Once and For All: An American Valor Novel

by Cheryl Etchison

  “I can make up my own mind about what I do or do not want.”

  “I agree.” Still refusing to make eye contact, he pulled out a beer and slammed the door shut.

  “Then what’s the problem? We’re adults.” Right now though, it took every ounce of her self-restraint to not stomp her feet and wave her fists like the little girl she used to be. “We can have sex if we want to. And it doesn’t have to mean a thing.”

  Danny popped the can open and stared into the top, in no hurry to take a drink. “You deserve better than that.”

  Argh. She wanted to scream. And she would have if it hadn’t been so late at night and she didn’t want to disturb the neighbors. The man was so unbelievably frustrating, she wanted to strangle him.

  She stomped off to the bedroom and grabbed one of his hoodies from the closet, throwing it on over her pajama top. Then she slipped on her shoes and grabbed her purse.

  “You can take the bed,” she spat. “I’ll sleep on the couch when I get back.”

  That got his attention and finally he looked at her. “Where are you going?”

  On the way to the door, she grabbed the car keys from off the breakfast bar. “For a drive. I need some air.”

  “Bree, please don’t go. I’m sorry.”

  She stopped at the door and turned to face him. “Sorry for what, Danny? For not desiring me? For not taking advantage of the situation even though I want you to? I can hardly blame you for that. You’re a good man. Maybe too good.”

  Bree opened the door, only to have it slammed shut again and stay that way as Danny pressed one strong hand against it. Her gaze trailed from that hand to his wrist, along the flexed muscles in his forearm to his shoulder, finally, turning enough to see his face. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or hurt or something else altogether.

  “What the hell are you doing, Danny?”

  “Not letting you go.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  DANNY PUSHED HER against the door, trapping her there with both hands. “You think I’m a good man? I’m not.” He slid his hands from her shoulders, over her breasts to her hips, finally filling his palms with the sweet curves of her ass. He lifted her from the floor, leveraged her back against the door and pulled her knees up to his waist. “You think I don’t want you?” He ground his erection into the warm heaven between her thighs. The sound of her sharp inhale made him crazy, driving him to do it over and over only to hear her make the sound again and again.

  “I’ve been walking around in a fucking daze because you’re in my head so much. I can’t think of anything else other than spreading your legs wide and tasting every inch of you or of burying myself deep inside you.” He buried his face in her neck, trying to regain some semblance of control. “Jesus, I was so lost in the thought of you this past week I’m surprised I wasn’t shot during live fire training.”

  “You’re joking.” Her words were hot and breathy on his skin as he bit the tender flesh beneath her ear. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Not even the slightest bit.”

  She must have believed him this time, grasping his face with both hands as she ravaged his mouth. And he was lost. In her warmth, her touch. Her fingernails scraped across his neck and scalp. With his hair cut so short, she couldn’t grip it in her hands so she took hold of his ears instead. Her tongue stroked and tangled with his, allowing him a taste of her as she slid her hands down his throat, across his collarbones, alternating between smoothing over his skin and clutching at his flesh. She broke the kiss and retreated just enough to catch his lower lip between her teeth. Her bite was far from gentle, sending a shock of electricity throughout his body and awakening every nerve.

  “Not here,” he groaned. With his hands cupping her bottom, he stepped away from the door and headed for the bedroom.

  Wrapping her arms tight around his neck, she pressed herself against him, leaving no space between. “I was looking forward to the door,” she whispered. She caught his earlobe between her lips, flicking it with her tongue as he walked them down the hallway.

  “So anyone walking past would hear? No way.”

  With his luck, someone would show up wanting something. Like his brother, for instance. The guy who had the shittiest timing in the world. The same guy who had taken every opportunity to remind him how this thing between him and Bree was a huge fucking mistake.

  Although they had the apartment all to themselves, he kicked the bedroom door shut behind them. Blocking out Mike. Blocking out the whole rest of the world. In here, it was just the two of them, where nothing and no one could ever come between them.

