Tall, Dark, and Dangerous Part 2

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Harvard turned toward her, shocked she could think that. “No! Damn, woman, look at me. Look at just how much I allegedly don’t want to be with you!”

  She looked.

  He stepped closer, and she looked again, her gaze lingering on the front of his fatigues. His erection made an already snug pair of pants even tighter. And the fact that she was looking with such wide eyes made it even worse.

  “I’m trying to be a hero here,” Harvard told her, his voice cracking slightly. “I’m trying to do the right thing. I want to make love to you more than you will ever know, but you know what? There’s something I want even more than that. I want to be sure that when we do make love, you’re gonna wake up in the morning and not have one single, solitary regret.”

  She looked away from him, guilt in her eyes, and he knew—as hard as this was—that he was doing the right thing.

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to give you those kind of guarantees,” she said quietly.

  “I think you will,” he countered. “And I’ve got time. I’m willing to wait.” He laughed softly. “Hopefully, it won’t take you another twenty-five years.”

  She glanced at him, then her eyes dropped again to the front of his pants. She laughed nervously. “I’ve never known a man well enough before to ask him this, but…doesn’t that hurt?”

  Harvard sat carefully in the other deck chair. “It’s uncomfortable, that’s for damn sure.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Like hell you are. I see you over there, laughing at me.”

  “It just seems so embarrassingly inconvenient. I mean, what happens if you’re in a meeting with some admiral and you start thinking about—”

  “You don’t,” Harvard interrupted.

  “But what if you forget and just start daydreaming or something and, oops, there you are. Larger than life, so to speak.”

  Harvard ran his hands down his face. “Then I guess you quickly start doing calculus problems in your head. Or you sit down fast and hope no one noticed your…situation.”

  Her smoky laughter wrapped around him in the moonlight. He could see her watching him. She’d curled up on her side in the chair, one hand beneath her face, her legs tucked up to her chest.

  He could have had her. He could have carried her inside and he would be with her in his bedroom right now. That same moonlight would be streaming in through the window, caressing her naked body as he held her gaze and slowly filled her.

  Harvard drew in a deep breath. He couldn’t let himself think about that. Not tonight. It wasn’t going to happen tonight. But it was going to happen. He was going to make damn sure of that.

  “May I ask you something else?” she asked.

  “Yeah, as long as you don’t ask me to kiss you again. I think I can only be strong like this once a night.”

  “No, this is another penis question.”

  Harvard cracked up. “Oh, good, because, you know, penis questions are my specialty.”

  “Promise you won’t laugh at me?”

  “I promise.”

  “You’re laughing right now,” she accused him.

  “I’m stopping. See? I’m serious. I’m ready for this really serious penis question.” He snorted with laughter.

  “Fine. Laugh at me.” She sat up. “It’s a stupid question anyway, and if I weren’t so damned repressed, I’d have already learned the answer through experience.”

  “Lady, you’re not repressed. Overly cautious, maybe, but definitely not repressed.”

  “It’s about the size thing,” she told him, and he realized she wasn’t joking. “I mean, I know about sex. I know a lot about sex. I mean, I may be inexperienced, but I’m not exactly innocent. I know the mechanics—I’ve seen movies, I’ve read books, I’ve heard talk, I’ve certainly thought about it enough. And, you know, everyone always says size doesn’t matter, but I think they’re talking about when a man is small, and that’s definitely not the issue here. Obviously. But I’ve seen small women and large men together all the time, so I know it must work, but how on earth…” She trailed off.

  She was serious. Harvard knew he should say something, but he wasn’t sure what.

  “I’m only five-one-and-a-half,” she continued. “I lied. I round up to make it five-two. I buy my clothes from the petite rack in the store. And petite is not the word I’d use to describe anything about you. You’re huge. All of you.”

  Harvard couldn’t keep from chuckling.

  She laughed, too, covering her face with her hands. “Oh, God, I knew it. You’re laughing at me.”

