Can't Forget You

by Rachel Lacey

  “Yes.” She whimpered, and his vision went hazy.

  “Fuck, Jess. Don’t hang up. Let me hear you come.”

  “Only if you’ll come with me.”

  He gritted his teeth. Phone sex? Not his style. Certainly not while he was sitting here in the middle of the woods, exposed to the world. “That’s a negative. But I’m with you. Keep going. Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “Mark…” She sighed. “Don’t be a prude. No one will know. No one but me.”

  “Public indecency and all that.”

  “You’re on our property,” she said. “I’m the last one here at the spa. What about your guys?”

  “Gone home.” To their wives.

  “Unzip your pants,” she said, sounding so sexy he found himself obeying before he’d even realized what he was doing. His fingers fumbled the button, and then he eased the zipper down, relieved beyond words to be free of its painful constraint.

  Jess moaned into the phone. “I almost came from the sound of your zipper.”

  Her words sent a bolt of lust through him so red-hot that he reached down and freed himself from his boxers, fisting his aching dick. “Your turn. Let me hear you.”

  She gasped. “I’m so wet. I can’t wait to have you inside me later tonight.”

  “Yes.” He stroked himself. Just until she came. He could wait until tonight for his release. To be with Jess. Inside her. Consumed by her.

  “Tell me,” she whispered, her breath coming in rapid pants.

  “I’m going to make you come so hard.” He tightened his fist, holding still. Control. Always control.

  “I can’t hear you, Mark. Tell me what you’re doing.”

  “I’m holding my cock and picturing you naked in your office, touching yourself.” He forced himself to stay still as his cock pulsed in his hand.

  She moaned. “I’m not naked, but tonight I will be.”

  “Fuck, yes.”

  “Stroke yourself. Let me hear how turned on you are.”

  He gave himself one long, slow stroke, unable to contain the groan that tore from his throat.

  “That was really sexy,” Jess murmured. “Keep going.”

  He did, keeping his pace painfully slow so that he could focus on Jess as she moaned and panted into the phone, the sounds more erotic than anything he’d ever experienced.

  “I’m so close,” she whispered. “Are you?”

  “Yes,” he gritted.

  “You sound so sexy right now. Keep talking…”

  “Listening to you come over the phone is going to be the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. I can’t fucking wait.”

  “Oh,” she panted, and her breathing grew even more rapid. “Yes…”

  “Keep going, Jess. Take your time. Make it good.”

  “Mark,” she moaned, and her breath caught, “I’m coming…”

  “Yes. Fuck, yes.” His balls tightened, and he stroked harder, faster, consumed by the sounds of Jess’s pleasure.

  She cried out, mumbling incoherently in his ear as she found release.

  Fuck. She was amazing. So sexy. So perfect. He’d only meant to listen to her come, but while he’d been focused on Jess, his fist kept going, moving at a frenzied pace to match her breathless moans, and now…“Fuck.” He lurched forward onto his knees as his own orgasm barreled into him, angling his hips so that he came into the fallen leaves carpeting the forest instead of all over his pants like a horny teenager. His balls burned, his dick pulsed, and relief poured through him.

  “Wow,” she whispered breathlessly. “You really did this with me.”

  “Yeah.” He sagged back on his heels, boneless and shaky.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d go through with it,” she said.

  “Didn’t mean to,” he admitted. He tucked himself back inside his jeans, zipped them, and then flopped back on the wooden platform behind him, not trusting his knees to hold him up just yet.

  “I’m glad you did,” she murmured. “This was…it was really sexy and intimate.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mark?”

  “Yeah?”

  “See you tonight at seven.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jessica heard Mark’s SUV pull up outside right at seven. The man was punctual to a fault. She shouldered her backpack and reached for the cooler she’d packed, right next to the roll of blankets and sleeping bag. They would need them. It was going to drop into the forties overnight, but she knew they wouldn’t be cold. Not the way they heated each other up…

  And not inside her flannel-lined sleeping bag, which was rated for colder weather than this anyway. She pulled open the front door and smiled at Mark. He had on well-worn jeans that hugged him like perfection, a long-sleeved black tee, an insulated black vest, and hiking boots.

