A Man of Honor (2 page)

“What the—”

She struggled against him, but he didn’t ease up. His leg might be just about useless, but everywhere else he was lock-grip strong. He’d pinned her as easily as a judo master’s takedown.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. Maybe it was the shock of seeing her, of finally having her in his arms, warm and sweet, after he’d lived through so much, stared death in the eyeballs and spat in its face. Or the fact that he was already turned on by her gentle caresses. In that moment, he didn’t give a damn why she was here, only that she was, soft and feminine and smelling as fresh as the lake breeze.

He reached down impulsively and stroked the velvet of her cheek, which was a thousand times softer than he remembered. When he traced a finger across her jawline, the skin of his hand tingled in response. In his dreams, he’d memorized every curve and valley of her face, from her full, soft lips to the delicate arch of her brows, to the light smattering of freckles across her cute little nose. It
hurt
to touch her, because she was his addiction. The bad habit he’d meanly given up, for both their sakes. Yet it now seemed all his hard work was for naught. He could not drag his eyes off of her, and he couldn’t stop touching her. She stared right back, her own eyes piercing but unreadable.

He’d meant to blow her cover, outrage her, and send her storming out his door. But life got complicated. Against his own usually iron will, he pushed his hands deep into the silky thickness of her hair and pulled her closer. Her warm, rapid breaths tickled his face. She swallowed hard as her head tilted back, her soft pink lips begging for his touch. Feeling the fine curve of her skull under his hands, he lowered his lips and kissed her.

And oh God, what a kiss. Catherine Kingston’s kiss was a lethal weapon, one he’d imagined every day of his dark existence. Now that he started indulging, he couldn’t stop.

She parted her lips, more in shock and surprise, and he took full advantage, crushing his own on hers, thrusting in his tongue and plunging deep. For a moment, she went still as the fight in her drained. In one quick movement, she wrapped her arms around his neck and clutched at him, her hands tangling in his hair. Her soft breasts pressed into his chest, her heat penetrating his T-shirt and lighting him on fire. She entwined her tongue recklessly with his, matching each stroke with her own.

The taste of her shocked him, sweet, tinged with wine, as familiar to him as his own shoe size and yet forbidden. Off-limits. He
knew
this, but he was too far gone. Kiss after wet kiss, he devoured her, almost a full year of pent-up desire unleashing in one terrible flood.

Their deadly attraction, one he’d fought for too many years to count, had erupted into a firestorm. He was helpless in the face of it, and too worn down to fight it. She’d found his Achilles’ heel, and it was her.

He wanted to tell her everything. Confess that he’d lied to keep her away. Express to her how he’d used her—the memory of her—to fall asleep every night, to blot out the explosions, the cries of his men going down into the biting sand. When the nightmares awakened him, he’d used thoughts of her to calm himself down. She was his Ambien. His narcotic. Only he couldn’t ever tell her.

His background, so different from hers, had kept him away from her for years. The war had changed him, inside and out, in ways he could never have fathomed. He’d never be the same man again. And he’d never be the kind of man she deserved, whole and strong, not physically and mentally crippled.

She tugged on his shirt, her hands fluttering over his hot skin like butterfly wings, tracing random paths over the hills and valleys of muscle. Every erotic fantasy she’d starred in over the past year came to life with her tender touch. She was driving him crazy, and all he could think was that he wanted more. In one quick move, he pulled his shirt over his head.

Her water-soaked raincoat hit the floor with a rustle. She wore a pink button-down blouse, the same color as her pretty, flushed skin. He fingered the lowest button, but his hands were trembling. To his amazement, she placed her hands over his and helped him make short work of the task.

He drew back the panels of her blouse like a curtain. Her breasts were small, something he knew she felt self-conscious about, but to him, they were perfect. He traced one with his hand, teased a nipple with his thumb until it hardened through her lacy bra.

One flick and the bra opened, freeing her breasts. He skimmed his hands lightly over them, learning by feel. When he kissed a pink tip, she let out a gasp and arched toward him, shifting her weight. Pain ricocheted through his leg, but he rode it out, more intent on other things. Like the sensations she stirred as her hands roamed freely over his naked torso, how they clenched hard in his hair.

He swirled his tongue over the sensitive tip of her nipple, tugged and pulled. Her breasts were exquisitely sensitive to every touch. The small moan that escaped her told him she was as out of control as he was.

