by Caro Carson
She slipped her fingers under his shirtsleeve, traveling a little way from his wrist to the crease of his elbow, making the rest of his skin jealous of that little piece of his arm.
“You’re still totally dressed,” she said.
“So are you.”
“I am?” Her laugh was languid, lazy. “I am. How is that even possible? I don’t feel dressed. I feel like I’ve been...uncovered.”
His heart, it hurt.
She slipped her hand down his wrist and slid her fingers between his, holding his hand as she turned thoughtful, a little serious, frowning slightly. “I feel a little exposed. I should be blushing.”
“You weren’t, and you shouldn’t.”
She held on to his shoulder to pull herself upright, so she was sitting sideways on his lap. “I shouldn’t?”
Graham started to shake his head, but Emily’s frown was already giving way to another smile. It started small, coy, but quickly turned into a laugh, all joy.
“Then I won’t.” She leaned forward, just to touch noses with him. “I can’t wait to do that again. Let’s be naked this time.”
Hell, yeah. All the blood in his body went south, leaving his brain empty, just empty. Graham thunked his head back on the headrest.
She began placing little kisses along his jaw. He regained enough brainpower to comprehend that much. She put both hands on his shoulders as she got to her knees, dragging one knee across his lap, grazing his aching hardness, so that she was straddling him as she knelt over him in the driver’s seat, pressed close to him by the steering wheel at her back. Her long hair fell forward to brush his face as she bent over him, kissing, kissing.
“Emily.” He tried to say it firmly. It came out as a growl.
Her hands slipped between them. The awkward angle didn’t prevent her from unbuckling his belt and the top button of his jeans. The relief that the extra room gave his body was short-lived, because her hands brushing so near drove his hardness to its limit. He grabbed her wrists. “Emily. Stop.”
She rocked her body against his. He closed his eyes against the bright flare of pleasure. She would be heaven in bed. Bright heaven.
“Stop, sweetheart.” He was murmuring the words like a lover, between the kisses he was returning. He let go of her wrists and slid his fingers between hers, holding both of her hands. “Hey. Slow down a moment, beautiful.” Not effective, either.
Emily will be hurt when you leave her behind, hurt worse than any bar fight.
That grim reality put the right tone in his voice. “We need to stop now.”
She sat back just a few inches to see his face better. He liked the way she looked him in the eye, even when she was confused. Of course he liked it. He liked every single thing about this woman.
“Why?” she said, a gently spoken word, a simple curiosity.
Because if I have you once, I’ll never stop craving you.
No—this was about her, not about him, but damn, that thought had been too clear.
“Because I’m leaving, remember? I have to leave.” He could see it in her eyes when his words started to penetrate.
“But...you’re passing through. You could stay a few days first? The weekend?”
A sex-drenched weekend, just Emily on the white sheets of a hotel bed. The image must have been in her mind as well, for she leaned into him, slid up the hard length of him, and whispered in his ear. “Stay the weekend.”
He forced his brain to keep functioning when his body wanted to shut it down. It was a learned skill, one taught from the first day in the military, how to overrule physical needs, how to complete a mission while the body clamored for essentials like food and sleep. Sex with Emily felt like just such an essential. He overruled his body now, no matter how tempting it was to just shut off his brain and let his body have what it needed. Emily would satisfy him, Emily wanted to satisfy him and herself, too, but he remembered who he was, where he’d been, where he was going. He didn’t belong with joy and beauty.
He held her still with one hand on her hip, warm under the coat. The other hand he used to cup her face, so they were looking eye to eye and he had her full attention. “I’ll be gone at dawn.”
That stilled her in a way his hands could not.
“I’m sorry, Emily. Sorrier than I can say.” He’d killed the last trace of her smile. “This was supposed to be just a kiss at your old make-out spot. A fun little dare when you said the front seat wouldn’t work.”
“Or the back seat.” She dropped her gaze to his chest, so he saw only her lashes.
“Or the back seat. It’s a kiss that got out of control. I went too far, too fast, but I’ve got to put the brakes on. I can’t—I can’t be your lover and stay.”
She looked so sad with her eyes downcast like that, as if he was rejecting her, when he was actually refusing to treat her as no more than a casual lay.
“Look at me, Emily. I can’t be your lover and stay, and I can’t be your lover and leave, either. I’m not going to have sex with you while a steering wheel’s at your back and then just drop you off in a bar parking lot and drive away. I won’t do that.”
“Just a kiss,” she repeated, stuck at the beginning of his explanation.
He hoped the rest of his words would stick with her, too. He hoped she’d see that she was more special to him than a kiss or a dare.
“Look, I need to cool off,” she said. “So, I’ll just—um—”
She tried to get off his lap, but that straddle position that she’d settled into with such confidence now made for awkward movements. The bucket seat that had felt like such bliss was too tight for the two of them to get untangled with any grace. Emily reached behind her right hip, groping for the door’s handle, until it opened and a rush of warm air escaped. She escaped, too. Or rather, she climbed off him and jumped the step to the ground, grabbing at his coat to keep it around her shoulders, grabbing at her hem to tug her dress back into place.
