by Julie Rowe
Of course he would. He was a good man, the kind of man who’d do everything he could to help her get through this until they were safe.
She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t use him like that.
Grief and guilt formed a tsunami of nausea that rolled up from deep in her gut, and she tried to jerk herself out of his tight embrace. How sick did she have to be to want a man only an hour after being in a crash that killed several men, after she’d killed men?
Sharp held her tighter. She fought, pounding his back and using the strength of her thighs to push away from him. He held her tighter still and whispered words of reassurance that made no sense in her ear. He should be angry at her, she hadn’t been able to save Rasker’s life. His friend’s life.
She shoved, punched and pushed until her muscles trembled with exhaustion. Panting, she stilled, waiting for an opportunity for him to relax his vigilance, and finally understood what he was whispering to her.
“It’s okay, Grace. You’re good, honey. You’re good. I’m going to keep you safe, I promise.” Over and over he repeated the words.
“Sharp?” she managed to say, her heartbeat a thunder of drums in her ears.
“The bad guys don’t know where we are. You’re safe.”
“Sharp?” she said again. “I’m okay, sort of, now.”
He sighed and held her even tighter for a moment. “God, I thought you were never coming back.”
“Neither did I.” She trembled and returned his embrace, her hands flexing against his body armor, needing to feel him, solid and real. “What’s wrong with me?”
“We’ve all got ghosts haunting us,” he said, his voice rumbling out of his chest. “You need to let go of a few of yours, that’s all.”
She tilted her face up to tell him to stop placating her, she needed the truth, but never got the chance to say a word.
He kissed her.
His mouth was hard and hot on hers, his tongue stroking past her lips, his taste waking something cold and alone inside her.
So good.
Oh God, no kiss had ever felt this good before.
A voice in the back of her head whispered that this was bad. This would change things between them.
A whip of pleasure silenced the voice, blinded her to everything else, and she kissed him back, groaning, needing this connection to the real world. To him. Her hips rocked against the erection confined to his pants and she lapped up the growl that came out of him as a result.
“Grace.” He jerked her closer, pressing her pelvis against him with one hand on her lower back as he rocked upward.
She wanted that.
She needed him. Now. Her hands clawed at his body armor, trying to rip it off. When that didn’t work she shimmied backward far enough to work her hand between them to find the long length of his cock, then squeezed.
He wrenched his head away, breathing hard. “Fuck.”
Grace nipped and sucked at his neck, but his hands pushed her away so he could catch her gaze with his.
“Grace, honey, slow down,” he crooned to her.
She blinked, desire a fog clouding her mind. “What?”
“Tell me you’re with me, sweetheart.” His words were spoken with the same gentleness a man might use to coax a wary animal or small child.
The fog lifted and reality, with all its cold, harsh truths, intruded.
They’d survived a helicopter crash, killed extremists who would have killed them, and there was no guarantee they would survive the next twenty-four hours, let alone get rescued.
Oh, and her best friend turned out to kiss like something out of her most intimate fantasies.
She still had his cock in her hands.
She stroked him through his clothing. “I don’t want to slow down or stop.” She did it again and got a groan out of him. “Are you with me?”
“Oh, holy fuck, yes,” he hissed between gritted teeth.
She nibbled on his neck again and was rewarded with hands cupping her ass, his fingers curving under her bottom and stroking her through her pants.
Her breathing had become as ragged as her pulse. What he was doing with his fingers had to be illegal.
“What,” he growled into her ear, “will get you off?”
At that moment, he stroked over her, his fingers finding her clit through her clothes, his thumb rimming the sensitive tissues of her body. It didn’t matter that there were several layers of clothing between them. It felt like they were skin to skin.
She shuddered and whispered in his ear, “Penetration.”
He reacted like she’d shocked him with an electrode. He jerked her up and took her mouth in a kiss so carnal she was surprised they hadn’t self-combusted. His tongue fucked her mouth while his hands shifted her back until he could open her pants and get his hand down the front of them. His fingers found her clit and began to circle it.
Then he put the other one down the back of her pants. One long finger entered her and began fucking her hard and fast.
She ground and rocked against him until she thought she was going to lose her mind. The orgasm that resulted blew every circuit she had.
He was still kissing her when she finally came down from the high enough to recognize it was his turn to lose it.
She sucked his tongue into her mouth, opened his pants and took him in hand. Not a small job. He filled her palm, a handful and then some, his length a delicious tease.
He growled into her mouth, took over the kiss, and his hands were everywhere. Touching her, grasping her, making her wish they were naked in a bed with a locked door between them and the rest of the world.
When he came, his whole body shook, his head falling back as he gave himself over to it. She stroked him until the shaking stopped.
His head came down and he looked at her like she was someone he’d never seen before. “Penetration, huh?”
