21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (47 page)

“Hey back.” She walked two fingers across the firm abdominals and smoothed her palm against his chest, half exploring, half petting. Eddies of pleasure radiated from all over—between her legs, hell, even her toes seemed to quiver in satisfaction. “Thank you.”

He chuckled, continuing to stroke her arm, her side and down over her hip bone. “You’re welcome and thank you.” His stomach growled into the silence and they both burst out laughing.

It pained her to pull away, to feel the last of him slip free, but when her stomach gurgled nearly as loud as his, the giggles struck again. He trailed a caress down to her thigh and watched her with solemn, almost too bright, blue eyes.

“I had dinner delivered for us. It’s a cold supper—sandwiches, drinks, potato salad.”

She turned her attention to the kitchenette, spotting the white bags with the MGR logo on the side. “Hungry?”

He cupped her breast and rolled a calloused thumb across her nipple. It stiffened in appreciation and pleasure tingled everywhere. “Starving.”

Blissful desire sighed through her. A.J. sat up and kissed a lazy path across each breast, pausing only to nip and suck at the distended nipples crowning each one. She skimmed her nails across his scalp, torn between the urges to watch his dark head move back and forth and pushing him back until she could impale herself on his cock again. She wanted to be on top next time. Her thighs quivered at the images popping into her head. He slipped a hand around the back of her neck and fed her erotic fantasy with a long, lingering kiss. God, the man knew how to kiss. He took control, slanting his mouth against hers, demanding access with his tongue, and twining it sensuously with her own.

With foreheads resting together, he broke the kiss. It was almost too much intimacy. They touched everywhere. It wasn’t just the physical contact, but the way his entire being seemed to pour into hers, searching, seeking, captivating.

“I want to get up and feed you. But that means I have to stop touching you and feasting myself.” The throaty admission turned her insides to jelly. It was an almost corny line, but the raw emotion in his voice made it echo with sincerity.

“We can do both.” She grinned, a streak of naughtiness stealing through her. “You can clean up. I’ll get the food. We meet back here in two minutes.”

“Right here?” He swept his gaze down to where his spent cock nestled between her legs and her knees framed his thighs.

Surprising herself, she pushed up and kissed him, licking the seam of his lips until he allowed her to take possession of his mouth. He tasted a little of salt and beer and totally man. His scent filled her nostrils. “Right. Here.” She murmured.

“Okay.” He massaged her ass, exploring her curves. The heat of his body had to be leaving imprints on her soul. Everywhere they met, a new forest fire of sensation broke out.

Their mouths parted and came together with every sentence. “But we have to move to do that.”

“I know.” He swept his hand up her spine, tangled it in her hair, and thrust his tongue into her mouth. He took control of the kiss, pursuing her tongue and claiming it. She groaned and moisture flooded between her legs. The aftershocks turned to foreshocks and she wanted him, right now.

“Tell me,” she let out between bursts of air, tasting him with every stroke of his lips against hers, “When.”

He surged upward, holding her straddled on his lap. Breast to chest, the friction heightened every point their bodies made contact. “Okay.”

Damn, he knows how to kiss
. The slant of his mouth demanded, promised, engaged, and held her at his mercy. She clung to him, starved for the contact. The one-night stand offered her a fresh start, a clean slate, and delivered so much more. Her mind whirled with the possibilities. The slow stiffening of his cock pushed between them and she pulled back, laughter bubbling up.

“Okay, two minutes.” He grinned and brushed his thumb against her lower lip but made no move to let her go.

“Two minutes,” she agreed, her heart pounding behind her ribs. And still, they didn’t move. If anything her knees tightened against him, and she wanted to rub herself all over him like a cat in heat.

Gripping her hips, he stole another kiss and murmured against her mouth. “On three….”

“Wait.” Nipping his lower lip between each word, she asked, “On three-three or after three?”

“Hmm.” He flexed his fingers against her skin, the touch scalding her, as though branding it through her flesh. It was like she could feel him everywhere, every place he caressed with his fingers or kissed with his mouth, tingles of sensation continued to eddy. “On three.”

