Читать книгу Craving Her Soldier's Touch - Wendy S. Marcus - Страница 7

IAN CALVIN EDDELTON, aka Ice to his army ranger buddies, looked up at the vision of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, bare-skinned loveliness now straddling his naked thighs, her palms pushing down on his pecs, forcing his back into the plush sheets of her bed. As if a tiny thing like her could hold him down if he didn’t want to be held down.

“You don’t have to do this.” He forced out the words despite his brain’s best rationalizations to suppress them. A fun bout of banter turned sexual challenge had never resulted in either of them shedding their clothes before. He needed her to be sure.

Beautiful, determined eyes met his. “Yes. I do.”

Looked like the woman who didn’t want sex to ruin their friendship, and the man who didn’t want friendship to ruin their sex, were both about to get screwed. Literally.

He caressed the smooth skin of her perfect ass, usually hidden by a pair of skimpy running shorts or some fitted designer duds, and eased her closer to Ian junior who stood tall, sheathed, and eager to explore her internal terrain. To learn the secrets of what gave her pleasure and exploit them until she screamed his name over and over. Like he’d bragged he could on their many long runs rife with blatant flirtation and sexual innuendo.

But, “Why?” Why tonight, of all nights, when he’d been trying to lure her into bed for months, when by this time tomorrow he’d be on a plane headed back to the war in Iraq?

She smiled. Damn she was beautiful. “Consider it my bit to support our troops.”

Tease.

Ian ran his fingers along the outside of her firm thighs. “There are thousands of us.” Rounded her hips, followed the curve of her narrow waist, up to her ribs. “You do this sort of thing often?” He slid his thumbs across her taut nipples.

She trembled.

“You,” she lowered her luscious breasts to his chest and leaned close to his ear, “are lucky number one.” She rocked her hips until she had him poised at her entrance.

The urge to tell her there’d better not be a number two, that she should mail out brownies and holiday cards instead, came out of nowhere. Because she could do whatever the hell she wanted. They weren’t going together, would never be anything more than friends—although an ongoing friends with benefits type deal was looking mighty appealing from where he lay. Hooah.

He tilted his pelvis, gave her a small taste of what was to come. “So it turns out you’re a sucker for a man in uniform after all.”

“I’m a sucker for you, Staff Sergeant,” she whispered, circling the perimeter of his inner ear with her tongue, sending rippling waves of arousal throughout his body. “And when you’re lying on your cot in the dead of night, exhausted, your mind reeling from the events of the day, I want to be your oasis in the desert, the calm that relaxes you before you drift off to sleep.” She lifted her upper body, shifted her hips, and took him deep. “I want you to think about us. Like this.”

Getting himself to stop thinking about them like this was going to be the problem.

She rode him slowly, their eyes locked, their bodies in total sync. “I want you to fight hard and stay safe and look forward to the day I will welcome you home. Just. Like. This.” She punctuated each of her last three words with a swift thrust of her hips before collapsing onto his chest, sliding her hands around his sides and hugging him. “I’m going to miss you.”

An odd sensation squeezed his heart. At the same time, an unsettling concoction churned in his gut.

Could it be guilt? Because, to avoid a protracted, teary goodbye, he would slip away as soon as she fell asleep.

Maybe remorse? Because he’d gone overseas and returned home enough times over the past ten years to know nothing ever remained the same. By the time he came home she’d probably be settled on one of the well-bred, successful business associates her brother seemed hell-bent on fixing her up with.

Or a hint of longing for what he could not have? Because he was career military and refused to put any woman through what his mother had suffered as the spouse of an active duty soldier.

Nah. A simple case of agita from his double order of farewell steak fajitas made more sense, since Ian Eddelton did not succumb to emotion. Ever. On the battlefield, emotion, distraction of any kind, gave an enemy the advantage, and got good men and women killed. On a personal level, emotion made men weak and vulnerable. Never again.

Ian flipped Jaci onto her back and took control, pushing all thoughts from his mind except how unbelievably amazing she felt beneath him, surrounding him, and how he was going to spend the next few hours in heaven … before he returned to hell.