Into the Crossfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  The important thing was to get into her as fast as possible and stay there as long as possible. Till next year, if what he was feeling was any indication.

  It was as if he’d never had sex before, ever. He was so excited he could barely feel his hands and feet as he walked to his car, moving fast. Luckily, he had his arm around her waist when Nicole stumbled on the gravel.

  Sam held her fast. She’d never fall when she was with him, but he was ashamed that he’d been half dragging her along.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled and slowed his stride. He was a runner, and he was used to getting from A to B fast. He moved fast on principle and when he was aiming toward something he wanted, he picked up speed.

  Had he been running? God only knew. His senses were so blasted he wasn’t getting any input except from his dick, which was communicating what it wanted loud and clear.

  He tried to slow down, even out his stride, but damn, it was hard.

  Later, he’d reflect on what it meant for him to be out of control of his body. It was unthinkable. He’d learned self-control in the hardest school possible—his early years. And then the Navy and SEAL training had taken those skills and honed them to machine-like perfection.

  He was in charge of himself—always. Aware of his surroundings and his place in any given setting. He was rock steady. For a while he’d been a fucking sniper, for God’s sake. Snipers could control their own heartbeats, certainly their breathing. And their hands never trembled.

  Right now, he was barely aware of the outside world, only of the beautiful woman by his side. Everything else was fog. He was tunnel visioning, like untrained soldiers in battle, hands trembling.

  Ten feet from his car, he took out his key fob and unlocked the doors. It took an effort not to simply throw Nicole into the passenger seat. A couple of seconds later, he was in the driver’s seat, hands curled whitely around the steering wheel. He was so excited, he was almost panting.

  Sam looked over at Nicole and winced.

  She was pale, eyes wide with what he recognized as dismay and not desire, hands in her lap clutching each other so hard she was white-knuckled. A vein pulsed in her neck.

  Fuck.

  She was scared of him.

  He had an idea of what she was seeing. A large, very strong, very fit man with clenched jaws and narrowed eyes, emanating aggression.

  Fighting and fucking are closely related, certainly for a man like him. He was dominant on the battlefield and dominant in the bedroom. That was his nature and he’d long since grown used to it.

  But he did not want Nicole Pearce scared of him. Shit, no. She was the classiest lady he’d ever gone out with, bar none, and the most beautiful, too. And by some miracle, it turned out she was kindhearted. Women like that didn’t grow on trees. They were so rare, in fact, that he’d never met anyone even remotely like her.

  She needed to be treated gently, like a lady, but goddamned if his blood wasn’t up. He recognized it, oh yeah. Now that he was in the car, ready to make it to his house and to his bed as fast as the law would allow, he realized he’d somehow gone into combat mode.

  The slight panting was to pull in oxygen for a major effort. His body was preparing itself for something big—fighting or fucking, it didn’t care. It just knew that it had to be ready and that it was going to be rough.

  At every level, Nicole was perceiving this, perceiving that he was a male with a broad streak of violence to him and a major case of almost out-of-control lust focused tightly on her.

  She’d have to be crazy to go home with him in this state. But if she said no right now, he’d simply howl at the moon.

  Sam knew he had to do something, and fast.

  First, relax. He uncurled his hands from the wheel, sat back and consciously unclenched his muscles. Forced himself to breathe slowly. Forced his face muscles to relax. Closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  Opened them.

  For the brief time he’d been a sniper, he’d learned a lot. He didn’t love the mechanics of sniping like Mike did. Mike loved his guns like children. For Sam they were tools, and not particularly interesting ones at that.

  But still, sniper training included big chunks of bodily control. They’d taught him how to slow his heartbeat. They’d been taught to let their bodies go into a weird form of hibernation, where they could stay utterly still for days at a time, bodily functions set at minimum, turning over just enough to stay alive.

  He reached deep inside and dialed himself down. Way down. Over the next minute, like the ticking of an engine cooling, he slowed his heart rate, his breathing, even stilled his thoughts.

