And he started again. Slow strokes down her arms. Skimming her belly. Teasing the heavy weight of her breasts without fully cupping her and then gently removing her bra. Lying against her side, he angled his body until he could nip the side of her breast. He smiled at her tiny, surprised cry as she relaxed with his touch, her tension turning lithe and sensual.
“Patience isn’t my strong point, Loehr,” she growled, sounding like a fierce, wounded kitten, rotating her hips against his. They were still on the floor in front of the fire, their bodies covered in the warm, flickering heat from the live flames.
“Hmm.” He held her gaze then as he traced the slope of her breast, moaning deep in his throat when her nipple puckered to a hard point beneath his touch. Her mouth parted, her lips swollen and glistening and pink, her breath a quiet gasp when he moved up her body gently, so gently, scraping her throat with his teeth.
He toyed with her breasts, careful not to cover her and box her in, remembering her panic about being cornered. His fingers journeyed lower, tracing faint lines over the soft curve of her belly. She shifted, parting her knees in silent offering.
She hissed in frustration as he traced a feather-light touch down the seam of her pants. She captured his wrist and pressed his hand to her sex, grinding against it. “Demanding, aren’t we,” he murmured.
Her warm, sexy heat penetrated the soft cotton. He freed his hand, sliding it between the cotton and her skin and into her slick, wet heat. He stroked her, slowly, slowly, skimming the length of his finger against her swollen flesh.
Pleasure burned in his belly, his cock aching and hard. He moved his hips, unconsciously seeking to release the pressure building inside of him with each stroke of his finger against her slick heat. He felt her answering tension in the rise of her hips, the sheen of sweat against her skin.
Her body bowed beneath his touch, taut and tense and ready to snap. And then he stopped. A moment before she crashed and burst against his finger, he stopped.
* * *
She arched against him, her fingers digging into his forearms as she chased the release he’d denied her. Frustrated, she slapped at his arms. “I swear to all that’s holy, Evan, you’re going to die.”
He laughed.
The bastard laughed at her.
“Now I know why Sarah doesn’t date,” she growled.
He flipped her onto her back again but did not attempt to lie on top of her. “Take your pants off.”
“You first,” she said, still sulking.
His eyes were pitch black in the low light as he shifted to do as she asked.
She propped herself up on her elbows, loving the way his throat moved when he swallowed. With deliberate slowness, he teased her with a glimpse of raw male flesh as he tugged his shirt up and over his head. His dog tags hung down the center of his chest, resting on the solid wall of muscle over his heart, right at the edge of the twisting black branches.
He shucked his boots quickly and then he stood before her, her own personal fantasy. Sculpted chest, rough with hair that tapered into a thin line disappearing beneath those damned buttons.
She attempted to swallow but her mouth went dry as he flicked open the top button of his pants. The second button revealed the glistening tip of his erection.
“You went commando?” she asked.
“Haven’t had time to do laundry.”
“There goes that fantasy I had of you wearing Ranger panties.” She lifted her gaze to meet his eyes and collided with a fierce intensity she hadn’t known he was capable of. Evan held her gaze as he dropped his pants, standing naked before her. He was perfect. “That’s a hell of a salute, soldier,” she murmured, taking in every detail of Evan’s beautiful body.
He burst out laughing, and the movement made his cock bounce as he left his pants in a pool on the floor and came over to crouch beside her. “That’s the corniest thing you could have said right now.” He leaned over and kissed her fiercely. “Your turn.”
Claire leaned back on the carpet, reveling in the feel of his gaze on her. She pulled down her pants first, then hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and inched them down, slowly, so slowly, until she was as naked as he was.
Claire had never thought of herself as beautiful. She was fair to middling at best, and she was certain it was the simple fact that she had a vagina that had garnered her so much attention in the male-dominated world of the army. But at this exact moment she felt radiant. Evan licked his lips, his gaze sweeping down her body to the center of her. He knelt near her feet, his hands seeking out the soft, smooth skin of her calves.
