squad. My brothers.”
Mac realized then that he’d never said a word about family until now, and when he did, it was in terms of the soldiers he’d served with.
“They sound like amazing guys. Do you stay in touch with them?”
Gage didn’t answer, and the silence stretched out until she lifted her head off his chest to look at him. His eyes were closed, and when they opened, she couldn’t miss the sadness in them.
“No,” he said. “They’re all dead.”
Crap. Why the hell had she asked that question? Couldn’t she have just left well enough alone?
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a painful subject.”
He gently twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known. It was a long time ago anyway. It hurts to think about, but not like it used to.”
She rested her head on his chest again, furiously trying to think of something that would help change the topic of the conversation. But her mind was completely blank.
“It was back in August, 1996.”
Gage’s voice was soft and so full of sadness that she almost stopped him, but she didn’t. If he wanted to talk, she’d shut up and listen.
“We were supposed to be on a simple training rotation in Kuwait. You know, run around, shoot some blanks, cross-train with the Kuwaitis and Saudis. But for some reason, somebody with a star on his shoulder decided to send First Platoon up to the northern part of Iraq—the part that’s called Iraqi Kurdistan now—to conduct some goodwill development with the regional Kurd forces. My squad leader tried to point out it wasn’t even a Ranger job, but nobody really cared about that, so we were sent up there anyway.”
He fell silent for so long that Mac thought he was finished. But then she realized she could hear his heart beating fast beneath her ear.
“It wasn’t so bad at first. Kind of fun, actually,” he continued. “The platoon leader had each of the squads farmed out, working with a different part of the Kurdish militia. They certainly needed our help, so none of us minded. Then on the thirty-first, Saddam got a hair up his ass and decided to send his forces up to the town of Irbil for a little ethnic cleansing. Right where our squad was set up.
Nine of us, stuck right in the middle of a place we really weren’t supposed to be, with no support and almost no ammo.”
Mac held her breath, waiting.
“As you can imagine it didn’t go well for us. We were fighting side by side with the Kurds, and we put up one hell of a defense, but they didn’t have much in the way of heavy equipment, and we didn’t have any. A whole lot of people died in a really short period of time, including every member of my squad but me. My squad leader died in my arms as I tried to drag him out.”
Mac was crying, and didn’t have a clue why. She hadn’t known those men. But Gage had, and their deaths had hurt him, so she hurt, too. “August of 1996,” she murmured. “Isn’t that what they called Desert Strike? I remember reading about it somewhere, but I don’t remember seeing anything about any US ground casualties. We just dropped a bunch of bombs and fired off some cruise missiles.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that’s what they called it. But the bombing and cruise missiles happened in the days after the initial attack. Didn’t do us or the Kurds any good. My squad was wiped out by then and I just barely dragged my shot-up ass back to the extraction point in time to hook up with the rest of the platoon. They’d been pretty beat up, too, but nothing like my squad. The worst part? The official report reads that my squad members all died in a training accident down in Kuwait. No one wanted to admit the US even had ground forces up in the Kurdish region.”
Crap. “Is that why you decided to get out?”
He hesitated for a long time before answering. “That had a lot to do with it. I just couldn’t be part of the big machine anymore. They didn’t even care about us.”
Mac understood Gage a little better now than she had before. How he’d risen so fast through the Dallas PD ranks, why he’d taken over the SWAT team and rebuilt it in his image. They were an organization that took care of their own above all else.
His arm tightened around her. “Sorry I unloaded on you like that. I’m not sure why I did. It definitely doesn’t qualify as romantic pillow talk.”
