Her hands came to rest on his shoulders and she tugged at him, wanting him inside her. Matt could wait no longer and eased into her wet entrance, watching her eyes widen and that mouth of hers draw into a satisfied curve. He drowned in the ocean blue of her eyes as he began to slowly move in and out of her. As much as he wanted to thrust deeply, take her hard and fast, Matt knew she was too sore, too bruised, and too traumatized.
This morning, all he wanted to do was tenderly hold her, kiss her, and let her know silently how much he loved her.
“You’re not going to hurt me, Matt,” she whispered, her hands firm on his bunched shoulders. “Please, I need you … don’t tease me …”
Her soft cry, her pleading, broke him. With a long, deep stroke, he filled her, felt her body accommodating him, stretching, and he tensed, holding still, allowing her the time she needed to adjust. Dara was breathing hard, her eyes wide and glazed looking. She was close to an orgasm, and he could feel her body tightening around him, gripping him until it took every last vestige of his control not to come. He grunted as she twisted her hips, flexing, dragging him all the way into her. And then he gripped the covers near her hair, thrusting, and she rose and fell with him in perfect union, perfect rhythm. Sweat stood out on his brow, his jaw clenched, his body driving into her, and he heard her crying out with each stroke, wanting more.
Ah, hell, he was a goner. Matt felt the slamming heat roar down through him, felt the white-hot pleasure ripping him apart as he spilled into her hungry depths. His mind shorted out and all Matt could feel was Dara’s sweet, willing body thrusting and moving, even though he was frozen above her. She was drawing everything out of him now, giving him pleasure that seemed to go on and on and on. He’d never come so hard or so long with another woman.
And then she orgasmed, crying out, freezing against him as waves of burning pleasure swept through her. Matt strained to continue to please her as well, feeling the scalding heat envelop him, draining him completely. When he collapsed upon her, Matt could barely move, sweat rolling off him, his breathing ragged and harsh, his fingers thrusting into her hair, pulling it just enough to hold her in place. Finally, he kissed her until they melted into one another and sighed together.
Dara snuggled with Matt afterward. Languishing in his arms, feeling his callused hand moving lightly across her damp, long back, caressing her cheeks, and then following the long curve of her thigh. Each caress was like velvet midnight against her heated, sensitive flesh. Her whole body was on fire, continuing to flood her with satisfaction long after her orgasms. Matt was a tender lover afterward, and she nestled her face against the damp column of his neck, inhaling his scent like the aphrodisiac it was to her.
He was strong but never used his strength against her. Instead, he kept touching her with slow caresses, as if memorizing her body, heart, and soul. He kissed her along her hairline, down her temple, nibbling playfully on the shell of her ear. He made her smile with pleasure, and she felt safe, and fully loved by Matt. Her heart was still pounding from their lovemaking and she pressed her breasts against his chest, enjoying the damp silk of his hair sprinkled across it.
More than anything, she liked that growl of his when she did something to please him. Already, Matt was hardening against her belly once more, which amazed her. Most men didn’t respond this quickly after a climax. But Matt wasn’t most men, she admitted.
“That was sooo good,” Dara whispered, smiling up at him, mesmerized by the molten gold flecks in his eyes. “Thank you … wow … I’m still drifting … still floating …”
“And this is only our second time together,” Matt said gruffly, aroused, lifting up on one elbow and leaning over, caressing her lips. “Just think how good we’re going to get with some constant practice.”
Her brows arched and she studied him in the warming silence. “At Christmas? Tell me you’ll see me often when you get home on leave for the holiday.”
“See you?” Matt snorted, his mouth curving. “Sweetheart, unless you say otherwise, I’m with you every night in bed.” Matt became serious, searching her still-dazed, fulfilled eyes. “I want those thirty days with you. Is that what you want, too?”
She cupped his cheek with her slender hand. “Are you serious, Matt?”
“As serious as I can be. Why?”
“Because of course I want the same thing.” Dara leaned up, kissing him for a long, long time, languishing in his arms, absorbing his powerful body.
