Next to Die (24 page)

“I was invited, but I couldn’t get off work.” She shivered again, wishing now she’d brought a coat.

“How’s the new job?” Vinny asked.

“Fine.” Her voice sounded strangled, far away. “I’ll be moving back into my apartment soon.” As soon as it was safe to move back.

With the small talk used up, silence coiled around them, redolent with unarticulated desires. “I came because I needed to say good-bye to you,” Vinny explained.
Just in case I don’t come back.

He didn’t say the words aloud, but Lia’s heart heard them loud and clear. It was wartime, after all. Soldiers didn’t always make it home. The realization struck her like a bolt of lightning:
Vinny could die
.

Her eyes pooled with tears.

“Hey, life doesn’t come with guarantees,” he soothed, sounding older than his years.

And wasn’t that the truth? One day she’d been kissing her daddy good-bye, sending him off on a business trip. The next, they’d been lowering his coffin into the ground. She didn’t want to go through that despair again or lose control by trying to numb the pain by any means possible.

With a cry of fear, Lia threw her arms around Vinny’s neck and hugged him hard. He pulled her into him, infusing her with his warmth, his scent, his energy. She could feel his heart beating through his camouflage jacket. Despite all the reasons she’d come up with to avoid him, it felt so right to be in his arms again.

She envisioned him parachuting into a desert filled with rebels or into a jungle rife with drug runners, and she clutched him closer still. “How long do you have?” she asked, determined to seize happiness while she could.

“Tonight?” She felt him consult his watch. “’Bout an hour.”

She drew back, just far enough to see his face in the shadows. “Come back to my house with me,” she begged. Desperation mingled with anticipation.

He stood very still, searching her face in the moonlight. “You have to make me a promise first,” he said.

Feeling his arousal thicken against her pelvis, she would have promised him anything. “What?”

“Tell me you’ll be mine when I get back.”

The words slipped over her like a noose, closing off her airway. But the need to get a fix of joy before he left was too intense. “I’m already yours.” Even as she said those words, she realized with a sense of shock that they were true. She was addicted to him—to the warmth and laughter he offered her. No wonder she’d been miserable without him.

He kissed her then, with all the toe-curling passion that he’d branded into her memories. She realized that this was what she’d wanted all along, to truly love again, holding nothing back, the way she’d loved her father—only with benefits.

“Come on.” He flashed his grin, and together they raced toward Penny’s house.

Too late, Lia forgot that her watchdogs were ever vigilant, keeping an eye out for intruders. She and Vinny were impaled by their spotlight as it shot out from across the street at them.

“Jesus!” Vinny swore, flinching from it.

“Just ignore them,” Lia advised, and they ran like a pair of jailbreakers for the door.

“Those are the cops you ditched the other day,” he guessed.

“I’ll explain another time,” she promised. They weren’t going to talk tonight. She had better things to do with her mouth, and only one hour in which to do it.

“What are you doing?”

With a guilty start, Penny looked up from the cutting board. She hadn’t heard anyone approach the kitchen, but there stood Joe, the affable host, in his champagne-colored button-up shirt, beer bottle in hand. He’d hadn’t been ignoring her, but he’d been working the crowd, introducing the latest guest to arrive, his new executive officer, Lieutenant Gabe Renault.

“Just refreshing the cheese plate. The Cheddar was almost out.”

He put his bottle down. “I didn’t invite you over to play hostess,” he chided. “Here, give me the knife; I’ll do that.”

Thinking she’d overstepped her bounds, Penny relinquished the knife without protest. “Sorry.”

He cut her a funny look. “Why don’t you come upstairs and play pool with us?” he suggested. He’d already introduced her to his buddies—four guys from Team Three—and as she’d expected, they’d obliged her with small talk, but not one of them found her interesting. Lieutenant Renault had watched her with detached gold-green eyes that made him look like a cat. Going by the gold band on his left hand, he was taken.

“I was thinking of trying the hot tub,” she confessed. In addition to Joe’s male guests, there were women in the game room upstairs, including one of Joe’s longtime playmates. Leslie was everything Penny wasn’t—tall, vivacious, and blessed with big breasts. Penny didn’t enjoy watching her fawn over Joe.

She would rather climb into the hot tub alone, or go home, for that matter. Only Vinny’s car was parked outside, and Lia hadn’t made it to the party, which meant that those two were likely having a party of their own at Penny’s house. Everyone was getting it on but her. And she was getting damn tired of it.

“Did you bring your swimsuit?” Joe asked her.

“What, I can’t get in naked?” Penny quipped with an edge to her tone.

That brought his gaze up. A shiver ran through her as he assessed her figure under the aqua-blue sheath dress she wore. Lia had suggested the push-up bra. Joe’s lingering look told her that he’d noticed, and Penny flushed self-consciously.

“You’d be taking your chances getting in naked,” he warned in a soft voice.

Penny’s mouth went dry. Flustered by the comment, she turned to pour herself a second margarita. Was he serious? Nah, he couldn’t be. He had Leslie here to keep him entertained.

As if to prove it, he hefted the cheese plate and reached into the fridge for another beer. “Why don’t you come up?” he urged again as he headed for the stairs.

The doorbell rang. He looked down at his full hands.

“Go ahead. I’ll get it,” she offered. “Whoever it is, I’ll bring them up.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, in the tone of a man shackled to his wife. With that, he carried his beer and the cheese plate up the stairs to the bonus room.

Penny headed to the door. Was that a subtle put-down? Maybe her helpfulness left him feeling obligated, trapped? Perhaps he preferred a woman who wasn’t observant enough to notice that the hors d’oeuvres were disappearing. Who cared about munchies anyway, as long as the sex was good?

