I Dream of Danger (8 page)

That one hurt.

The truth was the one thing he hadn’t planned on—Elle still here and the judge clocking out mentally before he did physically.

“Stop thinking that, Nick. Right now.” Elle’s voice was low, very serious.

Nick’s fork clattered to the plate. What the fuck? “Are you a mind reader?”

Jesus. Maybe all those weird dreams he’d had of her were real. Maybe Elle could fuck with his head.

“You wouldn’t let me think sad thoughts, so this is payback. And no, I’m not a mind reader. Don’t worry about that.” She leaned forward on her elbows, tucking a strand of pale hair behind one small ear. “You don’t have to be a mind reader to know that you were thinking dark thoughts. Sad thoughts. This house has known nothing but sadness for years now. Sadness and darkness and despair. Daddy was frightened to death when they diagnosed him with Alzheimer’s because he knew exactly what was coming, both for him and for me—and it took all my energy, every ounce of it, to keep him cheerful for as long as there was a person inside him that could feel cheer. Daddy left a long time ago. I did my mourning a long time ago. I’ve had about as much sadness as a person can bear and I don’t want long sad faces around me. Now—” She slapped the surface of the table and made the water glass slosh over. “Smile, damn it!”

Nick was so startled he did smile. Showing all his teeth, too.

She smiled back at him, pleased with herself. “That’s right, Nick. I knew you could do it.”

Oh God, look at her,
he thought. Just like his nickname for her when she was a child.
Pixie.
A beautiful little pixie, slightly careworn, perched on the edge of her chair, surrounded by a cloud of blond hair, pale eyes like shards of summer sky, smiling at him.

Irresistible. And he didn’t have to resist, did he? Because though by God she’d had a worse time of it than he had these past five years, his life hadn’t been all shits and giggles either.

He’d chosen the hardest military training possible, probably the hardest on earth. These past years had been day after day of grueling physical and intellectual training, the only breaks actual field ops, getting shot at, which was marginally better than the rest of it. Lying in swamps in Indonesia for days waiting for a shot at the man who’d planted the Indianapolis bomb. Indonesia had 450 venomous insect species and he’d been bitten by every single one. The bare, arid plains of Tibet, helping train local fighters for the successful coup and breakaway from China. Four months spent fifteen thousand feet up on the Pakistani side of the Himalayas with only goats and four other Rangers for company, fires forbidden, trying to contain the situation, then scrambling to get out when Pakistan blew up.

No, like his little Pixie, he felt it was smiling time. Pleasure time. God knows they both deserved it.

Sex. They both deserved it. The best sex he’d ever had, and the best sex she’d ever had too, by definition. They should have some more of it.

Right now.

Elle straightened in her chair and watched warily as he moved toward her. His very best stealth stalk, trademark Ranger move. “Nick?”

“Elle.” The word came up out of his guts, from the very core of him. And he had no further words in him right now, none.

“Nick, what are you do—” He lifted her up out of her chair by her elbows and as soon as she was on her feet, he pulled her top up over her head and tossed it to the ground. “Oh.” The one word barely had any breath behind it because what he was doing and what he was going to do was real clear.

If his face didn’t tell her, his blue steeler did.

It was a really good thing Elle seemed to be okay with this, because though Nick had self-control up the wazoo—he was nothing
but
self-control—right now control was a pretty shaky thing.

But she seemed okay with him pulling her pants down, kicking them away, and laying her down on a clean bit of surface of that mile-long table that he cleared with his arm. More than okay, actually. He’d barely touched her except to strip her and lay her out like a sacrifice in some weird religion and she was already with him. The left pale breast quivered with her heartbeat. She was breathing heavily, already panting, watching him out of half-closed eyes.

Nick stepped between her legs, reaching out to separate them, but she beat him to it, sliding her legs apart as fast as any soldier responding to a shouted command. He didn’t have to shout it, he didn’t even have to whisper it. She knew what he wanted.

