She did as he’d asked and went to the closet.
Men’s clothing hung to the right, women’s to the left. The women’s section of the rack held a couple of pairs of crisply laundered jeans. A handful of shirts. Sandals, flip-flops and a pair of worn hiking boots stood on the floor.
It wasn’t a lot, but it was more than enough.
There was no underwear, not in the closet or in any of the dresser drawers. She’d have to go commando under the jeans and shirt she chose at random.
A tremor danced through her.
She shut her eyes and imagined Tanner finding out that nothing separated his hands, his mouth, his body from hers except a thin layer of cloth.
The thought excited her.
Every thought about him excited her.
She paused with a shirt and a pair of jeans draped over her arm.
It wasn’t as if she never had sex before. Okay. She hadn’t had a lot of it. And it had never, ever been like this.
Once, during a sort of Girls’ Weekend at El Sueño, the Wilde ranch, the talk had turned to sex. Actually, it had turned to SEX, all caps, and the Wilde sisters, all of them happily married, had agreed that they Wouldn’t Really Talk about Their Husbands and Sex…but, one of them, maybe Emily, had said sex with her man was…
Incredible. Fantastic. Amazing. Wonderful. Indescribable.
All the words applied, depending on which sister you’d listened to.
Bianca, single the same as Alessandra, had taken on that little air of Shrink in Attendance that drove Alessandra crazy, looked at her fingernails and said, yes, of course, sex was one of life’s great pleasures.
“A tiny bit overrated, perhaps, but still something very special.”
Actually, what she’d said was that sex was a bit overrated but transformational nevertheless.
Transformational? Well, why not? Bianca had a habit of talking in Shrinkese.
Everybody had looked at Alessandra. Say something, she’d told herself, and what she’d finally come up with was that sex was nice.
And it was.
You met a man, somebody who wore a serious suit and had a serious job, he took you to serous places. Dinner at a restaurant where it took months to get a reservation unless, of course, you were him A Broadway show where he had orchestra seats, first row center. Or perhaps a by-invitation-only showing at a Soho gallery.
You dated for a while and then you might have sex.
Might was the operative word.
That had been the pattern of her life since she’d been curious enough to lose her virginity to Aldo Vincenzi in the backseat of his father’s Alfa Romeo on her seventeenth birthday.
But what had just happened…
Sex had never been like this. Hot. Exciting. Sex that turned you on just remembering it.
Sex that made you come.
What would her lieutenant say if he knew she’d never come before?
Her breath hitched.
Sex with a gorgeous bad boy. The kind of sex, the kind of lover most women only dreamed about.
Except, Tanner was so much more than that.
She loved talking to him. Bantering with him. Lying in his arms and doing nothing more adventuresome than listening to the thud-thud of his heart.
She loved…
The jeans and shirt fell from her arms.
Ridiculous. Impossible. This wasn’t a romance novel. You didn’t fall crazy in love with a man in just in a couple of days, especially if he was pretty much a stranger.
Of course you didn’t.
* * *
Superman’s “something interesting” in the kitchen was a feast.
A bowl of fruit. Okay, the fruit was from a can, but no bowl of fruit had ever looked better or tasted more delicious. Big, fluffy pancakes with maple syrup. And just in case the pancakes weren’t enough, toasted bagels from what tuned out to be a working freezer.
He’d topped the bagel halves with blueberry jam.
“If you were a New Yorker,” Alessandra said primly as she popped the last bit of a jam-smothered bagel into her mouth, “you’d know that you never put jam on bagels.”
“Says the lady born in… What part of Italy was it?”
“A village in Sicily nobody ever heard of.”
She licked a drop of jam off her thumb.
Tanner reached across the table, snagged her hand and brought it to his lips.
“Lieutenant Akecheta at your service, ma’am,” he said, letting his tongue take the place of hers.
“And such excellent service it is, Lieutenant,” she said, while her heart skipped a beat.
He grinned. Oh, what a gorgeous grin he had.
“We aim to please, ma’am.”
She laughed. So did he. Amazing, she thought, that acts of terror and brutality had brought her to a moment of such incredible joy.
“You know, Lieutenant, I think it’s time I made a confession.”
Tanner sat back, his arms folded over his chest. “Go for it, Bellini. I’m ready.”
“When you didn’t realize that FURever was about protecting wildlife?” She sighed. “It was the name. Not you. I’d tried to tell them that the name was, you know, cute, but maybe misleading…What?”
“Nice try, honey, but it was definitely me. I had this stereotype in my head. Beautiful woman. Spoiled silly…”
“You’re the one who’s spoiling me. And I have to admit, I love it.” She smiled as he leaned forward and reached for her hand. “Your turn,” she said.
“My turn for what?”
“To tell me where you’re from, for starters.”
Tanner let go of her hand, from the table, got the coffeepot from the counter, took two blue mugs from a shelf, and filled them.
“There’s no cream. Sorry.”
“That’s fine. It’s coffee. Real coffee.” She leaned into the steaming mug that he handed her, took a deep sniff and sighed. “Smells delicious. So, where are you from?”
“South Dakota.”
