Major Attraction (19 page)

“It's hard to filter thoughts and emotions when you feel threatened like that.” He slipped his palm up over her T-shirt and squeezed, catching her nipple between cotton
and muscle and tenderly tweaking it to life. “I imagine you were being very honest. I don't agree with you. And I wonder why you have such a low opinion of the military, but I can't hold an honest expression of emotion against you.”

“It's not the military…” J.C. closed her eyes against the sweetly honeyed sensation that lazed its way down to the juncture between her legs and swelled those lips with an almost painful gathering of heat and pressure. “It's the separation. The opportunity to cheat.” She thrust herself into his palm and moaned deep in her throat with pleasure. “It's knowing how easy it is to forget what you've left behind.”

He tongued the bare skin at her nape, building up an easy rhythm between his hand and mouth. “Somebody must have hurt you something awful.”

She felt his interest swelling against her bottom. She confirmed his words with a nod. “When my dad was in the Navy…” Tears burned in her eyes, but in the comfort of darkness and Ethan's hands, she wasn't afraid to let them fall. “…he was gone almost all the time. He cheated on my mom with several women. He—” She sniffed away the sting in her sinuses. “He had another family overseas. I think he knows those children better than he ever knew me.”

Ethan's whole body hugged tightly around hers. A tear ran down and dripped onto his arm where it rested beneath her cheek. She swiped the salty track away from her own face, then kissed the spot where he'd absorbed that drop of her pain.

“I'm sorry, honey. I'm so sorry.” His hand stilled its sensual massage on her breast. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” She lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed each
fingertip. Then she placed his hand back on her breast, welcoming him, conceding to his earlier assertion. “I do need you for this. Please. I don't want to be alone. Not tonight.”

“I'm right here with you, Jo. I'm here all night long.”

Ethan didn't stop at her breast. He slid his hand down her body, and with a helpful kick of her feet, removed her panties and tossed them onto the floor. His knuckles brushed along her bottom as he unzipped his jeans and freed himself from his briefs.

Then his hand came back, under her shirt. He cupped the weight of one breast, then the other, in his palm. He pinched the nipples between his fingers and plucked and rolled them until she was squirming against the wall of his chest.

While his gentle, callused hands worked her body, his soft words drizzled against her ear and meandered into her heart. “Most of the men and women I serve with
can't
forget the families and homes they leave behind. We learn how to turn off our emotions so we can get the job done and focus on staying alive. Sometimes, thinking about home and what we're fighting for can tear a man up inside.”

His lips lingered in an openmouthed kiss near the top of her spine. The stubble of his beard grazed the delicate skin and J.C.'s own mouth parted open in a stuttered breath, releasing a surge of heat. “If we give in to worrying about who's paying the bills, or we imagine who a lonely girlfriend might turn to for companionship, or we wonder who our children will adopt as a father figure in our place, we'll lose it. We count on the people at home to be just as strong as you expect us to be.”

“But Mom and me, we were always there for my father. We always waited for him to—” He flattened his
palm against her stomach and held her still as he rubbed his groin against her bottom. “Oh!”

She gasped for breath as the sweetness between her legs thickened and grew heavy. “Your father did you a disservice. You give the right man that kind of loyalty, and he'll sacrifice damn near everything to be faithful to you.”

His hand sank lower, until his fingers tangled in the triangle of hair between her thighs. He cupped her swollen labia and squeezed the sensitive nub in between. Her insides were slowly turning into a liquid heat, as sweet and thick as sugar turning into warm candy. “Ethan.”

He dipped a finger inside her slick folds, then two, as if testing the candy's consistency for himself. He pulled his fingers out and she felt her own sticky wetness against her thigh. The scent of her readiness filled the still air around them.

“Damn near anything,” he breathed with an open kiss against her nape. “I wish…” His hard, hot penis nudged her between her cheeks and tried to slip between her legs. “I wish I'd been able to trust the woman I once…” He pulled her thigh up over his, and wedged her open. His stomach pushed against her back and rump as his diaphragm muscle jerked to control his breathing. “God, Jo. Do you have any idea what kind of faith I've put in you? Not just with Craddock, but with my past. With this.” He nipped at her shoulder. “We have to trust each other, babe. We have to.”

His hand skimmed back over her aching, weeping clit and dragged her back into his helpless thrust. “Ethan. Please.”

