Warrior in Her Bed (6 page)

“Are you sure?” Johnny asked, wanting to be positive that she understood the implications of the question by firmly guiding one of her hands toward the rock-hard bulge between his thighs.

Annie's eyes widened. Her own sexual experience was limited. Clearly Johnny was more generously endowed than any man she had been with before. And although it suddenly occurred to her in addition to complicated emotional considerations she might not be physically up to the task, the roaring in her ears assured her that it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the compelling need she felt to join with this man in the most intimate way.

To unite her body with his.

“I'm sure,” she lied, closing her eyes and pulling Johnny's head toward a kiss that was certain to change the course of destiny.

J
ohnny's lips covered hers, sending Annie into a free fall that left her so dizzy she could do little but hang on to the strong column of his neck for fear of flying right off the face of the planet and entering uncharted space. When his tongue stroked hers, demanding access to her very soul, she put up no resistance. Rather she gave as good as she got and was rewarded for her efforts with the sound of a masculine moan against her lips. Trembling in his arms, Annie succumbed to the realization that she had never in her whole life experienced such a kiss.

It was the kind of kiss a girlfriend might describe to another over coffee as knocking her socks off. Considering the fact that Annie was about to lose a whole lot more than just her stockings, Johnny's kiss was appreciably more powerful than anything she could hope to put into words. Something about the
exposed back of this man's neck brought out the primal in her. The feel of closely cropped hair along his neckline was incredibly sensual as she continued upward, running her hands through his silken thatch of black, black hair. Clinging to him, Annie gave herself permission to revel in the heady sensations of the flesh without regard to any emotional consequences.

When he finally broke that kiss, Johnny was breathing hard. He paused to study her as if looking for the reserved teacher he had taken to the powwow. Who was this wanton creature that had switched places with her? Surprised by the intensity of the chemistry between them, he sought answers in eyes the color of cornflowers.

Those eyes shimmered with undisguised longing. Annie instinctively understood that from this point onward there would be no backing down. Silently praising herself for having enough self-control not to rip Johnny's clothes off him right there in front of the living room's picture window, she decided against giving any passersby a cheap thrill. Somehow she managed to disengage herself from Johnny's arms and attempted to stand up. The light-headedness that forcefully set her back down upon the couch had absolutely nothing to do with low blood pressure.

Or cold feet.

It had everything to do with the enormity of the step she was preparing to take. Steadying herself against Johnny's hard chest, she asked for his help. He was on his feet in an instant, pulling her gently up beside him. Taking his hand she led him down the hallway to her bedroom.

The trip took no longer than eternity.

 

To Johnny the step across the threshold covered the span of two very different worlds.

A yellow coverlet on Annie's bed matched the curtains fluttering against a partially open window. Johnny blinked his eyes against the cheerful color. Feeling out of place, he couldn't help casting himself as some kind of dark interloper against the forces of light: a native version of Darth Vader forcing himself upon sweet, innocent Pollyanna.

Correction: Polly-Annie.

An antique brass headboard gleamed beneath the sunlight spilling into the room. In the light, Annie's hair formed a luminous halo about her face, making her seem all the more angelic. Flushed with the prospect of making love to him, her skin glowed. Her bright eyes glistened with vulnerability.

Losing himself in those eyes, Johnny felt something hard inside him crack open. Like a baby bird poking though the shell that had protected it so very well against the outside world, it was a feeling that refused to be contained or repressed. Johnny wasn't sure that he even wanted to so much as acknowledge the emotions that he had deliberately put aside such a long time ago, let alone resurrect them. The thought of opening himself to the possibility of actually caring for a woman beyond the bedroom was unnerving. Frightening. He thought he might just as well rip open old scars with a bowie knife to probe the wounds that time refused to heal as subject himself to such certain heartache again.

All of a sudden he was transported across time and space. Back in uniform again, he saw himself as a green recruit separated by an ocean from the country
he had pledged to protect. All that connected him to everything he held dear was a letter from home. He held it reverently in his hand before opening it. He was not been prepared for the words written by the fickle fiancée who had promised to marry him when his tour of duty was over. She had found someone else and hoped Johnny wouldn't take it too personally. It was a scene immortalized on a film that periodically ran through Johnny's mind whenever he needed a reminder to never again play the part of a fool.

