by Cindy Dees
“So do I. Tell me what else you want me to do.” He lifted his hand away from her hot, needy flesh.
“Archer!”
“Talk to me. I’m yours to direct as you wish.”
Her cheeks went rosy with embarrassment, but he didn’t break down and take charge. He waited until she started speaking hesitantly.
“I want to make love with you again. Now. In front of the fire.”
“What else?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And maybe try a few different positions to see what feels best.”
“What would you like to try first?”
Her blush intensified, spreading down her neck and across the upper reaches of her breasts. “I have no idea.”
“First, because you’re fairly new to this and I don’t want to hurt you, I’m going to suggest we make sure you’re entirely ready.”
“Meaning what?” she asked breathlessly.
He leaned down over her and kissed her long and druggingly. “Meaning, that I’m going to make sure you’re very turned on before we engage in any gymnastics.”
She was so open and enthusiastic and trusted him implicitly. In turn, he trusted her to be honest with him. It added a dimension to sex play that he’d never experienced, either, and he reveled in the newness of it right along with her. Huh. Maybe there really was something to the whole soul-mate thing, after all.
He stopped their increasing frantic explorations abruptly. “Hold that thought,” he ordered.
She wailed in frustration as he rose to his knees and lifted her up. Oh, she was going to be tons of fun to play with.
“I don’t want you to get cold while we do this,” he explained, guiding her hands to the warm stones of the raised hearth. He moved behind her, spooning her smaller body with his larger one. “Bend forward a little, baby.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “Oh!” He entered her slowly from behind, giving her body plenty of time to adjust to this new kind of invasion. She was so tight and hot around him he worried that he was hurting her.
He stopped, but Marley was having none of that. She drove her hips backward and down onto him in no uncertain terms.
“Oh, my.” She sighed. “That’s very nice.”
“Nice?” he echoed indignantly. “I’m not going for nice here.”
“Then stop holding back,” she challenged him over her shoulder.
He chuckled and drove up into her more strongly.
“Mmm. Better. But not quite doing it for me.”
His laughter took on a helpless quality. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I’m insatiable,” she announced cheerfully. “And you’re lagging in the sating department, good sir.”
“I wouldn’t want to let the lady down, now would I?” And with that, he commenced sating her with quite a bit more vigor and enthusiasm.
In seconds, Marley was arching back against him, groaning in pleasure and then crying out more sharply as an orgasm built deep inside her. He felt it in the way her internal muscles clutched at him more urgently, in how she met his thrusts with eager thrusts of her own, in the way her breathing caught in her throat with each cry of lust he wrung from her.
Without warning, she shattered around him, crying out and shuddering violently in her release, dancing upon his flesh like a faerie nymph in the flickering light of the fire. It was one of the most erotic things he’d ever seen. She was so totally open to him and held nothing back from him.
The rush of a woman giving herself to him so completely, body and soul, was intoxicating. Something deep in his heart—something angry and locked down—broke loose and floated away on her sighs of pleasure. In the past, he would have taken a certain dark satisfaction in driving a woman out of her mind while he retained a certain emotional detachment. But here...now...he only wanted to give Marley all the pleasure she’d ever fantasized about. He wanted to give her all of himself in return.
He stayed very still, reveling in the new orgasm building within her. It was exquisite. He didn’t even have to move for her to come.
“Archer,” she gasped. “What are you doing to me?”
Slowly, slowly, he moved in and out of her, counting each time she cried out and convulsed around him.
Finally, when she was a quivering mass of desire and her eyes were completely glazed with pleasure, he let go. Unclenching his jaw at last, he surged into her and, with a shout of his own, buried himself inside her sweet body one last time. She responded to that ultimate thrust with one last, apocalyptic orgasm of her own.
He took everything she had to give and, in return, poured everything in his heart into her. His entire being exploded into that climax, and it felt as if a giant, damaged chunk of his soul went with it.
He braced himself against the hearth with a hand on either side of her, panting like a racehorse. She was breathing just as hard and rested quiescently against him, spent.
“You okay?” he murmured.
“Better than okay,” she breathed. She turned in his arms and he gathered her close, lowering her to the quilt and joining her upon it. “Thank you, Archer. That was...spectacular.”
He pushed the hair off her face gently and leaned down to kiss her cheek “You were spectacular.”
“Can we do something else new? Soon?”
Amazement soared through him. And joy. She was perfect. That was all there was to it. “Yes. Soon. I promise.”
“Pinkie swear?” she replied in a small voice.
“Good grief, I’ve created a monster.”
“Hopefully, a monster you won’t mind feeding?” She smiled up at him over her shoulder, looking as pleasured and relaxed as any woman he’d ever seen. It was a beautiful sight. Something strange unfolded in his gut, like a flower opening or a butterfly unfurling its wings.
Except he didn’t do butterflies and flowers. Yup, no doubt about it. He was losing his mind.
