Emergency Attraction (Love Emergency)

by Samanthe Beck

  But apparently, he had heard her reply, and he wasn’t done trying to prove her a liar yet. Everything went weightless, and then she landed in the driver’s seat of the Rover with her elbows propped on the center console and her legs dangling out the open door. He stepped between her knees, filling the door, blocking everything from her view except him.

  “Was that orgasm you’re still shaking from an example of how badly you hate me? Three more minutes, Sinclair, and you’re going to despise me.”

  She scrambled for handholds on the seat and steering wheel as he tugged her jeans and panties down past her hips. Another tug left them bunched around the tops of her boots.

  “Remember the second way I taught you to come?”

  Oh, sweet Jesus. She did. But he didn’t give her a chance to answer. He hitched her legs up and braced her heels along the top of the door. Cool February air washed across her bare skin, making her all the more conscious of her vulnerable position.

  “I taught you to come in my mouth.”

  He said the words against the inside of her knee and then kissed his way down her thigh, lowering himself to his knees in the process. “You were shy at first, and so nervous your legs trembled…just like now.” Those wicked green eyes sent her a look of pure masculine satisfaction. “Nervous?”

  She bit her lip, because she didn’t know what might fly out of her mouth. No. Yes. Please. It was anyone’s guess. The silence earned her a knowing smirk before he raked his teeth over delicate skin and sent a current of need straight to parts of her so overstimulated a wayward breath might leave her reeling. Her body jerked in reaction.

  He laughed, but there was a surprising amount of affection in the sound, and the hands supporting the backs of her thighs swept up and down, soothingly. “You jumped every time I touched you then, too. Especially here…”

  He kissed her. Right there. Dead on target, but just a fleeting brush of lips and a staggering gentleness that only strung her tighter. So tight she jerked again, damn him. A yearning moan vibrated from her chest—possibly her soul.

  “Yeah, you took right to this, baby girl. Remember? Once I showed you what I could do, you forgot all about nerves, and shyness. I had you trembling all over, for different reasons, and begging me not to stop. Think you’ll beg this time, too?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you, Sinclair.”

  And then he proceeded to, hard and fast, with lips, teeth, and—oh…ohhh—tongue. She fought it for one useless second, unwilling to let him win, but every lash whipped what promised to be a brutal orgasm to new urgency. The wet sound of his mouth working her filled the silence, punctuated by her panting breaths. Soon dignity surrendered to need. She chased it, one hand wrapped around the oh-shit handle, the other clenched in his hair. Somehow, she’d gotten one boot wedged into the corner where windshield met dashboard. His shoulder braced the other. Her jeans stretched tight between her ankles like an awkward tether. Just when she thought she couldn’t take another hit, he closed his lips around her clit and applied devastating suction. Suddenly she was on the brink, quivering and whimpering in the face of agonizing pleasure.

  And then—the bastard—he raised his head. Green eyes burned into hers. “Say it,” he ordered.

  She ground her teeth. “I hate you.” She did. She hated him for leaving. Hated him for coming back. Hated how easily he’d gotten her across the front seat of his car, with her ass hanging out the door and her jeans around her ankles, about to burst into tears because she needed him so badly.

  A hard palm smacked her unprotected ass. The sound sent a trio of birds flying from the tops of tall pines overhead. “That’s for lying.”

  Another smack—not hard, but over the same stinging skin—and her nerve endings sang. “That’s for putting this ass at risk by lighting out of the bus depot like a bat out of hell.”

  “I hate you.”

  Cool fingertips drifted over her still-tingling flesh, and she realized he traced his own handprint. The small discomfort didn’t distract from the pounding ache between her legs. If anything, it only intensified the sensation.

