Off Base

by Tessa Bailey

  Beck had to close his eyes and count to ten, surprised once again by the depth of jealousy the thought of her with someone else incurred. He was leaving Thursday morning, the day after the ceremony. Leaving for good. There wasn’t a man alive with the power of sight who wouldn’t want her for himself. On top of being every male’s sexual fantasy on two legs, she had a quick sense of humor. She was interesting. Intelligent. Mysterious. Knowing how quickly she’d be spoken for, he could already tell boarding that plane on Thursday would be like getting caught in a tunnel blast a second time. Worse.

  His dark realization was cut short when Kenna pulled up outside a greasy, dilapidated garage. “Tell me you don’t live here. Please.”

  “Afraid so, Major.” She cut off the car’s engine. “Still want to come inside, or have you changed your mind?”

  “I have not changed my mind.” Great. Finally, he gets her talking only to insult her home. “I beg your pardon, Kenna. I didn’t mean to come off rude.”

  A smile entered her eyes. “You’re begging my pardon?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He looked back toward the garage, noticing the sign advertising break inspections was seconds from plummeting to the ground. “It just doesn’t seem safe for a girl living alone, is all. Doesn’t your father object?”

  “I’m an adult, Major. I decide where to lay my head.” She shrugged. “Besides, I think as long as I moved out and gave Tina room to move in, I could have gone to the moon for all he cared.”

  Beck experienced the same irritation he felt when the lieutenant general hadn’t thanked her for the beef jerky, and then again when Tina hadn’t offered her a drink. “I don’t like you being treated that way.”

  She stared through the windshield for a moment before returning her attention to him. Gone was the forlorn quality in her expression. Invitation had taken its place. “You know, talking about this doesn’t put me in a sexy mood.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned across the console, casting a net of her incense scent to drag him under. Her hand landed on his thigh, but it might as well have been his cock from the way it immediately strained against his fly. “I want to hear more about what you want. What you told me back at the house…I liked it, Major. A lot.”

  “You ought to start calling me Beck, now, Kenna.” Lord, her breasts swelled against her shirt as she leaned toward him. “Seeing as how you’re taking me home.”

  Her hand skated higher on his thigh. “Okay…Beck.”

  That was it. Kenna saying his name blew a fuse in his head, short-circuiting his self-control. A boomboomboom started in his ears as he yanked her across the console, dropping her firm, little backside onto his lap. Every second of resistance he’d managed back in that dining room demanded repayment and nothing could settle the debt, save her. Before he knew his own mind, he ripped her shirt open and upclasped her bra, growling as those rosy-peaked, bad-girl tits popped free. “I’m going to suck them. Need to suck them.” He bent his head and dragged her right nipple into his mouth, drawing on it with a loud moan. “Move around on my dick while I suck you, Kenna. I’m so hard. You make me so hard to be inside you. How is that possible when I don’t even know what it feels like?”

  She turned in his lap to straddle him, one palm smoothing down the side of his face. “Take me upstairs and I’ll show you.” Her breathing was erratic, but she stopped after one mind-bending buck of her hips. “Don’t you know you make me just as achy?”

  Awe and relief and lust battered him. “I want to see that spot where you’re achy. I want to look at you there, watch you touch it. I want to touch…your pussy. Want to lick it.”

  Kenna fell forward onto his chest, forehead dropping onto his shoulder. “Beck, if you keep talking like that, I’m going to come before you get inside me.”

  “I don’t think I want that to happen.” With an iron will she continued to diminish with every hot breath against his neck, Beck pushed open the passenger door and stepped out, smiling through the pleasure-pain of Kenna clinging to him like a lifeline. Ah hell, he liked that. Like her compact body wrapped around his like a missing piece, her curves accommodating his ridges, the valley between her legs, warm and inviting, settling on top of his throbbing dick. “Tell me where I’m going, darlin’,” he choked out.

  She ran her open mouth up his neck. “There’s an alley on the left…staircase around back.”

