by Susan Grant
“Your lips are blue. Why didn’t you say something?”
“The chattering teeth weren’t a c-clue?”
Ignoring her, Ty crouched in front of her. “Boots,” he said. She gave him her feet, one at a time. He threw the boots in a corner. Then he shoved a chair against the door, followed by a table, wedging the furniture together. Finally, he strode to the bathroom, and then she heard the hiss of water. He came out and pointed. “Go.”
He was so serious that it was almost scary: Commander Armstrong ordering his troops into action. She hoped she’d never end up on the shooting end of his rifle. Teeth clattering, she gave him a stiff salute. “Y-yes, sir,” she said and followed him into the bathroom.
She’d learned something else about him. When he was worried, he became cold and businesslike. Strangely, she remembered the image she’d watched of his father, striding to a waiting car. Was that man’s icy demeanor due to his worry about his son? Did even the “Ax” fret about his babies?
That “baby” was a tall, dripping-wet SEAL now hunched over a bathroom sink in a third-rate inn in the wrong part of town. Ty scooped water into his mouth, rinsed, and spat, and then splashed handful after handful of soapy water onto his face, scrubbing it into his hair until he was soaked from the shoulders up.
He straightened, tossing back his head as he expelled a gust of air. Then he lifted the hem of his shirt to his face and dried off, exposing the whipcord-lean, tightly muscled body of a professional soldier.
Steam billowed in the small space. Bree’s clumsy fingers hadn’t made much progress with the buttons on her overtunic. She was shaking too severely to focus on one button at a time. Since it was her only outfit, ripping it off was out of the question. “Screw it,” she muttered, and stepped into the shower fully dressed.
Warm water gushed down onto her. She lifted her face, closed her eyes, and backed against the tiled wall. She didn’t know if it was from the relief of finally being inside and out of imminent danger, or the sheer pleasure of the water, but her legs felt like rubber, and she almost sagged to the floor.
Two strong hands grabbed her upper arms. “Don’t pass out on me.”
“I wouldn’t care.” Her speech was slurred. She sounded drunk. “I’d be warm...”
Eyes closed, she heard him tap the icon that controlled the water temperature. The spray got hotter. “Take off your clothes,” he said in a no-nonsense tone.
She opened her eyes. Ty stood under the deluge with her. Mist enveloped them in a sheltering fog, and moisture glittered on his hard, stubbly jaw. He was exactly what she needed to get her mind off everything that had happened tonight. If she were in luck, he’d feel the same about her.
“You first,” she said.
Ty’s expression softened with apology. “Hey…I didn’t mean while I was in here.”
“I did.”
It went very silent in the shower chamber. His eyes sharpened with a different kind of hunger. She pulled his hands to her sodden collar. “Help me with these buttons.”
His throat moved. For the first time, she saw his confidence waver. She’d thought he was a playboy. A bachelor stud. He didn’t act like a playboy; he acted like a choirboy. She hoped it wasn’t because he thought of her as something apart from a living, breathing woman. If so, she hoped he’d soon see how wrong he was.
But her condition forced him to comply: Borderline hypothermic, she needed hot water on her skin to get warm.
His strong hands undid her tunic, one button at a time. But his expression remained dead serious, as if she’d asked him to defuse a bomb.
When her top was undone, his hands spread the fabric wider, smoothing around to her ribs and down to her hips, where he hooked his fingers under her waistband and lowered the baggy trousers.
She let the shirt slide off her shoulders. Then, she undid her bra, letting it fall. Water ran over her face, streaming down her exposed body. Her nipples pinched tight from arousal and the cold. Between her legs, her pulse throbbed in a steady drumbeat, but her shivering wouldn’t go away. “Hold me, Ty,” she said quietly.
He drew her close to his wet body, a layer of sodden clothes between her skin and his. She burrowed closer, and a soft groan rumbled deep in his throat, his hands smoothing over her back and then cupping her butt. Her thigh grazed over a huge bulge straining his fly. So, he wasn’t immune to her after all. She wrapped her arms around his hips, her cheek pressed to his drenched shirt as she greedily absorbed his body heat.
