A Few Good Men

Although she was reluctant to admit it, her every other thought was about how nice it had been to be held by him.

The problem lay in that the other thoughts were about her betrayal of the memory of her husband.

“It seems like every time I takea breath, I smell you…”

Sara gave an eye roll.

“I swear I detect the scent of lavender and vanilla everywhere. Then I remember that it’s not around me now, but rather a memory of you.”

Her soap and bath oil.

Okay, so it would have been easy to dismiss his initial words as so much hype, but his specific mention of her fragrance told her he was being genuine.

Of course, if she overlooked the part of her brain that told her that any contact with Eric was a bad idea, she would have recognized his honesty. Would never have questioned his sincerity. It was those qualities that had captured her attention and had drawn her to him time and again when she needed to feel connected to someoe not her in-laws or work associates.

Someone who would be as honest with her as she was with him.

Her heart beat a steady, heady rhythm in her chest.

“You’re more beautiful than I ever dared to imagine Samantha might be,” he wrote. “More than just physical…although I loved touching you.”

She swallowed hard, captivated by his words.

“There’s a vulnerability about you, Sara. Yet you’re fearless when it comes to something that you want. The combination fascinates me. You fascinate me.”

She caressed the keyboard with her fingertips, but the words refused to come.

“Your skin…”

Her pulse hummed.

“You’re so soft. Softer than anything I’ve ever had the privilege to touch before…”

When they’d traded e-mails and IMs before his return, their sexy posts had been almost carnal in nature. Now there rang an emotional edge that reached out for her more powerfully than his hands.

“I loved making love to you…Hearing your quiet gasps…your low moans…You felt so good wrapped around me. Tight…Wet…Then there was your mouth…”

Sara found her lips were parched and she ran her tongue over them as if in preparation for his kiss. Only he wasn’t here. He was probably back at the base writing to her on his laptop.

“I want to touch myself right now just thinking about it, Sara. Just thinking about you…”

He might want to, but she was.

Sara found that her right hand had moved to rest against her neck. Right there, just below her ear, where he had kissed her, driving her insane with desire. She slowly trailed her fingers down over her opposite shoulder, feeling her bra strap under her T-shirt. She reached back and unfastened the confining material, letting it bow open, but not removing it.

“Your breasts…”

Yes…her breasts. She ran her palm over her right one, the nipple already drawn taut and achy.

“I could have kissed your breasts forever and never wanted for anything more…”

Sara wet her fingertips and lightly pinched her nipple, gasping as she imagined it was Eric’s hand against her rather than her own.

“Then there was the surprise waiting down below…”

Sara’s breath caught as she remembered him tugging her underpants down and gazing at her bare flesh. She’d started waxing when she was in her early twenties and had never really stopped, liking the feel of the clean skin against the sheets…against a man.

“I remember how ready you were for me…how engorged…”

She popped the button on her jeans and dipped her fingers inside the waistband, touching her swollen flesh through her panties first, then burrowing inside so that she caressed her hot, sensitive flesh.

“You were so wet…so ready…”

She was now, too. Oh, so ready.

“And you tasted like pure honey warmed by the summer sun…”

She dipped her index finger inside her sex and her own juices coated her skin. She pulled it out and fondled her clit, drawing small, wet circles even as she continued reading his posts through half-lidded eyes.

“But nothing compares to the moment I first entered you…”

Sweet Jesus…

“Feeling your body surrounding me, squeezing me…I’ve never felt for another woman what I felt in that one moment…”

Sara stiffened her first two fingers and slid them into her moist heat. But two wouldn’t do. Not when Eric had filled her so thickly. She added a finger and thrust them up into her wetness.

“Knowing you were so hot for me made me feel like I was burning up from the inside out…And then you moved your hips…I had to grab your bottom and hold on for dear life I was so afraid I was going to come right there and then…”

Sara shivered all over, running her tongue along her lips restlessly, longing to stretch out on the bed behind her but not daring to miss one word Eric was typing.

“I want you again, Sara…Now. Please let me in…Invite me over.”

“Come…please,” she wrote.

Chapter 5

ERIC COULDN’T BELIEVE he’d written what he had. But once it was out, there was no taking it back. Nor, he realized, did he want to.

On the front line, there was no room for hesitation or second-guessing. To do either was to risk being killed. And after two days of torturing himself over Sara’s odd behavior, he’d come to recognize that they were at a standoff of sorts. Not on a professional battlefield, but on a personal one. And he needed to pull out all the stops if he had any chance of winning this challenge.

Of course, he’d never expected Sara to accept.

But he certainly didn’t plan to give her a chance to change her mind.

