Chapter Sixteen

“The light,” Lacy whispered, pointing to the wall switch at the left of her bed, but Jake was past modesty. He wanted to see every last piece of her.

Kneeling over her in one of the Corps’ best push-ups, with one elbow to support his weight, he slipped his fingers beneath the strap of her bra. Exposing one small but plump breast, the dark pink nipple had already peaked and pebbled, waiting for his mouth to work its magic. He used to know to work that kind of magic, but now it felt more like a miracle had unfolded over them both. Something bigger was happening, and with all his heart he wanted it to never stop.

He kept on going, taking her nipple between his lips, afraid he’d hurt her with the intensity of the storm building within him. But a man could only want for so long before nature took control and set loose a million years of animal instincts. When Lacy arched her hips upward into his cock and moaned, forcing more of her breast into his greedy mouth, he succumbed to the powerful magnetism of her body. He tasted, nibbled, sucked, and all out devoured the tender offering. Around and around his tongue went, pulling her nipple into the hot recesses of his mouth only to release the succulent nub so he could torture the other.

Nothing. Not one damned thing in his life had ever tasted sweeter. She growled from deep in her throat, her long bare legs wrapped around his waist, and her fingernails in his back, spurring him on. Like he needed encouragement. His hands seemed to know what they were doing, but he was operating purely on instinct, tasting, kissing, and all but inhaling every tender piece of flesh his lips touched. Her breasts. Her stomach. The twitching, ticklish band of muscle that stretched below her abdomen and between her hipbones.

Moving back up, he sealed her mouth with his unbridled desire for forgiveness and an insatiable need to live again in peace. To not be afraid to live. Into that kiss, he poured the things he never thought he could feel or would want to share again. Or need to give away so desperately that it hurt. The only things he owned. His honor. His heart. His love.

Please don’t let me fail this woman, he begged the universe. Help me love her best. Treasure her most. Never fail her. Never hurt her.

Lacy took all that he gave, her delicate fingers laced through what was left of his untamed hair. She pulled him tighter, not offering any quarter, but forcing her tongue into his mouth and devouring him as much as he was devouring her. Panting for breath, she attacked him with a passion and a need so desperate and feral that only another warrior could understand where it came from.

It was the same for Jake, a hunger to belong to someone who truly cared, to not have to face the torment he’d dragged home with him alone. In filling Lacy’s needs, the strangest sensation happened to the hollow thing barely living inside Jake’s chest for years. It wasn’t’ an empty hole anymore. His heart warmed. It expanded. It throbbed and pulsed with—life.

He swallowed hard. The ugly black shadow that had taken over his soul and his sanity faded, and in its place came something better. Something real and pulsing and alive and… God, he wanted more.

“Love me, Jake. Please, just love me,” she demanded as her fingers moved to his neck, holding him in place as if she needed to trap him. She didn’t. His self-doubt had fled along with the shadow of regret. He was willing to love again. Her pretty panties went next and Lacy became his world. Poor desolate Fantine was forgotten, consigned to tragedy while he chose life and love and Lacy.

Well, yeah… His world had gone erotically tactile. The light in her eyes encouraged him to keep going. Her fingers hadn’t released him. He wanted her to forget the dangers that lay beyond her apartment door. He wanted her to be one hundred percent focused on him. A fire raged between them.

“Jake, please,” she begged. “I can’t take any more.”

Jake smiled. He was a man once more, able to pleasure his lady, to give her something no one else could give her. While he stoked her libido, he watched, his eyes wide open and filled with the sight of her coming undone. The sight of her body flushed with desire and needing his to make her whole, of her clutching the bedspread beneath her, urgently working to get him to enter her. Him. Sergeant Jake Weylin. That guy. To enter someone as sweet and pure as heaven itself.

He kissed and licked his way back to the satiny skin of her highly responsive neck and her kiss-swollen lips. She wanted more, and he had more to give. More than he’d realized. Once again in a push-up over her heaving, breathless body, he paused and let his heart fall into the forest of her sultry green eyes. A man could get lost in there. Somehow that didn’t seem so bad any longer.

