Rescued by the Marine

by Julie Miller

  He huffed a wry sound. “What if I can’t?”

  “I need you to try.”

  His splayed his big hand over hers, holding her against his skin. “My last mission...” He squeezed his eyes shut against a memory he couldn’t shake. “Before I was discharged...” His eyes opened again, pleading with her. “I don’t think I can handle losing anyone else. I can’t fail again.”

  Samantha considered the best way to respond to the pain in that taut whisper. “Then don’t.”

  “Sam—”

  “Are we alive?” He nodded. “Are we lost?” He shook his head. “Then I’d say you’re doing your job, Marine. And I have every reason to believe that you will continue doing that job.”

  Her reasoning seemed to take him aback for a moment. But then he nodded. He squeezed her fingers before pulling them from his face. “Nice speech. You’re officer material. How tired are you?”

  “What’s the next stage beyond exhausted?”

  The lines in his face softened with half a smile. “You’ve got a wicked sense of humor, woman. It takes a lot of spirit to make jokes when we’re in such dire straits. Sorry I’ve been such lousy company.” He stooped down to pick up the radio where she’d dropped it, then tucked it into his pack and pulled out a first aid kit. He opened a roll of gauze to tie around his bleeding knuckles. “I’ve...got some issues from my time in the service. Sometimes, I... I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  Samantha pulled off her gloves and knelt beside him. “Losing your friend reminded you of that? The explosion? The guns? They triggered something inside your head, got you to thinking about memories that upset you?”

  He nodded. “Post-traumatic stress syndrome. Marty’s not the first man I’ve lost. He was air support for my unit in Afghanistan. He saved my life on my last mission. Even though I lost...” His eyes darkened and he turned away. “Marty flew in to evac my team when no one else would. Too bad I couldn’t return the favor here.”

  “Those action movie bad guy wannabes are responsible for Marty’s death. Not you.”

  “I do better when I’m not around people. Nobody gets hurt.”

  “You didn’t hurt me just now when you easily could have.” She smiled, taking over bandaging his hand. “I do better when I’m not around people, too. I don’t mean to make light of what you’ve gone through. I’m just saying I understand the need to retreat sometimes.”

  “From your cheating ex?”

  “Kyle? You were listening to all that stuff I was saying?” Feeling her cheeks flooding with heat, she kept her face down, concentrating on tying off the gauze dressing.

  Her blush intensified when Jason smoothed aside a lock of hair that had fallen across her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Kind of hard to miss the conversation when we’re the only two people here.”

  For a split second, she didn’t know what to say. But then, as the thoughts tumbled in, her mouth started working again. “I knew something was off with that relationship. But on paper, he was perfect for me. I wanted to make it work.” She shrugged. “I think my dad worries I’m going to be a lonely old maid. It made him happy to see me with a man in my life.”

  “Did Grazer make you happy?”

  She thought about that. “Maybe at first. The attention was nice.” But even then, she’d had trouble believing his interest in her was sincere. Only her stepmother’s unfailing support of Kyle and his family pedigree had convinced Samantha otherwise. “I thought he found my quirks endearing. That we complemented each other. It never occurred to me that he was trying to change me into someone else. Maybe that’s why Joyce, my stepmother, likes him so well. She’d been trying to mold me into a pretty princess for years. That’s what she knows. That’s what she thinks I should be. Looking back, I think the only thing Kyle loved about me was the vice-presidency that comes with marrying me.”

  Jason let out a low whistle. “That explains a lot.”

  “What does?”

  “His behavior last night. He was desperate to get you back. Maybe he was just desperate to get his meal ticket back in hand. Unless...”

  “What?”

  “Grazer disappeared before the meeting with your dad and security chief was over. I thought maybe he knew something about your kidnapping”

  Samantha frowned. “What would be his motive? Kyle comes from money. Why would he need it?”