  “I’m laughing because I love the fact that you think of me that way. I’m laughing because this conversation is doing nothing to help reduce my, um, current tension. In fact, I think I have to go inside now so I can fill out my official application for sainthood.”

  “Yeah, go on. Duck out. You just don’t want to answer my question.”

  He met her gaze and held it. “It’s one of those things that’s easier to show than tell and—You are really pushing me to the wall tonight, lady. I can’t even stand next to you without getting turned on, and here we are, talking about making love. If I didn’t know better, I would think you were some kind of tease, getting an evil kick out of watching me squirm.”

  Her tentative smile vanished instantly. “Daryl, I would never do that. I—”

  “Whoa,” Harvard said, holding up his hands. “Yo, Ms. Much Too Serious, take a deep breath and relax. I was kidding. A joke. Ha, ha. Out of all the two hundred sixty-seven billion women in the world, I’m well aware that you rate two hundred sixty-seven billionth when it comes to being a tease. Which is why I know when you start asking questions about size—” he couldn’t hold back his giggle “—it’s because you seriously want to know.” He giggled again.

  She shook her head. “You know, I’ve seen ‘Beavis and Butthead,’ and I thought it was just some warped fictional exaggeration of male immaturity, but I can see now that the show is based on you.”

  “Hey, I can’t help it. The P word is a funny word. It’s a friendly, happy, just plain silly word. And add on top of that the absurdity of us sitting here and discussing the additional absurdity of whether or not I would fit inside you…Damn!” He had to close his eyes at the sudden vivid visual images his words brought to mind. He had to grit his teeth as he could almost feel himself buried deep inside her satin-smooth heat. Never before had sheer paradise been so close and yet so far away.

  “Yes.” He opened his eyes and looked straight at her. “I would. Fit. Inside you. Perfectly. You’ve got to trust me on this one, P.J. As much as I’d love to go into the house and prove it to you, you’re just going to have to take my word for it. I’ve been with women who are small—maybe not as skinny as you, but close enough. It works. Nature in action, you know? When—if—when…When we get to the point where we actually get together, you don’t have to worry about me hurting you—not that way.”

  “I know it’s going to hurt the first time,” she told him. “At least a little bit.”

  “Some women don’t have a problem with that,” he told her. “It’s not uncommon for a woman’s…maidenhead to be already broken—”

  She laughed. “Maidenhead? Have you been reading Jane Austen again?”

  “It’s better than cherry. Or hymen. Damn, who came up with that name?”

  “Dr. Hymen?”

  Harvard laughed. “Hell of a way to gain immortality.” He felt his smile soften as he gazed at her. She was sexy and bright and funny. He wanted this night to go on forever.

  She met his gaze steadily. “Unlike a Jane Austen heroine, I haven’t had the opportunity to have many horseback riding accidents. In fact, I’ve been to the doctor, and at last inventory, everything’s still…intact.”

  Harvard took a deep breath. “Okay. When you’re ready, we’ll do it fast. I promise it won’t hurt a lot, and I promise that it’ll feel a whole lot better real soon after. If you only believe one thing I say, believe that, okay
?”

  She was silent for a moment, and then she nodded. “Okay.”

  Harvard sat back in his chair in relief. “Thank God. Now can we move on to some safer topic like birth control or safe sex.”

  “Hmm…”

  “I was kidding,” he said quickly. “No more penis questions of any kind, okay? At least not until tomorrow.” He looked at his watch: 2340.

  “What I really want to ask you now,” P.J. said, her chin in the palm of her hand, elbow on the deck chair armrest as she gazed at him, “is more personal.”

  “More personal than…”

  “You know who I’ve been with. I’m curious about you. How many of those two hundred sixty-seven billion women in the world have you taken to bed?”

  “Too many when I was younger. Not enough over the past few years. When I turned thirty, I started getting really picky.” Harvard shifted in his seat. “I haven’t been in a relationship since this past winter. I was with a woman—Ellen—for about four months. If you can call what we had a relationship.”