Matt couldn’t believe his ears. But her kiss … God … her kiss was all fire and honey and it melted his heart, burned his soul. They parted, breathing hard, staring at one another. Dara looked so clean, so untouched by his world, yet he knew that the last few days, she’d had a large taste of it—more than she’d ever wanted. “I wasn’t sure,” he admitted slowly.
“What? Of us?”
“Yeah, us.” Matt moved his mouth against the smooth slope of her cheek, inhaling her, feeling the warmth of her skin against his lips. “The last few days have been rough on you, Dara. I wasn’t sure you’d ever want to see me again.”
She shook her head, her lips lifting as she turned just enough to allow her mouth to rest lightly against his. “And miss this? Miss you? Oh, no, nothing is going to stop me from getting to know you much, much better, Aslan.”
His heart swelled as his middle name rolled sweetly off her lips. He smiled a little, holding her glistening gaze. “You can call me that any time you want.”
Threading her fingers through his long, tangled hair, she whispered, “I love that your mother named you Lion. She must have intuitively felt or known you were going to be a true warrior.” Her voice lowered. “You were a lion out there for us. I don’t ever want to go through something like that again, but I’m glad it happened.”
He frowned. “Why?”
Dara stroked his temples, moving some of his hair behind his ear. “Because I got to see the lion in you. You’re a leader, Matt. A real one. Not just something you put on your résumé. You kept me safe out there. I saw you put yourself in the line of fire for me, urging me on, always there for me. You wouldn’t abandon me.”
Because I love you. How the words wanted to be torn out of his mouth, but Matt held on to them. “I had your back,” he agreed quietly, running his fingers through her hair, feeling its strength, appreciating how long it was, how feminine it made Dara look. “And I’d have died for you out there, if it had become necessary.”
He saw her eyes darken, saw sudden pain in them. Damn, he hadn’t meant to dredge up that experience again. Dara magically drew him out, drew out his real feelings. “But we weren’t even close to dying,” he added, cupping her cheek, kissing her, wanting to distract her from the frightening experience they had shared.
She pressed her hips against his, rubbing against him like the lioness she was, and he kissed her swiftly, then trapped her face between his hands.
“I want this day to last forever.”
“There’s the idealist in you coming out,” she teased, laughing softly, holding his hooded gaze.
“Maybe a little bit,” Matt conceded with a grin.
There was a knock at the door. Frowning, Matt eased off Dara.
“Stay put,” he murmured, getting up and grabbing his trousers. It had to be Beau. No one else knew of these places in this building. Curbing his concern, he padded barefoot to the door and opened it. Beau stood there, dressed in a clean uniform. Matt stepped out, shutting the door quietly behind him.
“Sorry to intrude,” Beau said in a low tone.
Matt rubbed his face. “It’s all right. How’s Callie? How are you?”
Beau shrugged. “I’m doin’ okay. It’s Callie. She wants to see Dara.”
“That’s fine, she can,” he said.
“It was rough last night,” Beau admitted, scowling. “I shoulda stayed with her out there on that mountain, Matt. I shouldn’t have tried to hide her and then make an end run on those bastards.”
Matt reached out, gripping
his shoulder. “You didn’t know how close or far away they were from you,” he said, holding Beau’s guilt-ridden gaze. “We had no drone up. We had no eyes to tell us where the tangos were. Hell, we were running for our lives with two women who couldn’t possibly keep up with us and you know that.”
Matt wasn’t about to let Beau carry that load, but he saw the anguish in his friend’s eyes and how his mouth was tucked in at the corners. Beneath that hill boy exterior, Matt knew, was a sensitive man who hid his deep feelings from everyone else most of the time. Beau had been working in Matt’s team for years, and they were more like brothers than teammates.
“My problems are small compared to Callie’s,” Beau mumbled, shaking his head.
“Do you think she needs some meds? Something to calm her?”
“Naw. I just think she needs to sit and talk it out with her big sister,” Beau admitted. He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it’ll help.”
“What does Callie want to do? Does she want to leave Afghanistan?”
“I dunno, Matt. I think she might, but I think she needs to speak to Dara about it first. She relies on her big sister for important decisions.”
