Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) (12 page)

And then there it was. The old farmhouse where he’d grown up. He’d taken his first steps there, but he hadn’t been back since his high school graduation. The first steps of his adult life had been to walk out the front door. He didn’t recognize the cars in the driveway anymore. He wondered when his parents had bought them.

He could stop. He could ask. Make small talk. But Casey’s ghost would stand in the middle of the room until the awkward silence twisted with regret and everyone was desperate to escape.

He ground his teeth, remembering the day they’d buried Casey. Evan’s arm had been bound in a sling, strung across his chest. No one had helped him get the suit on. He hadn’t been able to knot his tie with one hand.

The snow blanketed the road as he rolled past the place that would never again be his home. Crushing loneliness pressed in on him from all sides. He’d always been on his
own. Ever since he’d come to in the twisted metal of the car wreck, he’d been alone.

He drove past his parents’ home and headed back to the lodge and the one person who’d touched the frozen core of his soul since his sister had died. And as the walls around his heart melted, he craved the thing he wasn’t sure he could hold on to.

Claire Montoya’s heart.

* * *

Claire dragged her hands through her hair and stared at her computer screen as the snowstorm continued to rage at the mountains outside. The whole team had made it back to the lodge from the last of the late-night inspections just before the storm hit and it showed no sign of letting up. Claire was taking the extra time to figure out how she could layer in more actual training during the events that were already planned. Trying to get the most bang for her buck, so to speak. She’d give anything for more time.

Someone rapped on the door and she frowned, glancing at her watch. It wasn’t unheard of for someone to swing by this late. They worked long into the night in Iraq. Still, she was surprised someone was at her door at this hour. People had to sleep sometime. Tying her hair up into a quick loop, she padded to the door, curious.

She opened the door to find Evan. Standing in the hallway, holding two cups of coffee. Clean-shaven and freshly showered and looking like he had just run a marathon instead of listening to mission briefings for a bunch of lieutenants getting ready to go to war.

He stood framed in the door, his shoulders stiff and straight, a casual tension emanating from him. Evan was not a man who was used to admitting to his vulnerabilities, and it showed.

He was unsure of himself, she realized. He’d shown her something dark and deeply personal, something she doubted he revealed very often. It filled her heart with a
tender warmth to see this side of him.

Evan shifted and handed her one of the mugs. As he moved, she noticed the tiniest hint of black branches peeking beneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt.

She opened the door a fraction wider and took a single step backwards, inviting him into the suite.

“You look dead on your feet,” he said, sliding into a chair next to her at the dining table, his coffee mug in his hands.

“It’s close to one
A
.
M
. and I’ve been on my feet all day. Not exactly my prime energy time,” she said, breathing in the hot, moist aroma wafting up from her mug. “This smells like Dunkin’ Donuts.” She took a sip and the warm liquid burned her nerve endings awake on its way down to her stomach.

“It is.”

“Where did you find Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in a blizzard in Colorado? Do they even have Dunkin’ Donuts here?”

Evan grinned, and Claire looked away before she did something stupid. “I brought my own.”

“Seriously?” She raised both eyebrows and gratefully sipped the steaming coffee. There was something deeply sensual about the smell of coffee and freshly showered man. And the way his dog tags were outlined beneath his shirt sent her imagination down a dirty, gritty path filled with dark temptation. “I never would have thought of you as a coffee fanatic.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he said quietly. “Any chance your inspections went any better than mine earlier today?” Evan asked.

She raised her eyebrows again. “You have to ask? They had the wrong markings on their ammo and their trucks haven’t been serviced in lord only knows how long. It’s a train wreck, and no one seems interested in trying to redirect the oncoming disaster.”

He looked away, down at the map she’d been studying. Red and green pushpins
made small clusters around Baghdad and the Triangle of Death, the center of mass for the majority of U.S. deaths in Iraq. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for a pattern in the recent attacks so we can try to duplicate them during training.” She frowned and leaned back, cradling the mug in both hands. “I’m not breaking any rules. I just want to maximize the training time we do have.”