  “To get you out of the way so he could be with your sister?” When her hands stilled at the dark possibility, he took out a small pair of scissors to cut the end of the gauze.

  Her dad had promised Kyle an important position in the company when he married her. But he could marry Taylor instead and get the same deal if she was out of the picture. How had this pep talk for Jason turned out to be about her? Shaking off the malaise that threatened to overwhelm her at the idea she’d been set up by someone so close to home, so close to her heart, she plucked the scissors from Jason’s fingers and finished the bandaging job herself. “I can’t picture Kyle going by the nickname of Buck. Besides, I would have recognized his voice if he was one of the men on the mountain.”

  “Things got pretty crazy there for a while. No telling what we heard. But you’re probably right. Could be Grazer was just worried about your dad finding out about them fooling around. I wouldn’t say concern for you was his priority.”

  “It wouldn’t be. I was never going to make him happy. I just wish I’d wised up sooner.” She exhaled her humiliation on a deep sigh before reaching over his bent knee to pick up his backpack and pull it into her lap to put away the first aid kit. “I have almost three college degrees, but I’m dumb about people. I have a hard time figuring them out. Who’s being real? Who’s sucking up to me? Who thinks I’m an asset, and who thinks I’m a burden?”

  Jason watched her every movement, hanging on to every word intently enough to make her squirm. “You’re not a burden to me.”

  “What would you be doing today if you weren’t stranded on this mountain with me?”

  “Working on my cabin. My dad and I started building it before my last deployment. I’m finishing it on my own now.”

  “What happened to your dad?”

  “We had a falling-out.”

  She suspected there was more to that revelation than he let on. But he’d just revealed his struggle with post-traumatic stress—he probably wasn’t ready to share whatever family drama had made him choose such a solitary life.

  “My mom was murdered when I was a little girl. I still have nightmares about that sometimes. I was in the middle of one when you found me in the cabin. I don’t know your experience, and you don’t have to tell me unless you want to. All I’m saying is, I understand how traumatic events can get in our heads and mess us up.” She clutched her fingers against her stomach for a moment, confessing every shortcoming. “I break out in hives when I get stressed. I ramble on to fill up the dead air because there’s a very insecure part of me that thinks I’m not acting the way I’m supposed to be. And when I don’t know what to do, I tinker or talk or make jokes or...get myself into trouble. The only thing I’m good at is being smart, so I get frustrated when I don’t have the answers. People don’t understand me. They feel sorry for me or I intimidate them, or the money does. I keep thinking my mom...she would have taught me how to be normal. My dad tries, and I know he loves me, but he doesn’t know how to fix me. My stepmother’s tired of trying.” She zipped the pack shut and held it out to Jason, finally raising her gaze to his. “Don’t blame yourself for anything you’ve done with me. I come this way—a little odd and eccentric, but tough enough. And I can learn anything if you give me a chance. We’ll just keep putting one foot in front of the other and deal with the bad memories. Maybe we should make that another rule. No matter what happens—from the past or the present—we won’t judge each other, or ourselves. We’ll deal with it and support each other. We’ll get through this. Togethe
r.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “And we won’t hurt any more trees.”

  His eyes held hers for an endless moment.

  He thought she was an idiot.

  He was probably still replaying everything she’d said inside his head, trying to make sense of it all. He was probably deciding right then and there whether she was worth the time and trouble and grief she’d caused him. Maybe he was even trying to think of a nice way to tell her to shut up.

  But Jason did none of those things.

  He dropped the first aid kit into his pack and reached for her. By the time she felt his hands on her shoulders, he’d covered her startled lips in a kiss. It was no tentative exploration this time, either. If he was trying to calm her down, the moist heat of his mouth moving against hers was having the opposite effect. His arms snaked around her waist, pulling her to him as he stood, lifting her right out of the snow.

