Unravel Me (20 page)

“Baby.” He backed her into the shower spray again, intent on keeping her warm now that her climax had passed. His hand caressed her shoulders and she shivered again, her face still hidden. Shit, was she crying? Under where she pressed, beneath his skin, his sinew, and his skeleton, beneath all those protective layers were four aching chambers that twisted and squeezed at the thought of her tears.

At the reality of her regrets.

At the realization that he’d never have more of her than this.

Then, in that same spot, a sharper pain stung. For a minute it didn’t register as separate from the other hurt. Then it came again, another small bite of sensation and he looked down, pushing her away at the same time.

Her eyes were half-mast, her mouth swollen. She reached up to his chest, tracing with her thumb the shallow tracks of her teeth. “I did that,” she said.

Astonished, he stared at the marks and then at the smug expression of the woman.

“I want to do it some more,” she said.

His skin flashed hot and then he was on the move, dragging her from the shower and then dragging a towel over their flesh, the entire time battling the elegant woman whom he’d always assumed didn’t have a whiff of warrior inside her.

But she went heads up into a skirmish with him right now. Apparently she wanted undelayed, unfettered access to his body and she fought to touch him, taste him, crawl over him even when they were standing, even when he was trying to do something as uncomplicated as getting her across the room and horizontal on that whipped cream- colored bed.

“Take it easy,” he said, holding her by the shoulders so he could move without their feet tangling and taking them both to the floor.

“I want it hard.”

Shaking his head, he laughed. “Really, baby. Relax.”

“Not till I get what I want.” She lunged for him, and twined her arms around his neck and one calf around his hip. The hot, melting center of her body scalded his thigh. Groaning, he bent his knee to give her some friction.

She moaned, and licked across his pecs to find one of his nipples. He hissed in a hard breath, then gathered his resolve and folded her up in his arms.

She made a muffled protest against the side of his neck and rubbed one of her nipples along the hard plane of his chest. Striding for the mattress, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You’re a maniac, do you know that?”

“Maniac for your body.”

He laughed, dropping her to the mattress, then following her down as soon as he managed to get on the condom he had in his pants. She went wild again, writhing under him, delivering hot kisses, scratching his back with her nails.

Lust slammed into him again, harder this time. Desperate to slow things down, he reached back to close his hands on her wrists before the sharp edge of her fingernails had him coming over her belly before he could make it inside her.

He pressed her hands to the mattress and reared onto his knees to put space between them . . . and to let him look at her creamy skin, her pretty curves, the pink-tipped breasts and the pink wetness waiting for him between her splayed thighs. She was breathing hard.

He didn’t think he was breathing at all.

“Noah. Noah, please.”

There was desperation in Juliet’s voice, renewed tension in her quivering body. His inner sexual thug was gleeful, urging him on in single-syllable words.

But this was Juliet.
Juliet!

The woman he’d watched, the woman he’d wanted, for something like a hundred years.

So he closed his ears to that low-life gangster and treated her like the lady she was. He penetrated slow, sliding against hot, tender tissues at a pace that had him gritting his teeth. She moaned as he seated himself as deep as he dared, but he didn’t let that little sound hurry him either.

Instead, he took his time and took her with the caution and care that she deserved. He used a gentle rhythm and shallow strokes, but still pleasure burned. When his climax could no longer be denied, he wet his thumb and touched her again, sending her on a soft, sweet journey. As her body quaked against his, he ground his teeth harder and resisted the urge to plunge deep. Holding steady, he didn’t move another inch, but let her squeezing contractions around his cock do the work to bring him off. His body shaking, he swallowed his groan of satisfaction until both their bodies were still.

As he pulled away, Juliet’s eyes were closed and her mouth looked bruised. Guilt swamped him—those kisses had been too damn rough—and he tried to apologize by pressing his lips to her forehead. She made a little murmur and shivered, so he drew the covers over her and went off to deal with the rubber. When he came back, she was sound asleep, and he stood there, watching. The sun was higher in the sky and now flooded the room. When its rays burnished the gold of her hair, Noah closed his eyes and turned away from the almost-painful brightness.

