Not Another New Year’s (18 page)

“It’s another one of those leadership traits I learned in OTS—Officer Training School,” he murmured. “Initiative.” His mouth found hers.

This kiss was nothing like the one at the parking lot. He’d been prepared for another fight of fire to fire. But this time she didn’t spark in his arms. Instead she sighed against his mouth, and rather than straining to meet his desire, she sank farther into the mattress, as if she wanted to make herself part of his bed.

It disconcerted him. Troy lifted his head, trying to get a bead on this new game of hers, but her lashes hid her eyes, and then he had to bend his mouth to them too, brushing kisses against her eyelids with a touch more gentle than he knew he had in him.

His lips found hers again, and she made another soundless sigh, her tongue venturing out to graze the tip of his. At the contact, his muscles hardened in one quick squeeze…mimicked by a new tightening of the stiff bead of her nipple.

He almost lost it.

Sinking back to his side, he buried his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder. He shifted his hand from its place covering her breast to slide under her open-necked blouse. His fingertips found warm, bare skin, the cup of her bra, then the silky flesh beneath it.

She arched into his touch, like a cat stretching toward a hand, and he opened his mouth over her skin to bite.

Except he licked instead, ignoring the circling meat eater that was his hungry lust to tenderly savor her
exotic, spicy taste. His fingers wanted to pluck and squeeze that hard little nipple between his fingers, to give her a taste of the sensual pain she’d shown him every time she swished her ass in his presence. But he found himself soothing her with his touch instead, brushing his thumb over her, back and forth, forth and back, until she was pushing her hips into the cradle of his.

She turned her face toward him. The honey skin was flushed like a dawn sky, and her kiss was like the morning too, a glimmer of fiery sun rising, spreading, turning from delicate warmth to full heat.

They broke the kiss, both panting. She twisted on the covers, dragging the sheet down to his waist. Now they were nose-to-nose, staring into each other’s gaze. He flashed to those mysterious eyes beneath their lattice webbings in Afghanistan, and again wondered what Desirée was hiding.

“What are your secrets, baby?” he whispered, half to himself. It should have scared the shit out of him that he wanted to know them, but there would be days, months, years to regret all this later.

Her cheeks flushed a deeper red and her eyelashes swept over them, concealing her thoughts.

One hand still cupping her sweet breast, he tucked his free fingers beneath her chin, lifted it. “Dez?”

She smiled. Gave him one of those saucy, flirty glances that made him want to beat his chest and howl like the Wolf Man he’d claimed to be the night before.

“I love your body,” she confessed.

Oh, yeah, he was ready to howl all right.

“I’ve been stalking your surfing places just to catch you seminaked.”

She might as well have plugged him into an electric socket. Everything inside of him lit up, buzzed, whistled. His hand tightened on her warm breast and then he slid it away.

Pretending calm was something else he’d learned on the battlefield. He used the ability now, rolling to his back and stacking his hands behind his head. “I’m more than seminaked now, baby, and all yours.”

Her gaze on his chest, she licked her lips.

For the first time in his warrior life, he actually thought he might die. Then, oh God, then, she reached out to catch the sheet bunched at his waist. Her fingernails lightly scratched through the hair of one rock-hard thigh as she drew the covers down.

She stared at the package between his legs, her eyes flaring wide.

Oh Christ, oh Christ.
This had been a really bad idea, he thought. Not that he was a physical freak, but he was a big man, built with big man proportions.

He twitched, then reached down to yank the sheet back up. Quick as a snake, she moved, staying his hand.

“You’re not…embarrassed, are you?” she asked, her dark chocolate eyes darting toward his.

This was a test question, damn it. “I’m not the one still dressed,” he told her, trying to play it cool again. He even managed to arch a brow.

Her tongue swiped her bottom lip. And while her hand rose to toy with a button, she looked ready to bolt. Damn it!

She’d flirted with him in a thousand different ways and he’d resisted a thousand different times.
Now that he’d decided to give in to raging lust, she couldn’t,
couldn’t
refuse to engage!

“I’ve got a confession too. I’ve seen plenty of you, Dez. I’ve seen your long, honey-colored legs. You’ve made me crazy showing off that intriguing slice of your little belly between your too-high shirts and your too-low pants. Fact is, baby, you’ve made me hard staring at the small of your back. So don’t tell me now you’re afraid to show me the rest.”

A challenge would get her every time. She was buck-bare in fifteen seconds flat.

Maybe he
had
died on that mountain in Afghanistan and just now finally found his way to heaven.

