“Well, you’re one of the strongest men I know, Dan Taylor. And I’m not just saying that because I’m about to push you a little harder.”
And push him, she did. Dan groaned deeply. For thirty minutes, Cait ruthlessly forced that knee of his to bend. The pain was always there. That scalding sensation felt as if his thigh had ruptured. But the knee moved better and even he could see the progress he’d made. Cait went to retrieve a warm, wet towel for his thigh afterward.
Glancing around as he wiped his sweaty face, Dan saw they were alone. The pool was blue and glassy smooth. It was quiet. He watched her, appreciating the graceful sway of her hips.
“Here,” she murmured, laying it across his thigh, “this should help in a hurry.”
He inhaled her scent along with the spicy cinnamon shampoo he was sure she’d used. As she crouched, her hands gently draping the towel around his thigh, he felt the pain leave, replaced with a fierce need of her in every way. When was he going to get up the guts to talk to her about it? It had to be now, no matter how scared he felt inside. She sat down, legs crossed, her hand moving slowly, lightly across the damp, hot towel. This was new to Dan. He looked down into Cait’s face and saw her chewing on her lower lip. She only did that when something was really bothering her. Her hand felt so damned good on him, even if there was thick towel between it and him.
“When you touch me, Cait, the pain goes away,” he told her. Dan saw the flash of surprise in her eyes as she tilted her head up to catch his gaze. “Don’t you think that’s pretty awesome?”
Her hand stilled for a moment. “It is,” she admitted.
“Do other guys tell you that?”
“No, not hardly. After they’ve worked with me for a while, they know what’s coming and it’s not pleasant. You’ve seen that.”
“The pain goes away,” he told her in a low voice. Dan reached out, nestling some loose strands of her red hair behind her ear. He was taking such a risk. It was an intimate gesture. There was some shock on her face, and yet, as his fingers grazed her small ear, her eyes turned molten for a split second. No, he wasn’t imagining this. He’d seen she liked his touch. Her lips parted briefly as he caressed her hair, smoothing it against her scalp. Well, if she didn’t get it now, she never would. His heart was pounding as Cait studied him. Just one touch. There was so much in that touch. Would Cait get it? Would she accept his small act of intimacy with her? Dan knew it was coming out of nowhere.
“Okay,” she whispered in a strained voice, “what’s going on, Dan?” Cait stilled, her ear tingling wildly in the wake of Dan’s unexpected touch. She licked her lower lip, trying to read his mind, trying to read the intent behind that gesture. She forced herself to continue her light, stroking touch across the hot towel.
“Did you like that, Cait?” His heart was pounding in his ears. He could barely hear anything while he waited for her answer. Throat tight, Dan waited, feeling like a man waiting for the executioner’s ax to slice down on his neck.
“I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t.”
It was his turn to look surprised. His heart bounced hard. Dan had to be honest with her. Cait deserved nothing less. “What if...what if I told you that when I first met you, I instantly fell in love with you?”
Cait’s lips parted, shock in her eyes and then, something else...something Dan didn’t dare believe.
“What if I told you that when we were introduced, I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever met, Dan? That I felt my heart opening to you in such a way that it scared the hell out of me?”
Dan frowned. “I scared you?”
“In a good way,” Cait corrected. “You looked like a warrior, maybe a throwback to the time of knights and ladies.”
Dan wanted to so badly lean over, cup Cait’s chin, lean down and kiss her senseless. To taste those naturally pink lips just once. Just once. “I knew feeling like I did toward you, Cait, was wrong.” He swallowed, looking away for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I was eighteen. You were slightly younger. I was so full of myself. But I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.” He grimaced and added, “When I was on the football team in high school, I had my pick of any girl I wanted. The six of us, the Sidewinders, were heroes and champs to everyone in Rush City. Especially to the girls at the high school.”
She smiled, moving her hand a little more firmly against his thigh. Excitement thrummed through her as she tried to maintain a neutral expression, but her heart was doing backflips over what he’d just said. She loved Dan. It was that simple and that complicated. Her throat ached with wanting to say those words: I love you. I’ve always loved you. I never stopped loving you. “I imagine you were a very, very popular boy,” she deadpanned.
