Sexy Just Walked Into Town

by Lucy Felthouse

  He was so big towering over me. His body heat was burning onto my skin, his gripping fingers pressing into my flesh. My traitorous hormones perked up. The feel of him against my chest, my legs, the breeze of his hot breaths on my face was creating a bundle of erotic memories of our time together.

  I didn’t want to still need the man who’d left me, but I did.

  “So why did you?” I whispered. “Go, that is?”

  He lowered his head so his mouth was a hairsbreadth from mine. He had a tiny dink in his bottom lip, right in the centre—it was a part of him I adored.

  Suddenly he kissed me, soft and gentle, his tongue just peeking into my mouth.

  I was so shocked I didn’t respond, just stood there letting my arms hang limp and my mouth be caressed by his. But his flavour was too intoxicating, hot and peppery with a hint of vodka, and I soon found myself matching his kiss, winding my tongue with his.

  It had been so long. I’d fantasised about this, being in his arms again. Kingsley fitted me so well, and I fitted him. We were two halves coming together.

  What the hell am I doing?

  I jolted away, freeing myself from his grip then spinning to face the TV again. “What the fuck…?” I muttered, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand, “do you think you’re doing?”

  “I—”

  “No, don’t speak.” Heat was flaming on my cheeks. Indignation crawling on my skin like a swarm of ants. Did he think he could kiss me again and I’d fall at his feet? Oh, no, I wasn’t that much of a pushover. Not by a long shot. “Just leave.” I indicated to the door. “Now.”

  “But, Jen, let me explain. I’m not supposed to, not yet, we’ve still got lots to talk about, but I will.”

  “Don’t do me any favours. We’re over.”

  “Clearly we’re not if that fucking kiss is anything to go by.”

  “Yes, we are. How could I ever trust you again? How could I even let you go into another room and be one hundred percent certain that you’d come back?”

  “Trust,” he said, “is delicate, I agree. And the fact that I shattered your trust in me was not within my control, but I promise, it’ll never happen again. Not once I’ve explained.”

  I kept my back to him, staring at the screen as a new singer silently performed a ballad.

  I wanted Kingsley to go. He was talking in riddles and he’d just pulled off the Band-Aid I’d wrapped around my delicate heart. The pain was too much to bear.

  There was a rustle of material behind me.

  “Jen.”

  “What?”

  “Please, look at me.”

  “No.” I knotted my fingers together. I was shaking.

  He appeared around my right side and stood between me and the TV. He’d removed his t-shirt and I found myself staring at his bare chest. Oh, fuck. That little scribble of hair on his sternum and his tight, dark nipples could be my downfall in resisting him.

  The bastard didn’t play fair.

  “You think you’re going to win me back with your body?” I asked with a huff, peeling my gaze away. I had to hand it to him, it was a decent plan.

  “No, but I need to show you this.” He raised his right arm, exposing a tuft of black hair and the small tattoo etched onto a paler patch of delicate flesh.

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Really?”

  “This,” he said, poking the tattoo, “doesn’t exactly have the meaning I first told you.”

  I scowled. “What?”

  “I told you it was a symbol of my great grandfather’s regiment, in the army, didn’t I?”

  “Er, yes. I think so.” What was he on about?

  “It isn’t. It’s the symbol for the regiment I’m in.” He paused and tugged at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Now.”

  Chapter Two

  “The regiment you’re in now? But…” I was struggling to make sense of his words. “You’re not in a regiment. You’re… you drive a truck.”

  He lowered his arm, cupped my jawline in both hands and frowned. “I lied to you, and for that I’ll always be sorry, but it’s how it had to be. The only way it could be.” His voice was so husky it was like his throat was made of sandpaper.

  “You lied? About being in the army? Why would you do that? Why would anyone do that?”

  “I had my reasons.” He pressed his lips together and lowered his face to mine.

  I could smell him, his skin. Warm, salty flesh laced with dark earthy cologne. “I… I don’t understand.”

