Falling for the Marine (A McCade Brothers Novel) (Entangled Brazen) (12 page)

The colonel’s voice broke into her musings. “So, when’s the big day?”

Michael’s hand froze on her back. She cast him a quick glance that probably looked guilty as sin. Oops. They hadn’t thought to set a fictional date for their fictional wedding.

“We’re still in the planning phase, sir,” Michael replied, and casually ran his fingers along the back of her neck, as if to silently say,
No worries. I’ve got this
.

“Hmm.” The colonel pressed his lips together as he contemplated the information. The gesture gave him a mildly disapproving look and Chloe automatically tensed in her chair. She clasped her hands together in her lap.

“I understand you two are living together?”

Uh-oh. Now they were getting down to it. “Um—”

“Yes.” Michael nodded and dropped his hand to her lap. He threaded his fingers through hers to stop her from attacking the cuticle of her thumb. “Chloe had housing at Casa Clemente through her work, but the assignment she was on recently ended and, consequently, she needed to vacate her unit. Rather than go to the time, effort, and expense of finding a short-term rental, I asked her to move in. We can put the time and money we saved into the wedding.”

“What kind of work do you do?” Loretta offered an encouraging smile as she posed the question, and Chloe recognized a softball when someone was kind enough to lob one her way.

“I’m a massage therapist. I work through an agency called Helping Hands that places me in contract assignments all over the country.”

“Sounds exciting! How long are the assignments?”

“They vary. I’ve worked assignments anywhere from three weeks to three months. That’s pretty much my outside limit. Anything longer and I get a little restless,” she admitted. “I like to travel.”

“Oh, but, now”—Loretta’s eyes shifted to Michael—“now that you’re getting married, you’ll want to look for something local, right?”

“Right.” Michael lifted her hand and placed a soft kiss on her wrist, and her idiotic heart raced, even though she knew the sweet gesture was all for show. Then he smiled at her and winked. “She’s giving up her wanderlust ways for me.”

“Don’t give them up completely. As a marine wife of twenty-five years, I can verify you get plenty of travel courtesy of the military.” Oddly, Loretta sounded content with that state of affairs. A similar comment coming from Chloe’s mom would have been the beginning of a long lament about the difficulties of life as a military wife.

“Another reason to set the date sooner rather than later,” the colonel added. “Now, I know the men see me as a stick-in-the-mud about things like this, but I don’t endorse officers just…shacking up. It sets a terrible example. You two are engaged,” he inserted, holding his hand up for silence when Michael would have spoken, “and that’s different, but if you drag the engagement out too long, fate has a way of complicating things. I disapprove of complications. A smart person avoids them.” He punctuated the statement with a sharp look at Michael.

Loretta laughed and elbowed her husband. “I think you just called us not so smart, Stan.” She leaned close to Chloe and stage whispered, “If you do the math on our oldest boy’s birthday, you discover he came along exactly seven-and-a-half months after the wedding…and that kid was a week late.”

Heat flooded her cheeks.
Babies. They’re talking about babies.

“We’re not looking to have a…uh”—Michael cleared his throat and continued—“complication anytime soon. Definitely not before the wedding.”

“Then take my advice and keep the engagement short, son,” the colonel insisted.

“I don’t think either of us is envisioning a long engagement,” Michael replied. He aimed a questioning look her way and she had to give him credit for his acting ability. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was an attentive fiancé trying to feel out his bride-to-be on this important question. “But we have my family to coordinate and—”

“They’re right here in California, aren’t they?” The colonel phrased it as a question though he clearly already knew the answer.

“All except my little brother Logan, yes. He lives in Colorado.”

“Practically next door. Sounds like easy logistics on your end, Major.” The colonel turned to her. “Where’s your family, Chloe?”

The conversation was taking a dangerous turn, but she had no idea how to get it onto a safer track. “My dad lives in Texas.” She hesitated, unsure how much to reveal, and then decided to simply be honest. “My mom lives in Pennsylvania with her new husband. My parents split up when I was a teen, and I went to live with my grandmother in Mississippi.” A cough helped clear the lump from her throat. “She had a stroke almost eighteen months ago and passed.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Loretta piped up.

“Me too, but Grandma lived a full, happy life. She counted her blessing and taught me to do the same. The day my mom shipped me off to live with her was the best day of my life—though I didn’t know it at the time. She gave me the kind of secure, loving home my parents never quite managed.”

Loretta reached over and touched Chloe’s arm. “It’s difficult to build a secure home on a rocky marriage.”