With one hand, Nick unzipped himself, happy he was in the habit of going commando. He placed one hand by her side on the table and grabbed his cock with the other.

His cock did not like the feel of his hand. It knew precisely where it wanted to be and it wasn’t in Nick’s fist, which is where it mainly was when he was in the boonies training or on missions. His fist just wouldn’t cut it when Elle’s pretty little sex was right there, open and glistening, just waiting for him.

He ran an experimental finger down her, just to test the waters and an alarm bell rang in his head, loud enough to catch his attention even when there wasn’t much blood left in his head to think with.

She was wet, but not wet enough. Certainly not wet enough for him to slam into her as he had just been about to do.

Okay.

There was an app for that.

He dropped to one knee, leaned forward, heady from the scent of her and placed his mouth between her legs. He didn’t kiss her, not yet. He just breathed her in. She smelled absolutely wonderful, of some scented soap with high notes of sex.

He’d once read an article in a magazine in the waiting room of the base dentist. Together with
Field & Stream
, the daily
Stars and Stripes
and
Guns Magazine
, there was also a copy of
Vogue
. The wait was long, and after reading the other stuff cover to cover, he finally started thumbing his way through
Vogue
. There was an article on “noses,” expert perfumers who were basically human bloodhounds. He was interested because they’d just had a training session on how smells could give you away in an ambush situation. Scent Management it had been called, and they were taught not to use soap or mouthwash or shampoo forty-eight hours before deploying.

So he’d read the article on how noses could distinguish a thousand scents.

Elle’s sex had a smell that was unique, and it went straight to his cock.

She wasn’t ready yet, but soon.

He licked her and added taste.
Oh God.
She tasted delicious.

She sighed heavily and he would have smiled if he hadn’t been so intent on licking her, tasting her.

He kissed the lips of her sex exactly as if they were her mouth, opening them with his mouth, licking deep inside her. With each stroke of his tongue she gasped, and when he felt her clench around his mouth, he stood up and gazed at her.

Oh, yeah.

Her cheeks were deep pink, as were her hard little nipples. Her mouth looked swollen though he hadn’t kissed it yet.

He would.

She looked wanton, spread out on the dark wood of the dining table, pale and slender and so mouthwateringly delectable. He stood between her wide open legs, enjoying the sight of her pretty little cunt, pink and juicy. He ran an experimental finger around her and hummed a little.
Mmm.

Yeah. She was ready.

Nick leaned down, placing one hand on the table next to Elle’s pale breast and the other holding her hip. He didn’t need to hold his cock for entry, it knew how to get where it wanted to go all on its own.

He slid into her slowly, the feeling so exquisite he closed his eyes until he was fully embedded inside her.

They both sighed.

His eyes snapped open. It would have been a funny moment but he was beyond laughter, beyond even smiling. He’d fucked way too many times to count, but right now this was the most erotic scene he’d ever set eyes on. Elle’s pale, soft skin contrasting with his rough, dark skin, her legs open to him, her pink sex clenched around his cock.

Elle’s eyes were half closed, only a shimmering pale blue showing. She was panting slightly, chest rising and falling.

Her arm reached out and wrapped itself around the arm he’d planted next to her, as if to brace herself. She seemed to sense the coming storm. “Nick,” she whispered. Her hand tightened on his arm.

It set him off.

Not holding himself inside her for a moment or two, letting her get used to him. Not a gentle in and out, testing her readiness. Nope.

A storm.

His hips slammed against hers with the full strength of his body. He had to hold tightly to her hip or she would have slid to the other side of the table. The room was filled with the sound of his heavy breathing and flesh slapping against flesh and he was mesmerized by the sight of his cock moving in and out of her, fast and hard.

