by Julie Miller
She stroked the bare skin along his flanks, letting the sensitive pads of her fingers find each goose bump and soothe it into submission. She traced the hard line of his spine, and pushed her fingers into the flare of muscle rising toward his buttocks.
Oh, yeah was right.
But Travis still wanted to talk.
“Trust me, I’ve seen plenty of shrinks, too.” His voice slurred against the frame that cushioned his face. “All I need is a chance to get back to the job I do best and prove to everyone I’ve still got what it takes.”
“To be a Marine?”
“Yeah,” he moaned in a mix of pain and pleasure. “That’s the spot.” Tess slipped her tiring fingers beneath the elastic barrier of his pants and briefs to knead the small of his back. “When I was finally deemed fit, they reassigned me to light duty. I trained to be a Marine, not a paper-pusher. Every job’s important—don’t get me wrong—it takes every last man and woman for the Corps to run like the well-oiled machine it is. But I was bred for the front line. Special Ops. That’s where I was meant to be.”
“Aren’t there other jobs in the Corps that could be just as exciting and rewarding?”
“No.”
Tension crept back beneath her fingertips at the stark answer.
Tess opened her eyes. “And you resent your family worrying about you?”
“I resent my father putting his life on hold because he thinks I’m going to crash and burn without his constant supervision. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over not being at the hospital when Mom died. I think he’s afraid he’s going to lose me, too, if he lets me out of his sight.”
“So you recruited me to get you out of the house?”
“It was the first thing I could think of. He trusts you.” He shifted on the table, unwittingly thrusting her fingers farther beneath the band of his briefs. “I knew you’d come through for me.”
Her hands burned as she battled the urge to squeeze the devilishly firm cheeks right there beneath her palms. “You want me to be your accomplice, not your therapist.”
Tess pulled her wandering hands back to neutral territory by tucking them beneath her arms.
“I need you to be my friend.” Travis rolled onto his side to face her, apparently unaffected by their skin-to-skin contact the way she was. “If you’ll provide an excuse for me, Dad, Ethan and Caitlin will go on with their normal lives. They trust you to look out for me. If they think I’m in your care, that we’re working together…” He wrapped his fingers around her forearm and pulled himself up. “You’re the only one I can count on. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“How? You’re asking me to lie to a man who’s been like a second father to me. Why can’t we just do the therapy for two weeks?”
“Because it doesn’t work!” Travis pounded the table and Tess jumped at the power of his frustration. Instantly, his eyes darkened with shadows of regret. Softening his tone, he held up his hands and apologized. “Sorry. Usually, I can keep it in check.”
“You don’t have to cover up what you think or feel with me. We’re buds.” She curled one hand into a fist and held it out in a familiar gesture between friends.
Travis stared at her offering as if he didn’t remember—or no longer believed—what it meant. His weary sigh hinted at the latter. But his wry smile matched hers as he fisted his own hand and tapped it against hers. “Buds.”
Tess pulled away and hooked her thumbs into the pockets of her shorts. “You want me to lie to Hal and tell him that you and I are working hard at this recovery that you don’t really want to work on at all.”
“I want to recover, make no mistake.” He rubbed his hand along his injured thigh. “But I reported to physical therapy for six months and worked out on my own time, too. And what happened? The day before they’re going to test me and rate me fit for S.O. duty, I rip my knee up again. It’s weak. I’m weak.”
Her eyes couldn’t help but roam. In what earthly way could a man built like a battle-ready Achilles possibly be considered weak? Not the point. Tess blinked and drew her gaze back to his. “So, you’re thinking if six months with the United States Marine Corps couldn’t fix you up, then six weeks with me is obviously a waste of your time.”
“Time spent with you is never a waste,” he assured her. Once she smiled, so did he. “But this is my battle—my head game, my body. I don’t want Dad and my family, or you,” he winked, “to become casualties of my mission.”
“To get back to Special Ops.”
