Uncommon Pleasure

by Anne Calhoun

  * * *

  Closing in on midnight on Halloween, Abby stepped up to the waitress station on the horseshoe-shaped bar projecting from No Limits’s back wall and called out, “Scotch neat, Ketel One and cranberry.”

  Linc Sawyer owned the bar and worked as its lead bartender. He’d hear her and have the drinks made in the time it took for her to survey the costumed crowd. No Limits was packed with slutty nurses, slutty vampires, slutty cheerleaders, slutty French maids, slutty fairies, and extra-slutty strippers. The men wore the barest acknowledgments to costumes and took full advantage of the drink specials and amped-up atmosphere.

  “Hey,” Lisette said, adjusting her cat ear headband. “We missed you Saturday.”

  “I had to take Dad to the after-hours clinic, then get new prescriptions filled,” she said. The gray color hadn’t just been a lack of fresh air. By four in the afternoon his lips were blue-tinged, and she was on the phone to his doctor. She’d bailed on a closing shift on a Saturday night, and her wallet was already screaming about the lost tips. Her dad’s disability payments barely covered the mortgage.

  “How’s he doing?” Lisette asked.

  “Better, actually. His doctor met us at the clinic,” she said, remembering her profound relief when Dr. Weaver strode through the door, unflappable and analytical in her approach, no-nonsense enough to make her dad pay attention. “She found a better combination of drugs. He’s slept better the last two nights, but he still needs to gain weight and improve his lung capacity.”

  “Good,” Lisette said, and loaded up her tray. “Hey, did that hottie from last week find you?”

  Hottie from last week. Sean. “Yes, he found me,” she said, “and what were you thinking, sending him to Ben’s place?”

  “He whipped by the door in a muscle car, driving like a bat out of hell,” Lisette said. “He didn’t catch you before you went up?”

  Ah yes, the Mustang, Sean’s one concession to typical male testosterone toys. He liked to drive, and fast, and he was absolutely fanatical about American muscle cars. “No, but he was waiting three hours later when I came down,” she said.

  Lisette’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

  “Yes. It was bad. Very bad,” she said. The drinks materialized on the bar in front of her. “Thanks, Linc,” she called, more out of good karma and manners than any hope he’d hear her over the bar’s deafening noise level.

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” Lisette said.

  “Probably,” Abby agreed, not quite sure what she was agreeing to, but No Limits on Halloween wasn’t the place to carry on a meaningful conversation.

  She lifted the tray on her flat palm to shoulder height, turned, and found herself face-to-face with Sean. She shrieked and stepped back, bumping into an occupied stool as she did. The abrupt change of direction sent the tray tilting to the right, and the drinks tipped precariously toward a woman waiting at the bar. Deftly Sean reached out and snagged the Scotch and the vodka cranberry just as the tray clattered to the floor.

  “Nice reflexes,” Lisette offered with a flirtatious smile, then whisked away into the crowd.

  Abby crouched to reclaim the tray, then walloped Sean on the chest with it. “You scared me half to death! That’s the second time in three days!” she hissed, and added a second wallop for good measure. She might as well wallop a two-hundred-year-old oak tree. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you. Where do these go?” Sean asked without changing expression.

  She blinked. She’d fully expected to see him in the bar again; everyone in Galveston knew if you wanted to hook up, No Limits was the place to do it. But she hadn’t expected him to be looking for her. His eyes, visible to her for the first time in over a year, were the same piercing blue but somehow unreadable. The tan lines from the Oakleys stretched across his temples, and crow’s-feet gathered at the corners of his eyes. Even his mouth looked firmer, less inviting even than it had during the encounter in the parking lot.

  Something was different. Every nerve in her body quivered, seeking additional input to make sense of the situation, her brain whirling as it tried to take in both his implacable expression and his sudden appearance. A sharp whistle shocked her out of her reverie.

  “I’ll do it.” She held out the tray.

  “I’ve got them,” he said.

  “Drinks have to be delivered on a tray,” Linc called from behind the bar. “House rules. And stop harassing my waitress or there’s a baseball bat back here with your face on it.”