What would he do if she did change her mind? He’d spent so much time fantasizing about “Samantha” that he hadn’t really adjusted to the fact that she was actually Sara. But somehow everything just clicked the instant he’d stood in front of her on that beach. He’d felt as if he’d known her. Not just over the past few years through his friendship with Andy, but for his entire life.

And he wanted her in his life, fair play or foul, he didn’t care. He couldn’t imagine a future without her in it.

He began to log off so he could drive to her place when he noticed he had an e-mail. Thinking that maybe Sara had zipped him off something before shutting down, he double-clicked the icon to find fellow marine Matt Guerrero’s name in his box.

He opened it.

“Hey. Just heard from Eddie. Court-martial is on for Brian. The date has been set for the third…”

Whatever hope that Eric felt slid off like an unbuttoned shirt.

IT TOOK ERIC TWENTY minutes to drive to Sara’s, and every minute that passed, the more he feared she’d changed her mind.

How many times over the past six months had he imagined events just like this? Feeling a need so deep, so hot, that he’d do anything in order to reach Sara?

Of course, nowhere in those imagined circumstances had she ever refused him. But now the possibility emerged a very real one, indeed.

Damn. How did he go about convincing her that his feelings were the real deal? That she needed him as much as he was coming to need her? Her stubbornness was the stuff of which wars were made. Two factions refusing to budge and meet in the middle. It was either their way or the highway. And that highway ended up being a crater-filled no-man’s-land where deadly bombs were detonated and things escalated to the point where there was no truce to be had, only seething bitterness.

He didn’t want that to happen with Sara. Wouldn’t let it happen.

He tightened his hands on the steering wheel, understanding that he could defuse the situation himself in a simple, quick manner…

He could back out before tempers got too hot. Leave Sara to believe that hers was the right decision. Deny his own need for her.

Not an option, he argued.

He pulled into her driveway and stalked toward her front door, determined to face whatever it was she threw his way.

Thankfully, she grabbed his arm and hauled him inside and kissed him wildly.

She hadn’t changed her mind…

MASTURBATION, no matter the implements, was no comparison to the real thing.

Sara pushed a surprised Eric down onto her bed and stripped her clothes off, item by item before going to work on his until they were both nude. Then she climbed up onto the bed, straddling him in a shameless way that might have mortified her under normal conditions.

But what she was feeling was anything but normal. Her blood was on fire, raging through her body like a licking blaze, burning up every practical thought in her head. She was acting on pure instinct and fundamental desire.

And she had never felt better, more in control.

She knew that this was nothing more than an illusion. That her body’s desire to mate with Eric was making her think she was in control, when actually her hormones were ruling her actions. But just then she couldn’t have cared less. She just wanted to feel Eric inside her…now!

She scooted up his thighs, the springy hair there lightly scratching her as she bent to kiss him.

Eric groaned and held her head in that way that made her feel special. Like he could merely kiss her and he’d be the happiest man alive.

But she wanted more, oh, so much more.

She slid to cover his rock-hard erection between her pulsing folds, shuddering the instant the thick knob knocked against her hypersensitive clit.

Oh, yes.

Her own fingers could never bring her this much pleasure. The pure bliss of his hot, satiny hardness against her slick softness.

She reached between them to guide him inside her, reveling in the long, thick length.

“Whoa,” Eric whispered roughly. “Hold on a second while I get a rubber.”

“Can’t…wait…”

She ignored his attempts to stop her as she sank down over him, inch by delectable inch, taking him in.

He groaned and stopped fighting. Both of them stayed like that for a long moment, unmoving, absorbing every sweet sensation created by their joined bodies.

Sara swore she could feel her heart beating in every part of her body. Almost as if her body was her heart. One giant, pulsing organ capable of nothing but pure emotion. It was almost impossible for her to catch her breath.

Eric’s hips bucked as if involuntarily and sheer ecstasy rocketed through her.

Yes…

Bracing her palms against his wide shoulders, she tilted her own hips forward, then back, drenching him in her essence…

ERIC COULDN’T remember the last time he’d felt a woman’s flesh without the barrier of a condom.

A voice at the back of his head told him he should stop, sheath himself, protect her. But, Lord forgive him, he was incapable of doing anything that would impede the scintillating heat running over him in spectacular waves.

Was this really Sara stroking him with her body, her breasts swaying, her face a sketch of heaven?

God, but at this moment she was so beautiful she stole his breath away. She was a goddess who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid of going about getting it, land mines and lists of demands be damned. This wasn’t a truce, this was a coming together that transcended differences and preconceptions and flew up so high that the road that divided them was no longer visible.

Eric closed his eyes and ground his back teeth together to keep himself from coming too fast. She felt good. So good.

He grasped her hips and edged his fingers inward toward the bare flesh between her legs until both his thumbs slid into her shallow channel, finding the tight bud at the apex.

