High Octane Heroes (13 page)

It was the scarcity that was killing me. I couldn’t keep wanting more and resenting not being able to have it. I couldn’t keep holding out for someone who didn’t want permanence, or at the very least commitment, as much as I did. Yet I had no right to demand it. What was I left with except heartache?

He unhooked my bra and rolled me over on his lap. My underwear was stripped away, leaving me naked and vulnerable. I burrowed farther into the plump cushions while he slid out from under my legs and struggled to remove his wet jeans.

It was such a gift to look at him naked. Jake’s body was a work of art, sculpted and strong. It deserved to be immortalized in bronze and displayed in a museum somewhere. People should have to pay money to stare at it and be thankful for the experience. I would, even though I was lucky enough to be able to close my eyes and recall it whenever I wanted.

Just when my gaze settled on his equally beautiful cock, he flipped me onto my stomach and straddled my calves. His hands smoothed up the backs of my thighs, stopping at the bottom curve of my ass. “Still hurt?” he asked, humor lacing his voice.

“Will you kiss it and make it better if I say yes?”

Instead, he bit me.

I yelped and tried to roll away, but his hands held my hips firmly in place. Then his tongue was tracing a path up my spine while he worked his fingers into me from behind. I could hold very still then and let him work his magic on my clit. I could hold my breath while he fucked me with two thick digits and made me roll my pelvis to help things along. I could, and I did so he wouldn’t stop. When he had me panting and embarrassingly wet, teetering on the brink of coming, he pulled away again. I clenched my teeth together to trap a needy plea for more.

I heard him rummaging in his wet jeans, cursing a soaked wallet, then the crinkle of the condom wrapper. He jerked my hips up and made me spread my knees so he could fit between them. When I started to push up on my hands, one of his shoved me back down.

Damp clumps of my hair fell across my face, hiding my grin. Yeah, I liked Jake like this. Pushy and demanding. Rough.
Almost greedy. Tonight, I deserved it for scaring him the way I did. And whatever form of erotic punishment he decided to dole out, I wanted all of it.

There was no easing inside my pussy. No, he thrust hard and deep. So deep it hurt a little and forced a groan that started somewhere near the soles of my feet. He pulled out slowly and pushed back in, over and over again, until I felt everything inside me tighten.

Jake knew that too. His fingers pressed into my hips hard enough to leave bruises, and I came in a blinding, shuddering rush. A few more harsh thrusts and he stilled as he emptied inside of me.

Jake’s tight grip on my hips loosened. He leaned down, dropping kisses across my shoulder before he pulled away.

I rolled to my side and watched to see if he got dressed to leave.

But he grabbed a blanket from the back of an armchair and draped it over me, then gathered up his jeans and my underwear and tossed them in the dryer.

“Scoot over,” he said from the side of the couch.

I shifted to the edge so he could spoon me.

Jake brushed my hair aside and kissed my neck. “Why were you hiding at the bottom of the pool, Katie?”

“Have you been inside the house yet? It’s like a three-ring circus in there. I’ll take a classroom full of screaming five-year-olds over the family any day of the week.”

“But why the pool? Why not hide out in here?”

I sighed into the blanket. “You know why.”

His arm tightened around my waist, but he didn’t comment.

“Devin will be mad that you’re not spending any time with him.”

Jake rose up on one elbow, frowning down at me. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

Maybe.
“No. It’s not that. It’s just…” I shrugged and picked at invisible lint on the couch cushion.

“Goddammit, Katie, look at me.” When I did, he pushed harder. “It’s just what?”

Something inside me broke wide open and words came rushing through the crevice left behind. “I can’t keep doing this, Jake. I can’t.” I shook my head and scrambled into the corner of the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest. “I see you every couple of months, we spend hours upon hours in bed—the sex is amazing, don’t get me wrong—but then you leave and take my heart with you when you go, and it’s killing me! I know you’ve never asked me for anything exclusive, and I’ve never pushed you for more either, but I’m ready for that now. Since you’re not, we need to end this.”

“No.”

I fought back tears. “Please, Jake, don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

He scrambled off the couch, holding one finger up. “Wait right there, okay? Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.”

He darted into the pool house’s tiny bathroom and came out with a beach towel wrapped around his waist, then headed to the washroom door.

“Where are you going?”

He left me sitting there in the quiet, wondering. The only thing keeping the room from being completely dark was a small sliver of moonlight streaming in through a gap in the curtains. I watched his shadow pass it before returning with our discarded clothing.

After digging inside his jacket pockets, he came back to me, crouching down beside the couch, and opened his fist. A
small black velvet box sat in his palm.

I swallowed hard. “Jake?”

“I might take your heart with me when I leave, Katie, but you’ve had mine since the first moment I laid eyes on you. And every single time I leave, it’s
my
heart that stays behind with you.”

The tiny box and his face grew blurry before the tears spilled down my cheeks.

“Open the box, honey.”

Leaving it perched in his hand, I slowly lifted the lid. Inside was the most beautiful emerald-cut diamond ring ever made. Just a single stone on a platinum band nestled against a background of onyx. I tore my eyes away from it to look up at him. “Is that what I think it is?”

“I never meant for you to think I was stringing you along all this time. Honestly, I can’t believe my luck that you’ve waited until now to try and give me the boot. So, in answer to your question, I guess it depends. If you think it’s something I’m going to slide on your finger like a placeholder or an appeasement, you’d be wrong. But if you think it’s my way of saying I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life proving it to you, then you’d be right.”

