by Lara Adrian
She nodded again, stronger this time. But she couldn’t resist the comforting warmth of his palm where it rested against her cheek. She sank into his touch on a soft sigh and could only watch how John’s dark eyes drifted to her mouth and stayed there.
He groaned low under his breath, and then his touch was gone. The tender protector had retreated, replaced by the rigid warrior.
“It’s late. We can talk more about all of this tomorrow.” He drew back, putting more than an arm’s length between them. “You take my bed tonight. I’ll bunk on the couch.”
“You don’t have to—”
He cut her protest off with a growing scowl. “Take my bed. Close the door. I’m going to be up for a while yet. I never sleep much anyway.”
She recalled that about him from a long time ago. His trouble sleeping. His restless nature.
“The warrior in you never could let down his guard,” she remarked quietly, trying to lighten the tension that crackled between them despite the weight of the problems they were facing.
“I think it’s best if I don’t,” he murmured thickly.
Even though his words were heavy with meaning, his expression remained controlled. So disciplined. So unreachable. Just like he’d always been, except for that one unforgettable night when she’d glimpsed the man behind his warrior’s mask.
She missed that man now, but she couldn’t argue that he was wrong.
It was best that they didn’t complicate the situation with a repeat of their past mistake.
And while the last thing she wanted to do was walk away from him in that moment—for countless selfish reasons—she stepped aside with a murmured “goodnight” and left him standing in the kitchen behind her.
5
Duarte lay back on the lumpy, too-short-by-half-a-foot couch in his living room. Fully clothed, with one arm bent beneath his head as a pillow, his bare feet hanging over the far end, he didn’t hold much hope of sleeping anytime soon.
He’d quietly busied himself in the cabin for more than an hour since Lisa had gone to bed. The ceiling leak was stopped up for the time being. The dinner dishes were washed and stowed back in the cabinets. The remains of her cell phone had been disposed of, the SIM card drowned in the toilet and flushed away.
And yet he was still sporting one bastard of a hard-on despite the time and activity, neither of which had done much to distract him from the fact that she was just across the cabin from him behind that closed door. Asleep in his bedroom.
In his bed.
Christ.
The image sent a fresh wave of lust rolling through him. Hardened his cock even more.
He meant it when he told her it was best that he not let his guard down. That went double where she was concerned. God knew it was best for her, too, that he kept his head on straight and maintained his distance from her.
The last thing she needed was to get tangled up in anything related to the Phoenix program.
Damn her brother for not considering that fact before he risked contacting her. The in-person birthday visit after the program had been betrayed had been reckless enough, but to text her out of the blue several hours ago like he had?
Desperate warning or not, Kyle had potentially put Lisa in the crosshairs of Phoenix’s enemies. Whoever they were.
Hell, Duarte hadn’t done much better by her, divulging all he had over dinner tonight.
He exhaled a deep sigh. A bit too late for second thoughts on that. She was in up to her sweet ass now, thanks to everything he’d confided in her.
As much as he’d wanted to shield her from the truth and from any knowledge that could potentially put a target on her back, he’d found it impossible to lie to her. Not even about the inexplicable ability he possessed.
She’d see through him even if he tried. Those inky-lashed, light hazel eyes did things to his resolve that multiple combat deployments and years of training as a Phoenix covert operative couldn’t begin to match.
No, Lisa Becker had knocked him off-kilter from the second Kyle first introduced them. With her warm eyes and easy smile, she had blasted right through his protective walls. Her honesty in all things shook him up hard, forced him to be real with her when he’d survived most of his young life by wearing one mask or another.
With her wide open heart and knockout natural beauty, Lisa had made him long for things he never realized he’d wanted. Things he had no right to want from the amazing woman who also happened to be the little sister of one of his closest friends.
And five years ago, when the revelation of all that had smacked him broadside after their mind-blowing night together, he’d run like a damn coward, back to the desert front lines. Back to the hidden life he led as one of the Phoenix, where masks and walls were not only encouraged, but required.
Duarte had never told Kyle what happened between Lisa and him. Fortunately, by some miraculous quirk of the precognitive ability they shared, Kyle hadn’t psychically picked up on Duarte’s failure as a friend either.
Neither had Alec. The three had bonded as friends from day one in boot camp, but it wasn’t until they’d been several weeks into their first combat deployment together that they’d realized their uncommon extrasensory skills were, in fact, common to all three of them.
Seeing glimpses of the future had served their platoon well. Definitely saved a lot of lives—their own and their fellow Marines. But the trio kept their shared secret close, careful to avoid detection. Or so they’d thought.
It wasn’t long before the three of them were called into a private meeting with an official from the CIA. That man had been Henry Sheppard—a good man, and the founder of the highly classified Phoenix program.
Duarte, Alec, and Kyle became covert intelligence operatives, where they were known only to Sheppard and a very select few under the codenames Ranger, Stingray, and Talon.
Like the other precognitive agents of Phoenix, Duarte was required to report in regularly to Sheppard for various training and conditioning exercises and to divulge every occurrence of his visions, no matter how insignificant or disconnected they seemed at the time.