  “Jen. That night. I had to go, immediately. I got a call from my superior. Something had come up. Something of vital importance both from a professional and a personal point of view. There was no time to explain to you, not from the beginning anyway. And without starting at the beginning it would have scared you, confused you more.”

  “So try now.” I moved away, not wanting him touching me while I forced my muddled brain to follow what he was telling me.

  His touch was too distracting. His nearness made my knees weak and my heart beat fast.

  He folded his arms, his knuckles pressing into his biceps, and studied me. “I did try and find you that night. You’d told me you’d gone to the bathroom, but you weren’t there. I checked out a couple of bedrooms but I had a twenty-minute window until rendezvous and that had to be my priority.”

  “Rendezvous?”

  “To get to headquarters. Across town. I was in the air within an hour of us last being together and I only landed and debriefed earlier today. I came straight here.”

  “Oh.” I pulled the sleeves of my soft pyjama top over my hands and bunched the material in my fists, thought back to that night. I had gone to the bathroom, yes, but then I’d headed off with Cassie to borrow a pair of stockings as I’d laddered mine. Her room was in the attic, and we’d ended up giggling about the guy she fancied who’d just given her the eye. I’d only been a few minutes, and then when Cassie and I had rejoined the party Kingsley was gone.

  Vanished.

  “I went with Cassie, up to the top of the house.”

  “I figured as much, and I wished I could have pulled you to one side, taken the time to have the conversation I want to have with you now. But I had barely one minute to leave the house if I was to make my deadline.”

  “You make it sound like it was life or death.” I tsked.

  “It was.”

  Something about the set of his jaw and the furrow in his brow made me realise he’d meant what he’d said. Did I even know the man I’d fallen in love with? The notion that maybe I didn’t sent me jittery, unsure of everything I thought I believed in and knew about other people. We’d spent so much time together, intimate time, fun time, when he wasn’t on a long distance drives we’d been inseparable for a blissful summer of love and lust. His confident but understated manner had won me over, and the raw maleness of his desires had set my world alight.

  “You better get on with this conversation,” I said as I folded my arms. I didn’t know what else to do with them. I didn’t know what to do with myself. “I’m running out of patience.”

  “Jen.” He stepped closer and held his hands out. “Don’t. I’ve gone over this conversation in my head a million times. Please…”

  I moved backwards, until my legs hit the sofa.

  He sighed and shrugged. “I’m a soldier; I’m on active duty with a special forces division.”

  “But… but you said you worked for a long-distance haulage company?” I stared at his face, the shape of his nose, the bump in the middle. So familiar yet somehow not.

  “That’s just a cover. My true profession is classified information. But I need friends and acquaintances to think I do something for a living. I don’t want to be thought of as a bum or generate suspicion if I’m away for weeks at a time. Truck driver fits the bill.”

  I had so many questions but I started with the one that prodded me the hardest. “Classified information. What are you talking about?”

  “I’m legally not allowed to
tell people what I do, Jen. Only close relatives are permitted to be told, and… and, well, spouses obviously.”

  “But you’ve told me now. I think.”

  He tipped his head and smiled. His whole face softened, and the shards of steely determination in his eyes mellowed. “Not all of it, but yes, you now know more than most.” He scrubbed his hand down his cheek, creating an abrasive sound as his palm scoured against his stubble. “Which must surely prove something to you.”

  I panted out a breath. A sudden, vibrant image hit me of his bristles grazing the inside of my thigh as he pleasured me with his tongue. Damn, the man was good at that. In fact, he was bloody good at a lot of dirty deeds. And he was a hot soldier? Really? Fuck!

  “Jen, are you keeping up?”

  “No.”

  “I’m telling you this because you’re special, important to me.” He paused, pulled in a deep breath. “I need to be with you. I need to know that you’ll be waiting when I get back from a mission. That when I’m in some goddamn shit-hole being fired at by hostiles that you’re here, that you’re mine. That I’ll hold you in my arms again, make love to you, be with you.”

