by Julie Miller
He wrapped his hand around himself and squeezed, battling the urge to come before she’d completed herself.
“I’m hanging up now.” She could barely get the words out.
“No!” But a click had disconnected them before he could get out his protest.
His shout rattled the glass. She disappeared into the darkness of her room. She would not do this to him. She would not leave him hanging. If this was some sort of tease, some sort of payback…
He tossed the phone onto his bed and sat down to peel off his wet jeans, his eyes still glued disbelievingly to the glass. He was as naked as she was when she came back into view.
Not a tease at all.
Travis braced his hands against the window, leaned his forehead against the cooling glass and gasped at the vision he saw.
How could he not have known? How could he never have imagined how perfectly sexy Tess was? How perfect she was for him?
How could he have had these feelings bottled up inside him for so long and not have known that he loved her? He wanted her? And he was the luckiest man on earth that she wanted him.
Tess had some sort of toy in her hand, a vibrator by his guess. She held the pad in her palm and pressed it between her legs. She spread them farther apart and moved her hand against her clit.
Travis’s whole body lurched in response. Her mouth opened, her head tipped back, her breasts bobbed with each panting breath. She cried out.
“Tess,” he whispered.
She clamped her lips shut, her hand still moving between her legs.
“Tess,” he cried out with her.
Her breaths were coming faster and faster.
She froze for an instant. In ecstasy.
“Tess!”
Travis snatched the phone from his bed, the condoms from his jeans, and speed-dialed her number as he headed for the stairs.
Her breathless voice answered on the third ring. “Travis?”
“Get over here. Now.”
11
TESS’S BODY WAS still weak from the aftershocks of her orgasm, made all the more powerful by Travis’s greedy voyeurism.
Seduce me, said the man. If she wasn’t mistaken, that desperate phone call meant she’d succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.
Well, maybe not her wildest. Not yet. As scarily fabulous as that naughty nighttime show had been, she still felt incomplete. So the seconds ticked by like eons as she stumbled around in the shadows to retrieve his house key from her purse, pull her trench coat from the closet and dash down the stairs without waking Amy or her mother.
Rain slapped against her overheated skin when she threw open the back door. She tied the coat around her naked body and ran barefoot across the yards and up onto Travis’s back deck.
She needn’t have wasted time searching for the key. Travis was there, opening the kitchen door. Closing it. Ripping at the belt of her coat and spreading it open.
“Tess.” He ground the raw plea through tightly clenched teeth. She saw the condom already sheathed around his fully engorged member.
And then he had her off her feet. Up against the wall. And he was inside her.
“Oh-h-h.” Tess moaned at the decadent pleasure of his long shaft squeezing inside her, stretching her, filling her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips, opening herself, anchoring herself as he plunged into her once. Twice. Again.
“Tess.” His strong fingers clutched her thighs. “Babe.” His wicked tongue was in her mouth, mimicking every movement of his cock inside her. “I need you.”
Her breasts pillowed against the hard wall of his chest. Her rain-slick skin shifted and rubbed against him, turning her nipples into sensitized pleasure points. “Travis.”
“I need you.” He ground his hips into hers, buried his face in her neck and cried out his release as she screamed his name and shattered around his last pulsing thrusts.
Moments later—minutes later?—she became aware that cool rain had turned to sticky sweat between their bodies. She savored the synchronous rhythm of their breathing slowing and deepening. She sensed that the man still holding her in his arms was spent.
Taking pity on him, Tess unwound her legs and slid her feet to the floor. Travis’s penis slipped out of her slick center, but she wouldn’t let him release her entirely. Instead, she wound her fingers behind his neck and thanked him with a teasingly tame kiss. “Ha!” she taunted, feeling more like a beautiful woman than she ever had in her entire life. “I dare you to forget me this time.”
Travis rested his forehead against hers, looking deep into her eyes, understanding she meant no threat by her triumphant claim. Then they were laughing. Kissing each other gently. Wrapping each other in a grateful hug.
“That’s one dare I’ll walk away from.”
Travis swung her up into his arms and carried her to the living room, taking her to a bed somewhere. She hoped. All of her baseball coaches had said that practice would improve her form. She intended to practice this new sport with Travis just as often as he’d let her. For as long as their time together allowed. But she could tell the instant his knee protested and quickly squiggled out of his grasp onto her feet.
“Damn.” Tension crept in to destroy the relaxed satisfaction on his face. “Damn. Damn.”
“Shh.” Tess pressed a finger to his lips, silencing his self-critical curse. She spotted the sofa behind him and guided him to it. “You probably just overtaxed the joint. Let me take a look.”
She spread out the afghan hanging over the back of the sofa. But when she nudged his chest, he refused to sit. He captured her hands and pushed her back to arm’s length. But he held on, rubbing his thumbs across the back of her knuckles, searching for something inside himself before he raised his gaze from their hands to her eyes. “This isn’t how I want you looking at me. I’m a man, not a patient. I don’t want you to see me as some beat-up invalid.”
