Feel the Rush: A Hard Feelings Novel (InterMix) (7 page)

Reed laughed, he loved a woman that could put away food like a grown-ass man. “Good?”

“Uh-huh,” she mumbled and nodded her head, lifting her hands to cover her full mouth as she laughed. Reed was still watching her a few moments later when she swallowed, wiping her mouth off with a paper towel. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, you’re looking at me like I just grew a second head, so spill.”

Reed released a long, low sigh mixed with a deep chuckle. “I like watching you eat.”

Meagan smiled knowingly, picking up her burrito, slowly bringing it to her lips, and bit off another impressive-size bite.

Reed blinked his eyes slowly and shook his head. This damn woman seemed to enjoy testing his self-control. “Tease,” he admonished, but the word came out in a throaty laugh—and sounded more like a plea than a warning.

Meagan gave him smile around a mouthful, reaching out the burrito for him to take. “Want some?”

She didn’t know how badly he wanted some, but not the fucking burrito.

“Nah, you seem to enjoy it.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said before taking another bite.

Reed dug into one of the tacos. “So this roommate of yours, what’s up with her? I kind of got the impression she wanted to twist my testicles off when I talked to her earlier.”

Meagan erupted in a fit of laughter that was contagious. Her hand covered her mouth as her small body shook and her eyes disappeared beneath her lashes, and Reed couldn’t help but join in. The sound of their combined laughter echoed through the empty apartment. Meagan lowered her head to her lap as her laughter tapered off. When she lifted it again she wiped the tears that had accumulated and sighed.

Reed had a pain in his ribs, the good kind that you only got on the rare occasions that you laughed so hard it hurt. He missed laughing like that, it had been a very long time since someone made him laugh that way, but now that he had, he welcomed it. “Something funny I should know about?” Reed asked, his eyes wide as he watched Meagan’s face slowly return to its original color.

She sighed again and smiled. “She is a spitfire. You might need to watch out for her. She may be tiny but she is tough as nails and if you piss her off I have no doubt in my mind that she would, in fact, attempt to twist off your testicles.”

“Well, fuck. What did I do to piss off the fire-breathing dragon?”

She pressed her lips together, suppressing another laugh as the corners of her mouth twitched. “She’s not pissed, she wouldn’t have let you in if she was. She’s plotting.”

“Plotting?”

Meagan rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Yes, just ignore her.” She pushed the nearly demolished burrito aside and stretched her perfectly tanned legs out in front of her. Yes, self-control was something of his she seemed to push, knowingly or not.

“If you say so, sugar.”

“There you go with the ‘sugar’ again.”

“What? You don’t like it when I call you ‘sugar’?” He lowered his voice and made sure to let his thick Alabama accent stroke his words before they left his mouth. Why? Because he could tell she liked it—he could tell by the way her face heated up and her legs brushed together, and anything he could do to get that kind of reaction from her, he would do it.

A soft flush spread across her cheeks, only making her look that much more beautiful. She didn’t come across to him as someone who got embarrassed easily, but he was definitely doing the job nicely.

“It doesn’t bother me either way,” she said, meeting his eyes directly. There was that confidence he liked. Her face may say she was affected, but her eyes—they weren’t going to tell him so easily, and that was okay, he liked a challenge. “I do like your accent though, where are you from?”

Yep, that Southern drawl hadn’t let him down yet. “I’m from Birmingham. What about you,
sugar
?” He intentionally let the sound of the
r
fall short.

Meagan cocked her head, her mouth parting in a slight smile. “I’m from everywhere.” She lifted her finger and pointed to herself. “Army brat.”

“Oh yeah? You been stationed here with your family before?”

She shook her head and picked up her drink. She pressed it to her mouth, brushing her bottom lip across the rim of the cup, and then she pulled her bottom lip into her mouth, sucking off the salt before she took a drink. Reed needed that bottom lip in his mouth. He wanted to lean in and pull it between his teeth, then suck on it until it was swollen, and if she kept doing little things like that he might just do it.

She lowered the cup from her mouth and paused. Her head tilted a little to the side, her eyebrows furrowing before she blinked and continued to set her cup down. Reed was pretty sure he had the hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar expression on his face and she more than likely knew why. “Nope, this is the first time I’ve ever been to Georgia,” she said, letting him off the hook from his involuntary staring that he couldn’t seem to control.

“And what do you think so far?”

“Well, in the week I’ve been here I haven’t really seen much to gather an opinion. I mean, I like it just fine. It’s beautiful here.”