“Okay.” She sighed, opening her mouth to his tongue. The brush of his sweat-slicked chest glided sensuously across her almost too-sensitive nipples. Dragging her palms against his back, she explored the flexing muscles, tensing and teasing together.

“One….” he muttered, trailing hot kisses across her cheek. His traced the whorls of her ear and sucked on the lobe. “Two.”

Coils of pleasure tightened in her belly, winding up like some old-fashioned toy clicking past the point where she needed to let go, the tension holding her captive almost too much.

“Three.” He lifted her off him like she weighed no more than a feather and set her on the bed. Her body cried out at the absence of his, but he levered himself upward and paused long enough to give her a hand. “Go.”

Her mind hummed with eroticism. It took her a moment to even remember what they were supposed to do on three. He strode over to the bathroom, the muscles of his ass flexing with every step. Her insides quivered as the promise of his jean-clad ass on the street that day was delivered in spades.

Shaking off her self-indulgent, carnal stupor, she wandered over to the bags on the bar. Opening them one at a time, she unloaded the sandwiches, cold drinks, and tin of potato salad. She’d barely unwrapped one sandwich when he boxed his masculine body against her, the rigid length of his cock pressed against her ass and his hands slipped up to cover and massage her breasts.

She shuddered, hungry for him again, needing to feel him filling her.

“You like?” He laughed softly. How could he not know what he did to her?

“Yes.” She sighed. But that wasn’t where she wanted him. The riot storming through her system blotted out coherent thought.

“You mentioned fantasies earlier.” He bit down on the soft juncture between her shoulder and her neck. “Do you have any others?”

Oh. You. You. And for good measure more you
. The wild, unrepentant need rushing through her should be embarrassing. Some, small rational part of her urged her to remember this was one night, nothing more, nothing less. She shut off the devilish little voice and refused to think about it. Their one moment was right now and tomorrow could damn well take care of itself.

“I have so many.” And it was true. She wanted to do him up against a wall, on the floor, take his cock into her mouth and swallow him as he came. She wanted him to push inside her, ride her until she went limp.

She never wanted him to stop.

“Tell me,” he ordered and continued the sensual torture.

“Take me now, like this.” Heat burned in her cheeks, and she rubbed back against him. He nudged her legs further apart, and his fingers dipped between her legs. The sweet friction against her sensitive folds was almost too much.
I’m going to die like this, dissolving into pure desire
….

“Like this?” he asked, his husky voice turning her inside out. His thumb grazed over her clit, the light brush ratcheted up the pressure inside and she arched. If she were a cat, she would purr with the pleasure of it.

She licked her lips and held onto the counter. “Just like…that.” But he nudged her thighs apart further and guided her hips back until she stretched, fingers locked onto the counter.

“Hmm…this looks good enough to eat.” The delight in his words threatened to undo her right then and there. She clenched her butt, fighting the urge to rub her thighs together. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He abandoned her, retreating toward the bed. Her thighs quivered and her feet shifted. “Stay just like that….” The order throbbed through her.

The promise of his touch eroded her control.
What control
?
Who are you kidding
? Laughter rose up out of her again. She twisted at the sound of foil tearing. A.J. stood next to the bed and rolled the condom down his cock. He glanced up, meeting her eyes with a slow grin of his own.

“Did I mention what a genuine pleasure is to meet you, ma’am?” The slow, languorous cowboy drawl whispered from the rugged, hard Marine mouth. All of her sexual fantasies were rolled into one, living breathing—and thank God—hard man.

“You might have skipped that part.”
These things only happen in books—real life romance is so much messier than this…why the hell am I analyzing
?

His eyebrows lifted as he strode toward her, purpose and determination radiating from every step. He guided his cock to the entrance of her sex and pushed in a tantalizing inch. “Then let me correct that oversight right now.”

She didn’t need any urging to lean her upper body forward and push back until he filled her. The trembling inside increased three-fold.

“It is my genuine pleasure,” he teased her, thrusting with each word. “To meet you.” He retraced his path down her front and found her clit, and she forgot anything as he drove her over the edge into a climax.

