Unforgettable Heroes Boxed Set

by James, Maddie

  “Thank you,” he replied automatically.

  “You can do better than that.” She moved closer to him, until he felt the warmth of her breath against his lips, and the softness of her body against his own. Letting go of the last remnant of self-control he had, he gave her what she wanted, what he wanted, and pulled her onto his lap in the webbed chair. Desperation filled his kiss, the desire of the night before flooding through him.

  Tonight, though, the sky was clear and star-filled. Instead of thunder, the night held the familiar wildlife sounds and the occasional hum of a car on a distant highway.

  He abandoned all hope of resistance. Nothing could stop them now.

  Lillian moaned as he fumbled with her shirt until he got all the buttons undone.

  She resisted when he softly said, “Get in the tent, honey, I’ll be right there.”

  “The fire,” he whispered against her ear. “I’ve got to pour water over it.”

  The simple task became more complicated when she moved behind him, her hands sliding beneath his tee to connect with his muscled back. Barely able to think, he still knew that despite the privacy of their isolated lot, they were in a public place. The last thing he wanted was for the park ranger’s headlights to catch them as the ranger made his hourly ride through the campground.

  “Come on, honey.” He stepped back and grabbed her hand, leading her toward the tent. They’d only gone a few steps before he realized her shirt was missing completely.

  “Make love to me here.” Lillian lay down on the grass beneath a tall tree. “On the grass. Like Adam and Eve. Like we’re the only man and woman in the world.”

  She was crazy. Still Wes wasn’t about to say no. They weren’t teenagers necking at some local lover’s lane, for Pete’s sake. They were consenting adults. Supposedly married consenting adults. Besides, this tree was so far from the road that headlights would never find them.

  And Lillian was so tempting, her body gleaming in the moonlight as she laid waiting for him, one knee bent, her arms stretched out above her head. Yanking off his shirt, he lay down beside her and drew her to him, driven by a desire deeper than any he’d known before. She was beautiful and she was his for the taking.

  His lips had moved to one of those full, round breasts after a satisfyingly long kiss when Lillian stiffened and hissed, “Oh, my God, Wes, someone’s here!”

  She pushed away, reaching for her abandoned clothes as headlights swept across their lot, illuminating the tent and just barely missing them. Wes took longer to recover from the lovemaking, only gradually becoming aware of the big RV pulling into the lot next to theirs.

  Lillian stumbled over to the picnic table. She sat with her arms wrapped around her as the RV’s driver stepped out of the rig and shouted, “Millie, get out here and tell me if this is where you want it!”

  Seventyish, he wore a captain’s hat and leaned on a cane. A woman of about the same age climbed out of the RV, walked to the edge of the lot and shouted back, “You’re too close to that tree. Move it to the left!”

  The man climbed back in and pulled the RV back onto the roadway. Its headlights sprayed across the lot where Wes and Lillian sat, across the ground to the tree where they’d just been. Lillian stiffened, and Wes knew she wondered if the RV couple had seen them, naked, making out. Hell, he wondered, too.

  He slid onto the seat beside Lillian, keeping a foot of space between them.

  “I’m sure they didn’t see us.”

  “Yeah, right.” Lillian stared straight ahead. “You could light up an airport runway with those headlights. I’d say they got an eyeful.”

  Wes might have replied if the RV hadn’t roared backward and promptly sank a back tire into a wide muddy spot. Mud and grass flew as the driver tried to pull back out, but instead spun the tire in deeper and deeper. Over the sound of the revving engine, he could hear Millie scream, “You put it in the wrong place, Al! I said to the left!”

  The RV door flew up and Al came out with greater speed and agility than Wes would have imagined possible in a man of his age and in his condition. He was shouting as he stomped back to check the sunken tire, but Wes couldn’t make out the words. Millie was shouting every bit as loudly.

  “There goes the neighborhood.” Lillian stared past Wes at the arguing couple. “Think we ought to go over there and give them a hand?”

  “Are you crazy?” Wes studied the RV, which listed to the right. “No way the two of us could push that thing out of the mud.”

  “We could offer our sympathy.”