Chloe nodded her agreement. “Yes. My parent’s divorce was long overdue. My dad is career Army and my mom detested everything about military life. She sank into a depression every time my dad got transferred to a new post. She hated packing up, leaving everyone and everything she knew behind, and having to put down roots in a new place. The only thing she hated more than moving was being left behind when he went on deployments.”

Michael settled his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, offering her comfort, without a hint of
Stick a cork in it, Chloe
. Nevertheless, she wished he’d put paralyzing pressure on her occipital nerve because she had to stop talking. Every word out of her mouth focused on the dark side of a military marriage—all the reasons she’d vowed never to get involved with a member of the armed forces. Why in God’s name couldn’t she muzzle herself?

“Deployments are hard,” Loretta sympathized.

Chloe nodded, vaguely aware she was twisting and untwisting her napkin in her lap. “We both worried about him a lot. In addition to the worry, Mom felt abandoned, and she doesn’t do ‘alone’ very well. It made her especially susceptible to…ah…attention from other sources. Their marriage spiraled to the point where my folks were both just”—
shut up…shut up…for fuck’s sake, shut up
—“bitter and disillusioned with each other. I can’t tell you how many times I promised myself I’d never be with a man in uniform.”

Silence rushed in. Her words seemed to hang in the air above the table. Michael continued to rub her shoulder, but, otherwise, she sensed a distinct lack of movement around her. She glanced up and found the Hardings staring at her.
Nice work
.

The colonel slowly nodded. “You understand,” he said quietly. “You know how challenging a military marriage can be. That’s good. I see too many kids today—and no offense to either of you, but when you’re on my side of forty, everyone on the other side of that birthday is a kid—who don’t have the first clue what they’re getting into. I’m pleased to know you’re going into this with your eyes wide open.”

Loretta nodded. “I agree. And I think the fact that you accepted Michael’s proposal, knowing everything you know about the unique issues a military spouse deals with, means you love him very much.”

The breath trapped in her lungs leaked out her nose. She looked at Michael helplessly, unsure what to say.

“I think it’s time for a toast,” the colonel declared. “To the three most important things in life—truth, love, and the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Chapter Twelve

Michael stepped onto the Hardings’ front walk and felt a strong urge to kiss the ground like an astronaut returning to Earth after a long, hazard-fraught mission. Instead, he kept one arm around Chloe and a smile plastered on his face. The Hardings stood together, framed by the doorway, waving good night. Then Mrs. Harding called out, “Wait! Your cobbler pan… Stan, can you—”

“I’m on it,” the colonel assured her and disappeared into the house.

Loretta motioned them closer to the door. “I’m not sure he’ll find it. I may have put it in the dishwasher. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

That left Chloe, highlighted in the glow from the entryway, with a dark purple dusk as a backdrop, looking up at him with smoky gray eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“Why? You were”—he moved closer—“perfect.”

“You really think so?” With her chin angled up toward his face, her breath tickled his lips and he imagined pressing them against hers. “There were a few spots where I thought I sort of screwed up.”

He brought his mouth another millimeter closer to hers. “Absolutely not. You nailed this evening. They couldn’t get enough of you.”

She gave him a faint smile. “They’ll get over it. Everybody does.”

A part of him wondered if he would, before she moved on, but all he said was, “I’m going to be the most pitied man on base when you dump my ass.”

Her smile widened. “That’s not how it’s going to go down.” She reached up and ran her fingers through his hair; let her nails massage his scalp. “You’re going to get cold feet and call off the engagement, and I’m going to fly off to parts unknown to try and put my shattered heart back together.”

He was ready to point out that nobody in their right mind would believe
he’d
called things off when her eyes drifted to his mouth, her lips parted, and suddenly he couldn’t think of anything except spending the rest of the night tasting the dips and curves of her lips. He slid his hand down to the small of her back and pulled her against him. Her soft parts yielded to his hard ones.

She tipped her head and grinned up at him—an extremely sexy grin. “You remember when I excused myself to use the restroom after Stan and Loretta toasted to our long, happy future?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t really have to use the restroom.”

“You didn’t?”

She shook her head slowly, still smiling like a schoolgirl with a secret. “Nope. I had a wardrobe issue to attend to.”

“Uh-oh. Wardrobe issue?”

“My thong was bothering me, if you must know. It bothered me all evening. I think the darn thing shrank when I washed it and, well, it was a little bit too tight.”

A mental picture of her standing in the Hardings’ powder room with her skirt hitched up, struggling to get comfortable in a too-tight thong suddenly filled his mind. His body reacted instantly and predictably. He moved his hand from the small of her back to the curve of her butt. “Anything I can do to help?”

She raised her chin and brought her mouth a fraction of an inch closer to his. Her breath feathered over his lips. “I solved the problem. I went ahead and took it off.”

