Delta V

by Elsa Jade

  She crossed her arms over her chest, her heavy work coat crumpling. Shit, she could’ve at least changed into something with less cow spit on it if she’d meant to entice him. “You know how we decided to pretend that dragon thing never happened? Let’s extend that amnesia to right this very moment.”

  So impossibly fast that she couldn’t compute it in her brain but he must’ve jumped on a dragon and flown to her, the toes of his boots were right up against hers. That was the only place he touched her—and both their boots were pretty pointy so they weren’t actually touching—but she swore she felt him all down the front of her body.

  “We can pretend this is a dream too.” His low tone rumbled through her, fracturing the frozen indecision that had held her in place.

  “No dreams,” she murmured. “No dragons. Just…”

  “A date,” he said solemnly.

  She peered up at him, wrinkling her nose, but when she opened her mouth to go with that other D, he kissed her.

  It wasn’t as fast as his ground-covering stride, but she still didn’t have time to move. Or she did, but she didn’t. Why was she so confused in her own head? She hadn’t been confused for a long time. He was confusing her. She’d hold him to blame for this.

  Except she’d rather he just held her.

  “Don’t apologize for asking for what you want,” Amber had told her the first time they were together. “You won’t always get it, but you’ll get the satisfaction of speaking up for yourself.”

  I want those five years back, she raged in her head. I want those five years I had with you to last forever.

  So caught up in her thoughts, memories, raging grief, she’d all but forgotten her body. And Delta. The weight of his lips—he hadn’t gone for tongue even though her mouth was open—and the pressure of his breath seemed to push a touch of air back into her deflated lungs. A soft kiss, a sweet kiss. Not at all what she’d come here for.

  He must’ve sensed that—certainly she hadn’t responded at all in any meaningful way—because he lifted his head. “Lindy,” he murmured.

  Not wanting to hear an apology, or have to issue one of her own, not wanting to think or remember, ready to let her body heat again with anyone’s hands besides her own, she boosted herself up to the tips of her pointy boots to kiss him back.

  He was so tall that it was quite a boost, but she hadn’t been slinging hay and wrestling cows for fifty years with nothing to show for it. Grasping the sheepskin lapels of his coat, she hauled herself up to his chest. Not soft and not sweet and plenty of tongue.

  He grunted out a sound, half surprise, half pleasure, and wrapped his arms at the small of her back, holding her against him.

  He supported her so easily, his strength unyielding, not as if her height and weight were nothing to him, but as if he’d been training his whole life for just this moment, to give her the boost she needed to kiss him, to forget, to come alive again, if only for this one night.

  She’d missed this: contact, heat, the heady swap of panting breaths that sent her blood surging and her mind whirling. She tilted her head to deepen the kiss and anchored her arms behind his neck. The brims of their hats knocked together and fell to the hard-packed earth of the yard. His was a very expensive Stetson, but he didn’t seem to care, all of his attention on her.

  His hands slipped from her hips to her ass under the hem of her coat, molding her to him. But she was suddenly aware of the bright white glare of the yard light. Anyone could see them, including his brother and presumably the entire United States military apparatus since their secret mutant breeding program was undoubtedly surveilled.

  God, she had to stop thinking and just feel this moment. “Take me inside,” she murmured, staring up into his half-lidded eyes.

  The halogen glare turned his gray irises solid silver, and the metallic tattoo she’d seen in the sunlight seemed more vivid too. Or maybe that was just her imagination, trying to make him different from Amber, so this wasn’t a betrayal, a hopeless acknowledgment that what she’d had was gone forever.

  Before she could yell at herself for getting lost in her own thoughts again, he bent, scooped one arm under her knees, and lifted her off her feet.

  She managed not to gasp, but it was a good thing she had her arm already behind his neck or she probably would’ve fallen over just from shock. Although she had the feeling he would’ve caught her if she had. Damn, he would’ve given her marauding Viking ancestors a run for their money. Her stomach flipped over at the instant of zero G as he tossed her upward in his arms, resettling her in his grasp. Maybe she did let out the tiniest squeak.

