“Then I’ll put you back together again,” she promised. “Come with me, Brody.”
He ripped the foil and rolled the condom on while she watched. Slowly, too slowly, he slid back onto the bed, his body covering hers as his legs nudged hers apart to create a place for him. Nothing about him was small, and she had no doubts about the strength or his skill. A big, bad, dangerous man and all hers.
The thought sparked a second, and she ran her hands up his chest as he braced himself with one arm on either side of her. “You can be on top,” he told her suddenly. The offer pulled her inside out. Always thinking about her, making sure she felt safe, confident, and not afraid.
She shook her head because she didn’t have the words to express all the feelings tangling together in her mind. Here—with him—she was home. Connected. “I’m right where I want to be.”
“So am I.” The words were a benediction. He lined his cock up, then pressed in hard. No teasing, no play—just Brody, pushing his body into hers in one long, continuous thrust. It had been over a year for both of them, and he filled her, stretching her to match him. She wrapped her legs around him, battling her body’s aches to meet him, hold him to her.
He didn’t stop moving; however, he found a rhythm that seemed as natural as breathing, every stroke bringing him closer to her, and then his mouth caught hers, and he stole her breath. Fisting his hands in her hair, he kept her head where he wanted it and plundered, his tongue matching his cock’s thrusting motion.
Pinned by his delicious weight, she fought to pull him even closer, and still he didn’t stop kissing her—or maybe it was she who couldn’t stop tasting him. She couldn’t get enough, couldn’t stand any distance. Her breasts were crushed to his chest, and every glide of their movement sent wave upon wave of delicious friction. Twisting his hips, he caught her leg and lifted it higher, then he went deep, every thrust catching her clit and deeper still, as though he were pounding himself into her very pores.
Maybe he was, and she held on as the tension in her coiled so tightly, a spring ready to snap, then her orgasm smashed through her. She screamed his name. His shout joined hers, and the glorious tension threaded his body, turning him to solid steel against her until he drove in once more and stilled.
Tangled together, he began to relax, and he nuzzled her mouth gently as his muscles loosened. Settling, he pressed his face to her throat. She floated there, drifting on a current of peace she hadn’t experienced in far too long.
“Welcome home,” she whispered, and he answered with a gentle kiss. Her Brody was home. Everything would be all right. She could stand anything life threw at her.
She had her Marine.
Brody returned to the bedroom with the beer and a full box of pizza. Shannon lifted her head from the pillow and stared at him. Humor curved her lips, and her laughter was a balm for the soul.
Pretending an affront, he paused and raised his eyebrows. “Something wrong with the pizza you
ordered
?”
“Midnight snack in bed served by a gorgeous man?” She dragged herself up to a sitting position, absolutely unabashed by her own nudity. “Not a damn thing.”
Soft, tousled and smiling was how she should always look. Chuckling, he set the pizza box on the bed and the beer on the nightstand along with the water bottles. “Do you have a preference?” He motioned to the drinks.
“They gave me sedatives.” She pointed to a prescription bottle. “I don’t think I should drink and have those, too.”
Picking up the bottle, he scrutinized the label. “Have you had any today?”
“No. I took them after they brought me back here the first night. I didn’t like how they made me feel.” After opening the box, she selected a slice and balanced it with two hands. It wasn’t remotely warm anymore, but his mouth watered all the same. With a toss, he sent the bottle of sedatives to land in the trashcan on the far side of the room. The rattle echoed loudly.
“Want a beer now?” He didn’t bother to hide his grin at her laugh. In the hours since he’d arrived, her pinched expression had relaxed. She had relaxed.
“Mind if I split yours?” She patted the bed next to her, and he obliged her request.
“Not at all.” He popped the cap off the first one and passed it over. Even after sating his initial lust, his body still stirred at the sight of her taking a long drink. “You should get some sleep.” Uncertain of the time, he glanced over his shoulder at the digital clock face. Barely twenty hundred. He wanted to call Foster, see what the detective learned. Whoever her attacker was, he’d gone from sending notes to trying to take Shannon in a matter of days. Brody didn’t need to be a profiler to recognize the escalation as dangerous and odd.
