His Road Home (10 page)

“Lot to put on a guy.”

“Seems like a pretty strong guy.”

“Not a...” Alone on the bed, chilled without clothes or her touch, he could sense his speech fluency fading. “Not a symbol.”

“I know that. You once accused me of flag-waving just for talking to you, remember?”

“Worried.” As she climbed onto the bed, the towel obeyed his wishes and unknotted.

“About—” she retrieved it, but not before he had a view of that dark strip of heaven, “—what?”

“Some women.” He gritted his teeth in frustration about how to explain fetish chicks. “Letters. Pictures. To soldiers.”

“Groupies?” She rubbed his thighs and it didn’t matter if she understood, because he should not under any circumstances distract her from digging into his quads.

“Uh-huh.” Damn, that felt good.

“Why? If they don’t know you?”

“Hero shit.”
Holy Moly
,
Cruz
. He could hear Kahananui’s woman advice and feel Wulf knocking knuckles on his skull. Surgeons should have given him a lobotomy along with his legs. After they’d almost banged a mirror off a wall wasn’t the time to mention skanks with a hero fetish who liked to proposition amps.

Her hands paused. “You don’t think that I...”

“No. No.” He stiffened. That wasn’t what he wanted to express. “You know me.” He’d shared his days with her, how he thought, what he read. She’d seen him cry, then something more embarrassing than crying, and she’d stuck by him. “Friends first.”

“If you mention benefits I will—”

“Spank me?” His parts agreed with that awesomeness, but her eyebrows disappeared to her hairline, which he interpreted as
not.

Until she bent her head to bring her lips a whisper from his. “Will it make you talk?”

Chapter Eight

They slept so late that they were still ten miles east of Rapid City at lunch. Deep cold had settled across South Dakota, but no snow, and Grace made good time on the clear roads. With a thousand miles left, if they drove six more hours today, Cruz calculated they could pull in to Pateros as early as tomorrow evening.

He rubbed his thigh, the one closer to the driver’s seat where she couldn’t miss his action, and muffled a grunt. Never let it be said that a Green Beret wasn’t a master of subterfuge.

She took her eyes off the road for an instant to look at him. Target acquired.

He flexed his buttocks and stretched, one hand braced on the dashboard. He pushed a sigh out of his diaphragm and shifted as if the 442’s spacious seat had shrunk. “Need gas?”

“We still have over half a tank. Do you need to stop?”

Yep, he had her. “No. I’m good.” This time he dug four fingers into his thigh and pressed his lips together to appear as if he stifled a groan.

“Don’t be a martyr.” She merged to the exit lane. “If you’re uncomfortable, we’ll stop.”

The satisfaction that came after scoring a direct hit dissipated when she turned right off the exit instead of following the arrows left to a motel. One destination dominated the north side of Interstate 90, and the beds sold there inflated.

“Shop?” Billboards for the outdoor gear emporium had lined the last hundred miles of interstate. “Now?”

“Driving for fifteen hundred miles makes Grace a dull girl. I have a plan.”

So had he, and he’d been out-flanked.

Even the blue-signed spaces were full on shopping-crazed Black Friday. They parked in the corner with two football fields to cross merely to enter the massive hunting and fishing gear store.

“Chair. Please.” He’d move faster and keep his personal space open with his wheels, and his stumps deserved a rest after their stellar performance last night. Talk about the best reason to be chafed.

Grace grabbed a cart at the entrance. “Fishing gear, aisles six through nine. Get moving.”

“Kidding?” He wrapped his arms around his torso and pretended to shiver. “Crazy cold.”

“Aren’t you the tough guy who trained in Alaska?” She smiled over her shoulder but didn’t stop threading a path through other shoppers. “I promise to keep you warm and happy.”

The store was the most insane normal place he could imagine outside of Vegas. Bartenders and waitresses near Walter Reed were used to wheelchairs and amps, and people along the interstate had been too focused on their own trips, or he’d been wearing legs, so few people had paid attention to him. Here the air was too full of shopping mojo, holiday music and shrieking for many to double-take at a double-amp.

She maneuvered a value-pack with a shelter, a sled and who knew what else into the cart while he considered the possibility of frost-bite on his happy friend. The portable heater that went in next made the idea of ice-fishing more palatable, but the activity involved far too much clothing for his goal. In the tackle aisle her fingers skimmed shelves and her lips moved silently, as she read and compared price tags. She knew what she wanted.

“Didn’t know P-H-...Dees fish.”

“Sometimes, if you want a DNA sample, you have to get it yourself. I bet there are other things about me you don’t know.”

“Thirty-four B.”

She bobbled the cardboard box in her hand, but once she clutched it securely, she turned, her chest vibrating somewhere between shock and laughter.

“Right?”

