Craving Her Soldier's Touch

by Wendy S. Marcus

  She swore she’d never give in to him…

  Feisty nurse Jaci Piermont’s heart was crushed when Staff Sergeant Ian Eddelton walked away from their passionate night together. But letting him know? Not an option! This reluctant socialite would much rather channel her energies into helping the vulnerable women she works with.

  Now Ian’s back—as gorgeous as ever, but with dark secrets in his eyes. Her head might be screaming “keep away,” but Jaci’s rebellious heart has a very different idea…!

  Beyond the Spotlight…

  Uncovering the real Piermont sisters

  Identical twin nurses Jaci and Jena Piermont grew up in society’s limelight but their glittering lifestyles hide dark secrets—money has never bought them love.

  What these reluctant socialites want are men who can see past their wealth to the real women beneath…but they’ll have to be very special to deserve these sisters!

  In Craving Her Soldier’s Touch, feisty Jaci comes face-to-face with a man from her past—and he’s as dangerously delicious as ever!

  Also available this month, shy Jena is reunited with the father of her twins in Secrets of a Shy Socialite…but what will happen when he discovers her greatest secret of all?

  Sexy, glamorous and emotionally powerful, don’t miss this thrilling new duet by Wendy S. Marcus!

  Dear Reader,

  After spending so many months writing the three books in my Madrin Memorial Hospital series, it was difficult to move on from the familiar characters I’d grown to love like family, especially with reader requests for books on Dr. Starzi and Polly. Maybe someday. For those of you who know me, you know I am not a fan of change. Yet I make every effort to embrace it, because I realize with change comes new opportunities, growth and, dare I admit, a bit of excitement in trying something new.

  So with an encouraging nudge from my lovely editor, Flo Nicoll, I set out to create two new stories surrounding Jaci and Jena Piermont, identical twin nurses and members of New York’s social elite. With Jaci’s story, I delved into home health care, abused women and PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. With Jena’s story, I explored BRCA genetic testing for breast cancer, treatment options for those positive for the genetic mutation and the impact of both on a single mother determined to live for her daughters.

  As I began to write, it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with Jaci and Jena, two strong women who each in their own way overcame family tragedy to triumph as adults. And now they are both a welcome addition to the family of characters already established in my mind.

  I hope you enjoy reading Jaci and Jena’s stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

  To learn more about me or my Madrin Memorial Hospital series, please visit my website, wendysmarcus.com.

  Wishing you all good things,

  Wendy S. Marcus

  Craving Her

  Soldier’s Touch

  Wendy S. Marcus

  Recent titles by Wendy S. Marcus

  THE NURSE’S NOT-SO-SECRET SCANDAL

  ONCE A GOOD GIRL…

  WHEN ONE NIGHT ISN’T ENOUGH

  These books are also available in ebook format

  from www.Harlequin.com.

  This book is dedicated to army specialist Adam Bivins

  and to men and women around the world who risk their lives to fight for the freedom of others.

  With special thanks to:

  My wonderful editor, Flo Nicoll, for believing in me

  and always helping me find my way when I veer off track.

  My supportive husband, for calling from work at the end

  of each day to ask what he should pick up for dinner.

  My three loving children, for making me proud of the wonderful people they are growing up to be. I am truly blessed.

  Praise for Wendy S. Marcus

  “Brimming with complex characters, secrets, mystery, passion, wit, intrigue and romance, this beautifully written book has it all.”

  —Romance Junkies on The Nurse’s Not-So-Secret Scandal

  “This is one hot book and it is sure to please the readers that enjoy hot, spicy reads and a ripping fast pace.”

  —Goodreads on The Nurse’s Not-So-Secret Scandal

  “Readers will not be able to resist the rising tension

  that builds to a crescendo. Don’t be surprised if you

  devour this romance in a single sitting!”

  —RT Book Reviews on Once a Good Girl…(4.5 stars)

  “Readers are bound to feel empathy for both the hero and heroine. Each has a uniquely disastrous past and these complications help to make the moment when Jared and Allison are able to give their hearts to the other all the more touching.”

  —RT Book Reviews on When One Night Isn’t Enough (4 stars)

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PROLOGUE

  IAN CALVIN EDDELTON, aka Ice to his army ranger buddies, looked up at the vision of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, bare-skinned loveliness now straddling his naked thighs, her palms pushing down on his pecs, forcing his back into the plush sheets of her bed. As if a tiny thing like her could hold him down if he didn’t want to be held down.

  “You don’t have to do this.” He forced out the words despite his brain’s best rationalizations to suppress them. A fun bout of banter turned sexual challenge had never resulted in either of them shedding their clothes before. He needed her to be sure.

  Beautiful, determined eyes met his. “Yes. I do.”

  Looked like the woman who didn’t want sex to ruin their friendship, and the man who didn’t want friendship to ruin their sex, were both about to get screwed. Literally.

  He caressed the smooth skin of her perfect ass, usually hidden by a pair of skimpy running shorts or some fitted designer duds, and eased her closer to Ian junior who stood tall, sheathed, and eager to explore her internal terrain. To learn the secrets of what gave her pleasure and exploit them until she screamed his name over and over. Like he’d bragged he could on their many long runs rife with blatant flirtation and sexual innuendo.

