Midnight Man (25 page)

This was insane. He should have got the first fast heat of her out of his blood by now. He should be capable of settling down. But he still felt edgy around her, always semi-aroused, ready to jump her bones the instant she gave some kind of sign. Even without the sign.

He needed to slow it down, make conversation with the woman instead of remembering how soft her skin was and how it felt to be buried deep inside her. Counting the minutes between eating and when they could have sex again.

Still, even the down time was great, more intriguing than actual sex with most women.

It occurred to him, for the first time, that he might actually be in a relationship, instead of having sex. It was a novel thought, a not totally welcome one. It meant a major shift in his life, a realigning of his priorities. He wasn’t entirely sure how he should feel about this.

It might even be too late. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d already made the leap, and his head was just now catching up.

He stole an uneasy glance at her across the candles and she responded with a smile so blinding it was like a fist to his heart.

Oh God, he was done for. Like being parachuted into a hostile foreign country with no compass and no weapons. Dead, dead, dead.

“A penny for your thoughts, John.” She spooned ice cream over a huge portion of hot apple pie and handed it to him. She cut a slice about a tenth as large as his own for herself.

She definitely wouldn’t want his thoughts. “I was thinking,” he improvised, “that after dessert we could turn the radio on. If we can find a station with slow music, we could dance.”

Suzanne looked up swiftly, eyes wide. “You dance?” She didn’t have to sound so surprised. As if he said he did embroidery or collected stamps.

“No.” He shrugged as she laughed. “But I figure—how hard can it be? You hold on to someone and move. Can’t be harder than a HALO.”

A drop of melting ice cream dotted her lip and she licked it delicately, small pink tongue wiping her lip and just like that he got a hard-on. He remembered in vivid sensory detail just how she had taken his cock into her mouth and sucked gently, tongue swirling over the head…

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?” He had on jeans and his blue steeler had nowhere to go. It swelled against the tight restraining material and it hurt. He couldn’t concentrate.

“That thing you said—halo?”

Down boy!
“HALO. High Altitude Low Opening jump. You jump out of a plane, usually at night, from 25,000 feet carrying 150 pounds of gear and don’t open your ‘chute till the last possible minute. Not a whole lotta fun.”

“No, I can see that it wouldn’t be. Dancing’s a snap in comparison. So eat up your dessert, Commander. Then we’ll repair from the dining room to the living room where we’ll have some vin brulè. Then we can go to the ballroom for some dancing.”

It was a plan he could go with, even sporting a hard-on so intense it hurt to walk. The living room—which was essentially the couch—was three steps from the dining room—which was the table—and it doubled as the ballroom. Three in one. Ah, the advantages of living in a shack.

John made it to the couch, trying not to hobble, while Suzanne brought out two steaming mugs from the kitchen. The mugs smelled of wine and Christmas. He found a station he liked on the radio and sat back.

Suzanne sat next to him and eased back into his shoulder. One hand cupping the shoulder of a beautiful woman, the other hand holding a cup of mulled wine. Life didn’t get much better. They sipped.

Suzanne glanced at his lap. “You’re aroused.”

“Damn right.” He slanted a glance at her. “I’m counting on you doing something about it.”

“Mm. Later. First we dance, and then there’s another Barron Christmas tradition we have to respect first.”

“Does it involve red ribbons?” he asked, with interest. “I could really get into red ribbons. Oh, yeah.” He warmed to the theme. “You could tie me up and put a ribbon around my—“

She punched his shoulder. “I’m not into bondage, silly.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “I’m into fantasy. Like the one about the big bad soldier who kidnaps me and takes me up into his mountain lair and plies me with drink and makes love to me until I can’t see straight.”

“Oh, that fantasy. That’s one of my specialties.” It was so wonderful to see her like this, playful and flirtatious. This was the woman beneath the cool professional. This was her essence, he realized. Warm, sparkling, lively with laughter. Hidden these past days by his sex drive, which had scared her, and by fear of the damned son of a bitch who was after her. For now he’d managed to lift the veil of sadness and fear that had hid her sparkle. “We’ll have to see what we can do to make every single one of your fantasies come true.”

“That’s nice,” she sighed. Her head lay back against his arm, a blonde lock falling over his shoulder. Some kind of perfume wafted up from her, a scent guaranteed to bring a man to his knees. He let his hand drift from her shoulder to her neck, running the back of his index finger up and down the smooth length. She moved into his hand like a cat wanting to be stroked.

A ballad came on the radio, one he was familiar with because it had been playing in all the bars while he’d trained. His brain was imprinted with it. He rose from the sofa, pulling her up, wrapping his arm around her. “I’m willing to break my back fulfilling your fantasies, honey, but first I need to have this dance.”

She slipped gracefully into his arms, already moving, following his pathetically simple two-step with ease. They swayed and he hazarded a simple dip. When she came up, laughing and flushed, he felt like Fred Astaire.

He buried his nose in her hair and turned with her in his arms, the music and her perfume filling his head. He still had a hard-on and she had to feel it, but it was okay. They were going to make love soon; both of them knew it. It could wait another minute or two. He was going to make sure this time it was lovemaking and not fucking. No wall jobs, no taking her from behind. It was going to be in a bed and he was going to be on top and it was going to be slow and soft. Even if it killed him.

Her body fit so neatly against his. He turned and she followed gracefully, breasts brushing his chest, legs sliding against his. Dancing was something else he’d underrated. He’d always considered it a second-rate form of foreplay. Why do it, when you could have the real thing?