“Yes, darn it, and I don’t want to know how you knew
that
.”

“Expert recon.”

“Well, Mr. Expert, this P-H-D has always wanted a salmonid gutter.” With her hip cocked to the side in clear challenge, she flourished a box with the awesome logo Spineless Wunder Boner. “Afraid this won’t fit in the cart. Looks like you’ll have to carry it.”

If this woman wanted him to roll through the store with a boner, she had better weapons at her disposal by shaking those tight jeans, but he set the box front and center on his lap, words facing out. “That good?”

“Yah, y’betcha.”

All $1,263.28 of gear fit onto their credit cards and into the back seat of the Perfect Ten. Filled with a wild boar sandwich, fueled by coffee and possessing two fresh South Dakota fishing licenses, he slouched in the passenger seat. Alone, he might’ve burped. Grace presumably had standards. Although the way she knew fishing gear, maybe she knew how to burp. “Where to?”

“I checked fishing reports. It’s early, but Pactola Lake has six inches of ice in places.”

“Good roads?” He stroked the wood inlay on his door. His baby had carried them this far, but a frozen lake in the Black Hills might be asking too much from her forty-year-old suspension.

“I chose it because Highway 385 is dry and clear all the way. She’ll make it.” The ignition fired, and she confidently maneuvered the clutch and gears while she twisted to look out the rear and back out of the space. The sunlight falling sideways through the window picked reddish streaks out of her dark hair and lit the line of her jaw like a church painting. He could watch her all day.

A thousand miles ago, he’d known Grace could handle pretty much anything and wouldn’t leave if the road got hard, but every day he fell more in love with her, and not only because she treated him like a man instead of a hobby kit. His emotions must be so obvious, the words should be tattooed on his neck, but she didn’t seem to realize. She didn’t make kitty eyes or giggle, or whisper in his ear to try to get him to admit it first, like other women.

He used his sleeve to wipe dust off the dashboard, but he might as well wipe his eyes. He was deep in sappy territory. Obviously, she wanted a relationship, or she wouldn’t have slept with him. She’d been clear on that from the beginning. And he felt as pumped as a twenty-year-old when he remembered how she’d screamed his name. So if his legs weren’t the problem, and the sex was crazier than full-moon monkeys, why wasn’t she hinting for the L-word?

He needed a job. If he was careful with his disability checks and his traumatic injury insurance payout, he’d be comfortable in Pateros, but Seattle was a different economic game. He couldn’t court her on her city turf and expect her to support him, too.

They reached the lake. Drivers of the other vehicles were presumably inside the handful of shelters spread across the ice. Beyond the cluster of shacks, dark open water stretched the reservoir’s length. The sight excited him. Risk—small maybe, but not the insulated life of Walter Reed or the boredom of the passenger seat—lurked close by.

“Wheels or legs?” she asked.

“Too cold.” He didn’t know what extreme temps would do to his micro-processors and hydraulics. “Chair again.”

His cold-weather pants flopped like one of those fish Grace wanted. As he knotted each pants leg, she spun, arms raised to the sky, and blew clouds of steamy breath. Her bright orange-and-silver striped coat and the blue-green knit scarf filled his world with color.

Her cheeks flushed when she stopped. “I hear trout calling our names.”

“Graaaace.” His falsetto made her laugh, his favorite sound. “Eat me!”

“Dream on.” She pressed her lips to his with the speed of a familiar lover, and the touch warmed him in ways he didn’t think even a roaring fire could.

At first he stayed close since Grace had to trudge with the gear sled, but the wind-scoured ice beckoned like a giant crystalline runway. He imitated his 442 revving and eyed her. “Race?”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Watch!” He was off, friction so decreased that his wheels hissed when he flicked them through his hands. Then he arched and bounced on the back of his seat to pop the front wheels in the air.

“Rey!”

Better than a simple wheelie, he squeezed hard to stop the left tire, felt the sizzle through his glove but let the right one roll until he’d spun a perfect donut. “Whooo-hoooo!”

Grace reached him as he howled at the sky. “I don’t think you’re treating this expedition with proper reverence.”

“Ice, ice, baby.” He swooped her into his lap, took off again with her holding onto his neck and chest. She was a bundle of laughing woman, his laughing woman, but ten layers of padded gear would inhibit even a stainless steel fish boner’s rod. Getting the shelter raised became a highly motivating factor.

The shelter’s instructions claimed one person could set it up, so a former Special Forces soldier and a Ph.D. should be able to accomplish the task, even if they totaled only one and a half bodies. He stabilized the sides while she popped the middle pole.

“That sucks.” Grace climbed out to stand next to his chair and look at the portal’s bottom edge, approximately eighteen inches off the ground. “I bought one with no floor covering on purpose for your wheels, but I didn’t check for a raised door. I’m sorry.”