Tess tilted her head, saddened by the pain that tightened his handsome mouth. She tried humor first. “Well, I don’t know where you were, but the man in the kitchen with me was fully loaded.” The double entendre barely earned the arch of one eyebrow. “I don’t lust after my patients. I wouldn’t do anything so daring—”
“—so beautiful,” he added, releasing her to brush a curl off her forehead.
She buttoned the front of her coat, feeling more exposed by the emotions she was sharing than by his hungry eyes on her body. “I want to look at your knee because I care about you. It hurts me inside to see you in pain. If I can help, I want to. It’s what I do, Travis. I help people feel better about themselves. But you’re the first one who ever helped me feel better about me.”
She let her gaze travel the length of his body, and made sure he understood she was scanning every well-defined inch of him. He was a magnificent brute to look at in his naked form—tall, strong, sleek. To her way of thinking, the scars webbing through the golden hair on his left leg and marking other parts of his body from jaw to toe only added realism, humanity and touchability to his perfection. She stopped when she reached the rich blue cobalt of his eyes. “When I look at you, I don’t see a wounded soldier. I see a friend. I see a man who’s honest with me, who makes me laugh. I see a man who listens to me when I get uptight about stuff and helps me get over myself.”
Ah, at last, a smile. But he quickly shook it off and sat, his legs veeing out in a natural masculine position that only emphasized other intriguing parts of his form. “But I’m supposed to be this damned all-American hero, a man who almost died for his country.”
She sat beside him. “You are a hero.”
“For what? Thirty minutes at a time? Maybe two or three hours on a good day?” He squeezed his hand around his injured knee. “It’s not just my body that’s given out, T-bone. I used to be able to read the people around me, know who I could trust and who I couldn’t. I used to be able to sense when the enemy was near.” He tugged the end of the afghan over his exposed lap, finally succumbing to a wane in
self-assurance. “It’s like I know it in my head—I know the skills, I have the experience—but I can’t make my body do it when I need to. Not anymore. Not reliably.” He plucked at the holes in the afghan. Tess reached out and laced their fingers together to offer calm and comfort. “A glitch in my response time, a misread instinct, a stumble—all could get me killed on a mission. It could get someone else killed.” He tightened his grip around hers, seeking more than comfort. “Hell, since the accident, I’m the glitch. And it could keep me out of the Corps.”
“That’s not true, Travis.” He looked as though he was about to argue with her, but she didn’t give him a chance. “You told me yourself that there were hundreds of other jobs for Marines—and that every one of them was necessary for the Corps to run smoothly.”
“I don’t want to push papers.”
“Then do something else.” She climbed up on her knees beside him on the sofa and held her arms out wide to either side. “Reinvent yourself. Like I did. Like I’m doing. I’m a pro at dependability, consistency, providing support.” She flipped up the collar of her trench-coat, reminding them of what they had done together. “Who knew I could be such a shameless hussy?”
He started to grin. She almost had him. She punched his shoulder in a playful gibe. “And I was good at it, too, wasn’t I?”
“You’re proud of yourself, aren’t you?” He palmed the back of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. By the time they came up for air, the lines beside his eyes curled upward with laughter. “I will never think of you as a shortstop again.”
Tess blushed at the fitting compliment only the two of them could share. As her body heated with renewed interest in the man beside her, she wondered how far down a blush could go.
Apparently, Travis wondered the same thing, too, because he pulled her into his lap and leisurely unfastened the buttons on her coat, letting the silky lining slide across her skin as the material parted, inch by tantalizing inch.
“So what can I do besides sneak behind enemy lines and find the bad guys?” he asked, forcing her to think when his hands and eyes made her want to feel. “What skills do I have besides shooting a rifle and blowing things up?”
“Well…” She gasped as the tip of one blunt finger brushed across the curve of her breast. “You’re a pretty good coach. You know when to be patient, and you know when to push.” He pushed his palm against that same breast and she moaned. Tess had to snatch his wrist and pull him away so she could finish her thought. “Maybe you could take your skills and experience and teach them to new recruits. They have teachers in the Marines, don’t they?”
“Doesn’t sound like a lot of action to me.”
Um, was something stirring beneath her bottom? She braced her hands on his shoulders and tried to keep some distance so she could talk. “From everything I hear, having a roomful of students can give you more action than you’d ever want.”
Travis lifted her, turned her, and sat her squarely in his lap so that there was no doubt about his growing erection or his intent. “I’ll think about it,” he promised, sliding the coat off her shoulders. “But I’ve never wanted anything else the way I wanted that job. Not until you, that is.”
He kissed her tenderly, a marked contrast to the aggressive path his thumbs were taking along the inside of each thigh. “The action…” He touched her aching nub. “…not just…” Oh, Lord, she was losing it again. She palmed the back of his head and pulled him closer to deepen the kiss. “…job only,” she finished disjointedly.
Travis lifted her up to take her breast in his mouth. Tess moaned. When he strode to the kitchen to fetch a condom, she gathered her thoughts into one coherent sentence. “Maybe you could find the action you crave elsewhere.”
When he pushed her down onto the couch and settled between her legs, she had a good idea of exactly what type of action he had in mind.
