Ricochet (32 page)

Rachel’s heart took a few extra beats and tightened in her chest. “When did you do all this?”

“On my way back from Santa Ynez.”

She watched the paper catch and the flames lick up the sides of the wood, her throat growing tight. No one had ever done anything like this. Not even the man she’d planned to marry.

Nathan filled one of the small plastic cups halfway and handed it to her. Then filled the other and twisted the bottle into the sand at their feet. Mirroring her pose, knees up, arms resting there, he lifted his cup toward her. “To…” He paused, considered. “Spontaneity.”

She smiled and tapped her cup to his, then drank deeply. The red was lighter than she’d expected. Rich and fruity with a sultry taste that lingered in her mouth. “Wow, this is good.”

“Mmm,” he said around his own mouthful, his gaze on the horizon.

“That must have been some friend you saw today,” she murmured between sips.

Nathan’s mouth tipped up. He nodded without looking at her. “He is. He’s…” He shook his head, his expression turning serious again. “He’s…amazing. I’ve seen a lot of strong men in my life, always thought I was pretty tough, but after seeing him today…” He exhaled and lifted his brows. “I was…humbled.”

A rope twined around Rachel’s heart. She took another drink of wine and ended up draining her glass. He had fascinated her from that first moment in the bar, and the more she learned, the more she wanted to know. Yet she didn’t want to get so close she was hurt when he walked out of her life. And this…this…openness just teased her closer. The fact that he also had some deep wound that colored his world unearthed the nurturing streak she’d tried to bury.

“You, humbled. I can’t imagine. What would that look like?”

He picked up the wine and refilled her cup. “Looked a lot like me getting my ass kicked at hoops with a one-armed guy in a wheelchair.”

Oh, thank God for the wine. She took another deep drink. Her head finally started to feel light. “Damn. I would have paid to see that.”

Nathan laughed, twisted the wine bottle into the sand, and took a sip from his own cup. The fire crackled, and one of the sticks fell out of the teepee lineup.

“What happened to him?” she asked. When Nathan darted a sidelong glance at her, she lifted a shoulder. “You gave me the wine.”

His lips curved. “Right. Alcohol does tend to make you…direct.” He looked back to the surf and took another sip. “He got in the way of an IED. Lost both legs and one arm.”

Alarm clutched her chest. “In Afghanistan?”

He nodded, his mouth forming a tight straight line, eyes crinkled as he squinted at the sunset. “Fuckin’ farmer’s market in Kandahar.”

Kandahar
. Oh God. His argument with Josh the night before rushed back at her.

“It wasn’t my fault,”
Nathan had said. He’d been there.
He’d been there
when his friend had gotten blown up.

Alarm turned to horror as she thought about what kind of trauma that would cause in a psyche. What kind of scars it would leave on a soul.

So much about the man next to her suddenly made sense, and doubled the reasons to keep him at arm’s length and her desire to pull him closer.

“Just a normal call, you know?” he said, his voice quiet, expression contemplative. “Check out an IED threat in a vendor’s fruit stand. How dangerous could that be? Wasn’t like a guy with bombs strapped to his body in the middle of a playground. Wasn’t like a munitions building externally rigged with ballistic missiles or anything.”

He paused, and she could see his mind was somewhere else. His thoughts very far away, as if remembering those very real incidents, not making them up as examples.

“But we were still careful,” he continued. “Still went at it like we did every other call, as if every watermelon could have been rigged with land mines. But this time, they’d rigged a goat.”

He blew out a breath, lowered his head, and wiped his hand over his face. Rachel rested her chin on her knees so her mouth wouldn’t hang open.

“I’m sorry? Did you say they’d rigged a goat? Like, it had explosives wrapped around it?”

He shook his head. “No. Explosives were on the inside. Jesus, I thought I’d seen everything.”

Rachel finished the wine in her glass, her stomach tight and a surreal haze taking over her brain.

