White Dawn: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel (13 page)

After such a powerful orgasm, she
thought she would sleep immediately, as soon as she lay down, but
sleep was slow to reach her. For the moment, she was satiated and
her body quiescent, but now what haunted her thoughts was an odd
sort of sadness.

She fell asleep wondering why she would
feel sad.

The next day was another fallow day when
there was nothing to do but train, clean her gun and listen to the
same sexist jokes the men of the unit always told. Garrett didn’t
appear again that day and Llora took meals to his office, meals
that came back barely eaten.

Carmen went to bed with the same
low-grade melancholy wreathing her thoughts.

What on earth is wrong with me
?
she wondered.

But when Garrett woke her in the dead of
the night and pulled her from beneath the net, her heart leapt and
she knew.

Garrett wasn’t going to be a one-night
stand. He couldn’t stay away any more than she could.

This time, Garrett’s patience lasted
long enough to lead her around to the front of the monastery and in
through the public entrance. The public entrance was separated from
the monks’ rooms and kept visitors contained and away from their
devotions and solitude. But there was a door at the end of the wide
room that gave access to the back corridor where the rooms were
that Garrett was using as a hospital, plus Garrett’s own
office.

The only reason for going around the
main building and coming in the front way was because he wanted to
sneak her in so no one else would know she was there.

Carmen didn’t mind. She wasn’t sure how
she felt about this herself, yet, so keeping it private suited her
fine.

Her body was tingling with
anticipation.

Garrett pushed the door to his office
open and stood back and looked at her. In the light that shone from
the room, his gaze was almost blank.

Carmen stepped into the room and looked
around. She had only been in here a few times and most of those
times, she had been so roiled up by Garrett’s sub-human responses
that she had failed to take much notice of the room itself.

It was as bare as any of the monks’
cells. There was a window high up in the wall behind the small
desk. Another tiny table had been added since she had been here
last and the radio transmitter sat on it. The walls were the same
bare, smooth rock as the outside walls, bereft of any paint. The
floor was plain tiles.

“Here?” she asked as Garrett closed the
door behind him.

“There.” He nodded his head toward the
bedroom. He opened the door and once more stepped aside. Carmen
suspected he was waiting for her to make her own way into his room
because last time he had given her very little choice at all.

So she stepped into the inner room and
looked around. There was a bed and an old army footlocker and that
was all. A gas lantern sat on the locker, turned down low, in
defiance of Garrett’s orders that gas be preserved wherever
possible. The colorful coverlet on the bed and the sheet beneath
had been tossed back, as if Garrett had thrown them to one
side.

It was an odd sized bed, clearly
something the monks had made themselves, with little regard for
standard mattress sizes. It wasn’t a single bed and it wasn’t quite
a double, but it didn’t matter if they both fit or not. Carmen
didn’t intend to sleep there.

Garrett came up behind her and his arms
came around her. She could feel the strength in them. He pulled her
hair back over her shoulder and kissed her neck. His touch sent a
shiver through her.

She turned in his arms so she was facing
him. She was back to wanting him again, only this time, it felt
like her need was stronger than ever. She was trembling with
it.

Garrett was examining her face. There
was a crease between his brows.

“What?” she demanded.

He shook his head. “Nothing.” He bent
his head and kissed her and Carmen sighed into his mouth. Until
this moment, she hadn’t been aware that all day, in the back of her
mind, she had been replaying his kisses, his touches. Replaying
them and wishing for more.

Is that what Garrett had been doing? The
covers on the bed looked like he had thrown them aside in
frustration. Had his sleep been as fractured as hers? He was
barefoot, the heavy army boots he normally wore tossed up against
the chest, like they might be if he had shucked them off before
going to bed. Had his wakefulness caused him to sit up in the dark,
throw the covers aside and come to find her?

The questions faded as his kiss
deepened. She was growing warmer and her nipples tightened almost
painfully. Her pussy was slippery and rippling with emptiness. But
she didn’t hurry this time, even though she badly wanted to. She
let the kiss extend and grow.