He couldn’t stop. There was no mechanism in him that would allow him to stop or even slow down. He was overtaken by some power outside himself that wouldn’t—couldn’t—rest until he’d reached inside her just as far as he could go, over and over again. And she was with him every step of the way, pale eyes on his, mouth open, bringing in air in great gulps, clinging to his arm, digging her short nails into his skin as hard as she could, fingertips turning white. He didn’t feel it—he was beyond feeling anything but the enormous heat centered around his hips as he moved in her as strongly as he could.

Elle’s head moved back, exposing that long, white throat—and God how he wished he were a vampire because he’d just sink his fangs into her—and she moaned, then cried out. Her stomach muscles pulled as she clenched around him so hard he felt her cunt like a soft little vise, closing around him, letting go, closing . . .

The heat and the pressure were too much. He leaned forward, head hanging low, not even watching her anymore because everything in him was concentrated on where he was slamming into her, moving as deeply as he could, feeling those soft wet tissues pull him in even more tightly, faster and faster . . .

Until he exploded.

He couldn’t have stopped if someone had put a gun to his head. A lightning-fast white hot line running down his spine raising goose pimples everywhere and he erupted inside her, holding himself tightly against her while he jetted endlessly in massive spurts to the tune of his heartbeat. For so long he wondered dimly whether he was emptying out his heart and not just his dick.

It stopped eventually, as all storms do, and he came to, crouched over her, now resting on his forearm, head low over her stomach. He watched a big fat drop of sweat fall from his face onto her pale belly and quiver with her heartbeat.

Finally, he lifted his head to look at her. Her eyes were closed, head turned slightly to the right, unmoving. She looked like she’d died and was this gorgeous, rosy corpse, completely wiped out.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Nick growled, lifting his hand from her hip to turn her face to him. “Open those baby blues.”

Her eyelids flickered and opened slightly.

He tapped her face. “All the way.”

Her eyes opened wide, studying his features, then drifted closed.

No way. “You don’t get to zone out. Not an option. We’ve just started, you can’t quit on me now.”

The corners of her mouth lifted, breath coming out on a long soft exhale. “No energy,” she murmured. “Maybe later.”

He was buzzing with energy. “Nope. Not gonna let you. Here.”

Nick reached over to a big bowl filled with dark chocolate mousse. They’d never got around to it. In reaching for it, he pressed more tightly to her, even though he was only semi-hard. There was a serving spoon in the bowl and he scooped up a dark frothy mass. It smelled wonderful.

He didn’t need to prop himself up anymore, so he snaked his other hand around her neck and lifted her head and shoulders off the table, holding the spoon to her mouth with the other hand. “Open up.”

She opened obediently, lips closing around the spoon, tongue licking her lips.

Oh God. He surged inside her, moving his hips against hers.

Elle sighed with pleasure.

“Another.” He pressed a huge spoonful of the chocolaty glop against her mouth and she obediently opened. “Another.”

With each mouthful he got harder. Any man would have to be dead and long buried not to get aroused at the sight of her closing her mouth around the mousse, then swallowing.

“Feeling more energetic?” Nick demanded, pulling almost all the way out, then sliding back in. He was hard as a rock again.

Elle sighed.

Another stroke and her eyes opened.
Oh yeah.
She was feeling more energetic. But it was cold in the room.

Nick pulled her up in his arms and lifted her. Reflexively, Elle’s legs tightened around his waist. “We need the bed for this round.”

Elle sighed again, smiling, her breasts rubbing against his chest. “Okay.” She gestured gracefully with her slender arm at their clothes puddled on the ground. “We should pick those up.”

“Uh-uh.” Nick started walking toward the staircase. Actually, he wanted to run up, but he had his pride. “For what I’m planning, you won’t need any clothes.”

Chapter 4

I
t was the faintest of sounds but Nick woke up instantly, fully awake. He knew that sound, his life was lived by the cadence of that sound. His cell. Between bouts of sex he’d gone downstairs to grab his jeans and shirt.

Elle was sprawled all over him, soft and light, smelling of woman and sex.

