Willing

Chapter 16

Josie shook her head frantically, her hair sweeping against his chest. “Stop, Daniel.”

Was she crazy? “I can’t.”

“You have to.” She grabbed his head by the hair and pulled. “You’re not wearing a condom.”

For the first time since he became sexually active, he seriously considered finishing without it, but that wouldn’t be fair to Josie.

He barely had the strength to make it to the bed, but he did, and he laid her down before scrambling for a condom. He put it on with shaking fingers, his body strung so tight, he was a hairsbreadth from snapping.

He came back over her, looking down into her beautiful face. “You know the damage could already have been done?”

“My period is due any day. You’re safe.” There was something in her voice he didn’t like, but he forgot about it as she pulled his body into hers once again.

He wanted to come so bad he could taste it, but he needed her to be with him, not merely accepting his body into hers as reciprocation for the pleasure he’d given her. He leaned down and took a ripe raspberry nipple into his mouth and started sucking.

Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “I love it when you take me in your mouth,” she panted, her willingness to go on the journey of pleasure with him once again lacing every syllable.

He didn’t reply, but kept stimulating her with his teeth and tongue, moving to her other nipple as she started to writhe under him again. She whimpered and arched toward him as his hand moved between their bodies to find her already swollen sweet spot and touch it in the way he’d learned brought her the most pleasure.

She thrust upward, and they moved together, both seeking the ultimate pleasure in each other’s bodies.

Rational thought disintegrated as sensation overtook him, and pressure built until he knew his explosion was imminent.

“Come with me,” he demanded.

“Yes.” She went stiff, her whole body arching wildy against him, and they came together with cataclysmic force.

The next two days were idyllic. Josie and Daniel played in the pool, talked about their pasts and made love.

On the third morning at the hotel, Josie woke up to cramps, and she turned over in the bed, moaning as pain shot through her lower back and abdomen.

She’d never understood how she could be so incapacitated by something women the world over experienced on a monthly basis, but debilitating pain and exhaustion accompanied her period pretty much every month. Thank God for ibuprofen. It had saved a mission from total meltdown failure more than once.

She crawled out of bed, knowing if she didn’t take care of things right that minute, she would regret it. A long, hot shower left her feeling only marginally better. She needed pain reliever, and she needed it two hours ago.

She rummaged through her bag and found the pads she’d packed in case of such an occurrence, but no ibuprofen. The curse that erupted from her throat would have shocked Daniel if he’d been awake to hear it. How could she have forgotten something so important?

She had her Glock, extra ammunition and a terrain map of Nevada, but no small white bottle of pain reliever.

Moving gingerly, she dressed in a long T-shirt and pair of bikini-style briefs. She couldn’t stand anything around her waist just yet, but considering her pain and the absence of anything to deal with it, she would have no choice.

Daniel woke up as she was pulling the T-shirt on. He smiled at her, looking all too sexy and more masculine than any other man she’d ever known. “Come back to bed, sweetheart. We don’t have anything we have to do today but be together.”

She would put paid to that attitude of togetherness soon enough. “I started.”

He looked blankly at her.

“My period.”

His expression cleared. “I guess we really were safe last night.”

“Yes.” She turned away and grabbed up a pair of shorts.

She might as well bite the bullet and get them on. She couldn’t go into town dressed in Daniel’s T-shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting dressed.”

“Why?”

“I need pain reliever. I can’t go shopping dressed in a T-shirt. There are ordinances for that sort of thing.”

He was off the bed in a heartbeat and taking her shorts out of her hands. “Lie down. I’ll get it. If you’re in pain, you shouldn’t be driving. What kind do you need? Do you need anything else?”

She stared at him, shocked by the quick succession of words out of his mouth. It wasn’t that Daniel never talked to her, but he sounded panicked, and that wasn’t like him. In fact, she could never actually remember a time when he had used that particular tone in her hearing.

His face creased in a frown of concern. “I really think you should lie down, Josette.”

“I’m having my period, not infected with a deadly disease.”

“You said you were in pain.”

She winced as her womb knotted in another cramp. “Yes.”

“I’ll take care of you.”

