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This was too much. She was wound tighter than a top, while he was sprawled in his chair, one hand resting comfortably around the ice-cold beer, the other slung over the back.
She should tell him.
“How’s the General?”
Rina cocked her head to the side, wondering where this was going, and answered slowly, “Great.”
He leaned forward, playing with the curling edge of the beer bottle label, his eyes staring straight and true into her own. Blue, deep, dark and dangerous.
“He still pulling your strings?”
The familiar anger welled up inside. She should be used to it by now, the automatic assumption that she’d gotten something—everything—simply because of who her father was.
She’d had to deal with it when she entered the academy, taking more shit than any of the other cadets just because of who she was. They’d wanted to break her. To have her go crying home to daddy. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. With each assignment, including the one to the Thunderbirds, she’d heard the whispers behind her back. “Oh, she’s the General’s daughter.”
Years of experience had hardened her to the reaction but, for some reason, coming from Chase…it hurt. But why should she expect more from him than everyone else? She could count the things she knew about him on one hand. His middle name was Edward and he could make her body hum with desire faster than should be legal.
“No one pulls my strings, least of all my father.”
“I think we both know that isn’t true. If it were we’d have had this conversation about seven years ago.”
Why was he baiting her? Why was he doing this? Pushing her chair back from the table, Rina grabbed her purse. “This was a mistake.”
“Sabrina.”
“Don’t call me that.” She bit the words out as she stalked from the bar.
His voice followed her from the restaurant, through the ever-present casino and into the falling darkness—or as dark as it could get with megawatt bulbs blaring from every direction.
She ignored him, melting into the crowd of people on the sidewalk, blending in to the ebb and flow around her.
That had not gone well. She walked through the throng for several moments, pushing unseeingly against the people and things in her way. After a couple minutes the anger finally peaked inside her and her steps slowed to something resembling normal. Then came the disappointment at losing control of her temper. She didn’t do it often, for not much pushed her to the edge, but Chase seemed to have a knack for stirring her emotions.
Of course, if she was honest with herself she’d admit that she’d used the anger as an escape. She wasn’t ready to tell him. Didn’t know how to tell him.
“Sabrina.” His voice was soft. And close. It touched her moments before his arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her out of the flowing crowd.
One minute she’d been walking down the sidewalk, the next she was pressed against a cool stone building. How had that happened?
“I’m sorry.”
The heat of his hand seeped into the skin where it rested at her hip. “No, I,” she said, and swallowed hard, trying to tamp down the firestorm building inside her. “I’m touchy when it comes to my career and my father. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve been on edge lately, but that’s no excuse for purposely baiting you.” A sad smile pulled at the corners of his lips. His bright blue eyes flashed, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the lights around them or from some internal source she couldn’t understand. It only lasted for a moment before it was gone, and his normal cocky facade replaced the surprisingly unsettled expression.
“If I promise never to mention the General again, will you come back inside with me?”
Chase looked down into her eyes, his body holding her hostage against the unforgiving side of the building. She’d never known anyone else who, with a single look, could convince the people around him that he was all innocence and sincerity—all while hiding pure devilment underneath.
Normally she was immune to macho charisma and oozing flyboy sexuality. But she couldn’t seem to remain unaffected by Chase. Her nose wrinkled. No matter how much she wanted to.
His finger slid from the center of her forehead down between her eyes to the tip of her nose, smoothing the peaks and valleys as he went.
“That’s kinda cute. I don’t remember that from a year ago.”
“I don’t remember much reason to frown.”
“But you do remember.” He leaned closer into her space, his teasing smile fading away, along with the sounds of a city that never slept.
She could only nod, his eyes holding her hostage.
His hand lifted to her face again, only this time his touch was far from playful. The pad of his finger, ridged and rough, brushed the corner of her lips. He smoothed a path from edge to edge across the closed seam of her mouth. In the center he pushed gently against it, the tip of his finger slipping barely inside.
