Falling for the Enemy (3 page)

She narrowed her eyes and finger-combed his hair, trying to decide what she wanted to do with him…er…his hair.

Thick, dark brown strands shot with sun-burnished highlights sifted through her fingers. Great body. Nice wave. The kind of natural bounty God sometimes wasted on a man who “didn’t give a shit” about his hair, while women forked over a couple hundred bucks every six-to-eight weeks for the exact same effect.

“Are you giving me the silent treatment, Virginia?” His question came out a little fuzzy around the edges. Not surprising. He’d come in the door tired, and now she was fiddling with his hair, relaxing him even more.

“Ginny,” she corrected again. “Nobody calls me Virginia. It’s too”—she wrinkled her nose and searched for the word—“virginal.”

“It suits you.”

“Ha. I can assure you I haven’t been a virgin for a long time.”

“You are, by one important standard.”

“Oh, yeah?” She combed his hair with her fingers again. “How do you reckon?”

“You haven’t had sex with me.”

“Oh.”
Oh? That’s the best comeback you can manage?
This time, thanks to the mirror, she got to enjoy not just the sensation of her face heating like an oven, but also the sight of pink staining her cheeks—just like a flustered virgin, for God’s sake. Redheads were not meant to blush, and he’d pulled two out of her this evening. His satisfied smile suggested he knew he’d thrown her off her game. She snapped her mouth closed and concentrated on his hair.

“More silent treatment?”

She stopped messing with his hair and stared him down in the mirror. “I got the impression you didn’t like to talk, sugar.”

“Sugar?”

“Sorry, is that not what you like to be called? How rude of me.”

He ignored the jibe. “
You
like to talk.” In response to her unspoken question he added, “I’ve passed by a time or two. You’re always chatting with clients while you work. Don’t change on my account. I like listening to you. There’s something very relaxing about your voice.”

The admission softened her. She ran her fingernails lightly over his scalp, and searched for a topic. Thing was, monologues weren’t her specialty. Normally she took her conversational cues from the client. She listened, responded with interest, and considered it part of the job of making the person in her chair feel comfortable. She picked up her spray bottle, pumped a few spritzes of water onto his hair and got to work with her comb. “What do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything…Whatever you were talking about with your last customer.”

She thought back to her conversation with fifteen-year-old Dilly, which now seemed like a lifetime ago. “Okay.” She started to snip. “We had a lengthy discussion about which member of One Direction is cutest. Dilly thought Harry. I’m more of a Zayn fan myself. And you?”

“I find it impossible to choose.”

She grinned. “I know. They’re all so adorbs.” Her breast brushed his shoulder as she trimmed around his ear, and heat simmered through her at the brief contact. Her eyes darted to the mirror, found his, and registered the awareness in their depths. She cleared her throat and soldiered on. “I have to admit, I sometimes get Liam and Niall mixed up. I hope that doesn’t shock you. Dilly practically swallowed her tongue when I told her I had a hard time telling them apart.” She got into the rhythm as she spoke…comb, lift a section of hair, snip.

“God forbid,” he murmured.

“She set me straight.” A quick look up confirmed his eyelids had started to droop. She deliberately slowed her movements. If the haircut didn’t send him off into dreamland, the conversation probably would. “Apparently Niall is a real blond, and kind of a goofball, which is, and I quote, ‘totally obvious in every picture because there’s this devilish glint in his eyes.’ Liam, on the other hand, is a brunette with occasional blond streaks, and, according to Dilly, ‘way more soulful and serious.’”

She glanced at the mirror again and smiled. Shaun’s closed eyes and deep, even breaths declared him somewhat less enthusiastic a 1D fan as her previous client, who could have talked about the band for hours. Since there was nowhere particular she had to be, she took her time with the haircut and let him sleep. Why waste the opportunity to observe him unawares and appreciate his masculine beauty? He looked younger, all clean shaven, freshly trimmed and combed. Younger and…familiar. The shape of his chin, the wing of his brows, triggered the odd, déjà vu feeling again. She stood stock still, staring at him as some memory danced along the perimeter of her consciousness, but it faded like a mirage as soon as she tried to pull it into focus.

Damn it, who
was
this guy? Impatient with herself, she gathered up her tools and set about putting things away. She removed the cape and shook it out, but he barely stirred. He snoozed with the same quiet containment he radiated when awake. Her trip to the supply closet for her broom and dustpan went unnoticed, but on her way back to the workstation she heard him moan—a flat, reluctant sound escaping from the depths of a dream. Not a fleeting noise though. It increased in volume and urgency as she approached the chair, and the haunted, hopeless tone sent a shiver down her spine. Then his whole body jerked, and she nearly choked on her own startled scream.

Enough
. She propped the broom against the wall and crouched down in front of him. “Hey,” she said gently, not wanting to startle him, but determined to coax him away from whatever nightmare had sunk its claws into him. His moaning stopped, but his breathing turned choppy and a bead of sweat trickled down his temple. Without thinking, she reached up to wipe it away.