J.C. arched her back, granting him the right angle to slip inside her. Slowly he stretched her, filled her, inch by tantalizing inch. He was long and thick and touched that one magic spot almost immediately. As her inner ring of
muscles clutched convulsively around him, he retreated half an inch, creating a delicious friction, prolonging her pleasure.

Prolonging her torture. “Mmm…” she gasped. “Ethan?” She begged him to finish her.

“Not yet, baby, not yet.” Her whole body was focused on the incredible pressure between her legs. Big man. Tight fit. His fingers teased her mercilessly. She writhed against him, skewered on the brink of ecstasy. “I want you to say it. Say you believe that I'm here for you. That you believe in me. That you need me for more than sex. Say it.”

“Tonight. Yes, I believe in tonight.”

“Not just tonight.” He was sliding back in. “Forever. Say it—”

But it was too much for both of them. The candy pot boiled over.

Her release was as sweet and drawn out and complete as the buildup had been, leaving her utterly relaxed and drifting toward a secure, dreamless slumber wrapped tight in Ethan's arms.

When he pulled out, he made no effort to re-dress either one of them and break the skin-to-skin connection.

“You awake, Jo?” he whispered.

She shut her eyes without responding. She was too content, too physically and emotionally drained to risk spoiling the perfect moment.

J.C. was surprised she could feel this close to Ethan without feeling him inside her.

But she never said the words he wanted to hear.

She couldn't believe in forever.

P
ARKS AND MONUMENTS
and crowded streets gave way to green, rolling farms and tree-studded hills as Ethan and J.C. drove out of the D.C. metro area into the Virginia countryside. A command performance at the Craddocks' picnic awaited them.

“I never got around to the reason I wanted to see you last night.” Ethan glanced across the cab of his tan truck, lifted the rims of his sunglasses and winked at her. “Well, besides that.”

She grinned. “I'm glad you came over for
that,
too.”

J.C. went syrupy and warm inside, remembering those last few hours they'd spent together before grabbing a quick shower and changing for the Craddocks' picnic. They'd cuddled, slept, talked and made love on her purple chaise lounge.

Fast and furious or slow and thorough, every time she and Ethan were together amazed her. That karmic connection that had spoken to each other across the distance of that smoky bar intensified with each passing moment. Suddenly J.C. felt those promised two weeks together ticking past with the ominous finality of a time bomb.

Because somewhere along the way, if not at that very first kiss, she'd foolishly given him her heart.

And she couldn't quite seem to find a way to snatch it back unscathed.

If his job didn't tear them apart, her doubts and decep
tion would. The healing that had taken place last night—each sharing past hurts and doubts, hopes and fears—was still a tenuous thing between them. Open wounds, though recently tended, could still leave nasty scars if the same kind of hurts were reinflicted. As a therapist, J.C. knew that emotional healing could be a long process with setbacks that had to be dealt with and nurtured over time. But with the built-in obsolescence of their relationship, time might be the one thing they didn't have.

“There was a detail about the charade you wanted to work out?” she questioned lightly. Talking would be easier than stewing in silence and obsessing over regrets.

“Yeah. Something you said Kyle Black had pointed out to you.” He pushed himself up on the seat and reached inside the front pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a small, white box and dropped it into her lap. “Here. I want you to put this on.”

On closer inspection, she identified the box's design and function. A ring box. An antique, judging by the hard plastic celluloid it was crafted from. A mixture of guilt and anticipation twisted J.C.'s stomach into a knot. But he'd relaxed behind the wheel, his masked eyes focused on the highway. “Ethan, what have you done?”

“Go ahead. Open it.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and propped open the hinged lid.

“You like it?”

She slowly opened her eyes, knowing what to expect, never expecting it to be so simplistically elegant. The early-afternoon sunshine glinted off a crystal clear solitaire mounted on a plain white-gold band. “Please tell me this is a cubic zirconia.”

“Nah, it's real.”

A real diamond? Ho, boy. She shrugged, not knowing
what to say. Not knowing what he was asking. “It's beautiful.”

“Good. Then you can wear it when we meet with the others today. I don't want anyone hassling either of us about why I'm too chintzy to get my girl a ring. I don't want to give anyone any reason to doubt how serious we are about each other.”

“You really want that promotion, don't you?” J.C. closed the box and tried to laugh. But she ended up sounding more nervous than amused. Not a proposal. Not even a gift. Just a prop. “You shouldn't keep spending money on me like this.”

He slowed the truck and exited onto a smaller county highway. “Didn't cost me a thing. It was my mother's ring.”

