by Sybil Bartel
I WATCHED THE TRANSFORMATION ON her face.
Determination filtered in a split second before the locked expression she’d valiantly held on to, that was only given away by her haunted eyes, slid back into place. Except this time, it was different than the look in her eyes in the bar. I’d seen the fear then. Now I was looking at something else. And that something wasn’t good.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I got that kissing her had pissed her off, but holy shit, that kiss. And goddamn, she’d kissed me back. I just couldn’t figure out why she was so damn angry now when she didn’t make move one to red light the whole thing.
I was right. She was a mind-fuck contradiction, and that stupidly only made me want her more. Not wanting to take her home yet, left with no other move, I did what I said I wouldn’t. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head like she was even more pissed. “You said you weren’t going to apologize.”
“Not for enjoying it.” No fucking way.
She turned to face me. “Then what are you sorry for?”
“Making you angry.” I studied every nuance of her expression, but hell, I couldn’t read this woman.
She looked back out the window. Her chest rose with an inhale, and when she spoke, her tone had come down about fifty notches. “You took me off guard.”
“I wanted to kiss you.” I wasn’t gonna lie to her. “What you said earlier about not being desirable, you were dead wrong.” She’d caught my attention the second I’d laid eyes on her.
“I don’t have an appropriate response for that statement.”
“Then don’t respond. Just know I wanted to kiss you.”
For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she gave me back an in. “Apology accepted.”
“Thank you.” Relieved, I said it like I meant it.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’d still like to have dinner with you.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Fine.”
I took her olive branch, gladly, but I couldn’t let go of what she’d said about being in distress and me being a hero. She’d thrown out the words in anger, and whether she thought they were true or not, my instinct was still grabbing me by the balls, and I wouldn’t be a Marine if I didn’t try again to find out what the fuck had happened at Dax’s.
Keeping my tone neutral, I made an attempt to ask again. “What happened at the bar?”
“The shelf fell.”
No choice, I let it go for now, but I wasn’t giving up on dinner. “I don’t have soda at home. You want me to stop and grab some?” I threw the truck into gear and backed out of the parking spot, hoping she didn’t tell me to take her home.
“Water’s fine.”
I pulled into traffic and headed toward my condo. She didn’t speak, and I didn’t ask any more questions because I was just glad she was sitting next to me. Five minutes later, I drove past the valet parking and the restaurant on the ground floor and pulled into my spot in the underground parking.
“Wait there.” I cut the engine and got out. When I opened her door, she had the food on her lap. I reached for the bag, but she stopped me.
“I’ll carry the food if you get my bike out of the back.”
I didn’t bother pointing out no one in their right mind would steal her bike. “Deal.”
I lifted the heap of rusted metal out of the bed of the truck, and she followed me as I wheeled it to the elevators. Twelve floors later, I led us down the hall and let us into my place. Leaving the bike in the entryway, I turned on some lights and took the food from her.
“This way.” I walked to the kitchen, wondering if it was a mistake to bring her here.
“Nice condo.” She glanced around like she hated the place. “How come you didn’t just get food from the restaurant downstairs?”
“A five-star restaurant on site has its advantages, but good pizza isn’t one of them.”
“I wouldn’t know.” She walked to the wall of windows in the living room and looked out at the view of the intracoastal. “I didn’t have a privileged upbringing.”
Ignoring her loaded statement, and my own defensive bullshit, I laid out the truth. “My parents fought my entire life. My dad said women bled you dry, and my mom said men were trouble with a capital T. If they weren’t busy cutting each other down or yelling at me, they were locking themselves in different parts of the house, retreating only so they could refuel their hate for one another.” I joined the Marines to get the fuck away from them. “So yeah, if that constitutes a privileged upbringing, then I’m spoiled as fuck.”
She didn’t comment.
“How’d you grow up?” I challenged.
“Like a princess,” she deadpanned.
Not touching that, I grabbed plates, napkins and silverware and dumped them on the small table in the kitchen before going back for the food on the counter.
She picked up one of the plates, brushed something off it, then looked at the back. “This still has the price tag on it.”
Everything was new in the condo, right down to the towels and silverware. “I had a company that specialized in estate sales come in after my mom moved to assisted living.” I’d told them to take everything.
In a rare show of emotion, she looked at me like I was crazy. “Why?”
Did she not hear a fucking word of what I’d just told her? “Because I hated everything here.” Memories were attached to everything.
“So you just… gave it all away?”
“No, I sold it.” And bought all new shit.
“If you hated it, then why live here?”
I smirked. “It was a free condo.” Except nothing was ever free.
“You could have sold it and bought something else.”
That would’ve required me being home long enough to deal with something like that. When I was on leave, the last thing I wanted to do was look at real estate. I wanted to sleep and fuck and eat. In that order. “True, but new furniture was easier than a new address.”
She picked the plates up and walked to the sink.
Catching on to her intention, I intercepted her. “Your hand. I’ll wash those.” I reached for the plates.
She held them closer. “Can I get my hand wet?”