He laughed ruefully. “Baby, it’s going to be a long time before I get tired of feeding your curiosity.
“I’d love to offer you a nice long soak in a hot bath, but until we get power back, there won’t be any hot water—” he glanced around the cabin “—unless...”
He jumped up and went over to the kitchen cabinets to rummage around. “Aha!” He emerged with giant soup kettle. “It’ll take a while to heat up the water, but I might be able to get you a hot bath, after all.”
She dozed in the big armchair before the fire while he heated the water, but in an hour or so, he was able to fill the bathtub with hot water and then add just enough cold water to create a steaming bath for her.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. Your bath is ready.”
She smiled up at him blissfully and he leaned down to kiss her softly. “You’re perfect,” he whispered.
And she was his...
Since when did he get possessive over a woman? Hell, he’d hadn’t even been possessive of his toys as a kid! He installed her in the tub with a pile of towels waiting beside it and backed out of the bathroom with an admonition to her not to fall asleep and drown.
“I wasn’t a Girl Scout for nothing, you know,” she called after him as he pulled the door shut. “There’s a merit badge for avoiding stupid ways of dying!”
He grinned at the closed panel. Something light and silly twisted in his gut. Damn, he was all over the emotional map today. Men didn’t get crazy hormone surges, did they?
While she soaked, he carried in a few more armloads of wood. It had indeed gotten very cold outside, but the good news was the falling snow was finally starting to slow down. Upward of two feet of the stuff had come down already. Damn. They could be snowed in here for several days.
He took a long, hard look around the tiny clearing around the cabin. Nothing moved in the forest. He saw no sign of any intruder lurking out
there, watching and waiting to harm Marley. But the flesh at the back of his neck still crawled. They had to get out of here before anything bad happened to her. He wanted Marley back in town, close to Steve and the other stunt crew members who were trained Special Forces types.
The sooner, the better.
* * *
Marley luxuriated in the hot bath, which felt as unreal and fantastic as the sex she’d just had with Archer. As flings went, this had to be just about the mother of them all.
Her bliss dimmed slightly. If only this weren’t just a fling. If only this was the beginning of something wonderful and lasting. Then her happiness would be complete. But Archer would be gone in a few short weeks. She’d known that going into this affair, so it wasn’t like she could blame him for it now. He was going to leave her as surely as the sun rose and set.
She sighed and sank to her neck in the water. It wasn’t his fault she’d chosen to have her first fling with a soldier on leave.
No regrets, darn it. No second-guessing. She was finally rid of her pesky virginity, and if she played her cards right, he would divest her of a whole lot more of her inconvenient innocence, too.
Apparently, she had forgiven him for not trusting her before and not telling her about his temporary status stateside. She probably shouldn’t have. Great sex didn’t make his other bad behaviors acceptable. But dang, it was hard to see anything past the mind-blowing pleasure he gave her.
It wasn’t as if he was going to stick around for a real relationship that would require them to work out their differences, though.
Except she really wanted to work things out with him.
If only Archer wouldn’t leave her. The seductive pull of that idea, of Archer staying home, making her his, protecting her and loving her for a very long time to come...oh, my. She was getting a little breathless at the mere thought of it.
Fear, cold and insidious, abruptly clutched at her. She dared not fall in love with him for real. He would be here for a few more weeks, tops, and then he would be out of her life and off to fight his wars. She would be a total idiot to lose her heart to him.
At all costs, she must not get any more emotionally involved with this man than she already was.
Except she already was too far gone. When he left, she was going to be utterly and completely devastated. She could already feel the beginnings of the agony waiting for her in a few weeks. The mere idea of him going away provoked a hot knife of pain in her heart.
A sinking feeling that she’d done a bad, bad thing rolled through her. Like it or not, she was already a whole lot more than just infatuated with Archer.
This sucked. She wanted him forever. But he only wanted her for now. She’d chosen a guy for a fling far too well. He made no bones about the fact that he didn’t stick around for long-term relationships. He freely admitted that he jumped in and out of bed with women, that he shamelessly used his good looks to get laid and that he wasn’t looking for anything more than hot chicks and hotter sex.
An end to their relationship was not a probability. It was a certainty. A month from now, he would be halfway around the world in some danger zone flying choppers right on the edge of disaster and bedding every sexy female who crossed his path. And Marley would be just another notch on his bedpost, long forgotten.
If she were smart, she would cut her losses and run. Now. Before he saw beneath the Marilyn Monroe makeup and sexual adventurousness. Before he realized she was really as plain as white bread, inside and out, and dumped her cold. God, how humiliating would it be to watch him sleep his way through the other women in the cast and crew over the next two weeks? And it would happen right under her nose because they were all living practically on top of one another in that damned motel.
The shame of it, of having not been enough to keep him occupied for more than a weekend in the mountains, would kill her. But maybe...if she dumped him first, at least she would garner some sympathy and respect for having realized he was a shallow womanizer and gotten rid of him. She was so tired of being a joke to other people.
