by Tawny Weber
Cade growled.
Eden did it again. She moved faster. Up and down. Sliding, undulating. Her body grasping at his in desperate need. He moaned his approval, letting her set the pace.
Her eyes still on his, she watched his face tighten, his eyes hooded as they languidly moved from hers, then down to her breasts where his fingers were working pure magic, then back again. It was like he was fascinated with her body. Obsessed even.
The very idea made her come a little.
More excited than she’d ever been, Eden moved faster.
The power built, tighter, needier.
Her head fell back, her body on fire as she rode the waves of sensations crashing around her. Her pounding heart echoed the power of her orgasms, beating like a conga drum.
Hands trembling, she gripped Cade’s shoulders.
His fingers tightened, holding her breasts high as he angled his body upward to lick one, then the other nipple. Back and forth his mouth went, making her crazy as the climax coiled, tight as a spring, in her belly.
Then he nipped, his teeth tugging one nipple into his mouth to be sucked, laved, teased. His fingers twisted the other, then he tugged.
Eden exploded. Her moans were whimpers now as she rode the waves, ebbing and flowing with pleasure. He followed her with a guttural growl of delight, his body pulsing inside hers.
It was like floating on a cloud of passion. Spikes of pleasure shot like lightening through her, but didn’t change the foggy haze of delight that she was riding.
“More,” she whispered, leaning down to press a soft kiss against his chin, then scattering more along his jaw and cheeks. “You’re yummy, and I’m hungry.”
“Feast, baby,” he encouraged, his tone just as satisfied as the look on his gorgeous face.
11
EDEN GRADUALLY DRIFTED AWAKE on the bank of the lake. Was this what an out-of-body experience felt like? Gloriously delicious, as if everything had a surreal tint to it. From her body, which ached in the most deliciously satisfied way, to her senses. She slowly lifted her eyelids to peer into the evening light. The sun was setting, the lake bathed in a rainbow of pinks, oranges and purples to reflect the evening sky. Cade’s body was wrapped around hers, protective and warm.
She blinked a couple of times, not sure what’d woken her. She was limp with sexual satisfaction. So why the sudden tension? Like she should be worried, or even scared.
Then he muttered in his sleep, his hands gripping her waist as if he’d just been shoved off a cliff and she was his only hope of not plummetting to the ground.
Eden came fully awake, but was still standing on the edge of a terrifying nightmare. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there. And it was attacking Cade. She could feel the waves of misery pouring off him.
“No!” His denial was guttural, desperate, even though it was only a whisper.
Frowning, she tried to shift. But his fingers dug in tighter. She tilted her head back, peering up at him. Fear melted into sympathy. Her heart ached at the desolation on his face, at the pain in his voice.
“Cade,” she whispered. She reached up to his shoulder, giving him a gentle shake. “Wake up.”
“No. Return fire. Stop. No!” He didn’t yell. He barely muttered the words. But the intensity, the horror in them ripped at Eden’s gut, terrifying her.
“Cade. Wake up,” she demanded, shaking harder now.
“What?”
For one second, she could see it all in his eyes. The miserable pain, the devastation. The soul-wrenching loss.
Then he blinked. All it took was a second for him to tuck it all away. Charm and a rueful sort of self-derision replaced the raw emotion on his face.
“I think we wore each other out,” he said, his smile a shadow of its usual wattage, his laugh a little rough around the edges. “I can’t believe we fell asleep.”
“You were dreaming,” she said, ignoring the hint to let it go. “Are you okay?”
His jaw clenched, then he shifted, so he could skim his bottom hand down to cup her bare butt and his upper hand toward her breast.
Before he could cup her already aching flesh, she grabbed his wrist.
“You were dreaming,” she said again. At least, if being under emotional attack in one’s sleep counted as dreaming. Eden’s eyes flew over his face, trying to see if he was okay. Stress etched lines in the corners of his eyes, bracketed his mouth. But his lips were curved in his usual, charming smile and his beautiful green gaze was determined. To fight the demons? Or to push her away?
“That’s what people do when they are asleep.” Whether because he saw how determined she was, or out of pique that she wasn’t ready to roll around on the bank again, Cade shifted. He pulled his arms away and sat upright. “It’s going to get cold, though. We should head back.”
Eden gave him a long, considering look.
Here she was at the lake, that magical place of sexual-fantasies-come-true. With the sexiest man in the world. One who’d just rocked her every idea of what pleasure was supposed to feel like. If she ever wanted to feel that rocking pleasure again, she was pretty sure she should let it go. Just let the subject change, gather up her underwear and drag him back to her bed for another round.
But she couldn’t.
This was Cade.
Her hero.
The guy who was always there for her. To save her from falling out of trees. To shoo away the mean girls. To show her that her fantasies had nothing on reality.
Didn’t she owe it to him to be there for him, too?
Even if it ruined her shot at another mind-blowing orgasm?
Feeling very self-sacrificing, and just a little worried, she ignored the tense ball of stress in her stomach and rubbed her hand over his bare shoulder.
“Cade,” she prompted softly, her tone as sweet as it was stubborn. “What’s wrong? Were you dreaming about your friend? The one you lost last year?”