  Beck strode toward the alley, unable to ignore how poorly lit and deserted it was. Anger and worry trickled through the permanent heat she’d inflicted on him. “I don’t like this. I don’t like you here.” She tugged on his ear with her teeth and his stride faltered. Distracting me. It’s working. For now. He stomped up the staircase, groaning at the way she slid up and down his bulging fly with each step. “While we’re on the subject of things I don’t like, Kenna, I haven’t even kissed your mouth. You can be damn sure that’ll be happening before we go any further—”

  Her mouth landed on his just as they reached the door. Sweet Lord above. If he’d thought Kenna simply walking into a room had an impact on him, he’d had another think coming. His back hit her front door, air seeping from his lungs as she locked their mouths together and slowly dragged away, taking his bottom lip with her. Both of their mouths opened on cue for a pull of oxygen before melding together, meshing hotly, moving in a slow, sexual rhythm, matched by the pulsing between his thighs. As if she’d made an unexpected discovery, she climbed higher on his body, thighs gripping his sides, hands holding his head steady as she delivered the kiss of his life. As soon as the notion rocked through his fevered brain, he reversed their positions, shoving her up against the door, determined to deliver the same to her. Their tongues tangled in an eager slide and he finally let himself do what he’d been fantasizing about since yesterday. He reached beneath her skirt and manhandled her sinner’s backside. He gripped the taut flesh and tightened his hold, lifting and stroking. She alleviated any fear he had of being too rough by moaning into his mouth, digging her heels into his waist.

  Kenna tore her mouth away. “Inside, Beck. Take me inside,” she wheezed. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’d done this before. A lot.”

  “Nah, darlin’. Just you.” He took the single key she offered, turning it in the lock. “You make everything I do feel right. That has nothing to do with experience.” Walking them into the darkened apartment, he kissed her collarbone. “Thinking maybe that’s all to do with Kenna.”

  Her legs dropped from around his waist. She turned before he could see her expression, but he knew he’d said too much. Shown his hand too early. When the light came on, there was a line of tension in her shoulders. No. He wouldn’t let her shut him out after they’d come this far. Hadn’t she said he made her ache, too? When she’d taken off her bra, he’d never been more turned on in his life. Would it work in reverse? Figuring he had nothing—except everything—to lose, Beck started unbuttoning his dress shirt. When he’d nearly reached the bottom, Kenna turned, shifting in her boots. Her green gaze sparked like a firecracker when he tugged the hem from his waistband. “W-what are you—”

  Right before Beck let his shirt drop, he remembered the wound in his side and lifted a hand to hide it. Jesus, if this girl could make him forget the painful shrapnel wound, she could do anything. But he’d never willingly shown it to anyone, and he didn’t want her pity. He wanted her to need him. Needed her lust. Her touch. Anything but pity.

  Kenna came to him, tension still visible in her shoulders, but it was a different kind. “I thought you were in a support unit.” Her hand hovered over the wound, as if trying to cure it. “You saw action, too?”

  “I did. Of course I did.” He ran a thumb over her top lip, relieved to see her eyelids flutter. “I wouldn’t send men into a situation where I wouldn’t go myself.”

  She traced the edge of his wound with her finger. “You’re a good man, Beck Collier. Some woman is going to snatch you up one day and never let go.”

  Something akin to denial speared his chest
and spiked his temper. He tipped her chin up and stooped down to bring their faces close. “Don’t talk about me with some other woman when I came here to be inside your body, Kenna. Because I promise you this.” He backed her toward the living room. “I aim to get so deep inside you, neither one of us will think of anyone else for a damn long while.” Ever again, if he had his way. “Now get your clothes off and show me the only woman I have plans to fuck. Show me.”

  A beat passed in the living room where Beck thought he’d gone too far. Showed too early the secret, primitive part of himself he’d worked to suppress. Let more honesty slip out than was acceptable. It all vanished into the racing river of his pulse when she smiled, slow and sensual. “You know, I thought you were all sugar when we met.” She let her tattered shirt slide to the floor, palmed her breasts in a way that nearly brought him to his knees. “But you’re just a little bad underneath the sweet exterior, aren’t you?” She swayed toward him, right into his space. He thought she might kiss him, but she nudged him backward instead, sending him down into a deep-bottomed leather arm chair. “Why don’t we find out exactly how deep the bad goes, Major?”

