by KJ Reed
He took his time stripping her down. With every inch of exposed skin he took his time to explore with his lips, his tongue, his teeth. Gentle nips made her jolt, whispered brushes of his lips forced a shiver.
When she was in her bra and panties—feeling grateful she’d taken the time to pick out a cute pair instead of her five-for-five-bucks cotton set—he picked her up as if she weighed nothing. She waited for him to toss her on the bed. Instead he laid her down as though she were fragile and precious. Her heart took another traitorous tumble and she pressed her eyes shut to keep frustrated tears from falling. Frustration from knowing anything—everything—they had was finite.
“You have the smoothest skin,” he murmured as his lips moved down her collarbone to the valley between her breasts. He undid the front clasp and the material fell to the sides. He nuzzled, nipped and licked around the soft skin, all while avoiding her tight nipples. He took a bite from the soft flesh under her breast and she moaned, wiggled a little in an effort to force contact with her hard nipple.
He laughed and used one hand on her shoulder to keep her still. “Calm down. We’ll get there.” But instead of relief, he moved to the other breast, licking and nibbling his way around in that same teasing manner.
Just as she was about to grab his head and pull him where she wanted him, his teeth closed around one tight bud and he bit down. Hard.
Her eyes flew open and she gasped for breath. It hurt, but it didn’t. And she felt a responding throb between her legs. He soothed the ache with his tongue and the sting was a distant memory as her body wiggled and danced in answer to his laps and sucks. He moved to the other breast and she braced herself for the same pleasure-pain, but it didn’t come. He gave a gentle tug with his teeth and sucked once before moving down her stomach.
Everywhere his lips touched, her body twitched involuntarily. Her abs tightened and she couldn’t stop shifting her restless body. Then he reached the apex of her thighs and she couldn’t move at all.
Once again he surprised her by not slipping her panties down her legs. Instead he let his tongue roam and trace the outline of the black lace. Around her hips, over her thighs, then one long line down her center.
“You’re so wet,” he said, his voice sounding distant. “I can feel you through the fabric. God that’s hot.”
He pushed her knees wide. She raised her head in surprise. There was no way to get her panties off now, not with her legs that far apart. Before she could point out the obvious flaw in his plan, he surprised her again.
Donovan leaned down and let his tongue run over her panties, teasing her through the fabric. He reached her clit and pushed down, the tip of his tongue barely making contact.
It wasn’t enough. She thrust her hips up, silently begging for more, but one hand clamped on her waist and pushed her down with firm authority.
“Don—Donovan…”
He caught that sensitive bundle of nerves between his teeth and a scream stuck in her throat, came out garbled and watery. Her knees flew together, trapping his head between them.
“Problems?” he asked, voice muffled by her thighs.
She inhaled deeply and said, “No. Surprised.” She took a pillow and covered her face in embarrassment. God, one little nip and he almost had to scrape her from the ceiling. Very suave.
Donovan pried her legs apart and slid over her body. The pillow moved and his face appeared, looking amused.
“If you don’t like it then tell me and I won’t do it again.”
“No!” she said then bit her tongue. Her face felt as if it were on fire. “That’s not it, it just surprised me is all. I’ve never…no guy’s ever…you know…bit me…” She groaned and turned her face into the pillow. What were the odds she could convince him to use the pillow to smother her for real and end her agony?
He pushed down with his hips, his denim-clad erection pressing heavily into her groin. “Gotcha. But if you don’t mind, I think I’m ready to move on to something we have done before.” He reached over his head and pulled his shirt off in one motion, tossing it onto the floor.
She gave in to the urge and ran her hands up and down his chest a few times, brushing his flat nipples as she passed by. He was a rock, all muscle. Not a soft space on him, including below the belt. Her fingers drifted to his belt and she undid the buckle and the first button. Her arms were too short and she couldn’t reach his fly so she pushed his shoulder until he rolled onto his back.
Donovan toed off his shoes while she straddled his thighs and undid his fly. Then with some undignified wiggling and maneuvering, she managed to scrape his jeans and socks down his legs to fall with his shoes on the floor.
“Commando. I like it. Easy access.” She laughed and ran a hand down his hip. His cock, lying against his stomach, jumped at her touch.
“Someone’s anxious for attention.” Ariel bent down and used the tip of her tongue to lick the slit of its head. He was salty and male and delicious. She used one hand to fist around the base and took him in her mouth. The flat of her tongue rubbed the thick vein along the underside of his shaft. She let her teeth graze on the way up.
He hissed in a breath and his fingers tangled in her hair.
She loved it. Loved that she could evoke the same level of reaction from him as he did from her. Fired up, she cupped his balls in one hand and squeezed lightly. She let her fingernails rake the skin while her mouth took his cock again. She sucked and pulled at the same time and his grip tightened against her skull.
“Fuck, enough. You’re killing me.” He sat up, gripped under her arms and pulled until she was straddling him, his cock pulsing heat against her core.