Maybe she should have got up and kneed him in the balls. He’d probably have looked less betrayed.
“Gossip again?” he asked in a tone as chilly as one of his father’s worst put-downs. “I thought you knew better than to believe the whispers on the street.”
“You told me yourself that you lost your friend, Phil,” Eden countered, irritated at being lumped into the same category as the gossips, but deciding to letting it go. If she was hurting, she’d lash out, too. “I know how close you were because your grandmother speaks of him often. Last year she showed me a huge stack of pictures of the two of you and your other friend. Blake, right? She’s referred to you three as those sweet boys ever since you brought them home for Christmas a few years ago.”
For just a second, he closed his eyes as if the memory was too painful to see. Then he looked at her, his eyes as cold as she’d ever seen.
Eden swallowed hard, suddenly very aware that she was naked.
“Grandmother shouldn’t be talking about my friends. Or about me. I didn’t realize she was as much of a gossip as the rest of the town,” he groused, shoving his hand through his hair and glaring across the water.
“She needed help putting photos into the family album,” Eden said, irritation banishing her self-consciousness. How dare he so easily assume they were gossiping. “Your father has no interest, you weren’t home and she doesn’t like to let just anyone poke through her pictures. I’d stopped by to bring her a pie and offered to do it for her. She didn’t gossip. She simply told me the names to write next to each entry.”
“Oh.”
He sounded like he’d rather have had that kick to the balls.
As he should.
“Yes, oh,” Eden snapped back, sitting up and grabbing his shirt to wrap around her, definitely uncomfortable with her nudity now. His was fine, though. Even irritated, she could appreciate perfection when it sat naked in front of her. “Maybe instead of jumping to rude conclusions, you should consider how much Catherine worries about you. How much she loves you.”
His shrug w
as a guilty jerk of one shoulder.
Eden pulled her knees up to her chest and took a deep breath. She felt like crying. Both for Cade’s misery, and at the realization that she’d been so, so shallow.
All she’d ever seen was the gorgeous guy next door. The hottie who pulled her out of scrapes, who kept her supplied in fantasy material. That he was a navy SEAL only added to his sexy persona.
Sure, a few days ago on the cliffs, she’d clued in that his job had risks. That there was more to being a hero than just riding in with a charming smile and great timing. But she’d sort of let that fade into the back of her head. Not because it didn’t matter, she realized, wrapping her arms tighter around her knees. But because it was scary to think of what he must face on a regular basis. To admit, even just to herself, to the possibility of something happening to him.
“I’m sorry you had a—” What? Bad dream sounded so childish. Nightmare was too B movie-esque. “Troubled sleep. I wish the sex had been a little wilder. Maybe then you’d have been too exhausted to dream.”
She offered a tremulous smile, giving him her best aren’t I cute look.
For a second, he just looked stunned. Then he burst into laughter.
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought it was pretty wild,” he said, reaching back to give her a quick, one-armed hug. He didn’t keep up contact, though. Just as soon as his arm fell away, so did his smile.
Eden’s heart ached.
As always, unable to sit quietly in the face of suffering, she rubbed a comforting hand on his shoulder again.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “And not sorry, in a hey, open a wound and share it with me kind of way. I just hate to see you hurting like this. And hiding from the hurt.”
She wanted to tell him that it didn’t do any good to hide like that. That he should get it out, whatever it was. Air the pain so it could start healing.
But she couldn’t. She knew whatever she was imagining, whatever she’d lived through, couldn’t compare to his pain. Who was she to tell someone how to grieve?
All she could do was be there for him, ache for him.
After a handful of miserably long minutes, Cade shrugged again.
“It was my mission,” he finally said, his focus so strong on the water, it was like he was confessing a sin to the lake gods. “I planned it, I led it.”
“Was it your first?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “I’ve led dozens. Not just like this, no two are exactly the same. But similar. Same region, same objective.”
“Something went wrong?” she asked quietly.
“Phil was hit. Shrapnel to the head. One minute he was cracking jokes, the next he was gone. He still had a smile on his face when he hit the ground.”
Tears trickled off Eden’s chin, horror filling her heart as she imagined how he must have felt to have that happen right before his eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she protested, shifting across the grass until she sat next to him. She shoved aside the sudden cascading barrage of terror that’d come along with recognizing the reality of his job and tried to focus on helping Cade. He still didn’t look her way. Just continued to stare at the water, his face as hard as marble.
“The mission was my responsibility.”
Eden didn’t know what to say to that. She understood responsibility. Knew the heavy weight of it and how tempting it was to shoulder it alone. But she also recognized guilt. Why did the two always seem to go hand in hand?
She should let it go. She should make a joke, change the subject, slide down his body and offer a blowjob as a distraction.
Anything to keep him from thinking about his friend.
But she couldn’t. Not when he was so clearly hurting.
“Could you have stopped it from happening?” she asked quietly. “Could you have done anything to change it?”
He still didn’t look at her. Just stared at the water. His lips were white in the moonlight, his shoulders rigid. Finally, after long, miserably drawn-out seconds, he shrugged. “The powers that be don’t think so.”
