by Anne Calhoun
He flinched. The movement was involuntary, a tremor through the muscles under the skin of his face almost but not quite mistaken for the play of sunlight and shadow from the leaves overhead on his skin, but she saw it.
“Whatever you want, whenever you want it,” he said.
It was her turn to flinch, but thankfully, he wasn’t looking at her. “This isn’t like that, and you know it.”
At that his eyes opened, the brilliant blue unsoftened by the intensity of what just happened. He looked at her, his gorgeous, combat-hardened body sprawled in the driver’s seat, the smell of what they’d just done not yet dissipated by the AC. The shrapnel in her throat scratched as she swallowed hard, unable to look away until he spoke. “I know that, Abby. The question is, do you?”
For that she had no answer. She broke under the strength of his stare and turned to look out the front window. “Take me home, please.”
Chapter Six
The ride to Abby’s house was silent. She once again refused to look at him, staring out the passenger window until he pulled into her driveway. He unfastened his seat belt to help her with the salad bowl and the blanket.
“Don’t,” she said, still not looking at him. “Just…don’t. I’ve got it.”
If he’d learned anything in the last year it was that nine times out of ten the factor that fucked the best-laid plans was the human factor. Someone wasn’t where he was supposed to be, missed a signal, froze when he shouldn’t, or worse, attacked when he shouldn’t. Unfortunately, the converse was even truer. The only thing, the only thing that saved a fucked mission was the human factor. A Marine took the lead when he’d never walked point before, raced under fire to save wounded men, located the unforeseen sniper’s nest and took it out. People were un-fucking-predictable, but until life was totally automated, they were the only game in town.
In a neat little turned table, she’d blown his mind in the car, stripped his skin and left him defenseless. He loved doing that to her. He never felt closer to her than when she was sweating and trembling under him. But she’d done it to him when he was beginning to doubt whether she’d handle his vulnerability with any care.
Just so, he thought. Just like he’d fall for her, and she’d break his heart.
She slammed the car door and stalked up the front walk without a backward glance, the bright blue salad bowl balanced against one hip, the picnic blanket tucked under her arm. His heart squeezed tight. He loved her. He loved her and wanted her back, and she wouldn’t look at him. He reversed out of the driveway and drove home. Nerves and uncertainty roiled in his belly, demanded physical release so he exchanged his cargo pants and T-shirt for swim trunks and a USMC shirt, then laced up his running shoes. He drove through town to East Beach, parked, and walked down to the beach against the tide of families and teens making their way home at the end of a day in the sun. He found a clear spot, shucked his T-shirt and shoes, and waded into the surf. When the water reached his waist he struck out for the horizon.
Abby didn’t like the beach. Cursed with a redhead’s pale skin she burned in a matter of minutes, and she was sensitive about the sun darkening the freckles he loved so much. Last year he’d bought an artist’s fine paintbrush and a jar of high-quality hot fudge sauce, heated it up in the hotel room’s microwave, and dotted it on every freckle from her lips to her thighs. Then he’d licked it off, freckle by freckle, counting while Abby giggled, then smiled, then went deeply, intently silent as he used his lips and tongue and teeth to worship her skin until she’d come in a series of shuddering, gasping waves. Later, after she’d rested up a little, she’d painted his cock with hot fudge sauce, using her fingers to swirl it around his shaft in thick, dark streaks. The next morning the jar was three-fourths empty. It was a miracle neither of them had lapsed into a sugar coma.
It was so easy last year, so hard this year, and that was entirely his fault. It was also reality. There was a reason why marriage vows included better or worse, sickness or health, richer or poorer. That was the span of human existence, and a lifelong commitment included all of the above. Even if he hadn’t broken up with her, this year would have been harder. The home front was just a different kind of struggle.
The rhythmic movements and breathing ocean swimming demanded occupied his brain, leaving his subconscious free to send up thoughts in bubbles. In his opinion their strongest connection last year was sexual. They talked books and movies, a little about their families, and a fair amount about his deployment. How long, where, his duties, why he’d requested the transfer into an infantry unit.