  But, “Why?” Why tonight, of all nights, when he’d been trying to lure her into bed for months, when by this time tomorrow he’d be on a plane headed back to the war in Iraq?

  She smiled. Damn she was beautiful. “Consider it my bit to support our troops.”

  Tease.

  Ian ran his fingers along the outside of her firm thighs. “There are thousands of us.” Rounded her hips, followed the curve of her narrow waist, up to her ribs. “You do this sort of thing often?” He slid his thumbs across her taut nipples.

  She trembled.

  “You,” she lowered her luscious breasts to his chest and leaned close to his ear, “are lucky number one.” She rocked her hips until she had him poised at her entrance.

  The urge to tell her there’d better not be a number two, that she should mail out brownies and holiday cards instead, came out of nowhere. Because she could do whatever the hell she wanted. They weren’t going together, would never be anything more than friends—although an ongoing friends with benefits type deal was looking mighty appealing from where he lay. Hooah.

  He tilted his pelvis, gave her a small taste of what was to come. “So it turns out you’re a sucker for a man in uniform after all.”

  “I’m a sucker for you, Staff Sergeant,” she whispered, circling the perimeter of his inner ear with her tongue,
sending rippling waves of arousal throughout his body. “And when you’re lying on your cot in the dead of night, exhausted, your mind reeling from the events of the day, I want to be your oasis in the desert, the calm that relaxes you before you drift off to sleep.” She lifted her upper body, shifted her hips, and took him deep. “I want you to think about us. Like this.”

  Getting himself to stop thinking about them like this was going to be the problem.

  She rode him slowly, their eyes locked, their bodies in total sync. “I want you to fight hard and stay safe and look forward to the day I will welcome you home. Just. Like. This.” She punctuated each of her last three words with a swift thrust of her hips before collapsing onto his chest, sliding her hands around his sides and hugging him. “I’m going to miss you.”

  An odd sensation squeezed his heart. At the same time, an unsettling concoction churned in his gut.

  Could it be guilt? Because, to avoid a protracted, teary goodbye, he would slip away as soon as she fell asleep.

  Maybe remorse? Because he’d gone overseas and returned home enough times over the past ten years to know nothing ever remained the same. By the time he came home she’d probably be settled on one of the well-bred, successful business associates her brother seemed hell-bent on fixing her up with.

  Or a hint of longing for what he could not have? Because he was career military and refused to put any woman through what his mother had suffered as the spouse of an active duty soldier.

  Nah. A simple case of agita from his double order of farewell steak fajitas made more sense, since Ian Eddelton did not succumb to emotion. Ever. On the battlefield, emotion, distraction of any kind, gave an enemy the advantage, and got good men and women killed. On a personal level, emotion made men weak and vulnerable. Never again.

  Ian flipped Jaci onto her back and took control, pushing all thoughts from his mind except how unbelievably amazing she felt beneath him, surrounding him, and how he was going to spend the next few hours in heaven...before he returned to hell.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Almost thirteen months later

  SOMETHING had gone wrong.

  Two male thug-looking types in dark baggy pants and oversized sweatshirts exited the rear door of the rundown, graffiti ridden brick building. Community health nurse and Women’s Crisis Center advocate Jaci Piermont slid further down in the front seat of the clunker she’d borrowed from the center, trying to melt into the darkness. Even in broad daylight, when entering Nap Tower to visit her patients, Jaci never came unaccompanied, and never went near the rear door, a known hangout for drug dealers and troublemakers of every variety.

  But tonight it was raining. Pouring actually. The beginnings of a hurricane expected to slam the northeast coast of the U.S., Westchester County in its projected path. They’d specifically chosen this night figuring no one would be outside.

  Jaci’s phone rang.

  She checked the number. Carla. Assistant Director of the Women’s Crisis Center.

  “Hey,” Jaci said, peering out the bottom portion of the driver’s side window.

  “You were due here twenty minutes ago,” Carla demanded.

  “She didn’t show.” She being Merlene K., twenty-five-year-old white female in need of assistance to escape a controlling/abusive relationship with the father of her unborn child. No local friends or family willing to intervene.

  “Get out of there, Jaci. You can’t help her if she doesn’t follow the plan.”

  That they’d been working on for weeks. “Everything was set.” Every detail worked out with their contact who resided in the building. Merlene’s boyfriend’s work schedule checked and verified and rechecked. His accomplice, who kept an eye on Merlene while he worked the night shift, distracted. A duffel for her meager belongings. A change of clothes and a wig so she could alter her appearance and slip away unnoticed.

  The door opened again. “Oh no,” Jaci said.

  “What’s happening?”

  “It’s Merlene. She’s not alone.” In the one working light over the door, through the blur of the rain spattered window, Jaci could still make out Merlene’s battered face, and that of her bastard boyfriend, pure evil, gripping her arm tightly in one hand, dragging her, carrying a stuffed duffel Jaci recognized as the one she’d dropped off last week, in the other.

  Merlene shuffled behind him, hunched over, her right arm clutching her abdomen. Damn him.

