She raised her hands to cup his jaw. The rasp of his five o’clock shadow under her fingertips excited her. Despite having shaven that morning, he already had a good head start on a beard. She explored for a moment, the trail from the tip of his earlobe to the slight dent in his chin, invisible to the eye but so easy to feel with fingertips. He watched her, warily, lips barely parted. His chest heaved, and she wondered if it was from excitement, or the effort to give her this chance.
Maybe both. It’s why her own heart was thundering loud enough to drown out a herd of stampeding mustangs.
Following instinct, she traced over his lips, to that sweet cupid’s bow in the middle of his upper lip, up to the tip of his nose. There, she grinned as she pushed in. “Boop.”
As if that were all the invitation he needed, he rolled her over to straddle him. He was flat on the bed now, the pillows pushed to the floor in his haste. And though the suit rode uncomfortably tight in the back due to her unbusinesslike stance, she’d never felt more powerful than when she looked down between her arms and saw Greg Higgs looking up at her with hunger in his eyes.
And it was that power that gave her the strength to take what she wanted. It wasn’t a surrender to temptation, she realized as she lowered her head to breathe in his clean, male scent. A surrender was too weak, to mild sounding. No, she was claiming what she wanted. She was making it hers. That was a power in itself.
“I’m claiming you,” she whispered as she nipped his lip. His eyes widened a little—in fear? No, in surprise—and he licked his tongue over the spot she’d bit.
“Is that so,” he murmured. “I won’t get in your way, then.”
“You won’t,” she agreed, then kissed him fully.
It was exactly what she’d needed. The immediate release of pressure, like letting the cork on a champagne bottle fly free, gave her limbs a weightless quality. Or maybe that was just Greg’s arms as he steadied her.
He lay quiet beneath her as her hands roamed his upper body, while her lips explored his. Though his muscles quivered while she touched and stroked, he allowed her the time to get to know his body. Let her make each new move against his mouth. When she chose the tilt of her head, he accommodated her and adjusted. When she swept her tongue against his lips, he opened invitingly.
And he never once pushed her for more, never demanded she move faster to suit his pace, or slow down more. For once, he gave her the option of choosing.
It was like stepping into a cage with a lion. The lion might allow you to pet its head, run your hands over its powerful, rangy body, make the first move to play. There was no escaping the knowledge, though, that in an instant, the lion could make the final move, swipe his big paw once and it would all be over.
But for that moment of control . . . what a rush.
When she pulled back enough to see if he was just as affected as she was, she couldn’t help the catlike grin that spread.
Greg’s eyes were half-closed, as if drunk on lust, and thanks to the way she draped over his body, his erection was impossible to miss. It lay thick and hard against her thigh, making her very much want to reach down and stroke it.
How much more would the lion take before swiping with that dangerous paw?
Before she could even find out, she was flat on her back. The lion, it appeared, wasn’t as lust-drunk as she’d thought. He flashed her a quick grin before taking control and dazzling her with a kiss so skilled, she forgot to breathe.
She tore her lips away just before spots started to appear behind her eyelids. “You’re . . . dangerous . . .”
“Me?” He did what she assumed was his best imitation of innocence. His best needed some work. “I’m just here with a beautiful lady, doing some sweet kissing. Nothing dangerous about it.”
“You say that, but—” He interrupted her with another lip lock that took her several minutes to remember she’d been speaking. “You say that,” she repeated, putting two firm hands on his cheeks to keep him away. “But there’s nothing sweet about this.”
He waited a moment. “Do you want me to slow down?”
“I want you to speed up, dammit!” She hooked a leg over the back of his thigh, her heel resting just below his butt. With a nudge that made him jolt, she brought him back to her. And when his hand started to roam down her body, finding all those spaces above the waist she loved, she arched into his touch.
But just as his hand cupped her breast through way too many layers of clothing, he was off her and across the room. He might have been yanked away with a wire like a stuntman if she hadn’t been watching. She sat up, dazed and not entirely sure what had just happened.