But not about fear. Not about the fear that ruled his days, drove him to read and study and analyze to prepare for any contingency, and made sleep almost impossible. Beyond a simple exchange of Are you scared? Of course; only fools aren’t scared, she hadn’t pressed for more. In an effort to look strong and tough, he’d kept it from her. Some days knowing he’d see Abby smiling, watching him with those alert, alive green eyes was the only thing that kept him from vomiting up his guts in sheer terror, and he hadn’t even set boot to Afghanistan’s dirt yet.
His dishonesty made it easier to end things. He could see that in hindsight, but how much honesty could a fledgling relationship survive?
He slowed, treading water as he turned in a circle. The beach was a barely visible sliver of white between ocean and sky. The setting sun burnished the water in red and orange. The exercise worked, loosening his muscles, regulating his breathing. He turned back for the beach, emerging to find his shirt and shoes exactly where he left them. He pulled both on, ignoring the sand in his shoes, and set off down the sand at a fairly brisk pace. He alternated sprints with slower runs, veered into the water, pushing himself through sand and surf until he felt his muscles protest. Then he ran harder. Only when he felt on the edge of stumbling did he slow down. He walked the last mile back to his car, now the only one left in the parking lot.
He sat down heavily on the driver’s seat, the same seat that hours earlier Abby used to strip away the defenses he hadn’t even known he kept up. Fifteen months ago he’d purposefully made her that vulnerable, used her body’s white-hot responses to him to turn her into a quivering puddle of flesh and bone, but he’d never stopped to think how she would feel afterward. Because he’d never let her do that to him.
Today she’d done it. She hadn’t asked first, just trapped him between her body and the seat he now sat in, and she’d made him take what she would give him, when she’d give it to him. And he’d bet his Mustang she had no idea she’d done that to him.
He was in over his head. None of this was going the way he’d planned, but the only way out was through. He’d set events in motion, but he wasn’t in charge of the results, much less in control of them. All he could do now was wait.
At least nothing would happen tonight. He had a late surveillance shift, then he’d go home and get some uninterrupted sleep. Tomorrow, the battle for the home front went on.
* * *
No Limits was rocking, the post-Halloween crowd even bigger than the year before. Abby hurried up to the bar and slipped between Lisette and another waitress.
“How’s it going with your Marine?” Lisette asked.
“He’s not my Marine,” Abby replied. “Scotch neat, Scotch rocks, two Shiner Bocks, Cosmo, G and T,” she called as she keyed the order into the computer.
“Who’s drinking the G and T?” Lisette asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Some British girl who looks like she’d rather be anywhere else,” Abby said.
“He sure looks like he wants to be your Marine.”
“He doesn’t want me. He wants the girl I was a year ago, and that girl’s gone.”
Lisette stepped aside to let another waitress up to the computer, then said, “Don’t be too sure about that. The girl you are now, Miss-I-Sleep-With-A-Cop-On-My-Terms, might be just right for your Marine.”
“Stop calling Sean my Marine,” Abby said. “Why would I be just right for him now?”
/> “Because I saw him here with another guy and a woman, and the way they were dancing, I don’t think your guy was looking for sweet and innocent.”
Lisette set her drinks on her tray, but Abby stopped her before she disappeared into the crowd. “What are you talking about?”
“Your Marine—”
“He’s not just a uniform. He’s got a name. Sean.”
Lisette lifted an eyebrow and cracked her gum. “Sean was here two weeks ago with another guy and a woman. They danced. Together. By danced I mean simulated hot, sweaty, borderline kinky sex to the point where they had the entire dance floor’s attention and half the main room’s. All three of them, not Sean and her, then her and the other guy, the three of them at once, front, back, side to side. The other guy was hot enough to melt steel, by the way, no daylight between bodies, let alone the phone book the nuns used to put between us to keep prepubescent pelvises apart. Just before Linc was about to kick them out to get a room, they left. Very, very to-ge-ther.”
