He was standing next to the bed when she left the bathroom, his bare, oh-so-ripped chest sporting scars revealing that despite his claim of being a nerd, he’d experienced many more battles than that one in the Kush that had originally brought them together. And she’d never met a nerd who possessed such boulder-sized biceps. As an overabundance of he-man testosterone oozed from every warrior pore, Julianne’s body soared into an alert stage higher than the ultimate DEFCON 1.
Even though she knew she was asking for trouble, her rebellious eyes followed the light arrowing of dark hair down to the open snap of the jeans he’d changed into.
The jeans hugged lean hips and long, muscular runner’s legs. They also hugged a package that she could still remember pressed against her.
Dammit. She never blushed. She’d taught herself not to allow emotions to show while practicing for moot court in law school. But even as she struggled to regain her cool persona, she could feel the heat rising in her cheeks.
Dragging her gaze a long way up to his face, she was surprised not to find the “caught you” laughter she’d expected to find in his eyes, but a dark hunger that echoed the one reverberating through her own suddenly needy body.
“The bathroom’s all yours,” she mumbled.
Oddly, for a man with the amount of experience she suspected he possessed, Dallas appeared no more comfortable with the situation than she was as he left the room with more speed than she’d seen him move with since they’d first met.
The sexual jolt she’d experienced was crushed by the exhaustion that had finally caught up with her.
Deciding that this was no time to attempt to decode the male mind—especially
this
male’s—Julianne slid between the sheets, nearly moaning with pleasure to be finally horizontal.
Then she crashed into sleep the moment her head hit the rock-hard pillow.
26
Did the woman realize she was driving him crazy? And not just normal, “Gee, I’d kinda like to jump your bones” crazy, but blood-boiling, blue-balled, mind-fogging insane, his head—not to mention other vital body parts—about to explode if he didn’t get some relief. ASAP.
The funny thing, Dallas decided as he soaped down, then twisted the faucet all the way to cold, hoping to ice both his blood and his aching need, was that Juls didn’t even seem to notice how hot she was.
Maybe it was because she’d spent so many years working in a male environment. Unless all those guys in JAG were dead below the waist, you’d think she’d have been hit on more than a time or two during her career. Then again, they were lawyers, so maybe they took all those politically correct regs seriously.
Dallas had always been a politically correct guy when it came to the women he dated. If a female said she wasn’t interested, he left it alone. And he sure didn’t sit around telling his buddies about his exploits with the women who were interested.
Except for that one time. Up in the Kush, when they’d all been sitting around in a bunker, waiting for a Marine who’d gotten shot up by terrorists after their copter had crashed to die.
The Marine, whom Zach had dubbed Opie due to his resemblance to Ron Howard’s freckle-faced character from the TV show, had been talking about his hairdresser fiancée, which somehow had ended up with them all sharing stories about the women in their lives. Unwilling to admit that thanks to back-to-back tours he’d been celibate for so long that he was thinking of naming his hand, Dallas had obliged by sharing his tricks for speed dating and juggling a harem.
Not that he’d ever actually speed dated. He’d always preferred to take his time when it came to women.
As for a harem, well, his reputation as a horn dog was definitely exaggerated. Sure, he liked females. Liked them a lot. And he wouldn’t deny that he’d once been far more willing to let himself be seduced into tangling the sheets with a sexually aggressive woman.
But that time in the Kush had changed things. He’d seen guys die before; he’d even gotten himself into situations where he’d thought he might have his ticket punched. But there was something about the way that Marine had talked about the girl he planned to marry. Something—although it was corny to think so—
pure
about the depth of his love for the fiancée he’d never be having those planned-for sons with.
The experience hadn’t made Dallas decide to go off the tracks, throw away a lifetime of avoiding commitment and propose to the first woman he met. Actually, when it came to marriage, he’d always agreed with SEAL Quinn McKade that if the military had wanted him to have a wife, they’d have issued him one.