Twelve

All war is deception.

—SUN TZU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marlys stood by the door of her boutique, wrapping up her good-byes to one of her few former bed partners. A pharmaceutical rep, Phillip dropped by when he had some minutes to burn between appointments. She figured he had other, ulterior motives as well: He liked the coffee at the bakery next door, and he loved congratulating himself on having never offered her the flashy diamond and marriage proposal he’d planned.

When his brother couldn’t help himself and gossiped the news to her first—not such a surprise since he was a SoCal stringer for the tabloids—Marlys had dumped Pharmaceutical Phil that very night.

Another woman might have let him go through with the one-knee moment, but she’d spared them both the experience. Not only didn’t she want to be some man’s wife, she didn’t want to sleep with a marriage-minded one either. Smacked of codependency.

Then the shop door swung open and Dean Long stepped in. She took the jolt of pleasure at the sight of him like a stab to the belly. The sharp sensation made her suck in a hard breath, and then she hid her sudden flush of yearning by grabbing Phil by the ears and planting a searing kiss on his lips.

She put tongue into it.

And a little panic.

When she let him go, she dried her bottom lip with the edge of her hand and then pushed her ex toward the door, feigning surprise at seeing Dean standing in the way. “Oh!” She hid her smirk behind her fingers.

Dazed, Phil wandered around the other man and outside without a word, but Marlys waved at his retreating back with an aspartame smile. “See you!”

Then she swung her attention to the newcomer. “And I didn’t expect to see
you
.” Her hands tugged on the wrap dress she wore with a pair of sleek riding-style boots and then adjusted the little cardigan she had on for extra warmth. “You didn’t mention it last night.”

He shrugged. “The way you scampered off clutching that beefstick, I thought I’d given you enough to worry about for one evening.”

“Worried? You don’t worry me.” After a little more light-hearted flirtation, she’d left him without a care in the world. He was cute, she’d decided once she was safe at home with her dog, but of no concern for a woman like herself.

“Then how about a late breakfast or an early lunch? Can you get away—or did you already spend all your free time on the guy you just poleaxed with that out-of-the-blue tonsil inspection?”

Crap. He hadn’t bought her act—and it made her mad, because she wasn’t completely sure of what she’d been trying to sell. Was she trying to prove to Dean that she could attract other men? That she could manage any man?

“Well?” He looked as if he couldn’t care less what she answered and that made her mad, too. But he was here, wasn’t he? Maybe he was a better actor than she was, but he hadn’t sought her out without reason.

Maybe he wanted his own tonsil inspection.

That now-familiar belly burn ignited again and Marlys glanced around the shop. She had plenty of excuses if she wanted to refuse, but her clerk Leeza knew the ropes nearly as well as she did. And there was only a couple of browsers besides the woman who’d taken some outfits into the fitting room. Through her lashes, she made another quick assessment of Dean.

Not cute, handsome. Sexy. And the way he was looking at her, all silvery cool, felt like a direct challenge.
Angel, show me what you’ve got.

Marlys could never resist a dare, and this one didn’t have a downside. The upper hand was always fun, and she’d show him that to her, lunch with a gorgeous man like himself equaled pure playtime.

“All right.” The shop was so small it was only two hops and a skip to retrieve her purse from behind the counter. “Leeza, you’ll be okay?”

The clerk said she would, and Marlys was headed for the door and Dean. With only five steps to go, the woman who’d been in the fitting area blocked her way. In a long-sleeved, knee-length cotton knit tunic over leggings, she held out her arms. “What do you think?”

Marlys didn’t hesitate. “You’ll need to lose ten pounds before you can wear that without looking pregnant.”

Over the crestfallen shopper’s head, she caught Dean’s wince. She ignored the little poke of guilt at her plainspokenness, and while she would have done it anyway, she hurried on her detour to a freestanding rack. There, she pulled a different top off the metal stand. “This one will look fabulous with your great skin.”