And that was what he did, literally putting her back into bed and tucking the blankets around her. He asked if the air conditioner was set too high, then if it was too low, and when she said it was just fine, his relief was blatant. Then he made her a cup of tea, sweetened it and insisted she drink it before he left to pick up her ibuprofen.

He came back an hour later with a grocery bag filled with chocolate of every kind and a single bottle of the pain reliever.

“They didn’t have any of the special woman’s stuff in the local grocery store, so I had to drive into the next town and go to their pharmacy.”

“I could have taken something else.”

“But it wouldn’t have been as effective.”

He was right. “What is the chocolate for?”

He looked sheepish. “My mom used to crave it once a month. I thought you might want some, too, but I didn’t know what kind you liked, so there’s a little of everything.”

She felt a smile creasing her face despite the pain in her lower back. “I like pretty much all of it. Thanks. For everything.”

He brought her a glass of juice from the minibar fridge and watched her drink it and take the pain meds. “Do you want me to order some breakfast?”

“No. Actually, I’m tired. I’d rather just sleep.”

Daniel nodded, looking a little haggard himself. They’d had a long night of making love, and it was still very early. She looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. No wonder Daniel had needed to drive to another town to get her meds. The local pharmacy probably wasn’t even open yet.

“Sleep as long as you need.” He picked up her now empty glass and turned to go.

“Daniel.”

He turned back to face her. “Do you need something else, sweetheart?”

“You look tired, too. Do you want to catch another couple of hours of sleep?”

“I can sleep on the couch in the main room.”

“It’s a king-size bed, Daniel. If you don’t want to cuddle, there’s still plenty of room for both of us to sleep in it.”

“I might touch you in my sleep. It could hurt.”

She couldn’t believe he was so worried about her. “I’m fine. Really. In a half an hour, I’ll be feeling a lot better, and I’d rather you slept in here if you want to.”

“But if I touch you…”

“I like sleeping with your arms around me.”

“Are you sure?”

Man, he would be a total case if he ever did get a woman pregnant. He’d probably want to sleep on the couch the whole nine months.

“Yes.”

He stripped down to his skivvies and then climbed into the bed beside her. He pulled her into his arms, careful to cuddle her without putting any pressure on her abdomen.

She slipped back into a blessedly pain free sleep.

Daniel curled Josie close to his body, the need to make everything right in her world overriding every other impulse at the moment. He couldn’t believe how much it bothered him to see her in pain. He’d witnessed atrocities he would die never sharing with anyone else, but the sight of Josie’s pale face that morning had been enough to give him the shakes.

And she’d thought he was going to let her go out and buy her own pain reliever. Was she insane, or just too damn independent for her own good?

Her sanity might not be in question, but he was beginning to think his was. How would he come to terms with the fact that he’d been disappointed to learn her period had started? A part of his brain he had not given daylight in years had played with the idea of having a baby with his former-soldier lover. Learning it was absolutely not a possibility made him face the fact he might have actually wanted it to be.

Josie snapped Daniel’s cell phone shut, frustration making her stomach cramp. “Detective Stone says they aren’t doing anything to move in on the enemy despite the fact we know exactly where my stolen laptop is.”

“Why not?” Daniel looked up from where he sat at the suite’s small table oiling his weapon.

“The FBI is afraid of another Waco situation.” She rubbed her stomach, but it didn’t help dispel the tension tightening her insides. “All their intelligence indicates the compound is heavily armed, but that wives and children live there along with the self-appointed whites-only militia. An attempt to go in could result in a bloodbath. The situation is under consideration by the FBI and the rest of the coalition involved in the investigation.”

“Tyler isn’t going to stand around waiting for the shirts in Washington to get their heads out of their as—butts before he acts.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. The nutcases in that group hiding in the Rockies tried to kill him and did destroy his home. Dad’s going to be planning revenge.”

“The question is, do we try to help him or stop him?”

“We may not have a choice. Stopping my dad when he’s in full-throttle battle mode is like putting a hand brake on a rampaging elephant.” She plopped down on the edge of the bed and sighed, exhausted by the prospect of even trying.

Daniel looked as dangerous as she knew him to be. “Where did those idiots ever get the idea they could learn what he had to teach them and then dispose of him?”