How hopelessly naive he had been, leaning up against the PX, holding his heart in his hands for everyone to see and reading the words forever carved upon it. Her letter began with two little infamous words:

“Dear John…”

All these years later the memory was almost enough to send Johnny running from Annie's cozy bedroom without so much as stopping to explain the vow he'd made to himself that day. A vow to never let himself become so emotionally susceptible to another woman for as long as he lived.

All thoughts of retreat disappeared in an instant, when Annie startled him by taking charge of the situation. Playfully pushing him down on the bed, she proceeded to divest herself of her shirt. The moment she pulled that demure little T-shirt over her head and tossed it his direction, Johnny was her willing prisoner.

Propping a lacy pillow sham behind his head, he settled in for the show of his life. Whoever would have guessed that behind the face of innocent, shy Polly-Annie beat the heart of Gypsy Rose Lee? That
she would actually strip for him came as more than a mild surprise. One that aroused and tested the limits of his endurance beyond anything the Special Services had ever required of him.

Dropping a skinny bra strap down to her elbow, Annie flung a provocative moue over one shoulder. Had she not seen such pure male appreciation reflected upon Johnny's angular features it was likely that she would have immediately dropped all pretense of being a sensuous vamp and crawled right back inside herself. Whatever it was about Johnny Lonebear that brought out the temptress in her was as intoxicating as fine wine. As compelling as an addict's need for a fix.

Annie felt heady with a sexual power that she hadn't realized she possessed. A moment later her bra and jeans came off in an equally entertaining fashion. Before she quite knew what had happened, Annie was standing in the middle of her bedroom wearing nothing but a skimpy pair of panties.

Fearlessly facing the sexiest man on earth.

His candid admiration made Annie feel no less than a goddess. Removing her hands from where they covered her breasts, she peeled off the last of her underwear and sidled over to the edge of the bed. There she flipped back the comforter, abandoned her more daring alter ego and dived for cover.

Rolling to her side, she turned to Johnny and breathlessly informed him between the safety of clean sheets, “It's your turn now.”

Worked into a quiet frenzy by her performance, Johnny didn't need to be coaxed. Nor did he unduly bother dragging out the process of getting undressed. In less than a minute he was buck-naked and proudly
displaying the impressive state of his arousal. Annie was only momentarily perplexed when he stopped to retrieve something from his pants pocket. Watching him put on protection a moment later, she was grateful for his presence of mind.

Obviously, her own mind had taken a vacation from common sense.

She blamed that on the fact that Johnny was such a splendid-looking man. The way his dark skin shone in the afternoon sunlight reminded Annie of the ancient statues she had studied in her college art classes. He looked like Mars, the god of war, cast in bronze. And like that fearsome warrior, Johnny's skin bore the signs of battle.

A nasty gash at the base of his collarbone looked an awful lot like a knife wound. Had it been but an inch closer to his jugular, Annie suspected it might well have cost him his life. A frightful looking rosette scar below his ribs had no twin, making her shiver to think that was where a bullet had entered and never exited. Wondering if any shrapnel was still lodged in his back, she contemplated how close it had come to missing any vital organs. After witnessing his reticence to publicly acknowledge his distinguished service record, Annie couldn't bring herself to ask how he had come to be marked by the ravages of war.

Tears clouded her vision.

Wordlessly Johnny lowered himself onto the bed beside her. Annie opened her arms to him. Her heart could do no less.

Tenderly kissing the pale raised rope of the scar along his collarbone, she validated the sacrifice he made for his country. For her behalf—and for the
behalf of every consenting adult who was free to spend such a perfectly lovely Saturday dancing and eating and celebrating and making glorious love without giving a second thought to the freedom they enjoyed and all too often took for granted.

Johnny flinched beneath her tender ministry, giving the distinct impression that he did not want her lingering over his wounds. Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled Annie over so that she was on top of him. Her hair formed a shimmering curtain that framed both of their faces and blocked out the rest of the world. The sensation of bare flesh against bare flesh was heavenly. As their lips came together, the restraint both of them had managed over the course of the day was shattered.