“No prob-prob-problem.” When his chair’s front wheels touched the shelter’s nylon sides, he unzipped the enclosure and locked his brakes. Wouldn’t do if the chair ran away without him. He braced on the arm rests and self-propelled over the lip of the tent, rolling on his shoulder across the ice until the far wall stopped him.

“Rey!” Grace’s head poked through the open flap, her eyes as wide as her mouth. “Are you okay?”

“Last time I-I-I jumped—” he struggled to stop laughing, “—water not...hard.”

“The last time...” Her inflection rose as she climbed in. “Was that when...?”

“Yeah.” Felt odd to realize he hadn’t had the dream in four days, not since the first night on the road. He’d attended enough head-sessions not to think it was permanently gone, but he hadn’t slept so much in months. Grace, better than drugs.

“Step one is drilling the hole. This is a manly activity—note the large, sharp tool—so of course I will defer to you. Here.” She handed him an auger the size of a rifle. “Drill.”

An hour of sitting around the hole later, they had nothing. The patience required for this sport rivaled the amount needed for stalking a gaggle of bad dudes in the mountains. Today he was interested in a quicker reward. “Done yet?”

She rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you ever ice fished?”

“Hell no.” He shrugged out of his unzipped jacket and pulled off his stocking cap. Either the portable heater was effective, or his temperature was rising.

“This is an endurance sport.” Without breaking eye contact, she shed her parka too. “It requires contemplation.”

“Beer.” With his preferred beverage, he’d happily contemplate how her bib overall straps framed her breasts and pushed them together.

“That too. Luckily, the gas station happened...” she rummaged in the sled, “...to have some.” Her hand emerged, holding two bottles of Hopping Dakota Brown Ale.

“Best woman. Ever.” He made a gesture of prying off a cap. “Open?”

Horror as absurd as a rubber mask crossed her face. “Oh, nooo. I forgot.”

“New plan.” Screwing didn’t require beer, and his body fit the sled perfectly, like a bunk. His coat and the tent carry bag would insulate him from the ice. She could ride on top.

“I can predict where you’re going, and it won’t catch our dinner.” Despite the prim tone, she eased the portable heater closer.

“Catch me.” He ran both thumbs from the outer edge of his waistband to meet in the middle and watched her eyes track his motion. “Buy dinner.”

“That’s an...idea.” The rapid rise and fall of her chest intrigued him.

The snaps and fasteners at his fly didn’t make enough noise to be heard over the whoosh of the heater, but her pupils expanded when he spread his pants. She could probably tell what was happening under his sport shorts and long johns. “Come here.”

She clunked on to the sled, boots and all, and he guided her legs to either side of his hips. With their coats to pad her knees, he slipped the straps off her shoulders to hunt for the hem of her thermal shirt. He wanted to see her bare breasts in the filtered light of the tent and watch her skin flush pink.

Her shirt lifted out of the high waist of her snow gear, but the bib straps tangled on her arms. He pulled and lifted more layers, finally revealing the black stretch of...a sports bra. He couldn’t insert a finger under the band. The contraption was tighter than a jammed double feed in an AR-15. Probably twice as hard to remove. Why did chicks wear this stuff?

“Armor?”

“Support, you know, for hauling gear and landing a record trout.” At least she took the hint and wiggled out of her bindings, which involved rotating her hips smack on top of him, so maybe that was another acceptable reason.

He pulled her down until he could kiss her while he rubbed circles on his prizes. Her mouth was holy; he was a sinner who needed to worship. Her lips, her tongue, the kitten sounds from her throat invited him to enter and entwine until he couldn’t be sure where he stopped and where her thrusts took over. Every twist was a move he wanted to repeat with their bodies, but until he had more of her clothes off, he could only kiss and touch.

Her hands burrowed under his shirt to push the slippery fabric high enough to expose his skin, match it to hers, chest to chest while they kissed. He dug his hand deeper into her hair, and the other pulled her hip tighter. Skin to skin, she dragged her nipples across his chest and moaned, or maybe he dragged her and moaned, because they were so close to being one. If only they didn’t have clothes in the way.

“Harder,” she groaned, because the friction wasn’t enough for either of them. He lifted her, brought those breasts from his chest to his mouth and suckled like a man denied, not like a man who’d fucked himself sore the night before.

She made a sound somewhere between panting and screaming, and it was good. “More, more, Rey.” She was reduced to single words too.

He obliged by pressing his tongue under her nipple, sucking it to the roof of his mouth until she keened with appreciation. His cock pushed toward its destination, but she wore those damn padded pants.

Then her fingers dipped into his shorts and closed around his shaft. She could glove it tight and squeeze like that, or run her fingers from tip to balls, or flick her thumb, or both—oh, that was both—whatever she wanted, all good.