“So why the Marines?” She sat cross-legged on the bed, nibbling a sandwich. Her cheeks were rosy, a beautiful shade against all that creamy skin.

A.J. thought they were done after the bar, but she pushed him back toward the bed, food forgotten and teased his cock with her mouth until he came in self-defense. Three rounds in five hours and he wanted her again. He reached over to wipe a spot of mustard from the corner of her mouth with his thumb and sucked the spicy flavor between his lips.

“It was the right thing to do.” He shrugged. “My grandfather served, and his father and his father before him. Far as I know, it’s been a family tradition since the French and Indian wars. The only reason my dad didn’t was his asthma.”

The food spread out between them, like a picnic on the bed. They were both naked, and he appreciated the unabashed freedom to look at her breasts. They rose and fell with every breath. Her full, dusky nipples beckoned him, but he forced himself to let her eat before he took his time exploring every reaction.

She’d mentioned fantasies, and he had the inexplicable urge to fulfill every single one of them.

“That’s kind of sweet, to have a family legacy like that.” She leaned sideways, stretching out to reach for her bottle of water. His cock twitched, rousing slowly. She was a lovely woman, soft and curvy in all the right places.

“It is what it is, Sheri. It was the right thing to do. I enlisted, I trained, I served, and now I'm home.” And that summed up his military life. Granted, it didn’t mention the guys or the friendships, but his grandfather told him once that the men he served with in Korea were men he could rely on. He could call them anytime he needed something—whether it was a favor or just someone to jaw with—and they would be there. A.J. had attended a reunion with his grandfather in the early nineties. All those men in their sixties and seventies tossed back beers, laughing, reminiscing, and picking up right where they’d left off forty years before as though it were yesterday rather than decades in the past.

Brotherhood, his grandfather told him, didn’t end with a war or an honorable discharge. He hadn’t truly appreciated what that meant until now. But like his grandfather, A.J. knew the men in his unit were a phone call away. If he needed them, they would come. The same was true for him.

“And you were done. That’s why you came home?”

“More or less. I left to defend this way of life and now I’m home to enjoy it. Work on my ranch, fix it up and go back to training horses. If the guys need me, they know where I am.” He accepted the water bottle she offered him, washing down his own meal. Content, he sprawled on his side and propped his head on his hand, studying her.

“Can I ask you a question?” Shyness surrounded the question; she could ask him anything she wanted. He would have to show her that.

“Anything.”

“What was it like? Afghanistan…Iraq?”

“Hot. Monotonous most days, and lonely, and it could all change in a moment. You could go from routine to hellish in the space of a few seconds.” Odd to think he missed it, the routine of the unexpected firefights. But he didn’t miss the injuries or the surge of adrenaline pumping fear out of his system, knowing it only took one stray bullet—one misstep—and he would be in the coffin they saluted or the stretcher they carried off the field.

He was one of the lucky ones. His scars were all on the inside.

“Were you in both?”

“Mostly Iraq. I did a lot of supply runs, boring job, but necessary. Well, boring until it wasn’t.” He tipped the bottle of water up and took a drink.

“I’m sorry you had to go.”

Capping the bottle, he set it aside and caught her hand in his, Interlacing their fingers, he squeezed comfortingly. “I’m not. I met some great people—I learned a little Farsi. I learned what it’s like to truly have nothing and to hold a family together in spite of political and militant turmoil everywhere.”

Sadness etched into the lines around her eyes. He didn’t want her to only think of the bad, he saw some of the news stories reported from overseas. They barely skimmed the surface of everyday life.

Lifting her fingers to his lips, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Last year, I was running supplies from Baghdad to Mosul. On the route, there’s this really small town—I mean small—like five-houses-and-some-goats small. They didn’t have any businesses or even a real road besides the main stretch we drove. But every time we went through, we saw the kids out there playing. They had this really ratty soccer ball, and they kicked it, laughed, and played. They always cleared the road when we came through, staring at us with these wide, solemn eyes. Except for the kid with the ball, he waved. I got used to seeing him.” He could almost feel the searing heat, the fifty pounds of gear weighing him down and taste the sand and sunshine like grit on his tongue.