“Okay, let me get Dara up. Have you eaten anything yet?”
“No.”
“Why don’t we go to the chow hall and have breakfast, then? We can bring the girls back something to eat when we return. If they’re still talking, we’ll leave them alone”—Matt nodded toward the door—“and go sit it out in Nest Two.”
“Sounds good,” Beau murmured. He rubbed his beard, casting a look down the nearly darkened hall. “She’s not tellin’ me everything. I can feel it.”
“She needs Dara. Women will unload with each other but not with us,” Matt said. “It’s just the way they are.” He reached out, gripping Beau’s arm. “How’s the leg?”
“Sore, but usable.” He grinned a little. “It’s gotten me the next thirty days off with medical leave and another Purple Heart. How about that?”
“Goin’ home for the holidays, then?”
Shrugging, giving him an unsure look, Beau said, “I was, but now I don’t know. A lot has to do with what Callie decides. Her folks have a ranch near Butte, Montana, and she was talkin’ last night about going home to be with her family. It might be a good thing for her to do.”
“And you’d join her there?”
Beau dragged in a deep breath and rasped, “I’d like to, but I have to see what Callie decides. If she stays over here, I’ll stay here.”
“After what’s happened to her,” Matt growled, “I think the smartest thing would be for her to go home and heal up. Staying in this country is just going to keep her wounds open, and the threat is always here. It never goes away.”
“I know, I know, but she’s one stubborn gal, Matt. She’s waffling. I’m hoping”—he crossed his long fingers—“that she’ll decide to go to her family’s ranch in Montana.”
“Do you think she’ll want you to come home with her?”
“I think so.” Beau shrugged and gave him a confused look. “It’s somethin’ that she still has to decide.”
Matt gave his friend a sympathetic look. “Hang in there, okay? Take it one hour at a time. Dara had it pretty rough for a while, too. But you stay with Callie, be there for her. Don’t write yourself off. She needs you, Beau.”
“Yeah, but you two have had a connection for a bit longer than we have, and it’s more solid and sure.”
“Hey, I’m on thin ice, too. I want to push Dara, but I know it’s not the correct strategy right now.”
“Is she going to see you stateside? I know you’re taking your leave to be with your family in Virginia at Christmas.”
“Yes, she’s agreed to see me.”
“Then,” Beau said, hope in his voice, “maybe Callie will give me a chance to be there for her, too.”
“Does she blame you for what happened to her?” Matt knew things went sideways on an op all the time. And this was one of those times. Worse, it involved a woman who’d had no combat experience, which could leave any operator hamstrung in so many bad ways.
“No,” he muttered. “I thought she might, but she doesn’t. She’s taking full responsibility for her decision. She said I wasn’t at fault. That she was. I tried to make light of it, but she’s not there. At least, not yet. It’s really eating at her that she ran instead of staying hidden. I told her she’s a civilian and not trained up for the kind of world we live in. If she’d been in the military, that would be different. I don’t fault her one iota for panicking as the Taliban drew too close to where she hid. Most civilians would have panicked. I just hope my words sink into her and make a difference. Maybe over time, they will.”
“Good, you’ve relieved her of guilt for what she’s done. Now she has to forgive herself,” Matt murmured, patting his friend’s slumped shoulder. “Callie’s been over here long enough and knows the lay of the land when it concerns the Taliban. She’s not a greenhorn, Beau, and that’s good news for both of you. I’m sure Callie knows you did your best. You had no idea how close those bastards were to you two.”
“My sat phone went out,” Beau muttered unhappily. “I’d put new batteries in it, but we were running, and a Taliban bullet hit it instead of me. That’s when it got busted up.”
Hearing the frustration in Beau’s voice, Matt said, “Things happen. We do the best we can. You know that. At least you didn’t get badly wounded. Your phone did.”
“Yeah, but this is one time when the fallout was on Callie, not me. I’d give anything to redo my decision-making process. She’s so damned scared. Shaking. She’s really hurting, and I can’t fix what’s wrong inside her head or her heart. That’s what bothers me the most, Matt. I can’t fix it …”
“I hear you,” Matt said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “Look, give Dara an hour and I’ll meet you out here then. Bring Callie down with you, okay?”
