The Marine Meets His Match

by Cathie Linz

  “Maybe it’s the splatter of Contentment on your face.” She reached up to touch his cheek.

  He pressed her hand against the roughness of his skin before turning his head to kiss her fingertips. She shivered as his tongue darted out to brush the ultra-sensitive skin.

  Serena raised her eyes to his. The undisguised passion she saw reflected there was almost her undoing.

  Serena Sensual vs. Serena Serious. The wrestling match was intense. But somehow she found the will-power to lower her gaze and try to regain her composure. Serena Serious won this round. “We should get back to work. We still have another wall to paint yet.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  The way he said it, his voice all deep and rough and husky, made her melt all over again. And he spoke the words against her fingers, so she felt the words as well as heard them.

  The fight wasn’t over. This was only round two. Once again Serena Sensuous was duking it out with Serena Serious.

  Her gaze darted over to the shrouded bed. She’d been aware of it since she’d walked into the room. It was hard not to, the thing was huge. King-sized at least, and the room wasn’t all that big. She’d bumped into the bed more than once. Imagined him on it, naked, tangled in white sheets.

  The struggle between her two halves intensified.

  Then came the knockout punch. “I don’t think I can wait,” Rad murmured, nibbling at her fingertips. “How about you?”

  Chapter Eight

  Go for it. Take a chance. Grab what you want. Grab him!

  Come on, an inner demon urged her. You’ve been bold before. You’re an independent women. You can do this. Think how good it could be.

  To which her sensible side said, Think of the heart-ache it could cause. It would forever change her relationship with Rad, ratcheting up the risk to an unacceptable level.

  She just wasn’t ready for that yet.

  “I…can’t,” Serena stammered.

  “Why not? Come on, you must be really hungry, too. Admit it.”

  Her voice evaporated. Even the little voices in her head fell silent, awed by the seductive pitch of Rad’s delivery.

  “We could share. Just tell me what you want.”

  Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  “Come on, you can tell me. Do you want it pure and simple or hot and spicy?”

  The gleam in his brown eyes finally triggered a verbal response from her. “How do you like it?”

  “With everything. The works.”

  “The works?”

  “Oh, yeah. Extra mushrooms, sausage, black olives, pepperoni. That’s the best way to have deep-dish pizza.”

  “Pizza?”

  “Affirmative. Why?” He raised an eyebrow. “What did you think I was talking about?”

  “You knew what I thought.” She couldn’t help herself, she had to sock him. He was a Marine, he could take it. “You did that on purpose.”

  “Did what?”

  “Made me think you were talking about…”

  “Yes?”

  She wanted to sock him again, but all that had accomplished was making her even more aware of his powerful physique. Her fingers had practically bounced off his muscular arm. But the memory of touching his warm skin remained, stronger than ever.

  She met the challenge she saw in his gaze. So, he thought she wouldn’t say the word, did he?

  Darn him, he was right.

  She couldn’t say sex, not when she was standing in Rad’s bedroom with his ring around her neck. It was just all much too tempting. She needed a change of venue for this inner battle.

  “Never mind. A pizza sounds good. But not in here. The paint fumes will do us in.” Hey, maybe that’s why she was getting all weak-kneed and having these sexual fantasies. Paint fumes could be to blame. “Let’s go downstairs to my place.”

  Rad agreed. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Serena wondered how her own plan to keep things between her and Rad strictly professional had gone so far astray. She also wondered what on earth she was going to do about it.

  “Twenty bucks says the Bears whoop the Panthers.” Rad peeled off the bill and placed it on the table of the sports bar where he and Ben were watching the Monday Night Football game on a big screen TV. They were seated in a corner, where Rad could see the entrance to the bar but had two walls at his back. Old habits died hard from his days as commander of a Scout-Sniper Platoon.

  “You’re on.” Ben placed his twenty beneath the bowl of nachos. “They have zip pass protection. Easy pickings.” Ben waited until the commercial to add, “So are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”

  “The Bears are behind by seven, but it’s only the first quarter. There’s a lot of football to be played yet.”

  “I meant with this fake engagement of yours. You told me to go along with whatever you said when you came to dinner the other night and I did. But now I want to know, what’s the deal?”

  Rad sighed and took a large swallow of his beer before replying. “The deal is that I needed to get a general’s daughter off my back.”

  Ben lifted a brow. “You’ve been making out with a general’s daughter?”

  “No. General Burns’s daughter had a thing for me. All I did was smile at her once and bang, she’s in love with me.”

  “Yeah,” Ben noted mockingly. “You’ve got that effect on women.”

  Rad tossed a nacho chip at him. “She’s not a woman. Well, she is, but a very immature one. She’s barely eighteen and spoiled by her daddy. She swore she’d make life difficult for me. That’s when I decided to haul out a fictional fiancée.”

  “Serena?”

  Rad nodded. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “It doesn’t seem that way anymore?”

  “It’s getting much more complicated than I anticipated.”

  “No surprise there. So what made you pick Serena?”

  “It was a fluke. Her name popped out of my mouth because I’d just met her earlier that day.”