The cell’s ring had a Pavlovian effect on everyone in the Rangers—every single man sprang to his cell made of a black nonreflective matte material, and it was rare it took more than a second. One second went by, two, three, four . . .

No doubt at the other end a bot was clocking the response time and someone would mention it once he got back to base. But jumping would wake Elle up, and he simply couldn’t do it. She was so deeply asleep it was like she was in a coma. Nothing moved, not even her eyes under the lids.

Rangers were taught to move like ghosts, imperceptibly, without making a sound. So now he used that skill to disentangle himself from the sleeping arms of a beautiful woman rather than float in the dark toward a kill.

In an instant, she was clutching a pillow and he was standing naked by the bed, looking down at his display. The words were barely readable. Displays had two modes—nearly dark if a light could betray their position and bright enough to act as a flashlight. The default mode was dark and he left it like that. He could read the text words in dark mode well enough.

Wheels up oh dark hundred. Majestic.

Shit.
There’d been talk of this op, not a training mission, coming up. The brass had been waiting for intel from an exfiltrated agent and apparently they’d got it. No one knew where yet, but that was standard—need to know. They’d find out on the plane where they were headed. The only clue they’d have was the gear assigned. Cold-weather gear or hot-weather gear. That would give latitude. Longitude? Who the fuck knew?

All Nick knew was he had to get out of here fast and he didn’t want to. He wanted to stay right here, with Elle. Fuck her and feed her and watch roses bloom in her cheeks—that’s what he wanted.

He stared down for just a second. She was on her side, one slim arm outside the covers, face in profile, deeply asleep. There was only the dim light of a quarter moon riding high in the sky, but he didn’t need light. She was imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. He knew, without seeing her clearly, that her skin wasn’t that shockingly white color she’d had at the funeral. He knew the lines of her face had moved into their natural set—smiling. When he saw her at the funeral he didn’t need for her to tell him smiling hadn’t been a common occurrence in her life.

It was there in her face.

He wanted to stay and make her smile and laugh and make her eat until she put the pounds back on, and he wanted her to feel as beautiful as she was by making love to her as often as his stamina would let him.

That’s what he wanted. But wanting and having were two entirely different things.

What he had was a duty to get to Fort Bragg in time to be briefed and gear up. If they were wheels up at midnight, he had to get there by six tonight and it was a fourteen-hour car trip. He’d just have to push it.

He also had two things to do before signing in.

Nick dressed quietly. Quiet was what Rangers did. They were shooters, they were snipers, they were one with the night. Their clothes were dark. They carried nothing that could shine or jingle.

When he was dressed he spent long minutes looking down at Elle, wrestling with himself. There’d been a new rule instituted the year before, after a Ranger let slip to his girlfriend that he was going on mission to Venezuela. The airhead had posted it on her Facebook page and the team was wiped out half an hour after landing.

New rule—only wives could know of deployments and they couldn’t know when or where. Wives had had to sign an oath that they wouldn’t disclose any intel at all, ever. Girlfriends had to be kept absolutely in the dark.

Giving girlfriends intel wasn’t just a felony, it was a felony subject to court-martial. So what Nick was contemplating was something very, very serious and he had to reason it through.

Giving Elle any info whatsoever was wrong, against regulations, dangerous even.

But . . . he couldn’t disappear on her. Just couldn’t. It simply wasn’t in him. She cared for him deeply, even after he’d disappeared on her and left her alone with a sick father. Every inch of her skin, her mouth, her sex—they told him she cared. No one else cared for him, not in the whole wide world. He was respected in the military but he had no close friends and God knows, he didn’t have any girlfriends who cared. Just fuck buddies who forgot him the second he walked out the door.

He couldn’t leave her without a word, but leaving her word could get him court-martialed.

The battle inside him was fierce but brief. Army vs. Elle. Elle won.