  Jaci straightened her short, bob-styled black wig, pushed in her false teeth, and adjusted her faux eyeglasses.

  The couple was approximately twenty feet away, walking in her direction.

  “Do not get out of that car,” Carla cautioned.

  “She needs medical attention,” Jaci whispered as if they could hear her. “Who knows where he’s taking her, if we’ll ever have another opportunity to help her.”

  Ten feet.

  Jaci reached for the door handle.

  “Do not—” Carla started.

  “You’d better call Justin.” She never did a pick-up in this area unless Justin was on duty. “Tell him to hurry.”

  Jaci ended the call. After a deep calming breath, she stuck the phone in the pocket of her black rain slicker, pulled the hood up over her head, and pushed open a door.

  Rain pelted her in the face.

  “Excuse me,” she yelled.

  Merlene jumped. Her boyfriend stopped and pulled the woman he treated as a possession, to do with as he chose, close.

  “My car won’t start,” Jaci lied. “You got any jumper cables?” The wind tried to blow off her hood. She held it in place, thankful she’d remembered to slip on a pair of knit gloves to cover her manicure.

  “No,” the abuser said, and pulled Merlene away.

  Please let Justin be on his way.

  “Excuse me, miss,” Jaci said to Merlene. “Are you okay?”

  “She’s fine,” a deep, irritated voice snapped. He didn’t bother to look back at her.

  “I’m sorry. But she doesn’t look fine. Maybe I can...”

  Merlene turned around, squinted against the raindrops, and studied her face. “Ja...”

  Jaci shook her head, warning Merlene not to use her real name. “Are you in need of assistance, miss?” Jaci yelled over the wind.

  “Mind your own business,” the large man all but growled, jerking to a stop beside a shiny new black SUV almost glowing in the overhead light. While his girlfriend, the mother of his unborn child, couldn’t afford maternity clothes, was forced to wait hours at the free clinic for prenatal care, and wandered the building offering to clean apartments and do odd jobs to earn money for food.

  Which is how Jaci had learned of her.

  Where the heck was Justin?

  Merlene’s boyfriend released her long enough to open the rear door of his vehicle. And that’s all it took. With a look of absolute panic she lunged at Jaci, clamping her arms tightly behind Jaci’s neck. “Don’t let him take me,” she cried out.

  Jaci slid her left arm around Merlene’s waist and plunged her right hand into her pocket to retrieve the canister of pepper spray she’d placed there earlier. “You are not going anywhere without me,” Jaci said. Meaning it. Prepared to do anything within her power to keep Merlene safe.

  The first blow struck Jaci in the left posterior ribs, an intense, stabbing pain only minimally less severe than the closed-fisted punch to the right upper arm that felt like it shattered her proximal humerus.

  The pepper spray clattered on the asphalt.

  He was strong. Angry. And not wasting his time with words.

  Well, Jaci was no stranger to the pain of abuse. And if Merlene could deal with it day after day, Jaci could put up with it until Justin arrived. She wound her other arm around Merlene’s waist, locking her fingers together, and took a stand.

  “Don’t hit her,” Merlene pleaded, releasing Jaci, trying to push her away.

  “No.” Jaci tried to hold on. The over-sized bully grabbed her by the wrists, wrenched her hands apart,
and pushed her to the side in the same manner he’d probably treat a pesky toddler. The force made her stumble. Her heel caught the edge of a huge pothole filled with water and she went down with a splash. Both hands slapped the cracked, pebble-ridden pavement. Stung. Pain shot through her right arm, which gave out.

  Merlene screamed.

  The flashing lights of a police cruiser lit up the sky, its headlights illuminating Jaci where she lay.

  She tried to get up. “Stay down,” Justin yelled, running from his vehicle. His weapon drawn, aimed at Merlene’s boyfriend. “Release her,” Justin ordered.

  Once free, Merlene ran to Jaci and dropped to the ground beside her. “I’m sorry. So sorry,” she cried.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jaci said, putting her left arm around Merlene’s shoulders. “You’re safe now.”

  Another car sped into the parking lot.

  Carla ran toward them. “Are you okay?”

  “How did you get here so fast?” Jaci asked.

  “When you didn’t show up on time I thought you were in trouble. I was already on my way when I called.”

  And that’s why she loved Carla. “Merlene needs medical treatment,” Jaci said.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m fine. Sore, but fine.”

  “Let me help you,” a vaguely familiar masculine voice offered as large hands grabbed her from behind and lifted her to standing position.

  Jaci couldn’t control a yelp of pain at the pressure on the exact spot where she’d been punched minutes earlier.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, releasing her. “I didn’t mean—”

  “You are not fine,” Carla yelled.

  “He hit her,” Merlene sobbed. “Her arm might be broken.”

  “That son of a bitch hit you?” the man asked with rage in his voice.

  “Nothing’s broken. See.” She lifted her arm overhead and across her chest, despite the pain, to prove to Carla she was fine.

  “Stay here.” The man stormed over to Justin who yelled, “I told you to stay in the car.”

  That’s when recognition dawned. The broad shoulders filling out his dark windbreaker. The confident stride, camouflage pants and short military-style haircut.