  “And she agreed to pretend to be engaged to a man she barely knew? Why?”

  “You don’t have to know all the details. Look—” Rad pointed to the big screen TV “—the game’s back on.”

  Ben waited until the next commercial before continuing his interrogation right where he’d left off. “So why’d she go along with such a stupid plan?”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  Ben just gave him a look.

  “It’s working,” Rad maintained.

  “Oh yeah? Busha told me about Heidi, the general’s daughter, and how she had the hots for you. Doesn’t sound like your engagement made that much of a difference.”

  Rad was appalled. “Great, now my grandmother is talking about my love life. As if I don’t have enough problems.”

  “Why’d Serena say yes?”

  “None of your business.”

  “You offered her money,” Ben guessed.

  Rad’s expression darkened. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like?”

  “Look, she agreed to do me a favor.”

  “Out of the goodness of her heart? Come on, Rad. You’re a Marine with loads of money. Women are gonna come after you. The twins have both already run into that situation.”

  “Serena did not come after me. This entire thing was my idea. She didn’t even want me moving in upstairs.”

  “Upstairs from where?”

  “Her apartment. She lives over the bookstore.”

  “Why did you move into her building?”

  “It’s not her building. It’s my building. I bought it.”

  “When?”

  “Recently.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah what?”

  “Now I get it.” Before Rad could reply, Ben pointed to the big screen TV. “The game’s on.”

  Rad tried not to grind his teeth. The fact that the Bears scored two touchdowns in the next ten minutes helped to mitigate his frustration with his brother.
Of course it was Ben’s duty as his brother to give him a hard time. That went with the territory. All the Kozlowski brothers knew that was a given. Brothers drove each other crazy and stood by one another, no matter what.

  “No pass protection huh?” Rad tried not to gloat while a pair of twins with cheerleading pom-poms danced in a beer commercial on TV. “Back-to-back touchdowns.”

  “Remember when I whooped you at a game of darts?”

  “You mean that one time over a year ago when I took pity on you and let you win because you were having women trouble?”

  “I didn’t have women trouble. There was only one woman in particular who was keeping me up nights. Both literally and figuratively.”

  “Yeah, I remember. You were falling for Ellie.”

  “Hard and fast. I recognize the symptoms, bro.”

  Rad’s eyes widened and he put his hands up as if to ward off evil spirits. “You’re way off base.”

  “Am I?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So you’re not attracted to Serena?”

  “Who wouldn’t be? That makes me human, not infatuated.”

  Ben just shook his head. “I’m telling you, you’ve got it and you’ve got it bad.”

  “It?”

  “Deny it all you want. I know what I saw when you looked at her all cow-eyed.”

  “You’ve been talking to Striker again.”

  Ben just grinned. “He’d tell you the same thing.”

  “That doesn’t make it true. The game’s on again.” Rad watched the action on the football field, but his thoughts also remained on what Ben had said.

  Love was not in his battle plan. He’d loved Liza, he wasn’t going through that again. Married-land was for his brother, not for him.

  But Ben was right, things had changed. What had started out as a practical plan had turned into something more.

  As often happened on the battlefield as new intel came in, Rad’s mission changed. Success was still his goal. But instead of wanting Serena to pretend to be his fiancée, he wanted her…period.

  And his new mission was to get her.

  Rad was rather proud of himself. Sure it had taken him nearly two weeks, but he’d finally come up with something original, something that clearly pleased Serena. He’d invited her to one of the autumn festivals along the coast.

  His mission to get Serena hadn’t proved to be all that easy. She was obviously set on “caution mode.” He’d taken her to dinner several times, and a movie once or twice, but she still held back.

  He knew he had to move slowly so he wouldn’t spook her, so he could prove he was nothing like her father, but he was getting impatient.

  He’d managed to get past her defenses with some effective diversionary tactics and intel tactics. He’d found out from her assistant at the bookstore that Serena was a sucker for a festival.

  Rad wasn’t even sure what the event was, but when he’d mentioned it to Serena, her face had lit up and he’d wanted to kiss her. He’d wanted to do that, but he knew he had to proceed judiciously at this point. He had to woo her over to his way of thinking.

  And okay, he’d be the first to admit that he was a little rusty in the wooing department. Normally women were readily available when he wanted one. He hadn’t had to go after one since…Liza.

  He shut down that train of thought and instead focused on Serena as they strolled around the festival grounds. She was wearing a short paisley skirt and a pink tank top. The weather was perfect for the third week in October, with blue Carolina skies and warm temps. Indian summer at its best.

  Some sort of clip held Serena’s long blond hair up. She was enjoying an ice cream cone filled with freshly made strawberry ice cream. The seductive lick of her tongue was enough to make his body throb. Pleasure was written all over her face.

  The engagement ring he’d gotten her gleamed in the sunlight. He wasn’t the only guy looking at her. But that ring proclaimed that she was his, that this female was taken.

  Rad was a little surprised by his primitive reaction where Serena was concerned. He’d never been the jealous type before. If a woman was ready to move on, then so be it. He never got that involved. Not after Liza.