  Wes laughed. “Who to? Al for having to put up with Millie, or Millie for having to travel with someone who can’t back up?”

  When Lillian began to chuckle, he figured she was past her embarrassment. But when she reached out and put her hand on his thigh, rubbing tiny circles on it as they watched the show next door, he knew that, like him, she’d only banked the fire of passion. As soon as they were alone again, it would burst into full flame.

  This time, no one and nothing would stop them.

  Or so he thought. That was before Al spotted the two of them and came over to introduce himself. Before they knew what hit them, Wes and Lillian were inside the luxurious RV, being treated to a plate of Millie’s brownies and Al’s rambling tales of where the couple had been on their quest to visit every state in the union.

  “Started out in Oregon five months ago,” Al said as he reached for another brownie. “Three more states and we’ve got the whole mainland. The little woman’s talked me into trading the RV for a condo in Florida. She figures we can take an Alaskan cruise next spring and a Hawaiian vacation in the winter and we’ve got it all.”

  ****

  “They remind me of my grandparents,” Lillian said as she and Wes walked back to their own far more modest lodging. “They bicker like them, too.”

  “Every married couple fights like that,” Wes said. “That’s one of the reasons I don’t intend to get hitched. Fifty-two years with any one woman, like Al’s put in, and there’s no way I’d be sane.”

  “So you’re not the marrying kind.”

  Wes hesitated before he answered, trying to decide if Lillian was feeling him out or just continuing the conversation. He couldn’t tell.

  “It’s not whether I’m the marrying kind, but more about what kind of woman would want to link up with someone like me,” he finally said. “I like my life just the way it is, and I haven’t met a woman yet who wouldn’t expect me to start changing right away. Keeping things cool and casual’s worked real well for me so far, and I can’t see a reason not to keep on living that way.”

  “I understand. I can’t see myself getting married either, not with the business the way it is. There aren’t a whole lot of men who’d understand why I work fourteen-hour days week after week. Heck, I can’t even get my father and brothers to understand, so I know it would be even worse with someone who hasn’t known me my whole life.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to work like that.” Wes shuddered at the thought of it. “There’s too much else in life to waste your time working.”

  “Oh?” Coolness had crept into Lillian’s voice. “And what, pray tell, might those things be?”

  “Opening day at any ball park in the country. Grilling burgers in the backyard with my buddies on a hot summer night, drinking beer and swapping lies. Making my mom go through all the old photo albums and tell me about how it was when she and Pop first got married. Anything, in fact, but working.”

  “So you think I’m wrong?”

  Wes shrugged. “Not wrong. Just different than me. More ambitious, I guess. More dedicated. I’m not the kind of person who cares much about material things.”

  “But you’ve got to care about your future,” Lillian retorted. “You’re not going to be young and carefree all your life. If you don’t build up something now, you’ll end up like those old guys living in a room in some rundown hotel, wandering around the streets all day looking for pop cans to recycle.”<
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  “I’ll never work myself to death like my dad did.” The words poured out of Wes, fierce and sharp. “Having little pieces of me ripped away by a boss and his boss and all those banks and finance companies until there was nothing left but a bone-deep tired and a heart that couldn’t stand the strain of living anymore. I may not have much, honey, but I don’t owe my soul to anyone.”

  Lillian dropped down onto the bench of the picnic table, stunned. She didn’t know what to say, how to react. If he’d still been angry, it would have been easier. But his words had been honed by sorrow. She wanted to do was hold him tight and tell him everything would be all right. That he didn’t have to reject his father’s world to make his own way. There was a middle ground somewhere. She couldn’t because she didn’t know how to find that middle ground herself. She spent way too much of her life behind a desk to tell him his path was wrong.

  After all, if she had come up for air once in a while, she wouldn’t have had to hire someone to pretend to be her husband. She’d have the real thing.

  “I want you to show me how to live.” She touched his lips with her fingers. “I want to feel things the way you do. I’ve never had a cold beer in the backyard on a hot summer night, or gone skinny-dipping or dated any man who wasn’t preapproved by my father.