And as he reduced her to babbling in a much gentler but no less meaningful joining than what they’d shared in the kitchen, Tess wondered how she was ever going to live without this funny, noble, caring man. And she wondered how her heart could survive going back to being just friends when their two weeks were up.
TRAVIS MCCORMICK was one lucky son of a bitch, thought Kyle Black. Even cut up into half a hero, the Action Man could get a woman to go to bed with him.
The rain pouring over his shoulders and plastering his dark hair to his scalp did little to cool the familiar temper raging inside him. He stood outside in the night, across the street, hidden in the darkness, seeing more than he wanted of McCormick’s love life through the narrow window beside the front door.
But Kyle had seen enough. He couldn’t resist sending those flowers, but that had been just playing around. Now he really knew what he had to do to make things right. He’d seen touchy-feely talking involved with this lay. McCormick cared about her.
Perfect.
Having General Craddock’s return delayed by a storm out in the Atlantic would work to his advantage. It gave him the perfect excuse to make his presence in Ashton known—no more sneaking down after work hours and hiding in the shadows. What a loyal, dutiful soldier he’d be, driving down to check on his C.O.’s welfare. He’d be on hand to assist with any kind of rescue—he could offer the full resources of the DOD, if need be. With a practiced look of concern, he could be right there on the dock to welcome the Craddocks back to dry land.
And oh, yeah, maybe he’d bump into an old friend while he was in town.
Or an old friend’s woman.
Kyle climbed inside his low-slung Firebird and used the hand towel beside him to wipe down the moisture that had blown in on his seat and door panel. After he’d toweled off his face and hair as well, he looked out at his surroundings and remembered. He’d come here dozens of times before without ever being detected. But in the past, he’d always come to watch the house next door. She was in there now. The woman he’d loved. The woman McCormick had taken from him just to prove that he was the better man.
Kyle wasn’t sure what he felt for Amy Bartlett anymore. Wasn’t sure he even cared that she’d run from his bed. But his feelings about McCormick were clear.
Time to make the bastard pay for all he had done.
And Tess Bartlett was the going price.
TRAVIS POPPED A gingersnap into his mouth from the tray of veggies, fruit and other snacks Tess had put together to replenish their energy after their late-night rendezvous. He listened to the water running in the first-floor guest shower and had no problem picturing her strong, dexterous hands scrubbing soap across his favorite parts of her anatomy. Maybe even soaping up a few spots he hadn’t discovered. Yet.
He grinned at the inevitable stirrings in his body and reached for his laptop to find a much-needed distraction. As much as he wanted to strip off his dry jeans and join her, he suspected both their bodies needed a chance to rest.
Tonight’s training session had been intense. Against the wall in the kitchen, when he’d been like a madman and couldn’t get inside her fast enough. That tender coupling on the couch. And then another after that when she’d been sitting on his lap and a debate about whether or not the Red Sox could ever again be World Series champions had gotten out of hand.
Sure, he had a year of celibacy to make up for. And she’d released her inner hussy in a major way. He was sure Nixa Newhaven and the old fogeys in Ashton who’d categorized Tess as the properly predictable Miss McCormick would be shocked at her wild lovemaking. And the blind men who’d overlooked her and made her think she was plain and forgettable could damn well eat their hearts out when they saw her with her hair down and her eyes lit with mischief.
Tess Bartlett was his.
When he returned to active duty with his unit, then those other men could buy her flowers and flirt and fall all over themselves to get her attention.
Other men. Travis jammed the power cord into the wall socket with more force than was necessary. He liked that scenario about as much as being told he could never be a Ma
rine again.
She’d probably write him a letter or send him an e-mail to keep him posted on her progress. Just like those chatty notes with the hometown gossip that had entertained him over the years, except now she’d be the center of those stories—who had noticed her, who was hitting on her, who was taking her out.
Right. A note like that would drive him nuts. She’d granted him two weeks of seductive basic training. But now, instead of knowing he’d walk away feeling good about how two longtime friends had helped each other achieve their personal goals and mutual pleasure, he was feeling a little queasy about the whole idea of another man enjoying the fruits of her journey toward self-discovery.
He hadn’t considered that feelings of possessiveness might come into play when he’d agreed to pursue this attraction—an attraction that must have been there all along, simmering beneath the surface—unnoticed, unexplored. Over the years, they’d needed each other as friends more than either had needed a lover. Or maybe those were just the roles they’d gotten used to playing. Tess had talked about how Ashton’s residents were too set in their ways to see her as anything but a sexless tomboy and future spinster. Travis had been equally guilty of stereotyping.
It had taken a near-death incident to strip away his cocky self-image. Ashton’s Action Man could no longer guarantee his ability to charm a woman in every port, and the desire to do so had lost its appeal. With injury and uncertainty came a vulnerability he’d never experienced before, and with vulnerability came the need to trust on a level he’d never reached with any other woman. Who better to look to than an old friend for that kind of connection?
Maybe it was that unfamiliar need inside him that had finally allowed him to see Tess in a new way.