  She gave Sean a bright, false smile and held out the tray with a flourish. “Don’t make me lose this job,” she said through her teeth. She’d been a regular here, in another lifetime, and other regulars tipped her well. “I need this job.”

  He set the drinks down on the cork-lined tray. She brushed past him, distributed drinks, made change, accepted her tip, and looked around for the next customer.

  Sean was right there. “It’s Halloween. Everyone else is in costume. Why aren’t you?”

  He asked because when they’d met before his yearlong deployment and three months of training prior, she’d already been thinking about her costume. This year she’d remembered it was Halloween only when she pulled into the parking lot. “I’m an overworked cocktail waitress with sore feet,” she said, flipping him attitude even as she looked him up and down. He wore cargo pants, a loose shirt, and running shoes that looked like they’d seen a few thousand miles. “Who are you supposed to be?”

  “A Marine on leave.”

  A good choice to get laid. “Unless you want a drink, go away,” she said. “I’m working.”

  “I want a Shiner Bock and five minutes of your time.”

  “You can have the beer but not the time,” she threw over her shoulder as she edged her way through the packed house, back to the bar.

  “When can I get five minutes?”

  He was right behind her, clearing a path easily with his broad shoulders. “When I’m not working or in class, which is almost never. My shadow wants a Shiner Bock,” she said to Linc.

  “Get Ben or Steve if he’s bothering you,” Linc said. He popped the top off the beer and handed it to her.

  The last thing she was going to do was set up another face-to-face confrontation between Ben and Sean. “He’s fine,” she said as she set the beer on her tray and turned.

  Once again Sean was right behind her, but this time she didn’t startle. “Two fifteen?” he said.

  “Five even,” she replied, ignoring his confirmation of when she got off work.

  He handed her a ten. “Keep it,” he said when she dug in her apron pocket for his change. He turned for the door before she could say thank you, leaving her in the middle of the melee, watching him go.

  He even moved differently, she realized. Wove through the crowd and out the door like a cat on a roof peak, so the hardened, implacable demeanor wasn’t the only change the last year had wrought in him. There was no doubt in her mind he’d be waiting for her at two fifteen a.m.

  It was nearly two thirty in the morning when she walked out the bar’s back door and headed for the cluster of cars at the far end of the lot, where employees parked. Ben and Steve were long gone. Linc locked the door and followed her into the parking lot, watching to make sure every waitress locked herself in her car and left his property. She’d started her shift at five, when the bar opened, so her car was in the farthest corner, behind Lisette’s Blazer and Tim’s F-150. Parked beside her Celica was Sean’s showy Mustang.

  After a sharp-eyed look between Abby and Sean, Lisette peeled out. He leaned against the driver’s side door, arms folded across his chest. Abby’s steps slowed.

  “I don’t need the bat, you know,” Linc said conversationally from behind her.

  “It’s fine, Linc,” Abby said.

  Otherwise expressionless, Sean transferred his laser focus to Linc. “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Standing right here,” Abby said to the lights overhead. “I am
standing…right…here…and they’re talking over me like I don’t exist.”

  “Five minutes,” Sean amended, then switched those brilliant blue eyes back to her. “Please.”

  The please got her. “Go on home, Linc,” she said softly.

  Linc looked Sean over again, then the Mustang. “Your plates are wrong. That model runs five-fifty horse.”

  “I know,” Sean said patiently. “I transferred the plates from the previous model.”

  Linc lifted an eyebrow at Abby, and she nodded. He got in his car and left. There was a long moment of silence broken only by Abby’s quick inhales and the throbbing pulses radiating up from her cramped toes. Finally she walked over to the Celica and hoisted herself up on the trunk.

  “Your five minutes started about thirty seconds ago,” she said.

  “You’ve got half the male population of Galveston watching out for you,” Sean said.

  “I’m not sleeping with him,” she replied, but she was too tired to put any heat into the statement. “That’s what you really wanted to know, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t deny it. “So you don’t have plans tonight?”