“Why . . .” She moistened her lips, which felt sort of numb. Could really excellent kissing make your lips go numb? “Why are you over there?”
“Because you’re in my bed,” he said, as if that were a completely logical explanation. When she looked down at his crotch—yup, still saluting—he followed her gaze, then turned toward the door. “That’s about all for tonight.”
She scrunched up her nose. What the hell happened? “Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Hell, no,” he emphasized when she didn’t move. “You did everything right. Way too right,” he added in a mumble.
She was starting to get a headache. Or maybe it was akin to altitude sickness . . . only with lust. Changinglust levels at too quick a speed caused the oxygen in her brain to lag behind.
“It’s that I want you.” He laughed halfheartedly. “Obviously. And that’s not on the menu tonight so—”
“And why not?” She crossed her arms under her breasts, only to realize she was in the world’s most unattractive sprawl on his bed. She sat up and did her best to position herself better . . . or at least more comfortably. “Why not? Oh.” She glared. “You’re doing that whole ‘my way, caveman’ thing again, aren’t you? Exerting your control over the situation and the details.”
“I’m doing what I think is right. You’ve had a rough few days, I’ve had a rough few practices, and the team as a whole got dumped on. I don’t want you to look back tomorrow and think you were used. I want this to go right.” He said it all slowly, as if he wasn’t sure she wouldn’t take a swipe at him.
With as much dignity as she could muster—not a lot, sadly—she scooted to the edge of the bed and began to pull her heels on. “It appears as though I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“Ask me a question,” Greg blurted out.
She paused in the act of putting on shoe number two. “A question?”
“One of your PR things.” He shifted a little, and she knew it made him uncomfortable to offer. But he did it anyway, because it meant she’d stick around.
Brownie points for Greg Higgs.
She stood and turned a tight circle around his room. Nothing personal there. No photos of friends or family. No hints of the life he led outside of the gym where he trained with a dozen of his teammates. It was as if he existed for one thing only . . . to fight. “Tell me why you chose the Marine Corps.”
“The Marine Corps is the baddest of the badasses.”
She turned and watched him cautiously settle down on the edge of the bed. As if returning to the scene of the crime so soon might ignite potential feelings best left behind. “‘The baddest of the badasses.’ Very technical phrase.”
“It’s exactly what my seventeen-year-old mind was thinking when I chose.” He smirked. “Seventeen-year-olds aren’t known for their mature thought processes.”
Seventeen. Not even eighteen when he joined. Still a baby, in all the ways that count. But something told her he’d hate hearing that. So she sat at the opposite edge of the bed, as far from him as she could, and nodded. “Okay. Keep going.”
* * *
HOW did he explain it to her? She was a farm-fresh face with a loving family she actually wanted to avoid because they cared too much about her life. What was it like, he wondered, to hear from someone that the thing you dodged was the one thing someone else craved
with every cell in their body? That the family she found smothering would have fulfilled every single childhood dream of his.
“I needed to pick a service, and I went with the one that sounded the coolest. When you’re a seventeen-year-old boy, being a badass is basically the highest pinnacle to achieve.”
“Seventeen,” she murmured, and he could see the wheels turning. Did she ask, didn’t she . . .
She chose not to. Wise, since he wouldn’t have told her why, and he didn’t want to lie.
And the truth was something he never wanted to discuss. Ever.
“Hey, so funny story . . . abandoned as a baby, foster system blew, got sucked into the wrong crowd, spent lots of time in juvie for fighting and other petty shit. Had a judge tell me it’s either the service now—and he’d sign off on the early enlistment—or it’s going to be the big time . . . adult lockup. So I picked the lesser of two evils.”
Not exactly a sexy bedtime story.
“Anything else you want to add?” she asked, jarring him from the past.
He thought, then shrugged. Not particularly.
