DISARM (DISARM Series #1) (6 page)

“Well
hello,” he said and pulled me onto his lap.

I wrapped
my arms around his neck and took his gorgeous face in hungrily.
 
“Do you want to go to the conference
room upstairs?” I whispered in his ear. “It should be empty at this time of
day.”

Henry
looked extremely tempted, but he shook his head. “I really want to, but I have
to head back to work. I just came here to deliver this,” he said, tipped me
back, and planted a searing kiss on my lips.

We surfaced
a few minutes later, utterly turned on without any way to deal with it. With a
sigh, I pulled him up and we emerged from our own little world.

He gave me
a courteous nod. “Ma’am,” he said formally then leaned down and blew in my ear,
“to be continued.”

After he
left, a few people walked by my cubicle to ask about the rose and the handsome
airman who’d brought it. The inevitable question, “So is he your boyfriend?”
was asked, but for once, when it came to my relationship with Henry, I didn’t
know what to say.

~

On my way
home I got stuck behind every slow car or truck in Oklahoma. It was a
conspiracy; that’s the only way I could explain why everyone seemed to be in on
some big plan to keep me from getting home. But as soon as I opened that front
door, I ran to my man—yes, in my mind I’d claimed him already—and
leapt into his arms. To say I devoured his face was kind of an understatement.

Henry
backed up into the couch and sat down, taking me with him. He grumbled
something about putting steaks on the grill, but a tornado could be whizzing
past our window right now and you couldn’t have peeled me from that couch.
Instead, I unzipped his pants, drew aside my thong panties and pulled him deep
inside me.

Later,
after we finally got around to cooking and eating dinner, we lay on his bed
sated and drowsy. He was lying on his back and I was sideways across the bed,
my head resting on his stomach, as we talked about the past, too afraid to talk
about the future in case we didn’t have one.

“How about
that guy in your senior year?” Henry asked. “Did you guys date long?”

I smiled
against his stomach. “You jealous?”

“I was.”

I ran my
fingers over the soft skin covering his ribs. “We only went out until after New
Year’s,” I said. “I’d have broken up with him sooner if you’d told me how you
felt.”

“I almost
did a few times.” He twisted his finger around a lock of my curly hair. “I came
home early that Christmas to spend some time with you without Jason around.”

“Would you
have told me then?”

He
shrugged. “Maybe. If all the stars aligned. But I guess they didn’t.” His blue
eyes took me in for a long time until I became uncomfortable.

“What?” I
asked, covering my face with my hand. I peeked through my fingers and grinned.

He pulled
my hand away. “I was just wondering what Jason would think.”

“He’d
probably tackle you to the ground, maybe give you a black eye or bloody lip,” I
said. Jason would have grumbled but, deep down, I liked to think he would have
been happy for us.

“Sounds
like Jason,” Henry replied with a rueful smile. He pressed his palm to my
cheek. “I think he knew. I was always asking about you, trying to sneak your
name into conversations. Every time we talked about coming back home, he’d ask
me if I was looking forward to seeing you, but I’d just ignore him.”

I beamed so
hard my cheeks hurt. “You wanted to
huuuug
me, you wanted to
kiiiss
me,” I said in a singsong voice.

He sat up
and tickled me and we wriggled around on the bed like children until his cell
phone vibrated on the nightstand. He looked at the caller ID and said, “I need
to take this.”

I went to
use the bathroom to give him some privacy. On my way back out, I caught a
glimpse in the mirror that gave me pause. My hair was tangled and any trace of
makeup had been wiped off my face, and yet I looked positively delirious with
happiness. I finally saw the glow Henry had been talking about.

He was
wearing pants and a grave expression when I rejoined him on the bed.

“What’s
up?” I asked. “Everything okay?”

“That was
the commander,” he said in a voice that made the hairs on my arms rise.

I didn’t
want to hear whatever bad news was coming, but I had asked for honesty and it
was too late to take back. “What is it?”

“The
deployment date has been changed.”

A hopeful
little thought bubbled up from my chest. “It’s been pushed back?”

“It’s been
moved up.”

I spoke
around the thought that had lodged painfully in my throat. “When?”

A gloom
settled over Henry’s handsome features. “To this Friday. As in two days from
now.”

That was
about the time I fell off the swing and fell face first into the ground.

6
 
|
 
OVER AND OUT

We held
each other that night, never once losing contact as we slept. I clutched him to
my chest, afraid of losing his warmth, and in turn he nestled me in his arms
with his lips pressed to my head.

I woke with
a start around two a.m., nearly hyperventilating from the thought that I hadn’t
even told him how I felt. “Wake up,” I whispered against his chest, pulling
away.

He was hard
to rouse after the night we’d had, but I needed to tell him. We were fast
running out of time. “Henry, wake up.”

“Yes?” he
rasped, keeping his eyes closed. He pulled me back against his chest.

“I have to
tell you something.”

“Can you
tell me tomorrow? I was having a nice dream.”

I pushed
against him. “No, you need to know now.”

His eyes
remained shut. “So...?”

“I love
you,” I whispered.

Henry was
so still that if it weren’t for his rapid heartbeat, I might have thought he
had fallen back asleep.

I pushed up
to one elbow. “I said I’m in love with you.”

One corner
of his mouth curled up. “I already know.”

“What? For
how long?”

He finally
opened his eyes and fixed them on me. “You’ve always been in love with me. You
just needed time to remember.”

“But…”

He laughed
at my dumbfounded expression and pulled me back down into his arms. “I love you
too, Els. Now go back to sleep.”

