Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

The realms she visited then were places she had never imagined could exist. Her entire body became his instrument, played for both her pleasure and his.

Then, almost without her realizing it, her nightgown vanished over her head. Naked, exposed, vulnerable...

And enthralled with the beauty of it all.

“Ethan,” she said on a sigh, letting him have whatever he chose to take, because every taking was a giving beyond any but the rawest comprehension.

He lifted her to the mountain peaks, and she soared willingly with him.

A dark moment came, a moment when he vanished. She struggled against the web of heat and wonder that held her to try to find him, but then he returned, and when he did, she felt his smooth, hot skin along her side.

“Oh, Ethan...” She turned toward him then, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, surrendering herself to him.

She belonged completely to him.

Chapter 13 (#ulink_b0ae63f0-ca5b-54a3-a549-0e506226873b)

It had been too long. Ethan had buried this part of himself for the last four years, using his stateside rotations to try to sort himself out, not wanting to turn to easy women, absolutely refusing to draw a better woman into the mess of his life.

Now here he was with a good, decent woman, feeling a hunger for her that took him by surprise in its strength. There was no way he could have pulled back now. All that he had tried to spare himself and others turned to dust.

He needed this beyond all reason and caution, although at some point he had realized that Connie wanted this just as much. Just these beautiful, glorious moments of man meeting woman in the most basic way, the way the human race had always dissolved its aloneness.

He had been alone for a long time now. Intense as friendships could be in battle, this was a kind of union that could be replaced by no other. It reached out to fill places nothing else could.

He felt her shiver and tremble against him, felt her vulnerability as a blessing, felt her hunger and need meet and match his own, validating him at his deepest levels, way below thought.

The magic that bound her surrounded him, as well. He felt as if rainbows danced along his arms and zinged through his nerves. The voice of thunder roared through him.

Each shiver or sigh he drew from her was a gift that tightened his throat. When her nails dug into his shoulders, trying to pull him closer, he knew joy and triumph that he could give such a gift.

And when at last he levered himself over her and slowly sank into her welcoming heat, he knew a kind of salvation.

Then everything vanished as they rode the wave higher and higher, until they exploded together in a place beyond the stars.

* * *

They lay together in a hot, damp heap, limbs sprawled across each other, breaths slowing, heartbeats steadying. The TV still flickered, but the sound was too low to penetrate their cocoon of satisfaction and wonder.

She trailed her fingers lightly along his arm, as if reassuring herself of his reality. He held her hips close, as if he couldn’t bear for her to move away.

A long, shuddering sigh escaped her, and she pressed a kiss to his chest, near one small nipple. A shiver passed through him in response.

The hunger, fulfilled, had not vanished but merely simmered.

“Are you okay?” he asked. His voice rumbled deep in his chest.

She kissed him again. “I never knew it was possible to feel this wonderful.”

“Me, neither.” Sad to say, yet true. Something special had just happened here, but he wasn’t ready to think about that.

Maybe he was even reluctant to think about it. Better to accept some things rather than analyze them.

Cooling now, he reached with one arm for the sheet and pulled it up. She settled more comfortably against him, displaying no desire to end these moments. That relieved him. He could have understood it if she had wanted to run. They had crossed lines he suspected neither of them had ever intended to.

Yet here they were, and he wanted it to end no more than she did. Comfort, he thought, could be such a rare thing, yet he’d found it here in this woman’s arms. He hoped she had found it in his.

* * *

Midnight was creeping close on stealthy feet when Connie asked, “Are you hungry? I am.”

“I guess I am, but only a little.”

“Do you want real food, or will dessert do you?”

He smiled into her fragrant hair. “Dessert sounds fabulous.”

She pushed him playfully. “Food first, then me.”

He laughed and followed her out of the bed, pulling on his T-shirt and shorts while she knotted her robe around herself.

As he followed her down the stairs, he noted how small and fragile she appeared, in direct contrast to the iron strength of her spirit and will. A powerful urge to wipe the sorrows from her life rose in him.

When she bent to look in the refrigerator, he noted the perfect curves of her bottom, and his hands remembered the way her flesh had felt.

“We have strawberry pie,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“My mother’s concoction.” She pulled out a pie plate with a plastic lid. “Trust me, it’s good. Strawberry gelatin full of real strawberries on a graham-cracker crust. Topped with whipped cream and more strawberries.”

“That does sound good.” It sounded like heaven, in fact. “I’m sure I’ve never had anything like it.”

She flashed a grin and cut him a generous portion of the pie. “It’s not as high in sugar or fat as you’d expect, not with all the strawberries. And she’s gentle with the whipped cream.”

Given the life he’d been living, such concerns were pretty much foreign to him. Flavor was everything, and he’d had little enough of that for a while. A surprising number of soldiers in the field had to be reminded to eat, despite their heightened need for calories. Even so, most lost twenty or thirty pounds on a tour.

When he sank his teeth into his first bite of pie, he closed his eyes in sheer bliss, shutting out anything that might distract him from the taste. Fresh strawberries, perfectly balancing the sweetness all around them. When he finally allowed himself to swallow, he said, “Tell Julia I want to marry her.”

“You can tell her yourself. But,” she added coquettishly, “I know how to make this, too.”

“Then I’ll marry both of you. You have no idea how long it’s been since I tasted something like this.”

“I can guess. And there’s plenty more.”

He smiled and raised another forkful to his mouth. “Over there,” he said before he put it in his mouth, “we don’t get anything even a tenth as tasty as this. MREs, of course. Food we cook at our firebase, but none of us is a great chef, including the chef.”

She giggled a little at that.