Military Romance Collection: Contemporary Soldier Alpha Male Romance (77 page)

Chapter One

Jenna woke to the sound of something moving at the edges of her camp. For a long moment, she lay still in her sleeping bag, breathing in and out with deliberate slowness, listening to the noise beyond the canvas walls.

The snuffling was not a noise she knew from experience, but she had heard it in recordings often enough. This deep in bear country, it wasn’t a surprise. Jenna wasn’t particularly worried. Her food was all properly packed, her little camp circled with a portable electric fence. Without the smell of food to tempt him, it was unlikely the bear would brave the enclosure, not this close to the feeding grounds along the Pacific coast. There were easier ways to get a meal. Still, Jenna reached for the bear spray tucked into a pocket of her hiking pack. Better safe than sorry.

She’d come to Katmai to celebrate the completion of her Masters in Natural Resources, taking some time out in the Alaskan wilderness before she headed to her first assignment down in Iowa. She’d always been more at home out in the middle of nowhere than sharing space with other people. Here in Katmai, where the crowds that came to watch the bears during the salmon run were dispersing with the change of seasons, she had wide stretches of mountain and forest all to herself and the wildlife. Most visitors didn’t hike out into the backcountry.

The bear was still pacing her perimeter fence. Jenna hadn’t expected him to linger so long. She curled her fingers a little tighter around the bear spray and flicked the safety off. Still wasn’t likely he’d try to come through the fence, but if he did she didn’t fancy her chances of scaring him off without chemical assistance. You didn’t try to move a grizzly. Her heart beat a little faster behind her ribs, but she kept her breathing slow and even, quiet. The sound of the movement in the underbrush was circling around toward her back, and she sat up tense and straight in her sleeping bag, wondering for a moment if it had been such a good idea to go camping in the backcountry of a park with North America’s largest brown bear population without a partner.

But the sounds of the bear were moving away. She heard them receding slowly into the distance, and then it was quiet again, just the little noises of night in the national park lingering in her ears. Jenna took a breath and let it out again in a rush of relief that became a laugh.

It would have really sucked to be bear food before she ever got to wear her ranger’s uniform.

Chapter Two

There was something about waking in a tent that was, Jenna thought, incredibly refreshing. Or maybe it was just something about waking without an alarm clock blaring in your ear and forty minutes to throw yourself together and leave for your next field work assignment. She stretched slowly in the honeyed early morning sunlight slanting through the screen at the tent’s rounded peak, and enjoyed the sounds of the birds calling a wakeup to each other. It was only some minutes later that she reluctantly dragged herself from her sleeping bag to dress and boil water for breakfast.

Jenna Mayfair was not a small woman. She supposed some might have called her big-boned. At 5’9” she couldn’t be described as anything but tall, and she certainly didn’t have the kind of slim-hipped build people called athletic, though her curvaceous frame was solid with muscle from long years of working outdoors. Hers was a body built for physicality, in whatever form that took.

She pulled the tie from the braid that she usually slept in, dragging her heavy fall of brunette hair back into a tail and then curling it around itself, clipping the bun into place. Then she pulled on her jeans and t-shirt, caught up her jacket from where it was slung over her pack. Her heavy-soled hiking boots waited by the door of the tent.

Outside, the weather was a little chilly, clouds rolling in from the west with the promise of later dumping the water they’d picked up over the ocean. The breeze smelled faintly of salt. Jenna made a mental note to bring her rain gear along on the hike as she lit the camp stove, starting up the water that would make oatmeal and coffee.

When breakfast was done, she cleaned up, dumping the water used to scrub food from her bowl well beyond the perimeter of her camp. Then she went back into the tent to pack her day bag for a hike. Most of the supplies she’d need were already there: sunscreen, water bottle, compass, and map. She stuffed her rain gear in as well, and a few granola bars and some dried fruit in an odor proof bag.

Jenna hiked north, the great snowy bulk of the mountains on her left, and on her right—often invisible beyond the trees—the rugged stretch of the Pacific coast. She had no particular destination in mind, only the enjoyment of the land she moved through. As she walked, she hummed to herself, occasionally letting the noise become a song, partly to alert any nearby bears to her coming, and partly because she enjoyed it. There was no one around to hear her rather terrible attempts, and she took full advantage of the situation.

