Her Christmas SEAL (When SEALs Come Home Book 7) (9 page)

Jacks slowed and flipped on the blinker. Seconds later, he was pulling into a long, dark driveway. A slightly ramshackle farmhouse sat at the end. The truck’s headlights picked out the peeling paint on the front—and the new wood in the porch where someone had replaced old boards. It looked comfortable and kind of like a work in progress. I liked it, and hey, it wasn’t on fire or smoking, which was another plus.

“Where are we?”

“My place.” He threw the truck in park. I looked down at my lap. Frances appeared to be working industriously on kitten number three. Probably best not to disturb her.

“Kidnapping is a felony,” I pointed out.

He turned and leaned on the wheel. He looked big and comforting, but looks could be deceptive. “You need a place to stay.”

Sometimes the truth sucked. While I chewed on that, the cat continued to give birth.

Jacks winked and looked down into the box. “You don’t want to be a single mother, do you?”

Frances meeped something that sounded a whole lot like cat for
no fucking way.
Frances was practical, and Jacks was the solution to all our current woes. I just didn’t like it—which meant I could practically feel the universe howling with laughter.

“Look,” he said, handing me a key. “I’ll make this easy. There’s the house. It’s all yours. I’ll leave like you asked.”

I really had no idea what to say. Which was probably why five minutes later, I was standing in the living room alone and Jacks was gone. Just like I’d asked.

Maybe I should have rethought that plan.

HOLLY

I
slept. Funny how you think something’s impossible, but then it happens. Too much, too fast, and my body had shut me down. Hours later, when I woke up and checked on Frances, she was the proud momma of six. Two white kittens with black spots, two tabbies, and two all-black kittens, one with a tiny white moustache. Frances meeped up at me from her box, as if to say
Look what I did
, and I rubbed the top of her head.

“You’re awesome,” I told her, meaning every word of it.

Then I proceed to explore—okay, ransack
carefully
—Jacks’s place. It was my first opportunity to check out where he lived, and I wasn’t going to waste it. He clearly hadn’t come back last night, which made me feel ashamed. I’d driven him away, which had been my intention. What I hadn’t intended was to kick him out of his very own home. I sucked.

The house was nice. Jacks had three bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a sunny breakfast nook. The place had been a working farmhouse once upon a time, and part of me fell in love with it on sight. He’d clearly been working on fixing it up too, because every single room—up to and including the bathroom and the teeny-tiny pantry I discovered off the kitchen—held an arsenal of tools.

I found the cards on a shelf in the pantry. It wasn’t overly difficult, because the man must have either lived on takeout or eaten elsewhere. His pantry had three bottles of half-used sriracha sauce, a pepper grinder, a stack of cheap paper napkins from fast-food joints, and a Costco-sized box of energy bars. There were also fourteen matching cans of chicken noodle soup. So the cards stuck out.

They were my cards.

As I’d reminded him when we remet, I’d mailed him a card for every major and minor holiday. Apparently, he’d kept them. I wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture, but suddenly I needed to know more. Immediately. Retreating to the bedroom where I’d crashed, I fished my cell phone out of my purse and dialed Jacks. At least this time it was on purpose, and I wasn’t masturbating at the same time.

I heard a cell phone play a snatch of a Christmas carol somewhere close by and followed the sound—outside. The first thing I saw was my car, parked in Jacks’s driveway. He must have gone back to get it for me. The beat-up Civic didn’t even look any the worse for its closer encounter with a fire. Jacks had moved it in time, exactly as he’d promised.

I couldn’t help but wonder what other promises he might keep.

Going outside in December in just a T-shirt and panties was stupid. I stuffed my feet into a pair of Jacks’s boots, grabbed a blanket from the bed, and slogged outside. I wasn’t precisely equipped to scale the Matterhorn, but I’d survive.

The cool air hit me when I stepped outside, but it was impossible not to stop and look around. The mountains dominated the sky, making me wonder if Jacks had picked his place for the view. It was gorgeous but kind of made me feel small. Although he wasn’t too far out of town, the yard was surrounded by trees and had no visible neighbors. Parked behind my tiny car was Jacks’s great big truck. There was probably enough room to squeeze past it, but somehow leaving had lost its appeal. The phone rang again—from inside the truck. Okay. I hung up, wrapped my borrowed blanket around me a little more tightly, and strolled over to take a peek through the driver’s-side window.

