Light Up the Night (14 page)

No one came to mind.

Bill had trouble remembering quite how he'd gotten here. A bed, a big one, with fresh sheets.

He looked around and spotted the woman in the bed beside him. A short mop of red hair and white skin, and the sheets pulled up so tight around her neck that it looked as if Trisha was trying to choke herself in her sleep.

It wasn't that he'd gotten drunk. He remembered the beer and the pizza clearly. That was a memory wrapped up in all kinds of good. They'd talked long past sunset about almost nothing at all. Missions, stories from their old days surviving on the street, all sorts of things.

She'd even teased him into a slice of apple pie after far too much pizza with some yarn about the definition of a true Yankee and wasn't he a true Yankee after all. His attempts to point out that he was from the Midwest were summarily dismissed as irrelevant.

“To someone outside the U.S., it's someone inside the U.S. To someone inside the U.S., it's someone from north of the Mason-Dixon Line. To someone north of that old Civil War line, it was someone from New England. In New England, it's someone from Vermont. In Vermont, it's someone from the Great Northern Kingdom, which includes us right now. And in the Great Northern Kingdom, it's someone who eats Mom's apple pie. So you gotta have a slice of pie, sailor, or you aren't a Yankee.” Against such logic, he'd been unable to argue. And Trisha had made him laugh, actually laugh on the day he'd buried his mother.

That's when it slammed back in and the fuzziness of how he'd gotten here was blasted away. He'd buried his mother yesterday. And now he had to take care of cleaning up the last pieces of her life.

Trisha had offered him a few brief hours of sanity, made sure he ate, and then brought him to a good hotel that wasn't in Richmond. No one here in Burlington knew who he was, or who Constance Bruce might have been. Here he and Trisha were just anonymous people. A gift of immense value.

He'd pitched into bed. Trisha, who had turned into one giant goose bump, which he felt pretty guilty for not having anticipated, wrapped herself around him for warmth, and it was the last thing he remembered.

He slid out of the bed quietly and headed for the shower. There was going to be a ton to get done today, but thanks to Trisha, now maybe he could face it. Maybe.

Bill was getting out of the shower and just starting to dry himself off when Trisha stumbled in. Her eyes were shadowed with sleep. She practically ran into him. She wore panties and a T-shirt that sported a picture of the Milky Way galaxy and a little arrow pointing to an insignificant dot declaring, “You are here.”

“Good starting place.”

“Huh?”

He pointed at her T-shirt. “In case I'm ever lost, it seems like a good starting place.”

“My breasts?” She looked down at her chest for a long moment.

“Well, that too. But I was talking about the T-shirt.”

She looked down again. “Yeah, sure. I guess.”

Clearly not a morning person and in desperate need of coffee, if she drank coffee. Funny the things he didn't know about her. In some ways he knew more about her than any woman he'd ever slept with, but in most ways he knew far less. Somehow they'd skipped all that getting-to-know-you dating crap and moved straight on to…what?

She turned on the shower and peeled down. It might be rude to watch, but he decided that the view was worth it and leaned against the door frame to enjoy himself. She might be small, but she wasn't delicate like he'd expect for a woman of her size.

Her back was to him as she adjusted the water temperature. He admired the definition of her muscles. Runner's calves, but more than that. Some of the muscle was that of a bicyclist, probably from the foot pedal controls of flying a chopper so much. Like every other soldier, she clearly pumped iron. It was the one exercise that could be done in almost any camp. There was always room for a weight set. Her waist, which he could practically encircle with two hands, built in a taper up to shoulders with exceptional definition and form.

Trisha climbed into the shower, a smooth and graceful motion that was doing really nice things to his blood flow. She slid the glass door closed behind her.

He wrapped the towel around his waist and was turning to order them some breakfast when she called out.

“I'm pissed at you.”

“You are? Why?” All he'd done was slept beside her.

“You don't wake me up. You don't ravage me. What's up with that?” Her voice echoed around the bathroom partly muffled by the cascading water.