“Let’s put it this way—by the time I left and joined the Army, Cait, I knew my way around a woman. Which is why, when I met you, I felt like the floor had fallen out from beneath me. But you were seventeen. I couldn’t do anything except appreciate you from a distance.”
“Well,” she drawled, “there was Ben. He was fierce about making sure I never looked at a soldier. Even then he was drilling into me to stay away from military types.”
“Yeah.” Dan sighed, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. “At the time, I was okay with that because you were so young, beautiful and mature for your age.”
“I was always the serious one in our family,” she admitted with a half smile. “Ben was the joker, like you.”
“Yeah, we played a lot of jokes on one another over the years, that’s for sure.”
“When I turned eighteen, Ben made me promise to never date a soldier and I didn’t. I began to date civilian guys from the university as I worked to get my degree in physical therapy.”
Dan saw the sadness in her eyes and heard it in her voice. “I don’t think the quality of a man is predicated on whether he’s a civilian or in the military.”
“I didn’t, either, but I wasn’t about to go back on my word to Ben.” Cait got to her knees and positioned herself so that her hands could gently knead his thick thigh muscles through the warm towel. “I found out real quick, like Ben had told me, that too many guys were after one thing—sex. I hated being used and caught on quick. After I graduated with my degree, I got a job here at Tripler. I dated an ortho doctor...”
“Tim, as I recall?”
“Yes.” She shot him a look. “You’ve got a good memory.”
“Well,” Dan said, “I remember coming off deployment to spend thirty days’ leave here in Honolulu with you and Ben. You’d just broken up with Tim after being with him a year.”
She frowned. “And I remember when I broke down crying there on the beach about it, you were the one who came over and held me.” She couldn’t help but look up at him, see his sadness for her.
“You were hurt, Cait. I wanted to help you any way I could.”
“You did. More than you could ever know, Dan.” Because she’d had a crush on him for so long. Look but don’t touch. Dan was off-limits. Ben would not have forgiven her if she’d been honest and told Dan the truth.
“If memory serves, you had three serious relationships,” Dan said. “Ben and I thought for sure you’d marry one of the two docs.”
Shrugging, Cait moved her fingers down below the towel, slowly kneading the heavy hamstring muscles in his leg. “I guess I didn’t love either of them. I tried, but it didn’t work.”
“They were both good men, Cait. I know. Ben showed me one of your emails one time when we were at our FOB—he was all excited about Wes asking you to marry him.”
“I couldn’t go through with it, Dan. I just couldn’t. I know Ben was thrilled. My mother was doing a dance. She wants grandchildren.”
“Were you getting pressure to settle down?”
“Yes. My parents felt I should seriously be thinking about marrying and having lots of children. My mother, in particular, but my father is old-fashioned, too. You know the type—marry for security and all that stuff.
I couldn’t do that, Dan. I’m just not built that way. I never was, but it took me until my midtwenties to mature enough to realize it.”
“It seemed like every time Ben and I got home, you were going through some kind of emotional breakup with another man.”
Giving him a wry look, she said, “You’re right. And you were always there for me, Dan. Ben would chew me out in private for dumping another guy. He didn’t understand me or why I couldn’t marry the guy. But you—” her voice grew low with rich feeling “—you’d catch me looking sad. Or maybe when the three of us were surfing together, you’d sense I wasn’t happy.”
“I’ve always been sensitive to your moods, Cait. But you’re easy to read, sweetheart.” He reached out, barely grazing her flushed cheek.
Her breath caught. Her lower body tightened. The pad of his thumb was calloused, her skin skittering with fire, the pleasure like sweet honey drizzling into her clenched lower body. She lifted her lashes, holding his stormy gaze, noticing the way his mouth pursed as he stared intently down at her.
