With mouths and tongues still engaged in the kiss that was purely erotic by then, Clairy felt him take something from his pocket to drop onto the nightstand before he shrugged out of everything he was wearing.
Which meant that he was there, right in front of her, in her bedroom, stark naked.
And she just had to look.
She evaded the kiss, returned to tug at his bottom lip with her teeth as a promise of more, but then went to the limit of his arms in an effort to see him.
He didn’t let her. He leaned forward to recapture her lips instead, bending her far back before he eased her onto the mattress with the escort of that kiss.
She was alone on the bed with only his hands on either side of her as he continued pillaging her mouth with his for a few minutes, teasing her.
But in a short while, he ended that kiss and stood tall and glorious.
Intent on removing her bikinis, he seemed unaware of what he was presenting for her to see. But Clairy used the opportunity to finally have that glimpse of his body that she’d been after.
It was worth the wait and she devoured the sight of a man more magnificent than any clothes had done justice to—he was lean, amazingly muscled and endowed enough to take her breath away.
Once her underwear was gone, he paused to take an appreciative look at her that actually added to that endowment before he got on the bed beside her.
He was on his side and she turned to hers, too, peering into that excruciatingly handsome face of his, into those blue, blue eyes.
But what they’d begun couldn’t be denied and everything was unleashed then.
Mouths collided once more as Quinn held her in one arm while his other hand reclaimed her breasts and brought newly delicious torment.
Sometimes light and feathery, sometimes strong and firm, sometimes his whole hand pressing her flesh and then just gentle fingers tracing contours, circling her nipples, gently pinching...
Clairy nearly shuddered with excitement, thinking that it couldn’t get any better. Then he replaced his hand with his mouth and taught her how wrong she’d been. So much better that her shoulders lifted off the mattress in search of even more.
She ran her own hands over every inch of him, striving to cause a similar reaction in him, but the stalwart marine was rock-solid under even her most tantalizing caress.
Until she reached low enough to encase that lengthy staff of steel and brought a quick arch of his spine that let her know she had just as much power over him as he had over her.
So much that it drove him away, searching for the protection and pausing only to use it.
Then he came back with even more intensity, more hunger—to her mouth again, to her breasts with even more raw, wicked passion, to spots she hadn’t even realized were sensitive or could make her writhe.
And when she wasn’t sure she could keep herself from the brink, he found a home between her thighs.
His caution returned once he was there, though, moving into her oh-so-carefully as he kissed her with a contained hunger.
She tightened herself around him and raised her hips.
It was the only signal he needed, as he began to move with divine deliberation, in and out at first, at a pace she learned and matched. Then more quickly. More quickly still, until they established a rhythm that became so organic Clairy could just let it happen and concentrate on what it was creating in her.
Every thrust, every retreat, served a purpose, increasing the pleasure, taking her further into it, and further still until she crossed into so much more. Into a burst that carried her with it, higher and higher, to a culmination that stole her breath and held her in its grip as every nerve ending glittered in the most incredible climax she’d ever had.
And as he plunged deeply into her to find his own crest, another intense wave of pleasure swept her up and held her atop yet another peak that she hadn’t known she could ever reach. Only when it, too, passed did Clairy realize her fingers were digging into his back. She let up on him and wilted into the mattress again, welcoming the weight of him as his strength drained away.
For a few minutes, that was how they remained, breathing heavily, hearts pounding hard against each other.
Then Quinn took a breath that pushed his chest even more firmly to hers, sighed into her hair and rose up onto his elbows to give her a kiss that was nothing less than a profound confirmation of the connection they’d made that seemed one of more than mere bodies.
“I don’t know what to say,” he whispered with awe. “I didn’t know it could be like that...”
He looked confused, but she understood because it had never been like that for her, either.
She could only arch her eyebrows and nod.
“Can I stay the night?” he asked.
It wasn’t easy for her to rise out of her own awe, but she worked at it, managing a bit of glibness to camouflage it. “A sleepover?”
“I wasn’t thinking about letting you get much sleep.”
Clairy smiled. “Okay.”
He laughed. “After a breather,” he added, pulsing inside of her as a teaser of what the rest of the night would bring before he slipped out of her to escape to the bathroom for a brief moment.
Then he was there again, beside her on the bed, on his back, his arm under her to scoop her into his side so closely her leg went over his massive thigh.
He grasped it and tucked it higher, more securely to him.
“You’re okay, right?” he asked, his voice thick with fatigue.
“I am” was all Clairy had the energy to answer.
“And after a ten-minute snooze?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she joked, amazing herself by how much she wanted him again already.
“Thank God,” he muttered as his entire body relaxed—all but his arm around her and his hand on her leg, both of them keeping her right where he wanted her.
And as Clairy also gave in to the need for rest, she was a little worried.
Because she just couldn’t be sure if anything she did could keep her unaffected and detached...