The urgency in their lovemaking defied the limits of logic. Theirs was an insatiable hunger that only deepened with the attempt to satisfy it. He tasted of dark chocolate, sinfully bittersweet. She of spun sugar. Like cotton candy that melts in the mouth almost before it can be savored, neither one could seem to get their fill of the other.

Lightly stroking the sides of her breasts, Johnny feasted his eyes upon their perfect fullness. Evoking a whimper for his effort, he languorously moved his hands over the rest of her body, taking care to appreciate all her womanly curves. Gently, he lifted her hips in order to position her just right, giving her the chance to take only as much of him as she could handle.

Annie's breath shuddered as her body tensed in anticipation. Though not a virgin, her sexual experience was hardly what one would call extensive. It was not easy for her body to adapt to the demands
of such a well-endowed man. She watched in fascination as Johnny's eyes darkened to an impossibly even-deeper color. The expression on his face wavered somewhere between agony and ecstasy as she took her own sweet time adjusting to the hard length of him. It became quickly apparent that her small, instinctive movements drove him right to the edge of self-control.

“Do you have any idea what you're doing to me?” Johnny asked through clenched teeth.

“I hope so,” Annie answered in a whisper that called undue attention to just how unsure of herself she was.

Johnny responded with a kiss that took any doubt away about whether she was going to be able to pleasure him. Feeling as if she was standing at the edge of a precipice, Annie instinctively dug her fingernails into his flesh, mindlessly tried to hang on, not realizing that she was actually pushing him closer to the brink. When he called out her name, it echoed like a sacred song carried on the wind.

Annie could only answer by burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder and truly letting herself go for the very first time. As the world fell away beneath her feet, and shudders rocked her body, Johnny voluntarily stepped over the edge of that cliff with her. Rather than being dashed upon the rocks below as one might expect, they were magically carried to a point far above the world where nothing but the sublime existed. Reaching their peak together, the cosmos was forever altered by the intensity of a passion that was to have cataclysmic aftershocks.

 

A few short hours later Annie woke up in a tangle of legs and arms and sheets—and emotions. Her eye
lids fluttered open. She took a moment trying to figure out why she happened to be in bed at this unusual time of day. A sweet soreness in her body gave her the answer she sought, gently reminding her that she was a woman who had just experienced the most incredible sex imaginable and couldn't bring herself to regret it. Luxuriating in the warmth of the hard, masculine body next to hers, she stretched languidly and gave Johnny a generous smile.

He was awake already, studying her as if she were the enemy rather than the sexiest thing he'd ever seen. Her tousled hair cascaded over one bare, pale shoulder calling out to be kissed or caressed.

“Hi,” Annie mumbled, finding her voice every bit as heavy and resistant as her limbs.

Finding her voice as enchanting as a siren's and doing his best to resist it, Johnny grumbled back. “Hi, yourself.”

Puzzled by his mood, Annie reached out to trace the outline of his lips with her index finger. All efforts to replace his scowl with a smile were rebuked as he deliberately drew away.

Stung, Annie made an effort to cuddle. Again she was rebuffed by his cold reaction.

Determined not to be ignored, she demanded to know, “What's wrong?”

What's wrong, Johnny wanted to tell her, is how right you feel in my arms, how complete I feel with you, how happy you make me feel. And how very much I distrust this wonderful, fleeting feeling.

What he actually said instead was, “What's wrong is this whole thing.”

Feeling hopelessly inarticulate, he gestured to the
ceiling as if to encompass their whole shaky relationship.

“Oh,” Annie said, dragging the word out so that it sounded rather like the air being let out of a tire.

Of all the scars that she had tended to, Annie realized she had somehow managed to overlook the worst one of all. Leaning up on one elbow, she bent down to kiss the invisible one behind which Johnny's heart was beating. She felt it skip a beat.

Recalling how he had suggested that they take things one step at a time, Annie decided that what had been good advice earlier in the day seemed even more appropriate now.

“Don't worry,” Annie hastened to reassure him with a confidence that she did not feel. “I don't expect you to feel any special obligation to me because of what's happened. I'm a big girl, and I can take care of myself. If you want to simply pretend that nothing happened between us, I think I can probably manage that. This doesn't have to affect our working relationship, if that's what you're worried about.”