“W-why are you calling me sweetheart now, Dan? You’ve never done that before.” Her voice sounded wobbly even to her. Her heart was pounding and fear pressed down on her chest—she was afraid of what he might say. Searching his open expression, she didn’t feel him putting on his game face, which is what he did most of the time when it came to deeply personal questions. Dan would always avoid answering them by joking and teasing with her, instead. This time the seriousness in his eyes seared her from her heart down to her aching center.
“I told you—I’ve changed, Cait. Maybe because I’m older. I’ve done a lot, seen a lot. I think I know what’s really important in my life now.”
Her breath hitched and her eyes widened slightly at the growl in his tone. She watched as he slowly sat up, his hand slipping beneath her chin, angling her face upward. Dan was going to kiss her! Suddenly, her emotions went wild with a fierceness that made her lean forward to eagerly meet his descending mouth. He was really going to kiss her! How long had she waited for this moment, thinking it would never come? Her fingers stilled and came to rest on his thigh, being careful to put no weight upon it.
Cait felt the moistness of Dan’s breath as it washed across her nose and cheek. Her lashes closed as she strained toward his descending mouth. His other hand came to rest against her other cheek, guiding her, holding her tenderly as his mouth barely brushed hers.
His kiss was so light, and yet devastating to her that her heart threw open the doors, wild with joy over their contact. Cait wanted more. Much more. She moved another inch forward, meeting his mouth again. This time, she slid her lips shyly against his. Instantly, she heard Dan groan, felt his fingers grip her chin a little more firmly. He tasted so male. He felt so powerful and yet Cait could feel him watching for her every reaction. When his tongue moved against her lower lip, she whimpered softly, her hand lifting and coming to rest against his expansive chest, the T-shirt damp beneath her fingertips as she dug them into the fabric.
He deepened the kiss slowly, artfully and absorbed every sound that rose from her throat. His mouth created need and set a fire within her as he moved his lips from one corner of her mouth to the other, worshipping her. And when he slid his tongue between her parting lips, she froze with pleasure, drowning in his heat, the sensations stabbing downward into her taut lower body. Dampness collected between her thighs as he adored her mouth, his tongue gently engaging hers, inviting her to join him in the sensual foreplay.
Her breathing became choppy, shallow, her fingers digging insistently into his T-shirt, the muscles of his chest reacting to each touch. He smelled male, he smelled of perspiration and the Ivory soap he used. It was an aphrodisiac to Cait and she hungrily returned Dan’s kiss, wanting so much more.
Cait was trembling as Dan slowly eased his mouth from hers. As she opened her eyes, she was lost in the stormy gray of his, which were focused only on her. He released her chin, his hands framing her face as he seemed to drink her into his heart and memory. The feeling was so profound, so life changing, that all Cait could do was stare up into his eyes. She’d never wanted a man more than she did Dan. How many dreams had she had of him? Of her loving him? Pleasing him? And him pleasing her.
Because now, at her age and experience, Cait could tell just by the way Dan caressed her, was tender in his advances, that he would be a consummate lover, interested in pleasing her first, not last. Not like the other men from her past who were more interested in climaxing first and then, maybe, pleasing her if they weren’t too tired afterward. It didn’t always happen, and often Cait had gone away frustrated and dissatisfied. All her screamingly alive senses told her that Dan would make her pleasure a priority, bring her along, engage her fire, understand that she was slower to come alive than a male. Dan had always been patient with her, sometimes the student, sometimes the teacher. But now, as always, he was her equal, introducing himself to her. Her heart thrilled at his bold move to let her know he wanted her.
“That was a nice hello kiss,” he rasped. He released her and sat up, but he was unwilling to break the connection with Cait. He saw clearly the arousal burning in her eyes. Even though she wore a bra and those ugly blue scrubs, Dan could see that her nipples had hardened. His hands itched to curve around her breasts, expose them. He wanted to suckle her awaiting nipples, hear her crying out with pleasure, wanted to give her so much more. He moved his fingers lightly through her hair, taming the strands into place here and there. Cait’s eyes were clouded with arousal and he saw her struggling to come back from that wet, torrid kiss they’d just shared.
“That was...” she whispered, touching her wet lower lip, “so nice...”