She yanked open the door with more force than necessary, nearly spilling the margarita in her other hand. Her breath congealed at the sight of Solomon McGuire standing on Joe’s doorstep with his hands plunged into his pockets. He wore a black turtleneck, no coat. His eyes seemed to slice straight through her.

“You made it,” she said, with a sudden case of jitters.

“I wanted to see you,” he replied.

A thought occurred to Penny that made her knees wobble and her heart race. She didn’t have to be the only person not getting a piece of the action tonight. For whatever reason, Senior Chief McGuire was pursuing her. And he was handsome in a rugged, intense sort of way. After five long years of celibacy, she’d be an idiot to turn him down.

Vinny had to break for air. He could hold his breath underwater for nearly two minutes, but he couldn’t kiss Lia against the front door and feed his starving lungs at the same time, because his heart was galloping. “Shit,” he muttered, a little alarmed by how badly he was shaking. He’d thought himself sexually experienced, but he’d never wanted a woman the way he wanted Ophelia Price. Her name was like a litany in his brain.

“Take me upstairs,” Lia hinted.

He scooped her into his arms, eliciting a squeal of surprise. Opting to keep the lights off, he took the steps two at a time. “Which way?” he asked as they neared the second floor. She was kissing his neck with hot, open-mouthed kisses that utterly distracted him.

“Across the hall.”

He kicked the door open, stalked across the moonlit room, and tossed her onto the four-poster bed. Lia’s scream of laughter thrilled him. He stood there, struck by the depth of his need for her. Every inch of her inflamed him, from the dainty sandals that she kicked off her feet, to the opaque stockings encasing her slim legs, to the china-red silk that sheathed her from shoulder to thighs.

With a sense of desperation, he knew that one hour would never be enough. Not even one year.

Maybe not a lifetime.

He clawed at his uniform, fumbling to release the buttons. He flung his jacket on the floor and yanked his T-shirt over his head. With eyes that glimmered in the moonlight, she watched him, heightening his urgency.

He scrabbled with the laces of his boots, kicked them off, shucked off his pants and boxers, and then he was naked, praying that the planes of his body and the proud, flushed proof of his desire would be pleasing to her.

She sat up to look at him. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, reaching out to touch him. “You’re so . . .” Her soft hands slid from his pectorals to his hips. She brushed her fingers lightly over the head of his cock. “Unbelievably beautiful.”

He’d never been called beautiful before, but the compliment bolstered his confidence. If he could be the youngest SEAL to make the teams, he could make Ophelia his.

The thought fragmented into a thousand pieces when she bent her head and put her lips around him.

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, he did not want to think about how she’d gotten so good at that. Swear to God, he could feel her tonsils.

It was fear that made him pull away. He wanted this to be unlike any experience she’d ever had.

Slow down
.

But the textures that greeted him—the silk of her dress, the satin heat of her skin, the coyness of her darting tongue—brought on sensory overload. Taking the dress off her proved impossible. He managed to unzip it, to pull the sleeves down her arms, so that it bunched just below her belly button ring. Groping under her skirt, he encountered pantyhose and shredded them. “Sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t, especially when he realized she wore nothing underneath. “You are so damn naughty,” he muttered.

The scent of her, the memory of her responsiveness the last time, was just too much. He jerked her to the edge of the bed, and like a fifteen-year-old behind a car steering wheel, put the pedal to the metal, pressing all the way to the floor.

She let out a cry that managed to penetrate his haze of lust. “Did I hurt you?” he asked with remorse.

“No!” She writhed against him. “Do it again!”

Those were the words he’d used on her in the lighthouse. His lust doubled. “Don’t worry.” He intended to do it again. And again. And again.

Only he needed to put on a condom first. “Oh, shit! Wait,” he begged. Somehow he found the willpower to pull out of her.

It took several seconds to get his pants right-side-out in order to find the pocket that the condom was in. He covered himself with hands that shook, distracted by Lia’s impatient little noises.

Finally, he was protected. Vinny threw himself on top of her. She was already spreading her thighs, lifting her hips. He was buried inside her in less than a second, lust pounding through him, making him less than gentle.

The antique bed creaked. Lia was louder, urging him to go harder, faster, deeper. He clung to his composure by a thread.

She whispered something in his ear, and the thread completely snapped.

Oh, no.
Vinny fought to keep a lid on the geyser that rushed up to overtake him.
Not yet.
But he couldn’t stop himself. She was just too hot, too eager, too fucking beautiful.

The minute the waves of ecstasy ceased their crashing, he lifted his head to apologize. But instead of looking dismayed, he found her wearing the dreamiest smile imaginable. “That was amazing,” she murmured. “Fast, but amazing.”

Vinny tingled. Her words had an instantaneous effect on him. He gave an experimental thrust. Oh, yes, he was still plenty geared up and good to go. “Let’s do it again,” he suggested, “only slower this time.”

Her eyes flew open. “Are you serious?”

“Do I feel serious?”

“Oh, my God.” She gaped at him in wonder. “You can really do it more than once?”

“With you, I could do it all night,” he swore. And he knew it was true, except he had only one hour.

She seemed to remember that fact in the same instant he did. A look of regret replaced her wonder, and then she was reaching for him, pulling him down for a soul-searching kiss.

If I die tonight,
Vinny thought, surrendering to bliss,
I will surely die a happy man.

Lounging in Joe’s hot tub under a string of colorful lanterns, Penny thought of the time her father’d taken her fishing out in the Chesapeake Bay. The bluefish she’d hooked weighed almost as much as she did. She’d needed her father’s help to reel it in.

Daddy wasn’t alive to help her right now. And the fish she’d snagged on her latest lure was the size of a shark.

Oh, help,
cried the part of her that was still sober. Solomon McGuire was showing her how long he could hold his breath underwater, but that wasn’t the only thing he was doing.