There was an intense need that pounded through Léonie’s body and she could feel his responding need in the new tightness of his fingers. The grip he found around her head as he pulled her in closer to him.
Her lips moved to the side of his face and her hands grabbed around his head.
Ty’s eyes were open and he looked at her, grabbing her in his gaze. With another thrust Léonie lifted up and wrapped her leg over him. His back was against the wall and she was straddling him with his head in her hands. She wanted to drink him in, to own him. Her body was craving this man in a way she’d never craved anything before. There was nothing rationale that she wanted any part of. Ty’s fingers felt the skin just beneath the hem of her shirt. His large hands covered over the space of her skin. Her back moved with his touch, his thumbs brushed the sides of her ribs, slipping just under the edge of her bra.
A small gasp of anticipation left her throat and she lifted her arms. Ty immediately obeyed, pulling her light cotton blouse over her head. She wore a plain white cotton bra and Ty looked at her in as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world. His hands slid around her back, deftly releasing its clasps and pulling the elastic straps off of each shoulder, kissing the skin that was immediately left exposed.
Léonie slid the material to the floor, pulling at the bottom of Ty’s shirt. She pulled it over his head in just the same way he had. He helped her pull it the whole way off then lifted her body and shifted until he could lay her gently on the floor, sweeping his hand underneath her to make sure any left over rocks and debris had been moved away. Then, Ty leaned down and kissed her. She moved her head up to his lips.
Her fingers were at the top of his pants and she wriggled out of hers as he helped.
Ty had never seen a woman so beautiful before. Her skin was creamy in a way that rendered her more like a painting then as a real woman. It was the tiny marks, a little scar on her shoulder, a mole on her thigh, that made her real. It was these marks he liked the best. Ty kissed each one, every freckle that he found, anything that marked her as the woman she was.
Ty’s fingers crept along the inside of her thigh until she shivered again. It was such a satisfying reaction that he kept trying to find the touches, the kisses, the spots that brought it about. Her eyes were lit in a way that pulled him in completely. Léonie wrapped her naked legs around his torso and lifted her hips, her body asking for him to come inside.
She bit her bottom lip until he saw the little white lines where the pigment changed from too much pressure.
Ty leaned down and pulled her bottom lip between his teeth, dragging it between his lips, then releasing it again. Ty lowered himself and slowly exhaled as he slid inside of Léonie who released a whispered gasp into his ear.
She lifted her body using her legs.
Ty moved slowly at first. The need was overpowering but he was determined to feel her, to let her feel him. His right hand reached beneath her and lifted her lower back, pulling it up to him until she gasped through a ragged breath again.
“More,” Her lips wrapped around the word and Ty began to move more deeply. His rhythm changed to match hers and their bodies moved in unison as their breath puffed out at different intervals. He could feel her thighs around his waist, felt them as they pulled him in. Sweat beaded on his back and Léonie ran a hand over the slickness that had formed there.
She seemed intently interested and attracted to each new discovery they made of each other. Her short hair fanned out around her head and her lips had become a darker red.
Her breathing deepened. Ty watched her face as he tried to gauge each of her feelings, finding her pleasure and pursuing it.
She lifted her hand to Ty’s face and he pressed his head into her hand. A loud gasp escaped her lips this time and she seemed surprised by it herself. The look of surprise changed into something else and Ty knew she was getting close. His body demanded her and she demanded him right back.
The expression on her face was almost too much for him. He could feel his control slipping and his need to let go was beginning to overpower his senses. The sound that rattled through her throat, the lines of her body as she moved, and the look on her face, was all building up inside his body.
His eyes moved back over her face and just as her body seized up, gripping him tightly, Ty’s body responded in kind. He looked right into her eyes as he let go of everything he’d been holding onto.
His body contracted as her lower back arched, her hips gripping fully into him.
There was a heavy breath shared between them. Their lungs expanded and contracted quickly at first then slower as they ebbed away from the intense release that left them both heavy and naked on the concrete floor.
Léonie rolled to Ty’s side and they both lay motionless for a long time. Ty looked over at her and something hard that had settled in his stomach long ago, began to let go. To soften.
After a few minutes Léonie forced herself to sit up. She reached for her clothes, sliding into her panties, then pulling her pants over them.
“If we die here, I’d rather not be found naked,” She smiled at Ty.
He reached a hand up and pushed his thumb across her cheek, “You won’t die here. Not today.”
Léonie nodded, “I know. I believe you.”
Chapter Eight
When they were both fully clothed Ty sat against the wall again and again tried to hear for sounds outside the wall. As he listened carefully he began to hear a soft patter. People talking?
“I think I hear something,” Ty stood up. He walked along the wall and a small breeze brushed again his face. He walked toward the air and let his fingers search over the wall for cracks, for something that might be letting the air in.
“What is it?” Léonie asked behind him. She stood too and also began looking at the wall, listening for the sounds that Ty heard. “I think I hear it too.”
