Heat of the Moment (27 page)

“Cat lover?” I asked.

“He said he had all sorts of things that people had left behind.”

Owen joined me on the rug, held the glasses so I could pour. “This is homey.” We tapped rims, drank.

He smelled like chill wind and the fresh outdoors. I scooted closer so I could lean my head on his shoulder. We stared into the fire and sipped. Grenade purred a contented serenade. I wanted to stay here forever. With him.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“You want to talk about it?”

I wasn't sure which “it” he meant. Didn't matter.

“No.” I drained my wine.

“More?”

I set my glass on the end table, turned back, took his, and set it aside too. “Yes.” I pulled off my shirt.

His gaze went to my breasts. “Becca,” he began.

“Shh,” I said, and kissed him.

He tasted like red wine and winter wind. I sucked on his lip. His hands, still cold from outside, felt glorious in contrast to the heat pouring from the fireplace.

I lifted my mouth just long enough to yank off his shirt. Then I traced the patterns the flames made across his chest with my tongue and my teeth.

He pulled the band from the end of my braid, worked his fingers through my hair. The drift of the strands on my shoulders made me shiver. Or maybe it was the flick of his thumbs on my nipples. The heat had softened them; his touch changed that. I puckered, pebbled, and he pulled me into his lap, guiding my legs on either side of his hips.

“Wait.” I reached for my zipper.

He stayed my hand. “Not yet.”

Then he took my breast into his mouth, suckling, teasing, tormenting—first one, then the other—as he hardened against me. I had to steady myself with my hands on his shoulders, then I became fascinated by the play of muscles beneath my palms, the spike of his collarbone beneath my thumbs.

His hands tightened on my hips, pulling me against him. Through several layers of clothing I felt his heat, the beat of his pulse, or maybe that was mine.

“Please,” I whispered, dizzy with desire.

He lifted his head then became captivated by the flicker of flame too. His tongue chased the shadows across my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder. The dampness left by his mouth cooled despite the heat, and I shivered.

He scooped me into his arms, rose to his knees, tilted, and laid me on the fur. It was warm and soft. I shimmied against it, and he cursed, stood, and lost his pants.

“Wait.” He was so beautiful—naked and rippling and damn near perfect. Even the scar that marred his leg was smooth and sleek.

He clenched his hands, released them, and clenched them again. “You're killing me.”

I beckoned, and he dropped to the ground and reached for my jeans. I'd forgotten I still had them on.

He drew them down my legs, removed my socks, then kissed and stroked his way back up. A peck on my toes, his thumbs against the arch of my foot, tongue behind each knee, teeth on the inside of my thigh.

His breath brushed my core, and my hips lifted from the fur. His mouth pushed me back down. With fingers and tongue he made me come, gasping, biting back the scream. I didn't want to wake the animals. Though the animal in me, in him, had awoken shrieking.

He slid into me while I was still quaking. Stroked once, twice, a third time—harder, deeper, better. I hadn't thought it was possible, but what the hell? I came again.

I saw the storm in his eyes, felt the pulse radiating from him, through me. My fingers chased the firelight across his face. He turned his head and kissed my palm. My eyes prickled. I tightened my lips so I wouldn't beg him not to go.

He kissed me until we were both shaking, spent, a little cold. He moved to the couch, snatched up an afghan, strode back. Instead of covering us both, he draped it around my shoulders then added wood to the fire. I reached for my clothes.

“No,” he said, not even turning around. “I'm not done.”

I pulled the afghan tighter and enjoyed the play of muscles in his back as he fed the flames. The room brightened, warmed. He straightened, turned, and the wide, jagged scar running the length of his right thigh captured my gaze.

I rose onto my knees, ran my thumb down the mark. When I reached the middle, where the scar seemed the deepest, a spark sprang, so bright it looked like a shooting star in the night.

He hissed, took a step back, and rubbed the place I'd touched. “I think I'm done,” he said, in direct contrast to his last sentence.

“I can wait.”

He shoved the same hand through his hair. “Done in the service. I can't go back like this.”

“You're getting better,” I protested.

Why? I had no idea. I certainly didn't want him to leave.

“Not better enough. I can't run like I used to, like I need to. Can't jump out of a plane on my own, let alone with Reggie strapped to me. When I hit the ground on this leg, it'll give out and we'll both wind up dead.”

“You jumped out of a plane with a seventy-pound dog strapped to you?”

“How else do you think we got on the ground?”

I hadn't thought. Hadn't wanted to. But I certainly wouldn't have imagined that.

“Reggie's almost full strength.”

I curled my fingers in on themselves. Was that my fault? I hadn't meant to heal him; at the time I hadn't even known that I was. I couldn't take it back. I wouldn't. I shouldn't.

“I don't know what I'll do,” he said. “All I've ever had was that.”

“You had me.”

Same argument, different year.

“Don't,” he began.

“I love you,” I said. “I never stopped.”

“I hurt you.”

“You didn't mean to.”

“Of course I did. I had to make you forget me.”

“Did you forget me?”

“No.”

“Then how could you think I would ever forget you?” I laid my lips on his scar, and his hand fell to my hair. I licked the length of it, and he shuddered. “Did that hurt?”

“Yes. No.” He rubbed it again. “It's better since I've been here.”

Of course it was. If I touched him enough, he would heal, just like Reggie, like Pru, like my human mother, like any number of people and animals I'd made as good as new.

And then he would go.

 

Chapter 22

They'd made love again as the fire danced. Becca avoided touching Owen's scar, when before she'd done a lot more than touch it.

Had he flinched? Probably.

She'd seemed sad, and he wasn't sure why. Owen did his best to make that sadness go away, kissing her as he moved inside of her. “Smile for me,” he whispered.