She licked her lips, her intentions pretty damned clear. There was no hesitation. For once, there was no mournful dirge in his head to distract him, either. There was only beautiful, pure Lacy. The time to let go was now. With her hand guiding him, he slipped into paradise with a shudder of unspeakable pleasure. Inside her. Inside the man he used to be. The man he still was.

“Oh, Jake,” she purred, the sexy growl in his ear all the enticement he needed to push home. Clutching his back with all ten fingernails, she met him every inch of the way.

He set a rhythm, and by hell, she wasn’t just along for the ride. He slammed into her and her hips lifted, welcoming him every time. It didn’t take long before she stiffened beneath him. One more deep hard thrust sent her into her release and him along with it.

The night exploded around them and she came apart in glory with him. The sweetest muffled squeal announced to the world that she was claimed and claimed well. Together they unraveled, only to come back to earth together in shimmering waves of the damnedest ecstasy. Making love had never been like this before. Their separate worlds disappeared. Their separate futures, too. They were joined, and he had no clue how a simple physical act between two sweaty bodies could mean so much. But it did.

No more would she walk alone. Nor would he. The gift was given. Hope was bestowed and at long last, accepted. He just hadn’t known he had any hope to give. His heart filled with a new truth, one he could live with. Lacy Wright is mine. To serve and protect. To love. Forever.

“I know it’s too soon, but you need to know what’s in my heart, and I’m saying it anyway,” he declared with every intention of making sure she damned well knew who she was getting. “You are mine. All mine. Damn it, I love you, Lacy Wright. I think I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you in the alley behind the clinic.” Brave words for a man with nothing to his name, but his name.

The crazy woman giggled beneath him, her breath moist and warm in the crook of his neck. “Funny guy, I love you, too.”

He sank into her, the last of his strength spent, but the rest of his life beginning. The wonder of what they’d just done together stole his breath. He, a man so lost, so unworthy of anything good in his life, was suddenly as claimed as she.

Lacy lay in peace, hugged tightly against Jake’s chest, his arms wrapped around her and his nose in the crook of her neck. Twice he placed a soft kiss behind her ear and whispered, “I love you, Lacy.” And twice she clutched his arms to her, wanting him to stay in the safety of her bed.

But she couldn’t sleep. The pleasant soreness of her body only reminded her that when the morning came, he’d be gone on a mission of his own choosing. The ugly things she’d seen on Marlee’s video were reason enough for him to do what he felt he had to do, but Lacy was selfish. Why not just call the authorities and let them deal with Rafe Poindexter? Why did Jake have to be the one to put his life on the line again? Hadn’t he done that enough already? Didn’t he have enough scars?

The answer rang out loud and clear. More than anything, Jake Weylin was an honorable man. He would do all he could to rescue the girls on Marlee’s thumb drive, and that was why Lacy loved him. Despite his own unresolved memories of the war, he’d come to war torn Anacostia to help his friend and now he wanted to help others. He had to. That was who he was.

Carefully untangling herself from the masculine fingers cupping her breast, she slipped out from under her sleeping man and shrugged into her bathrobe. Lacy went to her closet and pulled out a few art supplies and a clean canvas. This painting had been calling to her since her car exploded, and she’d found herself beneath the body of a man willing to die for her.

She turned a small desk lamp on, situated herself on the bed beside Jake with her easel, and began to paint. The strokes came easy as oil met canvas in sweeping strokes of Chromatic Black mingled with more ornate Titanium Whites of inspiration and the barest hint of Phthalo Turquoise for depth. Within the hour, her work was done. A single kiss of startling Alizarin Crimson completed the piece.

“Hey, Lacy,” Jake murmured from his pillow. “What are you doing?”

She looked at the sexy smile of a man in love. The mussed up dark curls on his head gave him a jaw-dropping, just-had-incredible-sex look. Her heart flipped three backward somersaults before it nailed a perfect landing.

“Good morning,” she answered, the painting done and needing a safe place to dry for a couple days. She turned it to face the corner, shrugged out of her robe, and climbed back into bed.

Instantly, his very capable hands found purchase on her body, pulling her to face him. “I like touching you,” he admitted softly. “All of you.”

There was no doubt. The man was aroused and ready for round two. She wrapped her arms around his neck, acutely aware at this early morning hour that round two might be all they had left.