Tempted by the Soldier

Chapter Six


So much for getting ahead of the storm.

Nate flipped the windshield wipers to high and watched a bleary Virginia pass by outside the rain-streaked window. The drizzle they’d been driving through had turned into an all-out downpour now that they were closer to the coast. A gust of wind caught the side of the truck and he tightened his hold on the wheel to keep it steady. At least traffic was almost nonexistent. Most people weren’t stupid enough to be traveling during one of the strongest tropical storms the east coast had seen in years. He checked the light outside, already dimmed from the storm. If he had to guess, they only had a few hours of daylight left at best. Then he’d be knee-deep into Tropical Storm Cindy with only the few feet of visibility his headlights would give him.

Oo-f*ckin-rah.

As if he needed the added stress. He’d f*cked up. Bad. Losing control like that and kissing Lilly had been a colossal mistake. Because now he couldn’t get her taste out of his mouth. Couldn’t get that sexy f*cking half whimper, half moan out of his head. It had taken everything in him to pull away. And now it was taking even more not to pull the truck over and finish what he’d started. That shit was the last thing he needed to be thinking about. He should be preparing for what he was about to walk into—a hornet’s nest of memories that were going to rip him wide open.

He grabbed his coffee and took a scorching swig, trying to burn away her taste.

“You just passed the exit we needed to take.” Lilly looked up from the map on her phone and turned in her seat to peer out at a big green highway sign.

Nate blinked as the sign flew past, then checked the GPS. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes. You did,” she insisted. “I mapped out the fastest route before we left.”

He jerked his gaze back to the road and blew out a breath that did nothing to help the tension coiling in his shoulders. The woman was making him nuts. “We’re taking a detour, so no need to play navigator. Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing.”

“Detour?” She sat up, panic flashing behind her wide eyes. “Hayden didn’t say anything about a detour.”

“Maybe that’s because I don’t give Hayden a play-by-play of my schedule before I plan my day.” Especially since it was a surprise.

The sign for exit 209 to Cedar Springs came into view and a sick feeling brewed in Nate’s gut. It had been nine years since he’d allowed himself to take this exit. Nine years of running from a lifetime’s worth of mistakes. His instincts told him to blow past the off-ramp as if his life depended on it, but he knew in his heart that wasn’t an option. His brother was counting on him to pick up their grandmother’s necklace. God knew how many times Nate had already disappointed Jace in this lifetime, and he refused to do it again.

“What kind of detour?” Lilly sounded worried. “How long will it take?”

“Not long.” Not if he could help it. He didn’t intend to spend a second longer in Cedar Springs than he had to. There were way too many ghosts lurking around every corner. He’d grab the necklace and get the hell out of Dodge. They’d be back on the interstate within the hour.

Flicking on his blinker, he veered to the right to take the exit.

“Watch out!”

He jerked the wheel to take a hard right, frantically looking over his shoulder for the source of Lilly’s meltdown. Judging by the ear-piercing pitch of her scream, anyone would have assumed he’d nearly run down a bus full of kindergartners. Tires skidded as he fought to get control of the fishtailing truck. Lilly yelped. Something sizzling hot and wet spilled down the side of his leg.

He cursed as they swung onto the exit. “Son of a bitch!”

He grabbed at his jeans to pull the scalding wet fabric away from his skin. God damn it! He’d known stopping for that coffee was going to bite him in the ass. Now he had a hangover, no coffee, and third-degree burns.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lilly pushed her hair back from her face and clutched her chest as he straightened the truck on the road.

“You screamed to watch out! You made me think I was going to hit somebody!”

“I said to watch out. I didn’t say to roll the freaking truck.” She huffed. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

He stepped on the brake but the pedal didn’t budge. “No. But keep talking, and I might reconsider.”

“You need to slow down. The speed limit dropped to thirty-five back there.”

“That would be a great plan”—he reached down under his legs and the truck nearly swerved off the road—“if my coffee cup wasn’t stuck under the damn brake pedal. I can’t reach it. You want to give me a hand here?”

She eyed the floorboards warily, her eyes drifting over his lap…no doubt thinking about just how up close and personal she was going to have to get to reach the cup. He was thinking about it too, despite his best efforts not to. With that kiss still fresh in his mind, it was impossible not to think how close she was going to be to the hard-on he’d been sporting since they’d left the truck stop.

“Anytime this week, Lil.” Damn. He had survived a helicopter crash and two tours in A-stan that would’ve had most grown men pissing their pants and running home crying to Mama. How f*cking embarrassing would it be if a Flying Pig Truck Stop coffee cup was finally the thing to take him out?