As they stood there, clinging to each other in the shower, each for maybe very different reasons, something let go in Ty. The crook of his index finger nestled under her chin, lifting her head. She saw only his parted lips as he bent his head to kiss her.
A shock of pure pleasure shot through her when their mouths touched—and surprise. Kissing Ty Armstrong was far more powerful than she’d ever imagined.
Desire scorched through her as his fingers tangled in her hair. Water thrummed against her upturned face and the back of Ty’s head, streaming past their locked mouths. Ty slid his hand up her rib cage to cup her breast.
His rough thumb tracked back and forth over the center of her breast, and she felt the answering heat down below. The kiss turned forceful and hot, a sexy, reckless mix of growing need on her part and fading restraint on his.
Tyler Armstrong felt right in a world that felt so wrong. Period. Did she really need a better reason to make love?
She reached for his belt buckle. But he took over, throwing off his clothes with amazing speed and kicking the sodden mess out of the way. Vaguely, she wondered how they were going to make it to dinner—or even breakfast—dressed in soaking wet clothes, but she took the practical side of her and quashed it. Nothing she’d done so far since checking into this hotel had been anything close to practical.
As serious as a commando preparing to head out for a mission, he squeezed liquid soap into his hands and just as thoroughly proceeded to spread that lather over her naked body. She wasn’t as cautious. With a palm full of soap, she closed her hand around his swollen member and stroked. His breath hissed in, and his body went rigid. Then he found her mouth again, kissing her hard as she stroked him. Once, twice he pushed into her hand. Then, with what seemed like a tremendous effort, he took her by the wrist and guided her away. An instant later, his soapy hand slid between her thighs. And those fingers knew exactly where to go.
Convulsively, she grabbed his wrist, her hips jerking; but not because she wanted to stop him.
She didn’t want that hand to leave.
Ty responded with a throaty rumble of satisfaction, and she glimpsed his treasure hunter’s grin before he brought his mouth down to kiss her. But her attention was diverted far lower, where he slipped one of his fingers, thick and hot, inside her. Her inner walls contracted, squeezing him. Immediately, he withdrew his hand; he sensed how close she was, how close they both were.
He scooped her into his arms. Water battered them, hissing and spraying. Shutting off the water with his shoulder, he walked quickly to the bed and laid her on the cool sheets. That’s when she discovered she was no longer shivering.
He lay down next to her, kissing her neck as his hand tracked south. “Banzai,” he whispered in her ear.
“Bree,” she murmured back.
He lifted his head.
“Bree,” she explained breathlessly. “That’s my real name. Call me Bree.”
“Bree…” He kissed her throat. “Mmm. A feminine name. Delicate...”
“And nothing like me, right?”
“No.” His eyes were dark as he stroked her wet hair off her forehead. “Everything like you, sweetheart.”
His warm hand smoothed up her ribs to her breast. She gave in to the pleasure of his caress, her eyes half closed. Smiling, she sighed. “You really know how to make a pilot feel like a woman. It’s that playboy thing, huh?”
He groaned against her neck. “Playboy? That, Banzai, is an example of fabrication by a bored press corps.
The only thing that makes me a target is my father’s position as supreme military commander. Where would I find the time for that kind of socializing, even if it were true?”
Bree lifted her leg over his hip and rubbed the back of his leg with her toes. “I like that you’re not a playboy. Though it does take away some of your mystique.”
He gave a muffled bark of laughter.
“And since we’re busting first impressions, I’m not the kind of girl who sleeps around.”
“I knew that, Banzai,” he replied low in her ear, slipping his hand between her legs to caress her.
“So, if you’re not a playboy...and I’m not a loose woman, then what are we doing in bed?”
He rose up on his knees. “You’ll see...” His voice held such carnal promise, such honest desire, that her breath caught and her toes curled.