Chapter Eight
A ridge of steep, densely forested mountains formed the western border of Merritt. After a punishing workout at the gym on Saturday, Quinn hit the most rugged trail through the roughest terrain to the top of one of them for an equally punishing run.
It mimicked a day Mac had designed for him at the start of his freshman year of high school. The only difference was that when Quinn reached the flat top, he stopped. For Mac, the training exercise was only complete when Quinn made it back down again within the assigned time, without a pause to rest.
But today he did pause to look out at the view of Merritt below, scanning it until he located the general vicinity of Clairy’s house.
After his night with her, the workout wasn’t actually the way he would have chosen to spend Saturday. He’d wanted to spend it in bed with her.
But she’d had plans. She’d already made a date with Marabeth to go to Billings, where Marabeth would shop for a wedding dress and ask a cousin to be a bridesmaid.
So after making love for the fourth time at dawn, Quinn had reluctantly let Clairy out of his arms to get ready for her day trip and he’d gone home.
It had been his intention to go home to sleep, but when he’d plopped down on his own bed, sleep hadn’t come as easily as it had in Clairy’s bed, with Clairy curled up next to him.
Instead, for some reason, he’d started hearing Mac’s voice in his head, taunting him and keeping him awake until he gave up trying and put himself through one of his mentor’s specially designed drills.
The drill Mac had demanded of him the day after Mac had caught him showing off for Nicole Parisi, and Quinn had confessed that he liked her and was thinking about asking her to his first homecoming dance.
“You want to be a
ladies’ man or you want to be a marine?” Mac had shouted. “Females are a distraction—either show me you’re serious or don’t waste any more of my time!”
Quinn had finished that training two minutes under what Mac had allotted, and he hadn’t asked Nicole Parisi to homecoming—he’d used that evening for another of the workouts Mac assigned him.
In fact, after that, whether Mac had been around to see it or not, Quinn hadn’t gone to a single school dance all the way through high school. He’d cultivated a few friendships-with-benefits that had given him a way to lose his virginity and gain some experience, but that was it. He’d been determined not to be distracted, to become a marine, and to continue to prove to Mac that he was serious about it.
“But here’s the thing, Mac,” he said into the quiet of the deserted mountaintop, as if his mentor was there with him. “All those years ago, this workout was enough to get Nicole Parisi out of my system. Today it didn’t do anything to make me stop thinking about Clairy.”
Or wanting her even more than before they’d had last night together.
Or wanting to be with her in a way he’d never wanted to be with anyone.
Between the mess with Laine and then learning what Mac was doing to women marines, he’d been left questioning so many things. But today it seemed as if everything was coming to a head. With Clairy at the center of it.
“You gave her up for the marines, Mac. You even put making me a marine before her. But she was your kid, your family, and you just blew her off...”
Not that he had any room to judge when he’d done the same thing to Rachel, to Laine, Quinn told himself.
But while Rachel and Laine had given him some small look into the way his actions affected them, listening to Clairy talk about what it had been like for her with Mac as her father had really opened his eyes to how wounding Mac’s behavior—and his own—had been.
“You were important to me, you know, you old hard-ass,” he said affectionately. “I wanted to be just like you. I’ve devoted my life to it. But when it comes to the kind of life you actually had, the kind I’m headed for...”
Quinn had no idea what his mentor’s relationship with Clairy’s mother had been like. But since Quinn had become an adult and more of an equal to Mac, he did know what Mac’s private life had involved.
Mac hadn’t had relationships with women. He’d had women he slept with. But that was the extent of it—satisfying physical need with women who didn’t want anything more than that themselves.
And if ever one of those women changed their minds, it went one of two ways—if a woman wanted more, she never heard from Mac again. If a woman cut him off, he couldn’t have cared less because he had no attachment to any one of them—he just bided his time until someone else came along.
“And after Laine, that’s what I was figuring I was probably going to do, too, to keep any woman from getting in too deep with me.”
But now?
Now he’d had a taste of more...
So much more, with Clairy...
What he’d found with Clairy wasn’t what he’d had with Rachel or Laine or any of the other women over the years. Looking back now, he knew that they hadn’t sparked in him what Clairy had.
He’d enjoyed slightly more of the female companionship than Mac ever had—dinners and dating, meeting friends or sometimes families, some small amount of cohabitating. But he’d still never invested anything of himself.
And if he went on doing that—doing even less than he’d been doing and following more of Mac’s example—he was going to end up with even less than his mentor. No wife or kids. No nothing except the marines.
Certainly no Clairy.
When considering what path to take to avoid the kinds of things that had happened with Rachel and Laine, going Mac’s route had seemed like it might be the best way. But thinking about it now—knowing that it meant no Clairy—was a hard pill to swallow.
“Did you have any idea how great she is?” he asked his lost mentor. “Because she is great. She’s...everything.”