“Have you ever been white-water rafting? They just opened up an urban course here not too long ago.”

“No, I’ve never been.”

“Oh, I will take you sometime. It’s a blast.”

“Okay, that could possibly be fun.”

Reed flinched. “Possibly? Oh, sugar, you just broke my heart a little.”

Meagan rolled her big blue eyes at him then pushed her bottom lip out in a pout, mocking him. “Do you need a Band-Aid?”

“Ouch, woman,” he said, clutching his chest.

Her lips tightened into a line, and she scrunched her nose, causing her eyes to disappear behind her long lashes. “You just strike me as the type of guy who would take the boat over a waterfall or something equally as insane, just for kicks, and I don’t know how much fun that would be.”

Reed smiled, she had him there—that was exactly something he would do. “Nah, with you, sugar, I would take it easy. That is, unless you like it rough.”

Her eyebrows darted to her hairline and her wide eyes stared at him incredulously.

Reed threw his head back and laughed, he liked this woman. He liked making her blush and he liked shocking the hell out of her, even if he didn’t mean to that time. “Get your head out of the gutter, woman. I was talking about the courses. There are several different levels, and some are rougher than other.”

“Uh-huh. Nice cover.”

“Think what you think, but it’s nice to know where your head keeps going.”

Her mouth gaped open and she made a little noise that caused his dick to twitch beneath his shorts. It was going to be a long night.

Chapter Five

Meagan didn’t know how to respond to that—because he was right. Her head kept going back to that night eight years ago when she’d followed him back to his hotel room like a dog in heat. She had just gotten home from college for the summer, packing with her a broken heart. Her dad was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood at the time and she didn’t know anyone there yet other than the neighbors’ daughter, Courtney, and she was a little on the wild side. Courtney had taken her out to a small hole-in-the-wall bar that played a mix of eighties rock music and country—not the best bar, but there wasn’t much to choose from at Leonard Wood. The atmosphere was mixed, young and old alike, and they sat at the bar as Courtney flirted with the bartender and obsessed about getting out from underneath her parents.

Meagan had made a trip to the restroom and was making her way back to the bar when she ran into Reed—literally. Yes, it was kind of like one of those typical romance movies where the girl runs into the guy and he spills his drink on her and tries to wipe it off with his hand, conveniently brushing over her boobs in the meantime, and when they lock eyes it was all love at first sight, yada, yada, yada. It was exactly like that, minus the whole love-at-first-sight thing. It was more like turned on at first sight. Reed was sexy, and he had this playfulness to him that instantly roped her in—and she needed roped in, she needed the distraction he was so easily giving her. He seemed like the cure-all for her newly broken heart, standing there flirting with her in his worn pair of jeans and solid black T-shirt, (again, typical, and yes, she remembered what he was wearing), his mouth tilting up in that cocky smile, the Cupid’s bow tempting her, just like it was at that very moment.

Needless to say, they both had a little more to drink than they should have had to make morally correct decisions, but at twenty-two, decisions based on morals weren’t high on the priority list. She left with him, and he took her back to his motel room. She had never had a one-night stand before Reed, and she didn’t care. She had just come out of a relationship that left her numb to the idea of caring, and besides, the things he did to her body made any regrets she was afraid she would have later vanish. And she never once regretted it.

She’d anticipated this raw, intense . . . fuck . . . for lack of a better word, but it was anything but that. He was silly and playful. Their foreplay was more wrestling around and flirting, play-bites between kisses, and tickling between undressing. It was lighthearted and fun; and she let him sweep her up and carry her away in it.

The Reed she saw sitting before her now still had that playfulness to him that she adored. But there was a new harshness that hung in his shoulders, like something had eroded away a thin layer of his carefree demeanor and left a rough patch in its place. It wasn’t something that was obvious or noticeable, and she didn’t understand why after only spending such a short time with him back then that she could see this subtle change in him, especially when he didn’t even remember her at all—but she did.

The small amount of silence that lingered between them as Meagan’s mind wandered into the past was strangely comfortable. She didn’t feel the need to fill the quiet with small talk, and the little fact that she was already this comfortable around him startled her. She shouldn’t be getting comfortable or taking walks down memory lane—not with Reed.

She looked over at him and smiled, but he only shifted on his pillow and dropped his head a little. Obviously his mind was working during their little moment of quiet as well. She could feel the shift in his mood like a cloud of smoke was somehow permeating the air around them. It was thick and almost suffocating. His eyes lifted to hers and they were ringed with a sincerity that she had seen earlier today—when he was in the hospital—and she knew what had somehow entered his mind.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked softly.