“Yeah, the dressing’s waterproof.”
“Then I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt anymore.” She skirted around me and started washing the plates.
I grabbed the silverware. “These haven’t been used yet either.” Or washed.
She took the silverware and set it in the sink. “You don’t spend much time here, do you?”
A week or two a couple times a year. Maybe. “No.”
Her voice softened. “It really is a nice place.”
“You didn’t seem to think so when you first walked in.”
“What made you think that?”
“Your expression.” And body language.
“I was just surprised.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t think soldiers were rich.”
“I’m not a soldier,” I corrected. “I’m a Marine. The Army has soldiers. And I’m not rich.” Fucking far from it.
“It’s still a nice place.”
“Then you should stay here.” The comment was flippant and off the cuff, but the second the words hit the airspace between us, traitorous shit started to fill my head. “Someone should at least enjoy the view.”
Her hands slender, her movements feminine despite her outfit and crazy curly hair, she washed the silverware. “Do you always invite strangers to move into your home?”
“Nope.” Lucky her. “You’re the first.”
“You should be more judicious.”
I chuckled. I liked how she was getting bolder with me. She hadn’t moved away when I stepped up to her, and even though her tone remained even, she could dish it out. “Why? You gonna rob me of my unused plates and silverware?”
She almost shrugged. “I could be a squatter.”
“I’m never hom
e. How would I know?”
She didn’t reply. She placed the plates on the drying rack next to the silverware and turned off the water.
I picked up a dishrag and dried the plates. “You really got a place to land?”
“I said I did.” She took the two glasses I’d left on the counter to the fridge and filled them with ice.
I pointed out the obvious. “Doesn’t make it true.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
I shrugged and threw it back on her, mostly to gage if I really was out of the doghouse on that kiss. “You said I took advantage of you.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.” I stared at her, but her back was to me as she looked in the fridge at my meager supply of shit to drink other than tap water. “I kissed you. Big difference.” In my book, taking advantage of someone was stealing their shit or using them for your own gain.
She grabbed a bottle of sparkling water I didn’t even know I had. “To someone who didn’t invite it, it could have been construed as being taken advantage of.”
Fuck. Shit tensed across my shoulders and I set the plates down. “You haven’t forgiven me.”
She focused her gaze on her feet.
I reached to tip her chin, but dropped my hand, realizing what I was doing. “Look at me.”
I thought when she brought her face up, I’d be looking into the arresting blue eyes I’d first seen in Dax’s bar. The same eyes that had looked all at once haunted and determined. I knew that look. I lived it. I didn’t often see it outside my brothers in the Marines, and I’d never seen it on a woman.
But when she looked up at me, she didn’t look haunted.
At all.
Desire darkened her deep blue eyes as her cheek drew in like she was biting it from the inside. I knew exactly what I was looking at. I just couldn’t fucking believe it. “Brookelyn,” I rasped.
Her pulse jumped on her neck and she inhaled sharply.
My cock instantly hard, my hands itching to touch her, I mentally backed the fuck up. “I apologize for kissing you.” I wasn’t sorry. I was testing her. I was testing the look on her face.
She inhaled sharply. “Don’t.”
I watched her throat move with a swallow. “Don’t what?” Jesus, she was beautiful.
“Lie.”
“If you believe I took advantage of you, I apologize.” That wasn’t a lie.
“What do you want?”
I prioritized. “I want to know if I need to kick some piece of shit’s ass.”
“You don’t.”
She hadn’t hesitated, but she’d blinked right before she’d said the lie. “Then I want to kiss you again.” And get her naked.
“You don’t want to kiss me.”
I was wrong before, she didn’t smell like woman and spice and laundry. She smelled like everything I’d ever wanted. “I don’t?” I challenged.
Her voice went quiet. “You want more.”
“A lot more.” I half expected her to walk out. What I didn’t expect was the next words that came out of her mouth.
“You’re leaving soon.”
“Yes.” Less than twenty-four hours. But fuck, I wished like hell I wasn’t.
“Are you coming back?”
One way or another. I tipped my chin.
She picked up on my nonverbal cue. “Alive?”
“That’s the plan.” That and in one piece.
“When?”
Liking it far too much that she was asking these questions, I bargained. “Tell me why you want to know, and I’ll tell you when I’m coming back home.”
She hesitated. “I don’t like to kiss someone who has an expiration date.”
Shit. I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. “Then don’t kiss anyone.” We all fucking expire eventually.
“You know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, I did. “I didn’t take advantage of you.” I wasn’t taking this conversation further without clarification.
“You took me off guard.”
I spelled it out. “Do you think my intent was to take advantage of you?” Because I got it. Perception was law in emotions, and this chick had been taken advantage of before.
“No.”
A good start. “You scared of me right now?”
“No.”
I checked off another box on my mental check list, but I didn’t have all the pieces of her puzzle yet. “What happened to the woman who didn’t like people getting near her?”
Strong and bold, she held my gaze. “She hadn’t met you.”