Sara gasped and arched her back, her breathing erratic, her stomach trembling. Eric knew that all he’d have to do was blow on her sensitive skin and she’d shatter into a million crystalline pieces. But he knew a fear that when he did that, she’d also wake up from whatever sensual haze she’d surrendered to and go back to the woman who refused to let him into her house, much less her heart.

So he moved his thumbs and fastened his roving fingers to her hips. Her tiny sound of disapproval was followed by another gasp as he thrust upward. He wanted to make this as long as he could. To claim her on a level that would be almost impossible to ignore or push away. He wanted her to remember him, to know that only he was capable of giving her this much pleasure.

A groan rose in his throat. Of course, he was forgetting that the woman absolutely wrecked him. She could have been Mata Hari demanding to know every last secret he’d ever been trusted with and he would have told her. Standing above him in dominatrix boots holding a whip and he would have begged her to lash him. Anything to keep her near. Anything to stop her from pushing him away.

He recognized her low moan and realized she was on the crux of orgasm. He tightened his grip on her hips and instantly rolled her over off him. Her sound of protest was loud and not very ladylike.

Eric grinned as he repositioned her on the bed next to him. If he had any hope of holding off his own climax,he needed to impose as much control as possible. So he turned her to her stomach and hauled her hips back so that she was on all fours. Then he nestled himself between her smooth bottom cheeks and parted her farther, baring every sweet inch of her to his hungry gaze.

He was determined that this time when she came, he would come with her…

SARA WOKE IN THE middle of the night feeling sated and sore…and more than a little remorseful.

Eric lay next to her, his soft snores telling her he was asleep, but not deeply. She slowly shifted to get out of bed only to be kept in place by Eric’s arms where he held her. The snores had stopped.

“Where are you going?” he said quietly.

She swallowed thickly. “Bathroom.”

“You just went.”

He had her there.

She debated on whether to fight him, to insist that she had to go again. But she was too exhausted to do anything more than melt back against him despite the arguments ringing through her brain.

She felt his lips against the top of her head. “Please…don’t do this again.”

Guilt piled on top of Sara’s entire body.

“Please don’t pull away from me.”

She searched for words to tell him. To explain what was happening inside her mind.

Instead she found the strength to draw away. She sat on the side of the bed, but forced herself to stay there instead of run for the door to the bathroom like she wanted to.

The bedsheets rustled and she looked over her shoulder to watch Eric lift himself up onto one arm, propping his handsome head on his hand.

“I want you to come to Texas with me,” he said.

She squinted at him in the darkness. “What?”

Her heart beat a million miles a minute.

“I need to go down to take care of some things at the ranch before I leave again for Afghanistan. Come with me.”

Sara’s eyes burned as she pulled the top sheet up to cover herself as best she could. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

There was the question she’d been dreading. The one she’d been running full out from since the moment she’d first spotted him on the beach. The one she’d known was on the tip of his tongue since he’d figured out she was Samantha and that he didn’t care, he wanted her anyway.

“Sara...”

She told her feet to move, but they refused her.

“I know that you think you’re betraying Andy by being with me, but…”

She shifted to look at him in the darkness, the only light in the room provided by the full moon looming large outside the bedroom window.

“Hey, look, I loved the guy, too, you know?” He ran his free hand restlessly over his close-cropped hair. “You don’t think there’s a day goes by that I don’t wish I could have done something more to save him?” He looked everywhere but at her. His voice dropped lower. “You don’t think there’s a moment when I don’t wish that it had been me instead of him?”

Sara’s eyes burned and she bit her bottom lip to keep from making a sound.

“But that’s not what went down. No matter how much I wish differently, Andy’s still gone…”

She absently budged her wedding ring around her finger, seeing no more than a blur through her tears.

“But you’re here, Sara.” Eric reached out and touched her. “I’m here…”

Chapter 6

ERIC HADN’T FELT SO convinced of something since he’d first signed on to become a marine. He knew down to his boots that asking Sara to come with him to Texas was the right thing to do. He needed her to take a step outside the past she held on to like a cocoon. Needed for her to see him as something other than an enemy and her late husband’s best friend.

He needed her to see him.

He could tell this battle was going to be all uphill. With potentially no end to the hill.

He reached out and touched her bare shoulder, marveling at the satiny feel of her skin.

“Sara, I’m not asking you to marry me. At least not yet.”

She shifted to stare at him so quickly that he was afraid she might fall off the side of the bed.

He grinned. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. As a marine, I know that around every corner, behind every bush, someone may lurk, someone determined to end my life…I don’t have to explain it to you. You’ve lived long enough around marines to know that we tend to have a different view of time clocks. What might loom too soon for some seems too late to a marine.”

