Hard Way (16 page)

“I would have felt the need to.” She swallowed again. “Before.”

“Sunny, I doubt you’ll ever head down to the pinball arcade on your own, but at least you know that I like to. Just…give me that much, at least. Some more honesty.” It was his turn to pause, because his breath was like a branding iron in his chest. To admit even this much vulnerability aloud was a tough task. “What do we have to lose?”

She’d already threatened the worst. She could take him to a masochism festival and tell him to walk over red-hot coals. Gladly. It would be a welcome change from the constant fear eating at his guts.

“Give me a minute,” she said, with one last glance toward his morning hard-on.

Then she was gone, into the bathroom. The shower hissed on.

Dash grabbed clean briefs and went to freshen up in the half-bath across from the office neither of them ever used. Cold water helped calm his blood. He rubbed his neck and chest and down his legs with strokes strong enough to add pink to his skin. After managing to stave off his erection, he pulled on his underwear and ran a comb through his hair. Regulation length meant it was fairly easy to maintain, but it still stuck up in odd places.

Took her down. Rode her viciously.

Dammit.

So much for getting things under control.

For the rest of the morning, he and Sunny circled one another like binary planets, drawn together by one magnetic force. What next?
What next?

She busied herself in the kitchen, making coffee and throwing a bagel in the toaster. Navy-blue business suit. Matching heels. Perfectly braided hair. Dash tugged the zipper at the throat of his flight suit. He’d be in the air in four hours. That thought, along with the ratcheting tension, sank rocks into his stomach. He didn’t toast a bagel for himself.

Sunny sat to eat and flip through the mail. He could only stare, as confused now as she’d looked upon waking.

“You don’t seem like you expect me to…jump on you.” He sat across from her at the table. Although he held a cup of coffee, he had yet to drink from it. “Not this morning. Why not?”

“Maybe we’re both learning that there’s a time and a place. Some boundaries. Unless you want me to lose my job, you’ll lay off the morning takedowns.” She pushed her plate away and shrugged. “If you really
do
want me to lose my job, we’re at an impasse.”

Dash crushed his back teeth together. The best he could do was reply with a tight nod.

“Besides,” she said, almost tentatively. The way she reached across the table and looped her index finger through his was
definitely
tentative. But it was also touching—touching that she’d initiated. “I can tell.”

“Tell? What?”

“When you’re watching me. When you’re…stalking me.”

A primal surge zinged through Dash’s body. Heart. Head. All four limbs. He was erect in an instant.

He coughed into his fist. “Christ, Sunny.”

“The hair stands up on my arms, and I get this buzzing tone in my ears. A burst of adrenaline. It’s totally fight or flight, even before I know you’re actually there.”

She’d chanced looking at him, so it was only right that he manned up and met her eyes. “Is that a good or bad thing?”

“Good.” The finger looped with his was their only point of contact, but it was enough to feel how she trembled. “I like the moment when I know. When I know it won’t matter if I fight, but that I’ll fight anyway, and that you won’t stop and how fucking
good
it is that you don’t stop.”

Dash was fighting to see past a gray haze of need, to hear her describe their play from her perspective. He needed to focus. Needed to hear all of it, including how far this extended past the physical—if it did at all.

“Good because of the sex?”

“Good because it’s honest. Those times…you’re
honest
. You know what you want and you take it. You take
me
.” She blinked back a sheen of moisture. “I’m the first thing I’ve seen you want that badly in so long. Maybe since you fought in tournaments. Do you remember how awesome you were?”

His head spun as she switched topics. Didn’t matter. She was quick as a whip, and he needed to keep the hell up. “I remember it sucking when I didn’t have time for it, yeah. But shit, Sunny, I wasn’t awesome.”

She only stared at him. In her eyes he caught a glimpse of how confident he’d once been, and how much she’d adored him. But that didn’t make any sense. He was as confident as ever. No one in the Air Force could beg, borrow or steal a better assignment than he had with the Aggressors. He’d graduated from the Academy with top marks, and he’d flown so many sorties that even his father’s Desert Storm record couldn’t compare. He was thrilled with the successes of his career.

Wasn’t he?

Hell, if he had to ask it of himself…

Sunny gave his finger a squeeze before retreating to the last of her coffee. “You should think about it. Considering what we’ve been doing, maybe it would do you some good.”

“Pinning a hundred-and-five-pound woman isn’t the same as seriously taking up martial arts again.”

“You wouldn’t need to take it up again. You’ve never stopped. But we both know that kicking a bag isn’t the same as real competition.” She smiled one of her quiet, teasing smiles. “Although you know I try.”

“Sunny…” Dash ran a hand over his face. Was she teasing him for fun? Fucking with him for kicks?

Or did she have a real point?

“Liam?”

He put both hands flat on the table and exhaled. She looked at peace for the first time since she’d come home, as if she knew something utterly and completely. Damn, he could use some of that.

“What?”

She stood and crossed to the other side of the table, then kissed the top of his head. “You could take down Eric Donaghue in a heartbeat and you know it.”

There she lingered, behind him and out of sight. Dash closed his eyes, the better to process her simple declaration, and the better to let his other senses take over. She smelled of jasmine and warm woman. She was breathing with calm assurance. Evenly.

Nothing like the erratic tornado racing through his chest.

She turned away to collect her purse and briefcase. “It might be another way to channel whatever you’ve got bottled up inside you. I don’t know what it is or where it comes from, but you need an outlet. I can only afford to sacrifice so many outfits.”

Dash opened his eyes and snapped his head around. He needed to see her expression. What he felt was relief. Pure relief. Because Sunny was smiling.
Definitely
teasing this time.