The knot inside nearly strangled her.

“I can't take this.” She pushed the box back across the seat. “It's a family heirloom. I'm sure it means a lot to your father. He wouldn't want you giving it away to a stranger.”

He pushed it back her direction. “I hardly think that with everything we've gone through the past few days—everything we've done—we qualify as strangers.”

J.C. adjusted her seat belt and turned to face him dead-on. She refused to touch the box. “You know what I mean. We're not really getting married. It'd be a sacrilege to wear it.”

“Getting this out of the lock box yesterday morning isn't a decision I made lightly. Think of it as a gesture of trust, a tangible thank-you of how much I appreciate what you've done for me.”

“I'm not going to take your mother's ring.”

He hit the brake and pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. Once he set the truck in Park, he tossed his sun-
glasses on the dashboard and turned the full power of those battleship-gray eyes on her. “Until you and I are done, I want you to keep it.”

Uttered as succinctly as a command, she bristled at the order. Then she heard what his words were saying. J.C. breathed a little easier, seizing on that one morsel of common sense. “So it's just a loan? Easy access for you? Easy on the budget?”

Easy on her conscience?

Instead of answering, he picked up the box and opened it, lifting the ring out between his finger and thumb. He held it up to the light and studied the facets reflecting a prism of colors. “Dad gave it to me after Mom died. He said it was her wish that I have it to give to a woman who was special to me.”

With a deft maneuver, the ring disappeared inside his fist. He shifted in his seat to mirror her position. She looked up into those eyes and read the fervent vow stamped there. “You're special to me, J.C. It was like I'd been asleep to the stuff that really matters in life. I'd shut off my memories and desires. You reawakened me.”

“It must be the counselor in me,” she reasoned. Then she tried to joke. “I'll send you a bill.”

But Ethan wasn't laughing. He slid his hand along the back of the seat to tease the fringe of her hair at her temple. “To be honest, I'd kind of given up on wanting to be with a woman again. My last relationship had all the bells and whistles a man could want. But I was too blind to see the substance wasn't there. Bethany—that was her name—lied to me at every turn. But you're bold. Honest.” Oh, Lord. “For whatever reason possessed you, you're in this thing because you want to be with me. For two weeks, maybe a little longer, I don't know. But you're not using me to make a point with some other guy.”

This Bethany person had used Ethan to make some other guy jealous? She hadn't appreciated how strong, how fiercely protective, how endearingly tender and downright sexy he was?
Missing the point!
J.C. screamed the warning inside her head. She switched off her emotions and listened to her conscience.

“Ethan, I'm not—”

“I'm not putting any pressure on you.” He pulled his hand away and offered a reasonable argument. “The ring doesn't mean anything you don't want it to. Think of it as costume jewelry to make our engagement more convincing. Think of it as a thank-you for all the help you've given me. Whatever works for you. But I want you to wear it.”

Right. Make the charade more convincing. After last night—from the protection to the listening to the loving—she supposed she owed him that much.

“Okay. But I'm giving it back,” she promised with a resolute sigh.

“Not until you and I are done,” he repeated. He reached for her left hand and slipped it on to her third finger. Then he kissed the ring and leaned over and kissed her. It was a quick, perfunctory kiss, sealing a business deal, nothing more.

As Ethan put on his sunglasses and drove the truck back onto the road, J.C. looked down into her lap and studied the ring gleaming on her left hand. It fit as if it had been made for her. More karma. But was it a good omen? Or a cruel, ironic trick?

 

J.C.
ROLLED OVER
on top of Ethan, laughing so hard she couldn't catch her breath. He was laughing, too, making her words a garbled croak of elation as she bounced up
and down on his chest. “Oh, God, I haven't done that in years!”

“Semper Fi, J.C.,” he whooped in victory, slapping her a high five. “Semper Fi.”

God, he was dazzling decked out in boyish exuberance. It was a dimension of Ethan she hadn't seen before. It was another reason to love him. Another reason she should be more on guard than ever.

A round of applause and shouts from the wooden deck above them drowned out her labored breathing. As she sat up to take note of the cheering section, four more couples tumbled over the finish line behind them.

“Pay up, Black,” Ethan taunted, rising up on one elbow, his hand raised in a victorious fist. “We smoked you!”

