HeatedMatch (10 page)

She gripped the doorframe, her fingernails marking the wood.
Adam’s attention suddenly turned from his own reflection and caught her stare.
Their gazes locked and crashed in an exchange so heated she was surprised the
mirror didn’t shatter.

She wanted to lick him, run her tongue along the grooves of
his abdominal muscles. She’d walk over to him, pull her t-shirt over her head
and press her bare breasts to his glistening back, then run her hands around
his front to rub his nipples. He’d turn in her embrace and bend his head…

“Sis!” Chase’s voice boomed over the music’s steady thump
and knocked her out of her wicked fantasy. Out of the corner of her eye, she
saw Adam go back to his biceps curls, and she forced a smile on her face for
her newfound brother.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she shouted. “I have too many
questions.”

Chase opened his mouth to reply. Whatever he said was lost
as Loren’s attention was caught by a clang of steel on steel. Adam had slammed
down his weights and was making his way over toward her. As soon as he reached
her, he tugged on her arm and turned toward the weight room exit. She whipped
her head toward him with a nasty setdown for manhandling her, but closed her
mouth when she saw the look in his eyes. One glance and Loren knew her arousal
was not the only one spiking. She allowed him to escort her from the room and
they walked silently outside and down one of the long gravel paths. Finally,
she broke the silence.

“I thought you were ignoring me.” She tossed off the
flippant comment, but truth be told, it felt nice to walk alone in the sultry
summer air with him. Maybe too nice.

“Honestly, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. I can’t
seem to help myself around you. I should be back in the weight room, but
instead I’m out here. With you. Wanting to touch you so damn badly. Plus, why
the hell are you parading around in a nightshirt with no pants on?”

She paused as his admission sank in and her arousal spiked
even higher.

He frowned at the ground. “I need to cool down. Let’s go to
the pool.”

“Okay,” she said, agreeing, though slightly annoyed by his
behavior. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind. One minute he was foisting her
off on Chase and the next he was physically demanding private time. What was
his deal? He had the home court advantage growing up on this campus and knowing
about the whole genetic match breeding thing. One would think he’d be pumped
his turn had finally arrived. Instead his angst had her emotions bouncing like
a yo-yo and she wanted to know why.

Though, to be fair, it wasn’t as if she was the picture of
sanity when it came to him. Her body panted after his while her mind rationally
knew she wasn’t ready to commit her life to a man she’d known less than
forty-eight hours. And yet, she’d gone twenty-seven years without ever feeling
this kind of connection with another human. That had to play a factor.

Shep had asked her to stay for two weeks. She could do that.
Besides, they had a close connection to the kidnapping and she could use them
as a source, something even Pulitzer Derrick couldn’t do. Speaking of…she had
to call Derrick tomorrow and her boss to let them know she’d be using vacation
days.

Night closed in on them as they strolled in the muggy summer
air and an owl hooted off in the distance, accompanied by a chorus of crickets.
The night remained muggy. Here and there fireflies announced their presence
with bright-green flashes of light.

“Ooh, fireflies,” she said. “They’re hard to spot in my
neighborhood. It’s too urban and well lit at night.
Now
it is officially
summer. Did you used to catch them and put them in jars as a kid?”

He smiled almost wistfully. “Of course. But we were so poor,
we actually tried to fill our jars to use as a lantern.”

She turned to better see his face. “Why were you poor? I
thought you grew up here? Doesn’t your dad live on campus?”

“Yeah, he does,” he admitted. “But I didn’t grow up with
him. I lived with my mom somewhere else.” Something about his hard expression
translated, so she let the topic drop.

Within minutes she smelled the chlorine and saw the
illuminated turquoise glow of an Olympic-size pool. Adam toed off his sneakers
and dropped into the deep end, clothes and all. She shivered as a few stray
water drops splashed onto her ankles and slid down to her feet. His dark head
resurfaced and shook water in every direction.

“Come in. The water feels great,” he said.

“I have no suit.” She made her way carefully to the edge of
the pool and sat with her feet dangling in the water. She hid a smile at his
pointed look that reminded her there was no need for modest swimsuits when he’d
already seen the goods.