She waited impatiently for the thrust that would carry him deep inside her. It didn’t come.
Instead, Ty pushed up on his arms and gazed down at her, his face shadowed. She went still with the raw intensity in his gaze. When she’d made eye contact with him at the dinner with Kyber, and when he refused her pleas for help in finding Cam, she’d thought there was more to his hunger than the greed of a treasure hunter or the appraising study of a collector, but she wasn’t sure. Now she was certain. What she saw was passion, pure and frank, radiating from the heart of a man who had real feelings for her as a person. As a woman. All of a sudden, she found it very hard to breathe.
Ty cupped her face in his hand, his eyes dark, his voice quiet. “I used to say that my job was too dangerous for me to get too involved with a woman. It served me well as an excuse. But the truth of it, Bree, is that I could never shake the feeling I was destined for something big...something different and wonderful.” He slid one arm under the small of her back, lifting her hips. “I think I’ve been waiting for you.”
In one firm push, he thrust all the way home.
Her fingers grasped his wet hair as he seated himself deeply inside her. Before she could decide whether to moan or sigh, his mouth found hers. Her eyes closed and her lips opened under the soft, warm pressure. As he moved inside her intimately, his tongue lovingly stroked hers, setting up two disparate erotic sensations.
She couldn’t remember anyone making love to her and it feeling like this. It was more than a matter of skill; it was the tender awe he brought to the act. She willed her body to remember it all, in case life intervened and they never got another chance to repeat this.
“I’ve wanted you since I was ten,” he whispered in her ear, bringing her thigh over his back.
“Since you were ten?” Her question sounded more like a gasp, but Ty was moving inside her even as he’d spoke. And the way he moved...well, what woman wouldn’t lose her verbal skills?
“In a different way than this, I promise you.” There was a hitch in his voice with every determined push of his hips. “I saw your biography in a war textbook. Then I found a photo on the Interweb—you, posed in front of your F-16 fighter. At Kunsan Air Base.”
“You know about Kunsan?” she asked breathlessly. “About theF-16?”
His broad hand cupped her buttocks and he lifted her toward him, deepening their contact. It was all she could do to keep her eyes from rolling back in her head.
“I know about it all.” Arousal had thickened his voice, making it deeper, sexier. “Your picture remained in a place of honor for all the years I lived at home. I went to Harvard and then to medical school for a year. When the war started, I joined up. But I never forgot you.”
It was the most amazing story. It made her feel even more displaced in time, but for once she didn’t mind. She reached up and rubbed her thumb over the outline of his lips. The bristles of his beard pricked the pad of her finger. “Why?” she dared ask.
“Why didn’t I forget you?” His mouth spread in a smile. “You’re beautiful. And you can kick ass.”
She grinned back at him. “Is that it?”
With a bark of laughter, he rolled her atop him. Balancing herself with hands flat on his stomach, she pressed her pelvis down, taking him inside her, as deep as he could go. Her inner muscles clamped down around him.
He made a deep growl in his throat, arching his body upward, his fingers sinking into her hips, grinding her against him. “But in person, you’re much, much more,” he said on a gasp of pleasure.
Bree trembled, but not from the cold. Her decision to go to bed with Ty and somehow remain unaffected had been shattered. But he wasn’t having sex with her; he was making love to her. She knew enough of the former to recognize the latter.
“I never forgot you…”
And she had never known him. But she’d been dreaming of someone like him, only that dream-lover had never taken on form until now.
“I’ve wanted you since I was ten…”
With a sudden swell of emotion, she lowered her upper body, winding her arms over his shoulders to hold him close. They undulated as one, his damp beard pressed to her cheek, her lips pressed to his jaw.
“You’re beautiful...”
Warmth pooled in her belly, deep and low. She threw her head back and moaned. “Ah, Ty...”
His strong body arched between her thighs. He seemed barely in control, and when she breathed his name, he gave a short, strained hiss that told her his willpower was on the brink of splintering. Grasping her hips, he flipped her again, onto her back this time, and pressed her into the sheets. His kiss was greedy; he demanded everything she had, even what she held in reserve, both physical and emotional.
