The Marine's Road Home

by Brenda Harlen

  Jake slid a key into the lock of the side door, then held it open for Sky to enter.

  A kaleidoscope of butterflies danced and twirled in her belly as she stepped over the threshold and into what was obviously the kitchen. According to her brother-in-law, Jake had been living in Haven for a few months now, but looking around the room, Sky was pretty confident that he hadn’t been busy decorating during that time.

  The white Shaker cabinets were simple and classic, but the green plastic knobs on the cupboard doors and the faux marble laminate countertop screamed of a bygone era. Several of the green and white checkerboard floor tiles were chipped or cracked and the Formica table and chairs looked as if they belonged in a fifties diner.

  She perched on the edge of one of those chairs to take off her boots, setting them on the mat beside the door. Jake unlaced his—combat rather than cowboy, she noted—and toed them off.

  He tucked his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. “Can I get you anything?” he offered. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

  “I didn’t come here for food or drink,” she said, moving past him and into what was obviously the living room. The furniture was more modern in here, she noted, the oversize leather pieces and enormous flat screen a stark contrast to the faded floral paper on the walls.

  “I know,” Jake admitted, following behind her. “But I’m trying to give you a chance to come to your senses.”

  “I’ll be sensible tomorrow,” she said. “Right now, I really want you to kiss me again.”

  “And I really want to kiss you,” he said, already dipping his head.

  She sighed, a sound of pure pleasure, as his mouth captured hers. He kissed her deeply, hungrily, seducing her with the brush of his lips, the sweep of his tongue. It wasn’t just a kiss, it was a promise of so much more, and the realization had excitement coursing through her veins, making her knees weak and her thighs quiver.

  Because right here, right now, this was what she wanted.

  He was what she wanted.

  “Take me to bed, Jake.”

  He responded by scooping her into his arms, making Sky’s already-fluttering heart beat faster inside her chest.

  Molly, perhaps suspecting that they were playing a game, streaked past them and into the bedroom, leaping onto the bed.

  He paused in the doorway and winced. “I, uh, wasn’t planning on inviting anyone to come home with me,” he said, setting Sky on her feet.

  “I invited myself,” she reminded him, giving the room a quick perusal.

  It was simply and sparsely furnished, with a queen-size bed flanked by matching night tables on one wall and a long chest of drawers opposite.

  “Still, if I’d thought there was anything greater than a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d bring female company home, I would have put clean sheets on the bed,” Jake told her. “And moved that pile of clothes on the chair to the laundry room. And checked the expiration date on the condoms in my toiletry bag.”

  “I’ve got some in my purse—condoms, not clean sheets,” she clarified.

  “Good to know,” he said, reaching for the edge of the comforter.

  The lump beneath the sheet wiggled.

  He pulled it back and pointed to the door. “Out.”

  Molly lifted her paws to cover her face.

  Sky couldn’t help it—she giggled.

  Jake slanted her a look. “Don’t encourage her.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, not really sorry at all. “She’s just too adorable.”

  “Yeah, she’s adorable,” he agreed. “But right now, she’s also in the way.” He turned back to the playful canine. “Molly?”

  She dropped one paw, peeking at him with one eye.

  “It’s not playtime,” he said firmly.

  The dog let the other paw fall away and tilted her head to look at him imploringly.

  “Out,” he said, and pointed to the door again.

  Molly inched toward the edge of the mattress, moving as slowly as possible, as if to give him a chance to change his mind.

  Sky pressed her lips together to hold back another laugh as Jake grabbed the dog’s collar and tugged her toward the door, closing it firmly when Molly was on the other side.

  Then he looked back at the tangle of sheets again and said, “Do you want to wait in the living room for a few minutes while I sort things out in here?”

  “No,” Sky said, but tempered her refusal with a smile.

  “No?” he echoed.

  “There’s no point in making the bed now when we’re just going to mess it up again.”

  From the other side of the door came a plaintive whine.

  “I have to admit, I feel a little guilty that she’s been kicked out of her own room,” Sky said, having spotted the dog bed in the corner.

  “Molly thinks every room in the house is hers,” he said. “In five minutes, she’ll be settled on her favorite chair in the living room and forget that she was ever banished from here.”

  “And what will we be doing in five minutes?” Sky asked, lifting her sweater over her head and carelessly dropping it on the floor.

  “Not talking about the dog,” he promised, watching as she unzipped her skirt and wiggled it over her hips, leaving her standing before him in only a hot pink satin bra and turquoise lace panties. His eyes were dark as they skimmed over her slowly, approvingly. “I should have guessed you weren’t a white cotton kind of girl.”

  “I like color,” she said. “Though I would have matched my underwear if I’d known they were going to be on display.”

  “I like what you’re wearing,” he assured her. “But I think I’m going to like you wearing nothing at all even more.”

  He kissed her deeply then, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close so their bodies were aligned, breasts to chest, thigh to thigh and all the interesting points in between.

  But still it wasn’t enough. She wanted skin on skin contact. And he was wearing far too many clothes.