His question cleared the haze clouding her mind.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. She was plastered to him, his taste in her mouth, his lips so close to hers she could feel every breath he exhaled on her face. Her hand full of his cock. “We just...”
Had sex. In a cave. With God only knows how many bad guys trying to kill them.
She didn’t even want to think about the best-friends label she’d stuck on his forehead, now irrevocably ripped off.
He must think her a fool. She let go of his erection, now at only half-mast, and tried to jerk herself out of his arms. “I’m sorry... I shouldn’t have—”
“Whoa,” he interrupted, kissing her temple and gathering her close despite the stiffness of her body. “Nothing to be sorry about. I started it.”
“Then I attacked you.” She rested her head against his shoulder and relaxed a little. How was she ever going to look him in the face again?
“I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting it,” he said. “I figured kissing you might distract you a little from the shit we’d been through, but you know, if I have to defend myself against a beautiful woman and give her an amazing orgasm...” He sighed theatrically. “It’s hard being me.”
She snorted into his shirt. Shock. That must be what she was feeling. There could be no other explanation for the burst of humor grabbing hold of her frazzled nerve endings and calming them. Not only calmed, but made their situation a tiny bit humorous.
She lifted her head and looked him right in the eye. “You are the strangest guy I have ever met.”
He raised a brow. “That’s a good thing, ’cause a minute ago you were trying really hard to fly apart.”
“Yeah. I guess I was.” Now what was she going to do? How was she going to look at his face without remembering the expression he wore when his own orgasm overtook him? She shivered, the pleasure in watching him a glow warming her from the inside out.
/>
“Hey,” he whispered into her ear. “Can you move back a little so I can get at my pocket?”
Her hand was sticky, and she scooted backward, intending to get off him entirely. He stopped her.
“Whoa, hold still.”
She froze. Had she done something wrong?
He opened a pocket and pulled out a package of Wet Wipes. After quickly cleaning himself, he offered her one, as well. He took it from her when she was done and put the used wipes into a small sealable plastic baggy from the same pocket.
“What else have you got in there?” she asked, momentarily distracted.
“Shampoo, hand sanitizer and a little Vaseline.”
She blinked. “Vaseline?”
“Yeah, you never know when you’re going to need to lubricate...something.”
She swallowed hard, staring at his chest. “How bad did we just screw up?”
He didn’t answer right away, and after a few seconds, she finally looked up to meet his gaze.
He considered her for a long moment. “You know I care about you, right?”
She nodded.
“And you care about me?”
She nodded again.
“Then where’s the mistake? ’Cause I don’t see one. We needed each other.”
“That’s it?” She couldn’t quite believe it was as simple as he made it sound.
“Does it have to be complicated? Would you have rather screamed murder at the top of your lungs?”
“I suppose not, it’s just...intimacy isn’t casual for me.” If it was casual for him, she didn’t know how she’d ever look him in the face again.
“Hey.” He leaned down to catch her gaze again. “It’s not for me either.” He kissed her forehead.
He made it sound like sex was a coping mechanism. “Has this ever happened to you before?”
He grunted. “Nope. Never survived a helicopter crash, killed a bunch of bad guys and had to calm down a woman having a panic attack before.”
She nodded. “Okay, you can let go of me now.”
He didn’t just drop his arms, he gradually released her, comfort-rubbing her back before she found herself in front of him on her butt in the sandy dirt of the cave.
The need to crawl right back into his arms was overwhelming.
She stared at him, her whole body trembling, trying to figure out what to say or do next. She had no idea. He’d surprised her, done nothing she’d expected.
She’d done nothing she’d expected. She didn’t know this other Grace, a woman who took her pleasure, and gave it, without hesitation.
He watched her, his shoulders relaxed, his hands limp as they dangled off his knees, but his eyes were far from tranquil. She’d seen that look on his face, the one where the wrinkles around his eyes flexed and the furrow between his brows appeared. It was the one he wore when he was waiting for an attack, or preparing to make one. Battle ready.
Her breathing became deeper, labored, and she had to focus on it before she could calm herself down. “Stop looking at me like I’m a bomb about to go off.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Are you kidding? You already went off. I’m just waiting to see if there are any aftershocks.”
“I’m not going to go screaming out into the night,” she said, then paused. “I don’t think.”
His gaze examined her with unrelenting focus. “Is something else bothering you?”
She didn’t know if he was asking her about the crash, her reaction to their lovemaking or something else entirely. It didn’t matter. She was done talking. “No.”
He didn’t react except to ask, “Who am I?”
“You’re Sharp—Jacob Foster.”
When he didn’t respond, she added, “Special Forces Weapons Sergeant Jacob ‘Sharp’ Foster.”
He shook his head. “I want to know who I am to you.”
The sneaky bastard. Did he think he was some kind of weekend psychologist?
She leaned forward, narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth. “Right now, you’re an irritant, like all men who think asking the same question a different way is going to get you what you want. But when you’re not being an ass, you’re usually my best friend.”