  Samantha fell against him when she lost her footing. Her fingers latched onto the collar of his jacket, hanging on as he speared his tongue between her lips. Her mouth opened and his tongue slipped in, swirling around the soft skin inside, testing the hard edge of her teeth before sliding against hers in a needy claim. He touched that unknown ignition point inside her again, melting away the shock of the unexpected kiss, triggering a tingle of heat in her blood and breasts and the notch of her thighs.

  The tingling scattered her thoughts. Suddenly, Samantha wasn’t thinking. She was feeling. She was learning. Jason was teaching, and she was an apt student, following instinct instead of logic. There were no notes to take, no rules to remember. There was just Jason and need and a kiss.

  As the taste of him filled up her mouth, the scent of him filled up her head and the heat of him filled her entire body. She wasn’t just hanging on. She was grasping, pulling. Twining her tongue with his and suckling on the firm lip that moved between hers. She skimmed her sensitive palms along the rough textures of his neck and jaw and tangled her fingers into the thick strands of his hair. Jason moaned into her mouth at the needy tug of her hands, and she answered back as the deep-pitched sound vibrated against her lips. His hands slipped lower, palming her butt and anchoring her against the trunks of his thighs, creating a friction that kindled even more heat in sharp contrast to the cool air at her back, and the crispness of their clothes rubbing the skin of her legs between them.

  This full-body contact was a new experience for her. It was a graphic reminder of all the differences between male and female, and she relished the discovery of all his hard places with her own soft curves. Her nipples beaded to tight, almost painful, nubs, and she felt weepy and heavy inside. The sandpapery stubble of his beard was a seductive abrasion against the delicate skin of her lips, the stroke of his tongue a soothing balm. His nose caught beneath the rim of her glasses, nudging them up so he could press a warm kiss to the apple of her cheek, the corner of her eye. She kneaded her fingers against the back of his neck before sliding them beneath the grip of his cap to cradle the warm, masculine shape of his head and pull his lips back to hers.

  She went after his mouth this time, replaying every nibble, tug and stroke that he’d used on her moments earlier. He answered every touch with one of his own. The give-and-take made time stand still. Samantha lost track of where she was. There was no past, no future, only now. Only Jason and this kiss.

  And her rumbling stomach.

  Her eyes blinked open at the intrusive noise and she pulled her hands back to his shoulders, mentally cursing the noisy growl of reality. She squiggled out of Jason’s grasp, the cool air rushing between them as much of a shock as the initial kiss had been. But even as she sank ankle-deep in the snow, he steadied her with his hands at her waist.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, feeling a different, far less pleasurable heat coloring her cheeks. “That’s embarrassing.”

  Seductive just wasn’t a talent of hers. She glanced down at her smudged coat, torn dress, men’s boots and knee-high socks. She knew her makeup was gone; her hair was a mess and she hadn’t brushed her teeth since dinner last night. Plus, there was that whole never-ending question-asking thing that was probably bugging the hell out of him. Wow. She was all kinds of not-seductive.

  He dipped his head to press a quick, dismissive kiss against her tender lips, pausing to study her expression for a moment before releasing her. “You okay?”

  “Of course. Yes.” She pressed a hand against another growl of her not-seductive tummy. “Hungry, I guess.”

  “You’re right to let me know when I’m pushing you too hard.” He unzipped one of the pockets in his jacket and pulled out a plastic bag filled with dried fruit. Opening the bag, he invited her to sample a pineapple, apricot or banana. “It’s not the steak and potatoes you want, but the fructose will give you some energy.”

  Steak and potatoes? He had heard that whole whiny, stream-of-consciousness ramble earlier.

  “Thank you.” He tossed back a few bites, too, while she chewed and savored the sweet, tangy fruit. The apricot was more flavorful than the cardboard-flavored granola bar, but not as delicious as the taste of Jason. She stuffed the whole thing into her mouth, averting her gaze from the rugged lines of his face. When did she become such a devotee of kissing? And when had she ever thrown herself into an embrace without thinking about whether she was getting it right or not, or even if she was welcome to try?