As soon as her fingertips brushed his skin his eyes popped open. Hard hands clamped around her upper arms. The room spun, but before she could utter a single cry of alarm, she was face-first against the mirror, trapped by his weight and his arms banded around her.

She swallowed hard, drew in a breath, and called, “Shaun!”

Chapter Three

Congratulations, you’ve finally had a psychotic break.
Just as quickly as the unhelpful thought formed, he pushed it away. This was a dream. A bad one, mixed with flashbacks to make it extra nasty. Except…something wasn’t right. An out-of-place, citrus-y smell didn’t mesh with the all-too-familiar flashes of darkness, rubble, and some other horrific crap his mind refused to acknowledge. A voice called to him. Too high-pitched and feminine to belong to one of the other SEALs on the strike team, and laced with urgency—which in and of itself was not necessarily wrong, considering their target and what had gone down—but wrong because
this
voice called him by name.

Wake the fuck up. Now.
He forced the word “Stop” from his tight, dry throat, and used the sound of his own voice to wrench himself out of the nightmare, and into…
oh shit
.

Adrenalin originally activated by the dream continued pouring into his overcharged system, even as he realized he had Virginia trapped between his body and the mirror, restrained in a bear-hug, with his forearm wedged against her soft breasts and a hard-on of undisguisable proportions prodding her backside. He immediately released her, stepped back, and waited for her fist to connect with his face, or her foot with his balls, or whatever else she dished out, because he definitely had it coming. She turned to face him, staring up at him with wide, cautious eyes.

“Sorry,” he said lamely into the yawning silence. Heat crawled up his neck. His sleep problems usually took the form of insomnia, but on rare occasions he sleepwalked. He’d woken up in his closet once, the kitchen a few times, and in the garage once, which had been inspiration enough to flush the last of the sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed. Up until now he’d figured he’d flushed the sleepwalking as well, but tonight took the prize. He’d never laid a hand on anybody before. Of course, he’d been bedding down alone for the past several months, too tired and, frankly, too screwed up for company.
Way too screwed up
. He opened his mouth—to say what, he wasn’t sure—but she interrupted him.

“Sugar, if you’re not happy with your haircut, all you have to do is say so.”

He caught the glint in those clear, green eyes. “Not funny.”

“Oh, come on. It is kind of funny, when you think about it.” She straightened her top. He ordered his eyes forward but they went AWOL and dropped to her chest. The skin on the inside of his forearms prickled with the phantom sensation of her rigid nipples poking him. His cock throbbed hard enough to have him biting back a groan. He had to get out of there. Now.

“Besides,” she said, and smoothed her hands over her short denim skirt in an unconscious gesture designed to kill him, “you were having a bad dream. You didn’t jump me on purpose. No harm, no foul…” She looked up at him and trailed off, her eyes wide. He knew then and there all the desire surging through him showed on his face.

Retreat
. But he didn’t. He reached up and touched the small red mark riding high across her cheekbone—a souvenir from the mirror. Her skin felt like warm silk. “What would you have done?”

Her eyes were round and all pupils. “What would I have done if…what?”

“If I’d jumped you on purpose?”

He honestly didn’t know who moved first, but in the next heartbeat they were on each other. Mouths fused. Hands grasping. He pulled her in closer and somehow ended up with her legs around his waist and her smooth, round handful of an ass right there in his palm. He squeezed. She moaned and tried to crawl under his shirt.

He tangled fingers into her hair, tugged her head back, and recaptured her mouth. Her kiss was as tantalizing and vital as the rest of her, and made him want to taste her everywhere—to consume all the heat and energy she offered. He moved his hand from her hair to the back of her neck in some primitive strategy to foreclose any escape route, and deepened the kiss, plunging his tongue into the sweet recess of her mouth with more hunger than finesse. She moaned again and raked her fingernails along his spine, setting off tiny bolts of lightning everywhere she touched.

Uncensored, unsupervised lust tore through him. Desperate to feed it, he sank his teeth into her lip and tightened his grip on her ass. She squirmed against him with such force he suddenly worried it stemmed more from agitation than pleasure.

He pulled back. “Fuck, I’m—”

No apology necessary. She yanked him back and took hard, fast little bites out of his lips while she worked his shirt up his chest. They wrestled his arms free, and then she swept it over his head, dragging some of his hair along with it.

“Sorry…I’m not usually…so grabby, but…”

“I don’t care,” he managed when she ran her lips over his chin. Her fingernail etched a trail across his chest. He knew without looking she traced the gothic script letters tattooed there.
The only easy day was yesterday
.

Over the last seven months the sentiment had never felt truer, except right here, right now, because falling into Virginia felt easier than breathing—and just as critical. He slid his hand from the back of her neck around to her throat, over her collarbone and down the inviting slope of her chest.

A shiver racked her when he squeezed her breast. Her legs tightened around his hips. “It’s just lately…I’ve been on…this…sex hiatus.”