  “I missed you.” Whether he was telling her, or prompting her, she didn’t know, but the words fanned unfair places. Her whimpered response turned into a groan when his lips followed the path his fingers had outlined. That mouth. She needed that mouth…

  “Shane, please—”

  His lips drifted closer. “You know I love to hear you beg for it, Sinclair. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamed of you whispering, ‘please,’ in that breathless voice, and I wake up hard and hurting every damn time. Just as hard and hurting as I am now. But this time it’s going to take more than please.” With that, he moved to the other cheek and drew an intricate design with the tip of his tongue, seemingly content to torture her forever.

  Hot, sweet misery overwhelmed her. Frustrated tears stung her eyes. She had two options. Tell him to go to hell and drag her miserable, needy ass inside along with the tattered remains of her pride, or…

  “I hate you.” She barely managed a whisper—one last act of defiance before she gave in to his demand. He heard her, and somehow, he knew he’d won. His tongue grazed her clit.

  Her muscles gave out, and she fell back against the seat. The ceiling of the Rover blurred behind a haze of scalding tears. “I…” Oh, God, she was going to say it. “I m-missed you.”

  The words tore through her, annihilating boundaries she’d established and maintained for a decade, leaving her wide open and at his mercy.

  But then he was there, giving her what she needed, rewarding her honesty with hard, thorough strokes. Staying with her as she bucked and shuddered. Staying with her as her fingernails raked his scalp and her broken cry clawed the air.

  The last thing she heard before the shattering combination of pleasure and fear took over was her own voice repeating three words like a shameful confession.

  “I…missed…you.”

  …

  Victory raged through him, thundering like a heartbeat in time to her words. Damn right she’d missed him. He wasn’t in this alone. The uncontrived truth in her voice couldn’t be mistaken, and that kind of honesty deserved some serious positive reinforcement. After he saw her through this orgasm, he planned to flip her over, give her stubborn ass one last slap—to make sure she understood this wasn’t just about old memories, this was about them here and now—and then reward them both for today’s breakthrough with an exhaustive fucking ten years in the making.

  He’d imagined her like this, on-and-off, for a decade, and even though he had a pretty good imagination, those fantasies made a pale substitute. Since the night of the wedding, however, imagination had escalated to cravings. A constant thirst he hadn’t been able to quench…until now. He could spend hours here, drinking his fill, drowning in her, if she’d let him. But even as he gentled his kisses and slowed his tongue to the softest of caresses, her sobs increased.

  That was new. Not the tears. She’d always been a crier. It had scared the shit out of him the first time, but she’d blushed and promised they weren’t tears of pain, or sadness, they just…happened. Eventually, he’d realized if he made her come hard enough, she couldn’t hold them back. Those tears of pleasure were beyond her control, but not his, and he considered them the sign of a job well done. Once her orgasm subsided, however, they always tapered off, which these showed no signs of doing. No, this was something else. Maybe pain? Maybe sadness? Hell, maybe her foot was stuck there in the crevice over the dash, but until he knew more, there would be no flipping, slapping, or fucking.

  Instead, he eased away from the sweetest pussy he’d ever had the pleasure of plunging his tongue into. The familiar jut of her hipbone beckoned, and he bestowed a kiss there before running his lips over her fluttering stomach. Her leg had to come down before he could go any higher, so he hooked his hand under her thigh and lifted her knee toward her chin. Her foot slid out easily, and he lowered her leg to the seat. Sobs, now muffled b
y the arms she’d flung over her face, continued.

  Okay. Not the foot.

  He worked his way up the midline of her slender torso and nudged the poncho out of his way so he could press a kiss to the swell of her breast, directly over her heart. Her breath stopped, but then released on another small sob.

  This was going to get tricky. He planted a knee on the seat, braced a forearm on the center console, and nuzzled the underside of her jaw. When he reached her ear, he deliberately teased the soft lobe, where he knew she was ticklish, and hoped for a laugh…a giggle. Anything. He got another shaky breath.

  “There”—he kissed her salty lips—“that wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

  The sarcasm earned him a watery laugh. She’d always appreciated irony. He kissed her again, just to make sure she’d let him, and then drew her arms away from her face. First one, then the other, placing them on either side of her head.

  “Christ, you’re beautiful.”