  He stared down at her, and even though the light was behind him, somehow the silver glints were still in his eyes as he smiled at her. “This is the best date ever.”

  She snorted. “We haven’t left the yard and all our clothes are still on, cowboy. We got a ways to go.”

  “You have no idea how far I’ve come to get to this moment,” he murmured.

  No she didn’t, did she? And that was the whole point. She didn’t know him, didn’t need to know him. They were just two bodies bumping in the night.

  With long strides—not quite running, but almost—he bore her toward the house. He kicked his way through the front door, startling the two ranch dogs into surprised barks. “Go to bed,” he told them sternly. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “There better be more to it than lay down, roll over, and play dead,” she warned him. She had the peripheral impression of a house as confused on its insides as it was on the outside, but he was carrying her so quickly she might as well be dragon-back herself.

  He was gazing down at her the whole time, as if he had no doubts about where his boots were carrying him. “I have many tricks and treats for you. It is almost Halloween.”

  She lifted one eyebrow, trying for cool nonchalance even as he jolted her on the way up the stairs. “Oh really? So you been giving this a lot of thought since your first crack at seducing me with a stale donut?”

  He grimaced. “That was a miscalculation based upon my own selfish desires. I have since contemplated and discarded several hundred simulations for how to get you in my bed.”

  She coughed out a laugh. “And in all your calculations, how many of them depended on me coming to you?”

  “According to my computations, only a handful of scenarios included this possibility,” he admitted. “And in at least a couple of those sims, you end up shooting me. So I’m really pleased with how this is going so far.”

  She splayed up one hand across his chest, and though the sheepskin and leather blocked her touch, she swore she felt the pounding of his heart. “Point of reference: I think you’re coming in a little low on your percentages.”

  He nodded solemnly. “I’ll take your mathematics under advisement.”

  He whirled on his boot heel, and for half a second she thought she’d scared him with her semi-joking. But then he bumped his butt backward through a door into what she presumed was his bedroom.

  Not that she needed to know Delta Halley in order to fuck him, but bedrooms were always a good place to get a sense of…

  She glanced over his shoulder and then swiveled her head the other way. It was gray. Everywhere. Weathered gray wood, gray paint, even a gray blanket on the bed—a simple Lakota star quilt, but all in gray. No pillows on the bed, no art on the walls, no dresser with knickknacks. Even the single light fixture with its low-watt bulb was a plain half-globe dome set in the ceilings like the belly of the moon.

  She looked up at him. Gray eyes. Good thing she hadn’t wanted to know what kind of person he was inside.

  He gazed down at her, a single line appearing between his eyebrows. “Something’s wrong.” He let her legs slide down his, putting her back on her heels. “What’s wrong?”

  For a house that was trying to be too many things, this room was just… Nothing. A blank. She shook her head. “It’s all good.”

  If she’d had a momentary thought that he migh
t be a crazed serial killer, it vanished at his look of consternation. “You were expecting something else.” He looked around as if seeing the space with fresh eyes. Gray eyes.

  “No, I wasn’t expecting anything,” she objected. “Well, I was expecting something.”

  Cupping one hand at his nape where her arm had been crooked just a moment ago, he ducked his head, glancing sidelong as he followed her inspection. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted,” he explained. “I was waiting for…inspiration, I guess.”

  She compared the featureless gray box to her college girls’ rooms. Within half a second of them unpacking their purses, their spaces had been personalized; they didn’t have much room in her small farmhouse but they had staked their claim immediately. And Delta had lived here his whole life.

  “Maybe instead of waiting for inspiration, you should wait for a sale at Sherwin-Williams and T.J. Maxx and then just go for it.”

  “I should’ve taken you to the hayloft,” he muttered—mostly to himself, she thought. “A hayloft is always romantic.”