But he wasn’t in the military any longer. And while he wasn’t out there looking for a wife—far from it—he found himself getting choosier. And not just about women, but about life in general.
Maybe, he thought as he rubbed the too small, too thin towel over his body, watching the other guys fall into “till death we do part” relationships had him thinking more and more back on his own parents. Unlike a lot of guys from broken homes he’d met in the military, he couldn’t say the people who’d taken him in and given him their name hadn’t set a good example.
In fact, they could’ve been the poster couple for marriage. Which should balance out any sense that relationships sucked that he might have picked up from having been ditched at birth by his biological mother.
But, even as he sort of envied the other guys their obvious wedded bliss—particularly when he’d come home and find his apartment a bit too quiet, or even lonely—the gambler in Dallas, the part of him that always had him raising his hand for the dirtiest, iffiest missions, couldn’t quite get beyond the fact that no matter how much you tweaked the numbers, the odds for marriage were pretty much fifty-fifty.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he tossed the nearly useless towel over the shower bar and squeezed toothpaste onto a brush.
How about trying to be honest?
he blasted himself.
You’re not thinking marriage. You’re thinking sex. Hot, wet, blow-the-top-of-your-head off, blind-the-eyeballs sex with that female who’s sending off signals that could probably be picked up from outer space.
He glanced down at the stainless-steel diver’s watch he’d put on the top of the toilet tank. Giving them time to take in some chow before flying out to that carrier, Dallas calculated that they had exactly four hours, twenty-eight minutes, and forty-five—make that
forty-four
—seconds of rack time here at the lodge.
Which, given that they’d undoubtedly end up in male and female sections of that ship—boat—meant that any sheet tangling would have to wait until they got back to dry land.
So
, he told his body, which leaped to attention at the idea of getting up close and personal with Juls Decatur,
you’re just gonna have to suck it up.
For now
.
He pulled his skivvies up his legs and hoped his dick would take the hint and quiet down.
Females, Dallas, had discovered, were at the same time both gloriously unique and remarkably similar. Experience had taught him that getting along with a woman was a bit like solving a linear differential equations problem.
There were a finite number of possibilities, all with the female as the single unknown variable. Being a patient man, he was willing to do all the metaphorical subtracting, multiplying, and dividing until he found the value of the variable that made the equation true.
He knew there were people—such as the female he was interested in—who might object to being considered part of a mathematical equation. But Dallas had always been drawn to math.
It did, after all, make sense. It was stable. It didn’t change. Two plus two didn’t equal three on Tuesday or six on Friday. It had always, from the days Neanderthals were drawing lines in the dirt or on cave walls, added up to four.
A prime number didn’t suddenly become “unprime” after a bad night.
Most people, if asked, would probably assume relationships were along the lines of weather. But Dallas had found just the opposite. Because all relationships, like equations, required equilibrium.
Which brought his mind back to Julianne Decatur. Dallas strongly doubted that any relationship with her could ever become boring. Challenging, yes. But she was proving his analogy because the amount of positive expression he directed toward her had appeared to be contributing to changes in her reciprocal feelings.
The fact that they were opposites in so many ways only made the equation that much more interesting. Factor in his more impulsive, go-for-it personality, with her being a more cautious, follow-the-rules type, and while they might often be at odds, they could end up anywhere between love and hate. But one thing was certain—the relationship would never be dull.
Finally stepping out of the bathroom, ready to face the bed and the gorgeous woman waiting for him in it, he was somewhat disappointed to find her already sleeping.
He stood beside the bed for a moment, taking in the damp blond hair spread over the pillow, the gold-tipped lashes resting on cheeks the color of rich cream, the slightly parted lips.
She’d pulled the sheet up to her chin, but that didn’t keep him from noticing how her breasts rose and fell with each breath. From imagining how they’d feel beneath his hands. How her skin would taste. And how she’d buck when he’d take a nipple in his mouth and tug.
But apparently not tonight.
Sighing, he climbed into the other side of the bed and turned off the light.