“And blame me for it.” She was still mad about that. Being accused of attempted patricide was not her idea of a good time. “The authorities were already buying in to me as the culprit. If my house hadn’t been broken in to, I would still be under investigation.”

He gave her one of those looks he was so good at, the ones that made her feel shivery on the inside even when she was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to. “There’s no reason to believe you aren’t.”

“They let me leave the state.”

“You didn’t tell them you were going, and I made darn sure we weren’t tailed to the airport.”

She’d thought he’d been watching for the media, or the terrorists. It hadn’t occurred to her he had been just as intent on eluding the police. “Detective Stone didn’t tell me not to go anywhere, and he told me to concentrate on finding Dad.”

“He said to stay off airplanes.”

“He was talking about parachuting from them into the compound.”

“Maybe.” Daniel finished with his weapon and laid it on the hand towel he’d spread out on the table.

She shook her head, not convinced she was still under suspicion. Her dad and Daniel both tended to be overly cautious about some things. “I still think the enemy made a mistake breaking in to my house.”

“That wasn’t their only one.”

That was true, the extremists had made a lot of mistakes when she stopped to think about it. “Stupidity or arrogance, do you think?”

“Both.” Daniel didn’t sound very interested either way. “They’re not going to get the best of Tyler or us.”

“I hope not.” If she could just talk to her dad, she’d feel a lot better.

Daniel got up and came over to her, the fluid grace of his body impacting her even with all the worries tumbling around in her head about her dad. He stopped in front of her, so close she had to tip her head back to look up at him. She didn’t try to mask her worried thoughts, didn’t even want to. She’d spent most of her life hiding her weakness from others, but her defenses came crashing down with him.

“I’m worried, Daniel.”

“I can see that.” He gently pushed against her shoulders until she was lying back on the bed. “You need to let it go.” Then he came over her, settling his hips against hers and holding his upper body above her with his arms.

If his plan was to disarm her fears by getting her to focus on him, it was working. She could barely remember her own name, much less what they were talking about.

His dark brown, ultraserious gaze locked with hers. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“I want to believe that.”

“Then do.” He kissed her, and she melted without a second’s hesitation.

He took his time about it, nibbling on her lips and exploring her mouth with his tongue. He’d done a lot of that over the last day and a half—kissing her, touching her, pulling her into his lap to cuddle her. Far from ignoring her because she couldn’t make love with him, he went out of his way to be affectionate. He pampered her and made her feel as though she was anything but a simple sexual obsession.

Not that she had expected him to dismiss her from his thoughts as if she meant nothing when she wasn’t available sexually. They were friends after all, but she knew the nondemand touching excited him. She’d felt the evidence on more than one occasion, and yet he made no effort to protect himself from sexual frustration by sticking with a policy of non-contact. And she’d really liked that.

She’d offered to bring him to a climax with her hand or her mouth, but he’d refused, saying she was too tired and fragile physically to be worrying about him. The ibuprofen had helped a lot with her cramps, but the exhaustion that accompanied the first twenty-four hours of her period still clung to her.

He finished the kiss with a series of little nibbles down the side of her throat and then rolled onto his side, pulling her with him. He didn’t say anything, just rubbed her back, and she felt herself getting drowsy. She didn’t fight the sensation because she knew she didn’t have to. She was safe with him.

Josie woke feeling totally refreshed to the sound of the shower going in the suite’s main bathroom. She smiled to herself. Daniel must have gone for a run or a swim. He wouldn’t have wanted to take a mid-afternoon nap with her, but he’d held her until she fell asleep.

That kind of consideration deserved a reward. Besides, she’d dreamt about him, about how it would be to bring him to a climax. She wanted to see if reality matched the experience of her imagination. She considered how best to pursue her goal and was glad for what she’d considered extravagance upon checking in—a secondary half bath off the suite’s living room area.

She’d just come back into the bedroom after freshening up when she heard the water cut off. Okay, so a sojourn in the shower was out, but that hadn’t been her first choice anyway. She didn’t want him to be distracted by anything, including running water.