Hell yeah. Right fucking answer, but I wasn’t finished. “You want me to touch you?” I wasn’t gonna make the same mistake twice. She needed to give me a green light if she wanted this to go further.
“Do you want to?” she hedged.
For the first time since she’d stumbled into my atmosphere, she looked insecure. Not afraid, but insecure. I didn’t like it, at all. The woman who let her hair fly wild and wore I-don’t-give-a-fuck clothes, she could be a lot of things, but I didn’t want her insecure.
Taking a risk, I took her good hand. Then I did the only thing I knew to do with this wild and fragile woman. I gave her the naked fucking truth. “I want more than to simply touch you.” I stroked the back of her hand with my thumb. “I want my hands all over you. I want my mouth on yours, and I want to feel you underneath me, coming the fuck apart with mind-bending orgasms.”
I WAS COMING APART ALL right, but it was at the seams. My impulsive decision to accept his invitation, my plan for it to be just a meal, it was crumbling each additional second I spent in his presence.
Mind-bending orgasms.
I couldn’t even comprehend what that meant. But I wanted to. God, I wanted to. I’d come before, but nothing ever earth-shattering, and while I had limited experience with men, I knew an orgasm from Garret Collins would be exactly as he described. Mind-bending.
I took in every inch, every nuance of the surface value of the man standing in front of me, and he was exactly as he looked—muscled and rugged and dominating. But he was also considerate and attentive. I wasn’t foolish enough to mistake his controlled demeanor for complacency for one second, because I’d seen glimpses of what was underneath the detached expression he tried to hide behind. He was capable of commanding both dominance and heart-aching gentleness.
The gentleness I’d experienced firsthand, and that was what terrified me about him.
I didn’t have room in my life to get attached, to anyone. Especially not to a Marine whose value to the US Military was far more important than what he thought he could do for some lost woman he met a mere…
I glanced at the clock on the oven.
Wow.
I’d only known him a couple hours?
Part of me did feel like I was standing next to a complete stranger, but the other part of me, the part that was desperately trying to forget the way he’d kissed me, consumed me, held me like he knew exactly how to take care of me in every way, that part was looking at a man and feeling like she’d been waiting for him her whole life.
Slowly, as if he were afraid he would scare me, he traced a finger across the side of my neck. “Your pulse is racing.” He stared into my eyes like he knew every one of my forbidden thoughts.
“You’re touching me.” His voice, his eyes, the clean scent of him, I wanted to reach for him so bad, but I was afraid if I did, I wouldn’t let go.
Warm, forbidden, his hand settled on my nape. “I am.”
“It’s not a good idea.” I hadn’t been touched, not like this, in so, so long.
Tilting his head, he leaned in and whispered, “I think it’s a great idea.”
“Garrett,” I warned.
His breath whispered across my skin. “A really good idea.”
I could’ve stopped him.
I could’ve stepped back.
I could’ve told him the truth.
I didn’t do any of it.
My eyes fluttered shut, and his
lips, all at once hot and soft and firm, covered mine. His tongue darted out, and I didn’t hesitate.
I opened myself to him.
Taking my face in both of his hands, he stepped into me.
Then he kissed me.
Blinding and heart-stopping, my body went off like fireworks on a hot summer night. Red-hot heat raced through my veins as my center of gravity dropped to my core. He plunged into my mouth, and I rushed to tangle my tongue with his.
Light-headed and free, I was flying.
Heat, man, hero, warrior, desire.
He was all of it and more.
My arms went around his neck as he ground his hips against mine. Need surged painfully between my legs, and every one of his dominant strokes took me a step further past safe.
But I didn’t want safe.
I wanted to hurt. I wanted to feel. I wanted to fall. I wanted every word he’d uttered.
“Harder,” I begged.
His huge hands gripped two handfuls of my hair and pulled as he thrust his tongue and his hips. My scalp tingled, and I lifted my leg to his waist because I needed more. Moving with him, against him, feeling his hard length between too many layers of clothes like a cruel joke, I cried out. Frustration and need driving me, I pressed into him, but I couldn’t get close enough.
Brazen, I dropped my hands to his waist and shoved his T-shirt up.
For one unpolluted, perfect moment, anticipation surged. Soft material bunched, and hot skin and hard muscles rippled under my touch.
“Oh God.” He was everything.
Thick fingers locked around my wrists, and his lips ripped from mine.
“Brookelyn.” His deep voice vibrated with two syllables that weren’t all mine, and reality crashed into my fantasy.
He was everything. Everything I couldn’t have.
“Sorry,” I murmured, stepping back.
My wrists still in his hands, he didn’t let go. “I’m not.”
“You should be.” Nothing good would come of this.
“I’m not, and I didn’t say I wanted to stop.” Holding firm, he pulled me back into him. “But if clothes are coming off, you need to give me the words.”
I whimpered when my body touched his. I didn’t want words. I just wanted to escape the blinding ache pulsing between my legs. “Don’t,” I pleaded. “Don’t make me feel like this.”