She balanced on her knees and reached into the nightstand drawer. A quick check reassured her the condom was still good and she tore the packet open. With extreme care, she positioned the protection and rolled it down slowly. She looked up and saw Donovan’s eyes locked on her hands.
“There,” she said. “All suited up and ready to play.” She leaned over his body and gave him a kiss.
“Well then, put me in, Coach.”
He nudged her with his knee and she lifted up enough to wriggle her hips until she felt the head of his penis push in. She let her hips fall, sank down to the hilt and paused for a moment to savor the fullness.
Donovan thrust his hips up and she took her cue to move. The slow glide up felt good and she almost didn’t stop, but his hands caught her hips before his cock slipped out completely.
“Lean back. Put your weight on your hands and arch back,” he commanded.
Ariel didn’t think twice before obeying. She settled her hands on the outside of his knees and arched her spine. Her breasts lifted toward the ceiling and she let her head fall back. The position sent him deep inside her but limited her motion. She rocked forward on her knees as far as she could go and his cock pushed in even farther.
He used his hands on her hips to guide the rhythm. A slow burn started low in her belly and she tried to grind down harder, faster. His thumb stroked around where their bodies joined then slid up. He rubbed circles around her clit, teasing her with contact. Release was there, just out of reach.
“Donovan, please…” She panted the words.
He chuckled. “Please what?”
“Just…please!”
His thumb picked up the pace and pushed down hard. The added pressure and speed was enough to send her over. Her head fell back and her fingers clawed the bedspread. She thrust her hips forward and clenched her knees tight to his body. Against her thighs she felt his muscles tense and bunch. He grabbed her hips and held her down as he pulsed inside her.
Ariel let the waves of pleasure roll through her body until her limbs were limp. She shifted and fell to the side, facing Donovan. One heavy arm came around and pulled her to his chest. She breathed in their sweat, his cologne, and let the scent imprint a memory. They may not have forever, but they had something special for a short time.
* * * * *
The lack of war
mth woke Ariel up. Without opening her eyes, she shifted her hand over the bed but didn’t find Donovan. She sat up and pulled the covers over her breasts, holding the sheet by her sides with her arms. Her eyes adjusted to the room and she saw him, fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed facing the window. He sat bent over, elbows braced on his knees, head in his hands, unmoving.
“Donovan?”
“I didn’t plan this. Before anything, I need you to know I didn’t plan this.” He didn’t raise his head or look her way. Just spoke with a tone that had ice forming in her gut.
Didn’t plan what? To sleep with her that night? To sleep with her at all? Oh God… She screwed her eyes shut and asked the question she dreaded the answer to.
“You’re not married, are you?”
“What? No.” He sounded so offended her eyes popped open. He was staring at her like she’d just asked him if two plus two equaled five. “I’m not married. Not engaged or seriously committed or anything else.”
She exhaled. “Well, as long as you’re not on the run from the law…” she teased.
He smiled a little. “Not even a parking ticket.”
“Okay. So what’s wrong?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m not just here for a post-deployment vacation. I’m here looking for my sister.”
“You’re looking for your sister,” she repeated slowly. Of all the places she thought this conversation was going, that one did not come to mind.
“Her name is Sarah.”
Ariel’s sleep-fogged brain worked furiously to connect dots, but she had a feeling she was a few dots short.
“My first name is Travis. Trav.”
Travis. The truth slammed into her like a wrecking ball, fast and overpowering. Travis. Sarah. “The text messages,” she whispered.
He nodded.
What the hell was going on? She scooted until her back hit the headboard and she flipped on the bedside light. She blinked rapidly to refocus while a thousand thoughts swam through her mind.
“I didn’t plan it.” Donov—no, Trav’s voice cut through the whirlwind of her mind. “I had no clue who you were when you showed up with Pete night before last.”
“Pete?”
“Goodwin. His first name is Pete.”
“Ah,” she said, like it all made sense. Like her world wasn’t currently upside down.
“I enjoyed the texts. Text Girl.” He laughed, a humorless, scornful sound. “I came home from this last deployment and needed to find my sister. I just did. She wouldn’t respond to my letters. They’ve been sent back ‘return to sender’ for so long it wasn’t worth bothering any longer. And she used to just ignore my texts. But clearly she got a new number.”
“Clearly,” she agreed, dazed.
“I was thankful you’d let me know, since I could have just assumed she was ignoring me again. I thought that would be the end of it. But then you were so helpful. And funny. And just nice. I didn’t want to stop talking to you.”
Neither had she.
“I came here with the purpose of finding my sister. Meeting you—it never crossed my mind. No,” he corrected. “It crossed my mind. But I never thought it would happen. Then we get here and Pete comes back the same night with two girls. I wasn’t interested…until I saw you.”
He looked at her, as if waiting for a signal to continue. His eyes were full of hope and worry. She nodded, needing to know where this was going.