He swallowed and ran his palm over her backside. He could feel a lot through the soft fabric of her dress, but he couldn’t feel any panty lines.

“Am I a naughty girl?”

Holy shit, she was standing there on his commanding officer’s doorstep with no panties on. Parts of him that had zero interest in toeing the line told him to reach up under her skirt, and…

“Here you go.” A square, Pyrex baking pan appeared in his peripheral vision. Loretta’s sudden appearance startled Chloe, who jumped about a mile, effectively diverting his skirt dive.

“Whoops!” Loretta smiled at them and fanned her cheeks. “Mercy. I remember those days.”

“Sorry,” Michael said and took the pan.

“Oh, please. Relax. You’re off the hot seat.” She waved them off her doorstep. “Go! Have fun.”

No need to tell him twice. He nodded to their hostess, corralled Chloe from the other side of the planet, and hustled her down the walkway and into the Cherokee. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard the Hardings’ front door close. He came around to the driver’s side, got in, pulled the door shut, and stared at Chloe.

She stared back at him. The sound of her quick breaths filled the interior of the Jeep. Her tongue darted out and licked her lips.

He moved first—or at least he thought he did—but the next instant they were tangled together. He was drowning in the taste of her—champagne and apples and something sweet and addictive that was just, plain Chloe—his arms were full of her warm, soft curves, and no matter how much of her he got his hands on, or how intently she clung to him, they couldn’t seem to get close enough. In between kisses Chloe giggled hysterically, which told him she was running on pure, unadulterated relief as much as passion. Truth be told, he felt a little giddy himself.

“Come here,” he growled, and pulled her over the center console until she straddled him. Her lips locked on his and she proceeded to take his tongue into her mouth and treat it like her favorite candy. He dug through the folds of pretty, pink skirt spread over his lap, got a good grip on her pretty pink ass, and shifted her into a position guaranteed to drive both of them out of their minds in about three seconds.

Her giggles were officially gone. A moan slid straight from her mouth into his and flowed directly to his cock.

His thoughts devolved to single words. More. Now. He tried to break the kiss, with the half-formed intention of figuring out the best way to get her naked in such confined quarters, but she kept her mouth fused to his and clamped a hand at the back of his head for good measure. He groaned and leaned into her. She leaned back, which sent her hips sliding even more tightly against his.
That
felt so good he leaned forward some more. She wrapped her other arm around his head and bowed back, more…more… Her lower body rocked against his in a rhythm he was starting to recognize as her preferred pace. He tightened his hold on her ass, bent her backward a little more and—

A horn blared. He jumped. Chloe jerked back, and the horn blared again, inconceivably loud. Wide, dilated pupils sought him. “What the—”

“It’s us.” He shifted her into a more upright position. He’d had her bent back so far she’d braced herself against the steering wheel and accidentally bumped the Jeep’s horn.

His explanation seemed to satisfy her. She lowered her eyelids, ran her hand along his jaw, and brought those spectacular lips back to his. He could feel himself giving in to the reckless desire that seemed to grip him whenever he got too close to her. Urges that made him forget about goals and tugged him off the straight, narrow path he’d set for himself. It took a huge dose of self-discipline to wrap his hands around her upper arms and hold her a hairbreadth away. “Not here.”

They were parked under a streetlight, directly in front of his CO’s house, for Christ’s sake. He needed to get himself in check, and—she rocked against him as best she could given the tighter angle. The move sent his good intentions into a tailspin. Then she groaned his name and the sharp-edged frustration he heard in her voice perfectly echoed his own.

“Not here,” he repeated and ran his hand up and down her back. He nodded toward the house on the opposite side of the street where a woman stood in the doorway, clipping a leash to a golden retriever’s collar.

She glanced at the woman and then looked back at him and summed up the critical dilemma. “Home is too far. Where can we go?”

“I have an idea.” He dropped her back into her seat and started the engine. The Hardings lived on the last street in the planned community. The backyards of the houses along Dolphin Way faced the bluff. Nothing stood between those backyards and the bluff except an unpaved fire access road. No streetlights. No houses. No audience…unless some other desperate couple had already parked there. “Hold on.”

Chloe gripped the dash as he peeled away from the curb, but as soon as the ride stabilized, she leaned back in her seat and said, “Hurry.”

“I am hurrying. Lift up your skirt.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He glanced over at her. She raised her eyebrow but then slowly drew the skirt up, baring her legs, her thighs. He looked back at the road.

“Touch yourself.”

“I’ve spent the last twelve months touching myself. I have a better idea.” She took his hand off the wheel and guided it to her, and, Christ Almighty, she felt soft and warm and incredibly wet. His dick immediately snapped to attention, and he had to swallow a curse. “This is a risky game, Chloe.”