She was perfect. Honey skin. Nipples a light cinnamon color. A postage stamp of dark curls that did nothing to conceal the fruit-juicy sections of her sex. And her string bikini tan line was enough to make him sweat.

“Come here, baby,” he whispered, holding his arms out to her.

She flung herself down on him, as if to hide all those inches of skin. The head of his cock kissed the taut skin of her belly. Stilling, she glanced down, then glanced up at him. “You’re, uh, wet.”

Yeah, watching her undress had primed his pump. He grinned at her. “You too, I bet.” With one hand on her hip, he shifted her higher on his body. The other snuck between her legs. With a shallow thrust he slid his long middle finger inside.

Her back arched, her breasts lifting toward his mouth. Troy raised his head to latch onto one cinnamon-pink nipple. His finger pushed deeper.

She moaned as he sucked on the tight peak of her
breast, her body writhing on his simple, single impalement. She was tight there, clenching him hard, and he tried to soothe her by palming her hip.

“Troy,” she said as he moved to take her other nipple into his mouth. He sucked gently, in time with the shallow thrusts of his finger.

She pressed harder against him, grinding against his belly. Her breath panted against his temple and her fingers dug half-moons into his biceps. If she hadn’t been moaning so sweetly too, he would have thought her panicked. Concerned, he gentled his suction on her breast, then let it slip free of his mouth, lapping it in temporary good-bye.

Then he rolled, changing their positions so he was between her thighs and resting most of his weight on his elbows. “Baby, take it easy. Take it easy. We’ve got all the time we need, don’t worry.”

Her hands squeezed his shoulders. Her eyes flashed with nervous fire. “You won’t go? You won’t leave me? You promise?”

Troy narrowed his gaze. “I swear I’m not letting you out of this bed until we both can’t walk.”

“Good. Good. So then…so then I can tell you that I’ve never done this before.”

“Never done wh—” His jaw dropped. Christ. No. No?

The celebutante who had made his brother’s life hell with a simple kiss was claiming she was a…a…He couldn’t even say the word. “You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Good God in the morning. Get real here. Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Do you hate it?” Her voice was anxious. “Do you hate me?”

Yeah, he’d hated her for months. First, when he’d heard about what had happened to Tanner. Second, there was the day she’d walked into his bar and he’d glimpsed that sweet, exotic face of hers. In the dim light he’d thought she was fifteen years too young for him, and had hated her for that.

Then he’d hated that she wasn’t jail bait, and hated himself for being so susceptible to her brand of impudent sass. He’d hated her for being spoiled, and vain—she had to know what her tight pants and tiny tops did to him and every other male in her vicinity—and he’d hated it when he found out she was hardworking and funny and compassionate enough to take care of his hard, aching head.

He didn’t hate her virginity.

It didn’t matter to him—who the hell was he kidding! Of course it mattered to him. But only in that he was determined to make it good for her. And shit, please God he wouldn’t hurt her.

Wasn’t he going to hurt her?

Oh, hell.

He dropped his forehead against hers and tried to sound reassuring and gentle. “I’m glad you told me, Dez.” Him! Trying to sound gentle!

“I wasn’t going to,” she grumbled. “But then I figured if somehow you found out you’d be
really
mad at me.”

“I spend a lot of time in that state, huh?”
The best defense is a good offense.
Obviously that plan had worked for shit, because here they were, naked to naked. But how that had happened didn’t matter now.

Now Dez mattered.

Making love to Dez.

He started all over again.

More kisses to that sweet mouth of hers, curling his tongue against hers, stroking her softly on the roof of her mouth, then moving on to caress her nipples with the very same moves. Gentle was the word of the morning, and he wondered if he’d somehow sensed her inexperience before. The predator would have to save his bite for another day.

His mouth roamed from her breasts down over her stomach. He flicked his tongue in the little pool of her belly button, and smiled against her bikini-bottom line when she squirmed and opened her legs in silent supplication. His thumbs caressed the inside curve of her thighs, then moved higher to pull open the plump sections of her sex so he could take her in his hot mouth.

She gasped, her hips rising to meet him, and his heart pounded with lust and care and a bone-deep excitement. He wanted this to be perfect for her. So perfect that this morning would color every single other morning to come.

He fumbled with one hand to open the drawer on the bedside table. Without taking his mouth from its sweet task, he plucked one of the condoms from the small pile and dropped it on her flat belly. He glanced up between her bent thighs, saw the flush flagging her cheeks, and slid his tongue up the swollen slide of her sex. He found the hard nub playing sentry there, and overtook it, catching it in a light grasp of his teeth and then using his tongue to flick it toward her little death.