  “Hostiles? Being fired at?” Alarm socked me in the guts like a real punch. He got shot at? People wanted to kill him? This man of mine?

  “Don’t look so alarmed, Jen.”

  “But what if you got hit?”

  I couldn’t help but scan his body for signs of gunshot wounds. He had a few dinks and imperfections yes, but nothing too lethal looking.

  “I won’t get shot. I’m really fucking good at my job.” He gave a lopsided grin. “And that’s all it is, just a job. I get downtime, but occasionally I have to go, for a few weeks or months, on a moment’s notice.”

  “Like you did in August.”

  “Yes.” He reached for my left hand and unfurled the cuff of the pink patterned top that was covering my knuckles. “And if you’d known, if we’d been a proper couple, without secrets, I could have told you in an instant what was going on and you’d have understood.” He lifted my hand, turned it over and pressed a kiss to my open palm as he smoothed his fingers over mine. “I wouldn’t have wanted to leave you. Wouldn’t have wanted to go without a proper goodbye.” He smirked, a sexy little twitch of his cheeks. “You know what I mean by proper goodbye, eh? A long, lazy fuck and a whole night of me adoring every inch of your beautiful body.”

  “Er, yes, I know.” I pressed my knees together as a glut of heat shot to my pussy. It wasn’t hard to remember just how good he was at making every erogenous zone I possessed sing to his tune.

  He tugged me close, slowly, like I was a deer that might bolt, and carefully rested my hand on his warm, bare shoulder. He wound his arms around my waist and settled me against the length of his body.

  “So what do you say, babes?”

  My breath hitched at his use of his pet name for me. “About what?”

  “About forgiving me, taking me back?”

  I stared into his dark eyes and studied the black line around his irises. Could I forgive him after all the pain he’d caused me? The panic, the torment, the sleepless nights, and the soul-aching grief he’d put me through?

  I honestly didn’t know.

  “Please,” he whispered, a line furrowing between his dense eyebrows. “I’m in love with you, Jen. It doesn’t seem worth it without you. It did before but now, now it’s you I want to do it all for.”

  A sob brewed in my chest and burst from my mouth, spluttering out as it shook my whole body. “But it hurt… so much.”

  His face twisted, as though he was in pain. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I promise. Because we can work this out, I know we can, we’re strong.”

  He tightened his grip on me, and I couldn’t deny that being in his arms lifted the aching anvil of sorrow that had been following me around for so long. “But how can you promise me that if… if like you say, you might have to go again, any second?”

  “It’s true, there are times when I have to go in an instant, but usually I have notice. It was just…” He glanced away, seemingly staring at something in his mind’s eye.

  “What?”

  “It was just a colleague. No…” He shook his head. “More than a colleague—a mate, best mate, who was in trouble. I had to go. I had to be the one leading the rescue mission. If I hadn’t gone and he’d been killed I would never have forgiven myself.”

  “And did you save him?”

  I smoothed my hands over his shoulders, wondering what hell I’d go through if it were Kingsley in trouble and in need of saving. But, no, Kingsley was too tough, too sure of his every move to get into a deathly situation. He’d always made me feel safe and protected when we were out together. Now I knew why.

  He was a trained killer.

  Shit.

  I shoved at his shoulders and twisted away. My stomach clenched. All the things he must have done and seen and been involved in. I wasn’t stupid; he was in the SAS. I’d seen films, read books. Suddenly my imagination couldn’t keep up, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to go there or not.

  “Hey, hey, yes, we got him out. He’s fine, at home with wife and kids and making a good recovery. He looks a mess, but he’s an ugly fucker anyway.” He laughed. “Matt is a great soldier but came unstuck when he was outnumbered. He’d have come to get me if I’d been captured, no doubt about it, it’s the way we roll.”

  “That’s good, great but… you killed people to get him out, right? That’s what you do?”

