Heat of the Moment (20 page)

Right. Because the military was so easygoing. I decided not to press the issue. Owen had never been the kind of person who yielded to pressure, and I doubted ten years in the Marines had changed that. However, despite his words to the contrary, he wasn't going back to active duty limping like that.

“I should let Reggie run a bit before we go back to town, okay?” Owen set his hand on the truck as he moved to the rear, then put down the tailgate and hitched his butt onto it.

“Sure.” I sat close enough to touch, but not touching, then swung my legs above the ground like I used to way back when.

He'd had a pickup then too—a POS that he'd tinkered with constantly just to keep it running. He'd worked at the caf
é
nearly every night after school when it wasn't football season. I'd seen him handing money to my dad more than once. My dad hadn't taken it, but he'd never stopped offering.

“I don't have any appointments until later,” I continued.

And no one had called all day with an emergency—real or imagined—which was so strange I took out my phone.

No service. No wonder. When we got back to the town limits, the thing would no doubt start buzzing like a beehive with missed calls and messages. Oddly, the idea that I'd missed calls didn't bother me the way that it should. For just a minute or two, I wanted to sit in the warm autumn air with the only man I'd ever loved.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

He stared straight ahead. “How bad is what?”

“This.” I laid my hand on his thigh.

The whole world stilled. I swore neither one of us breathed. But he didn't move away. He didn't take my hand and push it off. So I left it right where it was.

Beneath my palm his jeans felt on fire, even though the trees shaded the sun and the bulk of the rays shone on the house and not here. I flexed my fingers, my short nails scritching on the fabric. Static snapped, and he tensed.

“Shh.” I continued to stroke.

Had he told me where his injuries had been? I didn't think so. But I'd watched him limp; I could figure it out. When I closed my eyes, I could see the bones like an X-ray. I traced the femur with my index finger, brushed the dark line of the fracture, halfway down, with my thumb. There was more wrong here than just that. Nerves. Tendons. Maybe both.

There'd been a few times in the past when I'd known something was off with a patient, despite all indications to the contrary. I'd close my eyes and “see” a bleeder, or a tumor, or a hairline break that didn't pop on an X-ray. Once, during surgery, I'd found a golf ball in a Labrador's stomach after I'd already located the half of a tennis ball I'd gone in there for.

There'd been occasions where an animal had just gone south. No matter what had been tried, nothing worked. Then the owner brought them to me, I acted on what I “heard” from them, or sensed myself, and they got better.

Not right away. It wasn't magic. I was a fantastic diagnostician. Nothing more.

But the sparks, the warmth? That was new.

Either I was crazier than before or …

I had no idea.

“Don't,” Owen said.

I stopped stroking, but I didn't lift my hand. “Am I hurting you?”

He gave a garbled, strangled laugh-sob, and my gaze flew to his. Then I couldn't look away.

“There's hurt,” he said, “then there's agony.”

I yanked back as if I'd been burned. My palm continued to pulse with heat so intense my skin tingled. The breeze kicked up and stirred the damp tendrils on my brow. Our lips met. It was inevitable.

The kiss was harsh, desperate, greedy, needy—everything that roiled within me reflected in him. My mouth opened, tongues warred. I licked his teeth; he nipped my lip. I returned the favor along his gloriously stubbled jaw.

My hand was on his leg again, but higher up. The heat remained. If I rubbed my thumb across his tip as I'd rubbed it along the imaginary line of his break would sparks fly? I had to find out.

I traced where I had a dozen times before, about half an inch below his belt, right where an erection should end.

It didn't. He was as soft as Reggie's ears.

What was going on? He wasn't kissing me like an uninterested man. He was kissing me like a man drowning in desire, one who couldn't wait to bury himself inside of me.

But there'd be no burying anywhere with a shovel like that.

He lifted his mouth. I wanted it back. He tasted like sex and love and life—three things I'd had precious little of since he'd left.