The smile she leveled at him in return made him want to stop the car, pull her out and take her right there on the hood of the Cherokee.

“In case you haven’t figured out by now, I like to take risks.” She moved his hand over her in a tight circle, increasing the pressure and speed a little more with each pass. He listened to her breath quicken and struggled to keep his eyes on the road.

Apparently his ability to multitask could use some improvement, because he misjudged the curb when he made the turn onto the access road, bounced onto the dirt trail, and stomped on the brakes. Directly in front of them was a bluff-top, one-hundred-and-eighty degree twilight view of the Pacific that any photographer would have been happy to frame in his viewfinder, but it was wasted on Chloe because her attention wasn’t on the scenery beyond the windshield. Her eyes were closed, her head tipped back, and a dewy glow of sweat sheened her face. She was biting her lip as she worked herself against his palm. He put the Jeep in park, and set the emergency brake, but left the battery on so the air-conditioning kept pumping cool air into the interior.

She looked so beautiful, wrapped in the last fading shades of dusk and dappled in moonlight, concentrating fiercely on the orgasm she was chasing, he almost hated to interrupt. He let her ride it out a few more precious moments, to get a little closer, and then he extricated his hand from her grasp and danced his fingers over her heated, swollen folds, experiencing a ridiculous surge of satisfaction when she whimpered. She opened her eyes and looked around at the darkening scenery.

“Are we there yet?”

And now he wanted to laugh. All part of the Chloe magic—passion and humor. “Yes.”

“Good.” She unbuckled her seat belt, then his, and reached for the fly of his pants. “I can touch you now.”

“Not so fast.” He cut her off, because he’d explode in two seconds if she got her hands on him. “You’ve been a naughty girl, remember? You’ll have to earn your privileges.” He leaned over, grabbed her hips, and helped her climb onto his lap.

“How?” she had time to utter before he kissed her again.

They were both breathing hard by the time they broke for air. Her eyes were slumberous and incredibly sexy, her hands were anchored in his hair as if she worried he might try to get away. Or maybe for balance, because his hands were under her skirt, palming her ass, moving her up and down and enjoying the friction of their bodies brushing together through their clothes.

What felt this good through clothes would feel even better without them. “Off.” He tugged at her dress. “This needs to go. Now.”

“Back zipper,” she panted, busy unbuttoning his shirt and kissing his chest.

His fingers scrambled along the back of the dress, found the zipper, and yanked it down. Then he bunched the skirt in his fists and started drawing the dress up her body. She struggled to undo the last few buttons of his shirt before he got to the point where she needed to let go to raise her arms over her head. She didn’t make it and ended up pulling the shirt apart, sending buttons flying. “Oops.”

“Uh-oh. More naughty behavior. That’s a setback.” He forced her arms up and yanked the dress over her head.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes and laughed. “Oh, I’m trembling.”

“You will be.” He tossed her dress into the back seat and snagged his fingers in the front of her bra. A second later it joined her dress in the backseat.

The cool air from the vents kissed her breasts, contracting the nipples. She crossed her arms over herself and craned her neck to look out the windshield. “Holy…crap. I-I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

He kissed the hollow of her throat where her pulse hammered. “You like to take risks, remember?”

“I know, but I feel so…exposed.” Her voice quavered on the word, and he loved the small sign of vulnerability.

“You are exposed.” He didn’t bother denying that part, since she was sitting on his lap, naked as the day she was born. “But only to me. You’re completely safe. I promise.” He kissed his way along her collarbone, and covered her breasts so he could feel her nipples against his palms. “Does this help?”

She arched toward him and her head fell back. “It helps…something.”

Full, warm breasts seemed to swell in his hands. He pinched the distended tips lightly, and just a little harder when her breath hitched and she drove her hips into his. He was determined to get her past the point where she had the capacity to focus on any external worries. The only thing he wanted her worried about was what he would do to her next.

He palmed her ass and lifted her until he could suck one tight, pink peak in his mouth. She squirmed and cried out and then clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. Nervous eyes collided with his.

“Nobody’s going to hear you. The windows are closed, the nearest homes are a hundred yards uphill,” he assured her, drawing her hand away from her face. “Scream all you want.” He sucked the other breast. She cried out again, but this time he heard less surprise and more unvarnished yearning in the sound.

A sudden compulsion to taste those cries swamped him. He lowered her until their mouths were level. She sank her fingers into his hair and kissed him like his tongue was her favorite treat. He went back to squeezing her ass, lifting and lowering her hips, but this time the feel of skin against skin, hard nipples scraping his chest, nearly undid him.