She expected him to slide up her body, kissing slowly, but nothing about this was as she’d expected.
His hands were firm and strong when he parted her thighs, pushing them wide, and for once she didn’t argue. Then he kissed her. A gentle kiss where she was swollen and throbbing. He teased her with a feather-light stroke of his tongue, a gentle flick across her exposed intimate flesh, and she arched beneath him, bowing her back off the floor. He repeated the gentle tap with his tongue and the pleasure was back, tighter, hotter and oh so exquisite.
He stroked her, using his tongue, teasing her until she was ready to snap. And when he finally, finally filled her with one teasing finger, her breath caught in her throat, frozen in that instant before she shattered.
* * *
She was hot and tight and perfectly wet. His cock throbbed until he thought it would snap as he teased her, drawing out her pleasure until she was on the edge, ready to tumble into abandon a second time.
He wanted her overwhelmed. He wanted her panting and naked and exposed. He urged her over him but she shifted, turning away until he cradled her body against his chest. And then his finger was no longer enough. He fumbled with the condom, barely able to roll it into place, and then he stopped, unsure how to proceed with this beautiful damaged woman. She hated being pinned. How—
She crawled into his lap, spreading her thighs over his as she faced away from him. He pulled her close, her back to his chest, her entire body open to his touch. Her hips arched against him as he pushed into her tight, tight heat—tiny, sexy cries escaping her as she rocked against him. She clenched around him, drawing him deeper but not deep enough.
He surrendered control and she arched her back, pushing against him until he sank fully, deeply inside her. Reaching between her thighs, he stroked her swollen flesh as she rocked against him, taking them to a peak.
He felt her come apart in his arms, her pleasure a cry in the darkness. Only when she was shaking and spent and rocking against him in the last throes of her orgasm did he finally shatter. And in that single instant as he slid deep, deep inside her and burst into a thousand points of light, he had everything he wanted.
Except a piece of her heart.
Chapter Thirteen
Claire moved toward the coffeepot in the conference room of the lodge like a crack addict looking for a fix. Luckily, no one bothered to intercept her, which was good because she was liable to commit murder if she didn’t get coffee. Soon. Holy ever-loving hell, how could she have been so stupid last night? She poured the coffee into a cheap Styrofoam cup and let the hot caffeine burn her tongue and the entire path down to her stomach.
She’d slept like shit after Evan had slipped out of her suite. She was grateful he hadn’t tried to stay. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover her postcoital reaction. Awkward was when you couldn’t remember someone’s name. This was more along the lines of epic mistake. Deeply uncomfortable. Sipping her coffee, she scanned the room. She paused for just a moment on Evan, who was sitting in the corner beneath the TV. He looked irritated and rumpled and drop-dead sexy. Her blood warmed at the mere sight of him.
Yeah, she was going to be real effective on the ranges today.
Looked like sex hadn’t done either one of them any good. She sniffed and packed away her twisted emotions. She needed to focus on work. His mood wasn’t her problem.
Claire sat by the
fire for a long moment, watching the flames dance as they bit into the logs. Memories danced in those flames, too. Memories of missions gone bad. She bit back the crushing sense that the dysfunction in this unit went far deeper than they could see. And she was terrified, because there were people she cared about in this formation.
Colonel Danvers seemed completely unconcerned that very few people from the support company had been out at the shoot house yesterday. They’d get people to combat practice when they could had been the response that had come through the operations officer.
Relentless frustration burned inside of her. There was little she could do to protect them. And worse, she knew that Colonel Danvers had set a command climate that placed higher value on PowerPoint skills than on combat effectiveness in their junior leaders. Bad leaders did stupid things that got people killed.
Reza walked into the dining room and made a direct assault on the coffeepot. She smiled when she saw the outdated brown sweater he had on beneath his uniform jacket. “Are those even authorized for wear anymore?”