A few minutes later, he came into the room, a towel slung around his hips and using another to dry his hair. He glanced toward the bed and stopped mid-movement with the towel dangling from his hand.

“Josette?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

She’d taken off the clothes she’d put on when the pain meds started working and put his T-shirt back on. It hung down on one shoulder and showed the upper swell of her left breast. She’d meant it to be that way and was very gratified by his response.

“I had a dream.”

His hand came down, and the towel dropped from it. “You did?”

“Yes, and it was really nice.”

His eyes kindled with heat, and the corners of his lips tilted in a small smile. “I’m glad to hear that, honey. Was I in the dream?”

“Yes.”

He started walking toward her. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“I’d rather show you.”

His breathing increased, his expression very interested. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“Definitely.” She put her hand up before he reached her. “Take off your towel and lie down on the bed, Daniel. I want to pleasure you.”

If his stillness before had been acute, now it was absolute. “You want to pleasure me?”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I want to make you come, and I want to watch you do it.” Her dream had been very explicit, and she was still tender in her secret places from it.

She watched with interest as his towel started tenting away from his body.

She smiled, her body suffusing with heat from his obvious arousal. “I guess you like the idea.”

“I always like the idea of making love with you.”

“This time I want to make love to you—a one-way deal.”

His eyes narrowed, the pleasure in them dimming slightly. “It can be mutual.”

“But I don’t want it to be.” She put her hands out, palms up. “Please, Daniel. Touching you is something I want to do…very, very, very much…but I’m not comfortable with the other.”

Concern creased his brow. “If you aren’t comfortable…”

“I didn’t mean physically. I meant mentally.”

“Oh.” He smiled the pirate’s smile she loved so much. “I could make you comfortable.”

If any man could, it would be him, but she didn’t want to and said so. “I want to show you what I dreamed about. Making love with you the first time outstripped every fantasy I’d ever had, and I want to see if it will be the same like this.”

“So, this thing you want to do to me is just a science experiment?”

She laughed, her insides liquefying at his expression. “No. A very special experience, not an experiment, and your body is making emphatic statements about what it wants, don’t you think?”

He looked down at the towel and back at her. “What you want to do to me is every man’s fantasy, and the fact that it’s you wanting to do it makes it mine, but—”

“I think we’ve already established this is something I want, so there should be no barrier to letting me live out my own fantasy,” she said, cutting in before he could voice any more objections.

He dropped the towel and stood in a position of complete openness to her. “Whatever you want.”

For several seconds, all she wanted to do was look. “You are a magnificent example of the male species.” Her throat was dry from excitement, and the words came out husky and inviting.

He was so gorgeous. Even the scars on his body from his years of professional soldiering made him more sexy, giving him a dangerous air that lured women of all types, and he wanted her.

“You could have any woman.”

“I want only one.”

She barely bit back words of love as his answer penetrated her to the depths of her soul.

“Lie down on the bed,” she croaked.

He did, his muscles rippling with movement and his sex jutting out from his body. His maleness, its very difference from her femaleness, fascinated her. He was hard steel sheathed in velvet, and she needed to feel the strength of his erection. She reached out to run a caressing hand down its length.

His breath hitched, and his hips arched toward her hand. “Sweetheart…”

“You feel so different from me, not like what I expected a man to feel like.”

“What did you expect?” he asked, his expression taut as she ran her fingers over him as if she were playing the scales on a piano.

“Roughness, I don’t know…not such intense sensitivity.”

“Why do you think so many men think with their lower head instead of the one that has a brain? So many nerve centers demand a lot of attention.”

“I read somewhere that a woman’s clitoris has the highest concentration of nerve endings of anywhere on the body, male or female, but a man’s penis head comes in second.” She brushed gentle fingertips over the top of his while the clitoris she spoke of throbbed in response to the sensory input of her fingers.

He didn’t bother to answer; he groaned instead.

Remembering her dream, she made herself stop touching the most sensitive part of his body for a little while. She wanted it all…every nuance of pleasure sensation she could coax from his body. She concentrated on his chest, tracing circles around his nipples and running her short nails down his rib cage while his body jerked with reaction. His stomach was warm, and she caressed it with hands that trembled in exultation at the license he’d given her with his body. He was such a powerful man, and he’d made himself incredibly vulnerable to her.