“Sounds good.” Beau gripped Matt’s shoulder. “Thanks, bro. It helps to talk to you about this hot mess.”
“Focus on Callie. Stop riding yourself about your decisions, Beau. You can’t change it or what happened, but what you can do is influence Callie right now. Just be there for her. I know you mean something to her.”
Beau gave him a warm look of thanks, nodded, and turned, walking down the hall, his shoulders slumped.
Matt opened the door to find Dara already up. He heard the shower going in the bathroom. Women’s intuition. He opened the door, some of the steam curling out above his head. She was in the huge, glass-enclosed stall, and he wanted to strip and go in there and join her.
“Hey,” he called, tapping on the glass door, which was almost completely fogged over with steam.
Dara opened it. “Is anything wrong, Matt?”
“Callie wants to see you,” he said. “I told Beau to bring her down here in an hour. That okay with you?” He saw her blue eyes lighten.
“Yes, I wanted to see her anyway. How is she?” She wiped her face with her fingers, brushing away water dripping from her hair.
“She’s hanging in there,” Matt said, relishing the look of her sleek body gleaming with rivulets of water. “Beau and I will leave you two alone to talk and we’ll bring you breakfast back from the chow hall.”
Dara smiled and leaned out of the stall, kissing him. “Thank you. I thought she might want to talk with me sometime today.”
“I think it will be healing for both of you,” he agreed. They were sisters, and they were tight; Matt knew Dara could help Callie in ways that a man couldn’t.
Women had their own kind of emotional communication. Men liked just the facts without all the touchy-feely stuff, but he understood Callie needed Dara as part of her healing process. Matt suspected by the way Beau was behaving that his protectiveness and care toward Callie were a lot more than what they seemed on the surface. His good friend knew how combat and life-and-death situations bonded people as nothing else ever could.
Now Matt was looking fo
rward to getting Dara out of here and home. And then? Christmas. With her. With his family. Matt desperately needed to get home for so many reasons, but the most important was wooing Dara and convincing her that what they had was beautiful. In fact, it was so beautiful, it could be the beginning of a life together.
CHAPTER 21
December 15
Matt wearily off-loaded from a C-5 transport and made his way through Operations to the front of the building at Andrews Air Force base near Washington, DC. At four p.m., the day was gray and cold. Rain or snow was threatening, and his entire family anxiously awaited him across the street in the parking lot.
A smile began when he saw his mother, Dilara, running toward him, arms wide open, tears in her large aquamarine eyes. As he met her at the curb, his duffel bag hefted over his left shoulder, Matt felt a huge weight lifting from him.
Dilara wore her hair down, a crimson cape across a black wool coat that hung to her knees. As always, she looked regal. Her gray wool pantsuit was a counterpoint to her flaming hair. She had been raised in luxury, wore expensive designer clothes, and dressed quietly but tastefully. Gold Turkish earrings gleamed in her ears, and a gold hand-beaten collar lay delicately around her throat. It shouted pride in her heritage. Right on her heels was his dad, Robert, dressed in civilian attire. He wore a dark blue business suit with a bone-colored raincoat over it.
“Hey, Mom,” he called, grabbing her and crushing her against him. Matt allowed the ninety-pound duffel to slide off him and drop to the ground as he wrapped his mother in his arms. He inhaled the faint scent of almonds from the oil she used to keep her hair shiny and strong. Dilara gave him a long, fierce hug, covering his face with kisses. Laughing, Matt kissed her flushed cheeks, his happiness complete as he saw the joy shining in her eyes.
“Oh! It’s so good to have you home, Matt! So good!” She quickly wiped away tears.
“Good to be home, Mom, believe me.” Matt released her but kept one arm around her shoulders as he reached out and shook his father’s proffered hand. “Hi, Dad. Glad you could make it.” Many times, his father wasn’t even in the U.S. He worked with NATO and often had to miss major holidays with his family. This time he was here, which made this a special event for everyone.
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