“What made you stay in?” She raised a hand, as if she wanted to reach out and touch him somehow. But she let it fall back. “You must have had to reenlist at least once between then and now.”
“It’s a good life.” The only good life he knew. “I got my college degree thanks to the Corps, shifted over to the officer side, and just kept plugging away. Every time there was a chance to get out, I considered it. Any guy who says he doesn’t hesitate, at least for a second, before re-upping is a liar. But in the end . . .” How else to say it? “The Corps has been good to me.” A surrogate family, really. Like the team had become. He’d do whatever he could to keep it.
She nodded at that, folded her hands in her lap very primly and looked down. Eyes closed, she said, “Hmm.”
Hmm? That’s all? It was the most personal he’d been with her since meeting her—the closest he’d come to baring that true, vulnerable kid he’d been—and she said “hmm”?
“I wouldn’t disclose what age you were when you went in,” she began, eyes still closed, as if envisioning something.
Aw, hell. She was back in business mode. He straightened his shoulders and forced himself to be impartial.
“I would say that the military has provided you with a good life, a good and honorable living, and you feel it is your duty to continue to give back.” She looked at him from under her lashes. “Does that meet your approval?”
He nodded, not trusting his voice.
“Good.” She stood, picking up her purse from the dresser where she’d left it. “I’ll leave you for now. Have a good evening.”
Before he could stand up, she was gone. He raced to look for his shoes, slipped them on without socks and raced after her.
He found her, standing still, on the sidewalk outside the building. “I forgot . . . I rode with you.” She turned, facing him with a blank expression. “You have to take me back.”
The five-minute car ride back was quiet. He struggled for something to say, but nothing quite worked out. When he parked at the gym, he sighed in relief to see her car was still alone, unharmed. With the vandalism happening, he shouldn’t have left her car there. Next time he’d be more careful. But before he could say anything, she slipped from his car and headed toward hers.
He barely caught up with her before she opened her car door. Damn, the lady could move with those long legs when she wanted to.
“Dinner,” he blurted out, then felt like an idiot.
“Dinner,” she said slowly. “We just ate dinner.”
“Tomorrow. Your place.” Sentences, Higgs, use real sentences.
She closed off at that. “No, thank you.”
“Fine, back at my place then.” He could make that work.
She shook her head. “Thank you, but no.”
“Then at Sweeney’s place. I’ll kick him out. He won’t care.”
She hesitated, then asked, “He wouldn’t mind?”
He might, but Greg wasn’t about to tell her that. “Nah, he’s good with it. Said we should make ourselves at home.” Probably hadn’t meant that for when he wouldn’t be home, but Greg wasn’t about to let the man take it back now. “Seriously, it’s fine.”
She hesitated, and in that hesitation he could see her true desire.
“Reagan.”
Her eyes slanted to his. She nibbled on her bottom lip a moment, and he slid in for a kiss. With her heels on, and him in just his running shoes, he was actually reaching up an inch to make it work but that was fine. When she sighed and pressed into him, he knew he’d won over her resistance.
Breathing hard, he pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers. “Have dinner with me tomorrow. Let me cook you a real meal, let me sit with you on the couch and watch a movie. Let me cop a feel during the scary parts and whisper cheesy lines in your ear during the romantic stuff. Let’s do the normal couple things that people do when they’re dating that are hard for us here.”
She laughed and let her head drop to his shoulder. “Okay. Fine, you convinced me. But only if Graham is okay with it.”
“He will be,” Greg promised as he shuffled her into her car and watched her pull away. He will be or else Greg would murder him on the spot and move into his house.
As soon as Reagan’s car—God, that was a death trap on wheels—pulled out of the parking lot, he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped through his contacts.
“Sweeney? Yeah, I need a favor . . .”
CHAPTER
12
“The article reads well.” Marianne settled in her chair, Kara and Reagan in their by-now assigned positions on two of the training tables in the AT room. “I’m sorry about the protestors, though.”