  She laughed. “A quickie roll in the hay stopped seeming romantic by the time I was sixteen,” she confessed. “Recapturing your childhood sounds like a good thing, but I’m too old to get caught with straw in my hair now.”

  “No one would see it.” He reached out to wind his finger through the short tail of her braid, a little smile quirking his lips as the stubborn tuft flicked away from his toying. “It would be the same color as your hair. Frost and moonlight on winter wheat with strands of raw iron.”

  Well, at least he wasn’t colorblind, which would’ve explained the color of his room—and at least he seemed to like gray, although she refused to be charmed. She hadn’t come here for that either.

  She unbuttoned her heavy flannel jacket and let it fall since there was no chair or anywhere else to hang it. The heathery green and dark blue looked almost lurid amidst the gray. “I don’t need romance, and I’m not interested in dating,” she told him. “I just want to mess up that bed.”

  Mimicking her gesture, he shed his coat. Underneath he had on only a thin t-shirt in—surprise, surprise—gray. “I don’t have much to mess up.”

  “I noticed.” She caught her breath a little as he reached over his shoulder and stripped off the t-shirt too. She’d thought she had a good eyeful of him in his black suit, but now…

  He was thicker than she’d guessed from the underoos; from chest to waistband, his torso was a solid column of dense muscle, but none of it was extraneous. His biceps flexed as if taking off his shirt was more effort than carting her around. At her perusal, he took a deep breath, expanding his pectorals wide enough that she imagined his dragon wasn’t the only thing that could fly.

  Only the metallic sheen of circuitry ink seemed wrong—too fragile a design for his heft, not to mention his dangerous work with a creature even bigger than him.

  Maybe it was a reminder that no one was as tough as he looked.

  And the look in his gray eyes wasn’t tough either. In fact, he reminded her of the barn cats on the worst winter days—maybe wanting to come in from the cold but too wild and wary to actually follow her. Except this “date” had been his idea…

  If she went home now, she’d be a coward, she’d be furious with herself, and she’d be alone. Fuck that. She’d fuck him.

  Jamming her hand into the back pocket of her jeans, she pulled out her wallet.

  “Uh,” he said. “That’s not—”

  She wrinkled her nose at him as she produced an accordion three-pack of condoms. She tossed them to the bed where the cherry-red packaging looked a bit too much like virgin blood for her liking.

  It hadn’t been that long for her…

  While his attention tracked the toss of latex, she sneakily unbuttoned her thinner flannel shirt. Flannel was many things: comfortable + warm + hid an impressive number of stains. However, flannel =/= sexy.

  This was not a mathematical calculation she had done before tearing off to the Fallen A. She’d never regret flannel, since Amber had loved flannel in all the colors of the rainbow, and not just for sociopolitical reasons. But maybe she could’ve thought more about how she’d be showing her ass in this booty call.

  Well, even if it didn’t hide its age as well as flannel, at least her skin was comfortable and warm too. And sexy, or so Amber had told her.

  When Delta’s gaze snapped back to her, she had her shirt flayed open and the zipper of her jeans down, enough to flash her undies.

  His jaw dropped and his tongue touched his canine tooth in a lustful way that was quite gratifying. “Not frost and winter,” he breathed. “You look like spring.”

  Not charmed, she reminded herself. Just because he had innocent eyes and a wicked grin was no reason to think this meant anything beyond the moment, certainly not until spring.

  And despite her inner scold, she felt a heated blush flood her cheeks and cascade through her whole body—as reckless as the first rush of primroses across still-snowy fields.

  Maybe she’d already come to the far side of the mountain, but if it was all downhill from here, she was going out in a woo-hooing thrill ride.

  She closed the distance between them in two strides, kicking out of her boots, one with each step. Which lost her a precious couple of inches against his height, but he caught her and lifted her to his bare chest, their mouths locking on the first try. They were getting good at this…

  Holding her tight, he spun her around toward the bed. For all his great strength, his movements were rocky, and she realized he was toeing off his boots too. But when they tumbled backward onto the quilt, he caught himself smoothly, stiff-arming himself above her.