  Her brain seemed to be misfiring. Maybe it was the drug the kidnappers had shot her up with.

  “You don’t have to fill up the dead air for my sake. But if it feels better to talk, it doesn’t bother me. At least I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have to be a telepath.” Jason offered her another handful of dried fruit before tucking the bag back into his pocket. “I like the husky sound of your voice. I know it’s not a hundred percent because you’ve damaged your throat. But it’s kind of sexy.”

  “Sexy?” Had the man just applied that word to her? She choked the last bite of pineapple down her throat. “Me?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with your hearing, is there?”

  “No, but—”

  “Just watch if you get light-headed or dizzy. Talking expends more energy and lets more cold air into your lungs, dropping your body temperature faster.” In the span of a few seconds, he’d kissed her senseless, tended to her needs, complimented her matter-of-factly and explained a valuable survival skill. What more could a woman want? Samantha followed his gaze as he glanced up at the sky. The sun was moving closer to the horizon. “And it will get cold again. The temperature is going to drop thirty degrees once night falls. We need to find shelter. Buck and his men shouldn’t be able to track us after dark. I know a place where we can stay the night. It should be far enough off the grid to be safe.” He dropped his gaze to hers, catching her staring at him. But her fascination with his rugged profile, ability to truly listen and his different sort of intelligence didn’t seem to faze him. Or maybe he wasn’t aware of just how badly she was crushing on her rescuer. “Let’s amend that last rule. You believe in me, and I’ll believe in you.”

  “I do believe you’ll keep me safe.”

  He nodded. He made a scan of their surroundings, quietly slipping back into mountain man mode, into the serious, taciturn former Marine who had promised to get her home. He stooped down and handed her the gloves to put on again. “You think you’ve got another mile in you?”

  Samantha exhaled a heavy sigh. “I guess I have to.” She pulled on the gloves while he adjusted his pack on his back and checked the gun holstered to his thigh. “Could you talk to me a little more while we’re walking?” He arched an eyebrow in apology. “You won’t talk...?” Wait, what was he apologizing for? He turned toward the steeper terrain that followed the rise of the creek bed. “We’re hiking?” He pointed to the rock face, about fifty yards north, where the water cascaded over a ledge, its plume frozen in midair. “We’re climbing? That?”

  Jason l
aughed, a deep, rich sound. She decided then and there that he was just as good-looking from the front as he was from the back. And she wondered why eliciting a smile from Kyle had never given her such pleasure.

  “We’ll deal with it. Together.”

  “That kiss was to bolster my courage to tackle rock climbing?”

  “No. That kiss was about thanking you. For getting me out of my head where I’m my own worst enemy, and giving a damn about me even when I’m being a total jerk.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “I was.” He helped her into her pack, hanging on to her shoulders for a moment before spinning her around to face him. “And for the record? You don’t need me to bolster your courage. You’ve been through more in the past twenty-four hours than most people endure in a lifetime. But you don’t quit. You make jokes when most women—hell, most men—would be crying. You’re grounded, Sam Eddington. You were the anchor I needed today. You care—even when a washed-up nut job like me goes off the deep end. A lot of people run from the kind of scary I can be. You ran to me.”

  “It seemed like a matter of survival. For me.” She brushed her fingers against the back of his uninjured hand in a tentative touch. “But, for the record—when you lost it, that really did scare me.”

  “Scares me when it happens, too. We’d better get moving.” He tightened his grip around her hand, leading her to the craggy rocks he wanted her to scale. “And one more thing for the record? Sometimes a man just wants to kiss a woman. He wants to feel her in his arms. Feel her softness, her strength. There isn’t always a reason. Your ex is an idiot if he never taught you that.” He tugged her to a stop. “I don’t know what lessons Grazer was teaching you. But there isn’t a damn thing wrong with the way you kiss.”

  Chapter Eight

  A fist of guilt punched Jason square in the gut.