Soldier's Pregnancy Protocol

by Beth Cornelison

  “Now we can finish what we started this morning.” He pressed delicate kisses along her jaw and strummed her spine with seductive strokes. “But I won’t do anything unless you tell me it’s still what you want, too.”

  Through the sensual haze he conjured with his kisses, a bittersweet pang pierced her bubble of contentment. She rested her forehead against his chest, inhaling the musky scent of aftershave she’d forever associate with Alec. “I want to make love to you as much as I want my next breath. But…”

  His hold on her waist tightened. “But…?”

  She lifted her chin to meet his gaze again, a hollow ache swelling inside her. “But I also know that I care about you too much to make love and have it mean nothing except great sex. I know I promised you this morning I could keep my emotions separate, but I don’t think I can anymore. I need more from you than just sex, Alec.”

  Tensing, Alec dropped his hands from her and shook his head. “Erin, our lives are completely incompatible. I can’t make promises about tomorrow or next week, much less further down the line. I told you—”

  She silenced him with a finger over his lips. “I don’t expect you to change your life for me. You’ve already done so much to protect me, and I won’t ask for more.” The tender ache twisted, driving deeper. “But I can’t give you what you want, either, Alec. I can’t sleep with you and keep my heart uninvolved. You already mean too much to me, and I don’t know how I’m going to tell you goodbye when the time comes.”

  Alec’s eyes slid closed, and he pressed his lips in a thin, taut line.

  She cupped her hand against his cheek, and he covered her hand, lacing their fingers.

  “I’m sorry, Alec,” she said, her voice breaking. “But I’ve already loved and lost one man whose purpose in life was to taunt death, to push the limits and chase the next adrenaline high. I can’t do that again.”

  He squeezed her fingers. “I know. I understand.”

  Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them back. “You asked what I wanted. I want you, Alec. So much. But what I want and what I need aren’t the same things. I need a quiet, safe life where I can raise my baby.” She paused and pulled in a deep breath, debating the wisdom of broaching the issue weighing on her heart. “Maybe the question should be…what do you need, Alec?”

  He stiffened, then stepped back. “Me?”

  “You are half of this equation. This morning, you said you don’t do relationships because of the dangers of your job. Is your life, with all the risks you face, really what you want?”

  Alec’s jaw tightened, and pain flashed in his eyes. “My life is what it is, Erin. What I want is irrelevant.”

  “Why? Don’t you deserve to be happy?”

  Alec spun away, plowing his hands through his hair with a huff. “We don’t always get what we deserve from life. Much less what we want. Sometimes fate hands us crap, and we have to make do.”

  Erin heard a load of heartache in his voice and absorbed it deep into her marrow. “Who hurt you, Alec? What did fate do to steal your hope?”

  He stalked past her and snatched his gun and holster from a small table. Without another word, he shouldered his way through the front door, disappearing outside.

  In the silence of the dim bayou hideout, Erin sank onto the floor and wept for the man who held so much pain inside.

  Chapter 12

  A strange noise from the bayou woke Erin in the predawn hours. Shaking off her slumber, she stared into the blackness surrounding her and listened. When the eerie screeching reverberated in the dark again, Erin bolted upright in the bed, heart thumping.

  “It was a bird. Probably an owl.” Alec’s quiet baritone voice drifted through the night like a balmy marshland breeze. “Don’t be scared.”

  “I’m not. I…” She hesitated and drew a ragged breath.

  “Your pulse is racing.” He squeezed her wrist gently to let her know denial was futile, that the scattered throb under his fingers was proof of her heart rate.

  Okay, maybe the shadowed bayou she’d seen last night, and the odd noises filling the pitch of night did creep her out. But she wasn’t scared. Or at least she had no need to be. Alec was here. The heat and weight of his hand on her arm calmed and reassured her.

  He drew her into the circle of his arms and rested his chin on her shoulder, her cheek to his. “Better?”

  She felt her muscles relax, and she melted into his protective warmth. “Mmm-hmm. Thanks.”