Dan studied her in the silence around them. Cait’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes radiant with yearning for him, so much unspoken between them still. “Let me come over to your house, Cait. The kind of food I want to share with you, though, isn’t coming off a stove. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Because things have changed between us.”
“We need privacy to really talk about this...about us,” Dan pressed.
Cait looked around. “This isn’t the place to do it,” she agreed quietly. Pushing her fingers through her tamed hair, she took a deep breath. “I didn’t know, Dan. I didn’t know until just now how you felt toward me.”
“Sweetheart, I’ve been trying to tell you this for a while. I wasn’t sure my subtle signals were reaching you.”
“Oh, they did, Dan, but I thought I was making them up. Because I wanted you so much, I thought I was reading what I wanted to read into it. I didn’t trust myself to read you accurately.”
Wry humor sparkled in her eyes. “Funny,” he rumbled, “I saw things in your eyes, felt hints in your touch, and I thought I was making it up, too, Cait.”
“Because we were taught we could never want one another,” she whispered rawly, sliding her hand into his. “I was so afraid, Dan...afraid that if I showed you how I really felt toward you, you’d say no...”
He gripped her hand in his, wanting so badly to kiss her again. Kiss her and take her down on the blue mat and love her until she melted into his arms. “I was thinking the same thing, sweetheart.” He squeezed her fingers gently. “Let’s talk more when we’re at your house.”
She looked up, giving him a brushing kiss on his cheek before she rose to her full height. “There’s so much to say...to explore with one another,” she promised in a husky voice. “Tomorrow evening, I want you to come over for dinner.”
* * *
The next day Dan sat in a pale green contemporary lounge chair. Everything in Cait’s home reflected her minimalist style. She had moved the chair around so that he could see from the living room where she worked in her U-shaped kitchen. It was an open-concept home and, although small, it appeared large and airy. The lounge chair was modern and S-shaped so that as he sat in it, his legs were propped up, allowing him to fully relax.
It felt damn good to be dressed in
his own clothes—a black-and-white Hawaiian flower shirt, a pair of tan loose-fitting cargo pants and sandals. He was back into his surfer-dude Hawaiian gear and Dan couldn’t begin to tell Cait how grateful he was to her. After his PT session, he’d gone into the heated whirlpool to help his aching leg.
Afterward she had driven over to his small apartment. He lived near the Army base and he’d given her the key. Cait had brought some of his civilian clothes to Tripler. Then, behind closed curtains, she’d helped him dress in them instead of that damned blue gown with the loose-fitting cotton pants everyone wore at the hospital.
This time, she was not embarrassed as she pulled the covers off the frame above his legs. He wore nothing beneath those covers and it was clear he was partially erect. Her heated smile as she’d carefully pulled the loose-fitting cargo pants over his lower body, told him all he needed to know.
Cait had taken him home with her at five that evening. Trussed up in that special external support system, his thigh screamed at him like a banshee, but he’d been able to slowly fold his tall frame and get into her Prius. The comfortable lounge chair at her home was wide enough for him to sit in without feeling as though he might tip over one side of it or the other. He was a big man and didn’t always fit in normal-sized furniture, but it was as if this lounge chair were made especially for him and his wounded leg.
Cait had already changed out of her medical uniform, trading it in for a dark blue, green and purple sarong that damn near made him leap out of that chair and take her right then and there on the highly polished blond bamboo floor.
She had taken her red hair and piled it up into a loose topknot with two gold combs. His heart leaped when he saw she’d tucked three white plumeria blossoms above her right ear. It wasn’t lost on him that when a woman in the islands did that, it was a signal to young males that she was single and open to a relationship with the right man. He’d never seen Cait wear flowers on the right side of her head before. She looked beautiful, alluring and incredibly open to him. Had their kiss from yesterday evening opened the door of possibility? He’d barely slept last night, his mind and body in utter turmoil, pitching from hell to heaven and back. Cait had returned his kiss. What did that mean? How far was she willing to go with him?
Course of Action: Crossfire Page 8