“Except for Texas,” Alessandra said, “I’ve never been in any state except New York and California. What’s South Dakota like?”
He sat down, raised his mug to his lips and blew lightly on the steaming coffee.
“Big. Wild. Beautiful. The Badlands. The Black Hills. Endless stretches of prairie. And ranches.”
“Ah.” She smiled over the rim of her mug. “Cowboys.”
“And Indians.” He grinned at her. “Them’s my people, Ms. Bellini.”
“Sioux.”
He shrugged and sat back in his chair, his big hands wrapped around the mug.
“What’s left of us. What’s pretty much the last of the Sioux nation lives in the Dakotas.”
“Did you grow up on a ranch?”
“More or less.”
She could almost see him shutting down. She knew she should back off, but she was hungry to know more about him, so she decided to ignore the warning signs and press on.
“Which was it? More? Or less?”
Tanner sighed, got up, grabbed the coffee pot and refilled both their mugs before sitting down again.
“My father had a small spread. Just enough land to keep a few horses. I guess you could be generous and call it a ranch.”
“And your mother?”
“She left us.”
Alessandra stared at him. “She left?”
“Yeah. It was a hard life. She liked pretty things…” His words trailed away. He raised his mug and drank more coffee. “My old man didn’t do too well after that. He took to drinking. Well, he’d always been into whiskey, but once she was gone he drank more and then, you know, the predictable happened.”
“He died,” she said softly.
“Yeah.” Tanner blinked, cleared his throat. “I keep this up, we’ll start to hear violins playing in the background.”
“How does a boy left to get through life on his own end up in an elite service? Because that’s what STUD is, isn’t it? An elite service?”
He sighed. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re as persistent as a mosquito at a nudist colony?”
She grinned. “Nice analogy, Akecheta, but it’s not going to get you off the hook.” Her grin vanished. She reached across the table for his hand. “I just want to know you.” Her face colored. “Not only in bed, you understand?”
His heart did that tightening thing he was starting to get used to.
“I did something I’d never believed in,” he said, clasping her hand in his. “I went on a vision quest. It’s a kind of spiritual journey to help you see inside yourself. And I took part in a ceremonial dance. The Sun Dance. It takes you even deeper into yourself. When it was over, I was somebody else. School took on meaning. A college degree became a goal. And after that, becoming a SEAL and then a STUD…” He paused, shook his head, and gave a bewildered laugh. “Amazing. We met, what, three days ago? And you know more about me than any human being on this earth.”
“I want to know everything about you,” she said softly.
He looked into her eyes. Then he got to his feet, went around the table and bent to her. She looped her arms around his neck and he kissed her and took her back to bed.
* * *
They made love.
And slept in each other’s arm.
When they woke, Tanner checked in with Chay.
“No changes,” Chay said. “Weather’s still coming in. And we lost the bunch of guys that might have been Bright Star.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Tanner sighed. Chay was right. Maybe it was good. Maybe it wasn’t.
“Okay,” he said. “Got it. Over.”
“Hang in there, dude. Out.”
Tanner stowed the satphone, turned to Alessandra and drew her into his arms.
“Looks as if we’re gonna be here for a while.”
“Well, we have plenty of food.” She reached out one hand, ran the tip of her index finger lightly down the center of his chest. “We’ll just have to come up with some creative ways to pass the time.” She leaned forward. Kissed his sternum. “Maybe we can find a deck of cards and play gin.”
“You know how to play gin?”
“No,” she said, and grinned. She moved lower. Kissed his belly button. “Or we can play some other game.” She nuzzled the covers down, exposing his penis.
It had just been very, very busy, but that didn’t stop it from giving an impressive twitch.
“For instance,” she said, looking up at Tanner, “just see what’s happening here. What an amazing toy. Changes shape, changes size…
She giggled as he rolled her onto her back.
“You,” he growled, “are a bad girl, Ms. Bellini. And ve haf ways of dealing with bad girls.”
“I hope so,” she whispered.
Tanner moved onto his side and took her with him. He folded one arm beneath his head and held her close in the curve of the other.
“Tell me about yourself. When were your parents divorced? Were you a little girl? Was it hard to see them split?”
She sighed, folded her hands on his chest and propped her chin on her hands.
“They didn’t divorce.”
“But your old man said—”
“He lied.” Her voice took on a bitter edge. “Lying is what my esteemed father does best.”
“Honey. If you don’t want to talk about it…”
“Like I told you, he had two wives. At the same time. One in Texas. The other in Sicily. Neither knew about the other, and none of his children knew, either.”
“Jesus.”
“He says he loved each wife too much to give her up, but the truth is he dug himself so deep into a hole there was no way for him to climb out without ruining his precious career.”
“When did you find out?”
“When our mother died.”
“When you were already grieving for your mom? Man. You must have been devastated.”
Alessandra sighed. “Things happen. I know how pointless that sounds, but it’s true.”
Tanner brought her hands to his lips.
“You have to keep moving forward,” he said. “One of the docs told me that when I was feeling sorry for myself because the wound in my calf just wouldn’t heal. I told her she was looking at life through rose-colored glasses, but she was right.”