She put up no resistance. Her heels dug into the mattress, she cried out in a surrender as clear as a white flag and gave him everything she had.

He didn’t show her any mercy. Her body writhed and jerked, but he held her hips steady, absorbing every last spasm of her climax. When she finally quieted, he grabbed up the condom, rolled it over himself and dropped the empty foil to the mattress.

Once again he came over her body. Desirée looked lush and languorous, like a woman who’d been waiting for him beside a decadent oasis all her life. He touched the tip of himself to the soft and wet notch between her legs. She caught her breath, one hand clutching his shoulder, the other falling to the sheet.

Her face changed and she lifted that hand, frowning at the condom wrapper. “Where did this come from?” she said.

“In the bedside table.” He nodded to the half-open drawer. “And tell me you wouldn’t let me do this without one.” He pushed, sliding the head just inside her body.

She gasped. Then her face softened and her hips rolled up, taking another inch.

He gritted his teeth, denying himself the deep thrust he desired. “Let me do this, witch.”

“Fine. What ever.” Smiling a witchy smile, she made a careless gesture with her hand. Then her gaze snagged on that condom package again, still between her fingers. “Do you have more of these in the drawer?”

“I guess.” He was trying to go slow, he
would
go slow, no matter what it took out of him.

“How many more?”

“What? I don’t know.” He pushed another inch and they both gasped. His head dropped and he kissed her collarbone, the side of her neck, the puffy surface of her bottom lip.

“Tell me how many more,” Desirée said, her voice breathless.

Good God. Who could figure out women? Shifting his elbow, he leaned over to peer inside the half-open drawer. “Five. Are you satisfied now?”

“Five? As in five plus one equals six?” She smiled in delight.

He shook his head. “I’m not doing my job if you can still count, baby.”

She tossed the empty foil wrapper into the air and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Magna cum laude, remember?”

“Semper fi, remember?” He gave her a little more of his weight. There was slight resistance, then it gave way.

Desirée’s eyes widened, squeezed tight, opened again.

“Okay?” Each breath was taking him deeper.

“Oh. Kay.” Air stuttered into her lungs, then eased out. “I’d say, um, groovy, Semper Fi. Now I think it’s time for you to kick my butt into Monday.”

“How ’bout if I kiss you there instead?” And then he bent his head to her, and bent his body to hers, and bent both their wills so that together the warrior and the witch found a common cadence that pleased them both.

“Troy Troy Troy.” Desirée was pleading as the rhythm ratcheted them higher.

He lifted his hips and put his hand between them,
stroking her on each upstroke. She continued calling his name, her body rising toward his.

“Look at me, Dez. Look at me.”

Her dark gaze focused on his face. He stared into her eyes, trying to understand why she was here and why this moment belonged to him.

But before he could figure out all her mysteries, she cried out one last time. Her body milked his, drawing the climax straight from his soul, straight through him, straight toward Desirée’s heart.

H
annah lifted a languid hand to her nose and sniffed the back of it. Her gaze cut toward Tanner. “Do I smell like honey?”

He groaned, and glanced away from the Mercedes windshield to her face. “You promised.”

She swallowed canary feathers as she smiled. “I promised what?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have picked up the phone,” he muttered. “I knew I should have pretended I wasn’t home.”

“We
were
a little busy at the time.” Hannah’s smile widened as she remembered. He’d been making them a meal to serve as a late breakfast/early lunch, and she’d been doing her best to make him take her back to bed by sliding her arms around his waist
and unbuttoning his shirt from behind. “But Uncle Geoff was glad to track me down.”

Tanner sent her another sidelong look. “You’re
sure
you didn’t give anything away over the phone?”

“You heard my half of the conversation. I was mostly giving out sympathy that his broken leg had cut his ski vacation short. He asked if you were showing me a good time, and well, you know what I said to that.”

“It was the
way
you said I was showing you a ‘great’ time that has me worried,” Tanner muttered again. “I could swear you were purring.”

She didn’t refute the idea. How could she? She felt like a happy, purring cat—warm, well-fed, well-petted. Tanner was an affectionate, attentive lover. Even when he’d gone to the bar to fill in for Troy, he’d woken her when he’d arrived home.

She loved sex.

But it was more than that. She had never lived with a man, including Duncan, and to turn over in sleep and find another body beside her, to wake up and have the plea sure of a lover’s skin just inches away…

All these years, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed a man’s touch. And Tanner knew, so well, how to touch her.

“What are you thinking about now?” he demanded. “No, don’t tell me, not when we’re minutes away from your uncle’s place.”