Kyle Black seemed less thrilled to have come in second and lost the bet. But he was grinning as he sat up to untie his leg from the tall, striking blonde he'd brought as his date to the Craddocks' barbecue picnic. “Considering you carried your partner halfway across the yard…”

“He did not!” J.C. protested. “I had to work twice as hard as he did, to keep up with his long legs. And believe me, when this guy falls on top of you, you'd better be tough or you'd better wear body armor.” She had the grass stain and ache on her backside to prove it.

“Excuses, excuses.” Kyle's blue eyes sparkled with emotion. But even though he was smiling, she couldn't quite make out the humor in his expression. “I demand a rematch on the croquet field.”

“I?”
The blonde, Darla something or other, showed more backbone than J.C. had originally given her credit for. She tugged on Kyle's sleeve. “Don't you mean
we?
As in ‘we're a team'?”

“Of course, baby.” He tunneled his fingers into Darla's
shimmering locks and kissed her full on the mouth, earning a fair number of teasing catcalls from his fellow officers. Even Ethan razzed him for showing off. By the time they came up for air, Darla was blushing. But J.C. got the feeling that Kyle enjoyed being the center of attention more than he wanted to please his lady. “
We
will kick their butts in croquet,” he vowed.

“After we eat,” General Craddock announced, waving a pair of giant chef's tongs toward the grills he'd set up in the side yard. “The steaks, hamburgers and hot dogs are ready.”

The announcement that the meats were prepared to go along with Millie Craddock's gourmet spread earned an even bigger round of cheers than the silliness of the three-legged race or Kyle and Darla's kiss had.

As the crowd of twenty or so guests thinned to go inside and fill their plates at the buffet, J.C. and Ethan went to work freeing themselves from the two ropes that bound them at ankle and knee. When their fingers brushed together, Ethan caught her hand and held it up, letting the late-afternoon sunlight play off the sparkle of her ring. Oh, gosh. If he said something mushy…

J.C. tensed, and hurried to speak first. “I'm having a lot of fun today. Thanks for inviting me.”

Ethan released her and removed the last rope. “Thanks for helping
me
have fun. I thought I'd be more uptight with Craddock and the others watching over my shoulder, but I'm actually enjoying myself.”

“Good.” J.C. stood and brushed off the bits of dirt and grass clinging to her jeans. She reached out in a token offer to help him stand. “Sometimes I think you're too serious. It's okay to let loose and do something crazy every once in a while.”

His eyes warmed with suggestion. “I seem to be doing
a lot of
crazy
things these past few days since I met you. I never knew I was such a stick-in-the-mud.”

J.C. shushed him, in case anyone was still close enough to eavesdrop. She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Walter will promote you because you're the best man for the job, not because you can follow rules better than the next guy.”

“That's right, boss.” J.C. started at the sound of Kyle Black's voice behind her shoulder. Ethan tightened his grip and pulled her to his side, apparently as unsettled by his aide's skulking about as she was. “You're the best man for that T.I. job, and I think you selected the best fiancée to help you get it.”

“You're out of line, Captain.” Boyish exuberance was now a thing of the past. Authority oozed out of Ethan's every pore.

“No offense intended, sir. You know you've got my vote.” He glanced down at their clasped hands. “Nice ring, by the way.”

Kyle joined Darla on the deck and went inside, leaving J.C. and Ethan alone in the yard.

Ethan's heavy sigh said everything necessary about the festive mood being spoiled. “Why do I get the feeling he's spying on me all the time?”

“You don't think he's helping one of the other candidates, do you?” After the other couple had disappeared inside, J.C. decided it was all right to follow. “Or maybe he's like a mole, checking on everyone for the review board.”

“He reports to me, not Craddock or anyone else.” Ethan reached around her to open up the screen door, but paused with his hand on the frame. He whispered into her ear. “He's got some agenda of his own that I just don't understand. I hate to ask this but…” His hand slipped to
her shoulder. “Maybe it's not me he's so curious about. You didn't know him before we met, did you?”

She turned and looked up at him, stunned by what he was suggesting. Was he considering Kyle as suspect in terrorizing her?

“No. I met him for the first time at the ball. You don't really think he's the one who shot out my window, do you?” She clutched at the front of his shirt, soothing her own anxiety by soothing him. “That had to be Guerro.”

“He'd have access to the kind of weapon that was used last night.”

“But for what reason? We're practically strangers. He doesn't
know
me.”

“I'm not ruling out anything yet.” He covered her hands with his own to still her nervous petting. Then he tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear and ushered her inside. “Let's just go enjoy the food. I'll keep an eye on Black.”