Adam swam a few lazy laps the width of the pool while she
glanced around the compound, trying to make sense of the buildings hidden in
shadows.

“Do families live in those homes?” she called to Adam when
his head surfaced for more than a few seconds. He didn’t respond and instead
dove deep under water. She craned her neck to watch him, but lost track until a
strong hand gripped her ankle and gave a gentle tug. A look of delicious intent
blazed in his eye.

“Get in.”

“No!”

“Can you swim?”

“Yes, but I don’t…”

He yanked hard and her mouth filled with water as she tried
to tell him she didn’t want to swim, at least not without a suit. All her
reasons for sitting dry poolside surfaced as she came up sputtering for air.
Her large t-shirt rode up, exposing her stomach and borrowed shorts. She used
her elbows to hold it down while she swam to shallow water furiously. Adam swam
in small circles inches away from her, a boyish grin on his face.

“I decided to stop fighting it,” he said. “I want to swim
with you and feel you in the water.”

She stood chest-high in water and glared at him. “I wish
you’d thought of that before dunking me. What will I wear tomorrow? I’m wearing
borrowed clothes as it is.”

He shrugged, swam even closer and stood in front of her. His
warm breath tickled her cheek. “We’ll figure something out,” he whispered.

And then his lips covered hers and she forgot all about wet
clothing. His lips slanted over hers gently, and then with more pressure. His
tongue probed and she opened her mouth to let him in. She moaned as her tongue
rubbed his and wrapped her arms around his neck. When the hem of her t-shirt
floated up to the surface, he took immediate advantage with his hands, branding
her as he cradled the undersides of her bare breasts and thumbed her nipples. A
whorl of sensations enveloped her, the cool pool water, the warm night air and
mostly the muscled wall of man holding her firmly against him.

She threaded her fingers through his wet hair and pulled him
closer to deepen the kiss. The rest of the world disappeared and shrunk to the two
of them. Two bodies tightly entwined, desperately lapping and nibbling at each
other’s mouths. His hands slid around her back and under her shirt. He pulled
her tight against him. Rather than acting as a barrier, her wet t-shirt rubbed
and teased her hardened nipples against his bare chest. Evidence of his arousal
pushed through his loose, nylon gym shorts and abraded her core.

Her desire rose and whirled through her, firing pistons and
tingling body parts that had lain dormant for too long. She’d never been this
hot during a kiss, but then, this was no mere kiss. She wanted to wrap herself
around him and lick him from head to toe and back up again with one big pause
in the middle. The kiss was inevitable as sunrise and just as fiery. She
undulated her hips against his hardness. He grunted and began backing them up
toward the steps in the shallow end of the pool.

He’d heard of fireworks during kisses, but he’d always
relegated that as a myth belonging to romance novels and Disney movies. But as
Adam rubbed his tongue in Loren’s mouth and arched his raging hard-on against
her soaked panties, he believed. Bells rang and lights flashed. He kept kissing
her. Had to, really. Kissing her and getting her to the pool steps so he could
get her damn shorts off and his cock inside her was as necessary as his next
breath. More maybe. Even the back of his head pounded with need. No wait, his
head did pound.

He gave her one last voracious kiss and reluctantly pulled
his head back only to get it smashed forward again.
What the hell?
He
turned and saw a Nerf football and tennis ball floating in the water beside
him. Hoots of laughter and catcalls penetrated his lust-induced, hazy hearing.
Man, he must have been way wrapped up in kissing Loren to have missed Chase and
Gavin along with a few other voyeurs standing around the pool. Gavin must have
thrown the balls. He had excellent aim and was a long-range sharpshooter.

Dammit, he hadn’t meant to kiss her again. He hadn’t meant
to do a lot of things, but as his match, Loren had one heck of a hold over him
that made him lose control and do new things. Like smile. Dunking her in the
pool had been a surprise too. She made him want to play and laugh. One minute
he’d been swimming to cool off, but her trim, smooth legs and bare feet in the
water had proven too hard to resist. He’d needed to touch, so he had. He
definitely hadn’t planned on kissing her, but once she came up for air and her
ridiculous t-shirt floated up revealing her flat stomach, he’d been a goner.