Him, too, now that he thought about it, but then thought got more difficult because her soft, quick lips scorched a path from his chin to his earlobe, and then she latched on and sucked so hard he almost went lightheaded at the thought of that mouth on his cock, sucking with the same brutal intensity. He shoved her tank top up to her armpits and took a second to appreciate the sight of her pale cleavage swelling above a red, push-up bra. “Sex hiatus?”

“Yeah.” She was on the move again, raining hot little kisses along the side of his neck. “Fun’s fun, but I figured it was time to stop making the same mistakes with the same old guys.”

He reached behind her and unclasped her bra. Her breasts sprang free from their satin and lace restraint. Compact, upswept, with tight, pink nipples pointed straight at him. His mouth watered with anticipation. “Time to make a new mistake, with a new guy?”

She laughed, and the low husky sound pulled his attention back to her face. Her grin slipped a bit off center as she stared at him and smoothed her hand along his cheek. “This is, without a doubt, a huge mistake.”

He didn’t know if she was trying to warn herself off, or him, but it didn’t matter. Good judgment had abandoned him the second he’d walked into her shop, or, in truth, the minute he’d left the house this evening, knowing full well where he’d end up. “Then we better make it count. One night. No apologies. No regrets.”

A wiggle of her hips served as a cue to put her down. For a moment of staggering disappointment he thought she’d changed her mind, but when he put her on her feet, she leaned over and dug around in the bottom drawer of her workstation. A second later she straightened and tossed a handful of condoms onto the surface. She stared at him in the mirror and added, “I’m a big believer in no regrets.”

To show her she wouldn’t have any, he hitched up her skirt, yanked her tiny, red thong out of his way, freed his throbbing cock from his jeans and nestled it along the cleft of her ass.

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide. “Holy mother…load.”

“You don’t know the half of it…well…maybe about half.” And he was only half-joking, which must have shown on his face because she wrapped her hands around the edge of the counter in front of her and shivered.

“Are you going to sweet talk me, or dirty talk me, before you—?”

“I’m going to fuck you.” So saying, he reached past her, grabbed a condom and tore it open.

“Oh, God, okay, that works.” He got the condom on, then reached around and sent his fingers into the neatly groomed, gratifyingly damp strip of red curls between her thighs.

“Until you scream my name, sweet Virginia,” he added, just to see what she’d toss back, and gave her a slow, thorough stroke.

“Sugar…” She leaned into the workstation and raised her hips to give him more access. “I don’t even remember your name.”

How had he resisted her for two weeks? He laughed, but the laugh was on him, because he was the one who wouldn’t survive their night of no regrets. Her heat, the feel of her, slick on his fingers as she grinded against his hand, and the slow, condom-lubricated slide of his cock along the ripe-peach contours of her backside had his mind racing with a thousand possibilities, and his body ached to act on them all at once. Incompatible impulses he scrambled to organize and prioritize. Kiss her until their lips went raw. Take her breast into his mouth and suck her nipple so she felt the pull all the way down her spine. Drop to his knees and devour her until she came with a scream and coated his tongue with her taste. But all of that was impossible, because the strongest urge, the one forcing its way to the forefront, involved one thing only—him sliding into her slick, tight heat, and losing himself there, fucking her so long, so hard, they’d both have scars by the time he was done.

Seven months suddenly struck him as a reckless amount of time to have gone without an orgasm involving another living, breathing,
feeling
human being, with needs and priorities of her own. He was like a ticking time bomb.

She arched her back and came up on her toes, squeezing his cock again in the process.

Jesus.
He slid one finger inside her. She sucked in a breath and went higher on her toes. He eased another finger in. Her body clenched around him and she let out a small, impatient “Now.”

“Take another finger,” he whispered.

“No more. I want you.”

He worked the third finger in anyway, because what came next was a hell of a lot more than three fingers. “I want to make sure you’re ready. Otherwise, when this is all over, you’ll be cursing me for the next week.”

“I’ve been cursing you for the last two. What’s one more?”

There it went. The end of his rope. He pushed her down until her forearms rested on the surface of her workstation. “Hold on, sweet Virginia, we’re about to find out.” With that, he drove into her. In some detached, disassociated part of his mind, he heard her cry out…first a high-pitched gasp, which slowly tumbled into a long, soul-deep groan.

Experience told him to stay still and let her adjust. Keep his hand cupped to her body, stroke her so she moved against him, pushing back as he pushed forward, finding a pace she liked. Basically, hold himself in check until she’d worked herself into a frenzy. But tonight the voice of need overrode the voice of experience, and demanded more. More. Deeper. Harder. Faster. He pumped his hips in an insatiable, instinctive urge to find what his body craved. Blood rushed in his ears. His heartbeat thundered in his chest. Tremors started somewhere around his calves and worked their way up.

Virginia clamped around him like a fist, over, and over, and over again, and called his name. And still it wasn’t enough. Not for him.

“I need more of you…all of you,” he ground out.

She raised her head, looked in the mirror, and her frantic gaze crashed into him “Please, please, please Shaun…I have to come now. I don’t care what you do, or how you do it. Just…fucking…do it.”