Insignificant sure as fuck wasn’t how he would describe the vision that had been plaguing him since the program’s demise.
Talking about his ability with Lisa had sent his thoughts back to the recurring nightmare he couldn’t seem to escape. The vision of fire and heat and destruction was startling. Confusing. Disturbing.
Hellish.
He didn’t know what the vision meant, but for three years it had been his most constant companion.
Thinking on it now made him relive the horrific sensation of melting skin, the agony of ash-filled eyes and smoking, burning hair. His own and that of the countless other people he’d been unable to save...
Duarte jerked in response, realizing only then that he’d started to doze.
Something else had woken him. A noise sounded from the other side of his bedroom door. The soft thump snapped his head up off his folded arm.
The subsequent crash of shattering glass had him on his feet and hauling ass across the room in the same instant.
He opened the door. “Lisa?”
The room was dark, but there she was. Crouched on the floor on the other side of the bed, picking up pieces of the water glass he’d left on the nightstand the evening before.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep. I was going to get up, so I reached for the lamp... I didn’t see the glass until it was too late.”
Duarte swore in relief that’s all it was. He stepped inside and flicked on the light switch. “Don’t worry about the glass. You’re all right?”
“Yeah.” She blew out a quiet laugh. “Just clumsy as usual.”
He rounded the bed to where she was hunkered down on the floor, and his mouth went dry. All she wore was her T-shirt. Her full breasts bobbed freely beneath the dark blue cotton, nipples peaked like hard buds.
Fuck.
God help him if he found out she wasn’t wearing panties und
er there either.
He wrenched his gaze away from her and that dangerously tempting question. Broken shards surrounded her bare feet. “Don’t move.”
He went out to the bathroom and brought back a small trash bin and some damp tissues to pick up the smallest chips of glass. She helped him clear away the pieces, apologizing profusely even though he was the slob who’d left the glass there to be knocked over in the first place.
He wasn’t used to thinking about anyone but himself. Now, with Lisa in his house for just a handful of hours, he was having a hard time thinking about anything but her.
Her warm skin. Her sweet vanilla scent. Her soft fingers brushing his as they worked together to dispose of the mess on the floor.
The dick-inflaming knowledge that she was as good as naked beneath that flimsy cotton shirt.
Yeah, he was having an undeniable, obviously very hard time thinking of anything else.
“It’s all right,” he muttered as her whispered apologies kept coming.
“No, it’s not. I should’ve been more careful. Bad enough I show up here uninvited to drag you into my problems. Now, I’m hogging your bed and breaking your things...”
“Hey. Listen to me.” He reached out to caress her cheek. “I don’t give a fuck about a broken glass or losing my bed for the night. As for dragging me into your problems, they’re mine now, too. They were mine even before you came here tonight.”
She blinked up at him, frowning, her bottom lip caught slightly between her teeth. And now that the glass was cleaned up and there was nothing but heat and silence separating them, Duarte realized his mistake in touching her.
He couldn’t pull his hand away from the softness of her skin.
“Shit, Lisa...”
She looked drowsy and sleep-rumpled in the dim light overhead. Just the fact that she had been in his bed a few minutes ago brought his hard-on to the verge of agony.
Against his better judgment, he looked at her—really looked at her. Christ, she was beautiful, even more so now than before. More mature, the roundness of her early twenties gone from her cheeks now, refined to a delicate, lean elegance.
She was still girl-next-door pretty, but with a devastating sensuality now.
Sexy as fucking hell.
As he stroked the pad of his thumb over her velvet skin and moist lips, the air between them crackled with a charged anticipation. He felt it in his fingers, in his bones. He felt it in every hard beat of his pulse as he tried to tell himself to back off, that kissing her right now would be a colossal mistake.
His brain knew that. Hell, even his heart warned him against complicating his solitary, dangerous existence by getting intimate again with this woman.
But neither head nor heart seemed able to convince his limbs to make the first move.
Lisa wasn’t moving away either.
Leaning in closer, he cupped her face tenderly in his palms. His fingers curled around the back of her warm, soft nape, and a small sigh leaked out of her. When she licked her lips and those pretty, long-lashed eyes went dusky with desire, Duarte was done for.
He pulled her toward him and kissed her once, twice... cursing roughly against her mouth as his lust spiked white-hot with just that brief taste.
God, she tasted good. Smelled good. She felt so good and right in his arms. As if the time they’d been apart had been only minutes, not years.
That alone should have scared him shitless.
Instead it made the need for her twist tighter.
Splaying his fingers behind her head, he held her to him and ravaged her mouth with all the hunger he was feeling. She moaned and went a little boneless in his arms, everything about her telling him that she was feeling the same out of control desire that he was.
On a low groan, he broke contact with her sweet, wet mouth to trail his tongue along her jaw line, over to her ear and the satiny skin beneath. His breath was ragged, sawing out of him in hard pants as lust swamped him, took him under.
She drew in a jagged gasp as he kissed the delicate column of her throat, and each hushed sigh and purr vibrated in his body and veins like a physical caress. Every sensation seemed to radiate straight to his cock.
