All systems go, and the condoms in the bag in his room were shoved to the back of his mind. “Yes. Recently had a physical.” But he could tell her he hadn’t been with another woman without a rubber since he’d broken up with his fiancée and he’d been tested after he caught her cheating. He knew beyond doubt he was clean, but she didn’t make him explain. She trusted him.
“Good enough.” She tore his belt open, ripped his zipper down, and pulled his cock out. Lannie waited for no one. One jump and she’d locked herself around his hips, ready for action. He pulled his hand away from her pussy, catching her in time. His fingers dug into her ass, increasing the chance he’d leave a bruise or two, but damn he didn’t think she’d care.
She reached down and moved his cock into position. Without hesitating, she grabbed the hair on the sides of his head and forced him to look her in the eyes, their lips close enough to touch. “No more foreplay. I’ve been wet all night. Fuck me already.”
No further encouragement needed, Tanner slammed into her. Holy hell. Hot. Tight. His dick had little room to move, not that he would complain. Damn, he wouldn’t get far, not with her squeezing him the way she did. He’d give her the hard screw she’d asked for, but he couldn’t guarantee endurance—at least not the first time. His balls tightened. He pumped his hips twice before she came again. Her whimpers turned into screams and she buried her face in the crook of his neck to muffle the sound.
Nails raked under his shirt. Tanner couldn’t take any more. He began to fuck her hard enough to bounce her off the door and wake everyone in the motel. With the way she responded, screaming out, yelling, most men would assume she faked her pleasure. But the juice running down his balls, the way her cunt throbbed around him told him she didn’t pretend and her arousal was all because of him.
“Harder. Damn you. Fuck me, Tanner!” The faster he slammed into her, the deeper he drove his cock, the more she cried out, asking for more. “Oh, God. Tanner.”
He kissed along her jaw and then down, wanting for some unknown reason to mark her with a hickey. She arched her back, giving him access to his favorite part of the female anatomy, her throat. Lannie had an exceptional one, long and graceful.
One might classify him as weird for loving a woman’s throat over her breasts or ass, but his attraction wasn’t about the way the neck looked, not completely. A person only had to nibble behind a woman’s ear or on her nape and see the way she surrendered so completely to understand. A puff of breath under her jaw, a kiss along the pulse, and a woman would throw a man of his back and take what she wanted. That kind of reaction could be addictive as crack. So, he gave into the urge, sucking on her flesh like a teenager, and in doing so, he discovered her
go
button.
“Don’t stop. I’m going to come again.”
“For the love of God, I can’t hang on if you keep doing that.” He slammed her ass back on the door and began to bang her in earnest. Harder. Faster.
“Tanner.” She thrashed and scratched his shoulders and back. Her pussy clenched down, a quick warning before the walls of her cunt convulsed.
“I can’t hold back.” Lannie was unique. Most women needed a long warm-up, slow grinding, and, when they found their release, they were done. Lannie kept coming, and coming and coming and, as he’d warned her, the way she responded to him proved to be more than he could take. Seconds later, Tanner went over the edge and into the abyss with her, certain they’d made it one for the record books.
He nuzzled her shoulder, taking deep breaths, trying to catch his second wind. “Woman, you’re going to kill me.”
Lannie laughed. “I have never had so many orgasms at one time. You were fucking amazing—a freaking rock star.” She tilted her head and kissed him, breaking away after about a minute and pressing her lips to his ear. “But you’re going to have to let me off this wall because we both could use a shower.” She licked along his neck, tasting him. “And I want to suck your cock while we’re in there.”
Tanner groaned. “You don’t take prisoners, do you?”
“No.”
Tanner set her down on shaky legs, which felt more like rubber than flesh and bone. Lannie resisted the urge to stretch and roll around on the bed in complete bliss. She’d never been as satisfied and maybe her noni had been on to something. There could be more between them needing exploration. A screw against the door wouldn’t be enough to find out what.
After the sweaty night dancing and the even more vigorous workout that followed, she needed a shower. Tanner, too.
