As she had thought, silvery sheets of moonlight made the area more than light enough to see. She unzipped her jersey cover-up and tossed it over a deck chair before slipping into the water.
David woke to sharp, shooting pain on the left side of his face. He fought the upwelling of despair. Two weeks had passed since his latest surgery. He had been free of pain all day and had allowed hope that the pain was finally going away to steal in. He was already on the thin edge of remaining a SEAL, since the repetitive jarring of spine and skull when he ran made the pain worse. If the pain didn't get better, the next thing the docs would want to try would be anticonvulsants. That would finish him.
The pain wasn't bad yet. Dwelling on the grim possibility that he'd be forced to leave the Teams wouldn't help.
JJ wanted him because he was a SEAL. He hadn't told her that was by no means a sure thing. Anyway, if she wanted a husband who stayed gone, he could ar range that. The important thing was that his brothers and sister would be taken care of. In the bathroom, he helped himself to two aspirin and checked his patient. Lucas was sleeping so deeply he didn't rouse as David gently felt for his pulse. It was strong and steady.
A metallic click, like from a door latch, came from the hall. He looked out in time to see a shadowy figure on the other side of the translucent glass door that opened to the indoor pool. No lights came on. JJ or a housebreaker? He needed to make sure. He hastily pulled on jeans and, shirtless and barefoot, let himself into the hall.
Someone was in the pool. As soon as he opened the pool door, he could hear faint splashing sounds.
Moonlight streaming in the tall Palladian windows on the south wall rendered the scene in silver and black.
"Don't turn the lights on." JJ's voice, pitched to bounce as little as possible, came from a patch of shadow.
"Why not?" Realization dawned. "Oh." A grin spread over his face. This was better than he had any right to hope for. Water and darkness were a SEAL's friend, but it was almost too good if she was already naked. "Good idea. I think I'll join you." His hands went to the zipper of the jeans.
"If you'll give me a minute, I'll get out. You can have the pool to yourself."
"Pool's big enough for both of us." He shucked jeans and briefs together.
"Don't dive!" Seeing that her protests didn't stop him, she warned him hastily. "It's too shallow."
He hadn't been going to, but he appreciated the warn ing. He let himself over the side without making a ripple. He had achieved the first part of his aim. He was in the water before she could organize her resistance. Now he needed to lull her. "How deep is the deep end?"
"Seven feet."
She was in the pool's back corner in a patch of shadow. Lucky for him, he had better night vision than most. The light-colored and hard surfaces all around reflected light almost as well as sound. The dark shape of her head, the glisten of her eyes, was perfectly visible. Keeping close to the wall, he glided slowly toward the deep end.
"No. Stay there. Don't come closer."
"Don't you know you shouldn't be swimming with out a…" he let the taunt trail away.
"A what?"
"A… buddy," he supplied, full of innocence. "I'll just be your buddy, here to save you if you get into trouble. Don't worry. I'll stay on this side. You stay over there." What a liar he was. Oh, he was bad, he thought without a trace of remorse.
"I think you are the trouble."
"Nah. We'll swim laps. Plenty of room for two swim mers side by side." He put a hint of challenge in his voice. "I'll race you."
"We have to be quiet," she objected. "The crawl will make too much noise."
"All right. You choose. Breaststroke or underwater?"
Her head disappeared. His cheek pulled as he allowed himself a smile. She had taken the bait without ever seeing the hook. He took a deep breath and went under himself. Underwater she was visible.
She was halfway down the pool, not desperate for air yet. The water at eighty-two degrees was a silky caress over her breasts, her belly, her buttocks. Especially her buttocks. Eddies titillated her most sensitive tissues. Sud denly she knew he was doing it. She couldn't imagine how, but he was. If she hesitated and she was wrong, she was going to lose the race to the shallow end—she had no chance without a head start. She felt the lightest, but unmistakable, brush of fingers. Reflexively, she drew her legs up and twisted in the water to find his grinning face no more than a hand's width away.
The concentration it took to suppress the urge to breathe was broken. She gasped water. Her trachea burned. She squeezed her throat against the urge to cough. She had only an instant to surface before the need to cough would overwhelm her conscious control. Almost before she could take in her danger, strong hands grasped her rib cage and shot her to the surface.
While she coughed and sputtered, her eyes streaming, he kept one strong, warm arm around her and guided her to the side.
"Relax." He took her hand and placed it on the rough, dry, unpainted, cement coping. There was a sensitivity to the action, a deep understanding of what would reassure her body, that in that moment changed something. He might try her patience a thousand ways, disturb her, and shake her up, but he knew what it took to make her safe.
"You're okay." The arm around her wasn't needed now, but he kept it there anyway, and she was glad. His skin was warmer than the water. "Relax. Just let yourself breathe." He lifted a hank of hair away from her face, and then another one, until he could look into her eyes. "Okay now?"