When he looked up, her eyes were closed. She looked like a beautiful, innocent angel, and for a moment, he longed for her to save him, as if that were even possible. That thought brought darker ones, and he silently prayed for focus, to not let his brain mess up the only moment of pure joy he’d felt for a year.

The light from the reading lamp next to his chair played over the carved lines of her cheekbones, highlighting her creamy skin. Skin that begged to be touched. He cradled her cheeks, and that’s when he felt it.

Water. Dampness.
Tears.

Shit.
He tore his lips away and jerked his head back.

His disorientation was complicated by the sudden
smack
of the door closing, followed by someone’s harsh gasp. Preston looked up to find his best friend standing in the foyer with arms crossed, shock evident in the concrete lines of his face. “What the hell are you doing with my sister?”

Chapter Two

Cat bolted upright, still shaking from Preston’s kisses that seared clear through to her soul. She was reeling from the way he’d held and caressed her like she was precious to him. Or maybe it was sheer animal pleasure, and she was mistaken, her internal man compass haywire from too much yearning. She struggled to get up, but his grip tightened instinctively, his big body engulfing hers protectively.

As if that would be enough to protect her from her two-hundred-thirty-pound Army captain brother.

She pulled together the sides of her shirt, fumbling to do up the buttons. How had he gotten them undone so fast? How had he gotten
her
so undone, so much that she’d lost all sense?

“What’s going on here?” Derrick addressed his question to Cat.

Cat tried to speak, but lies failed her. The truth was too terrible to admit, which was that she’d fallen completely under his spell, that she’d lost track of time and space, and her body had betrayed her as it always did within ten feet of Preston Guthrie. She sat there, speechless. This was definitely not good.

Preston looked Derrick in the eye. “It’s not what you think.” Even in the poor light, Preston’s tanned face was flushed. She’d never seen him be anything other than calm, even under pressure, and his blatant blush threw her.

Her brother grunted. “It had damn well better not be.”

To his credit, Preston didn’t try to push her off of him or make rambling excuses. He simply sat with her on his lap, his breathing as calm as if they’d been watching a movie and her brother had just walked in. The dragon tattoo imprinted across his naked chest curled its tail around his left bicep, looking badass and dangerous. The only sign of tension was the tic of a tiny muscle in his jaw.

Coming to her senses, Cat bolted up, folded her arms across her lopsidedly buttoned blouse. “It’s all right, Derrick. We were just messing around.” She winced. Heat raced into her own face. That was not what she meant. What
did
she mean?

“I take full responsibility,” Preston said gallantly.

Cat rolled her eyes. “Pu-lease. I’m a big girl. I’m responsible for my own actions.”

“What she means is”—Preston never skipped one beat—“we’re dating.” Pure shock riveted her to the rustic reclaimed hardwood floor and made her mouth drop open. Once upon a time, she would have begged to hear those words, but now they sounded ridiculous to her own ears.

“What?” Derrick, as predicted, was furious.

Preston turned to her with a wide smile and an adoring look that would have melted her panties on the spot if it weren’t for the calculated hardness in his eyes.

“Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Truth is, Derrick, I fell hard for her before I left last year and finally realized what a fool I was to have let her go.”

Derrick’s brows knit into a suspicious vee. “Cat? Is this some kind of joke?”

Cat cleared her throat. She could think of no reason to play along unless Preston was at risk of bodily harm. Which he was, but really, he totally deserved it. “We were just—”

Preston interrupted. “—waiting to tell everyone the good news. But it’s been a long day, and I’ve still got to do some PT. You’d better go home with your brother, sweetheart.”

He was telegraphing her the kind of looks that indicated that something on the scale of a category five hurricane was brewing under his deceptively tranquil surface. Cat weighed her options. She could protest. Tell her brother…what? That she’d come here to get answers but things had spun way out of control? Or she could save her pride and lie, tell him it had been Preston’s fault that they’d ended up kissing, and have her brother inflict pain and injury right before Maddie’s wedding. Neither choice appealed.

As the maid of honor, Cat felt responsible to ensure everything was perfect for her sister, who meant everything to her. She swallowed the knot in her throat and her integrity and stepped forward to kiss Preston’s cheek, where a five-o’clock shadow was already gracing the rigid planes of his dead-serious face. This time, he actually flinched. “Bye, honey,” she said in an affectionate tone. But she needn’t have bothered. Derrick was already out the door.