Travis nodded.
Fine. He didn’t want her help in her one area of expertise. But she was determined to help him. After all, that was what friends did. Maybe she could sneak in some physio-training—recruit him to help rearrange the furniture in her old bedroom, or lure him into the water to clean and put some touch-up paint on one of Hal’s boats. “So tell me what the deal is. What do I get out of this arrangment?”
“I can recruit some buddies from the base to cover your shift at the festival so you can have time off. Or I’ll teach you how to hit that curve ball. Anything you want. Just keep me busy and out of my family’s hair.” He pressed his hands together in supplication. “Please.”
“Anything?” Would he make love to her? Now that would give him the cardio workout he needed to maintain peak physical stamina. Would he look at her with lusty intent the way he did every other woman on the planet? Could he teach her whatever secret spark she lacked that made men ask her for a favor instead of sexual favors?
“Anything.”
Damn, those blue eyes were serious.
Her skin erupted in a sea of goose bumps at the suggestive promise in his voice. Would he? Did she have the guts to ask for what she really wanted? Was it foolish to jeopardize their relationship? Or was asking a friend to train her in the ways of seduction, instead of waiting for Mr. Right to come along and do it, the smartest move she could make?
“Cold?” He’d spotted the goose bumps on her arms, and immediately, familiarly, his hands were there, rubbing gently up and down her arms.
“Feeling a little warm, actually.”
She stopped the massage by lacing her fingers through his. Their hands were both strong and muscular, but the contrasts between them were obvious. Size. Length. The sprinkling of golden hair at his wrist, the faint dusting of fine tawny hair on her own. His scarred knuckles and blunt nails. Her paler skin.
There’d be similar contrasts elsewhere on their bodies. If they kissed. If they got close. If they meshed together.
Tess’s pulse raced at the possibilities.
“What are you up to, T-bone?” he whispered, studying the link of their hands as well.
Her lips moved before her brain and almost two decades of friendship could stop her. “How about we swap training exercises? I’ll schedule times for this therapy you’re not having, and you could teach me—”
Her cell phone rang from her bag across the room, interrupting her thoughts, stifling her courage to ask Travis for an affair.
“Saved by the bell.” His words were meant to be a joke, but the tension in the room didn’t dissipate.
Tess broke away. She pulled the phone from her back-pack, checked the number and groaned before answering. “Hey, Morty.”
“Tess,” Morty Camden greeted in his businesslike tone. “How’s your weekend going?”
“Fine. What do you need?”
“What do I need?” Morty hesitated. “Is everything okay?”
Tess pressed a hand to her temple and shoved a stray tendril behind her ear. “Sorry to snap. I just know that if you’re calling this close to the start of the festival that there’s a problem of some kind.”
“Well, it’s not a problem, exactly. I mean, it’s not about the festival. I need to ask you a favor.”
Who didn’t?
Why else would Morty be calling—why else would any man be calling—if not to ask her to solve his problem? Still, Tess strove to hold a charitable thought. “What’s the favor?”
“I’m free the second night of the fair. And I was wondering…”
Tess’s hand stilled on her ponytail. Was he asking her out? Even though it was sweet, reliable Morty, and not hot, unattainable Travis, who had singled her out, she still felt a rare flutter of anticipation. A genuine date would take her mind off this crazy obsession with Travis. “Wondering what?”
“Does your sister, Amy, have any plans?”
The momentary bubble of hope burst. “Are you kidding? You want me to ask Amy out for you?”
“Ouch.” Travis’s sympathetic comment behind her made her embarrassment complete.
“Would you?” Morty hurried to explain his concern. “I know she’s recently divorced, and maybe she’s not ready to date anyone. But I’d keep it casual. And we had such a delightful conversation at Travis’s party Thursday night, I thought maybe she’d enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed hers. But if you could provide that little buffer…”
Tess made a valiant effort to set aside her own feelings and think of Amy’s current disregard for the male species. Morty was shy, but sincere. It wasn’t as though he was a player, like Amy’s ex. Amy had talked about going to the carnival and checking out the shops, anyway—and with Tess working an extra night, she wouldn’t be able to spend that time with her sister. She couldn’t begrudge Amy a chance to go out just because her life was booked.