  The steady thump of Alec’s heart drummed against her back, and his thumb stroked the inside of her wrist, stirring a sweet lethargy in her bones.

  “Why do you always smell like vanilla ice cream?” he murmured.

  “Do I?”

  “Mmm-hmm, you do.” He angled his head to brush a kiss along her cheek.

  Her skin tingled with a prickly, restless heat, while her lungs squeezed with regret. “Alec, I told you why I couldn’t…” She sighed. “Nothing’s changed.”

  She wiggled to get away from him, and his grip tightened, drawing her more firmly against his hard strength and heat. “Don’t go. Please. I—”

  “Alec, I can’t. Not without falling in love with you.”

  She felt a small, almost imperceptible, shudder reverberate through his muscles, and her heart clenched.

  “I…gave a lot of thought to what you said last night,” he whispered.

  She held her breath.

  “And I can’t say anything’s changed. My job still makes it impossible for us to have a future together. But…I wanted you to understand some things about me… .” He took a few quick, shallow breaths, and the drumming of his heartbeat against her back accelerated. “Things I’ve never told anyone else.”

  Erin stayed silent, giving him the time and patience he needed to say whatever had him so agitated.

  “When I was fourteen, my mom used to pick me up at school after track practice. But um…one day, she…didn’t come. I thought she was just late, but then it started to get dark and cold, so I walked home. When I got to our place, she—” Alec shifted restlessly behind her, his palms growing damp against her arms.

  “Tell me, Alec. Please.”

  He sighed. “She was…gone.”

  Her chest tightened. “She was dead?”

  He snorted derisively. “No. She’d packed up her things and moved out. She ditched me. I haven’t seen her since.”

  Horror and anguish for the young Alec contracted Erin’s chest. Her throat tightened, imagining his pain over his mother’s betrayal and desertion.

  “I stayed at our apartment, pretending everything was fine, dodging children’s services, until the landlord kicked me out.”

  “And then?”

  He drew a slow breath. “I lived on the streets. Learned real quick how to survive, how to defend myself, how to scrape past the cops.”

  Learned to put defensive walls around his heart. Learned not to trust people. Alec’s teenage years explained a lot about his distant manner and the pain she saw in his eyes at unguarded moments. She lost another tiny piece of her soul to him, wishing she could heal his hurts. “What about your father? Where was he?”

  Alec hesitated. “My mom never knew who my father was. He was one of many one-night stands.”

  Erin’s stomach pitched, and grief knotted around her heart. She hated to think how scared and lonely Alec had been, abandoned by the woman who should have loved him most.

  “I dropped out of school when I was sixteen,” he recounted clinically. “I figured out I could make more money working odd jobs than sitting in a classroom all day.”

  Erin grimaced. “But school’s important… .”

  He gave her a short, bittersweet laugh. “Said the dedicated teacher.” He brushed his fingers along her cheek, adding, “Maybe if I’d had a teacher like you, someone who really cared, I’d have done things differently. But I was on my own.”

  Her eyes watered as she tried to fathom the odds Alec had overcome, the hardships he’d endured at suc
h a young age. She laced her fingers with his in support and nodded. “Go on.”

  “When I was eighteen, I joined the army. I figured I already knew how to fight and defend myself, so I might as well get paid for it. Have somewhere to live, something to eat. The army was my meal ticket, so I gave it everything I had. About the time the war in Iraq started, the officers offered me the chance to train to be a Ranger.”

  “That’s where you learned all your action-hero tricks and skills, huh?” Her attempt to infuse a note of humor in her tone fell flat.

  “I learned how to complete the most difficult missions and get out alive. Whatever it took.” His voice darkened, grew more detached. “I learned how to kill. I won’t glamorize my training.”

  Erin shivered. “What happened during the war?”

  Alec drew a slow breath. The stillness of the predawn morning seemed to echo the edgy anticipation jangling inside her.