The rain had stopped, the only good thing about this night. In the driveway, Derrick opened the passenger door of his pickup with an aggressive tug. He hadn’t been this furious since she was fourteen and he’d caught her smoking in the woods behind the high school with her girlfriends.

He blew out a big breath and eyed her dubiously. “Cat, really?”

“Really, what? Preston’s your oldest friend. Is it such a crime I would date him?”

“You know I love him. I would kill for him, and I know he’d do the same for me. But he’s commitment-phobic under the best of circumstances. After all he’s been through this past year—”

What exactly
had
he been through? He’d been called up from the Reserves to serve, and he’d gone proudly. She knew the leg injury was bad. A bullet had shattered his kneecap and damaged his leg. He’d had two surgeries, and judging from the awkward brace and the way he moved, things still weren’t right, if they ever would be. But what had really happened, and why had he shut her out so completely?

Derrick shook his head, still lethally angry. “You were so upset about how things cooled off between you two. I would’ve killed him myself if he weren’t already injured. Now he’s back, and suddenly you’re starting things up with him again?”

“It’s…complicated.” Complicated was right. Her fiancé, Robert, had called off their engagement last July, and it had been upsetting. But she’d met up with Preston in September and nothing before had ever felt so natural. They’d simply clicked, and everything that had happened with Preston up to his injury had felt so…right. She’d never questioned that what she felt for him was leaps and bounds over what she’d had with Robert. After all, Preston had felt it, too—or so she thought.

Preston’s rejection had totally blindsided her—it had cut to the bone to know he had given her up so easily when she thought they had the possibility of a forever kind of thing. It made her doubt herself. Question her sanity. Think she’d leaped too fast and too blindly after Robert. After her failed engagement, this was just one more thing to demonstrate what a bad judge of character she was. Yet even now Robert seemed like nothing more than a mosquito bite compared to the total body-and-soul devastation wreaked by Hurricane Preston.

“Look, you’ve had a tough year, too,” her brother said. “I don’t want to see you hurt again.”

Cat bit back the words that would have spilled out had she not pursed her lips tight. She wasn’t a fragile child with asthma anymore whom all her older siblings had to protect. She could fight her own battles. She loved her big brother, but she’d had more than enough of his overbearing protectiveness. She was fine, just fine.

Actually, she was lonely as hell. She’d gone to six weddings in the past year. Maddie’s would be number seven. It was only a matter of time before the baby showers followed. But still. She could handle this.

Derrick touched her hand as it rested on the seat between them. “He’s messed up from combat. Just take it slow, okay?”

She looked at her brother. Big, hulking Derrick, who was such a hard-ass, yet who could carry both his four-year-old twin boys, one under each giant arm, and race around the yard whooping it up like a crazy man. Whose tough-guy eyes softened to the consistency of baby cereal with one look in his pregnant wife, Jenna’s, eyes. He’d always been there for Cat and she couldn’t tell him to stick it. “I’ll be all right. Don’t worry about me.”

Earlier tonight she’d thought she
was
all right, until those kisses had scattered her common sense and muddled her brain. All the progress she’d made over the past four months getting over Preston had collapsed like a house of cards.

Guilt addled her. She should tell her brother the truth. Confess she’d put herself in a bad situation that had backfired terribly.

Too bad the joke ended up being on her.

…

Preston sat on his bed and punched the number into his cell for the seventh time when Cat finally picked up.

“Took you long enough,” he said. He wished he could pace, anything to dispel the excess of nervous energy. He settled for tapping his foot against the floor.

“I’m surprised you still have my number,” Cat said drily.

That caught him off guard. Of course he still had her number. As if he’d ever delete it. Just as he would never stop caring for her. “Yeah, well, lucky, I guess.” He’d stick to the asshole script. Anything to keep her at a distance for the time they had to be together.

“Why did you tell Derrick we were dating?” Cat asked. “That was the
stupidest—” Even as she laid into him, he couldn’t help smiling a little. God, he’d missed hearing the sound of her voice. Near-death experiences tended to do that, give you this overwhelming gratefulness for the simplest things. But there was no room for unchecked sentiment, so he tamped it down and did the job he had to do.