  He got a choked laugh this time, though he’d been completely serious.

  “I’m a mess.” She sniffed and blinked at the ceiling. Then her chin trembled. “I’m sorry.”

  Fuck. This was going in the wrong direction. He grabbed a handful of her thick, cable-knit thing and backed out of the car, pulling her into a sitting position as he went. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I made you a promise, and I didn’t keep it. You deserved to know why. But you didn’t owe me an explanation or a second chance, and you’re entitled to your anger.”

  “No.” She dropped her head into her hand and shook her head. “I’m not. I’ve been angry with you for so long, for stuff you don’t even know about, because it was easier than facing…things.”

  He waited for her to elaborate, but apparently, she planned to leave it at that. No good.

  “Sinclair?”

  She looked up. “What?”

  “Talk to me. It’s time.”

  “Now?”

  Had one word ever been more filled with reluctance? “Well, not this very instant, no. I appreciate this might not be a conversation we want to have while sitting in my car, with my dick hanging out and your pants around your boots.” He backed up to give her room to scoot out of the car and promised his protesting cock they’d get back to the flipping, slapping, and fucking as soon as he could be damn sure the next time she cried in his arms it was for the right reasons. “Invite me in for coffee.”

  In what looked like one continuous move, she hopped down, grabbed her jeans, and shimmied them up her long legs. “If we’re having this conversation, we’re going to want something stronger than coffee.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sinclair dropped two short tumblers and a half-empty bottle of whiskey onto her table with little regard for the glassware, but temper was wasted on the scarred pine. It had seen everything, survived everything, and accepted her carelessness with three soft thunks.

  Shane looked up at her from his seat on the other side of the table. “You’re serious? It’s not even noon.”

  “We were half naked in my driveway three minutes ago, and you’re going to get scandalized over a pre-noon drink?” The lip of the bottle clinked against the rim the glass closest to him as she poured a double. The scent of charred oak and vanilla seared her nose.

  “Come on, how bad can it be?”

  In answer, she lowered herself into a chair and poured another two fingers of the aged-to-amber liquid into the second glass.

  His lips twisted into a jaded smile. “Baby girl, I wrote this scenario before I even boarded the bus to Parris Island. You met someone over the summer. Some smooth-talking French guy swept you off your feet, and you forgot all about the screwup who had nothing going for him besides a shot at the Marines in lieu of a jail cell. You were so far beyond me by the time I was able to reach out, a part of me knew I’d already missed my chance.”

  Tempting. Oh, so tempting to go with his version of events. Write it off to his delay, and her fickle youth, and be done with it. No harm, no foul. But that wasn’t what happened. There had been harm. She brought the glass to her lips and tossed back the shot in one long, burning swallow. After a moment, the burn subsided, but the fire lingered in her veins like a distant relative to courage. “I was pregnant.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, his face absolutely neutral, and then picked up his glass and took a long swallow. “What?”

  “Before you start calculating ten years of child support payments, or judging me for whatever choice I made, you should know I lost the baby.”

  “I…” He broke off, looked away, and downed the rest of his drink.

  Had she ever seen him speechless before? Not that she recalled. Compelled to fill the silence, she added, “Nobody knows this except my family.”

  He looked back at her. Unflinching. “I’m sorry.”

  The bone-deep sincerity in his words hit her like a body blow. She pushed back from the table quickly enough to cause a screech of chair legs over floorboards and struggled for a pat reply. “Me, too.”

  “How did it happen? I thought you were on the pill?”

  I was stupid and reckless? “Darcy Briggs gave me her pills, because she’d broken up with her boyfriend. I didn’t know I was supposed to wait forty-eight hours before I relied on them without backup. I was so anxious to give you the perfect birthday present, I didn’t read the fine print.”

  He nodded slowly, as if digesting the information. “So, you think our first time…?”

  “First or second. One of the earliest. Between you leaving, and then Savannah and me flying out to meet up with our cousins and backpack through Europe, I didn’t realize. I missed you so much, Shane. Honestly, that gaping hole you left in my life took in all my attention. If not that, then the effort to walk around like a normal person and pretend the hole wasn’t there.”