He had about twenty minutes to get his shit together and go to work, but at that moment he was too scattered to think. That she had opened up so much was a show of faith he hadn’t expected and sure as hell wouldn’t forget. Yet she still hadn’t answered his question about another date. Sex without romance? Was she capable of that? He couldn’t believe it of his Sunny, but then, sex was proving to be the easy part—no matter the violent form it took.

“I’ll think about it,” he said roughly. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I’m often right.” The jangle of her car keys was like a clock striking twelve. Time’s up. This little interlude was over. Even her expression sobered, with a new hint of uncertainty. “As for our date…”

Dash nodded. Hopeful. And really, really curious.

“There’s a Yakshagana performance at the Kannadiga Center on Saturday night. You can take me if you want.”

“I’d like that.”

Maybe he agreed too quickly, because she rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

He stood from the table and met her as she opened the front door. It was another show of faith, his this time, to let her go and hope she’d come home.

“Sunny.” He touched her chin so that she might meet his gaze. “I look forward to it.”

Chapter Sixteen

Sunny didn’t realize she was fidgeting until her iced coffee almost took a header off the table.

Jake reached out to snag it. “Relax, Sunita. Rueland isn’t going to lose the reelection because we can’t find him fifty thousand.”

She shifted her gaze away from the large plate-glass window.
Sure.
Like that was what she was worried about. She managed to nod though. “Considering his backers, finances ought to be low on his list of priorities. He needs to watch who he’s hopping into bed with. The lobbyists on the phone sound entirely too smug for my taste.”

Jake smiled and flipped through a spreadsheet. “You’re cranky because you don’t like being in Vegas near your husband.”

“That’s not true,” she said, before she’d thought it through. A sudden, sharp pain lanced over her right eye. She winced. She rubbed her fingertips over the brow bone, as if she could wish it away.

“So you like being near him?”

If only it were that simple. She did like being near Liam, although her brain rattled upside down when she was in his orbit, trying to figure out what was going on, what he would do next.

What part of him is the truth?

She shook her head. “No, I meant that’s not what I was talking about. I really do wonder what Representative Rueland has going on.”

Jake’s brow wrinkled. He folded his hands on top of the papers sprawled between them. Coming to the coffee shop near the office had been his idea, but it hadn’t helped Sunny concentrate. He leaned closer. Pleasant features pinched with an intensity that reminded her uncomfortably of Dash. “John Rueland would
never
engage in anything untoward.”

Her headache amped up toward a migraine. “He’s
always
focused on the money. Every problem. Every issue. It all boils down to money.”

“For his district.”

She toyed with the green straw sticking out of her iced coffee. “I’m sure you’re right. I know you are. This is just…how politics works. I’ve been slow to catch on.”

What she kept unsaid was becoming more and more apparent.

I’m uncomfortable. Here. This job.

She’d hired on with Representative Rueland because she believed in bringing politics, the law and the people together—toward the better good. Rueland seemed idealistic and devoted to his constituents. She’d wanted to be a part of that. Her family had encouraged her to be a professional, but that path had been up to her. Perhaps she could trace it back to her hard-working immigrant parents, or even to honing her beliefs at Berkeley, but her professional goals hinged on making a difference. Being one of the good guys. She’d thought by joining, she’d be on the good guy’s team. Complete with T-shirts.

Maybe Dash wasn’t the only one who needed a new job.

Since when did he want or need a new job? He was as straight-laced as they came, Academy born and bred. Although, with a pause and cringe, she realized how little he spoke of flying, and how much of it was negative. Lots of “have to” and “gotta do”. Then there were the increasingly terse comments about his father’s upcoming visit. Gene wasn’t Sunny’s favorite person in the world, and she wasn’t his either. For the sake of harmony, she was the good military wife around him, yet the more Liam grumbled, the more difficult that pantomime would become.

Was everything turning fake and plastic? She wanted to check the scrubby trees outside the coffee shop just to make sure something was still real and alive.

Meanwhile, Jake had apparently decided the conversation was finished because he leaned back and reacquired his calm smile. He smoothed his maroon tie. “I tell you what. I’ll sit down with Rueland at dinner on Monday and express your concerns.”

She shook her head. “No, don’t do that. He’ll only be disappointed in my lack of trust.” The import of his sentence caught up with her. “Wait. Monday? Is he coming into Vegas?”

His hair looked casual, slightly tousled and aimed toward the center of his head in something that wasn’t quite a faux-hawk. He used enough product so that nothing moved when he shook his head. “I’m flying down to Miami to prep him for that photo op with the vice president. I got notice today.”

Relief.

Pure, sweet relief flowed through her veins and made her slump in her seat. How messed up was that? She couldn’t wait for Jake to head out of town.

Great.

Naturally, Jake wasn’t stupid. His features folded into disappointment and sadness. He took one of her hands between his. She let him—didn’t pull away or fight, because she knew that he’d let her go. If Sunny didn’t want her hand held, he wouldn’t force her. He wouldn’t dream of it.

Not like Liam. Her husband. Who at least could take what he wanted from Sunny, if not the rest of the world. She liked it too much when she could be that for him, though that would never be enough to hold them together.

She focused on her tan hand between both of his big ones. “I know this has been more demanding than you expected,” he said in that calm tone of voice she halfway adored.

“That’s an understatement.”

“I’m left to assume he hasn’t agreed to a divorce yet?”

She shifted on the wooden seat. That was one way to put it. She only managed to shake her head.

“I know I agreed to wait and be patient. And I will. But you’ve made that more difficult when you won’t go out for drinks with me.”