He knew that nightgown. He'd seen it hanging on the back of her bathroom door the last time he and Wes had visited. He'd touched it by mistake when he'd come out of the shower, thinking it was his towel. It wasn't. It was very soft to the touch.
Her body, beneath it, would be even softer.
"Want me to guess what you're wearing?" she asked.
Bobby couldn't speak.
"A towel," she said. "Just a towel. Because I bet you just showered. You like to shower at night to cool down before you go to bed, right? If I touched you," her voice dropped another notch, "your skin would be clean and cool and smooth.
"And your hair's down—it's probably still a little damp, too. If I were there, I'd brush it out for you. I'd kneel behind you on the bed and—"
"If you were here," Bobby said, interrupting her, his voice rough to his own ears, "you wouldn't be brushing my hair."
"What would I be doing?" she shot back at him.
Images bombarded him. Colleen, flashing him her killer smile just before she lowered her head and took him into her mouth. Colleen, lying back on his bed, hair spread on his pillows, breasts peaked with desire, waiting for him, welcoming him as he came to her. Colleen, head back as she straddled him, as he filled her, hard and fast and deep and Reality intervened. Phone sex. Dear sweet heaven. What was she doing to him? Beneath the towel—yes, she was right about the towel he wore around his waist—he was completely aroused.
"What would you be doing? You'd be calling a cab to take you home," he told her.
"No, I wouldn't. I'd kiss you," she countered, "and you'd pick me up and carry me to your bed."
"No, I wouldn't," he lied. "Colleen, I have...I really have to go now. Really."
"Your towel would drop to the floor," she said, and he couldn't make himself hang up the phone, both dreading and dying to hear what she would say next. "And after you put me down, you'd let me look at you." She drew in a breath, and it caught—a soft little gasp that made him ache from wanting her. "I think you're the most beautiful man I've ever seen."
He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. "I think you're crazy." His voice cracked.
"No. Oh, your shoulders are so wide, and your chest and arms...mmmmm." She made a sound deep in her throat that was so sexy he was sure he was going to die.
Stop this. Now. Somehow he couldn't make his lips form the words.
"And the muscles in your stomach, leading down to..." She made another sound, a sigh, this time. "Do you know how incredibly good you look naked? There's...so much of you. I'm a little nervous, but you smile at me, and your eyes are so soft and beautiful, I know you'd never hurt me."
Bobby stood up. His sudden, jerky movement was reflected in the mirror above the dresser, on the other side of the dimly lit room. He looked ridiculous standing there, his towel tenting out in front of him.
He must've made some anguished noise, because she quieted him. "Shhh. It's okay."
But it wasn't. Nothing about this was okay. Still, he couldn't hang up. He couldn't make her stop.
He couldn't stand the sight of himself like that, standing there like some absurd, pathetic clown, and he took the towel off, flinging it across the room. Only now he stood there naked. Naked and aching for someone he couldn't have. Not really.
"After I look at you for a long time..." Her voice was musical. Seductive. He could have listened to her read a phone book and gotten turned on. This was driving him mad. "I unbutton my nightgown. I've got nothing on underneath, nothing at all, and you know it. But you don't rush me. You just sit back and watch. One button at a time.
"Finally, I'm done, but...I'm shy." She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was very
small. "I'm afraid you won't...like me." She was serious. She honestly thought "Are you kidding? I love your body," Bobby told her. "I dream about you wearing that nightgown. I dream about—"
Oh, my God. What was he doing?
"Oh, tell me," she breathed. "Please, Bobby, tell me what you dream."
"What do you think I dream?" he asked harshly, angry at her, angry at himself, knowing he still wasn't man enough to hang up the phone and end this, even though he knew damn well that he should. "I dream exactly what you're describing right now. You in my bed." His voice caught on his words. "Ready for me."
"I am," she told him. "Ready for you. Completely. You're still watching, so I...I touch myself—where I'm dying for you to touch me."
She made a noise that outdid all of the other noises she'd been making, and Bobby nearly started to cry. Oh, man, he couldn't do this. This was Wes's sister on the other end of this phone. This was wrong.
He turned his back to the mirror, unable to look at his reflection.
"Please," she gasped, "oh, please, tell me what you dream when you dream about me."
Oh, man. "Where did you learn to do this?" He had to know.
"I didn't," she said breathlessly. "I'm making it up as I go along. You want to know what I dream about you?"
No. Yes. It didn't matter. She didn't wait for him to answer.
"My fantasy is that the doorbell rings, and you're there when I answer it. You don't say anything. You just come inside and lock the door behind you. You just look at me and I know. This is it. You want me.
"And then you kiss me, and it starts out so slowly, so delicately, but it builds and it grows and it takes over everything—the whole world gets lost in the shadow of this one amazing kiss. You touch me and I touch you, and I love touching you, but I can't get close enough, and somehow you know that, and you make my clothes disappear. And you still kiss me and kiss me, and you don't stop kissing me until I'm on my back on my bed, and you're—" her voice dropped to a whisper "—inside of me."
"That's what I dream," Bobby whispered, too, struggling to breathe. "I dream about being inside you." Hell. He was going to burn in hell for saying that aloud.