“I’m not tired— I mean I am. But I’m not sleepy.” She picked a slice of pepperoni off the pizza and turned it over, studying it.
The last thing he wanted to do was douse her simple joy with reality, but the clock on how long he had till NCIS came calling continued to tick. “You up for talking about the letters and the kidnapping attempt?”
“Probably wouldn’t help us if I said I never wanted to talk about it.” She sighed and nibbled another bite. He passed the beer to her to wash it down and waited for her to decide. He didn’t have to wait long. “I don’t understand it.”
“What part?”
“Any of it.” She spread her arms. “Brody, look at me. I’m an artist.” He had a hard time not looking at her. Gorgeous, curvy, and muscled—the perfect example of the feminine form. Strong and delicate, bold and fragile. “Okay, I didn’t mean look at me like
that
.”
“Like what?” Because he could stare at her all day. Leaning in, he nibbled the sauce staining the corner of her mouth, and her lips parted to greet his kiss. Soft, like her, edged with enough demand to send a pulse to his cock and wake him up. The combination of beer, pizza, and Shannon was a heady cocktail.
“Like you want to eat me up,” she said against his lips.
“Hmm, tempting.” But as much as he’d like to keep her in this bed for days, they had work to do. Though keeping her in his bed had its advantages—no one else would get near her.
With reluctance, she settled back on the pillows. “You have to ask your questions.”
“Yeah, babe. I do.” He drained the last of the first beer and then opened a second. “Before Lauren found those letters, had you received others?”
“I have no idea,” she answered immediately, and when he frowned, she continued, “No, I mean it. I don’t really go through the mail often.”
“What do you do with it?”
“With the orders coming in over the last year, I simply haven’t had time.” Finished with her slice of pizza, she accepted the bottle and took a long drink, then the second slice he offered her. She definitely needed to eat more. “So, a lot of times, the mail is delivered and it sits in a pile by the front door until I get to it. I haul it upstairs and leave it on the counter. Jeanine or Henry will come by and pick it up. They deal with anything involving business.”
The couple acted as her agent and business manager. He’d met them briefly during his leave in Dallas the same week he’d spent with Shannon. They were…remarkably unremarkable. “And they hadn’t been by in the weeks leading up to your Boston trip?”
She stretched her leg out, one foot balancing on his calf, and he studied the contrast of her painted delicate toes against his ruddier skin. “You know, they were busy. Jeanine was dealing with the details at the gallery there, and she has other clients. Henry…wait, no. Henry stopped by.”
“When?”
Teeth dragging over her lower lip, she shook her head. “I have no idea. Let me think.” Fortunately, she took a bite of pizza and chewed it with an air of deliberation. Tipping the bottle back, Brody took a long drink. Chances were the detective had already spoken to her manager and agent. They were deeply involved in helping her career. Hell, Jeanine encouraged her to try the service that introduced Shannon to him in the first place.
“I was working on practice pieces. I’d done sketches, and I needed to make the models to see how well the sketches translated to stone. I half-thought I might try woodcarving, but I am just better with marbles and stones. I’d finished Logan’s piece, and I had just started on Matt’s. I had problems really capturing Jethro.” While she spoke, she mimed the motion of carving with her hand. He had to wonder if she was even aware of her actions. “I finished Matt’s piece about four weeks before I went to Boston. His is only the second of the six practice pieces. I didn’t do Rebel’s until last….” Nose scrunched, she looked adorable.
The Rebel piece was one he’d asked her to do, and he’d sent her photographs Rebel’s fiancée had provided. He owed a debt of gratitude to Reb’s case nurse—now his fiancée—but visiting her and Rebel would have to wait.
“So, you’re saying roughly four weeks before you left for Boston. You were in Boston around two weeks, and you’ve been home nearly a week. So, around seven weeks or so since the last time your mail was picked up.”
“Wow. I suck.” Her eyes rounded, and she grimaced before taking the beer out of his hand and drinking.
Chuckling, he waited for her to finish her drink before passing her another slice. “You don’t suck.” Eating two slices in rapid succession, Brody considered what she’d told him. She could have received the letters for weeks. The escalation may not have been sudden. Maybe, instead, it had been a direct retaliation for her failure to act on whatever the writer had wanted her to do. “Tell me about the hotel break-in.”