He looked down at her to see her shaking herself back to
full awareness. She looked stunned that her legs were wrapped around his hips
tight as a vise. He wrapped his arms around her tightly and shielded her from
curious eyes. Her breasts in a wet t-shirt were a treat for him alone.

“Perhaps that’s their not-so-subtle way of telling us to get
a room,” she said, her voice muffled as she hid her face from view by burrowing
into his shoulder.

The audience of his friends and comrades reminded him like
nothing else that he had no business kissing Loren yet again. The men hooting
and grinning at the side of the pool were his world and he owed them a hell of
a lot better than what would come if he completed the matched breeding with
Loren. He didn’t need nine months to demonstrate that defective blood ran
through his veins. He didn’t deserve the beautiful woman huddled between his
knees and it would be far kinder to rebuff her now than a year from now or
whenever she gave birth to his child and saw for herself her mistake.

According to his mother, the DNA matching was simply a
catalyst. It didn’t mean true love, and he had no business acting as if it did.
Far better to separate from Loren now than open himself to a world of hurt when
the newness of the match faded. Sure there were examples of matched couples
still living in honeymoon bliss after years, but he could think of examples to
the contrary. Look at Loren’s father. He’d left his match. And Ryan. His wife
had betrayed him so publicly, it was a wonder she hadn’t been tarred and feathered
in the middle of the campus.

“Come on. Let’s go get you out of those wet clothes.” As
soon as the sentence left his mouth, he scowled. Dry. He meant get her into dry
clothes. Not out of her wet ones.

Loren glanced at him, a smile teased at the corner of her
lips. “I think I’ll take dry pajamas, thanks.”

He set her away from him and pushed her down onto a low step
so she’d be shielded by the dark water. He marched up the steps and hoped to
hell his hard-on wasn’t too obvious through his gym shorts. Towels were kept in
a large Rubbermaid trunk near the steps and he reached in and grabbed a stack,
immediately wrapping one tightly around his waist. He made his way back down
the steps to wrap one around Loren’s shoulders. Then he found and met Gavin’s curious
stare. “Can you take Loren back to her room?”

Loren’s hurt look had to be ignored. He focused on Gavin and
tried to reassure him with his forced serene gaze he wouldn’t be attacking him
again for touching his woman. He stood on the pool’s top step, barely feeling
the warm water lapping over his feet and watched Gavin lead Loren back to the
residences. Every instinct in him screamed to follow, but he swallowed hard and
suppressed it.

“That’s it, huh?”

He turned to look at Chase, who watched him with narrowed
eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You’re screwing with her mind,” Chase said. “I don’t like
it.”

He started to retort that it was none of Chase’s damn
business, but remembered Loren was Chase’s sister and had every right to
interfere. Family ties mattered at this military base. Blood lines and
relationships were everything, which was why he was doing one of the hardest
things he’d ever done in fighting his instinct and pushing Loren away. He
nodded in silence at Chase and offered no apologies.

Chase stepped closer and looked as though he were going to
throw an arm around his shoulder, but thought better of it and retreated a
step. “She may be my sister, but you’ve been my friend and like a brother to me
for fifteen years. I know you think you’ve got your reasons for rejecting the
match, but think hard, man. A near-perfect match is the holy grail around
here.”

“Don’t you have someplace else to be?” Adam asked. He
couldn’t go into his reasons for refusing Loren and the match, because no one
else knew the reason for his refusal, his little brother, was still alive.

“Nothing is more important to me than family. I overheard
Shep crowing about how high on the scale you two are. Are you sure you’re ready
to give that up?”

“I have to.”

“So be it,” Chase said. “Your loss, because my sister is a
prize and won’t stay single long.”

Adam walked slowly back to his apartment where he didn’t
even bother drying off before grabbing the box of his mother’s letters from the
dresser and flopped on his bed.

Dear Billy,

Adam smiled a little at the endearment. No one called his
father Billy. Except, apparently, his mother. He shifted in his wet towel and
bent his head again over the box of never-mailed letters from his mother to his
father. Mom had shoved the box in his hands when he left home to go find his
father. He hadn’t read them in a long time, but Loren’s appearance on campus
brought his parents’ doomed match to the front of his brain.