  “Here we can be anyone we’d like. Do anything we like.”

  Wes took a small step forward. She stood stock still, his stubbly whiskers prickling her fingers as she traced the line of his jaw. If she’d learned nothing else in her business life, it was when to stay still. She’d made her offer. It was his choice now to accept or refuse it.

  “Tell me why you want me.” He gently removed her hand from his face. “You’ve got an itch to scratch, and I’m handy? Is that it?” He inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. “You’re damned right. I want you. But if you’re just slumming, just getting it on with a good old boy for a change of pace, count me out.”

  “You know what I want?” Her voice was tiny in the darkness surrounding them. Compelling, too, as she spoke what was in her heart.

  “I want to forget all about what’s waiting for me back in Detroit. About that damned campaign of Frank’s that I need so badly. I want to feel for a change, Wes, to know what it’s like to just do something and damn the consequences. Being with you has made me realize what I don’t have. That’s what I want, Wes, the freedom to turn my back on what I have to do just for the few hours or days we still have out here.”

  Wes scooped her up into his arms and carried here across the damp grass to the tent.

  “Undress for me.” Wes’s voice was low and tense as he switched on the small camping lamp tucked in one corner of the tent. The light was dim, barely enough to see more than her outline, but he wasn’t going to deny himself the sight of her any longer.

  “Only if you undress for me, too.” Lillian tossed her shirt on the tent floor behind her. “I take off one piece, you take off one piece.”

  Wes grabbed the hem of his tee and yanked it over his head. “Your turn.”

  Lillian smiled, bent and slipped off her boots.

  Wes did the same. Next came socks. Then Lillian’s shorts and Wes’s jeans.

  “You’ve got more to shed than me.” Wes struggled to keep his voice steady as he studied her, standing before him in tiny panties and a lacy bra in the same shade of deep peach.

  “So what’ll it be?” she challenged. “Top or bottom?”

  “Both.”

  “Nope. You have to choose.”

  “Take them off.” His command was a growl, deep and tense. When she didn’t make a move, he slid his briefs off and came to her, his large hands slipping beneath the silky panties and sliding them down her thighs and off. He ran his fingers up her naked body to the small of her back, drawing her against him as he reached behind her to unfasten the single clasp of her bra. He eased the straps off her shoulders and stepped back only a few inches, just enough for the cups to fall from her breasts so he could grab her bra and sling it away.

  “This is your last chance to say no,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes on hers. She breathed in the smell of him, wood smoke and mosquito repellent and the scent that was Wes. Every nerve in her body tingled, and she felt the pounding of her pulse at her wrists, between her legs, in her ears.

  “You talk too much.” It was all she had breath to say, all she had time to say before Wes kissed her the way she’d been dying for. His tongue found its way into her mouth, his hands drawing her against his taut body and hard erection. She lost herself in the delicious sensation of his caress.

  The kiss ended slowly, but too soon for Lillian, who moaned as he eased his body away from hers. Stepping back, he pulled her down onto the air bed, dim light still glowing from the camping light.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Shut up.” Lillian positioned herself against him. “There are far better things you can do with your mouth than talk.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The rain began again shortly before the dawn, its gentle patter waking Wes from his shallow sleep. Lillian had slipped from his embrace during the night, and lay now curled against him, her hands tucked under her chin. Wes felt an unaccustomed protectiveness as he watched her sleeping, so small and vulnerable.

  He felt an unaccustomed pride, too. After all, he was the knight who’d tamed the dragon lady and turned her into a willing and wanton partner.

  Sometime in the night, they’d wakened. Made love. Wakened again. Made love again. Now he was content just to lie beside her and watch her sleep.

  That contentment was dashed by Millie’s strident cry outside their tent.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Millie’s call rang shrilling through the morning air. “Breakfast is ready if you are!”

  Wes lay perfectly still, barely breathing, hoping she’d go away before Lillian woke up.

  “Yoo-hoo!” The call came again, louder this time. “Fresh biscuits, crisp bacon and my special apple pancakes! Come over in your jammies if you want, sleepyheads.”