The sound of footsteps and human voices approaching as she started up the ridge of a hill was a surprise, and Jenna quickly stopped singing, choosing instead to whistle as she hiked. It was a fairly easy incline, and in a matter of moments she was standing at the top of the hill, looking down at two men who were coming up the other side. They were chatting easily, if a bit loudly, neither of them wearing packs. Both of them, despite the chill, were wearing t-shirts under unbuttoned flannel.

“Hey there,” the taller man said as they crested the hill, his voice deeper than she would have expected, with a bass rumble that seemed to vibrate under her skin. “Didn’t figure on meeting anyone out this far.”

He smiled, teeth white against sun-browned skin and a neatly trimmed beard. Standing on ground even with Jenna’s own, he had probably six inches on her, and he was built big—broad shoulders, heavy arms. It wasn’t often Jenna met a man so much bigger than she was, and she felt a little rush of heat at the thought of just how easily he’d be able to put her where he wanted her.

“Neither did I,” she said, answering him. “But I’m not entirely adverse to company.”

Not if company looked like him.

“Arthur,” he said, offering a hand that swallowed hers up when she took it.

“Jenna Mayfair.”

She turned her gaze to the other man, who still hadn’t spoken. He was maybe a couple of inches shorter than Arthur, leaner, but still muscled, regarding her from under a fall of tawny hair with a gaze that seemed to see right down to her bones. For a moment she found herself caught in brown eyes, and then she gave herself a little internal shake and offered her hand.

He took it, his own hand warm, fingers calloused.

“Barrett,” he said by way of introduction. “Nice to meet you.”

Chapter Three

By unspoken mutual agreement, they found themselves pausing there on the hilltop, settling down on a reasonably flat spot to break from their hiking. Jenna set her pack down beside her, pulling a granola bar from the bag inside. Arthur and Barrett waved away her offer to share the rest of her food.

“So, Jenna,” Arthur said when they were all settled. “What brings you to Katmai?”

“Celebrating,” Jenna said. “Just got my Masters in Natural Resources, and I’ve already got a job lined up at Palisades-Kepler  in Iowa, so I’m taking a couple weeks to enjoy myself.”

“Congratulations.” There was that grin again, a glance exchanged with Barrett. “You chose a good place to treat yourself.”

Jenna swallowed a bite of granola bar and leaned back against one arm, legs stretched out in front of her. “How long have you two been up here?”

“Oh, we come up here as often as we can. Been out here about a month this time.”

“I guess that explains what you’re doing hiking without a day pack?”

Arthur’s lips curled up in response to her raised eyebrow. “Probably not the best backcountry etiquette, now you mention it, but our camp’s just about a mile that way.” He tipped his head north, back the way they’d come. “And sometimes I want to go places without the camera. Just enjoy it for what it is.”

Jenna wasn’t sure that explained it, but she let the explanation go in favor of a different question. “You’re a photographer?”

He nodded. “It’s what I come up here to do. Barrett just tags along because he’s antisocial.”

His smirk made the teasing obvious. The dark look Barrett gave him was ruined by the barest upward twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“It’s not so much that,” Barrett said, with a conspiratorial wink that looked a lot like flirting to Jenna, “as it is that it’s impossible to get a word in edgewise around Art.”

It was Arthur’s turn to glare. He did it much more convincingly. Jenna laughed.

“So what
do
you come up here for, Barrett?”

Intent brown eyes settled back on her face.

“I’m a writer. I come up here for inspiration.” He grinned, shooting a look at the other man from the corner of his eye before he looked back at her, smile widening lazily. “Art relentlessly quashes it.”

Arthur reached over and slapped him lightly across the back of the head, and a minute later they were rolling around in the grass, laughing. Jenna rolled her eyes skyward. Men.

They did look good like that, though, muscles rippling under their shirts as they wrestled. She leaned back on her hands and watched them. Barrett, unsurprisingly, seemed to be having a bit of a rougher time than Arthur was, and in a few minutes he was pinned against the ground, panting. For a moment, they lingered there, staring at each other, still huffing out occasional breaths of laughter, and then Arthur rolled off and sat back down. His expression was smug.