Her breath was coming in gasps, too. "I love those dreams," she told him. "It feels so good..."
"Yes..."
"Oh, please," she begged. "Tell me more...."
Tell her... When he closed his eyes, he could see Colleen beneath him, beside him, her body straining to meet his, her breasts filling his hands and his mouth, her hair a fragrant curtain around his face, her skin smooth as silk, her mouth soft and wet and delicious, her hips moving in rhythm with his....
But he could tell her none of that. He couldn't even begin to put it into words.
"I dream of touching you," he admitted hoarsely. "Kissing you. Everywhere." It was woefully inadequate, compared to what she'd just described.
But she sighed as if he'd given her the verbal equivalent of the Hope Diamond.
So he tried again, even though he knew he shouldn't. He stood there, listening to himself open his mouth and say things he shouldn't say to his best friend's sister.
"I dream of you on top of me." His voice sounded distant and husky, thick with desire and need. Sexy. Who would have thought he'd be any good at this? "So I can watch your face, Colleen." He dragged out her name, taking his time with it, loving the way it felt in his mouth, on his tongue. Colleen. "So I can look into your eyes, your beautiful eyes. Oh, I love looking into your eyes, Colleen, while you..."
"Oh, yes," she gasped. "Oh, Bobby, oh—"
Oh, man.
11
Just after midnight the phone rang.
Colleen picked it up on the first ring, knowing it was Bobby, knowing that he wasn't calling for a replay of what they'd just done.
Pretended to do.
Sort of.
She didn't bother even to say hello. "Are you okay?"
He'd been so freaked out earlier that she'd made up an excuse to get off the phone, thinking he needed time alone to get his heart and lungs working again.
But now she was wondering if that hadn't been a mistake. Maybe what he'd really needed was to talk.
"I don't know," he answered her. "I'm trying to figure out which level o
f hell I'm going to be assigned to."
"He's able to make a joke," Colleen said. "Should I take that as a good sign?"
"I wasn't joking. Dammit, Colleen, I can't do that ever again. I can't. I shouldn't have even—"
"All right," she said. "Look, Guilt Man, let it go. I steamrolled over you. You didn't stand a chance. Besides, it's not as if it was real."
"No?" he said. "That's funny, because from this end, it sounded pretty authentic."
"Well, yeah," she said. "Sure. On a certain level it was. But the truth is, your participation was nice, but it wasn't necessary. All I ever really have to do is think about you. If you want to know the truth, this isn't the first time I've let my fantasies of you and me push me over the edge—"
"Oh, my God, don't tell me that!"
"Sorry." Colleen made herself stop talking. She was making this worse, telling him secrets that made her blush when she stopped to think about it. But his feelings of guilt were completely unwarranted.
"I've got to leave," he told her, his voice uncharacteristically unsteady. "I have to get out of here. I've decided—I'm going down to Little Creek early. I'll be back in a few days, with the rest of Alpha Squad."
With Wes.
One step forward, two steps back.
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't go into detail with my brother about—"
"I'm going to tell him that I didn't touch you. Much. But that I wanted to."
"Because it's not like I make a habit of doing that— phone sex, I mean. And since you obviously didn't like it, I'm not going to—"
"No," he interrupted her. "You know, if I'm Guilt Man, then you're Miss Low Self-Esteem. How could you even think I didn't like it? I loved it. Every excruciating minute. You are unbelievably hot, and you completely killed me. If you got one of those numbers, you could make a fortune, but you damn well better not."
"You loved it, but you don't want to do it again?"
Bobby was silent on the other end of the line, and Colleen waited, heart in her throat.
“It's not enough," he finally said.
"Come over," she said, hearing her desire coat her voice. "Please. It's not too late to—"
"I can't."
"I don't understand why not. If you want me, and I want you, why can't we get together? Why does this have to be so hard?"
"If we were a pair of rabbits, sure," Bobby said. "It would be simple. But we're not, and it's not. This attraction between us...it's all mixed up with what I want, which is not to get involved with someone who lives three thousand miles away from me, and with what I want for you, which is for you to live happily ever after with a good man who loves you, and children if you want them, and a career that makes you jump out of bed with pleasure and excitement every single morning for the rest of your life. And if that's not complicated enough, there's also what I know Wes wants for you—which is more than just a man who loves you, but someone who will take care of you, too. Someone who's not in the Teams, someone who's not even in the Navy. Someone who can buy you presents and vacations and houses and cars without having to get a bank loan. Someone who'll be there, every morning, without fail."
"He also wants to make sure that I don't have any fun at all, the hypocrite. Making noise about how I have to wait until I'm married, when he's out there getting it on with any and every woman he can."
"He loves you," Bobby told her. "He's scared you'll end up pregnant and hating your life. Abandoned by some loser. Or worse—tied to some loser forever."
"As if I'd sleep with a loser."
Bobby laughed softly. "Yeah, well, I think I might fall into Wes's definition of a loser, so yes, you would."
"Ho," Colleen said. "Who's Mr. Low Self-Esteem now?"
"Wes's definition," he said again. "Not necessarily mine."