I flung myself on top of him. We landed in a tangled heap on the floor, blankets and towels twisted around our bodies, my cheeks wet with tears and his mouth on mine.

When we finally came up for air, he said, “I pictured this happening a lot differently, you know. I was going to take you out to a nice, romantic dinner with candles and flowers then pop the question when we got back to my place. We’d probably still be naked, though.”

I giggled against his neck while he slid the ring onto my left hand. I held it up, letting it catch fire in the moonlight. “We
generally are naked when we’re together.”

“You had to go and ruin my plan by pretending to be Jacques Cousteau. I think you shaved ten years off my life, so thanks for that too. Might have to take early retirement now.”

The smile faded from my face when he brought up the subject of his work. Well, Jake didn’t see it as work, really. He loved the Navy, loved being a SEAL even more.

“How long are you home for this time?”

He rolled me beneath him, burying his face in the curve of my shoulder. “A while.”

I scowled at the ceiling. “Cute. How long is ‘a while’?”

That mouth of his was magic. The more it moved toward my breast, the less I was capable of coherent thought. “Could be forever,” he mumbled against my skin.

Grasping his face in my hands, I forced him to look at me. “Explain please.”

“I put in for an instructor position. I’m about ninety-nine-percent positive I’ll get it.”

“Seriously?” My heart beat wildly inside my chest. As selfish as it was of me to hope for, I wanted him out of combat so badly my body ached. I also knew that he didn’t do anything he wasn’t certain about. He wasn’t doing this to placate me; he was doing it because he was ready for a change. Finally, he was ready for
us
.

“Of course I’m serious. Besides, if I leave you again, you’re liable to drown yourself.”

I smacked him on the arm then kissed him, long and wet and deep. “I love you too, you know.”

He gave me a slow, confident smile. “You wouldn’t have waited this long for me if you didn’t.”

 

 

 

 

 

P
aige clutched a fistful of Abercrombie-style button-down and pivoted.

The college boy, who smelled of cheap whiskey, completed his decent headfirst to the concrete without taking her along for the ride.

Bobbing around his friends, who all looked as cute and just as wasted, she continued winding though the crowd. While most around her craned their necks toward the sky, mouths agape at the colorful spectacle of friendly little bombs, she kept her target in view. The Fourth of July crush of one million warm, Detroit bodies wasn’t enough to deter her lust for vengeance. It had been twenty-four hours since she’d been royally fucked and reaped no pleasure from the experience. Tonight, she would get release.

The security guard working the door of the City-County Building nodded at Paige’s badge, and she stomped through the lobby. Up the elevator and down a corridor of cubicle-sized
offices, Paige saw the door labeled ROOF ACCESS in the distance. After the echo of two ground-eating strides in its direction, the door swung wide with a metal smack, and two Special Response Team members in full tactical gear strode into the hallway.

At the sight of the blacked-out commandos, their faces obscured by balaclavas and bodies loaded down with Kevlar and weaponry, adrenaline shot through her veins like a bullet from a gun. All thoughts of fatigue from lack of sleep over the past forty-eight hours or the hour and a half it took warring through the crowd to get here vanished.

Shoulders back and chin up, she stopped directly in front of the two men. “Donovan Wolfe?”

Two sets of eyes went wide followed by heads shaking. The tallest of the two hitched a thumb toward the access door.

Paige inclined her head, a small gesture of thanks, and pushed past them.

One of the men, no way to know which since she wasn’t looking, cleared his throat. “Sergeant Cline, should we call an ambulance?”

The corners of her mouth turned up when she replied without glancing back, “No. Call the medical examiner.” Behind her the metal door slammed shut cutting off the men’s
ooh
s and chuckles.

Outside the cover of the building, Paige was surprised by the otherworldliness of the rooftop. Wailing sirens and honking horns were muted by the height and whipping wind, which took her hair in a violent gust and slapped it across her face. On any other night, she could lose herself up here, but tonight she couldn’t allow any distractions. Inhaling deeply, she focused.

Two more SRT members occupied the tar-topped roof. One big mother stood, legs braced apart, leaning loosely against the
building’s wide ledge where he studied the ground below through the scope of his SR-90. The other crouched his more meager, yet respectable frame on the sleek black epoxy, stowing his gear.

Coordination between the negotiator and the SRT funneled through the commander. So Paige had never met the elite leader of the Special Response Team she sought. Both men’s faces were hidden from view, yet she knew which of the two bore the name Wolfe. She’d heard through the department the former Special Forces officer always went the extra mile for his country. Here he was again, working harder than his men, leading by example.

Wasn’t he special.

Paige ignored the hint of respect that bubbled up in her mind and tried to hate him for it. Quickly, her rage came back in the form of a roar in the night. “Donovan Wolfe!”

Her voice rang in her own ears, but the behemoth didn’t look up, didn’t shift in the slightest. For a split second she wondered if the wind carried off her demand before it could make it to his ears, but then she looked at his buddy whose eyes met hers in a flash before they returned to his gear and he packed the last of it in a flurry of movement.

The man stood, nodded at her and made for the door, calling over his shoulder to Wolfe, “
Dios bendice
, my man.”

Still the son of a bitch didn’t move.

The metal door slammed once more, closing the two of them out together. Against clenched fists, Paige fought the urge to close the distance at a run and check him into the ledge—or better yet pitch him over the side.

But no, this could be one of the most critical negotiations of her career, and she’d do it right. Hell, she’d talked a furious cabbie into surrendering himself and his two hostages this morning. How hard could this be?