  She tugged the hem of his shirt out of his jeans and slid her hands beneath the fabric, exploring the smooth, taut muscles of his abdomen and chest with eager hands. He broke the kiss long enough to pull down the shade over the window, then yank the shirt over his head and toss it aside.

  She caught a glimpse of a tattoo on his shoulder—the logo and motto of the USMC in glorious color confirming her suspicion that Jake had served in the military. There was more ink on his other arm, something that almost looked like a list, but it was hard to decipher in the dim light and, truthfully, she was more interested in his muscles than his body art at present. And the man did have spectacular muscles.

  Her fingertips skimmed over sculpted abs as they traveled south to unfasten his belt. He helped her there, too, quickly shucking his jeans to reveal a pair of sexy black knit boxers—and an impressive erection. They tumbled together on top of the unmade bed, mouths mating, hands searching, each of them desperate to feel and touch and taste.

  She’d only met him a few weeks earlier, so how was it that she felt as if she’d been waiting for him forever? Wanted him forever? As if he might finally be the one to—

  No.

  She firmly shoved that romanticized notion out of her mind. She’d spent far too much time during her teen years trying to fill the emptiness inside her with the attention of boys she wanted to believe actually cared about her. Most of them only cared about scoring—and lied if they didn’t.

  It was a long time after she’d graduated from high school before she realized that she was responsible for her own happiness, and it took her a few more years after that to find it. But she was happy now. Sure, she had unfulfilled hopes and dreams and three part-time jobs instead of a defined career path, but she was confident that her life was on track to get her where she wanted to go.

  Jak
e wasn’t part of her long-term plan, and being here with him now wasn’t about anything more than finishing what they’d started with a single earth-tilting kiss on the side of the highway. Because in addition to taking responsibility for herself, Sky had also learned that she didn’t need to be ashamed of wanting sex for the sake of sex.

  Maybe she wasn’t proud of her sometimes less-than-discriminating choices when she was younger, but she was a woman now, with a woman’s needs. And it had been far too long since those needs had been satisfied.

  But Jake was already on his way to changing that. With every brush of his lips, he communicated his desire. With every stroke of his hands, he stoked the fire that burned inside her. He rained kisses along her jaw, down her throat, then lower still. He nuzzled the hollow between her breasts, his shadowed jaw rasping against her tender skin. Then he found the center clasp of her bra and deftly unfastened it, peeling back the cups to bare her breasts to his avid gaze and eager mouth.

  His lips skimmed over the tight bud of one nipple, a fleeting, teasing caress. She bit down on her bottom lip to keep from whimpering, pleading—More. Please.—as his mouth shifted to her other breast, another teasing caress.

  Deciding that turnabout was fair play, she let her hand brush over the front of his shorts and heard him suck in a breath. She stroked the hard length of him through the soft cotton with a fingertip, up and then down again, the deliberate action eliciting a low groan from deep in his throat. But the teasing caresses weren’t enough for either of them, and she started to dip her fingers beneath the waistband of his briefs.

  Jake caught her wrist and gently pulled her hand away.

  “Give me a sec,” he said, before rolling off the bed and disappearing into the adjoining bathroom.

  He returned with a square packet in his hand. “I checked the date,” he said, as he set the condom on the bedside table.

  “We’re good?”

  One corner of his mouth kicked up in a half smile. “I’m hoping.”

  Sky smiled, too, as she drew him back down onto the mattress with her. “Well, let’s find out,” she suggested.

  His hands moved boldly over her body, callused palms stroking her skin, sending tingles through her body.

  Though he’d drawn the shade, so that only a thin ribbon of light from the late afternoon sun was allowed to squeeze through on either side, she could feel areas of puckered skin beneath her fingertips. At first, she’d assumed he wanted the shade closed because the window was at ground level, despite the fact that the house was set back from the road and there were unlikely to be any passers-by this far on the outskirts of town. But now she wondered if he’d shut out the light so that she wouldn’t see his scars.

  Yeah, this wounded warrior definitely had a story to tell. And while Sky couldn’t deny a certain curiosity about his military experience, she was more interested in the man himself, and she set about exploring his taut, hard body with her hands and her lips.

  He captured her mouth again, his kiss hot and hungry, impatient and demanding, reflecting the same desperate urgency that was building inside her. There was no sweet seduction between them, only heat and passion and need.

  “Now, Jake. Please.”

  He didn’t make her ask twice, and she gasped as he thrust inside of her. Her orgasm came hard and fast, crashing over her in wave after wave of pleasure, leaving her stunned and breathless and with a vague thought that the celibacy vow she’d taken almost three years earlier had blown up in spectacular fashion.

  Then he began to move inside her, and before she had a chance to draw air into her lungs, the tension started to build again. The glorious friction created by his rhythmic thrusts was almost more than she could bear. And though she wouldn’t have thought it was possible to come again while her body was still quivering with the aftershocks of her first orgasm, she was overjoyed to be proven wrong.