She laughed. “What, you’re reading my brain waves now?” During the phone call, she’d agreed to her laid-up uncle’s suggestion to bring Tanner and
Chinese food over to his place for dinner. Tanner had gone piano-wire on her at the idea.

He had some misbegotten notion that Uncle Geoff might guess what was going on between them, and he wanted to keep that private, he said. His tension had only drawn tighter the closer it came to the appointed hour.

Poor man. But nothing was going to tarnish her shining mood.

She loved sex!

Tanner’s expression was grim as they pulled in front of Uncle Geoff ’s home. He lived in San Diego itself, in an executive town home in a new Mediterranean-style development. Between the sidewalk and the front door was a hanky-sized front lawn, an ornamental tree, a couple of bushes, and a fake-looking boulder.

When she rang the bell—Tanner’s arms were full of Chinese carry-out bags—Uncle Geoff called out that they should let themselves in. She put her hand on the knob.

“Hannah,” Tanner said, his voice so urgent it halted her.

“What?” She glanced over her shoulder.

“This is between us, remember?”

Mesmerized, she stared at him. The porch light made a halo of his blond hair, but she knew he was no angel. Oh, thank God he was no angel. Nothing had seemed too earthy for him. He seemed obsessed with her skin—
all
her skin—and he touched and tasted her everywhere, from the obvious places to the less obvious ones. Upon awakening this morning, he’d
placed a delicious, sucking kiss over the pulse at her wrist. His tongue had flicked the sensitive web of flesh at the base of her fingers, sending shivers to her elbow. He’d bitten the pad of flesh at the base of her thumb and her womb had clenched.

Like that, sexually ready.

Now, he closed his eyes on a groan. “Hannah, damn it,
Hannah.
”

She blinked, mind coming back to the present. “Yes? What?”

“If you look at me like that all night, I’m not going to last, sweetheart.”

That made her smile.

He groaned again. “Hannah, be serious. What happened last night and the night before…Okay, and yesterday and this morning—”

“Tanner…”

“Okay, and this afternoon, well…”

“I told you, I don’t want Uncle Geoff in my business any more than you do.” She wasn’t interested in examining what had happened over the last two days with Tanner, not yet anyway, and she wasn’t going to let any member of her meddling family do it either. Right now it was enough to be near him, smell him, recall exactly how his hands had fisted in her hair as he brought her mouth down to his when she—Hannah Davis!—had been riding him like a brazen cowgirl.

Her face heated at the thought, her body following suit. In a good way. A very good way.

Tanner shook his head. “This is going to be a disaster.”

She made a face, then tiptoed to reach over the bags of fragrant food and kiss his chin. “Don’t be such a worrier. I won’t let anything bad happen.”

To be honest, though, once inside and facing her uncle Geoff, she experienced her own little jitter of nerves. Not only did he look an awful lot like her mother (they were siblings, after all), but Secret Service supervising agent Geoff Brooks had eyes as sharp as her mother’s too.

They darted between Hannah and Tanner as he sat on an easy chair beside the gas-powered fireplace. His casted leg was propped on a pillow placed atop an ottoman. “You’re
sure
your vacation has been going well? Your mom filled me in about the loss of your baggage and purse.”

She had found a tray in the kitchen and continued to serve him a plate from the cardboard boxes they’d brought. “I’ve got new ID and a credit card and ATM card now, Uncle Geoff. I’m good.”

The older man shot a look at Tanner. “Did you check with the authorities at the airport?”

“Yes, sir,” he answered. After shaking hands with his former boss, he’d staked out a spot on the sofa. Despite all his dire predictions on their way in, he looked as relaxed as if he was sitting in front of his own TV. “I’ve called every day to see if there’s any word on Hannah’s things.”

Frowning, she turned to face him. “You didn’t tell me that. And you don’t need to make any calls for me. I’ve taken care of that myself.”

“Good job, Hart,” her uncle said. “I suppose they don’t have any leads?”

Tanner shook his head. “She’s not the first person
this has ever happened to, of course, particularly during the holiday season. But they’re keeping their eyes open. They’ll let me know if anything develops.”

Hannah continued staring at him. “I expect them to let
me
know about any developments. I can handle this.”

“Hannah…” her uncle started, his tone placating.

She turned her frown on him. “Uncle Geoff, I’m not six years old.”

They both froze at her choice of words. Six years old. The age she’d been when Deborah had died. That time in their lives was indelibly etched on their communal family memory and had a lot to do with why she didn’t drive, why she didn’t question, why she always tried to please.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, of course you’re a grown woman. It’s just hard for your old bachelor uncle to remember that.”