Arousal hammered through him, making his already stiff and straining shaft turn to heated granite in his jeans.
Lisa’s hands smoothed up his arms and over his shoulders as their kiss deepened, intensified. He groaned and hauled her close, crushing her soft curves against his hard chest.
If she didn’t stop him, he would be going down in flames any second.
She didn’t stop him.
Clutching him tighter, she kissed him back with utter abandon. Her hot little tongue swept out and into his mouth, bold and demanding.
Oh, fuck. Not good.
All he could think about was being inside her. It didn’t help that he already knew how sweet and tight and addicting she would feel. He’d been tormenting himself with that memory for the past five fucking years.
Arguments for why they shouldn’t do this rolled over him one after the other. His friendship with Kyle. His affiliation with Phoenix, and the danger that brought to Duarte and anyone close to him since the program’s demise. To say nothing of Lisa’s current vulnerable state of distress and fatigue.
Except she didn’t feel distressed or fatigued in his arms.
She felt soft and pliant and willing.
No, she felt as raw and on-edge with need as he did.
She broke their kiss on a fevered moan and withdrew from the circle of his arms. Just far enough for her to lift the hem of her T-shirt.
Ah, Christ. She was killing him.
With her eyes rooted on his, she peeled off the dark shirt, baring her gorgeous breasts and the slender curves of her waist and hips.
Turned out she was wearing panties underneath. And fuck if simple white cotton bikinis had ever looked so goddamned hot.
She stepped back toward him, unrushed, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. The peaks of her bare nipples pressed into his chest. Then she kissed him again. Hungered. Insistent.
Leaving no room for doubt or his tarnished sense of honor.
There was no room for anything but the two of them.
And all the reasons he had for why he shouldn’t want this—for why he shouldn’t feel this undeniable need to be with her once more, let alone here and now—incinerated on the spot.
6
John Duarte kissed even better than she remembered.
He felt even better than she remembered. And although she was not the kind of woman to strip her clothes off in front of a man mere hours after arriving at his house in the middle of the night—unannounced and uninvited—Lisa couldn’t summon an ounce of shyness around him.
They’d already been down this road once before, so he was hardly a stranger. God knew he didn’t kiss like one. His tongue invaded her mouth with a possessive demand, and she opened to him, eager and hungry, as wildly turned on as he clearly was.
His hands roamed over her bare breasts before moving around to the column of her spine as his kiss deepened to a fevered pitch. Heat followed his palms as he traced them down onto her ass where his strong fingers flexed and clenched at the sensitive mounds of flesh scantily covered by her simple cotton panties.
Wet need surged between her legs as he clutched and fondled and stroked her. Her sex ached for something to hold on to, the fine muscles pulsing, clenching with every deep thrust of his tongue in her mouth.
Good as this was already, it was probably a bad idea. She wasn’t looking forward to another awkward morning after, once they both came to their senses. But she was too far gone to worry about that now.
Not when she was practically naked and they both had their tongues down each other’s throats.
She wanted him naked, too.
Reaching up, she found the first button on his soft flannel shirt and struggled to work it loose. Her fingers were shaky from the power of her need for him. When she moved to the next button, John stopped
her, his large hands engulfing hers, stilling her. He broke away from kissing her, his expression grim and serious.
Oh, God. If he had suddenly found the will enough to put the brakes on now, she was going to die from embarrassment. Either that, or from imploded lust.
But he didn’t seem ready to kill the moment at all. Instead, he lifted her hands up to his mouth, dropping a tender kiss on one then the other, his dark eyes smoldering, hooded and heavy on hers.
“On the bed,” he told her, his voice dark and rough.
She scrambled onto the disheveled sheets as he made quick work of his shirt, casting it away.
Lisa feasted her eyes on the sight of him. Broad, powerful shoulders and strong, muscled arms. His chest was amazing, harder than before, even more defined with roped sinew and pecs that looked like shields of velvet-covered steel. His trim waist was leaner now, iron-hard ridges and smooth slabs of lethal strength.
She licked her lips, her mouth suddenly gone bone dry while other parts of her body pooled with liquid heat.
Her gaze drifted lower, down the trail of crisp dark hair that disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. The outline of his erection was massive, and she knew from past experience that it was even more impressive unclothed.
When he stepped forward without taking his pants off, she couldn’t bite back her small groan of disappointment. Sliding his warm palms under the backs of her knees, he drew her legs to him, pivoting her onto the edge of the bed. Then he leaned down and kissed her, driving her wild for more.
He caressed her naked breasts, rolling her taut nipples between his fingers in sweet torment. His body pressed her backward onto the soft mattress and he followed her there, moving over her as he laid her out beneath him.
He kissed her lips and chin and throat before beginning a sensual descent down her body. She could hardly take it, his unrushed exploration of her bare skin. His tongue trailed lower, his wet, warm lips dragging onto her breasts while need for more of him boiled deep and molten inside of her.
Then he descended farther, taking his time as he kissed his way to her hip bones. She cried out when his hot mouth latched onto her mound over her panties. The heat of his lips and rough breath, the startling graze of his teeth as he closed them over her clothed sex, nearly made her come on the spot.