Over the Line (14 page)

She wished she could walk away. Complication was something she avoided at any cost. She had her work, which she excelled at, and she had her home with her dog Jubilee, and sometimes Tammer. No drama, no anxiety, no stress.

This situation was the polar opposite. And now James was obviously angry, wondering what his father had said to her. As she’d said the words, she’d known that “he was welcoming me to the family” rang all kinds of false. But what could she do? It was a weekend to help out a guy who had not only saved her life, but who’d risked his life to save hers. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to give him the weekend he’d hoped for. So allaying his concerns had to be her priority. Giving him what he needed. She would make this work.

“Seriously, Beth. Do I need to go ask him myself?” They rounded the corner to the pool area and the reflected sun made it suddenly feel like Afghanistan in August.

She needed to distract him. “Sure, you can if you like, but I’m sure he’ll just tell you to ask me.” She took his hand and led him inside. She wasn’t stripping for James
and
the phantom peeper.

As soon as the door closed she started to undo her pants. James stopped in his tracks and did a double take.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a rough voice.

“It’s so hot. And you need to be not thinking about your father right now.” She let her pants fall to the floor and turned slightly so that when she bent over to pick them up, he’d have an eyeful of ass.

Boy, did that ever work.

Before she stood up, he had cupped her ass cheek and undone the zip at the back of her top. She reached up so he could slide it off her. His breath caught as he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. From behind he moved his hands to her breasts, stroking them into points. She shivered against him.

With one last squeeze of her nipples, he spun her around. In seconds he was on his knees, pulling her panties down around her ankles. He lifted up each foot to remove them, and without pausing or removing her high heels, his tongue was on her, forcefully pushing against her clit, laving the whole area with the flat of his tongue. He was still angry, she could tell.

Heat spiked through her and her skin fritzed as if she was bathing in champagne. Liquid heat pooled between her legs. She held his shoulders to steady herself.

He stood abruptly and held her to him. “Taste yourself,” he said, and kissed her, sliding his tongue into her mouth. Her knees became fluid at the forcefulness of his words. She sucked the essence that he’d created within her from his tongue, slowly pulling it into her mouth.

Then his fingers were back, on her clit, almost punishing her. She moaned at the pressure. On the edge, she clung to him as his fingers slid into her, hard and fast while still rubbing her clit with his thumb.

“Come for me, Beth. Right now.” He bit the side of her neck and the pleasure and pain of it had her teetering on the edge. It was rough and fast, and the sensations danced along the pleasure-pain line.

She would have cried out when she came, but his mouth swallowed the sound. She throbbed all over. His fingers didn’t give up, but took the liquid that had flooded her and gently smoothed it all over her. So gently… but still making her flinch when he touched her clit.

Beth wanted to feel him, wanted him naked. She pulled up his shirt and dragged it over his head. Then she paused and slowly undid the fly of his pants.

* * *

James was as still as a statue. Frankly he was worried that if he moved, he wouldn’t be able to control himself. He was so angry with his father, with her. He saw her taking off her damn pants for what it was: a distraction.

He didn’t blame her, not really. But he was worried whether he could even have a future with her after this disaster. He didn’t want to think about what her accepting a payoff from his father meant. If that’s what it had been. He didn’t want to ask her. He didn’t want to know for certain the depths to which his father had gone to control him. But he also
did
want to know. He wanted to know what was in Beth’s head. She was so strong, so able, and now he was worried that she was too capable of compartmentalizing what they were doing, that she’d be able to close the door on this when they returned to North Carolina.

But right now, she was pulling his pants down. He kicked off his shoes and shucked off the pants when they hit the floor. His erection strained against his boxers. Would he ever get enough of this woman?

She stepped back from him. Her glorious body was bathed in refracted white light, shimmering across her shoulders and breasts. Her legs were accentuated by the impossibly slender heels she was wearing. Magnificent. And fucking hot.

And then he remembered the person or thing that Beth had thought she’d seen earlier. He didn’t doubt for a second that she’d seen something; her instincts were usually spot-on. A coldness settled over him when he thought of anyone else seeing her the way she’d shown herself to him.