“I haven't been able to—” His lips, full and wet and inviting, tightened. “Since the accident.” His head drooped, and he let out a laugh that was anything but amused. “I think it's broken too.”

The idea of him trying to mend “it” with anyone but me made my fingers clench. They were still close enough to his nonerection to brush against it. A single spark made him jump. That jump pressed him to my wrist. My hand cupped him and warmth spread. I stroked, and the warmth flared into heat. Something else jumped. I ran my thumb where I'd felt movement and was rewarded with a growing pressure from the other side of his jeans.

“Huh,” he murmured, face full of the same wonder it had held the very first time I'd touched him like this.

“Doesn't feel broken.” I yanked on the snap, pulled down the zipper. “Let's make sure.”

I dipped my fingers inside, curled them around him. He went so hard he seemed to fill my hand in an instant. I pumped him once, and he groaned, closed his eyes, arched.

Nope, not broken at all.

“This is … This is…”

“Amazing.” I continued my movements. He got harder, larger, even more so.

“It is. You are.” He looked down, and his eyes widened. “Apparently I am.”

“Yes,” I agreed, and he kissed me again.

The desperation remained, a definite need for speed. I understood. Any man who'd thought “it” was broken, then found that it wasn't, would be frantic to use it before it broke again.

He fumbled with my shirt, the button on my jeans, the actions both sweet and disturbing. I didn't want it broken before I used it either.

I pulled back, and he set his forehead to mine. “Sorry. This is nuts. We can't—”

“We can. We will. We
are.
” I circled his wrists, met his eyes. “But let's just lose our clothes and save some time. Okay?”

His lips curved. He yanked his T-shirt over his head, kicked off his shoes, shucked his already open pants and everything else.

Next he busied himself spreading the blankets from the corner—Reggie's, but I was pretty sure the dog would share—across the truck bed. I was glad, not only because I'd rather get naked unobserved but because I was momentarily distracted—and distressed—by the scars on his body that hadn't been there before.

By the time he'd made our bed, I'd managed to not only drag my gaze from the criss-cross slashes of pink and white, some worse than others, the one on his thigh really bad—but toss my shirt, jeans, shoes, socks, and panties in a pile of their own.

I joined him on the makeshift bed, thrilled to observe that he remained “unbroken.” Even more thrilled that the truck shielded us from view on three sides. He yanked the tailgate up—make that four sides. We'd hear any cars approaching on the dirt path from a long way off, and Reggie would make sure nothing and no one else approached in any other direction.

Privacy was nice, but right now I didn't much care. I might have balked at doing him on the fifty-yard line at Lambeau Field during halftime. Maybe.

I set my hand on his chest, following the trail of my fingertips with my lips, tasting his skin, testing those larger, tighter, better muscles. His stomach rippled. I licked his ribs then traced the gooseflesh with my thumb.

“Becca, I can't—”

“Can,” I insisted, and used my teeth on his tip.

The next instant I was on my back, his wide shoulders blocking out the sprinkle of sun through the tree limbs. Our legs tangled together; the hair on his tickled. Thank goodness there wasn't any hair on mine. I certainly hadn't planned on having sex today—or any day, week, month, year.

Hell.

“Protection.”

He kissed me quick, then set his forehead on mine again and just breathed. The ebb and flow of his chest brushed his skin along mine, making my nipples tighten and ache.

I cupped his cheek. “We don't have to.”

“Oh, we have to. Just give me a sec.”

“Does your leg hurt?”

“I'll manage.”

He rolled free, hunted down his jeans, rustled around, and came back with a condom. Should I be thrilled that he had one or—

The snap of latex brought my gaze back where it belonged. I was definitely thrilled that he had one, a bit sad that he didn't have two.

He winced, just a little, as he crawled to the blankets, but he covered it well, no doubt because he'd been covering it for a while. Nevertheless, I worried.

“I could go on top.”

His gaze flicked to mine. “That obvious?”

“I just—”

He lay back and held out his arms. “First time for everything, right?”