He took an envelope he found on top of her dresser and wrote
Pixie, be back as soon as I can
on the back and placed it on the pillow next to her, fully aware that he was committing a felony. Downstairs he stopped by the judge’s desk in his study and memorized her bank account number and the undertaker’s phone number. He could do the rest on the road.

His last mission had lasted four days. With any luck at all, this one would be short too. Rangers weren’t the ones they sent in to get intel. They were the ones sent in to shoot the hell out of a place and get out fast.

They always got a couple days downtime on return from an op. So he’d come back here, then he and Elle would talk. Work something out, though he had no idea what. But now that Elle was back in his life, there was no question of leaving her again.

In five minutes on his smartphone, he paid the undertaker’s bill—even though the fucker was a mercenary son of a bitch and had overcharged Elle for everything. As soon as he had time, he’d transfer what was in his bank account to Elle. The next thing could be done on the way down to Fort Bragg. Shouldn’t take more than a quarter of an hour. As soon as it was opening time, he’d stop at the first supermarket he saw.

Man, the thought of her not having food in the house was fucking painful. He’d had to
work
to hide his wince when he saw her cupboards.

Well, those days were over. He was in her life now and she wouldn’t go through that ever again.

Nick slipped out the door, quietly closed the front door behind him, not wanting to leave, knowing he had to.

He’d left once and he had to do it again.

No choice.

But this time he’d be back.

E
lle woke up late and woke up . . . happy. The past couple of years she’d trained herself to wake up slowly, from dream to sleep to wakefulness, step by step, because when she woke up quickly the effect was brutal. Like waking up to a sword at your throat. She’d trained herself to come up from sleep like a deep-sea diver floating gently up, because if you did it too fast you got the bends.

Sometimes when she Dreamed, those odd states that were more real than any reality—where she could see things she knew she couldn’t see in real life—she could transit to wakefulness because it was like stepping from one room to the next, not one world to the next.

Her Dreams were not always pleasant, and that made it easier to deal with. No getting the bends from watching Nick have sex with an anonymous woman and then waking up to the reality of her life. What hurt—like walking over glass—was normal dreams of better times and then waking up to the reality of her life.

The reality of her life had been caring for a broken shell of a man and juggling the dwindling money supply.

Her father was no more. She’d buried him yesterday.

But she didn’t mourn him. She couldn’t. No one knew better than her what a hell his life had been. She missed the man he’d been before the empty shell took over.

She’d loved him, cared for him, buried him.

Done her duty and followed the dictates of daughterly love.

Now a new life awaited.

She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling, noticed for the first time that the watermark left by a broken pipe looked like a butterfly. A deformed butterfly by Picasso in his Cubist period.

She’d skimped on food and heat to repair those busted pipes, and now there was a crazed butterfly on her ceiling.

She smiled.

Still smiling, she closed her eyes so she could concentrate better as she took stock of herself.

Wow. She and Nick had made love until past midnight. She’d gone from zero to hero—from no sex to more sex than any woman could possibly handle.

She stretched and felt aches and pains, particularly between her thighs and the muscles of her core. But elsewhere, too. Her mouth felt slightly swollen from his kisses, her breasts still seemed to feel his mouth. The insides of her thighs were stretched from being held open for so long and slightly abraded from his hairy thighs moving between hers.

She felt imprinted with Nick. She could smell him on her, feel him on her. If her body had been a crime scene, they’d find his DNA all over her. Luckily, her body wasn’t the scene of a crime but of unimaginable pleasure.

Last night had been a sort of reboot. From an existence of gritted teeth and iron duty, she’d shifted over into a life of hedonism, of pure pleasure. Food had tasted wonderful instead of like glue, the wine had been like some libation of the gods instead of something sour and acidy she couldn’t drink.

She’d
slept
. Really slept. Like normal people did, going deep under, then rising refreshed to a normal day.

Oh God.
Normal.