By the time Garrett let her go, she was
breathless and it felt like even her fingers were throbbing.

Carmen reached for the buttons on his
shirt. She wouldn’t hurry, but she did want to touch his skin, to
feel the warmth and softness once more.

She got three buttons undone, then he
gripped her hand, halting her. He reached for the lantern.

“Don’t turn it off,” she said quickly.
“I want to see you.”

He paused, his head turned toward the
lantern and away from her. He let his hand drop away from the
lantern. “No one has ever seen…me,” he said, his voice very
low.

Carmen could feel her mouth dropping
open as she put it together. He’d never let anyone see his scars.
If no one had seen them, then had he blind-folded his lovers? Then
the secondary implication dropped into place.

He had never had a lover
. Not
one, not since his family was murdered.

Carmen swallowed, pushing aside all her
questions. Now was not the time. She held out her hand. “I want to
see them…that is, if you will let me.”

Garrett glanced at her. There was pain
in his eyes, but his jaw was tensed.

“Show me,” she coaxed softly. “If I gag,
you can shoot me. I’ll deserve it.”

His mouth twitched. But there was still
an animal wariness in his eyes as he slowly unbuttoned the shirt.
He was watching for every little movement or reaction she made.

Carmen deliberately dropped her gaze
from his face to the flesh that was slowly appearing. Then he
pulled the shirt off his shoulders and dropped it to the ground and
waited.

The scars were horrible. Carmen
acknowledged that grim fact then made herself look at them
closely.

There was one large one on one side of
his flat stomach, close to the left hip. It disappeared inside his
jeans, but the part she could see was a pinkish, crooked ridge of
scar tissue, that zig-zagged across his flesh. Over his pectoral
muscle on the right side, there was a white, mottled disk of flesh
that looked similar to the one she had noticed on his face. The one
on his face was smaller and was all but invisible under the four
day growth on his cheeks. There were other similar scars on his
belly, on his arms and shoulders, but the pectoral one was the
biggest.

The scar that started at the base of his
neck, that had always been visible inside the open collar of his
shirts, petered out just over the breastbone. It looked like
someone had taken a cheese grater to the skin there.

Carmen swallowed. “There are some people
who don’t qualify as human in this world.” She lifted her gaze back
to his face.

Garrett shook his head. “That’s not all
of it,” he said, his voice very low. Slowly, he turned his back to
her.

Carmen caught her breath and tried to
smother the sound. There were more of the white circles, down on
his lower back. But the flesh over his shoulders was a writhing
mass of healed cuts and slashes. Some of them were an inch across
and thick with scar tissue. Others were fine white lines. They were
laid over each other, a mishmash of lines.

Carmen didn’t need to ask what they had
done to his back. She knew instinctively. Someone had beaten him.
She didn’t know what they had used, but from the range of sizes and
thicknesses, she knew that more than one implement had been
wielded.

She found she was drawing closer,
without thinking about it. Gently, she touched one of the biggest
scars.

Garrett flinched, then grew still
again.

“The scar is just as warm as the rest of
you,” she whispered. “I thought it would be cold. Dead flesh.” She
stepped around him, to stand in front of him. “I can understand why
you want to hide them.” She pushed up onto the balls of her feet
and kissed him. “But if you don’t fuck me now, I’m going to go find
Angelo and take care of business with him. I’m horny, Garrett. Stop
teasing me and do something about it.” It was crude and
challenging. Garrett’s eyes narrowed and his scowl returned.

That’s better
, Carmen thought,
with satisfaction.

He moved fast. With a surge of power, he
pulled her tee shirt up and over her head, the rising garment
lifting her arms up. He dropped the tee shirt on top of his
discarded shirt and pulled her up against him with one strong arm
behind her back. “Don’t tease unless you mean it,” he growled and
kissed her. Hard.

She liked it hard. She liked any way
Garrett kissed her. It was hot and made her body start to throb
again.