“Never going to win, Barrett,” he said as his companion scrambled upright. “I keep telling you that.”

Barrett grinned at Jenna. “He’ll get old and slow first. I’ll have the upper hand one of these days.”

“Watch yourself,” Arthur growled. “Or you won’t live to see me get old and slow.”

“You see?” Barrett said. “He’s a tyrant.”

Arthur gave him a narrow-eyed look, but he was already sliding across the grass to sit nearer to Jenna, close enough that she could feel the warmth from his body.

“If you think she’s going to hide you, I think you’re mistaken.”

The sidelong look Barrett gave her then was definitely flirting.

“Not at all,” he told Arthur. “She’s just better looking than you are.” Another grin directed her way. “And she smells nicer.”

“Flattery,” Jenna said, “will get you everywhere.”

Arthur just stared at Barrett until he laughed—a low, surprisingly husky sound—and dipped his head, looking up through his eyelashes, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck. Typical country boy, Jenna thought, hiding a smile of her own. They all did that, she’d discovered, no matter which state they were from.

“So if I flatter you,” Arthur said, turning his gaze from Barrett to Jenna. “Will you let me sit beside you too?”

Somewhere, there had been a shift in the mood. It had happened, imperceptibly, between this moment and the last, and Jenna could feel the change like static charge in the space between them.

She smiled. “The more the merrier.”

Chapter Four

“You are,” Arthur said as he settled down on her other side, “a very beautiful woman.”

Jenna crossed her legs beneath her and looked expectantly at him. “Go on…”

"And you do smell good," Barrett said, his voice closer than it had been. "Really good."

She turned and looked at him, still grinning. "You used that one already."

"He reused what I said about you being beautiful and you let him do it."

"He changed the wording enough. You said I'm better looking than Arthur. He didn't compare me to anyone."

Barrett was quiet a moment, thoughtful.

"I think you have the best legs I've ever seen," Arthur said, shifting a little nearer.

Jenna turned her head to look at him, her smile widening.

"What is this? Compliment Jenna from every side time?"

"That's exactly what it is," Barrett said behind her, and she could hear the pleased amusement in his voice this time. "Especially if flattery will get us where we want to go."

She turned and found him sitting near enough that the heat from his body radiated against her side, his arm almost touching hers.

"And where is that?" she asked, knowing already where it was and more than on board with the situation.

"Oh," Arthur said, leaning in so that she felt the warmth of his breath against the nape of her neck in a way that made her shudder, his body close against hers. "I don't think you need to be told that."

Jenna eased back against his chest, and his arm wrapped around her waist, one big hand settling on her hip.

"No," she agreed. "I guess I don't."

"We have a very large, very comfortable tent," Barrett said, laying a hand on her knee and sliding it slowly upward until Arthur's hand caught it and stilled it.

"And if you would like to go there," Arthur said, "we'll gladly take you, before this goes any further."

"Unless you'd rather stay here," Barrett said.

"You two may be impervious to cold, but there is no way I'm getting naked out here where it's fifty degrees," Jenna said.

Arthur slid away from her, and when he stood he offered her his hand. "We'll go find somewhere warmer, then."

She took the hand and let him help her up, catching her bag on the way and slinging it over her shoulder.

It would have given her mother a fit, to see her heading off with two guys she barely knew, but Jenna wasn't really concerned about her mother's opinion this far away from Seattle. She followed Arthur down the hill and into the trees, Barrett walking just a step behind and to the left of her.

"How much longer will you be here?" she asked as they walked, pitching her voice loud as they had before, to warn the animals away from their path.

"Another two weeks or so," Arthur answered, turning his head slightly so that she could see his profile. "Then we're headed south. Maybe to Yellowstone. Maybe somewhere else. You?"

"Just short of two weeks," Jenna said. "I got in last night.  I wish I had longer, but I have to go to work, unfortunately, and my schedule isn't nearly as forgiving as a photographer's. Or a writer's."

"You know," Barrett said, "people think that, but unless you're writing the kind of stuff that pays thousands at a go, you're writing all the time. And it's not as forgiving as you might think."

Down on the flatland, they moved to walk a little nearer to each other, strolling through the trees more or less side by side, though Arthur still led.