He followed before she could shut the door. Out in the cold, he rebuttoned his jeans, rebuckled his belt angrily, mad at himself for how far he’d let things go. He stood beside her, letting the air do what it could to chill their passion.
“I’m just going to go for a little walk and check out the pond.” Emily pulled his coat more tightly around herself and gave him a brave little laugh. “It’s kind of been a theme tonight.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
She shied away from him, just a little duck of her chin and a turn of a colder shoulder. He felt it. He deserved it. She was hurt that he’d turned her down, but tomorrow would come, and Emily had a whole lot of tomorrows ahead of her. For all of those tomorrows, she’d be glad that she wouldn’t look back on this night and feel like she’d been used by a guy who’d only stopped in her town for a drink.
“Do you have another coat for yourself?” she asked.
She was going to let him walk with her, then. He was glad. Grateful, even. In silence, she followed him to the back of the SUV. He lifted the rear door to the cargo area. In the harsh white of the interior LED lights, he pushed aside the tumbled new bedding and the towels with their price tags still attached, no longer a neatly folded stack after their jolting cross-country drive. His two Marine Corps seabags were still lined up and tied down, exactly as he’d loaded them back in Chicago. The silence was going on too long; when he opened the metal clasp at the top of one olive drab bag, it sounded loud.
Emily trailed her fingers over the stenciled name on the bottom of the other bag. “These duffel bags look like the real deal.”
He was glad to hear her voice. “We call them seabags, but yeah. I’ve had them a long time.”
“Seabags. Were you in the Navy?”
“Marines. Oo-rah.”
It was the default response in the Marine Corps for nearly any kind of
comment, said far more frequently than the motto, Semper fi. He said the oo-rah quietly, tongue in cheek, as he watched her, unsure, for once, how to decipher the expression on her face. He pulled out the olive drab track jacket he knew would be near the top of the seabag, rolled in accordance with regulation. Some of the Marine lessons were worth following still; rolled items were the most efficient way to pack a duffel bag. Once a Marine, always a Marine, as the saying went. Semper fi.
Emily ran her fingers over the block letters he’d stenciled so many years ago during his very first week as an officer: GRAHAM, B.
“Benjamin,” she said softly.
“Yes.”
“I almost slept with a man who’d only given me his last name.” She didn’t make it sound like that was a good thing. “Mr. Schumer knew your first name before I did. Why did you tell me your name was Graham?”
“My name is Graham.”
“With everybody?”
Why did she seem upset about this? “All the time. Always has been. Midshipman Graham, Lieutenant Graham, Captain Graham. In the corporate world, my assistant put calls through to Mr. Graham. Graham takes clients to dinner. Graham buys a round of cigars on the golf course. And when someone new introduces herself to me, I shake the hand she offers and introduce myself as Graham.”
“Like a business acquaintance?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
Whatever she was asking, it was enough to make Emily drop that arm’s distance she’d been maintaining. She came a step closer to him, and she lifted her chin to a challenging angle. He preferred it over that shy duck-away.
“I’m asking what name you go by with the women who know you better than I do. The women whom you are willing to take to bed? In the dark, what name is a woman supposed to cry out at that moment? Do the privileged few know Benjamin?”
There were no other women he was more willing to take to bed than her. That wasn’t it at all. He just didn’t want to use her and leave her. If he and Emily could’ve stayed in bed for a weekend—for a year—forever—
He had to stop that train of thought. Keep it light.
“My mother calls me Benjamin. I don’t think that would be the best thing to hear at that moment, do you?”
But Emily didn’t smile with him. She looked away and traced the letter B with one finger. He dared to touch her again. He had never wanted to stop touching her, but maybe he hadn’t made that clear. She inhaled sharply when he slid his hand under her hair to the back of her neck, but he pulled her close, anyway.
“The only woman who matters at all to me has been calling me Graham all night. I was not keeping you at a distance by giving you that name, not at any distance whatsoever, but if you want to call me Benjamin, go ahead. Ben works, too. I’m not a fan of Benji.”
Now her expression was easy to read. She was deciding whether or not to believe him. He waited, pressing his fingers in slow, lazy circles on the back of her neck to relieve the tension there.
“I’m not a fan of Emmie,” she said. “Em if you must. But really, the whole three syllables isn’t a lot to ask of a man.”
“Emily.”
“Benjamin.” She thought it over. Her expression said she didn’t like it. “Maybe Ben. Hello, Ben.”
“Hello.”
Then she threw up a hand. “Oh, to heck with it. Graham. It’s going to have to be Graham, like a business deal. You know, when a man gives you an amazing orgasm as Graham, he’s pretty much going to be stuck as Graham in your mind forever after that. ‘Me and Graham, at the lake that night.’ That’s just the way it is.”
There was a whole lot to process in that declaration. The fact that he was going to be in her mind forever tugged at his heart, because he already knew she was going to be the standard by which he measured any other evening with any other woman from this day on. But the most important thing was that she’d returned to her bold and straightforward style. He was so relieved, he wanted to laugh and kiss her and thank her for still talking to him, all at the same time.