  “Ellen.” P.J. rolled the name off her tongue, as if trying it out. “What was she like?”

  “Smart and upwardly mobile. She was a lawyer at some big firm in D.C. She didn’t have time for a husband—or even a real boyfriend, for that matter. She was totally in love with her career. But she was pretty, and she was willing—when she found the time. It was fun for a while.”

  “So you’ve been with, what? Forty women? Four hundred women? More?”

  He laughed. “I haven’t kept a count or cut notches into my belt or anything like that. I don’t know. There was only one that ever really mattered.”

  “Not Ellen.”

  “Nope.”

  “Someone who tragically broke your heart.”

  Harvard smiled. “It seemed pretty tragic at the time.”

  “What was her name? Do you mind talking about her?”

  “Rachel, and no, I don’t mind. It was years ago. I thought she was The One—you know, capital T, capital O—but her husband didn’t agree.”

  P.J. winced. “Ouch.” She narrowed her eyes. “What were you doing, messing with a married woman?”

  “I didn’t know,” Harvard admitted. “I mean, I knew she was separated and filing for a divorce. What I didn’t realize was that she was still in love with her ex. He cheated on her, and she left him and there I was, ready to take up the slack. Looking back, it’s so clear that she was using me as a kind of revenge relationship. It was ironic, really. First time in my life I actually get involved, and it turned out she’s using me to get back at her husband.”

  He shook his head. “I’m making her sound nasty, but she was this really sweet girl. I don’t think she did any of it on purpose. She used me to feel better, and she ended up in this place where she could forgive him.” He smiled, because for the first time since it had happened, he was talking about it, and it didn’t hurt. “I was clueless, though. Alpha Squad got called to the Middle East—this was during Desert Shield. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her. When I came home months later, she’d already moved back in with Larry. Talk about a shock. Needless to say, the entire relationship had a certain lack of closure to it. It took me a while to make any sense of it.”

  “Some things just never make sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense now. If I’d hooked up with Rachel, I wouldn’t be here with you.”

  P.J. looked at her sneakers for a moment before meeting his gaze again. “You’re good at sweet talk, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve never had a problem with words,” he admitted.

  “You can fly a plane. You can operate any kind of boat that floats, you jump out of planes without getting tangled in trees, you run faster and shoot better than anyone I’ve ever met, you graduated from Harvard at the top of your class, you’re a Senior Chief in the Navy SEALs, and you’re something of a poet, to boot. Is there anything you can’t do?”

  He thought about it for only a moment. “I absolutely cannot infiltrate a camp of Swedish terrorists.”

  P.J. stared at him. And then she started to laugh. “Larry must be something else if Rachel gave up you for him.”

  Harvard looked at his watch, then stood and crossed the deck toward her. He pushed her legs aside with his hips as he sat on her chair, pinning her into place with one hand on either armrest. “It’s nearly midnight, Cinderella,” he said. “That means I can kiss you again without worrying about it going too far.”

  Her eyes were liquid brown. “What? I don’t under—”

  “Shh,” he said, leaning forward to capture her lips with his.

  He could taste her confusion, feel her surprise. But she hesitated for only half a second before meeting his tongue with equal fervor, before melting into his arms.

  And his pager went off.

  Hers did, too.

  P.J. pulled away from him in surprise, reaching for her belt, pulling the device free and shutting off the alarm.

  “Both of us,” she said. “At once.” She searched his eyes. “What is it?”

  He stood up, adjusting his pants. “We have to call in to find out for sure. But I think our leave is over early.”

  P.J. stood, too, and followed him into the kitchen. “Did you know about this?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You knew something, didn’t you? You’ve been checking your watch all evening. That’s why you kissed me,” she accused, “because it was almost midnight and you knew we were going to get beeped!”