That simple sensation shouldn’t have mattered, sure as hell shouldn’t have sent her brain into overload. But Rina could feel her body responding in a way she hadn’t felt in eleven long months. The center of her sex grew damp and tingled. Her stomach turned over, wanting more. She pressed the tiny tip of her tongue against his finger and lost herself in a groan of pure pleasure.
His eyes darkened as he reached for her, crushing her between the weight of his body and the merciless wall at her back.
She could feel him, every breath, every muscle, every bone, every vibration. Her head dropped back, too heavy to hold up anymore. But she didn’t have to. He did it for her, snugging one palm to her nape, the other to the curve of her throat.
His mouth claimed her with a passion she’d convinced herself had been part of a fuzzy dream. It couldn’t have been real. The way she’d felt couldn’t be real. The woman she’d been with him couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be her.
Her back arched into him, seeking more, giving him everything he asked for without hesitation or thought. His tongue thrust inside, filling her up before his mouth moved lower.
Her eyes wanted to close, wanted to surrender to anything and everything Chase wanted to give her. But she wouldn’t let them, couldn’t, although for the life of her she could not remember why. She focused on the skyline above her and he nibbled at the delicate center of her throat.
A light revolved against the darkness, coming and going in a throbbing pulse that was echoed deep at her core.
No. No, this wasn’t right.
“Stop.” The word popped out of her mouth on a sigh that held not a wisp of conviction. But Chase immediately took a step away, opening a space between them that she desperately needed.
Rina looked up into his face, ruggedly handsome and stamped with an unmistakable hunger she recognized as the twin to the beast roaring inside her.
He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t collected. And he sure as hell wasn’t charming as his chest rose and fell with the same labored pattern as her own. Wild was what she’d have called him, if she’d had brain power enough to think of a label.
“Too fast.” The words whispered up from somewhere deep inside her.
“Not fast enough.”
“Slow down, cowboy. I have no intention of sleeping with you.”
“You may not intend to but you’re going to anyway.”
Now that was the cocky pilot she knew.
“I don’t think so. Unlike men, we women tend to think with our brains instead of our anatomy. I won’t deny that I’m still sexually attracted to you, flyboy, but trust me, I can resist.”
His eyelids lowered to half-mast, covering glittering sapphire eyes. His lips turned up at the corners in a mocking imitation of his full-blown smile.
“We’ll see about that.”
Rina watched as he turned and walked back out to the crowded sidewalk.
She let the wall take the weight of her body from her shaking, saggy knees. Her head hit the veined marble as she realized she’d just made a tactical error with one of America’s best aerial dogfighters. A tactical error that could mean the next few weeks of her life were going to be hell.
She’d just issued him a challenge.
4
“HOW’D IT GO?”
Rina looked across the tiny table in the back of the casino restaurant at her best friend.
“You really want to know?”
It was late. Later than she normally stayed out on a work night, but she’d needed time to decompress before going home and Sadie was the only person she knew in the city who’d be up and awake. Sadie enjoyed her job as night bar manager on the strip. She was tall enough, blond enough and certainly stacked enough to have a more high-paying job as a showgirl, but that wasn’t what she wanted—not that she hadn’t been asked by quite a few of the casting directors.
Rina had no idea how they’d become friends. Maybe it was because they were complete opposites in just about every way.
Not that it mattered. The moment she’d met Sadie her sophomore year of high school they’d clicked.
“Yes, I want to know. How did he take the news?”
Rina dropped her head onto crossed arms atop the corner table, the polished wood and cotton eating her muffled words. “I didn’t tell him.”
“What?”
She lifted her head but only far enough to see her friend over the safety of her arms. “I chickened out.”
“Rina.” The single word reminded her more of her father than she’d like to admit.
That man knew how to fill one word with more disappointment and censure than anyone she’d ever met. She’d spent her entire life trying to avoid provoking that tone of voice. Trying to be different from her mother, the woman he was constantly telling her she was the spitting image of. The woman who’d deserted them both before managing to kill herself and injure a father and his son while driving drunk.