Mere hours had passed since they’d touched. Since he’d burned his taste into her soul, affecting her more than any man had in a decade, maybe more. Maybe ever.

She’d missed him. And the thought terrified her. They’d sparred when they’d been assigned to the brigade operations cell together, but despite the arguing, he’d become a part of her normal. A piece she’d been missing since she’d come back from Iraq.

A piece that had clicked back into place during this mission.

“Not that I don’t love your company, but what are you doing stalking the hallways, anyway?”

“I saw the light reflected on the snow from your window again. I wondered why you were up.”

She frowned slightly, shifting until there was space between them. “Why were
you
up?”

He shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t sleep much.”

She glanced at his shoulder, then met his eyes. “Why?”

* * *

“After my sister died, I started to have trouble sleeping.” It was a confession, one that wasn’t easy for him to admit. “I’d already been accepted to West Point before the accident. I stayed busy enough there that I was too exhausted not to sleep.” He shrugged and stared into his coffee. “Staying busy seems to be the best way to keep the insomnia
demon at bay. But it’s hard to stay busy enough when I’m not deployed,” he murmured, his voice thick.

She offered a wry smile, leaning back to look up at him. “It’s too quiet. The quiet really gets to me. Who knew that would be what I noticed most about coming home?”

“How many times have you deployed?” he asked, shifting his stance as she rose from her chair. The movement shifted the air and it brushed against his skin. He wanted to feel the fire in his blood from her body against his.

He loved watching her body move. There was strength beneath the beauty, a strength that called to him in dark, seductive whispers. “Last tour made three. You?”

“This last one was my fourth,” he said.

She glanced at the map, releasing a quiet sigh. “Do you honestly think we’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting them ready to deploy?” she asked.

He watched as she transitioned in one instant from the Claire who was soft and feminine and relaxed to the Claire he was used to at work: tough and no bullshit. It was an almost physical change, one that he could see in the renewed tension in her shoulders, the slight widening of her stance.

What did it say about him that both versions of her appealed to him equally?

“I was talking with Sarah after the briefing this evening and she said that Colonel Danvers is up for his first star soon. His battalion commanders are under a ton of pressure to perform.” Claire took a long sip of her coffee. “Apparently the pressure has already made one company commander quit and a first sergeant is being court-martialed for disrespect, among other things.”

“I didn’t realize things were that bad here,” Evan murmured, watching her as she turned back to the map. For a brief moment, his mind flittered back to Iraq and to another Claire, one who was driven to protect her soldiers first and accomplish the mission second. But looking at her now, Evan felt a tug, a tug that was respect mixed with desire. A potent combination.

“I don’t think any of us did, honestly. Sarah’s my friend and I’m terrified for her.”

He shifted, leaning against her shoulder to look at the map. Heat radiated off her body, wrapping around him and sliding through his clothes to caress his skin.

“We’re so limited on time. I feel like we’re cutting too many corners,” she mumbled, moving a pushpin to another area outside a town on the map.

He laughed, low and deep in his throat. Scowling, she glanced up at him and he realized how close he’d managed to get to her. “Now that’s funny, coming from you.”

* * *

Claire looked at him sharply, the quick retort dying on her lips as Evan rotated his shoulder, the motion slipping the T-shirt up his biceps, revealing more of the tattoo. Warmth flooded between her thighs as she remembered licking the edges of that hidden tribute.

She wanted to ask him more about it. About the sister he’d loved so much he’d permanently marked his body for her. But the way he’d stood, head bowed, as she explored the branches etched into his skin told her he wasn’t ready to talk about that. He rotated his shoulder and she frowned. “Sore?”

“It stiffens up if I don’t work out regularly.”

“You skipped the gym today?”

“Yeah.”

She wasn’t used to being uneasy around a man and everything about Evan made her uneasy. She needed to put it away, needed to get things back to what they had been. Her Super Woman to his Captain America. It was much easier that way.

