Army of You & Me (9 page)

With his ex-wife, things had been stuffed into a barrel that tumbled down a hill of drama, gathering speed in an unstoppable force until it knocked them clean off their feet. He hadn’t wanted to get married, but he did what he had to for the sake of practicality, for the sake of a potential child. Ultimately, he’d done the right thing. The Army still came first. No one and nothing had ever tested his loyalty to it. Until now. He didn’t want to make reactive decisions, be panicked into taking action because of another tour.

Why was he having a conversation with himself, challenging his career over a woman who wasn’t even his girlfriend? Yes, he’d spent the last several weeks slowly gaining her trust through dinners and galleries and exhibitions. But ‘The Talk’? Not yet had. Madeline was exemplary at distraction – enough that they had no labels for what they were as a couple. More than friends. Not lovers. She was a woman he’d slept with but never once had sex with. A woman who loved him. A woman
he
loved.

Of course he loved her. The idea of her trying to end things with him after meeting with her once had sent him into a frenzy. He’d had the brief vision of receiving a letter from her whilst on tour saying
I’m sorry, Cain, it’s over
. It’d given him a panic attack and now he was wasting more time having an unnecessary internal debate.

Getting up, he swiftly snuck back into the Rose Room. Madeline was on her side, still sleeping. He toed off his boots and unbuckled his belt. Ignoring the tiny ripping sound as he removed his jumper, he slipped back into the bed. Immediately, Madeline turned over and snuggled against him.

“You left,” she mumbled.

Hiding a smile by rubbing his mouth against her forehead, he answered, “I didn’t want to wake you. Sorry. How did you sleep?”

A yawn caught her and she rolled onto her back to stretch. “Amazing!”

In her motion, one deep sepia coloured nipple popped out of the nightgown. Cain froze. He’d been tested to his limit, and the simple view of her exposed, rounded breast was enough to snap his self control in two. Without a word, he bent his head and took the beaded flesh into his mouth.

“Cain!” she breathed. He braced his hand on her abdomen and felt the muscles beneath contract. The faint fragrance of jasmine mingled with her sleep-warm scent, sent blood rushing to his groin. This he understood. It didn’t need thought or debate or angst. He just needed her.

As he coaxed her other nipple free from her clothing, Madeline’s hands slowly filtered through his hair, pulling him closer to her. His stubble rubbed against her breast, and a moan caught in her throat. She was restrained. Maybe she didn’t quite trust him, even if she did love him. Or maybe it was that she was in his parents’ home. He’d have to work to make her forget. His hand shot beneath the duvet, smoothing over cotton-covered skin until he caught the hem of the nightgown. She was naked underneath the cotton, he realised with a groan of satisfaction.

His fingertips grazed unbearably soft curls that were damp with arousal. The breath locked in his chest, and he took a moment to compose himself before he edged higher. Madeline’s yelp burst across the room, her fingers tightening in his hair, almost yanking at the scalp. Touching her was just like skimming the surface of water – soft, slick, and wet. She arched into his touch, pushing down against his hand. Just as he circled his middle finger over her opening, fully intent on sinking inside to test her tightness, a knock sounded at the door, jolting them both from the cocoon they’d created.

“Hello, Madeline?”

Shit, his mother. Cain leapt from the bed and kicked his boots and belt under the bed and snatched his jumper up. Madeline simply pulled the bed covers to her neck and turned to her side with her back to the door.

“Madeline, are you awake?”

The door began to open, and Cain quickly edged behind it. Elspeth poked her head around and looked at Madeline’s still form for a moment before closing the door again. Madeline turned over and stared at him, her eyes wide with receding lust and horror.

“We nearly got caught!” she whispered angrily.

“It was just bad timing.” He shrugged, pulling his jumper over his head.

“Really bad.”

“Woman, you flashed your nipples at me.”

She folded her arms across her chest, tucking the duvet over her body. “You could have a little more self control.”

“God, am I trying to.” He sighed, opening the connecting door and stepping through. It took several laps around the perimeter of the house for his body to calm down. Even then, semi-arousal was turning into a permanent fixture around Madeline.

After the rest of the house was “officially” awake and Madeline had called into the shop to find out that Caz had turned up and opened on time, Cain announced over breakfast that they were leaving.

“So soon?” His mother gave a pout of disappointment. “I thought you could stay for lunch.”

“We have plans,” Cain said.

Madeline raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yes, really. They don’t involve my folks.”

His father choked on his toast. “Nathaniel, it’s far too early for such talk.”

“I agree,” Madeline muttered.

“We’re off to the theatre,” Cain interrupted. “I don’t have tickets for you, and it’s sold out. I’m sure Madeline wants to go home and get changed.”

She sent him a “
What are you talking about
” look.

“Well, at least finish your food first,” Elspeth insisted, “then you can carry on with your exotic social life. I can’t remember the last time your father took me to the theatre.”