"The tent isn't too much farther," Barrett said. "It's pretty roomy. Not very inconspicuous, we guess, but you can only fit two grown men in one of those little backpacker things for so long."

Jenna's tent—one of those little backpacker things—was barely large enough to fit a single person. She understood the sentiment.

"Well, you can fit two grown men and a grown woman into one of those little tents for even less time," she said. "So I promise not to report you to the ultralight outdoorsman police or anything. Anyway, I don't even think Arthur's shoulders would fit through the door of my tent."

"Arthur's shoulders barely fit through regular doorways," Barrett said, not quite managing a straight face.

Arthur shot a look back at both of them that said he'd quite clearly heard their conversation and didn't appreciate the direction it was going. Jenna looked expressionlessly back at him, but she only managed to hold the laughter until he looked away again, and then it spilled out, Barrett's following. It shouldn't have been that funny, really, she thought as she laughed, but there was a giddy sort of edge to the proceedings. She'd never just decided to have a one night stand with two hot guys before, after all. It was kind of an invigorating experience. And so maybe she was laughing a little more than she should, but she didn't think they would mind.

Barrett didn't seem to. He was smiling at her when the laughter died down and she turned to look at him, and the warmth in his expression made her cheeks heat a little. She looked down. His hand settled on her shoulder, drawing her in nearer, and they walked like that for a while, side by side with their hips bumping lightly against each other at each step. It was a pleasant way to walk, Jenna thought, that slight contact rekindling the anticipation that had settled a little as they left the hilltop.

The tent was not at all far, maybe even a little less than the mile they had initially suggested, though at their leisurely pace they did not reach it for nearly half an hour. As they walked, they talked, and Jenna learned that Barrett had grown up in Wyoming, which definitely explained the country boy thing he had going on. Arthur was from Alaska, near Juneau. They’d met a few years ago, in Katmai, when Barrett had visited for the first time.

“It’s actually kind of a funny story,” Barrett said, leaning in close so that Arthur wouldn’t hear him. His lips nearly brushed the curve of her ear, and a pleasant little shiver ran down her spine from the warmth of the whisper against her skin.

“If by funny story you mean he stumbled into the middle of a shot I’d been waiting to get for an hour and completely ruined it, then yes,” Arthur said from up ahead of them, “it is a funny story.”

Barrett dipped his head again, his grin a little amused behind its self-deprecation.

Through the trees, Jenna could see the curves of a tent, and she leaned a little closer against Barrett, suddenly a little nervous. She’d never done anything like this before, really. The couple of guys she’d slept with in college had already been friends, and in grad school she’d been too busy to date. She’d had a tryst or two out in the backcountry, but never with complete strangers, never with two men at once. Anticipation tangled with nerves in her stomach.

They all tugged their boots off outside the tent, and then Barrett swept the door back with one arm and waved her in. In one corner, neatly packed away, she saw their gear, including Arthur’s camera. On the other side of the tent, taking up most of the space, where two oversized sleeping backs, pushed close enough together that they almost touched. Arthur moved past her and pulled them nearer to each other, to make a space where three people could comfortably fit together, and Jenna somehow found herself kneeling in the middle of it.

She realized with a little surprise that she was trembling as a pair of muscled arms wrapped around her from behind, and Barrett’s chin settled against her shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked softly. “You know that if you want to call it off, you can.”

Jenna shook her head. “No. I mean. I am okay. I don’t want to call it off. I’ve just never done this before. It’s a little overwhelming.” She flashed a smile at Arthur that she hoped Barrett would hear in her voice.

“Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.”

Those big, warm hands began moving over her, exploring the curves of her waist and hips, stroking her stomach. He reached up and caught the zipper pull on her jacket, drawing it down until she could let the coat fall from her shoulders. The thin, long-sleeved shirt she wore beneath followed, joining her jacket with their gear in the corner.

Barrett didn’t take her t-shirt off yet, just resumed his exploration over its worn fabric. He was shirtless, she realized, as she felt him press closer against her, and suddenly she wanted to see.

Arthur, she noted as she turned, had settled himself at the head of the makeshift bed, and was sitting with his hands on his knees, his legs crossed beneath him, watching them. He looked, she thought, like he wanted to get out his camera.