“Call her this evening, Morty.” Tess gave her blessing and urged him to show a little backbone at the same time. “You do the asking. But I’ll have put in a good word for you by then.”
“Thanks, Tess.” The accountant sounded almost giddy with relief. “I owe you one.”
Get in line.
They traded goodbyes and she disconnected the call.
“Why didn’t you tell him to stick it?” She turned around to see Travis sitting on the edge of the massage table, his legs veed out in a casual position that belied the pinpoint stare of his alert, ever-observant eyes.
Shrugging off his protective concern, Tess crossed back to the table. “It’s just Morty. He didn’t mean it to come off like an insult.”
“That’s bull. A man doesn’t call a woman to ask somebody else out for him.”
“You did it.”
“Back in high school and college days,” he argued. “I didn’t ask you to set me up with Robin just now. Morty’s a grown man.”
Tess swept a lock of hair off her face and planted her fists on her hips. Mr. Man-of-the-World just didn’t get where she was coming from. “Trav, I’ve been the plain-old tomboy next door for so many years that it’s impossible for the men in this town to see me in any other way. I’ve tried to shake the stereotype, but I can’t. They ask me to be their friend or to do them a favor. But they don’t ask me out.”
Travis reached for her. He startled a noisy gasp from her as his big hands spanned her waist and pulled her between his legs. “Then the men of Ashton are idiots.”
Her hands had nowhere to brace themselves except against his chest. She curled her fingers into a fistful of cotton and shook him to make her point. “You don’t see me any other way, either.”
He brushed that pesky lock of hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Don’t be so sure, T-bone.”
“Right.” She angled her head in disbelief. “You’d ask me out on a date that didn’t involve playing baseball and did involve making out.”
“You want me to?”
Dammit, his voice had changed again. It had dropped to the husky whisper that fanned her pulse into liquid fire and mocked her resolve to keep things light and friendly between them. “I’m serious. Like, I bet right now you couldn’t kiss me without breaking into fits of laughter. You’d think you were kissing your sister or the shortstop, and that would be just too weird.”
That’s what she needed—a good belly laugh to make the need coiling inside her go away.
But the hands at her waist and nape tightened imperceptibly, drawing her closer. He angled his face toward hers. “Are you daring me to kiss you?”
“I’m proving a point.” His eyes were close enough for her to see the kaleidoscope of sapphire, cobalt and midnight ringing the black, dilated pupils. She could feel the heat of the afternoon workout through his clothes, smell the hint of musk and soap on his skin. Desire clogged her throat, turning her argument into a breathless plea. “Unless I work a miracle, or leave town and abandon Mom, I’m destined to take Nixa Newhaven’s place as the resident spinster of Ashton, Virginia.”
“Then let’s work a miracle.” He studied her lips as if they were one of her famous blueberry muffins and he were a starving man. A deep, pensive breath made his chest rise beneath her hands. “Maybe we just hit on how I can pay you back for helping me with Dad.”
“You’re going to kiss me?”
“I’m going to show you how to set this town on its ear, make them see you in a whole new light. And we’re going to have fun doing it.”
“Impossible.”
“Well, first you’ve got to get over that idea.” He stroked the shell of her ear, eliciting a shiver that almost made her forget what they were debating. “You have to think of yourself as an irresistible woman.”
Tess laughed at the ludicrous suggestion. The whole idea of being irresistible made her nervous, too.
“Don’t just think it,” he ordered in that seductive pitch, tracing her ear again. “Believe it. Men will see you in a different light.”
“Ashton’s had thirty-three years to see me in all kinds of lighting, and—” Her throat tightened up on a startled gasp.