It was foreplay, but pleasant in its own right. The music filled his head, a slow liquid beat that seemed to pulse in time with his heart. Suzanne was light and graceful in his arms, and she filled his head, too, the scent and the feel of her. He tightened his grip and she moved even closer, part of the music, part of him. It felt as if every movement he made was made with her, as if she were an extension of himself.

It was so easy to lose yourself this way, to be one with the night and the music and the woman. If he was already in a relationship, and he’d discovered he liked dancing, then there would be more of this in his future. He knew he was a goner when that prospect didn’t fill him with dread.

He brought their entwined hands up and tilted her head back with his thumb. His head lowered. Suzanne stopped swaying. She disengaged their hands and placed her palm on his chest. “Not just yet, soldier. There’s something more we have to do.”

Whatever it was, she wasn’t refusing him. The warmth in her eyes as she looked at him was clear. She lifted on tiptoe, pressed a kiss to his mouth, then took him by the hand. In passing, she picked up two candles, a box of matches, and her coat. He helped her on with the coat and she led him to the door.

Outside, the night had turned clear as glass and icy cold. There was no cloud cover and, so far from any light pollution, the stars were thick and bright overhead, the Milky Way a creamy rope across the sky. They stood on the porch under the star-bright night sky. Still and fresh, it was like the first night of a new life, where the new world would be bright and clean.

He held Suzanne, as fresh and beautiful as the night, tightly by his side. The match flared and Suzanne lit a candle, placing the other in his hand.

They watched the candle burn for a moment, the flame rising bright and straight in the still air. “In my family, we have a tradition,” Suzanne said quietly. “We all gather on Christmas Eve for a late supper. When I was small, there was my mom and dad and me, plus aunts and uncles and both sets of grandparents. After dinner, we’d listen to music or play charades until midnight. Then we’d all troop outdoors holding a candle. My father would make a little speech about how blessed we were to be with our loved ones and what he hoped for the world in the coming year. He would always end by saying ‘peace’. He’d light his candle, and light my mother’s candle with his. She’d light mine. The light was passed from person to person and we’d all say ‘peace’. It was like we were summoning peace from the spirit of Christmas.” She looked up at him and he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. She lowered her candle to his, her flame igniting his. It flared, and then settled to burn steadily. “Peace, John”, she whispered.

Peace.

He hadn’t had much of it in his lifetime, hadn’t missed it, and hadn’t even looked for it. But peace moved through him in a powerful surge, warming him. He now recognized that was what he’d felt like a punch to the heart on opening the door to his shack this afternoon to a little wonderland of beauty and grace. Peace. And a sense that he’d come home.

Peace and homecoming, for a man who was a warrior and who’d never had a home. In the space of a few days, this remarkable woman had created two homes for him and filled them with peace.

“Peace, Suzanne.” He gave her promise back to her and bent down.

They kissed, lightly, holding their candles in the chill night air, under a million stars. John moved his mouth on hers, keeping it gentle because that’s what he felt in his heart. The long, slow glide of lips and tongue, the sigh of breath meeting breath, heartbeat to heartbeat, that was peace.

John set the candles on the railing, where they burned brightly, side by side. He watched them a moment, then bent to gently blow them out. He turned back to Suzanne. Their lips met again and he bent to lift her in his arms, holding her high against his heart, kissing her as he carried her inside. Music from the radio provided a counterpoint to the drumbeat in his head. He considered, briefly, turning it off, but it seemed appropriate to lay Suzanne across his bed to the strains of “Joy to the World”.

Joy. John couldn’t help but smile down at her in joy. With no sense of hurry, he stripped, his gaze locked with hers. He was naked in seconds and she could clearly see what she did to him. Part of him—the old John—wanted to jump on top of her and enter her fast. She was ripe and ready, sighing, legs moving restlessly. Rip pants and panties off her and put it in.

That was the old John. The new one wanted to savor each step, each slow unveiling. This John bent to take her shoes and socks off, slowly. Right foot, left foot. He held her foot for a moment, admiring the elegant arch, the subtle play of tendon and muscle. He wanted to see more, see those long, slender legs gleam in the shadowy darkness. The rasp of the zipper, the hiss of material as he pulled pants and panties down and off and there she was. Naked from the waist down, covered only by a soft cherry-red sweater. He picked her right foot up again and lifted it to his mouth.

It exposed her. Enough light filtered in from the living room to show the folds of her sex, open and already glistening. His cock came away from his stomach in a surge and lengthened.

“John. Look at me. I’m ready.” Suzanne lifted her other leg then let it fall to the side. She was completely open to him. “Come to me now,” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, couldn’t. Words choked in his throat. All he could do was to bend and kiss her foot, nibbling, listening to the catch of her breath as he suckled her toes, one by one. He kneeled on the bed, watching her eyes. Everything he did to her tonight had to be pure liquid pleasure for her, joy heaped on joy. Her eyes would tell him what worked and what didn’t.

Light nips along the arch of her foot, a fingertip running from ankle to thigh worked. Her sighs rose in the room. He meant for there to be moans and then screams before he was done.

Lips, then fingers, trailed up her legs. That worked, too. He placed his hands on the inside of her knees and pressed them open, gently. Her sex unfolded like petals of roses, wet with dew.

His thoughts surprised him, even shocked him. He’d never had these images in his head before, ever. Sex was sex, period. Getting your rocks off was fun while it lasted, but not part of the important business of life. This…this was different. And important as hell.