  “Hi.” She felt herself blushing as their eyes locked. The phone sex hadn’t been planned, but holy hell, it had been hot.

  “Hi yourself.” He pulled her in for a kiss, taking the blankets and cooler from her hands in the process. “I brought my sleeping bag too. We can zip them together. What’s in the cooler?”

  “Cold fried chicken, cornbread, and some of Carly’s butterscotch cookies.”

  “Nice.”

  “There’s a bottle of wine in my backpack.”

  “Sounds like you’ve thought of everything.” He kissed her again, his hands sliding down to palm her ass.

  “Did you remember the condoms?”

  He nodded, his dark eyes heated.

  “Good,” she murmured against his lips. “Because after our phone call earlier, I really need to have you naked.”

  “That makes two of us.” He deepened his kiss, his tongue dancing against hers, an erotic promise of things to come.

  “Better get going then,” she said when they’d come up for air. “We need to set up before it gets dark. We could go back to that same field we camped in as teenagers. Do you remember the place?”

  “That old access road is still there. I’ve thought about you every time I drove past it.”

  “Aww.” She pressed a quick kiss to his lips even as she wondered if he was serious. Why would he have been thinking about her when he passed their old make-out spot? He’d been the one to run off and leave her without looking back. She’d assumed he’d wiped her from his mind when he enlisted. He sure as hell hadn’t gotten in touch.

  He led the way to his SUV and loaded her things into the back.

  “Where’s Bear?” she asked.

  “Trent’s watching her tonight.”

  “Oh.” She smiled at the thought. “What did you tell him?”

  “Said I had business out of town.”

  “Technically true,” she said as they climbed in and Mark turned the car out of Haven toward the wilderness beyond. They rode in silence. Once they’d left Haven town limits, there were only a few cabins tucked here and there in the woods.

  About fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the old access road that had been the scene of many stolen afternoons as teenagers. They never knew what the road had been intended for. The pavement was cracked and worn, punctured here and there by hardy weeds that sprouted through the cracks as nature attempted to reclaim the space. It led about a quarter mile into the woods then dead-ended.

  And if they walked straight ahead for another quarter mile or so, they’d come into the clearing where they’d often gone as teenagers to cuddle and make out and, once, to camp beneath the stars. She could hardly wait to do it again.

  “Think the field is still there?” she asked as they set out through the trees, carrying all their makeshift camping materials.

  “Yeah.”

  Did he sound so certain because he was Mark and never expressed doubt, or had he been here since that night? She pulled her jacket closer around her as they walked. It was already past chilly and headed toward flat-out cold here in the woods. Not to mention dark. She stayed close to him as they hiked together toward the field. It wasn’t long before it came into vi
ew before them, lit in a yellowish glow by the fading sun.

  “It looks just like I remember it,” Jess said softly.

  Mark nodded, leading the way toward the middle of the clearing. The ground here was soft and leaf-strewn. He stomped down a few weeds and saplings so that she could spread out the large, waterproof picnic blanket she’d brought to serve as their bottom layer. Once it was in place, she dropped the rest of the blankets and sleeping bags on top of it, toed out of her boots, and sat down in the middle to zip the two sleeping bags together.

  Mark sat beside her, staring up at the sky.

  “The meteor shower isn’t supposed to really get going until around midnight,” she said.

  “I’m sure we can keep ourselves busy until then,” he said drily.

  She laughed. “Hungry?”

  He nodded, reaching for the cooler. He unlatched it and flipped it open, tossing her a paper plate. “You make this?” he asked as he opened the container of fried chicken.

  “You’re kidding, right? This is from the café.”

  He grinned as he loaded up a plate. “You might have learned to cook in the last ten years. How would I know?”