  No more fevered images of Nicole Pearce under him, deep blue eyes slitted in ecstasy, long slender legs open for him, soft cunt accepting him.

  No no. Instead, he filled his head with quiet pools of emptiness and gray nothingness, willing his body to cool. The first time he’d been told that SEAL training taught you to do that, he’d laughed. It sounded too much like something beamed in from Woo-Woo Land. Sam had wanted into the SEALs more than anything else in the world because he wanted to be the hardest man in a world of hard men. When told part of that included becoming like Yoda, he’d scoffed.

  But it had worked then and it was working now.

  Nicole’s hands were now still in her lap and a little color had come back to her face. She’d lost that shocked look, as if she’d suddenly found herself face to face with a wolf.

  Their eyes met. Christ, her eyes were beautiful. Such a deep, intense blue, framed by ridiculously long lashes. How the hell could she keep her eyes open with lashes like that?

  “I want you. A lot,” he blurted out. Oh shit. He’d wanted to say something soothing, maybe even suave, not that he was known for his smoothness. Usually he was pretty blunt with women.

  She looked like the kind of woman who’d appreciate a little suavity. It seemed that right now he didn’t have any in him. Desire had fried his circuits. “Sorry.” He winced. “I mean—”

  Nicole huffed out a little breath. She wasn’t smiling, but her face had lightened. “That’s okay. I kind of got the message when you dragged me out to your car without stopping to ask for the check.”

  His back teeth clenched. “Sorry,” he said again, then stopped. Quit while you’re ahead.

  “Yes, I can see that.” Her voice was soft. They looked at each other, gauging each other, the cabin of the car utterly quiet. Sam controlled everything—his breathing, his movements. Stillness would have to be his gift to her, a sign that he could control himself later, in bed.

  He hoped.

  Nicole lifted her left hand from her lap. How could absolutely everything about her be so frigging beautiful? Her hands could figure in one of those soap commercials. Pale ivory skin, long, slender fingers. Some kind of complicated ring with several kinds of stones on the middle finger, not the ring finger, thank you, God.

  Nails manicured but short without that white square-top craziness and not painted black or purple. That and black lipstick were real turnoffs for him, made him think of fucking a zombie. Gah.

  There was nothing about Nicole that was a turnoff.

  Nicole’s hand was so gorgeous he had to freeze his muscles not to grab it.

  Her hand was moving, floating in space. He didn’t take his eyes from her face, though he could easily see her hand in his peripheral vision. Slowly, she placed her hand over his on the wheel. It felt cool, and soft.

  The contrast between their two hands was amazingly erotic. His hands were large, tough, scarred. Hers were like some marble statue by the world’s greatest artist.

  He became, if possible, even more still for a breath, two. Something must have reassured her because she smiled, faintly. She squeezed his hand, a light caress that shot straight to his dick, then put her hand back in her lap.

  “Are we going to do this?” she asked, her voice low.

  Fuck yeah! Sam locked the words in his throat instead of yelling them out.

  “Yes. I hope.”
His voice came out hoarse, as if he hadn’t spoken in years. He cleared his throat, then locked his mouth shut. Do not jinx this, he told himself. Anything that came out right now would be wrong.

  Her eyes dropped to his groin, where a blue steeler was trying to punch its way through the lightweight wool of his expensive suit pants. Unlike the jeans, the suit pants simply outlined him.

  “I can see that.”

  Blood pulsed in his dick, and it moved in his pants. She couldn’t miss it. It was like his dick was reaching out to her.

  There wasn’t anything he could do to hide the hard-on. Sometimes when an erection became inconvenient, he could think it back down, like slowing his heartbeat. Life was full of downer thoughts, images that could dampen desire.

  Nothing like that could work now, though. There wasn’t any thought in the world that could make his dick go down with Nicole Pearce a foot away from him, contemplating letting him fuck her. His dick actually hurt and his balls were curled right up tightly against him, waiting to blow.