As the scent of her shampoo and whatever female lotion she’d smoothed over her body surrounded him like a sexy, seductive cloud, Dallas decided it was going to be a very long night.
27
In the magical way of dreams, Julianne had been transported from the less than luxurious transient BOQ to an aquamarine lagoon fringed by pandanus trees. The bay, which curved out toward a backdrop of mountains, was separated from the vast blue Pacific by a long ruffle of dazzling white sea foam; waterfalls scored the velvet green mountain faces in rivulets of molten silver.
Clad in a Barbie pink bikini—a color she’d never owned, and skimpier than she’d ever dared wear in real life—she was lying facedown on peach-hued coral sand, straddled by a seriously ripped hottie in cammie shorts who was rubbing oil all over her sun-warmed body.
The scent of coconut oil blended with the fragrance of plumeria, sandalwood, and oleander drifting on the soft trade winds.
Julianne sighed as she imagined her faceless stranger’s wickedly clever hands stroking their way across her shoulders, down her sides, his fingers brushing her breasts before traveling down her back, slipping beneath the bikini bottom before moving on to create havoc on the soft flesh of her inner thighs, spreading oil and a sensual warmth at the same time.
Just when she feared she was on the verge of melting, he turned her in his arms. A lock of dark hair fell over his forehead. She wanted to reach up and touch it, to brush it away, but her bones strangely lacked the strength, so she could only lie there, drowning in a pair of melted chocolate brown eyes.
His lips were full but firmly cut, and when he smiled, a hot, sexy smile meant just for her, a pair of dimples flashed in mahogany tanned cheeks.
As she dragged her gaze away from those too enticing lips to his strong, unshaven jaw, his dark hands continued to smooth the oil over her.
Just when every hot, edgy nerve ending in her body was practically screaming for more, he lifted her leg, fitting it over his hip, pulling her close.
They fit perfectly. As she’d always known they would. Her soft breasts pressed against the rock-hard strength of his chest, the crispness of the hair on his legs was a sensual stimulus against her smoothly waxed ones, and when he cupped her butt in those broad, strong hands and began rocking against her, she slid a hand between their bodies, freeing his erection from his shorts.
He was full and heavy, and every bit as hot as the fires burning in her own blood. In fact, she was amazed he wasn’t scorching her palm as she curled her fingers around him, stroking the silky flesh, guiding it toward that wet, needy part of her aching to be filled.
Although it was the dead of night, somehow Dallas could feel the warmth of the Hawaiian sun on his body. He could hear the ebb and flow of the Pacific Ocean tide, smell the evocative scent of flowers and coconut oil.
And, most amazing of all, he could feel the woman sprawled over him, her body hot and fluid, her breath a warm, soft breeze against his neck as she fit her feminine curves against his male angles and began to rock her pelvis against his.
He drew her closer. Slipped his hands beneath a piece of silky material so skimpy he wondered why she had even bothered wearing it, then closed his hands on her butt, enjoying the inarticulate sound of pleasure she made when he squeezed that soft but firm flesh.
And then—oh, sweet Jesus—she’d freed his dick and taken him in her clever hands, her nails skimming from root to tip with just enough pressure to send jolts of electricity surging through his blood.
Even as his body was vividly awake, his brain was still fogged, struggling to make logic of how he’d gotten from the way-less-than-five-star base accommodations to this private beach.
It was in no way logical. But any need to sort the problem out disintegrated as those deft fingers urged him toward her sweet spot.
She was wet and hot, and as their flesh touched, he could feel her opening like a tropical flower to the sun.
He was about to slide into that welcoming warmth when his brain belatedly clicked in, screeching a warning like a Klaxon.
Oh, shit.
He wasn’t really on a beach.
He was in a bed. About to have sex with a sexy, smart woman, which sure as hell wasn’t the worst way to pass the time.
Except it was unprotected sex. And while he might not be a saint, he’d never, ever, even during his hormone-driven teenage years, made that mistake. Which was why he immediately began to back away.