Since he’d slid his cock inside her, she’d become obsessed with wrapping her lips around him and sucking him off. Bringing a man to pleasure had always been a huge turn on. She’d orgasmed while giving oral before, and a blowjob would be the first order of business, once she got him in the shower. God, she wanted to taste his cock. She crooked her finger as she walked by and to the bathroom to start the spray. Steam began to fill the room, fogging the mirror. Tanner stood behind her, in the doorway, watching. She wiped the glass off with her palm. No sense in blocking the view.
Lannie pulled her shirt over her head, unfastened her bra, and dropped them both to the floor. She hooked her panties with her thumbs and shimmied them down, turning around as Tanner stepped into her lair. He gave her a good once over and began to strip.
This time she got to play voyeur, and leaned back against the pedestal sink, gripping the edge, drawing in a deep breath. She’d yet to see him naked and couldn’t wait.
He eyed her and the corner of his mouth twitched. Grabbing the bottom of his shirt, he peeled the fabric up ever so slowly. Her fingers itched to grab and rip the damned garment off, and from the wicked gleam in his eyes, he damn well knew it. Yeah, he’d cued in on her impatience and took his ever-loving sweet time in a strip tease that had her gnawing on her lip and shifting from foot to foot. By the time his shirt landed next to hers, she’d had enough. Lannie grabbed him by the belt loops and backed into the shower stall, pulling him in, jeans, boots and all.
She sank to her knees and ran her hands down his thighs. The wet denim molded to his reemerging erection, and demonstrated he’d recovered. Ready for round two. She looked up and he shook his head. “You could have let me undress.”
“You could have moved faster. I’ve never been very patient.” She unlaced his boots, pulled them off, and tossed them outside the shower. “Now you’ll have to stay here until your clothes dry.”
“Are you asking me to stay the rest of the night?”
“I’m not asking.” She grabbed his waistband up and yanked his jeans and boxers down. His cock stood out against a thick nest of hair. Hard. Ready. She’d known his girth felt above average when they’d had sex, but seeing his thickness was another matter. Much more than she’d expected. Big man. Big dick. Her mouth watered. Lannie let her gaze travel up. His torso had very little hair, with the exception of his happy trail, which ran from his navel down. His abs were defined, the kind a man would have if he worked out several times a week. She raked her fingers down them, enjoying the way his cock jerked in response.
Broad shoulders. Strong arms. Wait until women saw him without a shirt in the calendar. His previous picture in Kosovo had been a panty dropper, but with a little skin showing.... Good lord, she’d be beating them off him. Lannie blinked and shook off the possessive thought. She had claim to one night, maybe the weekend—nothing more. He’d never be hers and thinking he could, would end one way.
With a broken heart.
She needed to be thankful he’d agreed to do the shoot. Her noni and the girls had meant well, but as a couple, Tanner and Lannie would never work. They were too different. Flint and steel. Every time they clashed, they produced sparks, followed by fire which could engulf them both if they weren’t careful.
But that wouldn’t stop her from enjoying every inch of him now. She leaned in and took him in her mouth. She gripped his cock, while her other hand clawed his ass. Water ran down her face and shoulders. His hands fisted her hair as he began to fuck her lips, groaning every time she let her teeth scrape along his vein. She worked the part of the shaft she couldn’t get in her mouth, by sliding her grip up and down in time with her lips, pumping him as though her were buried in her pussy. His salty taste sent tingles between her thighs and a buzz through her body.
“Like that, baby. To the back of your throat.”
She hummed around his cock in an affirmative response, relaxing her throat and letting him drive deeper. Her hand would check-stop him from going too far and gagging her, but she gave him a little rein to take more if he wanted.
He wanted.
“I’m going to come.” He let go of her hair with the warning, giving her the choice of swallowing, or letting his cum go down the drain. Fat chance. She intensified her effort, swallowing as he came. He pulled her to her feet as she released him.
“My turn.” He dropped to his knees and Lannie knew she’d never seen a sexier sight.
Tanner spooned Lannie’s body and listened to her breathing slow as she fell asleep. He hadn’t stayed the night with a woman for years. Not because he was that kind of guy, but because he often had nightmares of the day a young mother lost her life. The day he’d left her to die.