  “With Ben?” she asked. The relief of being off her feet was palpable, her feet seeming to expand inside her heels without her weight on the ball of her foot. “We don’t make plans. I text him. If he’s home, interested, and alone, he texts back.”

  His gaze skimmed the length of her legs in the short skirt, then he crossed the short distance between his car and hers. He seemed bigger than she remembered, taller somehow, as if combat expanded him two sizes. He reached for her foot, slipped off her shoe and set it on the trunk.

  The position was a little awkward, forcing her to lean back and brace her hands behind her, at the angle where the rear windshield met the trunk. Her skirt pooled in her lap, revealing the lacy tops of her thigh-high stockings as he took off her other shoe. Sean was hot before, in a clean-cut, spit-and-polish, perfect-wedding-photos kind of way, the jut of his ruthlessly shaved jaw mirroring the angle of his high-and-tight. Now dark-blond stubble glinted in the parking lot’s glaring lights, softened his jawline and emphasized his full mouth. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him with that sandpaper scraping against her lips.

  Then he gripped her foot, thumb rubbing her instep in counterpoint to the four fingers massaging her arch, the simple movement so confident and sensual that heat cracked everywhere she’d apply perfume—the hollow of her throat, the base of her spine, the insides of her elbows.

  “Oh, that’s good,” she said quietly. He did it again, easing strained tendons and ligaments at the same time need tugged at her nipples and clit. Her elbows bent enough to land against the rear windshield, and her head dropped forward. Through half-closed eyes she saw herself, sprawled on the trunk of her car, her skirt barely decent, the pale, freckled skin of her thighs visible between the black stocking tops and her skirt, her blouse buttons straining over her breasts.

  She shouldn’t need this. A night with Ben every few weeks satisfied her just fine. And yet when Sean set down her left foot and switched to her right, she didn’t primly close her legs. She didn’t sit up and reestablish boundaries appropriate for jilted girlfriend and jilting Marine. She didn’t say the words that would prove she was over Sean, that in her life he was so last year, and totally unnecessary this year. Instead she let him rub her aching foot and watch the telling heat climb from her collarbone to her face.

  He set her foot down on the bumper, then his warm palm slid up her calf to the back of her knee and stroked. “What do you want, Sean?” she asked, and if the words lacked the acid she’d imagined flinging at him, well, she wasn’t the only one feeling the connection between them. His erection strained against the front of his cargo pants.

  “I want to take you out to dinner,” he said, his voice so low as to be almost soundless in the silent night.

  She lifted both eyebrows and let her gaze drift down his torso to his erection. “Liar.”

  “I owe you an apology,” he started.

  Her bent knee dropped to rest against his waist. “No, you don’t,” she said, almost sweetly. “You did what you had to do. I’m over it. And I don’t have time for dinner, or lunch, or drinks, or coffee. All I have time for is a hookup. That was Ben’s job. If you want it for the duration of your leave, you can have it. He won’t mind sharing.”

  There. It wasn’t disdainful or disinterested, given that her black lace panties were almost visible at the juncture of her thighs, but this was better. This satisfied something dark and sexual deep in her belly, something that tasted very much like revenge.

  His hand was at the back of her thigh now, almost at the curve of her buttock, stroking delicate skin made sensitive by the tight elastic right below it. Standing between her knees, he planted his other hand on the rear windshield and bent forward, his hard body almost but not quite touching hers from lips to hips. The move put his mouth less than a breath from hers. Surprised, she dropped back against the windshield, but flattened her palms against his chest. Through his shirt she felt his heart pound, hard thuds that belied his calm demeanor.

  “I can have his job,” he said, but it wasn’t a question. “Do I fill out an application? Give references?”

  Something in the low growl dared her to say yes. His hot breath gusted over her open mouth, setting the nerves tingling in anticipation. “Not necessary,” she said. “I remember your work from last year.”

  “What are the hours? Job duties?”

  His rough mouth avoided her lips to trail along her jaw and down her neck, making it very hard to manufacture an answer out of the thick, heated air in their bubble. “Whatever I want, whenever I want.”