  “When the most dangerous missions came up, I was always first to volunteer. Not because I had a death wish, mind you, but because I had no reason not to be the one to go. The other guys had parents, wives, kids. Someone to live for. I had nothing. No one.” Alec’s empty, emotionless tone wrenched inside Erin, deepening her sorrow for his lonely past.

  “Oh, Alec…”

  “I could go into a volatile situation without anything holding me back.” He paused, sighed wearily. “After a few missions, I was pegged to join the black ops agency. The same circumstances that made me the best choice for Ranger missions made me perfect for high-risk counterterrorism work.”

  “The same circumstances.” Tears climbed Erin’s throat, choking her. “Meaning you were alone. Had no family.”

  Alec hesitated. “Yeah. I was expendable.”

  Erin sucked in a sharp breath and twisted toward him. “No! Alec, don’t say that. You’re not expendable. How could you think that!”

  His eyes were as expressionless and dead as his voice. He turned from her to stare up at the ceiling. “My mother thought so.”

  Erin gave a hiccupping sob. “Damn her for hurting you! For abandoning you…”

  The corner of his mouth twitched in a sarcastic grin. “I have. Lots of times. But after a while, I figured, what’s the point? This is the life fate dealt me. And I realized I could use my isolation, my independence for some good. And I am good, Erin. I’m one of the best agents on the team.”

  “I believe that.” She gave him a sad grin. “I’ve seen you in action, remember.” She curled her fingers into the T-shirt that stretched across his broad chest. She trembled a bit, thinking of the dangerous life he’d led and the harsh training that had given him his impressive muscles and strength.

  “I gave everything I had to the black ops team for seven years. Because I had nothing else.” He expelled a harsh breath, and his brow furrowed. His lip curled, then tightened as he fought some dark emotion. “Or so I thought…until I left Daniel in Colombia. Then I realized that over the years we’d worked together, put our lives in each other’s hands, I’d taken for granted the one thing I believed I’d never have.”

  He paused, and a quiver started in her gut. A niggling comprehension and fresh pain.

  “I had someone’s loyalty. His trust. I had a friend.” Alec pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. “But I left him. Just like my mom left me. I abandoned the only friend I had. I just left him to die…” His voice cracked as his emotions overtook him, and Erin’s heart broke along with it. “To hell with our agreement not to compromise the mission,” he grated. “Lafitte was my friend!”

  His guilt and agony raked through her, shredding Erin’s composure. She’d bet her child’s life Alec was terrified of the emotions he was finally acknowledging. His willingness to share this turbulent part of himself, to open an emotional vein for her, was humbling. He’d reached into her soul and destroyed her capacity to fight her feelings for him.

  “Oh, Alec… .” She wrapped her arms around him and held him close, wishing she could take away his pain. “Don’t punish yourself. Daniel’s alive. He has to be. He sent you that letter. He’s been here in the bayou recently. You even said so.”

  He released a shuddering sigh. “I know. I’m just so…tired, Erin,” he rasped.

  She raised her head to meet his gaze.

  “So tired of—” He stopped. Swallowed hard. Shifting bleak, damp eyes to her, he shook his head. “Forget it.”

  “Of being alone?” she finished, understanding him. Maybe more than he was ready to acknowledge for himself.

  Squeezing his eyes closed, he whispered, “You asked me what I needed.”

  Erin held her breath.

  “I need you, Erin. I need…the connection I feel with you.”

  Hot moisture stung the back of her nose, and she bit her lip, fighting the rush of tears.

  “I felt something the moment Manny cracked that branch on your head, and you looked at me with such sweet faith and innocence. I tried to shut it out, like I’ve always shut people out. But the hurt and betrayal in your eyes when you thought I’d put Daniel’s letter over your life…it shattered something inside me. Made me see what I’d become. How isolated. How numb.” He swiped the dampness from her cheek with his thumb. “The last few years of my life have been about death and lies and evil. But in you, I saw…maybe my last chance to save myself, to save my humanity. You were everything good and innocent and full of life. My God, you’re even carrying a new life inside you. And I need that. I need…the way you make me feel. Alive. Connected to the things that matter.”