Lilly finally scooted across the seat and bent over his lap. Her long hair draped over his legs and he sucked in a sharp breath. This…was not going to work. Her cheek brushed his thigh and he cursed. With her taste still fresh in his mind, his dick considered this a call to stand at attention, and there was nothing he could do about it. For f*ck’s sake, he wasn’t a saint. He was a man. And with her ass stuck up in the air and her face between his—

“Almost…”

She wiggled and his gaze drifted to her hips. He threw his arm over the back of the seat and fisted the jacket hanging over it. All the blood in his body was headed south, and if she kept this up there wouldn’t be any left north of the border to keep him going. The light pressure she was unintentionally applying to his cock was driving him insane. Her head slipped between his legs, beneath the steering wheel, and he bit back a groan.


A car accident wasn’t going to kill him. A massive heart attack was.

“Got it!”

Her head slid back up into his lap and he shoved his hips backward into the seat, fighting the urge to thrust forward. Gravel crunched under the tires and he jerked the vehicle back onto the road.

When he finally regained full control of the truck, he exhaled a shaky breath, and said, “Why the hell did you tell me to watch out, anyway?”

“You almost ran over a turtle crossing the road.” Her muffled voice rose from his lap.

“A turtle? You almost got us killed for a turtle?”

She reached up and tugged on her hair, and he glanced down to see what was taking her so damn long.

“You would have killed it! What if it had babies it was trying to get back to?”

She was insane. Certifiably in-f*cking-sane. He opened his mouth to tell her so, but before he could speak, sirens blared. Red and blue flashing lights reflected from the rearview mirror. Son of a bitch. “Lil…you might want to get up now.”

“I’m trying.” She wiggled, pulling her head up from his lap, and stopped. “Oh, no.”

She tugged on her hair again and he eased off to the side of the road, thankful to have control of the brakes again. “I’m not f*cking around, Lilly. I’m getting pulled over. By the cops.”

“My hair is stuck,” she squeaked.

Her face dropped back onto his thigh and he slammed the gear into park. “In what?”

“Your zipper!”

She slid forward, trying a different angle. Her mouth grazed the inside of his thigh and his cock twitched. He gripped the steering wheel. “Less moving, Lil. Way less moving.”

She gasped. “Oh, my God. Are you—”

Hard as a f*cking oak? Yes. Yes, he was.

“Jesus, Lilly! I’ll explain the inner workings of the male anatomy to you later. Can you just sit the hell up?”

He watched the cop cautiously approach the driver’s side of the car and cursed under his breath. How the hell was he going to explain this? Of all the times he’d imagined Lilly’s lips so close to his cock, this particular scenario had not been in any of his fantasies.

“Afternoon, Officer.” Nate smiled at the highway patrolman who approached the window, sliding his sunglasses down his nose as rain poured off the brim of his hat. He did not look amused. “It’s not what it looks like.”

The cop leaned in to survey the situation. A look of instant recognition lit up his face when he lifted his gaze to Nate.

“Nate Jennings?” A smile split his face as he tucked his sunglasses in his pocket. “Never thought I’d see you again. Especially not like this.”

Nate squinted at the familiar face, scrambling for a name. “Wyatt?”

Damn it! He was still an hour outside the Cedar Springs city limits and already he was running into people he knew.

“Oh, my God,” Lilly groaned into his lap. “Please tell me you don’t know him.”

Nate rested his hand on her hip and leaned back. “Lilly Grayson, meet Wyatt Sutton. We went to high school together.”

“Does he have a gun?” Lilly asked. “Just tell him to shoot me now. I’m totally fine with that.”

Wyatt peered into the car and laughed. “Do I even want to ask?”

Nate sighed. “I swerved to miss an animal back in the road and my coffee cup fell onto the floorboard. It rolled under the brake pedal. She was trying to get it and—”

“And my hair got stuck in his zipper. Okay?” she snapped. “Now that we’re all caught up on the situation, can we go back to discussing putting me out of my misery?”

Wyatt laughed. “Well, I can’t give you the gun, but I do have something else that might be able to help you out.”

…

“Well, that could have gone worse.” Nate sighed and tossed his sunglasses onto the dashboard, watching Wyatt’s police cruiser disappear through the heavy sheet of rain. “At least he was amused. Got us out of a ticket.”

Lilly inspected her hair in the mirror and tried not to cry. “Are you serious? You cut off my hair with his pocketknife! And you know him! How in God’s name could that have gone any worse?”

“Your hair will grow back.” Nate leaned down to inspect his leg and let out a hiss between his teeth. “Do you have any idea how hot that coffee was?”