“The wound in your calf,” she said softly. “The one that’s making you limp.”
“I’m not…” He expelled a long breath. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “I was in a firefight and I got hit.”
“Why do I think it was more complicated than that?”
He didn’t answer. She sighed. She didn’t know a lot about men, but she knew about her brothers. Sometimes it was best to back off.
“And this?” she asked, lightly touching the scar on his shoulder.
“Souvenir of Afghanistan,” he said, with another lazy shrug.
“There’s a scar on your belly, too.”
“Knife wound.” He drew her close and kissed her. “The guy who gave it to me would have been better off using his knife to butter his bread.”
She knew he wanted her to laugh, but she couldn’t. Thinking of him being hurt was too painful.
“And these,” she said, running her finger lightly over first one small scar on his pectorals and then the other. “What kind of weapon could make scars like these?”
At first, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. He caught her hand. Held it against his chest. A few long seconds of silence passed. When he finally answered, it was in a low voice.
“Not weapons,” he finally said. “A knife.”
“I don’t understand. These are knife wounds?”
“They are what remains of small cuts into my skin, done by a tribal elder, who then threaded strips of rawhide through them and tied them to the sacred pole used in the Sun Dance.”
He felt her body stiffen, and heard her small whisper of… Shock? Horror? Disgust?
Akecheta, he thought grimly, what a monumental fool you are!
Why had he told her this? The dance was not a thing he had ever discussed with anyone outside the tribe. There were far too many who still thought of Native Americans as barbaric. Had he just given credence to that stereotype?
“It’s a sacred ritual. It began two centuries ago, and then the federal government outlawed it. They said it was barbaric.”
“But your people said it was sacred.”
Tanner nodded. “It’s a ceremony of renewal. Of conviction. It reminds the dancers of their connection to the earth, to the circle of life. And, if you are very, very lucky, it renews your sense of self.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. “I needed that renewal of self. I needed to find my way out of the darkness and into the light.”
Slowly, she drew her hand from his. He let it happen. If he had said too much, if she needed to put some space between them, he would not stop her…but when, instead, she moved even closer and spread her hand gently over first one scar and then the other, his heart lifted.
“Is it still outlawed?”
“No. The government finally saw the dance as what it was and is, an important sacred rite for the tribes of the Plains.”
Her hand was over his heart.
“And did dancing take you into the light?”
Her tone was soft and sweet. He rolled towards her and slid his hand into her hair.
“I’d been a lost kid, sweetheart. The dance, my commitment to what I experienced during it… My life changed.”
Her lips curved in a gentle smile.
“What you mean, Lieutenant, is that you changed. You changed your life.”
“Yeah,” he said, in a way she’d learned meant he was embarrassed and didn’t want to talk anymore.
That was fine with her.
She didn’t want to talk anymore, either.
She wanted to kiss him. Make love with him and to him. Tell him with her hands and mouth and body what
she couldn’t tell him with words.
She loved him.
This strong, gentle, amazing man. She loved him.
I love you, she thought, and she brought her mouth to his.
To his throat.
To the scar on his shoulder and the ones on his chest.
To his flat belly.
“Alessandra,” he said, “wait…”
Why wait, when kissing him everywhere, as he had kissed her everywhere, was what she longed to do?
His penis hardened. Rose against his belly. It was as beautiful, as powerful as the rest of him, and she lowered her head and kissed the tip.
He whispered her name
She licked the silken length. Licked it again. Then she closed her lips around the head and her mouth took him deep just as her body had done.
His hands fisted in her hair. He gave himself up to her and then, when he could take no more, he withdrew from her mouth, cupped her shoulders, rolled her on her back and knelt between her thighs.
“I want to come inside you,” he said in a raw voice, and she arched towards him and he plunged into her and seconds later she cried out. He felt her muscles contract around him and then he stopped thinking and the world shattered.
* * *
The storm was merciless.
The rain beat down on the house. The wind tried to tear it apart.
But whoever built the place had anticipated tropical storms. The house stood fast against whatever the elements hurled at it.
The afternoon passed slowly.
They made lunch, and had it in front of the living room fireplace. Bowls of tomato soup from a can. Macaroni and cheese. It came from a box, but Alessandra found little canisters of spices in the pantry and turned the old standard into a masterpiece.
That was what Tanner called it, anyway.
“A masterpiece,” he said, scraping the last bit of mac from his bowl. “Where were you while I was in college, existing on packages of ramen noodles?”
She laughed.
“I was probably a few years behind you, existing on those same noodles.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” She brought the spoon to her lips and sucked the cheese from it. “To save money, same as you.”
“Your father didn’t pay for your education? But he earns a general’s pay. And that big ranch in Texas…”
“El Sueño. Well, we didn’t know that. He did offer to help with costs, but I didn’t want his help. None of us did. We already knew something was strange about his relationship with our mother. We didn’t want much to do with him by then.” She worked the spoon around the bowl, lifted it to her mouth and sucked off the last of the cheese. “What?” she said, when she saw the expression on Tanner’s face.
Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) Page 17