  The moment stretched between them, smoldering with things unspoken and lust. This wasn’t the studious, intense man who left her behind. Someone completely unknown challenged her from the darker shadows in his eyes.

  “Deal,” he said. “But I’m your only hookup for the next month.”

  “You don’t make the rules, Sean. I do.”

  Without blinking he straightened, pivoted, and gave her his back, leaving her skin to cool in the night air. The locks on the Mustang clicked open. She shifted back to her elbows and watched him walk, knowing this was the perfect way to end it. It was her way or no way, and she wasn’t promising him a thing, especially not some fake fidelity. Except…her body remembered Sean. Wanted Sean. Because it was different with him. It wasn’t about stress relief. It was about pure need.

  “Deal,” she said.

  He stopped, then shot her a narrow-eyed look over his shoulder. She met his gaze without flinching. Then he turned around, strode back to her, planted both hands on either side of her shoulders, and kissed her, using his lips to nudge her mouth open. The golden stubble around his mouth scraped as deliciously as she’d imagined, then his tongue slid inside, rubbed the sensitive roof of her mouth before he nipped at her lower lip. It was as good as she remembered. Better. It was better, obliterating all traces of two orgasms from twenty-four hours earlier.

  “I didn’t say I wanted that,” she said, low and rough, as if his stubble scraped over her voice box as well as her skin.

  Something resembling humor flashed in his shuttered blue eyes. “The hell you didn’t.”

  Definitely not the same Sean she’d waved good-bye to a year ago. Definitely different, in a definitely mesmerizing way that added to the thrill of taking him down a notch or two. “My rules, Sean. Remember that, or this is over before it begins.”

  Without changing expression he straightened and held out his hand, palm up. The sheer possessiveness of the move, all at once male, commanding, and very gentlemanly, made her heart knock hard against her ribs. But she didn’t take his hand. Instead, she slipped off the trunk of her car and picked up her keys. “I’ll drive myself. Which hotel?”

  His hand dropped. “I’m house-sitting for a friend. Stay close,” he said.

  Chapter Three

  The start
er on Abby’s car ground for a couple of seconds, then shut off. Sean rolled down his window and listened intently to the whirring until the engine caught and headlights flicked on in his rearview mirror. The Celica was getting to that point where components would start to fail. Starter. Battery. Alternator. The noise could be any one of those things. But the engine ran smoothly as she pulled into traffic behind him.

  He took the time alone in his car to assess his strategy so far. Total failure. That was his assessment because five minutes into the plan, the plan was fucked. Time to improvise.

  The official motto of the Marine Corps was Semper Fidelis—Always Faithful. The unofficial motto was Semper Gumby—Always Flexible. Marines made do with Army castoffs, out-of-date equipment, crappy food, took the worst losses and casualties. They cobbled together successful missions out of incomplete information, personal resilience and fortitude, and unmatched physical strength. When everything you heard in the mission briefing got fucked to hell and back under fire, you improvised.

  Ergo, if he devised Operation Prince Charming, a schedule of dates geared around conversations to learn what he needed to know about Abby’s new life, but Abby wanted sex on her terms, he could do that. He’d implement sections of his plan when they weren’t having sex. A complex, two-pronged approach, one according to her rules, one covertly ignoring the rules, both targeting the same objective.

  He shook off nerves as he led her into one of Galveston’s older residential neighborhoods. Under normal circumstances women weren’t his strong suit. He was a pretty typical geek, even with the black belt in hapkido, the last person in his high school class anyone thought would apply for one of the service academies, let alone thrive there. He set goals in the weight room, on the obstacle course, in marksmanship, got stronger, faster, harder, and graduated first in his class. The Rhodes scholarship made sense, good preparation for life in Washington, writing reports and memos and classified documents for generals and admirals and diplomats. But he wanted to know what combat was like before he returned to air-conditioned rooms and moved men around like they were toys on a map. He wanted to understand what they went through, and what they sacrificed in order to follow the call of duty. Now he knew the costs, both professional and personal. He’d seen it in Ty. Maybe he was seeing it in Abby, too.