His finger reached up and stroked his eyebrow. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just wanted to thank you again—for taking care of Brewer.”

Meagan reached over and placed her hand on his forearm and the muscles under his skin tightened. “He’ll be fine. I promise.”

He lifted his lips in an attempt to smile at her, probably more for her reassurance than anything, but they didn’t make it too far before they fell again. “I’ve seen my fair share of injuries. Hell, I’ve been deployed three times and have seen more life-threatening injuries than I can count—but this is different. This is one of my students. I’ve heard the horror stories of jump injuries, and I’ve witnessed a lot of them, but it’s never been this bad. One of my guys has never needed surgery from a jump injury before. It’s my company, they’re my men—if he would have died it would have been my fault.”

She remembered the concern that was engraved on his face when he walked into the emergency room with the medics. He was a completely composed wreck. He was keeping up the facade of the in-control company commander, but when he looked at her, the reflection he shielded behind his eyes slipped away, and she got a glimpse at the distress he was working so hard to hide. It wasn’t like he was just concerned for one of his soldiers, it was like he was hurting with him, fear and anger threatening to consume him—but only on the inside.

“Reed, there’s no way you can possibly blame yourself for what happened. It was completely out of your control, there was nothing you could have done to change the outcome. His chute didn’t open. He just landed wrong.”

“And what if that wrong landing had cost him his life? It’s our job to make sure these guys know how to jump safely, how to land safely. It’s my job.” His eyes went blank as he fixed them on a spot behind her. “It was just a moment, one single moment, but it was the longest fucking moment. . . .”

He finally blinked and pulled his eyes back to Meagan’s and held them with a vise grip that startled her. “Someone’s always to blame.”

Her heart stopped for a moment—the moment he seemed to slip away, his mind traveling somewhere she couldn’t reach. He felt responsible—and that was not a burden he should take on—but there was something else tightening in his jaw, tensing in his muscles—guilt. And if she couldn’t erase the guilt that was eating away at him from somewhere far away, maybe she could ease the guilt that was right in front of her.

“Reed.” She scooted closer to him and grasped his face between her hands, the stubble on his face tickling the skin on her palms. His eyes searched her as she looked at him. He drew his eyebrows together, a small crease forming between his gold eyes. His breathing started to calm as his mind seemed to find its way back to her. “You and your instructors teach these soldiers everything you possibly can to prepare them. But there are things that are out of your control. Once they leave that plane, it’s up to them—and even then things happen. You can’t beat yourself up over this.” He swallowed and shut his eyes briefly. When his lids lifted, his eyes were back on hers, never wavering from the hold they had on her. “He will be fine,” she whispered.

“You’re right. I know, I’m sorry.” He attempted another smile, his face still between her hands. “I didn’t mean to go all mopey on you.”

“You can mope to me anytime.”

His eyes held hers, and in that moment when his guard was lowered and his playfulness was in hiding, she saw the full layer of Reed that he kept tucked tightly away, not just a glimpse, and it was intense and consuming—and intimate.

Meagan cleared her throat and dropped her hands, leaning away from Reed. She had to get out of his stare, out of his reach, because if she didn’t she would give in—and she couldn’t give in. She needed to stick to the plan. She could tell Reed was a great man, and she already knew he was great in other aspects as well, but she also knew that he wasn’t what she needed. And she didn’t need to throw into the mix the little fact that he didn’t even remember who she was. Her ego was already slightly bruised—okay, it was every ugly shade of blue and green and purple there was—she just needed him to leave.

Meagan stood up, picking up the discarded food on the floor, and Reed jumped up after her. “Thank you so much for dinner,” she said, setting the food down on the kitchen counter.

Reed ran his hand over the top of his head, messing up the short cluster of hair, making him seem disheveled and sloppy and, dammit, sexy. His brows pinched together as he watched her quickly pick up their mess.

She started walking toward the front door. He needed to leave. “Next time, I’m buying dinner.”

She felt Reed following close behind her, his body only mere inches away from her back. She wanted to stop. She wanted to feel his chest crash into her. She wanted to spin around and push her breasts against him and feel his large palms splayed across her back. She wanted to feel his annoyingly perfect lips softly smooth over the skin below her ear. And she wanted to reach her hand down and feel the solid length she knew would be beneath his shorts. But she didn’t, and this was exactly why he needed to leave. Her self-control was faltering.