She did, but there was still something wrong. Of course, someone
had
tried to kill her. But he didn't think that was it.

He led her to the bed, but it was occupied. “Beat it.”

Reggie lifted his head, then his lip. Grenade lay draped across his paws, dead to the world.

“It's all right,” Becca said. “We can fit.”

As she curled against one side, and the dog against his other, with the kitten's purr tickling his skin, Owen's chest shifted with longing.

“What did my father say to make you go?”

His contentment fled. He'd known this conversation was coming.

“The truth,” he said. “You deserved better.”

“There's no one better for me than you.”

“I saw what it would have been like.”

“You're clairvoyant?”

“Huh?”

“You see the future?”

“It was pretty clear.” He began to play with her hair. “You would have gone to college; I'd have stayed here. I would have visited you one weekend a month if I could get off work at the caf
é
, or the gas station, or the grocery store.”

Which would have been the extent of his options back then. Still might be.

“You'd have come home to see me too at first. Things would have been fine. Then the visits would have become fewer and farther apart.”

“I don't believe that.”

“If you'd spent all your free time with me—whether it was there or here—you would have missed out on all the things you could have done, the people you could have met, the experiences you should have had.”

Just like in the Marines, the training was important, but the camaraderie was even more so. What Owen had gone through with his fellow Marines had made him who he was.

“You'd have been giving all that up for me,” Owen continued. “You deserved better, and your father was right to make sure you got it any way that he could.”

“What way?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“You fought for your mother. You fought for this country. You never would have left without fighting for me, unless there was a damn good reason. What did he say? Do?”

Owen didn't answer. He wasn't going to tattle at this late date. In the end, he didn't have to. Becca was smart; she figured it out. He was surprised it had taken her this long. Of course, until today, she hadn't realized her father was capable of great, big, life altering lies.

“He threatened you with something.” Her brilliant mind clicked along so quickly, so loudly, he could practically hear it. “Theft? No. Anyone who knew you knew better.”

“Tell it to Emerson.”

“Kid stuff.”

“I still stole his beer.”

“Owen,” she said, exasperated.

“I was underage. Not only is stealing illegal, but so was drinking it.”

She caught her breath, and he wished he'd kept his big mouth shut. “You were eighteen. I wasn't.” She shifted so she could see his face. “So were a lot of people who dated senior year. It wasn't like I was fifteen. I don't think that counts.”

“It doesn't. Didn't.” He thought about denying it but why? It was over, done with. Like a lot of things. “Your father made the threat sound good. I was a kid. I didn't want you to go through that.”

“You think my father would have put me through that? You don't know my father.”

“I realized that pretty quickly, but I was mortified that he'd caught us. Caught me, touching you.”

“You loved me.”

“The one thing he asked of me was that I leave you alone. But I couldn't.”

“He what?”

Reggie woofed, low and startled, and Grenade made a surprised kitten-cat sound.

“Shh,” Owen said, to the dog, the cat, the woman.

“You agreed to that?” She sounded pretty mad.

He could relate. He'd been angry for a long time. He'd been angry right up until he'd seen her again and realized that she'd become all that she'd dreamed of becoming.

And that she'd done so without him should have made him madder, or at least sadder. But, instead, it had made him glad. Or at least as happy as he got these days with his own life such a mess.

“I didn't think it would be that hard,” he said.

“Gee, thanks.”

“You were my friend. Your family was my family.” Or as close to a family as he'd ever had. “But I was wrong.”

About so many things.

“I
wasn't
your friend? They
weren't
your family?” If possible, she sounded angrier.

“You became more than my friend, and because of that they couldn't be my family. I have no one to blame but myself. I wasn't honorable. I didn't keep my word.”

“It was more honorable to break my heart?”

“If I'd stayed, you would have wound up hating me.”

He would have wound up hating himself. And who needed that?

“I hated you anyway,” she said, but her voice had gone thick; her body had relaxed against him. It
was
after midnight, and neither one of them had slept since … who knew?

Owen pressed his lips to her hair, matched his breathing to hers, and for the first time in their lifetime they slept together.

*   *   *

I heard a distant beelike buzz, swatted at it, but the
brr-brr
continued.

My phone.

My eyes opened. I blinked at the expanse of male chest.

Owen.

He hadn't even moved. I wanted to sink back into the same oblivion, but I couldn't. Emergencies happened. All the time.

I slipped out of bed. Reggie opened one eye, closed it again. Grenade continued to snore. I gathered my clothes, snatched up my phone, and went into the bathroom. I discovered a text from Joaquin.

There's something weird about this wolf.

“You think?” I muttered then texted back:
Be right there.

I found a piece of stationery imprinted with the words
Stone Lake Cottages,
and scribbled a note.

Had to check on Pru. Back soon
.
I'll bring coffee
.

That should smooth over any crankiness Owen might experience upon waking and finding me gone. With his truck.

I stepped into the early morning chill of a northern Wisconsin autumn. As Three Harbors was both a farming community and a tourist hub, there were plenty of cars on the road at just before seven
A.M.
I parked in my lot, opened the back door, and Pru shot out.

He saw
.

She raced across the gravel and disappeared into the trees an instant before Joaquin appeared.

“Where'd she go?”

I pointed at the forest, grabbed his arm before he could run off too. “You aren't going to catch her.”

“No,” he agreed. “She's completely healed.”

Ah, hell! How was I going to explain a perfectly fine rump that had not been fine only yesterday?

Now that Pru was gone, I didn't have to.

“Sure she is.”

“You should have seen her wound. Except there wasn't one any more.”

“Joaquin, that's—”

“I swear.” He lifted one hand. “I'd have thought I imagined the whole thing, but the hair was still shaved, there just wasn't … anything. No stitches, no scar. Poof.”