  “Well, I haven’t. At least, not like this.” She put two pieces of crispy fried chicken and a slice of cornbread onto her plate.

  Mark shrugged. “It’s what restaurants are for, if you ask me.”

  She smiled as she bit into her chicken. “Agreed. Oh man, that’s good.”

  “Missed this kind of food when I was overseas,” he said.

  She looked at him, surprised. It might be the first time he’d ever volunteered information about his time in the Army. “Nothing beats good Southern cooking. What did you miss most?”

  “Dessert,” he answered without hesitation.

  “You’ve always had a sweet tooth.”

  He nodded as he polished off his first piece of chicken and started in on the second. “Chocolate cake. Every time I came home on leave, I’d buy myself a chocolate cake.”

  “And eat the whole thing by yourself?”

  “Yep.”

  She laughed. “Good thing I remembered to pack cookies for tonight.”

  Mark had almost finished his second piece of chicken and showed no signs of slowing down.

  Jessica finished her first and picked up her cornbread. “Do you keep in touch with any of the men from your unit?”

  He chewed and swallowed a bite of chicken. “E-mail sometimes. They’re in Syria now.”

  It must be hard for him being here while they were over there. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what it was like for you, Mark. We had never talked about the Army or anything. You completely blindsided me when you enlisted.”

  He was silent for a moment. “It was something I needed to do.”

  “I get that. But I would have supported you, you know that, right? I’d have waited for you.”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that.” He had a faraway look in his eyes that was as disconcerting as it was frustrating.

  “With all due respect, that was my decision to make.”

  * * *

  “I did what I had to do.” Mark had heard the frustration in her voice, but he couldn’t apologize for what he’d done. He’d done it for her as much as he’d done it for himself.

  “If you could go back and do it over, would you change anything?” She crawled closer to him on the blanket, her brown eyes shining in the near darkness.

  “No,” he answered truthfully.

  She grumbled under her breath, something about a “stubborn, stupid man.”

  He couldn’t argue with her words. “I’m sorry, Jess.”

  She huffed out a breath. “Well, at least you’re honest.”

  “I’ve always been honest with you.”

  “And yet, sometimes I still don’t feel like I know you at all.”

  “I’m sorry for that too.” Sometimes he wasn’t sure he even knew himself.

  “What is it, Mark? What makes you tick?” She crawled closer so that her knees bumped his.

  You. He knew it as sure as he knew his own name, but he couldn’t tell her that, not after he’d just pushed her away with his words. Maybe he’d already hurt her too badly to deserve a second chance. The truth was that he might be too damaged for a relationship, a real relationship like Jess deserved. He might be better off on his own, the way he’d always been. And since he had no fucking clue how to tell her any of this, he kissed her instead.

  She slid into his lap and kissed him back. “That’s not an answer,” she whispered against his lips.

  “I know.” He tangled his fingers in her hair, pressing his forehead to hers. “But it’s all I’ve got.”

  “Do you realize how infuriating that is?”

  “Yeah.” He kissed her again.

  She poured her frustration into her kiss, nipping at his lip, lashing her tongue against his until he was totally drunk with lust. “I’d hate you if I didn’t want you so damn much,” she murmured.

  He knew it was true too.

  She climbed out of his lap and reached into her backpack, coming up with a bottle of red wine. She handed it to him with a corkscrew while she went over to the cooler.

  He jammed the corkscrew into the cork and twisted it out. She took it from him, poured wine into two plastic cups, and handed one to him, setting a plate of cookies down on the blanket beside them.

  “Hell of a picnic,” he said.

  “My favorite kind of picnic.” She snagged a cookie from the plate and spread a blanket over their legs. Then she leaned back against his chest, looking up at the stars.