“He’s doing…” Ryker started. “I hate to say he’s doing great. I mean, he’s missing three limbs, has been through dozens of surgeries, his life altered forever in a way I can’t begin to comprehend.” He slanted her a look and added, “Mike, not the goat.”

Rachel burst out laughing, and Ryker’s mouth curved. Even though it lightened the moment, the wrongness of it cut her laughter short.

“I guess I just mean…after what he’s been through, he’s so positive. So optimistic. So…” Nathan gestured as if he were gathering the air in a ball, “I don’t know…together, I guess.”

Rachel got the impression he wanted to say
so much more together than I am, and I’ve still got all my limbs.
She wanted to touch him. Soothe him. Let him know that he wasn’t alone. But she took another drink of her wine instead. “How’d he do it?”

“He says it was his wife and son, Julie and Travis. They say guys with a girlfriend or spouse at home fare twice as well on deployment as guys without.”

That sounded reasonable. A man who knew he had someone to come home to would have something to live for, look forward to. A man who had someone to talk to outside the guys he was with day in and day out had an additional release valve for stress.

“You don’t agree?” she asked.

He shrugged and kept his gaze straight ahead. “Maybe for some.”

“Not for you.”

“Before I saw Mike today, I’d have said, no, not for me. I know how it feels to love someone, depend on someone, and have them leave you behind. My mother did it over and over until they finally took me away for good. I never thought I could live with myself knowing I was doing that. Don’t know if I could take the risks that I do every day if I was worried about someone else in the back of my mind.”

She imagined Nathan as a boy, lost and confused, and God, that just broke her heart. She gazed into the clear bottom of her third empty glass of wine. “And now?”

He shrugged and frowned into his glass. “I…still don’t know.”

Another piece of wood fell into the center of the small fire. Nathan reached over and squeezed her knee before standing and turning to the back of the alcove. “I didn’t mean to get all serious on you.” He came back out with more pieces of wood, laid them on the fire, and sat on the blanket again. “How about another surprise?”

Her heart did that tightening thing again. She shook her head. “We’re already way past our five minutes.” She glanced around for her shoes and found her head a little light. Three glasses of wine on an empty stomach in the span of fifteen minutes? She was over her limit. “Where’d you put—”

His hand appeared in front of her at eye level, holding a perfect, chocolate-dipped strawberry in his palm.

Her shoulders sagged, and her insides went soft. “Seriously?”

“Come on,” he said. “Relax with me. It’s been a hell of a long day.”

That it had. She cut a look at him. He was so close. His eyes warm, his stubble dark, his mouth…

No. Just no.

But her body was already simmering. And she was so tired of pushing him away. And there was no one here but the two of them. And she hadn’t eaten since noon.

She sat back and took the berry from his hand. “Where did you get these?”

He pulled another one from a box nearby. “Town.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You did a lot in town.”

“You say that like I’m not normally efficient.”

She bit into the berry. The chocolate shell cracked, and the strawberry burst. The sweet, sour, and tangy taste spread through her mouth at the same time, and her appetite lunged to life. She closed her eyes and moaned. The darkness made her dizzy again, and she swayed, brushing against Nathan’s body where he’d moved behind her.

He lowered his chin to her shoulder. “Take another bite,” he whispered. “I want to hear you make that sound again.”

All her lust broke loose and flooded her body. She wanted to lean back and sink into him. Instead, she leaned away. “Oh-kay, time to—”

His hand cupped her face, turned her head, and pulled her mouth to his. The force of the kiss pressed her head back against his shoulder. Her lips parted, and Nathan’s tongue stroked inside. She didn’t think, just opened to him, met his tongue with hers, and made a sound in her throat, one even she didn’t recognize.

His mouth eased off hers too soon. She was still hungry for him. But his lips touched her jaw, her neck, then disappeared.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against him, in between his spread thighs. His erection pressed a hard line up the small of her back, and he lifted another chocolate strawberry to her lips.