That was what Tanner had said when Quinn had been attempting to understand his brother’s resignation from the marines—he had said that Addie was everything to him.
At the time, Clairy had inexplicably come to mind, but still Quinn hadn’t been able to see his brother’s point of view. Now he was beginning to.
He’d never been a big talker, and yet when he was with her, words flowed. It seemed important that he tell her whatever he was thinking, that she see what he was about, that she know him.
That had never mattered before. In fact, he’d guarded against letting anyone get to know him too well, against being too transparent. He’d always played his cards close to the vest.
And he’d actually listened to every word she’d said. Listened, paid attention, recalled, been eager to hear more.
He knew that no other woman he’d ever been with would believe that, but it was true.
He wanted to know what was on Clairy’s mind, how she viewed things, what made her tick. He wanted to hear her stories, her opinions, her interpretation of things. He cared what she thought. He liked the back-and-forth with her. Liked that she could admit when she was wrong, but that she held her ground when she wasn’t, that she didn’t retreat.
And something strange happened to him when he was around her—when she came into a room, or the minute he caught sight of her, even if there were other people around, things inside him just settled, relaxed, seemed right.
When he was with her he felt somehow stronger, more capable, more complete. He found comfort in her, he thought, as he recalled that she’d helped him deal with the guilt he’d felt over that last fight he’d had with Mac before the heart attack. And support, too, when he’d confessed his decision to put a stop to what Mac had been doing, despite the fact that it meant going against the man he’d never felt anything but loyalty to.
“And damn if I couldn’t look at that face forever...” And run his fingers through that red hair, search those green eyes. And smooth the backs of his fingers over that satiny skin.
He ached for her all over again and his hands itched just to touch her.
Everything...
His brother’s sentiment echoed in his head again, and with it came the certainty that that was what Clairy was to him—everything...
Everything he’d never known he wanted. That he wanted so much now he could barely stand it. So much that something old stirred in him—the drive, the determination to have her at all cost. At any cost. The long-ago single-mindedness that his mother had instilled in him, that Mac had honed, not to let anything stand in the way of having her, of making her his own, of never—ever—letting her go...
Which meant what? he asked himself.
Offering her his military life? The kind of life she’d grown up with?
He knew she wouldn’t agree to that. And it wasn’t what he wanted to give her. It wasn’t what she deserved. Especially not from him.
Plus, it wasn’t what he wanted with her, he realized suddenly. He wanted that more that they’d been having since he’d arrived in Merritt. He wanted to be an ever-present part of her life. He wanted a full life with her, without the gaps that living a military life would cause for them both.
He wanted to be everything to her, too.
And if they had kids—which, as odd as it seemed to him, he discovered he could actually picture—he sure as hell didn’t want to be to them what Mac had been to Clairy.
“The thing is, Mac,” he said now, “I do know how great Clairy is. And I don’t want to miss a minute with her. You may have loved her as much as you could love anything or anyone other than the marines, but for me it’s different.”
As sure of that as Quinn was in this moment, he knew what he had to do to have her.
And although it shocked him right to the core, he realize
d suddenly that he was willing to do it...
* * *
Well, that was a sight to come home to! Clairy thought as she pulled into her driveway late Saturday evening.
After a long drive from Billings and dropping off Marabeth at Brad’s house, she’d been eager to get home and fall into bed to catch up on some of the lost sleep of the previous night with Quinn.
They hadn’t made plans for tonight and it was after eleven, so she definitely didn’t expect to see him standing on her porch when she drove up to her house. But there he was, leaning with one tight T-shirted shoulder against the post, all but his thumbs slung in his jean pockets, that sexy stubble on that too-hot-to-believe face.
One look at him wiped away her fatigue and left her thinking about falling into bed with him again, sleep be damned.
After all, he won’t be here forever. Even if I spend more than a single night with him, why not enjoy this while it lasts?
Because it wouldn’t last long before his leave ended. Which meant that even if sleeping with him became a multiple-night stand, she had no illusions about it being more than a temporary tryst.
I can live with that, she told herself as she began to take off Quinn’s clothes in her mind.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, flirting when she got out of the car.
He smiled the devilish smile she’d seen so much of last night and she thought that confirmed the reason he was there.
But as she approached the house, the wicked smile turned into one that was more controlled as he said, “I just came to talk.”
She didn’t believe it, but she pretended to. “Okay. We do that pretty well, too.”
“I’m serious,” he said, pushing off the post to stand straight and strong—a force to be reckoned with.
“Okay,” she repeated, suspending her fantasy of undressing him, since a rerun of the previous evening didn’t seem to be immediately on the horizon. She also braced herself slightly, thinking that he could have come to tell her that he was leaving even though his ten days weren’t over yet—that was something her father had done.
The Major Gets it Right Page 19