  He stared down with those fog-gray eyes, not blank, but mysterious. What was he hiding?

  Reaching down between their bodies, he fumbled with the fly of his jeans. Ooh, she was about to find out… This better be a treat, and not a trick.

  In an admittedly arousing one-armed pushup that flexed his bicep right next to her admiring eyes, he lowered himself to kiss her, blocking her view. His lips slanted hot and slick across hers, his tongue a twisty muscle that reminded her it didn’t really matter what was in his pants if he was so good with his mouth.

  She tilted her head back to get more of his kiss, more of him, lifting her shoulders off the quilt to wriggle out of her shirt. The heat of his mouth branded her—not literally, but still, it left a deep, aching scorch of yearning in its wake.

  Her pulse pounded, circulating that desire all through her with every beat of her heart. Suddenly, she feared that this late-night rendezvous with forgetfulness was going to backfire. She’d look in the mirror tomorrow—the morning after this terrible five-year anniversary—and there’d be another mark on her soul.

  But fear had never stopped her from doing what she’d decided to do. No pressure, inside or out—not even Delta’s arousing weight pressing between her legs—would change that. She learned it from her land: flow with the seasons, maybe, but always and forever be bedrock underneath.

  Except maybe there was some long-ignored volcanic urges seething underneath the bedrock.

  When Delta traced his mouth across the edge of her jaw and down her throat, his lips left a red-hot trajectory of craving across her skin…and somehow that flightpath arced in advance of his touch, every other part of her lighting up in clamoring demand for his hands, his mouth, his cock which she still hadn’t seen, dammit. She stirred restlessly underneath him, grinding against his pelvis as she lifted her hips to push her jeans down.

  Groaning deep in his chest, he kissed the shallow V of skin revealed by her heavy-duty work bra. No way was he or any man, not with top-secret military-grade weaponry or his clever tongue, getting through her chastity-titty cage of mesh, foam, and a hefty chunk of her take-home pay. But it was bright pink and matched her undies, so she was pretty damn proud of herself there.

  Delta seemed to like it too. He reared up to let her shimmy out of her denim, and when he raked his gaze over h
er, she swore he was throwing diesel on the flames of her lust.

  She took the opportunity to eyeball him too. Maybe a decade without a man’s dick had altered her perspective, or maybe it was just that he was so tall and said dick was so far away, but… Mentally, she shrugged. Whatever. He’d already proven he knew what to do with his tongue.

  And his long fingers were busy down the multiple front closures of her bra, distracting her with little shimmers of sensation through the heavy fabric. When he unpopped the last hook and eye—one-handed; so impressive—she took a deep, freeing breath. And he did too, his gray eyes flaring wider than the sudden gaping of her boob coop.

  His hand hovered over her. “Tell me what I can do,” he demanded in a hoarse voice. “I want you to love this.”

  She didn’t need to love anything. “How about I just tell you when you need to stop, if you need to stop. And you can do the same.”

  He nodded hard enough to send his short copper-brown hair waving. “Whatever you need. I have excellent control.”

  She wondered about that, considering the tremor in his hand. But when he cupped those long fingers around her breast, his thumb curving under the distended bud of her nipple, the caress was steady, sure. And when he dipped his head to kiss a tightening spiral around her other breast, it was her hands shaking when she reached up to hold his head.

  Pausing at her touch, he glanced up. For a heartbeat, she was hypnotized by the shimmer of his metallic tattoos. They looked…almost alive… Then his tongue flicked out.

  She jolted at the sizzling burst of sensation—practically electrifying—that zoomed out through her body, as if she had the same circuitry ink hidden inside her. He plumped her breast in his big hand, sucking the swollen tip between his teeth with just enough roughness to make her shiver in delight. She clasped him closer, at the same time pushing down on his shoulder, urging him lower, as if she didn’t know the way to her own pleasure, as if she’d forgotten.