For no reason at all, when Jacks had given me my space last night, I’d expected him to crash with a friend or get himself a hotel room. Instead of either of those options, however, he was sprawled on the front seat of his truck, staring at his phone. I took a moment to appreciate my view. He was a great big rumpled mountain of a man. Easy enough to pop open the door, climb inside, and—do what? I needed to figure out what I wanted. I knew that.

I looked at Jacks. I looked down at the stack of cards tucked under my arm. He was a good guy, and not just in bed. Damn it.

I tapped on the window.

He looked at me through the window, then reached over and pushed the door open. He hadn’t even bothered to lock it. Not that Strong had a crime problem, but I couldn’t shake my own recent memories of car camping and how I’d worried about every noise, every shadow. Guess it was nice to be six plus feet of muscle and testosterone.

I tossed the stack of cards on the dashboard.

“You kept them,” I said.

Jacks surveyed the stack. He didn’t ask what I had or why I’d gone poking around in his things. Just gave an easy nod, like the answer should have been obvious. “I sure did.”

“Why?” I wasn’t entirely sure what I was asking, but Jacks wasn’t a sentimental guy. He’d have had a reason for carting a stack of cards around with him from one tour of duty to the next, and from Afghanistan back here to Strong.

He shrugged and scooted back to lean against the other door. “They were from you.”

Oh. I wasn’t entirely sure what to say to that, but I knew what to do. I crawled into the cab and onto the seat with him. Somehow it seemed natural to just keep moving until my butt was parked on his lap and my head was using his shoulder as a pillow.

“You never said anything,” I mumbled into his T-shirt. He found my back with his hand and rubbed. For a long time, we just sat like that.

“Thought I’d missed my chance,” he said eventually. “So I didn’t see the point.”

I sighed. “That right there? Is why it’s so hard to dislike you.”

“That’s what frenemies are for.” He flicked me a two-fingered salute. “You love to hate me.”

“We don’t have the best history,” I admitted. I could be honest. It worried me. I had all these… feelings… for Jacks. What if the frenemy stuff—and our personal history—got in the way of something more?

He shrugged. “It’s not a bad start.”

“How so?” This I needed to hear.

He didn’t answer my question though. “Gotta tell you something, babe.”

I’d heard that tone before, just not from him. It usually heralded life-changing news, the conversational equivalent of a trumpet blast. I wasn’t sure what to expect. “Should I sit up?”

“You’re perfect right where you are,” he growled, his arm tightening. Guess he liked my sitting on his lap just fine, which made two of us. I could tell him what else I was thinking—that I wanted to see where we could take this thing between us. That I had feelings for him, feelings I hadn’t planned on or even welcomed.

“Jacks—” I started, hoping the rest of the words would occur to me.

He cut me off, pressing a finger against my mouth. Just because I could, I licked the tip, dragging my tongue over the work-roughened skin. Every part of him tasted good. Not sweet—there was nothing sweet about Jacks—but part forest and pine and all wild male. No matter what happened here between us, I’d never tame Jacks.

“Sometimes when you’re up in the air and the plane’s circling, the ground looks real far away. Got to wonder if jumping’s the smartest thing to do or just a shortcut to the end.” He shrugged, and I drank in the play of muscles beneath the faded cotton. “And then every time I jump, I remember why I do it.”

“Because you’re an adrenaline junkie?” I traced his nipple with my finger, loving the way his breathing got rougher, harder. I thought either he was mine or working his way up to it, so if I could hurry him along, I’d do it. I might not be able to tame him, but somehow I needed to housebreak him just a little.

“Because then it’s me and the sky. Got the wind roaring in my ears, the ground swinging all crazy-like beneath me, and if I do what I trained to do, I’ve got a sweet shot at hitting my target, and everything’s gonna be okay. If I hesitate though, it’s over.”