There was no talking now. Only the expression of physical need. The sensation low in her belly intensified, turning liquid. Her breaths came faster, and a low moan began deep in her throat. The pleasure reached a heart-stopping peak...and hovered there.
At the very moment that she came apart, he slanted his mouth over hers, stealing her cry as his thrusting hips bore her down into the sheets. His entire body went rigid for one...two heartbeats. He shuddered, arching his back, and then his body went slack. But they continued to rock together, slowly, until their fatigue grew so overpowering that it swamped them both.
They collapsed like two dead people. Bree felt so lightheaded, so weak, that she wondered if in fact she was about to die. Not a bad way to go, she reasoned, dazedly running her fingers up and down Ty’s damp back.
Ty lowered the lights. “Don’t shut them off all the way,” she said sheepishly.
“Why? Are you afraid of the dark?” he teased.
She didn’t say anything as she pulled the sheet over their legs.
Leaning on his elbow, he propped his head on his hand and scrutinized her. “Incredible. You are. My kick-ass girl is—”
She shoved him. “Shut up.” She rolled onto her back. He was still watching her. Groaning, she flopped onto her side. “I don’t like it. Being in the dark.”
“The past few days that’s all we’ve been doing, running around in the dark. You should have said something.”
She sniffed. “The mission came first.”
He shook his head in amazement.
“So I dealt with it, okay?” Her eyes were adjusting to the dim light in the room. Details were coming into view. It was darker than she liked, but in Ty’s company she hoped it wouldn’t matter. “It’s...left over from something that happened to me when I was a kid. I’ll tell you about it, but not now. Not tonight.”
He drew her close. In his arms, the darkness wasn’t so bad. “We all have something,” he reasoned.
“What do you have?”
“You.”
She lifted her head and smiled down at him in disbelief. “Me.”
“Yeah. You.”
“Good or bad?”
“Good,” he assured her. “It’s very good. But complicated.”
“Hmm.” She could only imagine. One of the world’s most eligible bachelors secretly infatuated with a woman who existed in legend only, and then getting thrown in jail for finding he
r in the flesh.
“Hold me tight,” she whispered. And he did.
In the dimness, they cuddled. A good sign, that. Despite what he’d revealed about his feelings, they hardly knew each other; the whole “after” business could have been awkward, but there was none of that.
Ty’s fingertips wandered over the contours of her back. “In the heat of the moment, I didn’t ask if you had protection,” he said.
“You mean birth control.”
“Yes, that. I assumed...I mean, I’m used to—”
“Don’t worry about it.” But she liked that he’d asked. That he cared. “They gave me something at the palace, along with all the other meds. It’s supposed to work for six months. They said in my condition, getting pregnant wouldn’t be a good idea. I didn’t pay much attention to the whole explanation, really, because I didn’t think I’d be doing anything with anyone that would warrant me worrying about it.”
“So, you and Kyber didn’t…”
She could tell by his pained expression and the way he braced himself that he really believed she’d slept with Kyber. “No,” she said. “There was never anything between us like that.” She left out the rest. She owed Kyber that.
Ty seemed inordinately relieved. Smiling, she wound her arms around his neck and angled her mouth over his. His lips were warm, his mouth moist and hot as his tongue slipped firmly between her lips. The kiss was long, slow, and tender.
“Are you warm enough now?” he murmured when she pulled away.
“Yeah. It almost makes me want to get cold again, just so you can warm me up.”
She felt the rumble of laughter in his chest. “They say that man can’t live on sex alone. After tonight, I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about food in an hour. But if memory returns, I may have to resort to cannibalism, Banzai.” He bit her neck, pretending to devour her.
They laughed, kissing. Then he pushed off the bed. “One last thing,” he said, disappearing into the bathroom then returning a moment later. “I threw the clothes onto the DM rack along with the towels. They’ll be ready in the morning.”