Lisette stretched the word into three syllables, and Abby’s stomach dropped six inches, but before she could question Lisette again, she vanished into the crowd and Linc loaded up Abby’s tray. Tray held at head-level she wedged herself into the crowd. Noise and bodies buffeted her equally, but the turmoil inside her had her stumbling on her heels.
Sean…dancing? A year ago he would dance, if she smiled and pleaded prettily, and thanks to hours of drilling on the parade grounds could keep the beat in a way that wasn’t embarrassing, nothing more. But…Sean? Dirty dancing…with a couple…at No Limits…two weeks ago?
Two weeks ago he’d been replacing her battery by day and driving her wild by night. And on the nights she’d forced herself not to show up at his borrowed house, had he gone out looking for other company?
After she delivered the drinks she pushed through the crowd, looking for her blond coworker. “Lis, when was this exactly?”
Lisette waved vaguely. “I don’t know,” she said. “It was a Friday, I think. Or maybe a Saturday. A weekend for sure because we were slammed from five on. Weren’t you here?”
“I don’t remember seeing him,” she said, but then again, she’d missed him once before until he was right behind her. “I was late for work one Saturday because Dad was sick.”
“I remember now…that’s why we were slammed,” Lisette said. “We were short a waitress on a Saturday night. I made money by the fistful until you came on at eleven. All I had to do was show up at a table with a drink, not even the right drink, and I got tipped.”
If it was that Saturday, that was the night after he saw her in Ben’s parking lot. She’d gone home, gotten a few hours of sleep, done homework, housework, and yard work, and was on her way out the door for paying work when her father turned a terrifying shade of blue. Between that awkward scene in Ben’s parking lot and Sean showing up at No Limits again, full of intention and purpose and unrestrained sexual need. And here she’d been bragging about how grown-up she was, and once again he trumped her in his understated, modest way. Never drawing attention to his accomplishments, always letting the other person shine.
She stopped short in the middle of the big room, lights blinking and flashing, people shouting, a table surrounded by drunk guys doing rounds of shots to her left, the bar to her right, the dance floor that most nights rivaled a Girls Gone Wild show, where he and two other people somehow made enough of a spectacle that everyone noticed.
What had he done?
Possibilities flashed in her mind, each one hotter than the previous image. Apparently, the old Sean had new tastes, new interests. She should have guessed. Sex last year was an unhurried, subtle exploration of her body, their responses together. Sex this year had an edge to it, one she’d attributed to the aftermath of a year overseas and her own needs. But maybe he’d grown accustomed to the highly addictive combat adrenalin, sought it out in bed. Maybe that made her hot as hell.
Maybe this was exactly what she’d been looking for, something that would drive a final wedge between them, something that was here and now, immediate, not leave last year, not breaking up ten months ago, but right now.
Something moist, fleshy, and smelling vaguely of sweat moved slowly in front of her face, but the brisk, officious snap right in front of her nose jerked her back to the present. A pudgy, solemnly drunk man peered deep into her face. “Earth to Red,” he said, followed by a long pause. “Hey…?”
“Red?” she supplied helpfully. The other guys at the table laughed like she was the funniest thing ever.
“Yeah. Red. Earth needs Heineken.”
Earth was already about a six-pack of Heinekens to the wind. Afraid the reeking beer breath would knock her unconscious, she took a step back and found her smile. “Of course. Anything else?” she asked the rest of the table.
Tray tucked under her arm and order in hand, she trotted back up to the bar. So what if she’d told him not to expect her tonight. He’d given her a key. That sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach was relief she’d just found the best way to slam the door on her unruly emotions. Make it sexual. Stiff-arm him back where he belongs, tonight.
After she found out exactly what he’d done when he left No Limits.