  She searched his eyes, looking for something. He imagined she was looking for signs of violence. There was violence in him, sure, always had been, but never toward women or children. He’d never hurt a woman or a child and was grateful that his military career had never forced him to, because he wouldn’t have been able to.

  But beyond that, he could never hurt Nicole Pearce. He’d rather shoot himself in the chest. He just hoped with all his heart that he could keep in control in bed with her, which was another matter.

  Control.

  He’d spent a lifetime in control of himself and had to grip himself tightly to keep it, because it felt like it was slipping away, like sand through a fist.

  Finally her lips turned upward in a faint smile. “Okay,” she said softly.

  All right! It was like letting a greyhound out of the gate.

  A second later, they were shooting down the road, Sam trying to make it to his apartment as fast as legally possible. He wished he had one of those James Bond cars that could fly.

  After twenty minutes at top speed, they were driving along the waterfront, the sun starting to set in a bloom of red on the water. It was a beautiful evening.

  With any other woman, he’d remark on that. He’d driven countless women to his house or their house, knowing they were going to fuck, and he’d always been capable of keeping up a light conversation.

  He couldn’t get any words out now, though. None. It was like his throat was seized up.

  She didn’t seem to have any problems with that. He liked that she was comfortable with silence. She looked out at the vastness of the Pacific, the lower edge of the boiling crimson sun lighting gently on the horizon.

  “It’s a lovely evening.”

  Sam made a strangled noise in his throat and she turned to look at him.

  “Where do you live? Where are we going?”

  An ordinary question, deserving of an answer. He was going to scare her again if he couldn’t even fucking talk.

  He wrestled with himself, grabbed at a little self-control.

  “Coronado Shores. Bought an apartment there over a year ago.” He had to actually think about driving. Red lights, green lights, brakes. He was a good driver, had a natural feel for it, but right now he had to work hard not to press the accelerator to the floor and the hell with everything. Probably drive them straight into a goddamned light pole. “I was essentially a Navy diver and when I moved back here, I knew I wanted to live close to the sea.”

  That was part of it, but he didn’t say the whole truth—how he’d spent countless afternoons on the dunes a couple of miles down, spending as much time as possible away from Old Man Hughes’s fists, watching Navy SEALs go through their brutal paces. He’d longed to be one of them, part of a team of men with all the skills to make the world safer. Over the years, watching the hard men become harder by the day, he knew what he wanted to do with his life.

  And now, in his post-military life, living in Coronado Shores meant he could run along the beach down to the training area and watch the new recruits rolling in the freezing surf and know that there would always be a new generation of men to watch over his country.

  Nicole was looking around her with interest as they drove into Coronado Shores, passing by the first of the big condominium complexes. His was the last, La Torre. “I’ve been meaning to explore this part of town but I never got around to it,” she said softly.

  “That so?” He was surprised. The area was a popular outing for San Diegans.

  She looked at him with a faint smile. “We’ve only been here a year. Since we arrived I’ve been really busy with Dad and Wordsmith. I’ve barely explored San Diego, just poked around a little, mainly in our part of town and the downtown area near our building.”

  “I’ll show the area to you,” Sam offered. “Be happy to. I know the city like the back of my hand.” Afterwards. When we come up for air, whenever that will be.

  She looked at him, a sideways dark blue glance that held a slight note of sadness. It hit him like a sledgehammer that she wasn’t really expecting to see him again after tonight.

  Oh no, he wasn’t buying that. No way.

  That big song and dance about her not having room for a man in her life? Fuck that. Sam would fucking plant himself at her fucking feet if that was what it took to keep seeing her.

  “We’re here,” he said, veering sharply into his condo’s driveway, then plunging down into the underground garage. He drove into his slot and killed the engine.