Not to mention, she was letting her imagination completely run away with her. Archer hadn’t dumped her. He hadn’t left her yet. And truth be told, he’d seemed as blown away by their lovemaking as she’d been. She owed the guy a chance to see where this thing between them went before she assumed the worst.
But a trace of the fear stayed with her as she climbed out of the rapidly cooling bath.
She jumped out of the tub, dried off and dressed quickly, shivering. If she knew what was good for her, she would limit her feelings to no more than a crush on him. She would keep their relationship as close to purely physical as she could. Just sex.
No attachments.
No strings.
No problem.
No way.
Chapter 11
Archer looked up quickly as Marley emerged from the bedroom, her skin rosy and her hair curling in soft little blond tendrils around her face. She looked so sweet and innocent, but his firsthand knowledge of her voracious sexual appetite made that innocent look so sexy he could hardly stay in the armchair and not throw her down and ravish her all over again.
“Feel better?” he managed to murmur blandly enough.
“As good as new,” she said brightly.
“I heated up some baked beans for us. They’re not fancy, but better than nothing.”
“Man, it seems like I’m eating continuously today,” she groused. “I’m going to be as big as your truck by the time we get out of here.”
“Oh, I can think of a few ways to exercise it off you. Besides, it’s cold. Your body’s burning extra calories staying warm.”
She grinned at him. “Let’s go with that explanation.”
He offered his lap to her and she sank onto it readily. Satisfaction coursed through him that she was so comfortable with close physical contact between them. He fed her the beans, alternating taking spoonfuls himself.
“Who’d have guessed eating beanie weenies could be so nice?” she commented. “I gotta say, the Girl Scout handbook left this part out.”
“I should hope so,” he said with a chuckle.
They polished off the beans, and he set the pan aside. The fire hissed a little as snow dried off the latest batch of logs, and the silence was as deep as the snow outside. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this much at peace.
“So, here we are with nothing but time on our hands,” she said tentatively. “How about you tell me more about that last flight of yours before you came home? I swear on a stack of Bibles that I won’t ever breathe a word about it to anyone else. Maybe if you talk it out with me you’ll be good and over it before you go back to your unit.”
Peace shattered. Dammit.
He tensed. “I’d really rather not.”
She laid her palm on his cheek. “I understand. But I think maybe you need to talk about it. You get really uptight whenever you’re reminded of it.”
He stared at her, a sinking feeling in his chest. She was right. Besides, who else was there to talk to? He refused to come within ten miles of a shrink who could take his wings from him. And the other military pilots he served with were busy fighting their own demons. Not to mention, none of his colleagues wanted to hear the uncomfortable truths of their profession. Better to stay in a nice, safe state of denial, and pretend that good men and women didn’t suffer and die in their line of work.
He sighed. “What do you want to know?”
“Not sure. What can you tell me without breaking the rules over classified material?”
“Not much.” He considered his words for a few seconds and then began to speak slowly. “It was a rescue mission. In a place no Americans were supposed to be. Which meant neither the guys we were rescuing nor we were officially there.”
“And it went bad, right
? You got there and it was some sort of ambush for you, too.”
He shrugged. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if it had been an ambush for him, or an unlucky coincidence that he flown right into the teeth of a rebel stronghold to rescue that American patrol. “We got a distress call, and I was the guy on alert, so I responded.”
The frantic radio call for help from the ambushed unit crackled in his head, and the sudden tension of a clock ticking on a bunch of Special Forces troops’ lives tightened his gut.
“We came in for a landing and were hovering about thirty feet in the air over the team we were pulling out. That’s when we got shot out of the sky.”
A log broke in the fireplace with a shower of sparks and he jumped, startled. Firelight. Cabin. Marley. He was not in a helicopter hovering over hell’s doorstep.
Her hand alighted softly on his arm, a look of concern in her eyes.
He shook his head. He was okay. And she was right. He did need to relive that night. To work through how he felt about it.
Grounded in the present once more, he continued, “We crashed, and my bird was a mess. Not gonna fly again. A hell of a firefight broke out as soon as we came down in the LZ, and we were suddenly in need of rescue, too.”
She frowned. “LZ?”
“Landing zone.” She nodded and he continued. “Rockets and bullets were flying all over the place. We were pinned down in a valley with rebels in the hills on either side of us. We were fish in a barrel. It was uglier than you can imagine.”
Marley shivered against him and he tightened his arm around her waist a little. God, she felt good in his arms. A reminder that this other world, where people didn’t shoot at and kill one another, existed.
“Before we went down, I got off a Mayday—that’s an emergency call for help. We took hellish incoming fire for about the next half hour. We were running out of ammunition and medical supplies, and when, from over the ridge, I heard a chopper. That was just about the sweetest sound I ever heard.”