He had taken them to a patch of moonlight. His irises were colorlessly dark but even clearer than usual—eyes one could literally look into. His clumped, spiky, ab surdly long and thick lashes radiated like a dark sunburst. There was concern in his eyes and also the avid glint of hunting instinct.
She wiped water out of her eyes. "You made me do that!"
His grin was unrepentant, in fact, satisfied. "Not the breathing water part. You did that on your own. See there. I told you, you needed a swim buddy."
Breasts floated, and wasn't that one of the best ideas God ever had? He wanted to feel them mold against his chest, but it was too soon. Anyway, from this distance he could see them while keeping his eyes on her face.
The conical mounds gleamed white, chased with sil ver where water streamed across them. He loved breasts, the soft firm feel of them, the way they were cool on their tops and warm underneath. The texture change between skin and areola.
Her areolas were dark—just like he knew they would be. They played dark peekaboo as bright water first lapped over them, then receded with every breath. Breasts clothed in dark water. The déjà vu feeling nudged at the base of his skull again. He didn't have a poetic bone in his body, but he knew he'd had that thought before. Chasing it, he let his eyes drop.
She gave a gasp of disgust and slapped one arm across her chest. Fortunately, it didn't do much good.
"You jerk!"
"You're the one swimming naked."
"Alone!"
"You stayed."
"I could hardly get out."
"Yes, you could. You're not embarrassed to be naked."
"How do you know that?" The challenge surprised him with its sharpness.
He gave her a knowing grin. "Don't deny it." Truth was, he didn't know how he knew, but he did.
"Just because I enjoy swimming naked doesn't mean I'm immodest."
"Hell, no. It means you enjoy your body. You like mov ing and letting air or water touch every inch of it." She was listening now, eyes wide. He wasn't sure what he had said that had gotten her attention, but he decided to go with it. "It feels good," he put the full import of what he meant by good in his voice, "doesn't it? It can feel even better."
Above the quiet lapping of water, he heard her breath hitch. She was responding to his arousal—he knew it better than he knew the feel of his own heartbeat. Now was the moment to kiss her. This moment wasn't about dominance or bending her to his will. Now he could invite her to love play.
He c
upped her shoulder, relishing the vital, pulsing with-feminine-power feel of her. He skimmed his hand over her shoulder and up her neck. "I love how good your body feels," he murmured, "and I love knowing it feels just as good to you."
He drew her to him, letting them both savor the extra sensual dimension the water added. The suddenness of added heat, skin clinging to skin. How good it felt to know he wasn't taking or demanding. He was giving his desire to her. When their lips met, it was to further mingle their delight with twining tongues and toying nips.
Her long, strong fingers restlessly kneaded muscles on his back and then dug into his shoulders so that she could take advantage of the buoyancy of the water to stroke herself against him side to side, up and down, and in sinuous belly-dancer moves. With exquisite control, she made sure his erection received full attention. He caught the two globes of her buttocks in his hands, in sinuating his fingers between the silken folds, letting her move but staying with her so that a teasing touch from him was added to her every movement.
She made a sound, a tiny gurgle of delight. He wasn't sure she knew she did it, but it filled up his chest and made him feel like the king of everything.
He hadn't come this far to fail to render this goddess her full homage. He wanted to see her, to fill his hands with the bounty of her breasts, to draw the nipples deep into his mouth. Still, he'd rather not drown himself while he did it. He clamped his hands on either side of her rib cage and lifted her out of the water. "Extend your arms along the gutter," he commanded.
"Why? What are you going to do?"
"You know what I'm going to do."
As if her hands had a will of their own, she felt for the slick, curved tiles of the overflow channel with one hand and then the other. Warm water lapped over her arms and made soft slurping, sloshing sounds. The position arched her back and lifted her breasts above the surface. With her body no longer vertical in the water, her legs wanted to float.
Before she could think of what to do with them, he calmly stepped between her legs and pulled them around his waist. She could feel the thickness of his arousal, its heat, against her buttocks. With his thumbs, he opened her so that the swollen center of her excitement was in full contact with him. Something about the sheer compe tence of the move penetrated the hypnotic sensual haze that his voice had sent her into.
"You've done it in a pool before." She pulled her legs away and stood. If the water didn't cover her, so what? Once again, she had been this close to giving in, just going with the flow, letting the tide take her—just like before. What this man could do to her should be illegal.
He didn't deny it. He also didn't move away. "You're a passionate woman. We would be good together. What's the objection?"
"The truth?"
"That would be best, yes."
"I know what you're like. You see a pretty girl, decide you're going to have her, you do, and then you see the next pretty girl and it's the same moves; rinse, repeat. A week or so later, you don't remember her any better than you remember what you had for lunch that day. I can deal with that—in fact, I prefer it—but not if I'm the one you can't remember."