“Yes, exactly, we’re best friends. Something hasn’t been right with you since we arrived at Bostick. What the hell is going on between you and Marshall? Did he try to hurt you?”
Sneaky, sneaky bastard. She opened her mouth to yell at him, to let the anger boiling beneath her skin out into the space between them to batter him with the truths he thought he could easily ferret out.
He spoke before she could utter a sound. “Don’t throw me a bullshit flag. There’s a history there, right? You weren’t alone with him long enough to start a new argument.”
“You’re right, it’s not new, and there isn’t anything anyone can do about it, so, please just drop it.”
He watched her face as she struggled to decide whether she should say anything. “Look, I get it. Shit happens. In my case, my dad beat the hell out of me on a regular basis when I was a kid.” Sharp snorted. “He said it was character building. He wanted me to be tough.” Sharp’s face reflected pain, fear, anger and despair. “Breaking a kid’s arm in three places doesn’t make them tough.”
He’d been abused? Oh God, no. Horror’s frozen fingers wrapped around her throat. “Did you fight back?” It came out as a quivering whisper. She’d fought. When the enemy attacked, she’d killed.
Sharp’s chuckle was unexpected, and it loosened the cold grip cutting off her air. “Not in the traditional sense.”
“Traditional?”
“I didn’t hit back. After he broke my arm, there was a social worker who figured out what happened, but she couldn’t prove it and I wasn’t talking. Instead of badgering me, she saw to it that the community center where I went every day after school offered martial arts training.” He paused. “I forged my dad’s signature on the permission form.”
“What?”
A grin came and went so fast on his face she wasn’t sure she’d seen it. “She made sure I could hit back, if I wanted to.”
“But you said you didn’t.”
“I didn’t. What I did was block every punch my father tried to throw at me. I never hit back. I didn’t shove or kick. I just blocked. Blocked and blocked until my arms were bruised and my father realized he’d succeeded.”
After that litany of pain she couldn’t reconcile the last word with the rest. “Succeeded?”
“I’d become what he wanted...tough.”
What a sad, awful way to grow up. Yet, here he was, healthy, strong and resilient. “What happened then?”
“On my eighteenth birthday I signed up for the army. I haven’t talked to him since.”
“Has he tried to communicate with you?”
“He did at first. He doesn’t anymore.”
“Well, that just sucks.” She released a breath and made a decision. Rationally, she knew he was safe and no threat to her, even if the primitive part of her brain had been programmed by circumstances to protect herself emotionally by whatever means necessary. The only way to reprogram herself was to leave her comfort zone.
Ever since the IED explosion, she’d stayed away from making emotional connections with people. She’d loosened up enough to befriend Sharp and the other men on the A-Team, but it had happened only because they’d ended up training together for nearly a year. Anyone else, she’d kept at arm’s length.
Change of plan. She was going to put herself in his hands. Again.
“Okay. Right.” She swallowed hard, met his gaze and held it. “Here’s who you are to me: my friend, my partner and the one man I trust. I can’t promise I won’t freak out again, because I just did, but I know you’d never hurt me.”
&nbs
p; “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
There was a long silence.
“So,” he said drawing out the word. “Are you ready to talk?”
She tried, she even opened her mouth, but admitting she’d made mistakes that resulted in the death of a fellow soldier, no matter the circumstances, was more than she could do. “Could we compromise? Could we talk about it after I’ve had a chance to...” She glanced around at the cave, at the two of them bloodied, dirty and tired. “Wrap my head around everything?”
He considered her for a long moment. “Yeah, I think I can agree to that.”
Relief was a balm on her frayed nerve endings.
“Next question. Are you going to take off your pants?”
She blinked. “You...are the weirdest guy. It’s a good thing you’re my friend or I’d have to—”
“Kill me?” he finished for her.
“I can’t joke about that right now.” The young soldier’s dead face flashed across her vision. Followed closely by the sight of the bodies of the five men she’d shot today. Other memories surfaced. Memories she wished she could forget. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to joke about it.”
“Fair enough. You look like you’ve got your groove back, so I’ll lay off the jokes, but I reserve the right to go back to being funny if you lose it again.”
She blinked away sudden tears. “I did lose it, didn’t I?”
He shrugged, as if it was all good. “It’s been a pretty shitty day.”
That’s when she noticed he had tear tracks running down his face. “Did you lose it too?”
He snorted. “You’d know if I’d lost it. I prefer something a little more...physical.”
* * *
She sucked in a breath, but responded with a shaky smile. “Right, the martial arts stuff. What do you do to blow off steam, break a bunch of boards?”
She looked so confused, uncertain and shocked, Sharp had to force himself not to take her in his arms and hold her until the sorrow left her face. He wanted to touch her again, to put his hands on her and watch the pleasure make her light up like a fucking Christmas tree again.