  Erin framed his face with her hands and rested her forehead against his. “I’m here, Alec. For whatever you need. Always. I promise.”

  He sank fingers into her hair, holding her close and covering her face with achingly tender kisses. Desperate kisses. Kisses full of affection and emotion and words left unsaid. Words that hovered near the surface. Words she saw reflected in his azure eyes.

  She felt the tremor that shook him, and her body answered with a quaking need and clambering hunger. She held him tighter, angling her hips and shifting her legs, wishing she could climb inside him. Fill him. Give him all the love he’d been denied and had denied himself for too many years.

  Alec’s kisses drifted to her lips, and he groaned as he deepened the connection. Without breaking the seal of their kiss, Alec hooked a leg around hers and rolled her to her back. When his body pinned hers, he raised his head and stared deep into her eyes. Searching. Reaching to her soul. “Erin, if I don’t make love to you, at least once, it’s something I’ll regret…forever.”

  Her breath caught. She knew he was asking permission. Giving her the chance to walk away. Like everyone else in his life had.

  I need you, Erin. Her heart stumbled, braced. Prepared for retreat.

  Could she do it? Could she give herself, heart and soul, to this man? Because there’d be no going back for her if she made love to him. She knew that with painful certainty.

  But when they found Daniel and the danger to her had passed, he would move on. Leave her behind. He’d told her nothing had changed in that respect. His high-risk lifestyle had no room for a wife and family.

  Yet, despite what it would cost her heart, how could she not give him this gift? A few moments of knowing how it felt to be well and truly loved. The deep connection with a soul that wanted and cherished him.

  The truth was, she already cared too deeply about him. When this was all over, when he left and went back to his job, she would feel the loss. To her core. She swallowed hard to force down the lump of heartache that swelled in her throat. “Make love to me, Alec.”

  Releasing an unsteady breath, he closed his eyes, bowed his head. As if collecting his composure. Or praying. When he raised his head, his expression was pure humility. Reverence. Awe.

  Placing a soft kiss on her forehead, he slid his hands down her shoulders and arms and caught the hem of her gauzy shirt. Alec peeled her blouse over her head, stripping her of clothes as surely as he peeled away any d
efenses left to protect her heart. The skirt and her panties followed, leaving her naked to him, body and soul.

  He caressed her with loving, desire-warm eyes and with tender fingers that roamed over every inch of her skin. Testing, learning, arousing. His slow, methodical strokes sent sparks of pleasure skittering over her skin and electrified every cell he touched.

  Eager to feel his skin against hers, Erin tugged his T-shirt up, bunching it in her fingers. As he rose, straddling her hips, to toss the shirt aside, she grappled with trembling fingers to unbutton his jeans. The watery morning light seeped through the blinds, providing just enough illumination for her to study the planes and angles of his beautiful male body. The man personified strength and power. Agility and sensual grace. Her heart thumped harder as he moved back toward her like a panther stalking its prey.

  But for all his savage beauty, the gentleness and passion in his eyes reverberated to her core. He moved aside long enough to strip off his jeans. Then, twining her limbs with his, she met his mouth and melted into his kiss. Sweet for a moment, then increasingly fervid, Alec tantalized her lips before moving down her body. The sexy rasp of his unshaven jaw played an enticing counterpoint to the satiny warmth of his lips and tongue as he skimmed over her breasts and nuzzled her belly. He nipped playfully at her hip, and as he made a pass over the tiny bulge where her baby grew, his kisses deepened, slowed.

  Her throat closed with emotion watching him turn his head to brush his cheek against her belly, eyes closed and an expression of love and wonder softening his chiseled face. He placed one last soft kiss against her womb before sliding his hands up, along her sides, until he framed her face.

  Alec’s quick, shallow breaths mirrored hers, and he murmured her name on a slow exhale as he positioned himself for entry. Then, seizing her lips with a kiss she felt to her marrow, Alec joined their bodies. He filled her, stroking her with his heat and carrying her to dizzying heights. Farther. Faster. Higher.