  His condo had 140 units and the garage was usually busy 24/7 with people coming and going. Oddly enough, though, right now it was deserted. The only sound was the ticking sound of his engine cooling.

  They sat in silence for a moment, looking at each other. Nicole swallowed.

  Do something, dickhead, he told himself.

  Clutching the wheel tightly, because he didn’t trust himself to touch her, he leaned over to her, slowly. She was still a moment, then moved her head to meet his, hands in her lap. Their lips met over the central console.

  The first real taste of her was electric. He felt it down to his balls. The merest taste, a brush of the lips, then, heads tilting, a deeper taste.

  Oh God, it was like drinking fine wine. His nose was against her cheek. Close up, she smelled even better. They should just bottle up that smell and call it Desirable Woman. Men would follow women wearing it over cliffs.

  He opened his mouth and licked her tongue, feeling her in-drawn breath from his mouth. Oh Jesus. One more second and he’d tilt her seat back, climb on top of her, lift her skirt, rip her panties open and drive into her.

  He could barely breathe from the excitement. They had to take it inside. He didn’t give a shit, but presumably Nicole would mind being caught humping in the front seat.

  He lifted his head, watching her eyes slowly open, like huge dark blue headlights. She looked dazed, the skin over her cheekbones flushed. She was aroused. Not as much as he was—that would be impossible—but she was definitely turned on.

  “Let’s go up.” He was whispering. Everything felt fragile, as if the moment were of glass and could shatter at too loud a sound.

  “Okay,” she whispered back.

  There was no small talk in the elevator going up. Nicole couldn’t utter a word, her throat was too tightly closed. What was there to say, anyway? She couldn’t have made any small talk that wouldn’t arrow right back to what they were about to do.

  Sam Reston stood beside her, looking as if he were about ready to explode, with an enormous erection tenting his pants. Any possible comments she might make about the weather or the building or the food they’d just eaten would be inane.

  The very air felt charged, as if something enormous, something dark, surely momentous, possibly dangerous, were coming closer with each second.

  This hadn’t actually happened to her before—going to a man’s house on a date having already accepted the idea of sleeping with him. Ms. Cool always kept h
er options open, never promising anything. A number of men who thought going to bed with her was a done deal had been left hanging. She made no promises and always reserved the right to say no if she became uncomfortable with the idea.

  She wasn’t going to say no now. She couldn’t. It was as if Sam were this…this dark wizard who’d somehow cast a spell. Cast a glittering net over her so she couldn’t escape, couldn’t go back, could only go forward. The way an arrow, once loosed from the bow and embedded in flesh, can only be pushed forward, never pulled back.

  There was this huge, rushing stream of dark sensuality, flowing directly toward his apartment and his bed, and she was caught in it.

  At the thought of being in Sam Reston’s bed, her vagina tightened, hard. Oh God, she was so aroused, she could feel the lips of her sex rubbing together as she moved.

  This was absolutely new territory for Nicole. Another country altogether. One so far away from her knowledge of herself she could have been on an alien planet.

  She couldn’t say anything. Her voice would betray her agitation. She was barely holding on to a semblance of control, trying to keep her breathing regular, but it was all but impossible when she realized they were minutes away from bed.

  At the thought, at the heated images in her head of Sam Reston’s broad, naked shoulders above her, dark eyes staring into hers, long legs twined with hers, her vagina clenched again, her stomach muscles pulling sharply.

  Heavens, she was minutes from orgasm, just from riding in the car and walking beside this man! Her heart pounded, her knees were weak.

  This was ridiculous. Insane. Nicole was not highly sexed. Even in Geneva, footloose and fancy free, with all the money in the world and a city of diplomats and bankers at her feet, she hadn’t dated that much. Certainly hadn’t slept around.

  She was hard to please, easily bored. Cool and in control, always.

  Not now. This rough former soldier had somehow shaken her so hard she’d come away from her moorings. She was so filled with nervous excitement she had to stop herself from drumming her fingers on her purse.