  He wondered what she’d think of Serena. Outwardly the two were nothing alike. Liza had had dark hair and eyes. But they did share certain personality traits. They weren’t easily taken in by surface charm; they tended to look for more depth.

  The memory of Liza still haunted him, all these years later. He wasn’t looking for that kind of heartache again. He wasn’t looking for love with Serena, he was looking for…

  A good time made it sound cheap and it wasn’t true. He’d had good times before. He wanted more with her. That was the best way to put it. More. Not love. Just more.

  He wasn’t sure what Serena wanted, but it was his mission to make sure she wanted the same things he did. More.

  “You want any more of that ice cream?” She was down to the last bite of the cone, and he hated to see the show end. He wanted to watch her tongue dancing over the pink creamy dessert. He really wanted her tongue dancing over him.

  “Mmmm.” She licked her lips. “That was delicious. But I shouldn’t eat any more.”

  “Sure you should.” So I can see that tongue again.

  “No, I should show some restraint.”

  “No, you shouldn’t. Restraint is highly overrated.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “This coming from a United States Marine? A man who cherishes order and detests chaos?”

  “There’s a time for restraint and a time for going all out, going for bust.”

  “Is that what you’re doing today? Going for bust?”

  Rad tried to keep his eyes off her bust but it was no easy task. The tank top showed off her breasts to perfection, allowing him to see just a hint of cleavage.

  He tried to give her a Who-me? look.

  She didn’t look like she was buying it, but she didn’t challenge him. Instead she said, “I find it hard to believe that you enjoy coming to a thing like this.”

  “You shouldn’t. This event helps fund the Assembly Building that was used to assemble rockets during ‘Operation Bumblebee’ after World War II.” He’d read that in a flyer they’d been given on their way in.

  “So by being here, you’re protecting an important part of military history. That makes sense then, I suppose.”

  “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something that doesn’t make sense?”

  “Sure I have. More times than I can count.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “I hardly think you need encouraging. You have enough confidence as it is.”

  “I’m still trying to recover from your harsh painting critique.”

  “I was not harsh. You’re the one who gave me a hard time for painting outside the lines. I was merely being honest.”

  Not entirely true. If Serena had been totally honest she’d have told him how good he looked manning a roller brush. So many images of that day still remained so vivid in her mind—the ripple of his muscles, the surprising sexiness of his legs in those running shorts, the roughness of his skin as she’d touched his face with her fingertips.

  That had turned out to be a wonderful day. Today was turning out to be another picture-perfect event.

  She was having such a great time. Rad had been patient while she’d enjoyed the arts and crafts booths, even insisting on holding the small sunset photograph she’d bought from one of the artisans.

  “Must be a sunset over the sound, huh?” he teased her, reminding her of their conversation that first night they’d gone out together.

  That seemed like so long ago. So much had happened since then. So many things had changed.

  Her feelings for him had grown. She’d tried hard not to let that happen but it had been impossible to fight. If he’d come on strong, if he’d pushed her, then she could have fought back. But Rad didn’t do either of those things. Instead he went out of his way to make
her feel special.

  Like right now. He was holding her hand, his fingers intertwined with hers as if he wanted her to be a part of him.

  “Are you getting hungry?” he asked.

  His question reminded her of their conversation in his bedroom.

  “What exactly did you have in mind?” This was something new for her, this ability to tease him, to flirt with him.

  “Oh, I’ve got plenty of things in mind.”

  “I’m sure you do,” she murmured.

  “How about you?”

  “How about me, what?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Something hot and steamy.…”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Does that sound good to you?”

  Rad nodded.

  She grinned. “Then let’s head over to the Taste of Topsail section and see what trouble we can get into.”

  A variety of food vendors were set up along with picnic tables to enjoy their wares.

  Ten minutes later, Serena was eating fried shrimp when she got some red shrimp sauce on her chin. Rad leaned forward, wiping the excess off with his thumb.

  She gazed at him, awed by the power of his touch; such a simple thing creating such a complex reaction. For once she could read his thoughts in his eyes. He wanted to kiss her. He was going to kiss her. He took his time, leaning closer until his lips were almost brushing hers.…

  “Hi! Whatcha doin’?” Amy asked with the friendly interest of a six-year-old as she plunked down beside them on the picnic bench. “Were you gonna kiss her? Do you think cats kiss? I want a cat but I can’t have one because of my asthma.”

  “I have two cats,” Serena said, recovering quickly. “Bella and Oshi, a mom and a daughter.”

  Amy’s face lit up. “Do you have any pictures of them?”

  Serena shook her head. “Not with me, but I’ll bring some next time I see you.”

  “There you are,” Ellie said to her daughter. “I told you to stay close by.”

  “Yeah, but then I saw Uncle Rad.” Amy rested her head on his shoulder and gazed up at him with a grin.

  Ellie joined them on the picnic bench. “If I’d known you two were interested in coming here, I’d have included you in the invitation for the rest of the gang.”

  “What gang?”