  “I didn’t know exactly when.” He keyed the number that had flashed on both their beepers into the kitchen telephone from memory. He grinned at her. “But I guessed. I know Joe Cat pretty well, and I figured he’d try to catch as many of us off guard as he possibly could. It seemed right up his alley to give us all forty-eight hours of leave, then call us in after only twenty-four. I figured it was either going to be midnight or sometime around oh-two-hundred.” He held up one hand, giving her the signal to be quiet.

  P.J. watched Harvard’s eyes as he spoke to Captain Catalanotto on the other end of the line. He caught her staring, and a smile softened his face. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her close.

  She closed her eyes, resting her head against his shoulder, breathing in his scent. She could smell the freshness of soap and the tangy aroma of some he-man brand of deodorant. Coffee. A faint whiff of the peppermint gum he sometimes chewed. His already familiar, slightly musky and very male perfume.

  She still couldn’t believe it was Harvard—and not her—who had kept them from making love tonight.

  She’d never met a man who’d say no to sex out of consideration for what she might feel.

  “Yeah,” he said to Joe Cat. “We’ll go directly to California, meet the rest of you there. I’m going to need my boots and some clothes. And, Captain? Remember the time I saved your neck, baby? I’m cashing in now. I’m going to tell you something that’s for your ears only. P.J. is with me. Consider this her check-in, too.”

  He paused, listening to Joe. “No,” he said. “No, no—we’re here visiting my parents. Mom and Daddy. I swear, this whole trip has been completely innocent and totally rated G, but if anyone finds out, they’re going to think…” He laughed. “Yeah, we’re not talking real mature. Here’s the problem, boss. P.J.’s going to need some clothes and her boots. I know you don’t have much time yourself, but could you maybe send Veronica out to the hotel to pack up some of her things?”

  “Oh, God.” P.J. cringed. “My room is a mess.”

  Harvard looked at her, pulling the phone away from his mouth. “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “Cool.” He kissed her quickly before he spoke into the receiver again. “She wants you to warn Ronnie that her room is a mess. Tell Ron just to grab her boots. We’ll get P.J. whatever else she needs in Coronado. We’ll be there before you.”

  Another pause, then Harvard laughed. P.J. could hear it rumbling in his chest. “Thanks, Joe. Yeah, we’re on our way
.”

  He hung up the phone and kissed her hard on the mouth. “Time to wake up Mom and Daddy and tell them we’re out of here. And no more kissing,” he said, kissing her again and then again. “It’s time to go play soldier.”

  12

  Harvard could feel P.J. watching him as he stood at the front of the briefing room of the USS Irvin, the Navy destroyer steaming toward their destination.

  They’d taken an Air Force flight all the way to South Korea. Now, by sea, they were approaching the tiny island nation where their training op was to take place.

  P.J. had slept on the plane. Harvard had, too, but his dreams had been wildly erotic and unusually vivid. He could have sworn he still tasted the heated salt of her skin on his lips when he awoke. He could hear the echo of her cries of pleasure and her husky laughter swirl around him. He could still see the undisguised desire in her eyes as she gazed at him, feel the heart-stopping sensation as he sank into the tightness of her heat.

  He took a deep breath, exhaling quickly, well aware he had to stop thinking about his dream—and about P.J.—before he found himself experiencing the same discomfort he’d been in when he awoke. He held his clipboard low, loosely clasped in both hands, trying to look casual, relaxed. He was just a guy holding a clipboard—not a guy using a clipboard to keep the world from noticing that he was walking around in a state of semiarousal.

  When he glanced at P.J. again, she was trying hard not to smile, and he knew he hadn’t managed to fool her.

  The captain, meanwhile, was giving a brief overview of their mission. “There’s a group of six jarheads—U.S. Marines—who’ve been doing FID work with the locals, trying to form a combined military and law-enforcement task force to slow drug trafficking in this part of the world. Apparently, this island is used as a major port of call for a great deal of Southeast Asia’s heroin trade. Lieutenant Hawken has spent more time in-country than any of us, and he’ll fill us all in on the terrain and the culture in a few minutes, after we go over the setup of this op.