“You looked too damn comfortable,” he called back loud enough to be heard. “And all cute tucked in bed like that.”

She slid open the glass door a crack and peered out at him. “I'm not cute.” By her tone she'd clearly taken that as a deep insult. Her hair was already plastered to her head and washed partly over one eye.

“You're about the damn cutest thing I've ever seen.”

She slapped the door closed on him.

Grinning to himself, he once more turned toward the bedroom and the phone. Then he thought better of it.

Shedding the towel, he went back to the shower and slid open the door. He had one foot in when she slammed it closed. Had it been heavier, it would have hurt. Instead, it just trapped him momentarily off balance, with one foot in the shower and the rest of him balanced on one foot on the slick bathroom floor.

He hopped around until he had his balance back, then shoved sideways on the door. It resisted momentarily as she tried to find some way to brace it in place. Finally giving up, she let go and he stepped under the scorchingly hot water.

“Ow! Crap!”

“Don't touch that or I'm leaving.”

He turned it down to merely scalding.

She went to slide open the door at the other end of the tub, despite still being half covered in soap, but he caught the door before it was open wide enough for her to escape.

Giving up, she turned to glare up at him as the water pounded down against his back.

“I'm not cute! I'm beautiful!” Her Irish temper was practically steaming out her ears.

“You're immensely cute.”

“You're a jerk, Mr. SEAL. Bloody Scotsman!” She thumped the side of her fist hard against his chest.

“And you're not beautiful, you're gorgeous! You crazy Irishwoman.”

In that moment her expression shifted from ire to disbelief.

He laughed. Bill couldn't help himself. The woman was a constant wonder to him. He pulled her into a kiss, their bodies moving slickly together. Without hesitation, her arms slid up around his neck and held on, fingers digging into his hair.

His senses were awash in her. The smooth perfection of her skin. The strength of her kiss. The heady taste of her. The life that practically exploded from her pores. Bill actually had to shift and rest one hip on the shower wall to make sure they remained steady on their feet.

Trisha pulled back and nipped at his shoulder. She paused for a moment and mumbled barely louder than the pounding water.

“I'm not cute.”

***

God, but Trisha loved Billy's laugh. Even when he was laughing at her, it somehow included her. She remembered the laugh of all of the people who had judged her based on her size or her gender or her background or her jumping style of conversation that she was told skittered along like a flat stone on a mud puddle, or any of a hundred other excuses they'd found to belittle her.

That was one of the things Vinny had taught her and why she'd kept running with his gang whenever she had the chance. He'd taught her how to stand up for being who she was.

And now this big galoot of a sailor was sweeping her feet out from under her just by being himself. She wasn't ready for that. Didn't want that. She wasn't going to let herself be made less of by anyone, even if they didn't intend it.

Then she laid her ear to his chest and wrapped her arms around him, letting the shower water cascade over them. So slowly, so gently for a man of his immense strength, he in turn wrapped his arms around her back and held her tight. He didn't make her feel less than she was; he made her feel more.

And that sent her nerves to skittering. So, she'd go for something that was more familiar.

She slid her hands down to his waist and pulled him tightly against her, his arousal pressing against her belly.

Well, she might not have any protection in the shower, but that didn't mean she was out of ideas. She snagged the bar of soap and, keeping him close, began lathering that nice ass of his.

His sigh, and the combined relaxing of his body and tensing of his hips, was all the answer she needed.

She soaped her chest and breasts and then slid down along him, tracing her tongue along that big scar crossing his chest. Trisha didn't know why that line so intrigued her. Perhaps that he had been so damaged and yet come out whole. It was how she often felt inside—like anything that even started to make sense was always chopped off and shredded, never allowed to come together, never allowed to heal. Like damned Chief Warrant Maloney and her get-your-shit-together-or-get-out talk. She'd had it together. Trisha had made SOAR and…

Bury
it!

Just
bury
it!