He’d dragged his hand along her ribcage, skimming the side of her breast, and now he lingered since he’d discovered she couldn’t form words when he touched her there.
“You are irresistible,” he repeated, instructing her, praising her—she couldn’t tell which.
“I’m not—” He flicked his thumb over the tight bead of her nipple and she choked on her protest. “Trav—” His name rushed out on an embarrassingly breathless sigh.
He brushed soothing fingertips against her neck, pulling her closer even as he continued to play with her breast. Palming her. Squeezing. Flicking. Rolling. She panted at the electric jolts zinging from each caress straight to the thick, heavy heat between her thighs.
“Still dare me to kiss you?”
No. It might prove an embarrassing repeat of that disastrous night in college. But his warm hand felt so…good. His attentions made her feel so…feminine.
She should stop him. “I never actually said—”
His firm lips covered her half-hearted protest and he thrust his tongue inside, sliding it against hers.
Tess held her breath, stunned by the rasp of his tongue, the grip of his hands, the sweep of his lips against hers.
Travis was really kissing…her.
And he was stone cold sober enough to know what he was doing.
She’d been primed for this moment for far too long to find the will within her to resist. She softened her mouth. He groaned with some kind of release and laid claim, and she answered with every rudimentary instinct she possessed.
Digging her fingers into cotton and skin and the man beneath, Tess pulled herself onto her toes and into his body. She slid one arm behind his neck and skimmed the short prickle of his hair with her sensitized palm. Her breasts ached to feel a firmer touch and she rubbed them against his chest, eliciting a groan that echoed her own.
His tongue stroked hers, and she nipped at it to catch it when he retreated to taste the rim of her lips. He laughed in his throat and swept his hands down to cup her bottom and lift her onto his thick thighs and that hot, intimate place in between. “Definitely irresistible.”
Tess moaned with years of want that a few short seconds in Travis’s embrace couldn’t begin to assuage. “What if someone comes in and sees us?” she breathed against his ear.
“It’ll jazz up your reputation.”
“But…” Any idea of proving points or proper decoru
m or even preserving friendship was forgotten as he tumbled backward onto the table, dragging her with him so that she spilled on top of him. “Trav!”
But he didn’t stop. She didn’t retreat. And no one was laughing.
As her pliant body molded to his harder places, he reclaimed her mouth and drove his tongue deep inside. Whatever rationale she’d intended to stand by was dashed away in the full-body press of their kiss.
5
BASE TO McCormick. McCormick, come in! Retreat! Retreat!
Even disguised in his commanding officer’s voice, the warning signals firing off inside Travis’s head couldn’t get through the static of full-blown desire that was short-circuiting every commonsense impulse in his body.
Tess’s predictions were wrong. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t thinking of baseball. And he sure as hell wasn’t thinking of his sister.
This girl was a natural. Every move he made, she answered back with her lips and a chorus of hot, sexy moans that hummed in her throat. He’d wanted her closer and she’d obliged. No, she’d taken charge with eager abandon. Crawling on top of him, straddling his hips, rubbing those knotted firebrands against his chest and sinking her white hot promise of satisfaction against his throbbing groin.
He tangled his fingers in the caramel silk of her hair and freed it from its twisty thing in the back. The wavy strands fanned around their faces like a privacy curtain, daring him to do what he would to her lush, responsive mouth.
“You’re…” she nipped, he thrust, “a great…” he traced her lips with his tongue, she softened beneath his probing touch, “kisser,” He finally finished. She angled her mouth and demanded full-on contact, he accepted the challenge. Endless moments passed before they came up for air. “Been practicing?”
“Not much chance of that around here.” She pushed her tongue inside, erasing Travis’s questioning frown. He wanted to sort out the cryptic comment, but he was too busy losing himself in what had to be one of the best kisses of his life. He’d rank it number one if he only counted the women he remembered.