  * * *

  Out of self-preservation, Kenna pretended not to see the absolute possession in Beck’s eyes as she removed her bra and kicked off her boots. If she let herself think about the hints he’d been dropping, her intuition that he wanted more than a one-night stand, her conscience wouldn’t allow her to go through with it. Unfortunately, her body gave her zero choice in the matter. She’d known Beck was a large man, a handsome man, but then he’d gone and taken off his shirt. If she stared at his brick-house body any harder, she’d need smelling salts to be revived. The angry wound in his side, the jagged, rough-hewn cut of his muscles made him rugged when she’d been expecting a teddy bear. Uh-uh. Not Beck. Beck was ripped as shit, and that little display of anger he’d let slip through the cracks had made him unexpectedly dangerous. He was a coin with two very appealing sides and she wanted to flip him, see where he landed. Since danger suited her need to keep this temporary fling as casual as possible, she would be anything but sweet. Memorable? Hell yes. But not sweet.

  When only her short black skirt remained, she used Beck’s shoulders for balance. She placed her knees on opposite arms of the chair, leaving her center exposed for his perusal, shielded only by a sheer red pair of panties. Beck cursed under his breath, the muscles of his chest and abdomen shifting powerfully, making her even bolder. She took a moment to tease the hem of her skirt before sliding the material over her hips, baring the wispy red thong that barely covered her center. “You want to touch me where I ache, Beck?” She nudged aside the red strip with two fingers, whimpering as they made contact with her sensitive clitoris. Her eyes tried to close at the flood of pleasure when she circled her nub once and pressed down, but she kept them open. On Beck. “Right here, sweetheart?”

  “Yes. Christ, yes.”

  She slid her hands up to cup her breasts and squeezed, thigh muscles tightening at the delicious quickening in her belly. “I’m all yours.”

  Beck shot forward, latching his mouth to her clit, sucking her panties and flesh into his mouth on a thunderous growl. Kenna screamed at the unexpected action, nearly losing her balance until his hands molded to her bottom, holding her steady as he sucked. Licked. Oh God. Her body convulsed, stuttering just on the edge of orgasm. Impossible. Too soon. Wasn’t it?

  He pulled back by the barest of inches, his rapid puffs of breath feathering over her flesh. “D-do you like this?”

  “Yeskeepgoing.”

  “Thank God. Tastes so good.”

  Beck made contact again and Kenna’s mind shut down, focusing only on the perfection of his suctioning mouth. He was a starved man who’d forgotten his last meal and needed sustenance. One of his brawny arms wrapped around her hips, freeing his other hand to slip between her thighs, a thumb brushing her entrance. As if he wanted her permission but refused to stop tonguing her damp core long enough to ask.

  “Yours, Beck. My body is yours.” Words she’d never said to anyone, would probably never say again. Don’t think about it. Focus on him…what he’s doing to you. “Touch me, move me, enter me, speak to me however it feels right. Everything you do will be right.”

  She could feel something give way inside his big body. If possible, his mouth worked her harder, opening wide to draw on her flesh, then bathing her clit with his tongue. Two long fingers filled her and she gasped—yes—making eye contact with Beck as he broke away with a groan. “Ah, Kenna.” His voice was a bed of nails. “I’m going to hurt you. I never knew…I didn’t know you’d be so small.” He wrapped his arms around her waist, buried his face against her stomach. “I take back what I said. I don’t want to make you scream. Don’t want you in pain.”

  Her throat constricted so hard she couldn’t draw air for a moment, but Beck’s obvious physical torment snapped her into action. She lifted his face to meet hers. “Unfasten your pants, Major. You won’t hurt me.” Their lips brushed. “If it hurts a little, the good will outweigh it. Okay?” She kissed him long and deep. “I showed you my ache, now show me yours.”

  His hands fell to his lap, bringing the sounds of leather sliding, his zipper descending. “If I do something to hurt you…” He broke off, shaking his head.