He went with the kiss.
He felt her soften, felt her give in, but then she backed out of his hold. She was better than he was at resisting this new addiction.
She’d been wearing his coat as a cape all night, but now she put her arms through the sleeves. He put on the track jacket, a uniform item that Marines were allowed to wear as civilian dress. He could wear it even though he was no longer in the military. Out of habit, he zipped it up halfway. Regulation.
Emily tugged on his sleeve. “This is all I was looking for in the back seat. Something to keep you warm while we went to look at the dock. Pretty innocent of me. But then I started kissing you. I know that I was the one who started kissing you first—”
“Nothing is your fault. You didn’t start it.”
She let go of his sleeve and shoved her fists in the coat pockets. “Actually, I did. I introduced myself to you at Keller’s. I offered to buy you a drink. Later on, I practically begged you to kiss me on the side of the road, and I brought you here. But you...” She fell silent.
He was keenly interested to hear where this was going. “But I...?”
“You’re a grown man, Graham. I mean that in the best way. You know exactly what you’re doing.”
Well, he had known, until he’d met her and gotten the crazy idea that he could enjoy a few harmless hours dancing or drinking with her, then walk away unaffected.
“In the front seat... I’ve never been kissed like that before. I’ve never been touched so perfectly...” She blushed now in a way she hadn’t blushed in the front seat. “I’ve never been touched so perfectly accurately before.”
Ah—she meant that kind of knowing what he was doing. It was tough not to feel a little smug about that. Hard on the heels of that thought was jealousy at the idea of other men touching her, followed by the even more irrational anger that other men had apparently fumbled around and not pleased her. They didn’t deserve to touch her if they couldn’t please her. Scratch that—no one deserved to touch her. Ever. Graham could break every man who’d ever dared to try.
Addicts were irrational.
Emily’s blush didn’t stop her from being bold. “To be perfectly honest, I loved it, Graham. Every moment of it. I want more of you.”
Hell, yeah. But he beat down the impulse. She was too young for him, too full of life, too everything as she blushed, pink-cheeked in the pool of artificial light. But she was a hella-brave woman—she never dropped her gaze despite her blush.
In fact, she was studying him closely. “You’re choosing to bring it all from a full gallop to a hard stop. That’s not my first choice, but it takes two. You said it best. It wouldn’t be any fun if one of us wasn’t having any fun.”
It would be fun, no doubt, but her regrets afterward wouldn’t be. Didn’t she understand this was all for her sake?
“But I don’t like the way you’re making this all about me,” she said, echoing his thought with her own kind of accuracy. “You’re being some kind of noble Sir Galahad, protecting my delicate sensibilities. I didn’t ask you to do that. If we’ve come up to a line that you don’t want to cross, I can respect that, Graham, I really can. But don’t cast me in the role of some virginal princess who is too delicate to watch you drive away in the morning. The real reason we aren’t making love right this second is because you don’t want to cross that line.”
She squinted at the light in the ceiling of the cargo area as she reached up to find the switch. She turned it off. The darkness was a relief.
The silence was not, but damn if Graham could think of the right thing to say. Of anything to say. He could only watch Emily become more vivid as his eyes adjusted to the moonlight.
She stepped close to him, as close as she’d been when she’d put her hand on his heart and asked him for that first ki
ss. Graham, it’s cold out.
She was right. She had taken the initiative—brave, bold Emily. The piece of him that would always be a Marine Corps officer valued that. She had everything a man could want in a teammate: initiative, a cool head, the ability to adjust when plans went awry. She kept a sense of humor; she smiled easily and often. Add to that her beauty, her body, the way she’d be heaven in bed, and Graham knew he was looking at the one woman for him—or the woman that would have been perfect for the younger version of himself, the Ben Graham who had existed once upon a time.
He’d met her too late.
He was done. Burned out. But if he’d met her years ago, if he’d been the one who was just finishing college, the one who didn’t know what lay ahead, if he’d been the one who was twenty-two—
She would have been fourteen.
He would have already finished his first year as a lieutenant in the Marines, and she would have been a high school freshman who could have had no more than a crush on him. No matter how kind he would’ve tried to be if she’d followed him around, her young heart would have inevitably been crushed. He would’ve been her first disappointment, her first disillusionment.
With one hand, he gently tucked her hair behind her ear.
I’m sorry, sweet girl, but I’m not the right man for you. Someday, you’ll fall in love with someone your own age, and you’ll see what I mean. I promise.
She closed her eyes briefly and leaned her cheek into his touch. “I guess I’m wondering what you think will happen if we cross that line.”
“I don’t want any hearts to break.”
But Emily stepped into him, arms around his neck, fingers in his hair. She fit herself against him, woman to man, breast to chest and softness to hardness. Graham wasn’t twenty-two; she was. Twenty-two and grown-up and absolutely spectacular.
Graham bent his head and took her mouth with his, claiming her as if he could keep her.
And then he let her go.
Chapter Eight
The dock made her angry.