“But don’t you see…that’s what I’m afraid of. I’ve already lost one man…I couldn’t go on, couldn’t survive if I lost you, too…” Her words drifted off.

Eric had fully expected her to shut him out. To counter his proposal with an offensive that would leave him bleeding his emotions all over the sheets.

Instead she’d finally laid her heart, her fears, open to him.

He sat up, for the first time hope emerging, pushing through his array of weapons.

“You won’t lose me, Sara. I won’t allow that to happen.”

“How can you say that?” she whispered. “You don’t know what might happen tomorrow, or the day after that.”

“Neither do you.” He longed to haul her into his arms. “So why waste time we can spend together worrying about what if?”

She looked at him. The pain shining bright in her eyes sliced like a knife through his heart. “What about my job? Truman?”

He knew a strong relief. But also knew he had to act fast, before she shut him out again. “Take some time off. You can probably see to a lot of your tasks on your laptop, right? And we can take the Lab with us.”

She didn’t appear convinced, as if she’d expected a different answer. Or perhaps it wasn’t the answer at all, but the question that should have been different.

“What about Gertrude and Howard?”

Andy’s parents.

Eric blinked. In all honesty, he had never considered the older couple. Andy had been their only child. And when he’d visited the other day, he couldn’t help feeling awkward in their company. Because of the circumstances of his past with Andy, yes, but there had been something more…almost as if their continued close connection with Sara allowed them to buy into the delusion that their son was only away on assignment and he would be returning any day now.

“Tell them you’re going on vacation.”

She laughed without humor. “I never go on vacation.”

He reached out and cupped her chin with his hand, wiping some of the dampness from her skin. “Well, then, it sounds like it’s long time since you started…”

To his surprise, she leaned into his touch and then melted into his arms, allowing the sheet to drop. Eric closed his eyes, marveling in the warmth of her skin against his. How small. How sexy.

Her movements doubled the hope swelling inside him. Did he finally have her? Would she come to Texas with him?

He thought of his family and all he’d introduce to her. Show her. From the stables to the back nine where he used to spend so much of his time as a kid chewing on stalks of straw and contemplating the world from under his Oilers ball cap.

“I can’t.”

She’d said the words so quietly, he nearly didn’t hear them.

But hear them, he did. And his heart dipped low in his stomach. But rather than let go of her, he held her closer.

“Thank you, Eric. Your offer is the best one I’ve heard in a long, long time.”

He heard the deep click of her swallow even as she clutched him like she might never let him go, despite the meaning of her words.

“But I can’t.”

He tried to open his mouth, push out the word sitting on the tip of his tongue: Why? But it refused to come. Mostly because he didn’t have a breath on which it could exit.

She pulled slightly away, searching his face in the dim light. “I have so much to thank you for. For being patient. For making me feel alive again when I’d felt like I’d died right along with Andy. For…well, for making me look to the future again with curiosity rather than dread.”

“Then come to Texas with me, Sara. Take that step into the future.”

She looked down and slowly shook her head. “I understand that you have your timetable, Eric. What you must understand is that I also have one. And it has yet to adjust to all the changes you’ve wrought in my life in the past week.” She blinked up again and caressed the side of his face much as he’d done to her moments before. “I can’t move at your pace. Too many people will get hurt if I do.” She smiled a ghost of a smile. “Including me.”

“I’d never hurt you.”

“No, you wouldn’t. At least not purposely.”

He opened his mouth to protest and she rested her hand against his lips.

“Shhh. I’m not done yet.”

He forced himself to shut up and listen.

“I need you to promise me something.”

He wanted to say he’d do anything she wanted. Then he realized that this particular promise was going to be something he didn’t like.

“I want you to promise that when you leave here tomorrow morning, that you do so without looking back.” Her voice caught and she appeared to have trouble keeping her breathing even. “I want…no, need you to promise me that you won’t try to contact me. Not by phone. Not by e-mail. Not by IM. Not by any means.”

“Sara—”

“Promise me, Eric.”

He drew her close again and she rested her cheek against his shoulder, holding him just as tightly.

It was all so confusing.

If she was admitting that she wanted him, with both her words and her body, then why was she still pushing him away?

“I can’t,” he whispered fiercely into her hair, holding a fist full of it gently. “I can’t imagine not being able to see you, Sara. Not being able to talk to you.”

She made a small sound as she kissed his arm. “Who said you wouldn’t be doing either?”

“But how…”

He stopped.

“If this is going to happen, I have to be in control. If you force me into it, I may end up regretting it later. Regretting you. And I don’t want to do that.”

He didn’t want that to happen, either.

But he couldn’t stand the idea that he would have no sway over her. Didn’t trust that the moment he walked out of her front door that she wouldn’t go back to being Andy’s widow and lock herself out from the world all over again.

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