  “Hey.” As soon as his erection was free between them, large and beautiful, she pushed him against the chair back. “You’re the virgin. That’s supposed to be my line.”

  An intense glow lit his eyes. “You’re in deep with me, Kenna Sutton.”

  “I know,” she whispered, hiding her shaken reaction to his vow by reaching for the unopened pack of condoms in her side table, but her trembling fingers gave her away.

  Beck took the box and ripped it open with his teeth, effectively replacing her embarrassment with another whopping dose of heat. He took out a foil wrapper, tore it on one end and rolled the condom down his erection. “I know this much from health class,” he explained with a lopsided smile.

  Something pointy stuck in her throat, but she swallowed it with resolution. Thighs still spread wide, knees resting on opposite armrests, she took him in her hand, led him between her thighs and sank down, inch by inch. Beck gritted out her name at the ceiling, his neck and arm muscles constricting. Kenna’s thighs felt the strain of her position, but she refused to change it because—damn damn damn—he couldn’t possibly get any deeper. So huge and thick and smooth. Amazing. He pressed against her inner walls, stretching her to fit him and it hurt, but the hurt was glorious. Nothing compared to this. Nothing. The need to move was fast becoming an undeniable yen, so she dug her fingers into the leather back of the chair and rose, before dropping down onto him once again.

  “Oh my God.”

  “You? Christ. Oh, Christ. You have no idea…” He lifted his hips, bringing them both off the seat. “It’s too good. You’re tight. So fucking tight and I can’t. You can’t move like that. Do it again. Okay, darlin’? Again. Again.”

  She’d never wanted to kiss a man during sex, but hell if she didn’t want to make out with his flushed, masculine face, the promise of a too-soon, blistering climax be damned. Beck. Sweet, sexual beast that had been pacing his cage too long. Kenna twisted her hips and pleasure spread like spilled ink in her middle. Never mind about the kissing. She’d only had this man inside her for thirty seconds and her body was sprinting blindly toward relief, lip-lock be damned. Kenna lifted and came down on him with a quick flick of her hips, moaning as Beck grew even larger inside her.

  “I’m not leaving you in need again.” Beck thrust up into her with a strangled groan. “But I can’t think when you’re doing that. Can’t think about anything ‘cept coming inside your body.”

  “Don’t think, Beck. I don’t want you to think.” Reminding herself this was his first experience, Kenna took his hands and placed them on her backside, her breath leaving in a rush when he gripped her with punishing strength. “Move me how you want me, Beck. Grind me down, bounc
e me, make me ride you slow. Do whatever makes you come the hardest.”

  Sweat had broken out along his upper lip, his sexy, corded neck. “I already know you’re going to be the best of my life, Kenna. How do I make sure I’m the best of yours? Tell me.”

  There’s no one in the world like this guy. “I like it hard.” Her voice wavered. “Slam me down. Use my body to jack yourself off.”

  His eyes closed briefly before they opened and scorched a path over her breasts, belly, thighs. “You can’t be real. You can’t be.”

  Even though she’d instructed him, Kenna wasn’t prepared for what followed. With the flesh of her bottom clenched in his hands, he impaled her on his unforgiving hardness, again and again. It started at a testing pace but grew almost out of control. Her teeth rattled inside her mouth with each life-affirming impact. Beck watched her through eyes at half-mast, eyes that glittered with so much pent-up lust, it staggered her. He tilted his hips, satisfaction conquering his expression when she moaned loud enough to shake the windows. Unbelievable. He was searching for her pleasure when this should have been about him. His first time. With the unimaginable sensations blasting her, she couldn’t find the same selflessness. No, she’d never needed relief so badly.

  She held her fingers over Beck’s mouth. “Lick them.” When he did as she asked, his tongue stroking her fingertips like their taste was incomparable, Kenna almost climaxed then and there. No more waiting. As Beck continued to slam her down on his erection, Kenna found her clit and with two rough circles of her middle finger, she pushed over into oblivion. “Yes, yes, yes.” Oh holy shit, her legs spasmed violently on the armrests, moisture flooding over the spot her body joined with Beck’s. “So good, Beck. You’re so good.”