“You were beautiful and unexpected and I couldn’t walk away. Didn’t want to walk away. And then we ran into you the next day in the coffee shop. Which was a coincidence, I swear. I just texted, well, you. And I was wondering how to approach, uh, you…”
He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “This is confusing. I still didn’t know who you were, but then the employee called out Ariel instead of Mackenzie and it made me think. So I texted ‘Text Girl’,” he said, using air quotes to make it obvious. “And I watched while you opened your phone, read something, typed something and closed it. Then three seconds later my phone’s vibrating with a new text and Text Girl is saying she’s hanging with a friend getting coffee. I may not be a college grad but I can put those two together.”
Random coincidences. Could it really all be chalked up to happenstance? Or was Mary Ellen’s paranoia on the money and she currently had a crazed stalker with a good story in her bedroom?
“I wanted to tell you tonight after dinner,” he said softly. “I planned on it. But then you brought me back here and my resistance broke. You do that to me. And no matter what, I hope you believe me. Even if this is the end, I hope you believe me.”
She wanted to believe. Was desperate to believe him and move on. But a small voice in her head that sounded annoyingly like Mary Ellen warned her to be skeptical.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that I need some time to process.”
He was still a moment then nodded sharply. “All right. I’ll leave.” He crossed to the bedroom door and paused. “If you need anything, or just want to talk…you know my number.” He shut the bedroom door quietly behind him.
A moment later she heard the front door close.
Ariel didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She stared into the dark until her eyelids were heavy with exhaustion. She got up, stripped the bed of the sheets that still smelled like sex and him and remade it with fresh ones. Then she crawled back under the covers and decided to pull a Scarlett O’Hara.
She’d think about it tomorrow.
Chapter Eight
“Bombed, huh?”
“Shut up,” Trav muttered as he backed away and let Pete into his hotel room.
He’d come home the night before and crashed, not bothering to see if Pete was back yet. If his friend was in the middle of an all-night sex-fest with Mary Ellen, he wasn’t in the mood to interrupt.
Pete flopped down on the bed. “I missed the breakfast buffet. Did you bring back anything to eat?”
Trav waved a hand toward the desk, which held a plate with pastries. Pete jumped up and threw himself into the desk chair, attacking the plate with a vengeance. Trav took his place on the bed, knowing nothing short of a mortar attack would stop Pete in the middle of stuffing his face.
Three danishes later, Pete asked, “So what happened?”
“I tried to explain right after we split up. But we got sidetracked.”
“Sidetracked being an euphemism for ‘fucking’ right?”
Trav lifted a brow at that. “Do you even know how to spell the word euphemism?”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Ha. Clever. Stop stalling.”
Trav blew out a breath. “To answer your question, yes. She kills my resistance. I had my mind all made up, this entire speech planned out and then bam. She takes me back to her apartment and suddenly I can’t say a word.”
“So you didn’t tell her?” Pete asked between bites of his second croissant.
“I told her…eventually.”
“Mary Ellen said she thought Ariel would believe you. Said combining you and this text dude she thought she’d been talking to would be like a dream come true.”
Trav stared at his friend. “You told Mary Ellen?”
Pete shrugged. “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to leave the area too soon in case you got it over fast and needed a drinking buddy. So we had to kill time somehow.”
“And you chose to do it by talking?”
“She’s hung up on someone else. Nice girl, good sex. But I’m not interested in playing someone’s second string.”
Wise words from the man for whom all women would be second string. “Why did she say Ariel would believe me?”
“Ellen—sorry, Mary Ellen said Ariel’s one of those ‘believes in the good in all’ people. So maybe she just needs a day to think and she’ll forgive you.”
Trav stood, too restless to relax, and paced the small hotel room. “And what if she doesn’t? What if we leave here in a few days and she’s still processing? What if she never talks to me again?”
&n
bsp; “What if?” Pete repeated. He used the last croissant to point at him. “Fact is, we are leaving in less than a week. And you can’t change that. You know we have to report back. And then what? We get back, sign our re-up papers and start all over again. Her life is here. You heard her say that, all those plans. She’s got ‘roots’ written all over her.” His point made, he popped the pastry into his mouth.
He was right. Even if Ariel forgave him for the unintentional deception, nothing would come of it.
But the part about signing papers—for the first time, it didn’t appeal. And not because of Ariel, but because he was just done running. The Corps had been there for him—saved him—when he had to escape his home. But he never intended to stay in for life. He’d just stuck with the habit of running, never feeling quite steady or safe enough to get out. Was he ready now?
Only one more thing to do before he’d know for sure.
“Time to go see dear old dad.”
* * * * *
Ariel sat on the fence watching Mary Ellen work a yearling in the paddock off the barn. It always amused her that Mary Ellen—so tiny and compact—exerted complete and utter control over the thousand-pound animals with a simple flick of her wrist or a whistle.
Watching the horse circle around, figure eight and stop in place soothed her frazzled nerves and she was glad she’d come to the barn to talk things out. Even though she knew she was in for a huge “I told you so” lesson.
Mary Ellen led the horse back to the barn and Ariel hopped down to follow and give a hand.
“You can say it now,” Ariel said.
“No clue what you’re talking about,” Mary Ellen replied as she started to rub down the yearling.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t tell me you and Pete didn’t say a word about Trav being the anonymous texter.”