  * * *

  The wind roared in his ears. Tiny grains of sand, whipped into a frenzy, slashed like knives. In the distance, a billowing cloud of dust. Harmless enough in the moment, it would be upon them quickly, reducing visibility to zero, blocking out even the sun.

  Jake felt a hand on his arm. Soft. Gentle.

  An unmistakably feminine touch.

  No, it wasn’t the wind he heard, but the blood pulsing through his veins.

  He jolted back to the present and exhaled a long, slow breath as his heart continued to pound like a jackhammer inside his chest.

  “Yeah,” he decided. “We’re good.”

  Sky chuckled softly. “You’re not going to get any argument from me.”

  Though his body wasn’t just sated but spent, he managed to lift his weight off her and roll onto his back.

  He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed sex until his body was joined together with hers. It was more than just the physical act of mating or the culmination of mutual desire. It was the sense of connection, of becoming a part of something bigger than himself. A connection that he’d been certain he’d lost forever when—

  No. He wasn’t going to go back there now.

  He was just going to let himself be in this moment for the moment.

  So resolved, he closed his eyes, a surprising feeling of peace stealing over his body, relaxing his muscles. He actually started to drift off, thinking it might be nice to fall asleep with a warm woman in his arms—and wake with her beside him.

  Yeah, it might be nice.

  Or it might be a nightmare.

  With that sobering thought at the front of his mind, he rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom to get rid of the condom and get his head on straight—not an easy task when he was feeling so unaccustomedly satisfied and relaxed.

  He hadn’t planned for this. He wouldn’t have dared to even dream it might happen. And just because it had happened—and had been pretty amazing—he knew it would be a mistake to think that the pleasure he’d shared with Sky could ever lead to anything more.

  He’d come to Haven because he needed some time and distance to get his life back on track. The absolute last thing he needed was the complication of a woman.

  But he couldn’t deny that he’d enjoyed being with her.

  She was spontaneous and passionate and fun, and while their bodies were intimately linked, she’d made him feel as if he was not just alive but whole and normal.

  Unfortunately, he knew that was only an illusion.

  But as he recalled the way she’d touched him, her hands stroking every inch of his body, he knew there was no way she’d missed his scars. But she hadn’t skipped a beat when she’d encountered the ridges of puckered skin that were an unwanted souvenir of his last tour. Her touch might have gentled as she’d traced the rough edges, but she hadn’t recoiled. She hadn’t turned away.

  And she hadn’t asked any questions.

  If he was a man capable of opening his heart, he might love her for that alone.

  But he wasn’t.

  Still, he stood there for a moment, looking at her in his bed. The sheet was pulled up high enough to cover the swell of her exquisite breasts, but one of her legs—slim and toned and perfect—was thrown over the top, and her silky dark hair was fanned out over his pillow. She looked so peaceful and contented, as if there was nowhere else she wanted to be, and he felt a tug of something that might have been regret that he had to disturb her.

  “Skylar?”

  Her eyelids flickered before they lifted, revealing blue-gray eyes that he longed to get lost in. Then her lips curved, and his body—though recently sated—stirred again.

  “Mmm?” she murmured.

  It was as much an invitation as an acknowledgment—an invitation that he desperately wished he could accept. He wanted to slip between the sheets with her again, spread her legs wide and—

  He ruthlessly stomped down on his growing desire and said, “You have to go.�
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  Chapter Five

  Well, that was a new experience, Sky acknowledged, sitting behind the wheel of her Jeep and staring at the closed door of Jake Kelly’s house.

  Not the sex—although that had exceeded her expectations in the very best way—but what had followed. His summary dismissal of her had been not just surprising but insulting.

  Okay, so maybe he liked his own space when he slept. He wouldn’t be the first guy who had no interest in cuddling a woman after the deed was done. But instead of rolling over and falling asleep, like a few other guys she’d known, he’d told her to leave.

  Bluntly and unapologetically.

  And staring at the door he’d closed between them, she couldn’t help but feel as if she’d been used.

  Which she knew wasn’t really fair, because if any using had been done, it had been mutual—and mutually satisfying. And while the logical part of her brain understood that there might be something more going on here, that possibility did nothing to soothe the unexpected ache in the region of her heart.

  You don’t know anything about me.

  Yeah, she definitely should have heeded his warning.

  Because while she had no doubts that he’d enjoyed the physical act, it was more than apparent to Sky that Jake didn’t want anything more.

  Of course, if he’d given her the benefit of even five minutes of conversation, she might have been able to reassure him that she wasn’t looking for any kind of a relationship right now, either. And that even if she was, she wouldn’t set her sights on a moody Marine with obvious intimacy issues.

  No matter that they’d had mind-numbing, heart-pounding, body-tingling sex together.

  And no matter how much she wanted to experience it again.

  She had too much pride and self-respect to chase after any man—especially one who had clearly and unequivocally given her the brush-off.

  Of course, she had only herself to blame. He’d told her, the first night he’d sat at Diggers’ bar, that he wasn’t interested in company or conversation. Obviously he was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said, and she was an idiot for not paying closer attention. Or maybe she was a fool for allowing herself to believe that things had changed over the past few weeks.