Wiping her fingers on a napkin, she repeated the details from the moment she and Liam had left the elevator to when security arrived, including how she’d fallen inside and hit her head and the man catching her shoulder with his foot before he grappled with Liam. “But I think he was more interested in getting away than in hurting me.”
Maybe. And if she’d been alone when she’d returned to her hotel room? If Liam hadn’t insisted on accompanying her to her door? “Did Liam take you to your room every night?”
“No, actually, I had been giving him a hard time for insisting the night of the gallery opening, but I was really tired, too. He’s a good friend, he had to rescue me from three conversations where the people were pretty pushy, and I know I was swaying on my feet after all was said and done.”
“Your normal pattern included driving back to the hotel and going up alone?” So, Liam’s presence could have thrown a wrench in the person’s plans. Making Boston the first attempt, which would explain the preparation for hitting her loft in Dallas. If he’d already been interrupted once, he wouldn’t have wanted a second problem.
“Brody?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“I don’t understand why anyone would do this to me. Lauren said she had her dealings with stalkers. That makes sense. She’s an actress. People saw her in movies and on television. Nobody sees me. I’m in my workshop ninety percent of the time.”
“But
Her Marine
made a name for you. It’s been a big hit, right?” She’d sent him some clippings from a couple of magazines and the paper. “You raised money with the showings. Luke mentioned you’d done a donation, too.”
Cheeks flushing pink, Shannon nodded. “But those were always about the piece. Not me….” She looked at her hands, which she’d begun to twist together.
“What?” He nudged her gently.
“One interviewer wanted to know my inspiration, and I talked about you. A lot.” With a wince, she stole a glance at him, and her blush deepened.
Brody smiled. “I have no problems with you talking about me.”
“Well, I may have gone on at length about how noble and brave and handsome and sweet you are.” Shyness rippled through her expression, and she laughed. Pride fisted in his chest, and he caught her chin with a finger and nudged her gaze back up again.
“Thank you,” he said. No way she could understand what her adoration meant to him or that she thought of him at all. “Do you want to know something utterly unrelated to any of this?”
“Yes,” she said with a nod then caught his hand in hers. He liked the way her hands felt. They were scraped at the moment, nails split and a little rough from working with her stone. But they were also soft and feminine, as gentle in their strength as she was.
“For the last fifteen years, the Marines were my family. My only family. I signed up the day after my eighteenth birthday. If I hadn’t needed my high school diploma, I would have hitchhiked my way to the boot. Sergeant Messer knew it, too. He was the recruiter I met during career week. Tough son of a bitch. Hard as nails and had no tolerance for attitude, but if you asked him for questions or help? He was right there. He knew my situation, met my foster folks, and sat me down and said, ‘Finish school, get your diploma, play it straight, and then you go Marine, and you go hard.’” Damn, he hadn’t thought of Messer in years. “He promised to have my back, and he did. It was a shit three months between the day I signed up and the day I walked across the stage with my diploma. Messer sat right there in the audience. He took me out for dinner afterward, and the next day, he drove me to the airport and put me on a plane.”
“He sounds wonderful.” She tightened her grip on his hand, and Brody tried to relax his fingers. His knuckles had gone white.
“Yeah, well, not sure he’d like that description. But he was there when I graduated boot. Slapped me on the shoulder and then congratulated me because I’d qualified for OCS—Officer Candidate School. Said he expected the next time he saw me, he’d be saluting me.” Lifting their joined hands, he brushed a kiss to her knuckles. She really had done a number on them. Closing the pizza box, he set it aside then pulled her over into his lap.
Cuddling with Shannon had to be the best part of being home. No matter how brief his sojourn would be, he planned to touch her often. “My point is,” he said as she settled her head on his shoulder. “Messer was the only guy on my side, and then I graduated OCS and received my first orders. I met Luke and, later, Logan and Damon. Zach, too. Those guys are family. Matt came into the unit later, so did James. But Messer was first. I watched a lot of the guys around us have to say goodbye to their families, their loved ones when we shipped out. Never had anyone out there been waiting for me. Sometimes I think it was easier. Luke had his dad in the Corps. He was over there in the thick of it with us, but you know he left a girl.”