Cheering some, the woman took the hanger, and Marlys continued on her way. Outside, Dean slanted her a look. “How the hell do you stay in business with that kind of customer service?”

“I stay in business because when I tell them something’s right, they believe me, and don’t think I’m just trying to make a sale.”

“Ah,” Dean said, nodding. “I’ve been to a restaurant in Atlanta where the waitresses regularly curse the diners and roundly criticize their selections from the menu. The line is out the door.”

“The top I picked out cost twice as much as the one she’d tried on.”

“Marlys!” A laugh was startled from him.

She gave him a cheeky grin. “What? It will look twice as good on her. Really.”

He laughed again, and slung an arm over her shoulders. Her little shiver of reaction was easy to cover by drawing her sweater closer around her. “I can’t decide if you’re wicked or fun,” he said.

“Wicked fun,” she answered. See? Playtime. Nothing to worry about.

It was cool enough to choose the table under a patio heater at a nearby café. She asked for a half order of Chinese salad and black coffee, while Dean wanted eggs, bacon, homefries, a blueberry muffin, and a side of granola-topped yogurt.

“You and Noah need to go grocery shopping,” Marlys said, marveling at the number of plates that the waitress had placed around him and the speed at which he was chowing down the food. “Last night it was beefsticks. This morning he didn’t have anything to offer for breakfast?”

“Noah wasn’t there this morning.”

She hooted in surprise. “So the private got lucky last night! Who’s the woman on gun-cleaning detail?”

His fork halfway to his mouth, he froze. His cool silver gaze seemed to slice right through her like an ice pick. “I don’t know. What do you have against him anyway?”

Her plate of shredded cabbage, sliced almonds, and wonton strips required her full attention. “What makes you think I have something against him?”

“ ‘Private’?”

Marlys squirmed. “It’s not meant to be a put-down. I don’t criticize soldiers—of any rank.”

“Mmm.”

Miffed, she glared at Dean. “I don’t!”

“Yeah, and that guy you tongue-kissed in your shop a little while back is your true soul mate.” He put down his fork and patted her fingers resting on the tabletop. “Don’t get worked up, angel. Not everyone appreciates the military life.”

Marlys jerked her hand from his touch and shoved it into the patch pocket of her cardigan where she fingered the silver amulet and played with the attached silver chain. “I lived on Army bases. I loved military life.”

“Yeah?” Dean pushed the last of his plates away. His eyebrows rose as he took in her expression. “I think you mean it.”

While she resented his apparent belief that he could read the truth on her face, she didn’t see any harm in reminiscing about the childhood she remembered as blissfully happy and incredibly secure.

“It was the best. I was an only child, but there were always other kids to play with. Our parents shopped at the same places, we went to the same schools, the focus of every family on my block was exactly the same. I loved the way that everything stopped on base when the flag was lowered at five P.M.” She had her hand out of her pocket and halfway to her heart before she realized what she was doing and, embarrassed, redirected it to her coffee cup.

Dean gave a little nod. “The way my sisters and brother and I were raised, our entire family was in the service, not just our father.”

“Exactly.” Marlys smiled. “I couldn’t wait until I turned ten and was eligible for my very own military I.D.”

Dean laughed. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“And instead of Barbies, I had a whole army of G.I. Joes.”

His brows rose again. “Which might explain your career in boutique-wear. You missed out on your girly years.”

“I didn’t miss out on anything.” Every day she’d walked within those comforting gates, she’d known she’d belonged and she’d been secure.

Dean was shaking his head. “God, I felt like I did. When I turned fourteen, I wanted to be a civilian kid in the worst way, which only made my dad clamp down harder. My mom, too, telling me that every trouble report on me reached the base commander and reflected on my father, and my father’s career. At seventeen, I bailed out of the whole thing and it took me a few years before I woke up, went back, and enlisted. I don’t suppose growing up with that kind of pressure was any easier for you.”