“Damned uncomfortable,” Major Goldsmith dismissed. “Who wants to be boxed into a small place like cattle to be bored out of one’s mind for three hours? And pay for the privilege!”

“And on that note…” Cain trailed off and got to his feet. “Come on, pretty lady. Let’s go.”

Madeline also got to her feet and exchanged warm goodbyes with his parents. Major Goldsmith’s embrace was longer than Cain felt comfortable with.

“Stay in touch. I use email these days.”

“Me too. And I will,” Madeline promised. “Thank you for everything.”

“Go on, now.” His father shooed them away. “Make a grown man weep for nothing.”

As soon as they were in the car and heading for the motorway, Madeline gave a sigh. “They’re lovely. And they put up with a lot from you.”

He laughed. “What? I’m a model child.”

She shook her head. “Are we really going to the theatre?”

“Only if you feel like it. I just felt I’d shared you enough with my parents.”

A huge yawn took her over. “Okay, then. It’s so early. What are we going to do?”

“Nap?” he offered.

“Okay. But no funny business after.”

“This is the first time I’ve had a man in my home,” Madeline admitted, closing the door behind him. “A man who isn’t my dad.”

“I’d hope so,” Cain said with typical arrogance, swaggering into her living room and collapsing into the sofa. Madeline didn’t quite know what to do with herself until Cain held out a hand to her. “Over here,” he ordered. She sat beside him and snuggled against his chest. It was far too comfortable where she was.

“Cain,” she started, “I’m thinking we should talk.”

Looking up, she saw he was fast asleep. Grief. She supposed it gave her more time to think. He hadn’t said anything about it, but he’d already been on R&R for almost eight weeks, most of which he’d spent with her, so his time off would be up soon. It had to be. Then he’d go. Disappear. Maybe look for someone who wasn’t afraid of sex like she was.

The sum of her previous sexual experiences was, in a word, “meh”. Each time, she’d let the possibility that it could be so much more than a man exerting his power over a woman overrule her natural instinct to not have anyone touch her. She’d found each man, each act wanting. Her needs remained unmet. Not that she hadn’t given it everything, in search of the elusive passion people talked so broadly about. In Rwanda she’d escaped a terrible fate, but the screams of those women who were so savagely and repeatedly assaulted still haunted her. Her therapist had been surprised she had been willing to explore her sexuality. But still she struggled to unite sex with love when it had only ever been associated with power and violence and control.

Yet when Cain touched her in Cambridgeshire, like he couldn’t help himself, she felt a tantalising breath away from that elusive, enviable, desirable climax. It worried at her that if she gave him that intimacy, what else would he need from her? How long would it take for him to understand how damaged she was and leave?

Madeline lifted Cain’s arm from around her shoulders and took the throw from the back of the sofa and draped it over him. Upstairs she changed into something a little more comfortable – a button-down pencil skirt and a boat-neck, thin knit cardigan. Once changed and shoe straps were secured around her ankles, she went back downstairs. In her kitchen, she boiled the kettle for tea. Mango and lychee always calmed her. At the very least she should explain it to him. As smart as he was, he wasn’t telepathic. No man was.

“Madeline!”

She jumped, in startled cat mode. “What’s the matter?” She made her way back to the living room and Cain was sitting up, the throw in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor.

“Where’d you go?”

“I was in the... Why’d you throw my blanket?”

He stood up, towering over her. “You’re trying to tiptoe away from me again.”

“I was just in the kitchen!”

His gaze turned stormy. “I didn’t mean physically. Look, what happened this morning was going to happen.”

Really?
“Um...”

“It was going to happen the minute we met.”

Just one minute... “Excuse me, I do have some autonomy.”

“Not where you and me are concerned. And the more you keep fighting it, trying to protect yourself from this supposedly inevitable hurt, the more you’re going to kick yourself when I go back on duty for wasting time.”

The volume of his annoyance triggered her temper. “You’re being an arsehole.”

“How?”

“You are. You’re being an arsehole about things you don’t understand.”

“So I misunderstood when you told me you loved me?”

Madeline felt the world shudder to a stop. Shit on a stick. “What? I never said that! Did I say that?”

Cain tucked his tongue against his teeth and clicked it. Oh, God, he was cross. Those weird eyes of his were dark with irritation. He folded his huge arms across his chest and waited. Madeline’s brain activity flatlined. “When did I... When?”

Cain’s eyebrows slowly inched towards his hairline. “Does it matter?”

“Well, no. But you haven’t mentioned it until now. To yell at me.”

“I was brought up by a Captain of the Royal Anglian Regiment. I yell at everything, woman! I yell in the shower. I yell to order coffee. I yell if my phone runs out of battery. So yes, I’m yelling.”

Perfect distraction, even though he was irritating the hell out of her. “You can lower the tone with me, thank you very much. I don’t care if you were brought up by Genghis Khan, you do not yell in my house and definitely not at me.”

“Stop trying to change the subject. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you love me?”