She scowled at him, heating at the memory of the tantalizing hardness that hid behind his zipper. He’d been that affected by her just being close to his—

She didn’t know whether to be flattered or worried. She tucked her ragged hair behind her ear and frowned when a curl, now shorter than the rest, slipped free and fell back into her face. Great. At this rate she was going to be disfigured by the time she got to Vermont. So much for bagging a hot groomsman. Reluctantly, her eyes wandered over to the one groomsman she had no intention of bagging. That kiss had been a mistake. A mistake she wasn’t going to repeat.

Right? Right.

He slid his seat all the way back and was rolling his pants leg up to inspect the damage.

“Does it really hurt that bad?”

He grunted. “I’ll be fine.”

She sighed and grabbed her purse, fishing for the first aid kit Hayden had given her for Christmas last year. “Take your pants off.”

He stilled and turned his wide-eyed gaze on her. “Excuse me?”

“Take your pants off so I can take a look at the burn. You can change into dry ones before we get back on the road.”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. Instead, she grabbed the little black kit and looked up to find Nate standing out in the rain, shimmying out of his jeans. Once he had them off he jumped back in and shut the door to block the rain out.

“It’s just a coffee burn.” He wadded up his pants and tossed them in the back seat. “I think I’ll live. No need to play Florence Nightingale.”

She sighed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re as stubborn as a mule?”

“Well, look at that,” he drawled. “We do have something in common.”

“Just slide your seat back and shut up.”

Amusement in his gaze, he obeyed and slid his seat back far enough for her to get a good look. She had the feeling that not many women gave orders to Nate Jennings. And it was even less likely that he obeyed them. A thrill of pleasure ran through her that he’d given in so easily. Not that she expected it to happen again.

“You carry a first aid kit?” He raised a brow as she ripped open a packet of burn gel. “Why does this seem eerily familiar?”

“I worked for Hayden Summers for two years. Her neurosis was bound to rub off on me.”

The laughter died in his throat when she slipped her hand under his thigh to pull his leg up, then rubbed the gel over the red mark on his muscular calf, soothing the burn. She peeked up at him and his eyes were half-lidded, watching her with an intensity that sparked a burn low in her belly. God…that really was all it took from him. One look that stripped her bare and she was overwhelmed with want. Why couldn’t she be this attracted to someone safe? Like her dentist. Or the guy at the coffee shop who kept writing his number on her caramel macchiato.

“I really am sorry about your hair,” he said.

She slapped a gauze pad over the burn a little harder than necessary. “You didn’t seem very sorry when you were going at it like it was a log and you were in a lumberjack competition.”


He chuckled. “Hey, I tried to unzip. But I ran out of options when you started screaming like a banshee.”

“You pulled my hair! It hurt.”

“There was a cop staring at us while your face was planted in my lap. I was working under pressure, Lil.”

“A cop?” She scoffed. “He showed you pictures of his kids and told you stories about the high school reunion       you missed. I doubt you were in danger of doing hard time.” She leaned back and zipped the kit back up, forcing her gaze to stay on his face and not on the considerable bulge inside the black boxer briefs he was wearing. “There. How does that feel?”

Grabbing an extra pair of jeans out of his duffel bag, he shrugged, then fought to pull them on in the cramped space that the truck provided. “Like I said, I’ve had way worse injuries.”

Without thinking, she reached out and touched the white scar peeking out from under his sleeve. He stilled, hands on his jeans zipper. Damn her weak willpower. She knew getting this close to him was a bad idea, especially after that kiss, but she couldn’t help herself…or the curiosity that had taken control of her hand. His gaze dropped to her fingers, which were tracing the jagged raised flesh. The sound of the rain beating the roof of the truck only seemed to intensify the moment.

“Like this one?”

“Yes. Like that one.” His voice sounded gruff.

Amazed that he wasn’t stopping her, she slipped her fingers up into his sleeve to follow the ridge of flesh. “How did it happen?”

“Souvenir from my last tour.” The muscles in his biceps twitched under her touch. “Helicopter crash.”

Lilly’s heart clenched and something painful tugged at her stomach imagining him in that much pain. A helicopter crash? How did a person even survive something like that? She glanced at the dog tags he always wore around his neck. She couldn’t make out the name from this angle, but she could see that it wasn’t his. Had someone died? Had he almost died?

“You must have been really lucky to survive something like that,” she said.

Nate pulled away abruptly and tugged his sleeve back down into place. “So they tell me.”

“You don’t feel lucky?” She blinked up at him and his jaw clenched.

“Depends on what day you ask me.”

“What about today?”

His gaze slid over her face and down the column of her throat, making her pulse jump. When it came back up and landed on her mouth, something flared in his blue eyes. “Yeah. I’d say today I’m feeling pretty lucky.”