"Or mine," she countered. "It's definitely not mine."
"So, okay," he told her. "We toss the fact that I want to make love to you for about seventy-two hours straight into that mess of what you want and I want and Wes wants. Boom. What happens upon impact? You get lucky, I get lucky, which would probably be transcendental—no, not probably, definitely. So that's great...or is it? Because all I can see, besides the immediate gratification of us both getting off, is a boatload of pain.
"I risk getting too...I don't know, attached to someone who lives three thousand miles away from me.
"I risk my relationship with your brother....
"You risk your relationship with your brother....
"You risk losing any opportunities that might be out there of actually meeting someone special, because you're messing around with me."
Maybe you're the special one. Colleen didn't dare say it aloud. He obviously didn't think so.
"I've got a flight into Norfolk that leaves Logan just after hours," he said quietly. "I'm going into the Relief Aid office in the morning. I've got a meeting set up at hours to talk about the security we're going to be providing in Tulgeria—and what we expect from your group in terms of following the rules we set up. I figured you'd want to sit in on that."
"Yeah," Colleen said. "I'll be there." And how weird was that going to be—meeting his eyes for the first time since they'd...since she'd... She took a deep breath. "I'll borrow a truck, after, and give you a lift to the airport."
"That's okay. I'll take the T." He spoke quickly.
"What, are you afraid I'm going to jump you, right there in the truck, in the airport's short-term parking lot?"
"No," he said. He laughed, but it was grim instead of amused. "I'm afraid I'm going to jump you. From here on in, Colleen, we don't go anywhere alone."
"But—"
"I'm sorry. I don't trust myself around you."
"Bobby—"
"Good night, Colleen."
"Wait," she said, but he'd already hung up.
One step forward, two steps back.
Okay. Okay. She just had to figure out a way to get him alone. Before —-: p.m.—tomorrow.
How hard could that be?
The Relief Aid office was hushed and quiet when Bobby came in at . The radio—which usually played classic rock at full volume—was off. No one was packing boxes of canned goods and other donations. People stood, talking quietly in small groups.
Rene pushed past him, making a beeline for the ladies' room, head down. She was crying.
What the...?
Bobby looked around, more carefully this time, but Colleen was nowhere in sight.
He saw Susan Fitzgerald, the group's leading volunteer, sitting at the row of desks on the other side of the room. She was on the phone, and as he watched, she hung up. She just sat there, then, rubbing her forehead and her eyes behind her glasses.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"Another quake hit Tulgeria this morning," she told him. "About a.m., our time. I'm not sure how it happened, whether it was from a fire caused by downed power lines or from the actual shock waves, but one of the local terrorist cells had an ammunitions stockpile, and it went up in a big way. The Tulgerian government thought they were under attack and launched a counteroffensive."
Oh, God. Bobby could tell from the look on Susan's face that the worst news was coming. He braced himself.
"St. Christof’s—our orphanage—sustained a direct hit from some sort of missile," Susan told him. "We lost at least half of the kids."
Oh, Christ. "Does Colleen know?"
Susan nodded. "She was here when the news came in. But she went home. Her little girl—the one she'd been writing to—was on the list of children who were killed."
Analena. Oh, God. Bobby closed his eyes.
"She was very upset," Susan told him. "Understandably."
He straightened up and started for the door. He knew damn well that Colleen's apartment was the last place he should go, but it was the one place in the world where he absolutely needed to be right now. To hell with his rules.
To hell with everything.
"Bobby," Susan called after him. "She
told me you're leaving for Virginia in a few hours. Try to talk her into coming back here when you go. She really shouldn't be alone."
Colleen let the doorbell ring the same way she'd let the phone ring.
She didn't want to talk to anyone, didn't want to see anyone, didn't want to have to try to explain how a little girl she'd never met could have owned such an enormous piece of her heart.
She didn't want to do anything but lie here, on her bed, in her room, with the shades pulled down, and cry over the injustice of a world in which orphanages were bombed during a war that really didn't exist.
Yet, at the same time, the last thing she wanted was to be alone. Back when she was a kid, when her world fell apart and she needed a shoulder to cry on, she'd gone to her brother Ethan. He was closest in age to her—the one Skelly kid who didn't have that infamous knee-jerk temper and that smart-mouthed impatience.
She'd loved him, and he'd died, too. What was it with her...that made the people she loved disappear? She stared up at her ceiling, at the cracks and chips that she'd memorized through too many sleepless nights. She should have learned by now just to stop loving, to stop taking chances. Yeah, like that would ever happen. Maybe she was stupid, but that was one lesson she refused to learn.
Every single day, she fell in love over and over. When she walked past a little girl with a new puppy. When a baby stared at her unblinkingly on the trolley and then smiled, a big, drooly, gummy grin. When she saw an elderly couple out for a stroll, still holding hands. She lost her heart to them all.
Still, just once, she wanted more than to be a witness to other people's happy endings. She wanted to be part of one.
She wanted Bobby.
She didn't care when the doorbell stopped ringing and the phone started up again, knowing it was probably Bobby, and crying even harder because she'd pushed too hard and now he was leaving, too.
Seal Team Ten Page 216