  He grabbed a cookie for himself and bit in, washing it down with wine. He wasn’t much of a wine drinker but this, tonight, was good. The wine was bold and spicy and put a warmth in his belly that chased away the chill of the night around them. Of course, all he really needed to keep warm was the woman in his arms. His blood turned to steam every time he touched her.

  “Oh!” Jess exclaimed, lurching upright and elbowing him in the chest in the process. “I just saw one.”

  “Yeah?” He looked up into the night sky. The heavens twinkled above them, sparkling with what looked like millions of stars. “It’s the one thing that’s the same everywhere.”

  “What?” She craned her head to look at him, her brow wrinkled in confusion.

  “The sky. Whether you’re here, California, Iraq, Germany…it always looks the same when you look up.”

  “I never thought of that.” She leaned back against him again.

  “Sometimes you just want to see something that reminds you of home. The stars always did it for me.”

  “I thought about you a lot those first few years,” she said quietly. “I’d wonder what you were doing, where you were…if you were safe.”

  “Thought about you too.” He wrapped his free arm around her and pulled her in closer.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked, her voice nothing but a whisper.

  “Yeah.” Like he’d left a piece of himself behind here in Haven. He’d mourned the loss of Jess until…well, pretty much until he’d gotten her back.

  “You could have written to me. I’d have written you back.”

  “No.” He couldn’t have kept in touch with her. He was a part of her past, and he’d wanted her to have a future free of the uncertainty that came with military life, waiting to see if he’d survive, if he’d come home, and what kind of man he’d be if he did make it back.

  “I don’t understand you, Mark Dalton.”

  “Not sure I understand myself half the time.”

  She laughed, twisting around in his arms to face him. “No matter how angry I still am about our past, you’re one of the good guys, you know?”

  He drew her in for another kiss. She tasted like a mixture of butterscotch and red wine, a heady combination that lit a slow burn deep in his gut. He lifted her, settling her so that his cock pressed between her legs.

  She moaned, rocking her hips against him. “This after
noon…that was my first phone sex.”

  “Mine too.” He slid his hands beneath her jacket, popping the clasp of her bra.

  “I liked it.” She nipped at his lip. “A lot.”

  “Yeah.” He still couldn’t quite believe he’d done it, but yeah…it had been hot. If he lost her again, when he lost her again, the memory of that phone call would fuel his fantasies for years to come.

  “I think I’ll call you again the next time I’m feeling horny.” She rocked her hips, moaning as he cupped her breasts.

  “Please do.”

  “Mark,” she whispered, reaching down to grip him through his jeans. “I want you to let go tonight.”

  “What?”

  “I want to see you lose control.” She ran her palm up and down his length, and his dick surged beneath her touch.

  “No can do, baby.” He lifted her hand, settling it on his shoulder. “I don’t lose control.” Ever.

  “Everybody loses control sometimes.” She pushed him back on the blanket, straddling him.

  “Not me.” Not since he’d turned eighteen and enlisted in the Army. He’d left behind the foolish, impulsive kid he’d been before.

  “It’s fun to let yourself go,” she whispered, tugging at the zipper of his vest. He unzipped it and tossed it aside and then let her tug his shirt off over his head.

  “I do love watching you lose control though,” he said.

  “I give it freely.” She bent her head to kiss his chest, tracing her tongue around the tight bud of his nipple, igniting that slow burn inside him into an inferno. “And tonight I’m going to take yours. I’m going to make you beg.”

  “You’re welcome to try.” He watched in amusement as she unzipped his pants. Never in a million years would he beg, but he was going to enjoy the hell out of whatever torture she had in mind.

  “This is going to be so much fun.” She tugged at his pants with a wicked grin on her face.

  He lifted his hips, allowing her to slide him out of his jeans. “Fair is fair though.” He sat up, making short work of her clothes.

  Once they were both naked, she sat straddling him, her head thrown back. Moonlight illuminated her, gleaming over the perfect peaks of her breasts and the creamy expanse of her stomach. He sucked in a breath. God, she was beautiful. So fucking beautiful.