With the flick of a switch, cream-colored roman blinds cascaded from the ceiling and covered the picture window completely.

“You couldn’t have done that this morning?” She stood, brazenly naked with her hands on her hips.

“My mind was on other things.” He reclined on the daybed where they’d been before. It was now his lucky lounger. He grinned.

She crouched slightly and kissed the bullet wound on his right side. She touched her tongue to it, and it might as well have been a soldering iron by the amount of heat it generated. He wanted to touch her, feel her hair at least, but he didn’t trust the amount of control he’d be able to muster.

She kissed him just south of the old wound. Then played with his waistband with her teeth. Teasing him, rendering him unable to think.

Her kisses fell on his stomach. He felt her tongue in his navel, then tasting the tattoo on the other side. Then without any warning, her open mouth puffed hot air onto his dick through the thin material of his shorts. He nearly exploded right there.

She worked his shorts down his legs and pulled them off. Naked. They were both naked in the reflected light from the swimming pool. Ripples from the breeze across the water outside cast patterns through the blinds onto her skin. He’d never wanted anyone so bad in his whole life.

For a second she stood before him, legs slightly open, lips slightly open. As if she was considering the best way to devour him. He didn’t care, as long as she did.

She hitched one leg up onto the lounger and dipped her hand between her own legs. In seconds he saw her juice glistening on her hand. She hesitated for a second, and then slowly climbed on to the bed with him.

Abruptly she opened his legs and knelt between them. Using her own lubrication, she stroked his dick from the base all the way to the tip, swiveled her hand around it and stroked back down. The feel of the friction, abated a little by her own liquid, sent red hot blood pulsing through his body, making its way between his legs. He felt enormous, like every molecule of blood was in her hands.

He closed his eyes and groaned at the sensation. And then her hand was replaced by her hot wet mouth. Her tongue swirled around the tip, probing its hole, and then the length of him. She licked him like an ice cream. Base to tip, base to tip. And then, as she reached the top, she drew the whole of him into her mouth. The light scrape of her teeth, the hot wetness of her mouth made him forget the rest of his body existed. But not the rest of hers.

The sight of her crouching between his legs, naked, with his dick in her mouth, gave him a slam of desire. Her breasts bobbed as she slid up and down his length. He reached for one, and relished the feel of her pebbled nipple in his fingers. He wanted to come so badly, but more, he wanted to see her, wanted to be buried so deep inside her that her eyes glazed over. He needed to hear her say his name. His name on her lips was suddenly more important to him than having his dick on her lips. He wanted to watch her as she came.

In a second she was in his arms. He knew exactly where he wanted to have her. After kicking open the door to the bathroom, he deposited her on the vanity between the two sinks. It was the perfect height, and there were mirrors behind her, behind him on the wall, and to one side. He’d get a spectacular view of her as he fucked her. He pulled her so her ass was just on the edge of the counter.

There wasn’t time to play nice. He took his dick in his hand and placed it right at her entrance.

Beth grabbed his chin. “Inside me, James. I want you inside me.”

Her words slayed him. “Yes ma’am.” He dug his fingers into her ass cheeks and pulled her onto his dick. At the same time he thrust hard, no practice pushes, no waiting for her natural lubricant. Hard, into her. Her warmth squeezed him as she moaned for him.

“Again,” she whispered into his ear, her breath fanning heat over him.

He turned her head so she could see their reflection in the mirror to the side. Her eyes grew dark as she saw. She drew one leg up, bending it at the knee, so she could see him sliding in and out of her. It seemed to drive her crazy. He watched as she looked at them, first in the side mirror, then in the one behind him.

Her tight pussy pulsed around him as he thrust into her. Hard, unrelenting, making her gasp and moan. Her eyes opened wide as she watched his dick drive into her. He slipped his hand between their frantic bodies and slid it over her clit, circling it, not touching it, and then pressing directly on the bud, rubbing it with the same cadence as he was fucking her.