Reagan played with the homemade breakfast sandwich Kara had brought over. Zach, her son, was playing imaginary basketball in the gym while they talked in relative privacy.
Early that morning, Reagan had passed the small but determined group of protestors on her trek through the main gates. They couldn’t step on base, but they huddled together just outside on the main road that led to the main gate, where a majority of the Marines would drive through. Holding up hastily created signs that ranged from generic military hatred—“Damn those who hide behind the uniform”—to ones that were more specific to the current kerfuffle—“Violent sports + violent men = more violence.”
That one, she had thought with a private snicker, had been a truly moronic one. If you were going to take the time and energy to make a sign, at least create one that was original.
The smile died as she remembered children, no older than Zach, standing with their parents in the weak morning sun with their parents, holding hateful signs.
“I knew it would happen eventually. I just didn’t think it would be so soon, and after just one article.” Reagan let her sandwich fall back to the paper plate. Her appetite had taken a nosedive.
“It was a doozy of an article.” Kara reached over and stroked a soft hand once down Reagan’s arm. “They’ll move on shortly. We’ve seen this dozens of times, right, Marianne?”
“She’s right. It’s not uncommon around here. We’ve seen it all.”
“And when they’re tired, or just bored, they’ll move—” Kara paused, then yelled, “Zachary, get in here!” in a voice so fierce, Reagan jumped a little. That was, without a doubt, the Mom Voice.
Zach peeked his sweet face in the doorway. “Yeah, Mom?”
“Were you on the other side of the gym?”
He flushed, and even Reagan squirmed a little being witness to the Mom Stare. Kara had all the weapons of motherhood in her arsenal, and she was loaded for bear this morning.
The sweet woman with the elfin face and soft voice crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “And remind me, one more time, why you aren’t allowed to cross the halfway mark of the gym?”
Zach sighed, the heavy sigh of the beleaguered. “Because the coach’s
office is on that side of the gym.” When Kara only waited, he added, “And I’m not supposed to bother him, even if his door is closed.”
“That’s right. So you stay on this side, or I’ll make you sit in here and listen to us gossip.”
The horrified look on Zach’s face had Reagan covering a snicker with a cough. “Fine, Mom.” He sprinted away, and they could hear his sneakers echoing in the hollow, empty gym as he darted around invisible defenders on his way to make the game-winning basket.
“Stinker,” Kara muttered, but she was fighting off a smile.
“He’s awesome,” Reagan said. “Reminds me of my brothers. They all turned out decent, for the most part.”
“For the most part?” Marianne leaned in. “Which one didn’t?”
“The ax murderer,” Reagan said easily, appetite returning enough to pop another bite of sandwich in her mouth and chew before she added, “Kidding.”
Kara and Marianne’s twin frozen faces of terror made her snort.
“You guys are too easy. He’s just a good kid, that’s all I mean. Listens to his mom, pushes boundaries a little—but what kid doesn’t?—and respects you enough to not argue when you rein him back in.”
“He is pretty awesome, isn’t he?” Kara’s smile grew a little misty, and Reagan wanted very much to avoid waterworks.
“Yup. If only he weren’t so ugly . . .”
“Reagan!” Marianne threw her napkin at her while simultaneously laughing.
The sound of men’s voices drifted to their room, and all three women sat up a little straighter. Marianne checked the clock. “Must be an early group wanting to get some exercise in before practice.”
“Zach!” Kara hopped off the table and rushed to the door of the training room. “Zach, come back in here now.”
Zach rushed back, red-faced. The unmistakable sound of a basketball bouncing caught Reagan’s ear. “Mom! Mom, they said I could play with them. They’ve got a basketball with them and they said they were going to get a game in before practice. Can I play? Pleeeeeeeeeeeease?”
The amount of pathos a child could pack into a single word was unbelievable.
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