It was a heady sensation.

His abdominal muscles clenched in response to her touch…just like in her dream.

And just like in her dream, she wanted more.

Straddling his thighs, she leaned down and kissed the rock-solid contour of his chest. So good. She loved the scent of his skin, the spicy maleness that she associated only with him. Brushing her lips over his warm skin, she moved her head until her open mouth was over one of his now turgid male nipples. She flicked her tongue out to taste, and remembering how much he liked it, she started to suck.

His fingers dug into her scalp, and she sucked harder, rubbing up and down against his erection with her torso. His big body vibrated under her, the sexual tension buzzing off of him palpable.

“Josette, this is going to get out of hand really fast,” he rasped.

She released his nipple from between her teeth and sat up. “No, it’s not.”

His brow rose, questioning her assertion as did the pulsing erection protruding even more stiffly from his body.

“I’m taking you in hand, not letting you get out of it.” She curled her fingers around the evidence of her effect on him, gasping when her fingertips would not quite meet. “You’re so aroused.”

“You’re sitting on top of me wearing my T-shirt, looking sexy as hel—heck, touching me in a way guaranteed to separate me from my sanity. Aroused is a tame word for the storm you’ve got raging inside me.”

His words made her thighs clench in excitement where they straddled his, and she couldn’t help rubbing herself against him, frustrated that the layers between them muted the sensation so much.

He made a hoarse sound low in his throat. “Is this part of your dream?”

She squeezed his erection, unable to tell if it was her hand or his penis that was so hot. “What do you think?”

“I think I want to see more of your body.”

She peeled the T-shirt off over her head, exposing breasts whose peaks were tight with excitement. He reached up and touched them, cupping her and rubbing his palms over elongated nipples highly sensitized by her monthly hormone changes.

She shivered, pressing herself into his palms, and then she pleasured him.

Using the small bottle of hand lotion the hotel had provided, she stroked up and down his length and over his head until he was bowed off the bed, his expression one of tortured pleasure. She felt as if he was inside her, touching her erogenous zones even though his hands were now fisted in the bedspread. Her lower body throbbed with vicarious pleasure, and her nipples stung with excruciating sensation.

“I’m going to come!” His hoarse shout reverberated in the room.

But he didn’t, and she could see the effort it was costing him. Whether he couldn’t take that final step and make himself completely vulnerable to her, or he felt some macho need to hold back his own pleasure when he wasn’t making it mutual, she didn’t know. And she didn’t care.

It was mutual, and she didn’t need him to be inside her to make it that way, but she did need him to orgasm with her hands wrapped around the most intimate part of his body. “Don’t try to hold back, Daniel. I want you to come for me.”

He looked at her, his expression reflecting conflicting desires, his body so taut with arousal it felt as if he was about to snap like an overextended rubber band.

“Give up control. Please.”

“It’s hard…”

“Do you trust me enough?” she asked, her own body trembling with an excess of feeling.

“Yes!” And he came, shouting her name and ejaculating in powerful surges.

As the warmth of his essence mixed with the hand lotion over her fingers, she felt contractions start low in her belly, and these contractions didn’t hurt. They were pure delight and corresponded to something happening in her heart she could no longer even attempt to deny. A well-spring of consuming love bubbled through her bloodstream like uncorked champagne overflowing its bottle.

She tumbled forward, a special gravity pulling her to him that could never be explained in a physics book. Locking her lips to his, her body convulsed in its own orgasm from the sheer pleasure of the man she loved allowing her to give him one.

His hands settled onto her bottom, and he kneaded her, his mouth voracious under hers. They shook together in aftershocks every bit as intense as any they’d had after full intercourse, only finally relaxing into sated passivity several minutes later.

She rubbed her cheek against the sweat-slick skin of his chest, and words came she did not plan, but had no desire to hold back. “I love you, Daniel.”

The silence of his response did not surprise her, nor did it diminish in any way the feelings engulfing her.

Love did not have to be returned to be as deeply embedded in her heart as the roots of an ancient oak in the soil under it.