Reza grunted as he filled his stainless-steel travel mug. “You can keep that moisture-wicking crap. I’ll take my old wool sweater any day of the week.”
“In my day, we had wool sweaters and we liked it,” she said, making her voice sound like an old man’s. “We didn’t have all this fancy, shmancy gear you young pups have.”
“I’m three years older than you.” Reza sighed and shook his head. He looked ragged and, for the first time since she’d met him, hung over. “Only in the army would you think thirty-five is old.” He breathed in the steam rising from his coffee, but his faint smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t suppose this is any good?”
“It’s better than the goat piss they used to serve in the ops office in Iraq, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.” He sighed and braced himself for that first bitter taste, then flinched. “This is worse than I expected. Ugh. I might do without.”
“Please don’t. You’re not nice when you don’t have caffeine and you’re out of Rip Its, last I checked.”
Reza smiled and said nothing, staring into his drink. Finally, he sighed. “You’re not going to bitch at me about last night?”
Claire studied him carefully. Searching for the words she needed. And beneath her worry was the agonizing fear that she would lose him forever if she said what needed to be said. Just like she’d lost her dad. “Would it work?”
“Not really.” He sipped the terrible coffee.
And Claire turned away from the fight. “Then I’d just be wasting my breath. I’ll save it for when it will make a difference.” But her voice broke, and there was nothing she could do to hide it except to turn away.
“Ah shit, Claire, don’t cry.”
She wheeled on him, keeping her voice low, her actions tight and controlled. She didn’t want to draw any attention to them but from the corner of her eye, she caught Evan watching. Alert. Tense. “I’m not crying over you, you son of a bitch. I’ll save my tears for your goddamn funeral.”
She walked away before he could say anything else. Before she could see if he was angry or if maybe, just maybe, her words had made a difference.
They hadn’t. She knew they hadn’t.
Reza was going to die. Not from an enemy bullet, but from his own stupid choices, because whatever demons he was battling, he was losing the fight.
And she was going to lose one of the only people she could call friend.
* * *
The small contingent of trainers gathered around Evan as he started to lay out the mission for the day. Finally, after days of ranges and briefings and inspections, they’d reached the important training: convoys. He glanced at LT Engle, who was blowing on her hands as though her breath were going to magically penetrate the army-issued cold-weather gloves. The kid had grown up fast in the last year. Hell, no one who went to war came back as innocent as when they’d gone in.
He glanced around, looking for Claire. She should be happy they were finally hitting the convoy portion of the training exercise but when he saw her earlier this morning, she had looked drawn and tense. He was worried about her. She hadn’t spoken to him much over the last few days of the exercise and despite their having slept together, he felt the distance between them more sharply than ever.
He crouched down, pushing away his worry, and drew a quick sketch of the mock city in the snow, doing his best to ignore Claire, whom he’d finally spotted near the edge of one of the buildings, talking to Sarah. He shut down his reaction to her, focusing on LT Engle, who looked excited to finally be running convoy training. He almost smiled at her eagerness.
“Okay Engle, your platoon is going to enter the city here and you have to get the supplies to the objective here,” he drew an X at a four-way intersection, “and two of the four streets will be blocked with burning tires. From there, depending on how you react to the civilians, you’ll either get ambushed or make it through the rest of the city to the objective.”
“Got it,” Engle said. “I just wish we’d found someplace less freezing than this for the exercise.”
Evan raised both eyebrows and looked up at Engle. “Unless you plan on driving the entire battalion to somewhere warm and sunny like Fort Irwin, California, no.”
Reza slapped Engle on the shoulder. “Toughen up, sissy. You haven’t been frozen until you’ve spent forty-five days in Grafenwoehr.”
“What’s Grafenwoehr?” Engle asked, rubbing her hands together.
“A training area in Germany. You want to talk cold, you haven’t seen shit until you’ve spent a month at Graf in December. Takes three weeks to thaw out your balls when you get home. If you had any. Which you don’t. Never mind.”