“Old bachelor uncle,” she scoffed, shaking her head at him as she arranged his tray over his lap. “Don’t try that sympathy stuff on me. Didn’t you just tell me you broke your leg on a double black diamond run at Mammoth?”

How a hard as nails, fifty-something man thought he could look pitiful was beyond her, still, he tried it. “Hannah, there’s my point. I broke it—”

“After some hotdogger cut you off. I have my sources too, you know.”

He laughed. “Why I thought I could put something over on a member of this family—”

“You know Mom can sniff bread going bad from a
thousand miles away.” She turned back to the food and the dinnerware she’d brought out for Tanner and herself. He had picked up a plate and a serving spoon already.

Tanner prepared her plate before his own, lifting his eyebrow and pointing to each selection before doling out a spoonful. Then he handed the food over with a napkin and a paper sleeve of chopsticks as she sat beside him on the couch. Instead of telling him she was a fork kind of girl, she decided to try the wooden utensils in a continued spirit of adventure.

She waited to begin until Tanner dished up his own plate and watched as he pulled the chopsticks from the paper and then took them between his long fingers. In a flash she remembered him taking her nipples between them too, plucking at her hardened, sensitive buds of flesh until she writhed on the sheets, and all the while his gaze had watched her face, taking in each desperate response—

“Hannah,” he said from between his teeth.

Coming to the present—Uncle Geoff ’s living room sofa!—she started, and glanced up at Tanner’s face. “What? What?” What had she missed?

“Do you need help with your chopsticks?” he asked. The question sounded innocent, but she could hear the edginess in his voice.

“Are you feeling all right?” Uncle Geoff chimed in. “You’re not eating.”

“I’m fine. Fine.” She smiled at her uncle and tried relaxing against the cushions. Hadn’t she promised this meal would go well?

She could feel Tanner’s glare on her face, but she
pretended not to notice and applied herself to her meal and the new-to-her utensils. The task was enough to distract her attention from her earlier preoccupation. Though she was aware she was supposed to hold one stick steady and the other like a pencil to make the tweezing action, she couldn’t get the hang of it.

Laughing, she looked up at the two men. “I have a whole new appreciation for my students with handwriting issues.” She tried again, but the piece of shrimp was more slippery than an eel and slid right back to the plate.

“Let me demonstrate,” Tanner said. He reached over, plucked the errant shellfish from her plate, and held the savory food up to his own mouth.

Her gaze met his as his lips opened. Oh, no. She was thinking about sex again. The soft pink fish, the slick sauce that she knew was slightly salty, the way his tongue curled out to take the first taste—

Uncle Geoff cleared his throat. “Speaking of your mother—”

Hannah choked on nothing but air. In a flash, Tanner’s hand was on her back, giving it a sharp thwack so that the bubble was dislodged from her throat. Tears stinging her eyes, she then took a long breath and chanced a peek at her uncle.

Oh, terrific. His eyes were narrowed and there was a small frown between his brows.

Hannah pasted on a smile. “Speaking of my mother…what?”

Her uncle shook his head. “Never mind. Tell me what you’ve been doing on your vacation.”

Careful not to look at Tanner, she gave the bright
and breezy censored version: Desirée’s suite, the spa, sand, ocean, zoo. Uncle Geoff seemed satisfied, and when she hopped up to take his tray away, he asked her to fetch his pain medication from the bathroom. He said he was going to take a couple of capsules and then go to bed.

“Leg’s aching like a son of a gun,” he said, grimacing.

Taking that as their cue to leave, Hannah rounded up the few dishes and put them in the dishwasher, then stashed the leftovers in Uncle Geoff ’s fridge. As she ventured down the hall to find the pills, she heard the men’s voices murmuring in the other room. She didn’t worry about it, though. Tanner had shown himself to be far more in control than she was.

It was annoying as all get out that while her imagination had been going wild as he fed himself that piece of shrimp, he’d looked cool and unaffected.

Bottle in hand, she nearly skipped back down the hall. If she had her way, though, as soon as they were alone she was going to do her best to shatter his unruffled facade. He didn’t stand a chance against her, she told herself, casting all doubts aside.

He wouldn’t turn away from her now, not yet.

She reentered the living room, her mood as bright as it had been all day.

Tanner was on his feet. He swung toward her, his eyes glittering, that tension he must have been smothering now radiating from every cell.

Unable to look away from his tight face, she blindly handed the pills to her uncle. “Tanner? What’s the matter?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” he bit out.

“Tell you what?” It felt as if an icy hand had grabbed the back of her neck, though Tanner wasn’t touching her.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that Duncan, your errant ex-fiancé, is dead.”