“James.” Her voice cracked on the most beautiful sound she could make, and she came, gasping every breath as if she was dying. His own balls contracted slightly at the sound as the trail of fire hit the small of his back, signaling a release so strong he wondered if he would be able to stay upright.

Buried fast inside her, she rocked her pelvis in small thrusts, milking his orgasm out of him. If he didn’t have the vanity to lean against, he wasn’t sure if he’d still be standing.

* * *

Beth’s head dropped onto his shoulder. How was it possible to stay coherent when it felt like her whole body was filled with warm honey? Contentment flooded through her as he wrapped his arms around her. She peeked into the mirror opposite and saw his face reflected in the mirror behind them. He looked at peace—blue eyes closed, lips pressed into her shoulder, completely still.

“Nap time?” she murmured. To hell with the fact that it was still before lunchtime.

He didn’t answer her, just picked her up and took her into the bedroom. This time he placed her on the bed and tucked the sheets around her. He left the room and came back with some bottles of water, and climbed into bed with her. She turned over to face him.

“When do you deploy next?” she asked him, wanting to know more about his life, or at least his life away from his family. She also thought it might make him happier to think about the military rather than his dysfunctional family.

“I guess some time next year. It depends on the state of the war, I suppose. Are we leaving Afghanistan? Staying? Will we be in a different war next year? All things being equal, next year sometime. You?” He rolled so they were bent knee to knee, and face to face on the pillows.

“I filed my ‘fit for deployment’ paperwork when you saw me at the gym. So anytime,” she said.

“Do you like what you do?” he asked, stroking her arm and making goose bumps pop.

“Love it. Well, for now. I’m not sure what my future holds, but I’m not getting any younger and I suspect my days with special forces are numbered. If I have to sit behind a desk all the time, I’ll leave. Go do something exciting.”
If your father doesn’t ban me from working at the CIA.

“Did you do the Army’s SERE training?” he asked, referring to the Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape training that everyone had nightmares about, but was a rite of passage in some parts of the military.

“Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to in the beginning. I got into the Cultural Support Teams. That was my first role in special forces. But after my third deployment, that role kind of segued into just another regular S.F. one. So I did the SERE training a bit late. Did you?”

“Yeah, I only deploy with special forces, so I did all their training as well as all mine.”

“Funny thing is, my last deployment, I was in a Humvee with the training guy who slapped me around in my SERE. He didn’t know where to put himself.” She shifted in the bed. “I enjoyed that.” She laughed softly. “He was terrified of me. He’d left a training role to deploy, and, well, I guess it’s like a cop being sent to prison. You never know who you’re going to meet again. But I never forgot him.”

“Did you get your own back?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? I owed him. Totally. What use am I if I don’t know how to take a punch? No one else in all my training laid a hand on me. He hurt me, but you know, afterward I knew that no matter how hard someone hit me, I’d be okay, and I’d survive it. So now I’m not scared of getting handy in combat.”

“I knew before I joined up that I could take a punch,” he said, rolling so he stared at the ceiling.

She propped herself up on one elbow. “How so? Were you a troublemaker?”

“Sadie packs one hell of a punch. Trust me. She’s five years older than me and used every inch she had on me to her advantage. Yeah, it’s a miracle we’re still friends.”

“What are you going to do now that you’re a Senior Master Sergeant? They’re not going to let you kick in doors anymore when you’re downrange, are they?”

“Probably not. Maybe I won’t have to lie to my father anymore about what I do.”

“Except you’ll still be deployed.”

“Good point.”

An elite combat airman wouldn’t take being out of action very well, she was sure. “So what’s next for you?” she asked.

“I have a friend who’s a private military contractor. He’s always looking for guys with my training. So that’s always in the back of my mind. But part of me wonders if I’d be able to do that. I chose to serve my country, but doing the same job for a private contractor, well, it feels…”

“Weird,” she finished. “Yeah, I know. I often wondered if I’d be able to take orders from someone whose main concern was making a profit, rather than doing something for the good of the country.” She mentally struggled against the comfort she felt with him. They even thought the same way about serving in the military. She half wished he’d do something gross, just so he didn’t seem so damned perfect for her.