Ty’s heart began to beat faster. He moved another step when he felt the air again.
“I think—if I can move this. We might be able to climb down from here.” His hands began testing the various pieces of wall until they touched on one that moved. “Stand over there, the furthest spot from me, if this falls then the whole thing might go.”
Léonie did as she was told and watched as Ty began to slowly and carefully remove pieces of the wall. The first chunk of sunlight brought tears to her eyes once more. After forty-five minutes there was enough free for Ty to see out. He yelled to the soldiers he saw on the ground and then the sound of voices really came alive, at first a few, then many.
He continued on and someone brought a ladder, which three different men braced at the same time.
“You first,” Ty held out his hand to Léonie and she caught her breath. Ty guarded her body as she moved onto the ladder. Before she began down she looked up into his eyes and he smiled. One foot after another brought her all the way to the ground where another soldier unnecessarily lifted her off the ladder to the dirt beneath. She walked a few feet away and watched as Ty descended.
The closer he got to the ground the more something in her heart ached. When he reached the bottom he wouldn’t be hers anymore. He would belong to the Army to another world far from hers. She watched his easy way of coming down. With a swift agile leap he landed on the ground.
There were people all around, mostly soldiers. Léonie knew that the other doctors would be helping those in need and that she should be there too.
Two men had surrounded Ty.
“I should go help—” She pointed in the direction of the other two buildings. Ty nodded. Before she left she looked into his face, knowing that it may be the last time. She may be moved to another hospital tomorrow, a hospital with room for her. Léonie gave a weak smile. She read something in Ty’s eyes that made her feel weak.
Quickly, before she could change her mind, Léonie turned and walked quickly to the buildings.
Ty stayed with the soldiers and took orders from Major O’Donnell. They discussed what
had happened before Ty moved to the street where the patients well enough had been moved. He found the large Scottish women he’d met in the building and sought direction for ways to help. The woman obliged him with a good many. From there it was tedious work. Ty had to have one of his translators call around to other facilities in the area and some far away to find out about open beds or space. Ty worked on securing military transportation to take the serious cases to other facilities. The less serious would stay in military provided tents nearby.
They did everything they could to help even as patrols of US and Afghan soldiers moved along the streets, taking fast and swift action to apprehend the people responsible for the events in the first place. Torches lit up the road and the buildings in the oncoming darkness.
It was eight hours before Ty was able to think about going back to the base. He found Major O’Donnell who requested Ty to do just that.
Ty looked over the MSF buildings that had stood completely intact only sixteen hours before.
“Brandt, back to base?”
Brandt nodded and another soldier followed him. The three men walked silently down the road toward base. Their guard was still up and their flashlights roamed the ground, but they were all so exhausted it was hard to focus on much of anything at all.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” Brandt said in a distant voice.
“I know,” Ty agreed though his thoughts were on the entire confluence of events during the day, not just the explosions.
“I just want to sleep for three days but I know I may never sleep well again,” The third soldier said and Ty looked at him.
Ty was looking at the other soldier but he hadn’t heard anything he’d said. It was the sight of the sun making its first dim appearance in the sky that stopped him. Something dropped within Ty and he stopped in the middle of the road.
“Are you ok?” Brandt asked as he too stopped in the middle of the road.
“You go back to base, I have to go back,” Ty turned.
“I’ll go with you,” Brandt immediately volunteered.
“No,” Ty smiled and slapped the other man on the back. “I need to go back alone.”
Then Ty took off running in the direction of the hospital. Ty kept his flashlight on the ground in front of him as he ran. His legs felt weak but he pushed on anyway. As he took his first steps in view of the hospital, Ty slowed down to a walk. Now that he was here he didn’t know exactly what to do.
Taking a guess, he walked through the large hole in the wall and moved around the first crumbling building to the second that still stood in good shape. Ty was about to walk in when he saw a shadow leaning against the edge of the wall.
Ty stepped closer to the shadow.
“Léonie?” The shadow lifted and turned to him in surprise. Ty looked at her face. There were tears on her cheeks and look of loss pushing through her eyes. Léonie pushed at the tears on her face.
“Are you ok?” Ty stepped closer.
Her eyes moved away from his as she nodded and tried to smile, though no smile appeared.
“Did you need something? Forget something?” Her voice was soft and barely intelligible.
“Yes,” Ty walked all the way to her, held the back of her head and kissed her.
When he pulled away he looked in her large blue eyes.
“I thought I would never see you again. That I had lost you for good,” Léonie hiccoughed a cry as her large eyes looked into his, asking questions her mouth wouldn’t dare ask.
Ty smiled a wide boyish grin, “Not here. Not today.”
This time it was Léonie who smiled.
Chapter Nine
Ty watched Léonie push a stray strand of dark hair out of her face and behind her ear. The short cut and fringe of bangs made her eyes look even larger than they otherwise might have. The evening sun was hitting her face at an angle and, if it weren’t for the complete destruction that stood blatantly behind her in all of its grisly glory, she might have looked like a nineteen twenties move star off on safari.