  “People, no, I kill shit-for-brains lunatics who are trying to harm this country, the people of this country and who want to undermine all the things I believe in.” He pressed his hand into my lower back, squeezing our pelvises together. “Have you any idea what I’d do to someone who tried to hurt you? Even just a hair on your head?”

  “No, I… oh…”

  His erection jammed up against my belly, and even through clothes I could feel how hot and hard he was. “Kingsley?”

  He pressed a quick, strong kiss to my lips and then pulled back. “I’m sorry there’s a part of my life you didn’t know about, but that’s all it is, one detail. I’m still the same man who craves a hot curry, hates soppy movies, and loves having you hug me tight shouting ‘faster, faster’ as we burn rubber around town on my Harley.” He brushed his hand over my hair. “It’s still me, babe, it’s just now you know everything.”

  “I guess I do.” I licked my lips, taking in his delicious flavour that lingered there.

  Suddenly a glint, a sparkle on my left hand caught my eye. There was a ring on my finger. A new ring, one I hadn’t seen before. It was a ruby surrounded by diamonds and set in gold. Big and beautiful, it fractured the light from the TV and sent it glittering over my fingers and onto the back of my hand.

  I snapped my palm from his shoulder. “What the…?”

  “I’ll promise to do my best to make you the happiest woman on Earth, Jen, but I won’t promise to play clean.” He reached for my hand, closed his fingers around mine and the ring. “Dirty is my middle name, especially when it comes to getting the result I want.”

  My throat was tight, my mouth dry. “Which is?”

  “You.”

  “But I—”

  My words were cut off by his ravenous kiss. His passion unleashed he ravished my mouth in a way that had my pussy clenching and my clit buzzing. Kingsley was a man who put everything he had into whatever it was he was doing, which made him one hell of a kisser, one hell of a lover.

  In that moment, as his breaths quickened and he cradled the back of my skull, I knew I’d forgiven him. Knew I’d need this for all of time. Okay, so he wasn’t who I thought he was, he was so much more. He was layered, mysterious and, so it seemed, mine.

  “Wait,” I panted, pushing at his chest. “But, the ring.”

  “You’re still wearing it, which is a very good sign.” He shifted his eyebrows upwards as though daring me to say otherwise.

  “B
ut what does it mean? Are you asking me to—?”

  “Marry me, yes.”

  I paused for a moment and then, “Well, in that case, soldier…” I tilted my chin and stepped back from his embrace. “You’d better get down on one knee and ask me properly instead of presuming.”

  For the first time since he’d walked out, for the first time in weeks, a smile, a real, genuine smile pulled at my mouth. It felt good—more than good, it felt fantastic.

  Kingsley dropped to the ground in front of me, a wicked smirk on his face and a damn dangerous glint in his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chapter Three

  I held out my hand, the ring a bright beacon on my finger.

  Kingsley took my fingers in his and dropped a kiss over my knuckles. He closed his eyes, and I studied the way his eyelashes were like little fans, spreading shadows on his cheeks. He could be so gentle, so sweet and delicate, and although I’d always known he had power and energy lurking beneath the surface, now I knew the extent of that muscle and skill.

  It turned me the hell on.

  “Babe,” he said, looking up at me. “Marry me, be my someone to come home to.” He didn’t blink, just stared into my eyes. “I love you so much and I’ll work forever to making this last few weeks up to you.”

  I blinked back a well of tears that were building on my lower lids.

  “You’re a complete bastard, you know that?” I said, swallowing even though my throat had thickened with emotion. “And, yes, you will have to work very hard to make it up to me.”

  “Does that mean you will? Marry me, that is?”

  I gulped for air, tears threatening to overtake me completely. How fast my life had spun around from sitting alone and sad to being deliriously happy and excited. A life with Kingsley, my whole life?

  I loved him so much and always would. He’d stolen my heart the way he’d no doubt sneaked in and saved his soldier mate, with stealth, precision and absolute determination.