“Would you rather I told him you came to seduce me, and things got a little out of hand?”

“I did
not
come to seduce you.”

“Funny, because last I remember I was innocently sitting there resting my leg.”

“Right before you tackled me and I ended up in your lap.”

“I was trying to teach you a lesson.” Some lesson. His entire body still thrummed from her touch. He knew that whatever he did now, he couldn’t let her think their interlude meant anything, or all his effort in keeping her away the last few months would be for naught.

“Oh, like I’m the one who needs the lesson. Who’s accepting exotic dancers in their rooms instead of going out to get laid like normal people?”

“For your information, I don’t have problems getting laid. And I don’t have sex with strangers. I was playing along for my friends.”

She snorted. “You seemed pretty interested to me.”

There was the faintest edge of hurt in her voice. He couldn’t stand what he’d done to her and was about to again. “I took my pain pills a little early tonight and my behavior was a little—unchecked.”
A lie.
He hadn’t used pain pills in months. “What’s your excuse for that performance?”

“I wanted to take the opportunity to see for myself how you were doing.” The line was quiet until he heard her take in a sharp breath. “And to kick your ass about the shitty way you dumped me, you jerk.”

Ouch.
He deserved that, but he couldn’t tell her so. “I was ready to go into combat, and you were getting over being dumped. We both should have known better than to start something last fall.” His voice was a dispassionate monotone, even as his heart squeezed so tightly in his chest, he had a hard time taking in enough air.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. We talked every day for months. You sent me
love letters
.” She paused before adding, “Which I have, of course, burned.”

Whoa.
He hadn’t expected that. The shy, sweet Cat he knew would never have disagreed so forcefully. He’d have to get meaner, even if it killed him in the process. He did not want to hurt her. But he had to stay strong for her own good.

He made his voice smooth as silk and added a pinch of condescension. “I thought you knew me better than that, Cat. I’m not the settling-down type. I’ve always loved you like a little sister. It was a mistake for us to try to take that to another level. Besides, you can’t dump someone if you don’t have a commitment to begin with.”

This time, his arrow must have hit the mark, because the line went silent.

“I’m going to tell Derrick the truth,” she said. “That I came because I was angry and things got—out of hand.”

“Don’t do it.” He tried to sound firm, but he couldn’t keep the pleading out of his voice.

“Give me a reason why.”

“I was protecting your reputation.”

“Who are you, Sir Galahad? Last I knew, women have been in charge of their own reputations for the past…oh, I don’t know, hundred years or so.”

“Nothing you can tell him will make up for that visual in his head, of you, his sister, straddling my lap with your shirt undone.”

She made a sound between a groan and a wince. “Okay, enough! I was there. No need to rehash.”

“Besides, the wedding is a week away. Admitting we don’t have feelings for each other but overstepped some boundaries is going to create hard feelings.”

“That translates into
my brother will kill you
.”

“When you’re the one who came on to me. That’s fair,” he said sarcastically, although she was right, of course. He’d lost control the second he’d pulled her delicious body into his lap.

“Hey, buster. It takes two to tango.”

And one moment to mess up one of the best friendships he’d had in his life. Derrick had been his friend since grade school. He’d stuck by Preston through the troubled days of his early teen years. Mr. Kingston had given him his first real job in the Kingston Shoe Store downtown, and Mrs. Kingston, a circuit judge, had kept him out of jail by vouching for him so that he got community service instead of having his ass hauled off to juvie when he’d hot-wired a car at age fourteen. And they’d both helped him fill out the application to West Point. Getting accepted there had taken him away from his abusive father once and for all.

The Kingston family was important to him. Preston was a man of honor. He would work this out.

“Your brother’s friendship is important to me.”

“That’s between you and him. Leave me out of it.”

“Honey, you were in it the moment you put that trench coat on and started vamping it up. And let’s face it, if Derrick gets upset with you, it will ruin the next week for everyone.” He paused a good while. “Remember the cowboy?”

Cat surprised him again by laughing. She remembered Derrick’s reaction to their sister Maddie’s deadbeat ex-fiancé as clearly as he did. He was a fiercely protective big brother to both his younger sisters. “Derrick drove all night until he caught up with him in Abalone. We never did find out what he did to him.”

“Whatever it was, he never showed his face around here again.”