Okay. I didn’t need that particular mental image of Jacks crash-landing on the ground. Watching him cut himself free of that big pine tree had been funny, partly because I’d been pissed at the world and partly because he’d already handled the
landing
portion of things and had survived intact.

“And you’re telling me this why?”

“Because I’m jumping right now.” His finger moved from my mouth to my chin, nudging my face up, and my breath caught. “I love you. I should have told you that years ago, but I hesitated, and then you met Mr. Dick and things kinda snowballed from there.”

“You never said anything.” I sounded like a broken record.
You didn’t write, didn’t call, didn’t didn’t didn’t.

“I should have,” he agreed, and I loved the look in his eyes.

That look was worth a thousand letters or conversations, although I was greedy. I’d take the look, the letters, and anything else he’d give me. I wanted all of Jacks Benson.

“So I’m saying it now. I love you, Holly Clark, and I’m hoping you love me back.”

Old habits die hard, I realized. Part of me wanted to tease, wanted to watch him squirm. The rest of me though had pretty much melted all over his chest.

“You move fast,” I said.

“I know what I want.
Who
.”

“Me too,” I admitted, letting my hands get busy with the buttons on the front of his jeans. Undoing him was as easy as one, two, three, and then he came popping out. My smoke jumper had gone commando underneath his denim.

“While that’s real nice,” he rasped out, “that wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Jesus,” he cursed when I wrapped a hand around his dick. “I thought you’d want me to explain.”

“I want everything,” I demanded. “Starting with this.”

I squeezed his dick, sliding my hand up the hard length to the tip.

“That your favorite part of me?” Amusement filled his voice as he shifted me to straddle him. His fingers got busy too, stroking down the T-shirt and beneath the hem. Seeing as how I was bare legged, there was nothing between him and my panties, a fact he seemed to appreciate, because he groaned and stroked higher.

“Nope,” I told him and slapped my free hand against his chest. Right over where his heart was. I thought. I had to admit that my knowledge of anatomy wasn’t as great as it could be. “This right here is my favorite part.”

He nudged my fingers up and over a few inches. “I’m assuming you prefer my heart to my rib cage?”

I squeezed and he groaned. “I love you.”

“In the truck no less. Shame on you, babe.” Since he’d somehow managed to find a condom and position himself at my opening, I figured that wasn’t a complaint. And then he pressed into me, opening me up and sliding deeper and deeper with single-minded focus, and I forgot about using my words.

Jacks thrust up and I slammed down, taking him ways I hadn’t dreamed were possible. My bad boy SEAL was a constant surprise. I tightened my knees on his hips, riding him with a slow roll of my hips.

“Good thing I don’t have neighbors,” he muttered, adjusting the angle of his penetration and finding a spot that made me squeal. He drove me insane, and we both knew it. He found my clit, dragging his thumb around the bud in a slow, hard circle, and I lost it, grinding against him and falling over the edge. He withdrew, pushed back inside me, following me in a few fast, furious strokes.

I collapsed against his chest, savoring the way we were still connected. Hot sex
and
Jacks loved me. My crappy week had taken a right-hand turn into fantasyland. Eventually Jacks shifted, easing me off him and tucking me against his side.

“We should go inside.” I was almost certain we couldn’t spend the rest of our lives curled up on the front seat of his truck. He was too tall, for one, plus my stomach picked that moment to growl.

He grinned and reached into the backseat to fish out a cardboard box. “Brought you breakfast.”

The man was definitely a keeper. He’d brought me cream puffs. A dozen big, fat, oozing pieces of pastry with enough calories to fuel the entire smoke jumping team. If I hadn’t already loved him, I’d have fallen for him on the spot.

“I love you,” I said. “Just so we’re clear.”

“Best day of my life when I fell out of the tree at your feet.” He pressed a kiss against my mouth, and for a moment I thought we’d steam up his truck again. “Gonna be one best day after another now.”

“Except when we fight.”

He grinned. “And then we’ll have make-up sex.”

He made it sound so easy. Just… let go. Let it happen.

“I’ve got this,” he rumbled against my mouth, and I couldn’t hold back my smile.

“And I’ve got us.”