He’d had to make a split second decision. The child wouldn’t leave the mother and had to be carried away. The woman couldn’t get free from the cuff that attached her ankle to the seat. Seconds were ticking down. Go back and try to defuse the bomb, taking a chance the woman and kid would die with him, or save himself and the child. The woman pushed the child into his arms and screamed, “Go. Save my baby.” She’d made the ultimate sacrifice, had chosen her child over her own life. He hadn’t intended for her to die.
He could have tried to render safe the bomb strapped to her, instead of carrying the kid to safety. He’d boarded to get everyone off once he knew the doors wouldn’t blow when he opened them. When she’d handed him her child, he’d had every intention of returning to disarm the bomb, after he’d evacuated the child to a safe distance from the bus.
Could he have disarmed the bomb in time? The explosive device had been simple—as IEDs went. He could’ve taken it apart. Easily. But he’d elected not to risk all three lives. The decision would haunt him for the rest of his life.
He’d never know if he could have saved her.
The woman lying next to him now, had snapped the shot and written the article, skyrocketing him to fame overnight. His face told the story. He’d saved the boy, but also made him an orphan. Every time he looked at the picture, he relived that day and dwelled on what he could or could not have done.
His ex-fiancée, Catherine, an MIT graduate and ballistics engineer, had worked all over the country first bringing down old hotels and casinos, later, as a member of the FBI, couldn’t deal with his post-traumatic stress any better than he had. They’d been together for over four years before she cheated on him with his best friend and fellow squad member.
They’d met in training, when she’d contracted with the government as an ordnance specialist, and it had been love at first sight. Smart, beautiful, and a woman he knew would understand why he did what he did, and he’d fallen hard. He’d thought they were a match made in heaven, and for several years she’d kept him grounded through his deployments and when he returned. Until he’d made a decision that killed a young mother. Then Catherine could do nothing to chase away the nightmares that plagued his sleep or ease the guilt he carried while he was awake. Someone had died and a child became an orphan because of a decision he’d made. She couldn’t fix it.
She’d witnessed on more than one occasion his flashbacks, the after-effect of the botched mission. He’d wake in the middle of the night, screaming at the top of his lungs, twisted up in the sheets and drenched in sweat. Flailing, he’d caught her with a fist to the jaw while waking. Once cognizant of his surroundings, aware he wasn’t on the other side of the planet, he found her curled into a ball in the corner of the room, crying. Seeing the bruise destroyed him. He’d not meant to hit her and, if he hadn’t been asleep, it never would have happened. He knew then he had to do something to fix his broken mind.
After he’d hurt her, he’d stopped staying in her bed and, a short time later, he quit spending the night. He’d started therapy and had gotten involved in community service by reading to the ladies at the nursing home, anything to get his mind off his problems.
A month later, he caught his fiancée out behind the barracks, fucking his best friend in her car. Catherine blamed him, and maybe he had driven her away for her own safety, until he could get his head on straight again, but he hadn’t deserved her infidelity, so he broke off the engagement. A month later, he didn’t re-up, choosing to leave Catherine and that chapter of his life, behind.
Since then, he’d hadn’t slept in the same bed with a woman. For the last hour, he’d fought exhaustion and held Lannie while he did his best not to nod off. He could slip away, go next door to his room, and get some rest, but he didn’t want to leave her. He wanted to stay, worse, he wanted more than one night with her. An impossible reality. If his previous girlfriend, a demolition expert and as tough as they came, couldn’t deal with him, Lannie sure couldn’t. Any relationship he had would be complicated.
He captured one of her auburn curls and wrapped the strand around his finger, pulling back to let it slip off. Prettiest hair he’d ever seen. Hot like her temper. He smiled and leaned in to plant a kiss on her shoulder.
Lannie groaned and pressed her ass against his erection. They’d taken the sex from the shower to the bed and finished out the night with one more screw, slow and steady, making him want to try love once again.
“It’s five in the morning, Tanner.”
“Yeah. Good morning, beautiful.” He grabbed her hips and rocked his cock between her ass cheeks. “You don’t have to get up.”
“Like I could sleep with you sticking me in my backside?”