I wanted to
call in sick the next day, but Henry had a lot of last minute things to take
care of, like making sure his training and medical papers were up to date. “I
also have to update my will,” he said as we sipped our morning coffee with my
sitting on his lap.

His will.

My spine
stiffened, that one word bursting my happy little bubble. All of a sudden my
fears came racing back, crushing my lungs.

Henry felt
the sudden change of mood. He squeezed my side and said, “I will be okay.
Updating my will is just customary.”

I stood up
and faced him, intent on swallowing my fears. “Of course it is,” I said, giving
him one last kiss. “Well, I should get going.”

His hands
rested on the back of my legs and slid up my skirt. “Have a good day,” he said
huskily, his fingers playing with the edge of my panties.

I kissed
him and pulled away. “Bye.”

I ate my
lunch at my desk, turning my head every time someone walked by, hoping that
Henry had found a sliver of time to come see me again, but he didn’t come. I
stared at that red rose sitting inside an empty glass water bottle and ate my
food like a zombie. I couldn’t even tell you what I ate, I was so out of it.

After work
I rushed home, jittery with the knowledge that the seconds were ticking by. As
I drove I convinced myself to live for the moment, to pretend that tomorrow
didn’t exist—and almost succeeded until I walked in the living room and
found a pile of his stuff on the floor. Two dark green duffel bags with his
name embroidered on the side, folded ABUs, tan boots, gloves, a helmet. My
heart stopped when my eyes rested on a body armor vest. I picked it up,
wondering how it could possibly protect Henry when it hadn’t been enough to
save my brother.

This was
really happening. Henry was really going to leave tomorrow.

I dropped
the vest, suddenly too exhausted to even hold myself up. I sank to the floor
and stared at the deployment pile, trying to convince my lungs to simply keep
breathing.

“I didn’t
know you were ho—” Henry stopped when he saw me. I must have looked like
a hot mess, but he didn’t mention it. “I have something to show you.” He held
out his hand and pulled me up off the floor. We walked through the living room
and he opened the sliding door that led to the balcony.

“I wanted
you to have your camping trip,” he said, stepping aside so I could see. He had
placed one of our kitchen rugs on the cement balcony and erected a tent on it.
Beside it stood a camping stove and two metal skewers.

I peered
into the tent and found our sleeping bags zipped together to make one oversized
one. “Nice.”

“But
there’s more,” he said and produced a box of graham crackers, a bar of
Hershey’s chocolate, and a bag of marshmallows.

“You’ve
thought of everything, Captain Logan,” I said with the best smile I could
manage. I gave him a kiss, pushing the sad thoughts to the back of my head,
pretending for at least tonight that the pile of stuff in the living room
didn’t exist.

Having sex
in a tent is not that hard, but when you’re suspended three floors up with a
six foot man on top of you, it can get downright tricky. So we switched
positions and I rode him, hoping that the tent’s walls were not in any way
transparent. My head kept hitting the metal rods, so I had to bend down, which
provided Henry ample access to my breasts. He grasped them in his hands,
devouring each one in turn, while I rocked back and forth carefully. I tried to
memorize the way he filled me up, the sexy growl he made when I squeezed him
extra hard. He was in so deep, he was pressing against my core.

I covered
his mouth with my own when I came, afraid to make too much noise should the
neighbors overhear, but what I really wanted to do was shout, to rant and rave
that it wasn’t fair. I had finally found the love of my life but now he had to
leave. I pressed all of the emotion into a kiss, knowing that Henry shared it
with me, felt it with me. We were nothing if not two parts of a greater whole.

Later, we
unzipped the roof canopy and looked up at the stars as we lay wrapped up in
each other. The evening air was cool but Henry was warm and chased away the
chills brought on by the fear.

“Are you
scared?” I asked, playing with his dog tags, trying not to think of what they
represent.

“No. This
is what I’ve been training for,” he said. “A lot of people will be relying on
me to keep them safe.”

Then whose
job was it to keep Henry safe?

“I’m sure
you’ll be fine,” I said, pushing the thought away. Maybe it’ll come true if I
said it enough.

“Els,” he
began tentatively. “What do you want this,
us,
to be?”

I twisted
my head to look up at him. “What do
you
want?”

“I want you
to be mine only,” he said and added with a grin, “and wearing that Lara Croft
costume at all times, but for my eyes only.”

“Greedy.”

He fixed
that intense blue gaze on me. “I’ve waited a hell of a long time for you. I’m
not about to share with anyone else.”

“I want you
all to myself too,” I said. “And if anyone tries to steal you from me, I will
shank a bitch.”

I felt the
vibrations through his chest as he chuckled. “So it’s settled. You’re my girlfriend.”

“It’s
settled,” I said with a happy little nod. “What would you have done if I’d said
I wanted to see other people?”

He
shrugged, his confidence so disarming. “Never even occurred to me.”

Henry gently
shook me awake from a nightmare, pulling me away from the gunshots and blood.
“You were having a bad dream again,” he said, rubbing my arm.

“I wasn’t
screaming, was I?”

“No. You
were breathing weird, almost like you were sobbing.”

It was
early yet and I was still sleepy, but I fought to keep my eyes open if only to
keep the gory images away. I couldn’t even think about who would comfort me
from the bad dreams once Henry left. I guess it would have to be me for a
while.

He reached
for the watch he’d hung on the tent rod. “Go back to sleep. It’s only five.”

“Henry,” I
whispered, pressing a hand to his chest. “Make love to me.”

His heart
began to race under my palm and I knew what he was thinking, what we were both
refusing to acknowledge: that this was the final time we would be making love
before he boarded that plane.