Uniform Desires (Make Mine Military Romance) (17 page)

"Last night." She bent to capture his lip between her teeth, pulling on it, then sucking it into her mouth.

He drew away. "Was that the call you got while we were in your shower?" He’d just lathered her up, soap sliding over her breasts and down her belly to catch in the soft curls over her mound. Damned if he wasn’t feeling the need to shower again.

She nodded, trailing her finger from his lips down his throat to the collar of his shirt, loosening one of his buttons.
 
"I told him I was busy."

His lips quirked upward. "With me."

"I didn’t tell him
what
I was busy doing."

"Doing me."

"Yeah, but we both know it can’t go on." Her head jerked up when a woman entered the hallway, headed for the bathroom. "And I don’t want anyone to know about us." Delaney worried her bottom lip as she trailed a finger along his cheek and across his lips.

Tuck loved it when she chewed on her lip. He bent to catch that lip between his teeth, tugging gently. "We can keep this our secret."

She captured his face between her palms, her brows drawing together. "No more secrets. We need to end this."

"Coward." He smoothed the hair behind her ears, then pressed a kiss to her earlobe.

"No, really." Her words were saying one thing, while her breasts rubbed against his chest, her fingers sliding over his shoulders. "We can’t keep doing this."

"We both agreed this relationship was temporary." Though he wasn’t as sure now as he had been going into it. He liked being with her more than he cared to admit.

"Yes, but..."

He kissed away her ‘but’. "And
you
have no intention of making our relationship permanent, as you emphatically stated the first night we made love."

"Right." She drew her finger across the top of his ear. "As did you. And what was it you said? Ah yes, when a woman gets too close, you walk away."

He nodded. The thought of walking away from Delaney sat like sour apples in the pit of his belly. What was it about this woman that made him want to break all of his self-imposed rules? He couldn’t think past the feeling of her riding him, even fully clothed. "If we’re both in agreement we won’t ask for permanency, then why end it now?"

"And if one of us changes his or her mind and wants more?"

There she went again, biting on her lip, driving him insane. His cock grew impossibly harder beneath the confines of his Levis. "We nip it in the bud." He bent to nibble her full lower lip, pressing down her hips, rubbing his crotch against the smooth silk of her panties.

"Understood." She laid her hands on his chest and pushed. "Let me down."

With more restraint than he knew he had, he gripped her arms. "Okay." For a moment he held her there, enjoying the warmth of her body against his.

"We both know that adrenaline junkies make terrible partners." Her hand remained on his chest. "And you, Tuck, are an adrenaline junkie."

He nodded. "I am. It’s kind of a requirement of the job."

"I know." She smiled up at him, her lips a little too tight. "And if we see each other anymore than we have, I might break my promise to myself."

His chest swelled at the thought that she was worried about falling for him. "And that’s a problem?"

"Yes." She pushed away and stood at arm’s length. "I refuse to give my heart to someone who could die on each mission." A shadow crossed her face, her green eyes darkening.

"Honey, nothin’s gonna happen to me. I’m freakin’ Superman." He reached out to take her back in his arms.

"And I’m not going to be your kryptonite." She moved out of reach. "Let’s just end this now. We were better off when we were only friends."

Chest tightening, Tuck realized he didn’t want to end what they’d only just started. Being friends without touching her would be impossible. Anger spiked. The urge to take her, right there in the hallway, to show her how much he cared and wanted to be with her nearly overwhelmed him, almost made him lose control. He never lost control.

Tuck schooled his face into a mask of indifference. After several deep, calming breaths, he nodded. If this was the way she wanted it, so be it. He’d let her stew in her very sexy, musky juices for a little while and see if she was singing the same tune later.

"Okay, then. It ends here." His groin tight, his jeans tighter, he lifted her, pressing her back against the wall. He brushed one last, brief kiss across her soft lips and let her feet touch the ground, though he kept her pinned to the wall for a moment longer, prolonging the torture. Then he left her standing in the hallway and returned to the bar room, searching for the second prettiest girl in attendance. He had some dancin’ to do, and maybe seeing him in action would get under one helicopter pilot’s pretty skin.

As a U.S. Army Aviation Captain of the esteemed 160th Aviation Regiment "Night Stalkers", Delaney O’Connell, could fly her MH-60 Black Hawk into Afghanistan’s Taliban-held Provinces under enemy fire without batting an eyelash, her hand firm on the controls. But when faced with creepy-crawly bugs, she squealed and went all girly on him.

And he loved it. It had taken a spider in her bathtub to get her to let him past the front door of her apartment. She’d been a tough nut to crack, refusing to be anything but friends with soldiers, sailors, and SEALs on assignment for temporary training duty with Special Operations Forces stationed at the Joint Expeditionary Base in Little Creek, Virginia.

At first, Tuck hadn’t considered dating the hotshot pilot, preferring to stick to civilian women, safe from the no-fraternization rules imposed by his command and the U.S. Military. Safe, too, because when he left, transferred, deployed, or otherwise moved on, they stayed behind. His commitment was never to a woman, but to his team.

Until Delaney.

Oh, he’d still take a bullet for any one of his brothers at arms, but lately he’d had difficulty seeing himself leaving Delaney behind. And if the current TDY was any indication, as part of the joint task force, they’d trained together and would deploy together should they be called to do so.

The thought of Delaney deploying still left him feeling strange. Knowing she’d fearlessly fly into enemy-held territory didn’t sit well with the protector in him. What if she was shot down? They were all members of the U.S. military, sworn to serve and protect their great nation. As a man born and raised on a west Texas ranch, Tuck had learned to respect women, treat them well, and protect them from harm. How could he do that if she was flying straight into hell?

As his grandmother always told him,
don’t borrow trouble
.