  With her still in his arms, he climbed onto the bed, walking on his knees until he reached the middle, setting her there.

  She hastily reached for the zipper pull on the hoodie she’d commandeered from his closet minutes earlier. He pulled her hands away from the fastener, holding them at her sides beneath his. While he’d held her against the door, she had him at the disadvantage. Now it was his turn.

  Danny leaned in but purposely avoided her lips. He kissed her cheek, her jaw. Grasping the zipper pull between his fingers, he eased it down, taking his damn sweet time. He didn’t need to look in her eyes to see her impatience. He could practically feel the frustration rolling off her in waves. But without knowing what the future held for the two of them, it was better to believe they might only have this one chance. He absolutely refused to rush, sliding his hands into the sleeves at her shoulders, his palms smoothing over her flesh as he pushed the fabric from her arms.

  “Danny, please.” Her chest rose and fell heavier with each uneven breath.

  He placed a kiss upon the tender skin at the hollow of her throat. “In a hurry? Have somewhere you need to be?” A soft moan escaped her mouth as his lips skimmed across her collarbone to the lacy strap of her tank top.

  “Absolutely not,” she replied. He curled his fingers around the fabric, pulling it over the cap of her shoulder, his mouth tasting the newly revealed flesh. “But it’s been so long.”

  A thrill ran through him knowing that. He wasn’t stupid enough to think she hadn’t been with anyone else in the past ten years. But a part of him deep down inside liked the idea of being her first of sorts for the second time in her life. As if that made any damn sense.

  Danny grasped the hem of her tank top and she followed his lead. Bree raised up her arms as he lifted it over her head and tossed it to the floor. Almost instantly, her hands folded over her belly.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.”

  She was trying to hide the long scar he’d seen only minutes before. The same one that had sent him running from the room. Not because he found it ugly. Instead, it served as a reminder of all the pain she’d already suffered and he feared adding to it. Then she chased after him. Strong. Determined. Ready to fight. Suddenly, that scar resembled one of his own. A sign of strength instead of weakness. Just like him, she’d been battle tested and wounded. And just like him, she’d pushed her way through and made it to the other side.

  And his heart could no longer resist her.

  “I disagree,” he whispered against her lips. “I think you were absolutely right the first time. This is a very good idea.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to look at him. Taking hold of her hands, Danny kissed the center of each palm then guided her to link her hands around his neck. Leveraging his weight on his hands, he eased her back until she lay flat on the bed. With each kiss, each breath they shared, she relaxed beneath him.

  He moved down her body, nuzzling the soft underside of her breast. She gasped the moment his teeth scraped her taut nipple then sighed softly when he laved it with his tongue. That hadn’t changed. Those were the same sounds she made years ago and his body recognized each one. He eased his way down her body, tasting her skin as he went. He ran his tongue just above the edge of her plai
d pajama pants, before hooking his fingers into the waistband. She lifted her hips from off the bed, allowing him to pull her bottoms down then off her legs, revealing nothing, or everything, depending upon how one looked at it. She’d gone commando and he couldn’t help but smile to himself. He settled between her knees, pressing chaste kisses to her inner thigh, her hip, to the rosy pink scar marring the pale skin of her stomach. Every muscle in her body tensed. And not in a good way.

  He pressed up on his hands to meet her eyes. She was almost scowling, her forehead wrinkled, and a little crease had appeared between her brows. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “What makes you think—”

  “Christ, woman.” He smiled. “The smoke alarms are about to go off because the gears in your head are grinding so hard.”

  She dramatically flung one hand over her face, covering her eyes. “Just so you know, it may not happen.”

  He waited for her to elaborate, but she never did.

  “It? As in orgasm? Why would you think that?”

  She huffed in frustration. “After the first round of treatment, it was . . .” She uncovered her face, her gaze searching the ceiling as if the right word was hidden within the 1970s acoustic popcorn. “It was difficult. And I haven’t gone for a test run after the second round of surgery.”