The woman she never wanted to be. The woman she saw in the mirror every time she looked.
If the General ever found out about this mess, he’d be so disappointed.
He’d run their house like he’d run his men. He’d always held high standards, for himself and everyone around him. Sometimes the pressure to live up to those expectations had been heavy to bear. But she had. Because she was a McAllister.
Not that any of that mattered anymore. What did matter was the mess she’d gotten herself into. Which she had made infinitely worse by letting Chase kiss her. Where was her damn self-control when she needed it?
“You’re right. I wouldn’t have told him anyway. I was too busy letting him suck the skin off my neck.” She let out a groan and dropped her head back onto her arms. She really didn’t want to see the look on Sadie’s face.
“Sabrina McAllister.”
The shock in Sadie’s voice was exactly what she’d expected.
“It’s about time you had some fun. And I say who better to give you a little sexual satisfaction than your husband?”
“Sure. If I wanted to stay married, which I don’t. The minute I sleep with him any hope of an annulment goes out the damn window. Before, we didn’t know we were married. Now we do.”
“So what if the judge doesn’t find out?”
Rina cut her eyes over the top of her arms.
“Have you seen my life lately? He’d find out.”
“So what? Then you get a divorce.”
“Then the General finds out, along with my commanding officer, and all hell breaks loose. We’re breaking about a million regs right now. Frankly, I’ve spent most of my life avoiding disappointing the General. Somehow, I think causing an air-force-wide scandal would crash that effort.”
Sadie rolled her eyes in a familiar gesture that did little to help Rina feel better. “You need to stop worrying about what your father thinks.”
“Yeah. Easier said than done.”
“No. No it isn’t.”
Rina sighed. Her friend simply didn’t understand. She had no idea how to turn off twenty-nine years of pleasing the man. It was a firmly entrenched habit.
For most of those years they’d only had each other to rely on. She’d watched him dedicate his life to a career that had often taken him away from her for long stretches at a time. His job was dangerous. Even at five she’d realized she could lose the only person in her life, the only parent she had left, at any moment. It had instilled in her a need to make him happy whenever he had been there. A need to be different from the woman who’d yelled, complained and made their lives miserable before deserting them both. A need to be dutiful and strong and perfect where her mother had been flighty and vain and selfish.
“What I need is to figure out how to tell my husband we’re married.”
CHASE HEARD the knock on his front door. For about five seconds he entertained the hope that Sabrina would be there on the other side. He knew it was futile but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He hadn’t exactly handled things well tonight.
“There was a rumor you were back in town.” Nope, not Rina, but someone almost as good.
“Jackhammer.” Slapping his best friend on the back, Chase ushered the man into his new apartment. “You want a beer?”
“Hell, no. I’m not going to drink with you. I’m mad as hell at you.” Jackson stopped in the middle of Chase’s living room, arms crossed over his barrel of a chest, glaring across the space at him.
There was a reason he’d been chosen for the Basic Cadet Training Cadre as a second class during their years at the academy. The man could be damned intimidating.
“Mad? What the hell did I do?”
“You’re alive.”
“Of course I’m alive.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. Almost a year in a combat zone and I didn’t hear from you more than two or three times. I had to learn that you were back in town from one of the newbies.”
Chase fought down a wave of guilt at that. It was true. He really hadn’t kept in touch with anyone back home while he was gone. He hadn’t wanted to. What could he tell them? How unbelievably appalling war conditions could be? How he’d made decisions that had cost men and women their lives?
He hadn’t written home because there was nothing worth telling.
“Don’t take it personally, man. I barely wrote to my mother and sister either.”
His mother and sister had e-mailed him on a regular basis but…it wasn’t like they’d exactly been a close-knit group before he’d left for Iraq. His mother and sister had always been close…closer still after his parents’ divorce. They’d had a mother-daughter bond he hadn’t ever been a part of. Chase had been left with no one when his father disappeared from their lives.