“It isn't—” I began, then snapped my mouth shut.

He wasn't talking about me in general but us in particular, and in that, he was right.

We'd been kids—eager and fumbling—in the dark, in the cab of his truck, the woods, his closet, then that haymow. We had not had the time, the experience, or the inclination for experimentation. It had been missionary all the way.

He cupped my hips. I took him in slow. Had he always been this big? Or had my lady parts shrunk from lack of use?

The sensation of stretching, filling, oh, so full was glorious. His tip struck something deep inside that sent a thrum of need all the way to my toes and I arched, thrusting my hips against his, and then …

Then I rode.

This was a lot better than riding a horse. I rubbed my inside against his outside. I never wanted to stop. The breeze stirred my hair, cooled my skin; the sun flickered across my face; the leaves above sang and danced.

I stifled inappropriate laughter at the mental images, which played through my brain like a pornographic version of
Fantasia.

“You're so beautiful.” He watched me through half-open eyes. The sun dappled his skin, highlighting every ripple and curve. The shadows played across cheeks and chin, giving me glimpses of the boy I'd loved in the face of this man.

“Touch me,” I said.

Never stop.

The last two words drifted through my mind but I managed to keep them there. I wanted nothing to slow this, end this, ruin this.

His large hands brushed upward and I shivered, the movement pushing us together in such a new and interesting way, I gasped. He pulled away.

“I scratched you.”

“Do it again.” I pulled him back. “Higher this time.”

His eyebrows lifted, so did his lips, then those gloriously rough palms scraped my breasts. I liked that so much, I pressed my own hands to his and helped.

I watched his throat work and leaned down to lick his Adam's apple, my nipples peaked, pressing into his chest. “Becca, I have to—”

I sat up and rode some more.

Time passed. It seemed both forever and just a day.

He moaned. A prayer, my name.

“Soon,” I promised.

He curled upward, took my breast in his mouth, worried my nipple with his teeth.

“All right,” I agreed, then tightened around him and whispered …

 

Chapter 16

“Now,” Becca said, and Owen exploded, there was no other word for it. He knew explosions.

Everything went bright and silent, perched on the edge of brilliance in that instant before the whole world changed.

He lifted his lips from her breast, wanting to drink her gasps, her sighs, her moans, and met hers coming down. Then he did to her mouth what he was doing to her body—claiming it, possessing it, making it his.

He'd been afraid he would never be able to do this again—not just with Becca but with anyone, even himself. He should have known if there was anyone on this earth who could get him hard, keep him that way, then make him come as if the world was ending—or maybe beginning—it would be her.

He ended the kiss, gazed into her face, which was slightly above his and just a bit dazed. He felt that same.

“That was epic,” he said. He hoped he hadn't broken the condom.

“Epic,” she echoed, a tiny wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows.

That wrinkle always meant she was thinking. Which always led to trouble.

Speaking of trouble. Now that he'd thought about breaking the condom, he was terrified that he had. Wouldn't that just be great? Knocking her up at twenty-eight after managing not to at eighteen?

Would her father gloat about being right that Owen had finally managed to ruin her life? Or just kill him and be done with it? Owen thought he'd prefer the latter. He was certain Dale would too

Reggie barked, out in the woods still, but Becca's head spun toward the sound. Her movement caused a slow slide down low and Owen grabbed his dick and the condom before disaster happened. He cast a silent thank-you to the dog for the distraction, which allowed him to dispose of the evidence in an old plastic bag before Becca even realized what was going on.

Having sex in the back of a pickup had never been ideal, even when they were young enough for it to make sense.

“We should probably go.” She reached for her shirt.

“We should probably talk.” He reached for his.

“What about?” The question was muffled as she pulled the garment over her face.

He did the same. “What do you think?”

“We had sex, Owen. It wasn't the first time.”

He didn't want it to be the last, but he wasn't quite sure how to say that without screwing up so badly he would assure that it would be.