Hopefully, the joint task force wouldn’t be called up anytime soon. SEAL Team 10 had been deployed a couple times to various missions in the Middle East without the assistance of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment squadron. And as much as he would miss Delaney on that kind of mission, he hadn’t been distracted with worry over her.

Which was ridiculous. He’d told her from the start, anything he felt for her would be purely physical.

He’d been wrong.

And now, instead of him backing out of the relationship as was his modus operandi,
she
was calling it all off. Normally, that suited him fine. But this was Delaney, and she’d managed to sneak under his protective barrier, somewhere between pizza, football, and night training missions.

He glanced back as she slipped into the semi-darkness of DD’s Corral, the country western nightclub frequented most by members of the units conducting joint training exercises in the Little Creek-Ft Story area for the past two months.

His member straining against the fly of his jeans, Tuck edged toward the dance floor, making his way through the crowd of men and women in civilian clothing, just as one of his favorite Tim McGraw songs struck up the first chords on the juke box.

An Army guy stood and swayed in front of Delaney. "Hey, honey, wanna dance with me?" His voice carried loud and clear as the song hit a lull in the melody.

Tuck’s fists clenched and he took a step toward the two.

"Not interested." Delaney tried to get around the man.

Again, he stepped in front of her. "Ah, c’mon. Just one dance."

The man next to him jabbed an elbow in his friend’s gut. "Watch out, that’s Razor, the one I told you about."

"Razor, is it? You’re pretty for a razor. Tell ya what, I’ll bring the shaving cream, and, darlin’, you can shave me any day."

Her eyes narrowed. "Still not interested." She ducked around him and moved on. Before the army guy could catch up, she grabbed the biggest Navy SEAL on Team 10, Benjamin Sjodin, and headed for the dance floor.

Nicknamed Big Bird, the SEAL was the largest and youngest member of their team and as graceful as his Sesame Street namesake. Still, Delaney painstakingly set out to teach the man how to two-step. A farm boy from Indiana, he’d been nicknamed Big Bird because he walked like an ostrich, all lanky, jerky and unnatural, but he got the job done. Not so much on the dance floor. He stumbled and stepped on Delaney’s feet and his freckles glowed every time he blushed.

"O’Connell might have the reputation of being a razor, but she also has the patience of a saint." Cory Nipton, aka Reaper, grinned. "That’s the fifth time Big Bird stomped her foot. I’m keeping count."

"He has the grace of a bull in a tutu. Whatcha drinkin’?" Tuck sat on a barstool beside his friend.

Reaper lifted his bottle of Guinness and swished the liquid inside. "I’m good for now."

Tuck wasn’t. He ordered another Bud from the tap, waited for the bartender to slap the mug on the counter, then took a long swallow. He needed the liquid encouragement before launching himself out into the sea of women looking for a little fun on the dance floor.

Before Delaney, he’d enjoyed dancing with just about any woman willing to put up with his less-than-stellar two-step. Since Delaney, he found himself comparing every woman to her. They didn’t fit right against his body, the perfumes they wore weren’t as enticing as the fresh scent of Delaney’s skin. They didn’t laugh like she did at his crude jokes or point out when he was being an ass. If he was honest with himself, Delaney had ruined him for other women and that went against his promise to himself to remain unhitched, unattached, and single for the duration of his military career…if not longer.

Tuck’s only experience with marriage was when his mother had run out on his father and left him to deal with the old man’s foul-tempered upbringing.

Not like he wanted to marry Delaney now. But he would like their relationship to last at least one more night. Maybe two. She fit him like a glove. A warm, wet glove he could drive himself into again and again.

Fuck. He’d never be able to dance if he had a hard on. He took another swallow of his beer before again facing the dance floor, scanning for a pretty woman to partner
 
with. Maybe she’d make Delaney rethink her desire to call an end to their crazy, mad lovemaking that never should have happened in the first place. But now that it had, he wanted it to happen again.

He took in the ladies sitting at the tables, smiling and laughing, touching their hair and generally trying to appeal to the bar’s male population in hope of enticing one to dance.

There was a blond with pretty hair. After a closer look, Tuck shook his head. She smiled with a big toothy grin, like she was trying too hard. The brunette beside her was passable, but she laughed too loud and often. No. He couldn’t do that to himself.

One after another, he ruled out the women seated around the dance floor, his gaze shifting back to Delaney.

She laughed up at Big Bird, the musical sound hitting Tuck square in the chest.
 

He jumped up from his seat.

"Where ya goin’?" Reaper asked.

"Gonna find me a woman." He stalked toward the pretty redhead at the end of the bar. "Wanna dance?"

"Sure." She grinned, slid off her seat, and stood on leopard-patterned stilettos that matched her leopard, skin-tight skirt.

Yeah, she’d do. Without waiting for her to get her bearings, Tuck grabbed her hand and wove through the tables to the hardwood dance floor. He turned and spun her into his arms, executing a perfect two-step.

Thankfully, she was graceful enough to keep up as he whisked her around, passing Delaney who struggled to keep her feet from being crunched under Big Bird’s size thirteens.

When she glanced across at him, he made a point to smile down at his partner for the first time and laugh, though the redhead hadn’t said a thing.

The woman he was dancing with cleared her throat to get his attention. "Don’t you want to know my name?"

Not really.
He gritted his teeth. "What is it?"

"Lisa." Another few steps in the dance and she raised her brows. "And your name?"

"Tuck."

Big Bird chose that moment to dip Delaney, nearly dropping her on the floor.

Tuck lurched toward them, stepping on Lisa’s foot in the process.

"Ouch." Lisa leaned on his arm and limped for a moment on her injured foot.

"Sorry." He held her steady until she’d wiggled her toes and nodded.
 

"I’m okay."