She turned her back to him to hoist herself from the pool—the coping was too high for her to manage the more graceful lift—even though her position would give him an eyeful. At this point she didn't care what he saw.
Out of the water, sticking to the earth as land crea tures do, she felt heavy. Her feet made wet slaps on the concrete. She crossed to the chair where she had draped the towel brought from her bathroom. She wrapped it around herself, tucking it securely under one arm.
He lifted himself to the coping as she had but far more easily. If there was one thing her ballroom-dancing hobby had taught her, it was that grace was a combina tion of strength and of always knowing where all parts of your body were. The sight of his shoulders and sculpted back rising from the water, silver water sheeting from him, the shape of his buttocks, the perfect timing as he caught the coping with his foot—his consummate coor dination, caught her breath.
His feet on the concrete made almost no sound. Disregarding his nudity and his still more than half aroused state, he came to stand in front of her. "You think I'm pretty much a lightweight, don't you?"
"Not in every way. I can see you're devoted to your family. I don't think you got to be a SEAL without an unusual degree of dedication and determination, plus willingness to make sacrifices." She tilted her head, test ing the fairness of her assessment. "I'm not even sure it's your fault, but women drop into your hands like ripe plums. And you don't turn them down."
"You seem very sure of that."
"Oh, I am."
"Did you know someone like me—like you think I am?"
JJ chuckled cynically. "You could say that."
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing. The experience taught me not to do some thing I was going to regret. I had the same problems in the morning, but, in addition, I had to recover my self-respect."
David couldn't believe what he was hearing. "So, you're willing to marry me, but you're not willing to have sex with me?" Oh man, did they need to talk. "I'm not going without sex."
"I've already told you I don't expect you to. I'd just rather you didn't do it in Wilmington. But I have no control over that."
"I meant sex with you."
"Think again, stud. Anyone you want, but not me."
"You."
"Why?"
"I don't screw around."
"I find that hard to believe. Are you saying you've ever been faithful in the past?"
He'd usually—once he was out of his teens—limited himself to one girl at a time, but he admitted it never lasted long, and he stuck to his rule largely because it made one less thing to keep up with. Best not to go there. If he could have what he knew she had to give, he'd have no need to look elsewhere.
"You don't think much of me, do you?" he countered.
"I told you I admire your dedication. Frankly I'm awed by the sacrifices you have made."
"Dipoma—diplomatic answer. I mean what you think of me. The man, not the SEAL."
"I think you're intelligent and you can be trusted to do your duty—to put duty first. I believe those qualities would allow us to be on the same page."
"Well, let me tell you something else about me. As long as I'm married, I intend to be as married as I know how to be. I don't do anything halfway. I will give you the best I have. But I won't do it, I can't even think about doing it, if there's no way you'll give yourself to me." His sincerity rang through every note in his dark, smooth voice, was written on every line of his stance, could be read in the vulnerable look in his eyes. She might doubt his ability to live up to his words, but he believed what he was saying. That kind of genuineness could create the mother of all con jobs. "Don't tell me you're in love with me!"
To her surprise the uncompromising lines of his face shifted. He looked a little sheepish, adorably boyish. He didn't let his eyes waver, though she thought they looked a little pained. "Well, maybe. Some."
She laughed in disbelief. "Some?"
In his life he had never heard one syllable packed with such incredulity and indignation. "How the hell do I know?" He lifted a frustrated hand, reaching for what he didn't know, and let it fall to his side. "All right, that sounded lame, but what do you expect me to say? I'm attracted to you."
The pain, which had been just inside the threshold of awareness, suddenly twanged hotter, harder, longer. Sometimes it escalated; sometimes it didn't. He needed to finish this up and get out of here.
"I don't know about love. I get wanting sex, you know? But sex with someone else isn't going to satisfy. I want you. I know that much. Girl, you say yes, and I'll do you in every one of the eighty-six Kama Sutra positions. Twice. But now… I can wait. I'm not going to force you. I'm just telling you where it's going to end up. Take it or leave it."
"You want me?"
"You are the stubbornest woman in the world. What part of want don'
t you get?"
"And you'd be willing to turn down everything else I have to offer, if you don't have that, too?"
"Is that what I said?" The words he meant were not always the words that came out. He mentally replayed his words. The pain in his skull flared with acetylene torch intensity with every heartbeat. He couldn't believe he'd found a way to take care of everyone, to be free to return to the Teams as soon as he was better, and he was getting ready to throw it all away. Had he lost his mind as well as scrambled his brain?
And yet whether he had thought it through before hand or not, he had said what he meant. He and Riley might wind up living on his disability and eating a lot of beans, but so be it.
SEALed with a Ring Page 17