  She wasn’t leaving. Wes sighed. Lillian roused beside him, uncurling and sitting up. She stretched, blinked and smiled sleepily at Wes. But before he could act on the invitation in her eyes, Millie’s voice was replaced by Al’s booming bass.

  “Coffee’s on, kids.” Wes was pretty sure the old guy was yelling from over on his own lot, but he grabbed his clothes anyway. The last thing he wanted or needed was for good old Al to decide to bring the coffee to them.

  “Oh, dear lord, tell me that’s not the people next door.” Concern replaced the come-hither look on Lillian’s face.

  Wes crawled out of the sleeping bag onto the cool tent floor and rounded up the clothes strewn around the night before. Separating Lillian’s from his, he dressed with his back to her, feeling an odd need to give her as much privacy as their forced togetherness would allow. He didn’t dally. He pulled his clothes on and turned around.

  She was completely dressed. But clothes couldn’t hide the way she looked. Her eyes were puffy from a lack of sleep caused by their interludes throughout the night. He itched to smooth her tousled hair with his fingers, because he knew how it had gotten that way. Her skin had a rosy glow, and her lips were still slightly swollen from their marathon of kissing. She was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. And he wanted her as badly now as he had the night before. Every time the night before.

  Before he could act on that desire, the tent shook and he heard a string of muttered curses. Al had walked into their tent rope. Before their neighbor could bellow about coffee again, Wes unzipped the tent door and stepped out. The dewy grass was cool on his bare feet, and he squinted in the bright morning sunshine at Al.

  “Sleep well last night, boy?” When he chuckled, and Wes remembered with unease how active he and Lillian had been the night before. Loud, too, if he remembered right. His thinking had been pretty foggy during the height of it, but he was pretty sure he’d cried out Lil’s name once or twice at a crucial moment. She hadn’t been e
xactly quiet with her moans and gasps, either.

  Al handed Wes a cup of coffee, black and rich, in a stoneware mug. “The missus figured you’d need a good breakfast to keep your energy up and frankly, son, it doesn’t look like you’ve got too much on hand. I told Millie to go ahead and fix you two a meal right along with ours.”

  “That was thoughtful of you.” The two men turned toward Lillian, who’d just emerged from the tent. She stretched, her arms going high above her head, and yawned.

  “Have trouble sleeping?” Wes tensed at Al’s question, but Lillian smiled and shook her head.

  “I’m getting used to that air mattress now.” She yawned again. “But I could use a cup of coffee to wake me up.”

  “We’ve got plenty.” Al headed back toward his lot. Wes followed, moving slowly to allow Lillian to catch up. He grabbed her hand as they went. He had so many things to ask her when they were finally alone.

  First among them, of course, was whether Lillian had just used him to scratch an itch. Whether she’d roll over tonight and go to sleep as if he wasn’t even in the tent.

  “Hello, lovebirds.” Millie deftly scooped the cooked food onto bright plastic plates as they slid side by side onto a bench of the picnic table. “I sure hope you’re hungry.”

  ****

  Lillian hadn’t been until she’d smelled the food. Now she was ravenous, her appetite sharpened by the enticing aroma of maple-flavored bacon, her mouth watering at the sight of the light, fluffy biscuits piled on a plate. Wes handed her a cup of coffee and she took a swallow, grateful for its rich taste but equally grateful not to have to strain the grounds through her teeth as she drank.

  Wes’s thigh was warm against hers as they shared food and conversation with their new and, to her way of thinking, way too friendly neighbors. His arm brushed across her breasts as he reached for another biscuit, and even that tiny, accidental touch made her barely-banked desire come back to life.

  Last night had been wonderful. Incredible. So far beyond wonderful and incredible that she couldn’t find the words to describe the feeling. She knew her languor this morning had been caused by more than a lack of sleep. It came from being totally and blissfully sated, from having discovered what an incredible sexual being she’d been hiding from herself all along. It had taken Wes to make her let go of her inhibitions, to not only give her pleasure but also inspire her to try things she’d never imagined herself doing. There wasn’t a spot of his body she didn’t know intimately now, nothing she wouldn’t do again with him in a heartbeat.