  “I know. I felt the same way. I’m sorry,” he said again, and she shook her head to fend it off.

  “By the time I got to Paris, I knew something was wrong. I taxed what little French I knew to buy a pregnancy test. When it read positive, I just…I don’t know. I freaked. I tried to reach you by calling the base, but when the guy asked me to state the precise nature of the emergency, my throat froze. I hung up, boxed up all the careening emotions, and shoved them to the back of my mind. I told myself to sit tight until you called. Because I knew you’d call. You’d promised me you’d call as soon as you could.”

  “Sinclair—”

  “But you didn’t call.” She was pacing like a boxer in a ring, but she couldn’t get the story out if she stood still. “And we just kept moving. Frankfurt. Bonn. When we hit Rotterdam, I had really bad cramps, but I sucked it up. We’d figure everything out when we talked. Then we went to Amsterdam, and…”

  She stopped stalking back and forth on her side of the table and poured herself another drink. This part took effort. Memories were flooding in faster than she could organize them. Long-buried feelings rode in their wake. Feelings she’d never really experienced until that summer. Fear. Panic. Helplessness. She took a sip and swallowed before continuing, “And in Amsterdam the pain flared into an overwhelming thing that I couldn’t ignore. Savannah found me curled up on the bathroom floor in our hostel, feverish and bleeding. She called for help, and called our parents. I woke up in a hospital about twenty-four hours later, with my parents and a doctor hanging over my bed. I’d had an ectopic pregnancy that continued too long. The doctor spewed a lot of information—a congenital defect resulting in a weird curvature in the tube, so the pregnancy couldn’t progress the way it should. I’m down to one now, but the defect was bilateral, so my chances of conceiving the normal way are, according to the surgeon, remote.” And if she did, her chances of having another ectopic pregnancy were good.

  “Fuck it, Sinclair.” He braced his forearms on his knees and stared at the floor. “You should have let me know.”

  “Are you kidding me?” She drained her glass and put it on the table with an ill-tempered sla
m. “I didn’t dare breathe your name. My parents were upset, to say the least.” She dropped into her chair and then poured herself another shot. Thinking about everything that had happened up until this point—talking about it—emotionally drained her, but the next part? Whiskey-induced numbness might help her make it through without bawling.

  “My father…” She closed her eyes and time traveled ten years back and a continent away. “My easygoing, fair-minded father was livid. My mom was surprisingly pragmatic about the whole thing. Sort of like, Okay, this happened. We’re going to get you well, get you home, talk about the mistakes you made that led to the situation, and then we’re moving on.” Her mom’s drama-free reaction could still wring a laugh out of her. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, she grounded me for life, but very calmly. She went easy on me.”

  “And your dad?”

  Shane’s question came from across the table, but it might as well have been from anywhere. The memory pulled her so deeply into yesterday. She sighed, opened her eyes, and blinked her unknowing coconspirator into focus. “My father wanted the name of the guy responsible for knocking up his sixteen-year-old daughter and landing her in a hospital. He wasn’t in the mood to go easy on anyone. Not on me, for violating his trust. Not on the guy who violated his daughter, for damn sure. If I had given him the vaguest clue it was you, your world would have turned to shit so fast your head would have spun.”

  She spun her empty glass on the table as an example. Restless hands.

  Now he released a breath, looked up, and pinned her with a green gaze full of regret. “So, you didn’t tell him.”

  It wasn’t a question. No answer required, but something in those eyes made her speak. She spun the glass again. “I was a fool, not an idiot. I understood the implications of spilling my guts. You would have stood trial for statutory rape and possibly gone to jail. You’d have been booted out of the Marines. Your life would have been ruined.”

  He nodded and then got up and walked around the table. When he reached her, he crouched by her chair. A muscle ticked in his jaw, but other than the small sign of tension, she couldn’t pinpoint his reaction.