  “Not even solo?”

  “Really?” Her head snapped up to look at him. “I lived with my parents. Who were always right there. And because of the cancer my mother felt she had the right to invade my privacy whenever she damn well felt like it.”

  He chuckled. “Wouldn’t have stopped me.”

  “Oh, God.” She closed her eyes and her head fell back to the bed.

  Her laughter subsided and soon the smile disappeared from her face. Even through the darkness, he caught sight of the single tear that slipped down her cheek.

  “To be honest,” she whispered, “I kind of gave up hope.”

  Shit.

  He could barely wrap his head around what she was saying. It wasn’t that she merely gave up on self-pleasure. She gave up on the idea of intimacy and love and sex. He might have given up the dream of a woman to love and cherish the rest of his life. But Bree . . . she gave up on living.

  And fuck if that didn’t nearly kill him.

  He fought the urge to pull her into his arms and comfort her, to hold her until she let all the sadness go. But if he did that, she’d be pissed. She’d find a way to twist it, interpret his care and concern as pity and then she’d be right back in that same place.

  Instead, he took everything he really wanted to say and everything he really wanted to do and put it in a kiss. A gentle press of his lips to hers, until she slanted her mouth against his and took him deeper, allowing him to taste her as he stroked her tongue with his. He trailed his lips across her jaw, down her neck, making his way to her shoulder. But as he moved lower, she tensed beneath him.

  “Do you want to stop?” He raked his fingertips over the soft skin of her belly, large, sweeping motions from one side to the other, her muscles quivering beneath his touch.

  “Not at all. I was just trying to lower expectations.”

  He ducked his head, smiling against her skin as he pressed a kiss to the crease at the top of her thigh. “For you? Or for me?” His fingers trailed lower, stroking, teasing the bare flesh he’d been fantasizing about the whole damn day.

  “Both of us, I guess?”

  “Sounds like a challenge to me.” He pressed her legs wide, his mouth hovering over her center. Close enough that when he spoke his breath fanned across her skin, but far enough away she didn’t get any of what she really wanted. “You’re forgetting two very important things.”

  “And those would be?”

  “One.” He pushed one finger carefully inside her, inciting a soft gasp from her lips. With slow, smooth strokes, Danny studied her face for any hint of pain or discomfort. “At one point in time I knew your body almost as well as my own. Or have you forgotten all those ‘lab sessions’ we used to have?”

  Bree half smiled, half giggled. “Maybe that was true in high school, but things are different now.”

  She was fooling her damn self if she truly believed he didn’t remember all of her little sounds. The gasps, the sighs of pleasure, the soft moans. Those sounds haunted his dreams for years after he left. He wouldn’t forget those any more than all the things he did to make her crazy. And if what turned her on now did differ from ten years ago, well, he was bound and determined to figure it all out. Again.

  “Not so different,” he said, continuing to pump slowly. Her eyelids fluttered. Her breathing slowed. Her body arched slightly into his touch. “And the second thing . . .”

  He added a second finger and again her breathing hitched, followed by a long, soft moan. God, that sound. It took every ounce of his self-control to not strip off his boxer briefs and enter her in one hard thrust. But this being her first time in who knows how long, he needed to keep things at a careful pace. Despite her inner muscles clenching around his fingers. Despite the sounds she made whenever he stroked that special place inside her. She wasn’t completely ready for him, and without a doubt he’d hurt her if he jumped the gun.

  “And?”

  His head snapped up to see she was looking directly at him. The fact she was following the conversation meant he wasn’t doing his job very well. Especially since he was aroused to the point of pain and had completely forgotten what he was going to say in the first place. He took a slow, measured breath, fighting to retain his control.

  “What’s the second thing?”

  He needed to overwhelm her senses. Needed to get her out of her head if he was going to achieve his goal.

  “The second thing is Rangers never quit.”