Meagan grabbed the doorknob, and just as she opened the door, Reed’s hand reached above her head and pushed it shut again.

Her head jerked up to look at him and her eyes immediately searched his face—his eyes did the same. “Did I do something wrong?” he said quietly, obviously taking notice of her whiplash mood swing. His body was so close that his chest brushed against her. His arm was still raised, his hand was still pressed against the door, and his head was lowered, looking down at her. She felt consumed by his proximity. He was hovering over her, his expression intense and worried, and all she could think about was him leaning down just a little bit more. . . .

She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “You really don’t remember, do you?” she asked, exasperated.

His eyes narrowed in concentration. “Remember what?”

She pressed her lips together and inhaled deeply, then let out her breath slowly, trying to gain the courage to endure the humiliation that was about to take place. “Me.”

His eyes widened, and small lines formed across his forehead as he looked at her, then a slow, very slow, almost agonizingly slow, smile pulled up on the corners of his mouth. His impish eyes gleamed with mischief.

Ah hell, he remembered.

***

He was a fucking idiot. How in the hell did he not put two and two together and realize that this was Meagan? Well shit, probably because he didn’t remember the name of the girl he slept with on the night before he graduated OBC eight years ago, but still, he knew there was something about her, something his mind just couldn’t grasp. She looked different. Her blond hair had been short and sleek, just below her chin before, now it tumbled down her back and over her shoulders. She had more confidence now, too. The woman he’d met all those years ago was a little shy and unsure of herself—that was definitely not the woman he saw now. Sure, she still didn’t realize how every little thing she did dripped with a sex appeal that made him want to rip the clothes from her body, but the way her eyes were unafraid to meet his, the way her shoulders pulled back straight, and the way she was so relaxed around him was completely new.

Reed didn’t know what to say to rectify the fact that he hadn’t recognized a woman he had had sex with. He knew that was a blow to her ego, and that was the last thing he wanted. He had been just a young, stupid, horny-ass guy who was looking to have a good night before he left. Now that his memory was back in working order, he remembered just how sweet she tasted, he remember just how she sounded when she moaned into his mouth, and he remembered exactly how she felt beneath him.

Meagan didn’t look pissed, and she didn’t look embarrassed, she looked almost hurt—and there was no way in hell he was going to hurt this woman because of his stupidity, especially since he had wanted her since he first saw her that night in the courtyard. There was only one way Reed knew to reassure her.

His hand dropped from the door and he wrapped it around her waist. He almost pulled his hand from her body just so he could do it again, because the surprised little look that crossed over her face was the sexiest damn look she had given him all night.

He pulled her body against him and she sucked in a quick breath—ah yes, he very much liked surprising her. His other hand lifted to her face and he pushed back the damp hair that was resting next to her cheek and his thumb skimmed over the smooth skin and traced her jawline. He leaned over her and his shoulders curled forward as he moved his face in close to hers. Her eyes stayed stoic, locked on his as if she were held in a trance. Her mouth parted slightly, and he could feel the smooth, soft puffs of air that were streaming from her lips, caressing his mouth. He smiled again. “I may not have recognized you, but I never forgot you,” he whispered, and then his mouth crushed against hers before she had a moment to respond.

He expected her to hesitate, to maybe even push him away, but her lips connected with his with a ferocity that caused a deep moan to hum in the back of his throat. Her hands flew to the back of his neck, and he felt the small pinch of her fingernails digging into his flesh as her fingers curled around his neck.

His tongue invaded her mouth, her taste encasing his senses in her sweetness, and it was fucking delicious. Her eagerness was hitting him with a force that would make even the strongest of men weak.

“Hell,” he said against her lips, “I could never forget this.” His fingers reached around and threaded through her wet hair, and he tugged her head back, deepening the kiss.

No, he remembered her perfectly now, and the memory of her naked body pressed against him mixed with the melodic whimpers undulating from her mouth at that very moment had his dick rising.

Her legs seemed to give slightly, and she molded her body to his and he gladly held her firmly to him, supporting her weight as she fit her small body against him. She was sweet—sweet and spicy at the same time. Her soft moans and her body’s gentle delicate reaction to his touch tugged at him, sending a possessive shrill through his body, but the way her mouth moved over his, taking what she wanted from him, the way her nails bit into his skin, and the way she made his own body quiver above her was anything but sweet—it was sexy as hell. How this woman could give him two totally different sensations at one time was testing new waters for him.