“Whoa. Wait a second.” He held up a large-palmed hand and frowned. “You’re not making sense here.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t any help to you. I’ve always meant to take self-defense courses but I never got around to it, and if you want to know the truth, I am a total wimp. I can’t even face up to Murphy the garage owner jerk and by the way, I never thanked you for picking up my car. I’m sorry you had to deal with Murphy for me, that’s never pleasant. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to do anything but cower in a closet,” she continued, past the huge lump in her throat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to defend myself and had to call in the Marines. Well, the SEALs.” She gave a choked laugh, cutting it off before it could become a sob. “I’m so sorry I forced you into hiding, sorry you have to stay holed up here with me, sorry…just…sorry.” She covered her face with trembling hands. She was flying apart, shaking, taking deep breaths to hold herself together.
“Fuck this,” John snarled, pushing back his chair so hard it fell to the dusty wooden floor with a clatter, and scooped her up. He held her high in his arms, moving quickly into the bedroom. He didn’t switch on the light. Just sat down on the chair, holding her, and began to rock.
Suzanne turned her face to his neck, no longer bothering to fight the tears that welled out of her. He held her in silence, tightly, probably realizing that she didn’t need words at all. She needed this, human contact, human warmth. A connection, however tenuous, with his strength and courage.
One large hand covered the back of her head, another held her tightly around the waist and it was as if she had permission to let it all go. Throughout it all John simply held her so tightly she could feel his chest lifting and falling with his deep, even breathing. She could hear, even feel, the slow steady heartbeats, steady and strong just like he was and it gradually calmed her.
When the bout ended, she felt dazed and exhausted. Fatigue and whiskey had demolished her defenses. She couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it.
Her arms were tightly wound around his neck. If she was choking him, he wasn’t complaining. Maybe he was uncomfortable sitting there with her on his lap but he didn’t say anything, just held her close. How much time had gone by? She had no idea. She stirred, trying to muster the energy to get up, but his arm tightened and she slumped back against him.
Her hip came up against his erection, huge and hard and she quivered. She remembered every second of his penis inside her, how he’d thrust with the whole strength of his body, how she’d flown apart.
He wasn’t thrusting up against her in sexual demand, but he wasn’t hiding it either. It was there—he was aroused, but he wasn’t pushing for sex.
Oh God, she couldn’t deal with any of this. Sex and death. Death and sex. It was too much. Her body simply gave up the fight. Sleep was falling as swiftly as night in the tropics. But before she fell asleep in his arms, there was something he had to know.
“I’m glad you were there,” she whispered against his neck, her lips moving across his skin in what was almost a kiss.
“So am I,” he whispered back.
CHAPTER NINE
She’d fallen asleep like a child, from one breath to the next, John thought. He himself didn’t have any experience with children, but that’s what his married buddies always told him. Kids could drop off to sleep in an instant, just like that, they said.
Except Suzanne was no child. His raging hard-on was very clear on that.
She thought that she could hide herself from him inside a high-necked flannel nightgown, but hell, she couldn’t hide inside a burlap bag. She’d still be totally desirable. High-necked the gown might have been, but the shape of her breasts—her braless breasts—was clearly visible, the tight little nipples outlined against the pretty pink fabric. It was the cold making her nipples hard, not thoughts of having sex with him. So he managed—barely—to keep from tossing her onto the bed, ripping the nightgown in two and crawling on top of her. Opening her with his fingers and sliding his cock right in.
He knew exactly what being inside her felt like and he wanted more. Right now.
Part of it was his obsession with her, that ice princess air she had which contrasted so sharply with the curvy femininity, the luscious, slightly overlarge mouth, perfect creamy skin, large, slightly uptilted eyes…
But part of it was adrenaline. He was coming down from a firefight and extraction and that always made him hard as a rock.
It was an aspect of soldiering that didn’t figure in Hollywood movies or Tom Clancy novels. Movies showed men smoking, laughing, high-fiving each other after battle, but the truth was that men after battle were strung out, grim, tense and shaking, sporting woodies as hard as rocks. Willing to fuck a knothole in the wall to get it out of their system.
Every soldier in the world knew it, knew that surviving a fight required sex afterwards—hard and fast and furious—to bleed off the tension. A barracks after a takedown was so filled with testosterone you could smell it, it fogged the air so much. Soldiers had hard-ons after fights and that was a fact of life. Some would get it on with a female goat if a woman wasn’t around, but he’d always drawn the line at anything kinky. If a semi-attractive and willing woman wasn’t available, his fist worked just fine.
He had a more than semi-attractive woman in his arms right now and his hips surged upwards reflexively as his dick, all on its own, sought to enter her. She was right there, legs across his lap, ass right over his dick. Through the nightgown he could feel the little scrap of material over her hip. Probably a copy of those incredibly sexy little lace panties he’d ripped off her the other night, in his frantic haste to get inside her. Right now, right now, goddamn it, he could pull the soft flannel up, rip her panties off again—he’d have to start buying her underwear by the ton—spread her legs until she straddled him and thrust right up into her, and she’d be sweet and tight and smooth and all his…
Jesus.
He remembered every second his dick had been in her, everything about it. The tightness, the heat, the wetness…she’d been thinking about sex just as much as he had over dinner.
Suzanne sighed in her sleep, shifting slightly, slithering over his dick. He froze. Sweat broke out on his face, though there was still a slight chill in the air the heating system hadn’t managed to dispel.
A good soldier visualized, running what he wanted to do through his head until he could see and feel the moves, until the moves were second nature, running a successful future battle through his mind so many times that by the time the real thing rolled around, the op went down smooth as ice.
John was damned good at visualizing, at projecting himself forward in time to an op, going over the details again and again. It wasn’t something he could turn off, just like he couldn't turn off his ability to prepare for future danger or countering danger when he met it.
Right now he was visualizing like crazy. Visualizing doing all the things to her he hadn’t had time to do the other night because he’d been nearly half-crazy with lust. Not that he wasn’t in the same state right now. There had to be some point in the future in which he was going to be able to make love to Suzanne Barron instead of fucking her blind. When he'd had her enough times to assuage this burning hunger, when he’d come inside her often enough that he could savor the feel of her instead of craving it…then maybe he’d settle down some.
Maybe.
But he’d already been too rough the other night and that was without post-fight adrenaline raging through his system. Now he suspected he’d hurt her. Enter her too quickly, thrust too hard, Jesus maybe even bite her.
That thought made him back down a little.