  The sound of her laughter was music and torture and humiliation all at the same time. “Oh. My. God,” she said, laughing. “That’s so damn cheesy. I can’t believe you just said—”

  Her words ended on a gasp as he fastened his mouth to her clit, sucking, licking, biting, showing absolutely no mercy. He couldn’t hold back now if he tried, spurred on by the taste and smell and feel of her until he had her writhing beneath him. Her feet skidded atop the comforter, unable to gain any traction, her hands fisted in the sheets. She tried to squirm away, but he held her firmly in place, living out the fantasy that had been playing on repeat in his mind for the past few weeks.

  When her extensive vocabulary was reduced to the breathless, repetitive exclamations of his name, God, and fuck, in that exact order, he knew she was on the edge. He increased the thrust of his fingers, sucked hard upon her flesh and within seconds her body went taut, bowing off the mattress. Her head fell back, her mouth open wide in a silent scream. He held her there, seeing her through to the very end until she finally collapsed into a quivering heap, a light sheen of sweat covering her body.

  He pressed a kiss to her stomach and another over her heart before she pushed him away as if her nerves were far too sensitive to tolerate any more. He stretched out alongside her, his head resting on his hand with a smug smile of satisfaction on his face as they both attempted to catch their breath.

  “You deserve a medal for that,” she said without opening her eyes.

  Danny chuckled. “That would definitely make for an interesting ceremony when the commendation was read, but I’d accept it with pride.”

  She turned to look at him now, a half grin on her face. Bree took hold of his hand and limply twined her fingers with his, resting his hand upon her chest where he could feel the racing of her heart. “As great as that was, I want to feel you inside me.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  He held his breath, waiting for her response.

  “Absolutely.” Her half grin now expanded into a full-blown smile. “For the first time in a very long time I feel alive and I don’t want i
t to end.”

  “OKAY, THEN. I’LL be right back.”

  Looking like the cat who ate the canary, Danny pressed a quick kiss to her lips before rolling off the bed and racing to the bathroom.

  His quick exit was a good thing. Because if he hadn’t rushed out of the room, she likely would have told him that birth control was unnecessary. Then, wanting to understand, he would have asked a lot of questions. She’d have no choice but to tell him everything then. Which would likely lead to one of two outcomes: either he’d look at her with pity, which would make her want to strangle him, or he’d run away out of some screwed-up fear of hurting her. Either way, everything would stop and their opportunity would be squandered.

  Instead, she wanted the thrill and the heat and feel of him inside of her, surrounding her. She wanted to lose her mind and pretend the last several years hadn’t happened. Pretend the surgeries and chemo and cancer never happened at all. If only for a short while, she wanted to feel beautiful. Sexy. She wanted to feel like the girl he loved ten years ago.

  He returned just as quickly and tossed the small foil package onto the bed next to her.

  She raised a brow. “Only one?”

  Danny shook his head and smiled. “Be nice,” he teased.

  Bree settled in, tucking her hands beneath her head as she watched him strip out of his boxer briefs. Of course he made a show out of it, turning, bending, and flexing. He was absolutely stunning and he knew it. Part of her found it impossible to believe this was the same boy she once knew. Gone was the good-looking athletic teen, replaced with a man who rivaled Adonis. She giggled as he crawled up the bed wearing nothing more than a smile as he straddled her body, bracing his weight on his hands. He lowered his head as if to give her a kiss, but quickly pulled back to look at her, a mischievous glint in his dark blue eyes.

  “Who’s not being nice now?” she asked while running her hands from his wrists, up his arms. His eyelids drifted shut as she touched him, taking her time to admire all the hard curves and ridges of his muscles, all that strength and power on display. Her palms swept over his shoulders and behind his neck, bringing his mouth down to hers. This time he didn’t pull away; instead, he kissed her tenderly, taking his time and thoroughly tasting her. Her hands drifted to his chest, his abdomen.