“Eat,” he murmured. “Before I find other ways to distract your mouth.”

Too late. She had a handful of other ideas in mind already. But she closed her lips around the plump strawberry. With Nathan’s chin on her shoulder, watching her, Rachel was hyperaware of every move of her lips, her tongue, her teeth, and simply eating a strawberry had never been so erotic.

When it was gone, Nathan ran his index finger over her lower lip, and Rachel licked it, then took it between her lips and sucked. A soft moan sounded at her ear, and he offered another. She did the same with that one.

“I love your mouth,” he murmured.

It wasn’t the words as much as the affection in his voice that pushed Rachel over the edge. He was a good man. A troubled man, but a good man. One with a strength of character, heart, and soul that she admired.

She sucked his fingers free, dropped her head back, and wrapped one arm up and around his head, pulling him into a kiss. His tongue was warm, his movements sensual, and Rachel pushed her bottom back against his erection with a sudden need to be closer to him.

He groaned into her mouth, fisted a handful of her hair, and pulled her head back while lifting his own to break the kiss. “How tipsy are you?”

“Less than I was at the hotel.”

His fingers raked against her belly as he fisted and flexed his fingers, making her realize his hand had found its way under her shirt, and suddenly all she could focus on was the feel of flesh on flesh.

“I have one last surprise,” he said, his voice rough as he lowered his lips to her shoulder and kissed her there, then whispered, “Wanna play with it?”

God, she was so gone. The stress, the wine, the fatigue, they’d all weakened her. Now she didn’t have the strength to resist him when she should.

She leaned close and took the skin of his neck gently between her teeth and scooted her hips back to rub against him again. “Mmm.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He lifted his head and reached behind him again, leaving her back open to the cool night air. That was enough to sharpen her mind, but not near the jolt required to shake the need he’d stirred, something she feared had gone beyond sexual. Then he was back, legs flanking hers, knees up, arms wrapped around her, presenting her with a box the length of his palm, two inches high and two inches wide. It was wrapped in plain hot-pink paper with a single ribbon, and she stared at it stupidly.

A gift?

Only now, staring at the box, did she realize she hadn’t been offered a gift by a man in… Had it really been years? Dante had forgotten her birthday eight months before. Claimed Valentine’s Day was a fake holiday created by greeting card manufacturers. And had shown up empty-handed at Christmas with the bullshit story that they’d already agreed their planned trip to his parent’s house in Vermont that coming February would be their gift to each other.

How had she stayed with him for so long?

“Come on,” he whispered at her shoulder. “Open it.”

“Why’d you do this?” She took the box and glanced at him. His eyes were bright with excitement.

“Because I think you’ll enjoy it.”

The seductive tone of his voice hinted at something sexy in the box. “What in the hell were you going to do if I flat out said no to coming tonight?”

“Someone was going to get lucky in a whole different way than I intended. Come on, come on.” He punctuated the words with the nudge of his chest against her back. “Rip it open.”

She laughed. “You’re worse than a kid at Christmas.”

“I wouldn’t know what that’s like.” His arms lowered and doubled around her waist, pulling her tight against him. “And I don’t have any opportunity to give presents either. I never realized it was so much fun.” He kissed her shoulder. “If you don’t open it, I will.”

Tears burned her eyes from nowhere. Foster homes. No Christmas presents. Friends getting blown to pieces in front of his eyes.

Blinking the sting away, she ripped the paper and let it drop as she read the box. Her heart skipped, then pounded a painful triple beat. Her mouth dropped open. “High intensity…” Her eyes closed in a combination of humor and horror. But her pussy had already started weeping. “You didn’t.”

“Have you used one?” he asked, reaching up to take the box from her hand, pulling the top off and plucking the tiny vibrator, no bigger than the size of her finger, the tip smaller than the base, from the pillowy cotton bed where it rested. Then moved the puff aside and drew out something else, larger than the toy.