Chapter Seven
A shadowy figure stepped between the bed and the thin curtains covering the window. Adrenaline poured along Sean’s nerves, and he was off the bed, in a fighting crouch, knife in hand when the feminine shriek and the light from the full moon silvering the figure’s red hair brought him fully awake.
“Jesus Christ,” he said as he straightened, his heart rate out of the red zone and heading for the stratosphere. “Jesus Christ, Abby! You said you weren’t coming over!”
“You gave me a key,” Abby said, her voice high and thin, her hands spread like he was holding a weapon on her. Which…he was. “You gave me a key! Why did you give me a key if you freak out when people come in unexpectedly?”
“I didn’t know I’d freak out,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Goose bumps rippled under the fine sweat on his skin. “No one else comes over. Fuck,” he ground out.
For a few seconds their irregular, stressed breathing was the only sound in the room. “Are you okay, Sean?”
The distressed tone in her words cut into him. “That’s not a PTSD thing, Abby,” he said quietly. “That’s a Marine thing.”
“That’s a really big knife, is what that is.”
He looked at his hand, his fingers still wrapped around the leather-washer handle of his KA-BAR fighting utility knife, the seven-inch blade long enough that keeping it in his boot was technically a violation of Texas’s concealed carry law. He carefully replaced it behind the alarm clock, noted the slight tremor to his hand. That would take a while to subside. Even though he’d put the knife down she stayed where she was, just inside the room, so he shifted backward on the bed until he leaned against the headboard. “Standard issue combat knife,” he said. “No big deal. C’mere. I’m harmless.” That was as much for himself as her.
She stayed where she was, in the doorway, her hands slowly dropping back to her sides. “No, you’re not, Sean. You are absolutely lethal.”
His brain jerked into high gear as he scanned from her head to toe, but with her back to the window her face was hidden from view. She was here, when she said she wouldn’t be. “I would never hurt you, Abby,” he said.
At least she dropped her bag, stepped out of her heels, and crawled onto the bed. Then she straddled his body, her knees outside his, her hands by his hips, and kissed him, openmouthed, provocative. When she nipped his lower lip fight-or-flight adrenaline cracked into sexual response. His cock hardened painfully, and suddenly the only thought in his brain was getting Abby spread for him. He fisted one hand in her hair and gripped her hip with the other, ready to roll her when she resisted.
“I want to ask you a question.”
Her tone was challenging, the look in her eyes even more so, and the urge to fuck her doubled. “
After,” he said.
“Now,” she replied.
His cock throbbed. For the first time in his career as a Marine he was in a position to relieve combat stress with something other than a combat jack, and she was arguing with him? They’d discuss the immediacy of reptile brain male physiological responses later. Much later. “During,” he said.
At that her mouth softened. She bent forward and placed her soft, open mouth against the pulse pounding under his jaw. Meticulously but rapidly she made her way down his throat to his collarbone, then along his sternum to his abdomen.
Fuck, yeah.
He shifted up so just his shoulders and head were braced against the headboard, brushed her hair back from her face and wound his fingers in it, all the better to watch. Abby gripped his cock in her fist and took the head in her mouth.
Three minutes ago he was sound asleep. Sound fucking asleep, beyond dreams. His eyes dropped closed as Abby swirled her tongue around the head, went down until her lips met her fist, then came back up again with enough sucking pressure to make his hips buck. She did it again, again, then backed away and licked the tip.
“I was talking to Lisette tonight,” she said.
Who? Waitress. No Limits. Blonde, with a malicious sense of humor. “Uh-huh,” he managed.
“She said you were in No Limits a few weeks ago with another guy and a woman.”
And just like that, his past caught up with him. He went still, prey-still, like she did their first night together. His eyelids lifted enough to see Abby looking up at him innocently as she closed her pretty pink lips around the head of his shaft and flicked her tongue against the bundle of nerves just below. He groaned, shifted his hips up while he used the fist in her hair to urge her down.
“Tell me about that, Sean,” she murmured when she came back up.