The thought made Ty smile. Léonie’s personality was about as a similar to a twenties movie star as Ayman al-Zawahiri was to a sugar plum fairy.
“Tell us about where you were when the first explosion happened, Ms. Fournier.” The reporter was wearing a blue Kevlar vest with “PRESS,” written on the front of it. The woman had dull brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and looked nothing like the reporters Ty was used to seeing on TV at home.
She was reporting for the BBC and she stood in perfect symmetry with Léonie. Oddly, it seemed to Ty that Léonie was the more composed of the two. She had a way of listening, considering her answers, and responding with fluid ease, something the British woman didn’t seem to have going for her. The British woman had fumbled over words twice in the last five minutes and Ty was waiting in anticipation of her next.
“I was upstairs in the children’s ward. I was moving a boy to another ward with one of my colleagues… unfortunately my colleague did not survive.” Léonie’s eyes dropped to the ground, her face gave a barely perceptible twitch before she looked back up. Ty understood this but the people watching thousands of miles away would probably not notice the emotion that sat in her blue eyes.
“Your colleague, what was his name?”
Léonie gulped, “Jacob, he was an American, this was only his second week at our hospital.” Léonie had been frantic to find out the name of the boy who had died under her hands. To her it had felt like an insult to his death that she, a woman who had worked with him and seen him for two weeks, dozens of times throughout shifts, couldn’t remember his name.”
“Did you think you were going to die?”
“There were certainly moments,” Léonie’s eyes flicked to Ty. There was a small prickle that burned his face when she looked at him that way. There was something to the blue of her eyes that made it seem as if she saw through everything. That she saw through Ty, through the bullshit of the world. He liked it. It was freeing in some odd way and because of the sensation he didn’t even try to hold things back from her.
“I would like to say,” Léonie turned to the reporter then looked directly at the camera. “We have had a serious blow. This Doctor’s Without Border’s Hospital was the only one for a hundred miles that could take the sort of serious cases we can handle. It has seen a terrible tragedy in the last few days. We have lost human lives, which can never be replaced, but the building, that, we can replace. This is a cruel call to action. For those who can give, give. With financial help from around the world we will rebuild, we will save more lives that those that have been lost today—I can’t think of a better way to honor the lives that have been lost right here then saving more lives right here.” Léonie turned to look over the ruin of the building and Ty watched the camera pan across the worst of it. The reporter motioned and the camera slowly panned back to her and her Kevlar vest.
Léonie waited until she was sure that the woman was closing up the interview then walked toward Ty.
“Hi,” Her large eyes latched onto his. He had a strong desire to pull her to him. To wrap her up and smell her hair, her neck, her thighs.
“You did a good job putting in a plug for Doctor’s Without Borders. I think it’s the first time I’ve heard you call it that.”
Léonie gave a half smile up at him, “I wasn’t sure if Americans would know what I was talking about it I said—Médecins Sans Frontières.”
“You’re right about that.” Ty motioned and they both began walking side by side toward Léonie’s housing. She’d been set up with various other nurses and doctors in a very utilitarian housing building. Léonie had her own room but shared a bathroom with every other woman in the building. Some of the nurses shared rooms and almost all of the short-term volunteers, depending on their experience and tenure, stayed in dormitories.
Besides a quick walk over to her housing unit Ty and Léonie had barely been able to spend any time alone since the bombings two days previously. For two d
ays straight things had been chaotic. He’d picked her up and walked her back. Tried to stay as close to her as possible when his time wasn’t needed somewhere else, which he was most of the time. But these days the place he wanted to be was at the bombed out MSF building.
Ty picked up Léonie’s hand when they got close to her building and gave her a swift tug, pulling her behind a wall. Kissing her in public, in a place where women were often encouraged to cover their entire faces, seemed like a bad idea. Ty pulled Léonie into him, both of his hands held her arms. She looked up into his eyes and their lips met at the same time.
He’d been thinking about this, just kissing her, just touching her, every minute since they’d climbed out of the room they’d thought they might die in.
Léonie gave herself over to her feelings, something she’d had little experience doing. Ty smelled like aftershave and sweat. She liked it. His dark eyes looked at her in a way no one had ever looked at her. She hadn’t known until she met Ty that she’d really never actually been looked at before. This, his eyes roving her face, neck, what little of her body he could see in her long sleeved linen shirt and pants, felt more intimate then any sex she’d had before.
Her chest heaved with desire for him, another new phenomenon for her. The only thing she’d felt passionate about or real desire for had been medicine. The burning sensation that crept through her gut, tickling her insides made Léonie shiver.
“Do you want to come in?” She could barely hear her own voice.
“Hm?” Ty pulled out of their kiss to look at her.
Romancing the SEAL: The Complete Box Set (SEAL Military Romance Series Book 4) Page 5