“Do you?” She bit her lip, knowing she’d be better off backing away. But she’d never been able to take the safe route. “Does your friend Blake?”
That got his attention.
Cade’s gaze shot to hers like a sniper’s bullet. Iced fury flamed in those green depths, made all the scarier because the rest of his features were now shrouded in the dark.
The charming facade that most people took as the regular Cade Sullivan cracked, showing the real man beneath the usual charismatic amiability. Eden almost took a step back.
“I’m just saying...” She almost stuttered, then took a deep breath and continued, “Maybe you shouldn’t be blaming yourself. I’ve seen all those pictures of you and Phil and Blake. You look like really good friends. Would Phil blame you? Would he want you carrying this?”
“Phil isn’t here anymore,” Cade snapped. “So what he would or wouldn’t have wanted is immaterial.”
Eden’s heart broke for him. The pain, the loss, the misery. Without that protective facade of charm he usually held between himself and everyone else, she could see them all so clearly on his face.
She’d only been interested in the fantasy. In hot, wild sex and a chance to live out all those things she’d dreamed of for so many years with a man she had always hero worshipped. Now he was more than a hero. Cade was a man, all man.
A man that she was terrified to realize she could easily fall in love with.
* * *
CADE WANTED TO TELL HER this was hardly the love talk he usually enjoyed after incredible sex. He liked the manly feel of cuddling in the afterglow. He preferred a slow buildup to round two, maybe a little kissing and sucking.
A woman poking at his most vulnerable parts, and not the one between his legs, wasn’t the makings of a turn-on.
“You’re a hero, Cade. Not because of your job, or because you’ve earned a chestful of medals. But because of who you are inside. Because you care, deeply, about people and about doing what’s right.” Eden bit her lip, then sighed and gestured to the patch of grass across the lake. “You take responsibility for everyone. For everything. Even when it’s not yours to take.”
Cade sighed. She wasn’t going to give it up, was she.
“I was in charge,” he said, appreciating her attempts to make him feel better but not willing to sidestep reality. “That means the responsibility was all mine.”
Eden nodded.
Then, as if she’d heard his mental instructions, she shifted closer to his body, smoothed the palm of her hand up, then down his chest. The vulnerable part he wanted her interested in stirred to life as she pressed a soft kiss to a scar zigzagging down his shoulder.
“That must be rough. Taking all those untrained, unskilled, and what? Unwilling guys into a battle.”
Shocked fury shut down his libido in a flash.
“What?” He ripped his gaze from the safe view of the trees to glare at her. “That’s bullshit. My team is the best. They are SEALs, dammit. We never ran a mission unless they were totally on board, were totally ready to kick ass. There’s nobody unwilling to serve in my squad.”
Eden didn’t say a word. She waited a beat, then arched one brow.
Cade’s frown turned ferocious.
“I’m not saying Phil didn’t know what he was doing, or that he wasn’t damned good,” he snapped, getting the message loud and clear. “But—”
“Either your guys are damned good, highly trained and totally prepared, and the loss of one of them was a horrible result of going into battle,” she interrupted. “Or you were responsible for every single thing, from the weather to the enemy to the state of mind of every man under your command.”
Unable to find a valid argument that’d shoot her down, Cade finally settled on a glare.
She gave him a sympathetic smile, cupping his cheek in her palm and pressing a kiss against his lips.
Then she shifted, rolling quickly
so her body angled over his. Straddling him, her thighs gripped his hips and her glorious breasts pressed against his chest.
“What are you doing?” he gasped as his body sprang to full alert.
“Exhausting you,” she said with a watery laugh. Thankfully, her face was dry now, clear of those tears that ripped at his gut. “I don’t know of any other way to distract you from making yourself miserable.”
Cade wanted to protest. To claim that he wasn’t miserable. But she wasn’t leaving him any room to argue.
Or much space for self-pity.
Because it was impossible to feel bad when her body was making his feel so good.
Damn, Cade groaned as she snagged another of the condoms and rolled it over his throbbing length. Then she slid back up, her thighs gripping his sides as she slowly—so, so slowly—impaled herself on his rock-hard erection.
She was delicious.
Glorious. Like a triumphant Valkyrie warrior, fighting his demons for him, then sweeping him away to the heavens.
He was usually the one who rode to the rescue. Who dove in and saved the day.
Just before he took her mouth again, he had to wonder...
Who was going to rescue him?
* * *
CADE CROSSED HIS HANDS behind his head and propped one bare foot on the other, waiting for Eden to join him in bed.
This was pretty damned awesome. He’d never done this domestic thing with a woman before. A night here or there, a few days at a plush resort once in a while, sure. But all week long, everything from meals to sleep to showers? This was a whole new world. One he’d have sworn he’d hate. Instead, he was loving it.
He suddenly understood what Blake was talking about. That feeling of completion. Of happiness. It was freaky. Hell, another few days and he’d be writing bad poetry and crying over afternoon specials. A week and he’d be thinking about baby names and retirement property.
Cade grimaced, feeling like a girl all of a sudden.
Maybe he should drop to the floor and do a hundred pushups. Go flex something in the mirror.