Nick had flipped a switch and her life became normal. Not something to be endured but something to be savored. There were things to look forward to. Breakfast for one. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t woken up with her stomach in a knot.

Now her stomach was this open and friendly organ, making smiling
me too
noises. Rolling its eyes toward the kitchen downstairs because, really . . . she hadn’t eaten since last night and it was time to eat.

She opened her arms and legs like a child making a snow angel. Nick wasn’t there and since she didn’t encounter any warmth, he’d been up for some time. If he was trying to cook breakfast, good luck. She had enough coffee for this morning, a little milk if it hadn’t spoiled, and an apple.

Well, they could go into town and have breakfast at Jenny’s. And she could thank Jenny for last night’s feast. Kill two birds with one stone.

Except for caring for her father, all the old problems remained, the ones that had seemed as insurmountable as the Himalayas. There was a mortgage on the house it would take her twenty years to pay off. Joshua Bent, the owner of Bent Mortuary Services, had told her he’d hold off on sending her the bill for a month and that he’d give her a ten percent discount and stagger the payments over a year, but with all that, an eight-thousand-dollar bill was on its way to her.

But Nick was back, and she felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.

She was drowning in debt but . . . it was only money. She was young and she could work. She had her health, she was smart and good with computers. She’d manage.

And Nick was back.

She could face anything right now. Even a bare kitchen. Because Nick was back.

She threw back the covers and shot into the shower, remembering how the last time they’d made love had been in the steamy confines of the shower cabin. Hot, heated sex under hot water.
Mmmm
. Oh man, she was going to forge a good and sexy memory with Nick in every room in the house, to replace the sad ones.

It was cold in the house, unfortunately. She felt it academically, because she was molten hot herself though it was freezing. She didn’t even choose a heavy sweater because, well, . . . Nick downstairs would certainly see to keeping her warm today.

She hugged herself briefly, glad he wasn’t seeing this excess of childish enthusiasm because she was totally incapable of suppressing it.

She nearly flew down the stairs, expecting to find him rooting around uselessly in the kitchen, ready to suggest going out for breakfast and food shopping and a walk around town, and maybe even a movie in the afternoon.

She hadn’t been to the movies in . . . forever.

The movies, walks in the park, fabulous sex. All those things were in her future. Yes, they were.

She wasn’t so relentlessly
alone
anymore, she was part of a couple. One by one her girlfriends had fallen away. It seemed like getting a boyfriend in high school entailed ditching your friends.

And then of course all her high school friends went off to college and were lost forever.

Well, every single bit of it—including college, eventually—was now open to her. She wasn’t alone any longer, and the world was full of people to befriend and movies to see and things to do and places to go.

She was poor but she was young and strong and above all, she wasn’t
alone
anymore. Nick was with her.

She hugged herself again and went into the kitchen to say good morning to Nick.

Only . . . Nick wasn’t there.

He wasn’t in the kitchen and he wasn’t in the living room. He wasn’t anywhere in the house. That huge anticipatory feeling, like a balloon in her heart, deflated. She had so many things to tell him, but above all she wanted to just see him, touch him. And, well—since they’d started—she wanted to have sex with him again. Soon and as often as possible.

She peeked out the living room window, looking left and right. Nick’s SUV was gone. Had he parked it in the garage? But it wasn’t in the garage either.

Oh.
So he’d gone into town without her to do the shopping. Which was nice but . . . she’d rather have gone with him. It was nice of him to let her sleep in, but she’d have infinitely preferred driving into town with Nick and doing some shopping, even if she had to pretend she wasn’t using up the last of the reserves in the bank.

She paced the ground floor— kitchen, living room, dining room, study, den, spare bedroom—over and over again, restlessly waiting for Nick. It was a stupid thing to do of course but there was no stopping her. She had all this energy to burn off, this sense of anticipation, as if life wasn’t going to begin until it began in his presence. Everything else was fake time, time to be counted off, minute by painful minute until Nick returned.