He looked at her then and she saw just how serious he was. Very, very serious. Something was eating at him, more weighty than their argument or their kiss. He looked at her sharply, the torment in his soul etched into the lines beneath his eyes. Maybe it was
the storm that had kept him up. Maybe it was something else.

Whatever it was, he did not want to be alone right now.

And neither did she.

The storm pounded against the walls of the lodge. Wind whistled through the spaces between the buildings, howling like a banshee.

The T-shirt Evan wore clung to his chest like a second skin, revealing hard angles and sharp planes that disappeared into the belt around his jeans. Claire breathed in and caught the scent of … laundry soap?

Never in three combat tours had she figured out how to get her laundry to smell like something other than the sterile, pungent odor of dirty water and cheap detergent. One thing she missed when she was traveling was the smell of warm clothes fresh from the dryer. Tonight that smell mixed with the scent of Evan’s skin and it sent warmth spiraling through her.

She shifted so that she could look up at him.

He sat too close, close enough that she could see a smudge of shaving cream below the line of his jaw. She reached for it before thinking about it, swiping her thumb over his pulse. He swallowed, his dark gaze capturing hers. “Do that again,” he said, his voice rough.

The temptation to touch him, to feel his hot skin beneath her fingertips, was too strong to resist. She traced her index finger beneath his ear, down the strong line of his jaw to the sensitive skin covering his pulse.

He slid one hand into the hair at the base of her neck, his fingers strong and hard against her skin. She tipped her neck, tacit permission for him to touch her. Hot sexual tension ripped through her, slicing any hint of restraint to shreds. Heat pooled between her thighs and she was suddenly, achingly aware that they were alone.

He nuzzled the sensitive skin beneath her ear before cupping her face and urging
her to turn to him. She smiled against his mouth, flicking the tip of her tongue over the full edge of his bottom lip, acutely aware that she was doing more than just teasing him. She was crossing a line she’d set for herself years ago. She was lowering barriers that had been guarding her heart for what felt like a lifetime. And it felt good.

She opened her mouth and kissed him. His surprise was a burst against her tongue, his taste a potent, raw hunger. He moaned low in his throat, his fingers clenching the back of her neck.

Her fingers curled into his chest of their own accord, the chain of his dog tags biting into her skin through his T-shirt.

* * *

He couldn’t resist the urge to push the boundaries of this new aspect of their relationship. A sensation rose inside him, a longing so fierce and primal it nearly dropped him to his knees.

He craved Claire, but more, he respected her strength, her determination. And he wanted her complete and total surrender.

The boundaries of appropriate conduct had long ago fallen away between them and damn the consequences, he wanted more. There were no rules against what he wanted with her, at least no formal rules. They were unwritten, impossible to navigate, but he no longer cared. He wanted to be reckless for the first time in his adult life and do something completely unplanned.

He wanted … he wanted no barriers. No hiding behind uniforms or rank or customs. He wanted her to look at him, just him, and still want what she saw. It was a needful thing in him, growing and demanding more than, perhaps, either of them was willing or able to give.

Claire said nothing for a long moment, and Evan felt the silence pressing against
his soul. Her palm slid against the back of his hand, a gentle, firm touch that said so much more than any words could hope to convey.

“Do you ever cut loose? Ever truly let go?” she asked, tracing her tongue over his bottom lip.

He swallowed. “Not really. I don’t like to do things if they’re not going to be done right.”

“A perfectionist,” she murmured. “I knew it.” She shifted so that she was standing between his thighs. Her fingers skimmed over his forearm, a touch of silk.

“I don’t want to be perfect,” he admitted.

She smiled gently. “No, you just want to be in control,” she murmured against his mouth. Her breath traced across his lips but they did not touch.

“Bad things happen when I lose control,” he said.

“Bad things happen regardless. You can’t control everything.” Her fingers traced up the sides of his neck, a light, teasing touch.