And, with a hard blink, she did. She cast it aside and instead focused on that impossible contradiction of males, that something so hard could be so soft and so sensitive. Rubbing him between her breasts until he moaned aloud was the perfect anodyne for the mess she was inside. This was simple, clear, controllable.

“So, what's with this?” She traced a line of soap down the scar. “Zulu warrior? Crazed Burmese drug lord? An angry Smurf?”

She soaped herself some more and used herself like a human washcloth, rubbing herself over him until he had to brace himself against one of the walls to remain upright.

“The last is actually the closest.” His voice hitched with the effort to speak.

“Tell me.”

“Later.”

“Now, or I stop.” She wrapped a leg around him and began rubbing that up and down.

“If you don't stop, I'm not sure I can keep speaking.”

“If I stop, I don't restart. Figure it out, sailor.”

His eyes rolled in frustration. God, he was so much fun to torture.

“Angry husband.”

At that she did stop. Stopped and stared at him. He hadn't seemed like the type to sleep with someone else's wife. Her expression must have been clear on her face.

“I was only nineteen, but I wasn't stupid. She didn't tell me he was a trucker, out of town.”

“No ring? No male crap scattered around the house?”

“Neither. Makeup on her ring finger, so not even a shadow. Didn't know it at the time, but we were in her guest bedroom. All his stuff was in the master bed and bath. He surprised us and came at me with a machete.” He traced the stroke down.

“Damn! What did you do?”

“Disarmed the son of a bitch. Broke both his wrists and a knee to do so. Actually, it was the wife he ended up pissed at. He was going for her throat with that big blade when I stopped him. Then his wife came at me like it was all my fault.” He traced a tiny scar on his left arm. “Point of a nail file. Tied her up with a bedsheet and called 911.”

“With a bedsheet, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And?” His grim look had a smile hiding in it somewhere.

“I, uh, tied her to the bedpost with her hands behind her back. Once I told the cops what was going on and the ambulance crew was working on the husband and me, they just kind of left her tied there a good while. Stark naked. She wasn't real pleased about that or her injured husband screaming for a lawyer so he could divorce her sorry ass as soon as he could sign a paper again.”

Trisha ran her hand down the scar once more. It didn't change how it felt. A slice like that and he hadn't killed the man. As always, Billy did right by everyone he met.

“Tell me about this one?” She traced the bullet hole so near his heart.

“That one was a Smurf.”

She took a soapy hand and massaged him right between the legs.

“Okay. Okay.” His groan was deep and shook him. “It was a crazed Burmese drug lord, except he was Argentine and dealing in Russian arms.”

Trisha led him across the road map of his body, scar by scar, wound to wound, teasing and taunting him until he shook with need.

There was a thrill to having such a strong man so wholly under her control. One of the nation's best trained warriors was almost whimpering at what she could do to him.

She kissed Billy as he came in a rocket-hot jet against her palm, with a massive groan of release and joy that lodged in places far deeper than any scar.

***

When Trisha tried to slide free in the shower, Bill wrapped an arm about her, keeping her in place.

All he could think… He couldn't think. All he could do… He thought of several things he could do. He tipped his head back into the water that continued to sheet over them to clear his brain.

As soon as he was steady enough to do so, he pushed her back half a step and looked down into those sparkling blue eyes made even more so by all of the water drops caught on her darkened lashes.

Ever so slowly, he turned her around, until her back was facing him. She glared at him, but finally submitted. Then he lifted her hands and placed them against the shower wall. Again the resistance until he leaned in and whispered into her ear, “Trust me.”

“Like I'm going to do that.” But she did turn to the wall, bracing her hands high.

“Close your eyes.”

She gave an exasperated groan, but he hoped she did so.

Then he poured a squirt of shampoo on her bright red hair and began working it in.

Her startled gasp was all he needed. She'd clearly expected something else. He liked surprising her, keeping her guessing. As he worked his strong fingers into her scalp, she began relaxing until she truly did need those hands on the shower wall to hold herself up.