Then she’d have it. He closed his eyes to shut off the visual stimuli of her face, growing pinker as sweat bloomed on her temples, only to discover his heightened awareness of her gasps and caught breaths, each one like a honey-tipped dart to his balls. Fuck it. He’d immerse in it, in the slowly building rhythm, in the sex flush building on her throat, on the way her nipples brushed his chest with each thrust as he counted backward from one hundred in Pashto. She tightened around him, heels digging into his ass, abdomen taut and trembling, her noises forced through her tight throat as she immersed in the pain and the pleasure, savoring both.
Then, victory, sweet, sweet victory as a dark flush swept up her chest, her throat, into her cheeks. She tightened around him, sharp cries piercing the air. He kept the same steady pace, his orgasm seething in the tip of his cock, until she subsided. Three thrusts and he lunged deep, each pulse of release like a shock, tightening his muscles as he emptied himself inside her.
When he regained control of his muscles he looked at the clock. “Six fifty-nine,” he said. “You shower. I’ll make breakfast.”
“Okay,” she answered fuzzily.
He pulled out and kept going, backing off the bed, away from her flushed, wrecked body, fetching up hard against her dresser. Halfway out of bed herself, she giggled when he swore, then stumbled when her knees buckled. “Like to see you walk a straight line, Stannard.”
“Ha ha,” she said, reaching for the dresser. They both made it into the bathroom without bumping into the walls. Jamie dealt with the condom and washed up quickly while Charlie started the shower. He treated himself to one more last lingering look at her body, all long lean lines and toned muscles, then got dressed in the clothes conveniently still on the bathroom floor.
In the kitchen he found eggs, bread, and a container of sliced fruit—pineapple, grapes, cantaloupe, honeydew melon—and whipped up an easy breakfast, pouring the eggs into the pan when he heard the hair dryer. By the time the toast popped up, Charlie emerged from the bedroom dressed in a simple pantsuit, her hair mostly dry. She wore makeup, a bit of blush, rosy lipstick, and a hint of eye shadow.
“What?” she asked, pulling her hair back and snapping the elastic from her wrist to the thick ponytail.
“I’ve never seen you in makeup before,” he said, buttering the toast.
She shot him a narrow-eyed look that didn’t hold as much heat as it could have. “You left massive stubble burn on my chin. I needed to do something to make it look natural.”
“Yeah, not really sorry about that,” he said as he slid eggs onto their plates.
Jamie elbowed aside a stack of junk mail and set both plates on the breakfast bar separating her kitchen from the living/dining room.
“Thanks,” she said, pleased by the simple meal.
“How many men do you think wake up in my bed?” she asked after he’d take a hearty gulp of orange juice.
He choked, but managed to swallow rather than spit all over her eggs. “What?”
“The first thing you said to me this morning was your name. Like I wouldn’t know who I’d gone to bed with the night before.”
“It wasn’t that,” he said, eyes watering, silently cursing himself. He’d give up a limb to take back those words and substitute something romantic, like I’ve loved you since I was seventeen.
“What was it, then?”
“You looked far away. That’s what I’d want to know,” he said, because he’d been projecting his own emotions onto her face. “First, who’s with me and can I trust them? Second, where am I?”
“Oh,” she said. “Does that happen often?”
“When you’re sixteen days into a mission and running on about eight hours of sleep total, yeah, it happens.”
“Who you’re with matters more than where you are?”
“When I’m with the right people, where I am doesn’t matter. We’ve got whatever’s coming.”
“When the alarm went off, I was dreaming,” she said, using her fork to push scrambled eggs onto a triangle of toast.
“About what?”
“What we did after I woke up, pretty much,” she said.
Heat stained her cheeks, deepening the color there. In the back of his mind he noted the difference between her face flushed from a game and her face flushed after really incredible sex. She was retreating, mentally shifting gears to focus on students and classes. He was the one on leave, not her. A frown crossed her face.
“What’s that look for?”
“I need to buy a dress,” she said, disgruntled.
He laughed. “Sounds like fun.”
“You like shopping?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.
“No, but I’d like watching you try on dresses,” he answered.
“Pervert. I don’t think they let men in the dressing rooms.”
“Even better. I’ll sit outside by the mirror and watch you model them.”
“It’s not going to be sexy lingerie fun,” she pointed out, amused. “It’s a work event for me. I’ll get something practical I can wear again on recruiting trips. What are you going to wear?”
“Dress whites.”
“Your uniform?”
“I’m an active duty member of the United States Navy,” he said. “I don’t have to wear dress whites, but to be totally honest, I don’t own a suit.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said. “The kids definitely responded to the uniform yesterday.”
“Who’s the kid you were sitting with?”
“Grace was the short one. Olivia, tall, no coordination at all.”