Evan glanced to his right when he heard the sound of boots crunching on the snow. Claire walked up and was looking down at the quick terrain sketch Evan had done. She stayed silent, but the bones in her jaw looked close to snapping from the sheer pressure she was putting on her teeth.
He’d wanted to catch her after breakfast but she’d disappeared after talking with Iaconelli. Now, she looked unapproachable at best. Frustration snapped at him. He’d thought last night would be the start of something new between them. Instead, she seemed terrified of the intimacy between them.
The group dispersed at once and he didn’t miss how quickly Claire tried to disappear. He fell into step with her.
She was trying to put distance between them again.
Too bad for her, Evan had stubbornness issues. He caught up with her as she surveyed the frozen landscape that was standing in for an Iraqi village in today’s exercise.
Evan pulled her into the shell of a building where they could have some privacy.
“What happened this morning with Iaconelli?” he asked.
She paced for a moment before answering him. Then finally she turned to him and said, “I’m tired of him drinking himself unconscious.”
“You’ve known him a long time.” It wasn’t a question.
“Longer than anyone else in the army.” Evan watched her for a long moment, fighting the urge to reach out, to offer her comfort.
She looked so rigid and stiff, as if she might shatter at the faintest touch. “Reza is what all the little infantry privates want to grow up and be,” she said. “Any other soldier, I would have directed to the behavioral health docs long before now. I wouldn’t even think twice.”
Evan watched as Iaconelli worked his way through the formation. He trusted Iaconelli more than any other warrior in his formation. His skill on the battlefield was unnatural, but it kept his men alive, and Evan couldn’t help but wonder at the cost of that skill. Had the descent into hell been worth it? Iaconelli was the warrior Ajax personified and more deeply flawed than any Greek hero. A nagging voice whispered in Evan’s ear that Iaconelli was a grenade with the pin already pulled, simply waiting for the handle to be released to explode. “He needs help,” Evan said.
Claire stood at an empty window frame, s
taring out at nothing as the first vehicle stopped in front of Iaconelli, focused on the battle in front of her. Claire might want to protect Reza from the consequences of his drinking but she couldn’t ignore it forever.
Evan was close enough to see the tiny curls that escaped the bottom of her helmet.
Finally she turned back to him. “I can’t turn him over to the army, Evan,” she said. “Don’t ask me to do that.”
For one moment, all her shields fell away and he was looking at a woman with no barriers. No walls. Vulnerable. And damaged. So beautifully damaged.
“There isn’t another way,” Evan said softly. “He needs time. The only way to get him that time is if the army knows.” He swallowed the next words, knowing they were going to crush her. “Otherwise, we’re going to be standing at his court-martial. Or his funeral.”
The last vehicle disappeared around the corner, their view blocked by an empty, graffiti-marked bell tower. The silence hung on between them and she finally looked away.
“The army isn’t the answer here, Evan,” she said, her words harsh and cutting.
“You don’t know that.”
“Really? Let’s talk about what I do know. I know that when it comes right down to it, officers like you will throw someone like Reza out of the army the moment he becomes a liability. In combat? Sure, he’s a god. Back here in the rear? He’s a risk. He’s one serious incident report too many.” Claire started to stalk away, but she was stopped short by his words.
“Officers like me, Claire?”
* * *
She heard the hurt in his voice and closed her eyes, clenching her fists at her sides. “That’s not what I meant,” she whispered.
“What did you mean, then?”
She didn’t honestly think he was giving her the chance to take her words back. They’d cut him, deeply. But they were also true and came from a place that Evan would never understand.
She turned back, lifting her chin, fighting for every scrap of strength it took for her to remain upright. “You have no idea what it’s like for enlisted soldiers, Evan. You’ve never been a private, who could be thrown out of the army for looking at someone the wrong way. You’ve always been an officer. You’ve always been protected from the arbitrary desires of whoever the current commander is.”
Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) Page 14