Barrett was as muscled under his shirt as she had imagined he would be, bronzed there too like he often went around without it, even this deep into fall in the far north. She ran her hands up the muscles of his abs and felt him shudder a little under the touch, heard his breath catch. On his right bicep was a tattooed band of pine silhouettes, reflecting off each other as though the top line of them stood at the edge of water. Jenna reached out and touched that too, feeling the smooth, warm skin under her hands.

Chapter Five

Barrett's hands on her hips turned her gently, and she wondered if he'd done this before, because the new position was specifically to give Arthur a better view as he laid a hand against her cheek and guided her up for a kiss that was slow and deep and a little showy. Not that she minded. She could feel Arthur's eyes on them, and it made her want to look good for him. She arched up into Barrett's chest, pressing them closer together, and then wrapped an arm around his neck on the side that wouldn't obstruct Arthur's view. When the kiss broke, they went back for more, the soft sounds of them moving together seeming loud in the quiet tent.

Barrett pulled back then, and his fingers curled around the hem of her t-shit, though he didn't lift it yet. He looked up at her, waiting for her to nod, and then he dragged it slowly upward, and Jenna lifted her arms to let him pull it over her head, her skin breaking out in goosebumps. She wasn't sure whether that was from the chill, or from the way she could feel Arthur's gaze moving up her body, lingering on newly revealed skin. Her simple white bra wasn't exactly the stuff of lingerie catalogue daydreams, but she didn't really think either of them minded, if the way Barrett's hands were running flat-palmed up her stomach to curl around her still clothed breasts were anything to go by.

He kissed her again. Heat was settling at the base of her spine. She was already wet, already wanting, and she pressed into the kiss with the same hunger that she could feel at the edge of the gentle contact from his end.

"More," she breathed against his mouth, and she heard him growl softly.

His hands reached down, fumbling for a moment with the button of her jeans, and then she was lifting up and sliding out of them, kneeling there in her underwear. She followed his example, unfastening his jeans, but he didn't take them off yet, just let them slide down low on his hips, revealing the cut of muscle that arrowed lower, and Jenna's tongue slipped out to wet her lips.

Barrett was turning her again, this time to face Arthur while he settled in behind her, his hand gently but implacably pulling her thigh open so that she knelt with her knees set wide and the support of his body at her back.

"Look at me," Arthur said.

Swallowing, Jenna raised her eyes to his face. His own dark eyes were fixed on her, and he smiled as she looked at him, settling some of the new nerves that being so blatantly on display had woken.

"You're beautiful," he said, the way he had up on the hill, his voice with a husky edge that hadn't been there then.

Hands were moving up her body, following the curve of her waist as though to emphasize it, and then Barrett was pulling back enough to unfasten her bra, and Jenna let him pull it off and toss it aside. The air of the tent was slowly warming, but was still cool enough that her nipples hardened as soon as they were exposed to the chill. She breathed out slowly, then caught it back in with a gasp when Barrett's hands cupped the weight of her breasts and his thumbs stroked across her peaked and sensitive nipples.

"You smell," he said, nose brushing against the curve where her neck met her shoulder, "like summer."

"Like summer?" she returned, teasing, if a little breathless.

She felt him nod. "Like the way the grass smells in the sun, and like ripe berries."

No one had ever told her that before, but she thought she liked it. She looked down at his hands, at the contrast between his sun-darkened skin and the paler, softer skin of her breasts. The air in the room shifted, and she looked up to find Arthur nearly close enough to touch. He grinned at her, a quick flash of white teeth.

"I was going to wait, but then I decided that waiting is entirely overrated."

His hands settled on her hips, bigger even than Barrett's, and maybe a little warmer, the calluses on his fingers rough against her skin in just the right way. He leaned down and pressed his lips to the curve of her neck, and she let her head fall back against Barrett's shoulder while Arthur mouthed his way up her throat, occasionally biting gently. She whimpered a little when his teeth nipped at the soft spot under her jaw, arching into Barrett's hands because he'd caught her nipples between thumb and forefinger and tugged on them.

Arthur smiled against her skin. One of his hands slid down, pressed up against her through her underwear. But he didn't move, didn't give her any friction, and she rocked her hips, writhing against him, hoping for more.