His spare hand slid between them, to cup
her breast. He tugged at her nipple, making her moan into his
mouth. Then his arm pressed even harder against her back. She was
being lifted. Her shoes dropped from her feet.

He lowered her onto the bed as he pushed
the covers to the end of it. His mouth barely broke contact with
hers. His leg tangled with hers and he leaned over her, his hand
capturing her breast once more.

Carmen slid her arms around his neck and
her fingers found puckered skin on the back of his shoulder.
Curious, she traced the elongated scar and Garrett tore his mouth
from hers and shuddered.

“Not good?” she asked quickly.

“Sensitive,” he said. His mouth picked
up in a faint smile. “
Good
sensitive,” he added.

That gave her an idea. Carmen sat up,
leaning on one elbow, which forced Garrett to sway backward. She
pushed on his shoulder, forcing it even farther back, until he was
lying on the bed next to her.

“Stay there,” she commanded and flipped
her knee over his hips, so that she was straddling him.

Garrett’s eyes were narrowed, but she
could see his pulse, beating heavily at the base of his throat. He
wasn’t protesting.

She licked the edge of his chin, tasting
salt. The scrubby beard scraped against her tongue. Then she worked
her lips down the underside of his chin, feeling the skin grow
softer and the beard sparser, until she touched bare skin. She
kissed her way down his throat and he made a growling sound she
could feel against her lips.

“Tell me to stop if you don’t like it,”
she murmured, then deliberately ran her tongue over the pale,
scarred flesh at the base of his throat.

He hissed, sucking in his breath between
his teeth. His hips shifted beneath her thighs.

Smiling to herself, Carmen pushed her
knees farther back along the length of his thighs and settled down
so that her nipples were brushing his stomach. Then she began to
lick and stroke every single scar and the flesh in between,
exploring the ridges and dips with her tongue and her lips.

Garrett began to squirm, his chest
rising and falling quickly. His breath grew ragged and from the
corner of her eye, Carmen could see his hand fisted in the sheet,
straining the cotton.

She moved slowly backward, as she made
her way down his long torso. His pelvis was thrusting in
reaction.

She finally paused with her mouth over
the button on his jeans. Then she got off the bed and looked down
at him. “You’re wearing way too much clothing.”

His tongue moistened his lips. “So are
you.”

She took her time with the fly on her
jeans, as he watched every inch open. Then she peeled them down her
hips, until her pussy was almost exposed. She stroked the sensitive
flesh of her pelvis, watching him.

He swallowed, but remained silent. There
was a dollop of sweat gathering at his temple.

Carmen pushed her jeans down to her
ankles and stepped out of them. Like last night, she was naked
beneath, but she didn’t give Garrett a chance to let his gaze
linger. She straddled his knees and leaned over him once more and
reached for the button on his jeans and undid it with a twist of
her fingers.

His cock was a thick ridge against the
denim, right next to the fly. She picked up the zipper tab. As she
slowly opened the zip, she let her fingers scrape against him.

Garrett groaned, a deep sound.

She dropped the zipper pull, but didn’t
open his jeans. Instead, she gripped the slack denim around his
hips with both hands and pulled. Garrett lifted his hips, helping
her. She pulled the jeans off and threw them aside. Then she spread
her knees on either side of his and looked down at him.

The scars were all over his body. His
thighs had more of the same elongated ridges as his back carried
and there were white disks everywhere. Not even the fine, delicate
skin over his pelvis had been spared. The long, jagged scar on his
left hip ended just above the pelvic ridge.

But Carmen barely noticed, except in a
distant way. Her attention was on his cock, which beat with heavy
life. It was engorged, the head flaring with almost purple
congestion. She licked her lips. “Beautiful,” she said and her
voice was husky.

“I think that’s my line,” Garrett
murmured.

She shook her head in denial, bent once
more and slid her lips over the head of his cock, plunging him deep
into her mouth.

Garrett’s hips lifted and he groaned,
his head rolling back and the tendons in his neck straining.