PROLOGUE
April
Baghdad, Iraq
Another letter. From her.
Levi McPherson felt a current of heat snake through his weary limbs and settle hotly in his loins. A slow smile sliding over his lips, he sank onto the edge of his bed and ignored the various sounds echoing through the concrete barracks. The catcalls, the buzz of laughter, the odd guitar and video game noises faded into insignificance as he carefully opened the envelope.
Quite frankly, aside from the rare telephone call and email, there was nothing more wonderful to a deployed soldier than a letter from home. Since arriving in Iraq some ten months ago he’d gotten letters from his former unit mates--Lucas “Huck” Finn and Mick Chivers--his parents, his sister, his nieces and nephews, his high school Algebra teacher and hell, even his boat mechanic.
And he’d appreciated each and every one of them.
But the letters he’d started getting from the Mysterious Ms. X, as Levi had begun to call her, were admittedly the ones he found himself anticipating the most during mail call. Though she never signed her name to any of the letters, but instead ended each steamy missive with a simple “Yours”, Levi knew she was a hometown girl because the return address was a PO Box in Bethel Bay, a sleepy little backwater town nestled just north of Hilton Head, South Carolina. Home, he thought with a pang of nostalgia, missing the scent of magnolia blossoms and salty sea air. Missing his mother’s meatloaf, tag football and sailing.
The latter most of all.
Though he wasn’t home often enough to justify keeping his boat--a sweet little thirty-three foot Columbia Boomerang--Levi couldn’t quite bring himself to sell it. Being out on the water, hearing the snap of the wind in the sails... Other than being on the frontline of a battlefield, it was the only other place he’d ever felt grounded. He loved the sea, the expanse and depth, the sheer vastness of it. It was easy to make sense of his own place in the world when he was on the water.
And whoever Ms. X was knew it, too, because she’d mentioned seeing his father taking The Sabrina out for a turn around the bay. Levi winced. Damn, he really needed to do something about that name, he thought. Despite the fact that he’d painted over the moniker--christened after his ex-fiancé who’d literally left him at the alter two years ago--the bright blue letters still bled through. He should have painted over them in black, he thought darkly.
The color would have matched Sabrina’s miserable, faithless heart.
Water under the bridge, Levi reminded himself, fishing the letter out of the envelope. It was done. Finished. Over. Better that he find out now that she didn’t have the emotional strength to be a military wife. Hell, the first time he’d counted on her to keep the home fires burning, she’d gotten lonely and kept the sheets hot with an old flame. His lips twisted bitterly.
Unfaithfulness was sort of a deal-breaker in his book.
It was all for the best really. He’d been trying to find the kind of love his parents shared and had known deep in his heart that the connection wasn’t right with Sabrina. She’d been an ill-planned substitute. Since then, though it left him feeling a bit hollow on the inside, Levi had given up on the idea of marriage and family. He’d decided it simply wasn’t in his cards.
He heaved a silent sigh and made a mental note to check in with Adam, his little brother, who was also currently serving in Iraq. Not that he necessarily needed to check in on him. Only two years younger than himself, Adam was a crackerjack soldier, one that Levi knew would always have his back. But old habits died hard and, though it was unreasonable, he couldn’t seem to shake the pervading feeling that he needed to protect him. That, even after all these years, it was still his job.
Shaking off a bit of unease, Levi unfolded the letter and felt a smile roll over his lips as the familiar feminine writing--neat and a bit loopy--filled the page.
Dear Levi,
I dreamed about you again last night. I dreamed you were home and, more importantly, mine. I dreamed you wanted me, really wanted me, that you walked through my front door, our eyes locked, and a second later you were on me, taking me hard and fast against the door.
Sweet God, was she trying to kill him? Did this woman have any idea how these letters affected him? How therapeutic the ones he wrote back to her were?
You kissed me as though you needed my breath to breathe, you took my breasts into your mouth and suckled the peaks until I almost came. You slipped your wickedly talented fingers into my panties and I rubbed myself against you, satisfied...but not, wanting more. Needing more. I’m hot and muddled now, remembering.
Welcome to the club, sweetheart, he thought, chuckling darkly. At the moment his balls felt like they’d been hit with a blow torch, then tossed into a microwave.
It was the sort of dream where I never wanted to wake up and when I did, I still tingled with release, imagined I could even still feel you there, deep inside of me. I ache for you in places I scarcely recognize, most notably...my heart.
Imagination was an interesting thing, Levi thought, and in this regard she definitely had the advantage. She was imagining him. Obviously knew him. She’d cited too many little things in previous letters--including local gossip--not to know him and his brother, for that matter, relatively well.
Meanwhile, his under-informed imagination had just enough sexy information from her to have him cocked, locked and ready to rock with a few strokes of her pen, but no face to put with the vision. Not exactly true. He’d put a face with the vision. An image of dark red hair, big brown eyes and a mouth made for sin suddenly materialized in his mind’s eye. He sucked a breath through his teeth and gave his head a small shake.
Off-limits, he told himself. Don’t go there.
It couldn’t--wouldn’t--be her.
He desperately wanted to know Ms. X’s identity, but until she slipped up--or he went home to investigate, which in his present situation was out of the question--he was completely at her mercy.
Levi McPherson didn’t like being at anyone’s mercy, but after the Sabrina fiasco, when he’d looked and felt like a damned fool, particularly a woman’s.
Furthermore, while the sexy nature of the letters was a stoker, there was something more at work here. He felt a strange sort of connection with his anonymous letter-writer. She got him. Truly got him. And that was more of a turn on than anything she could write.
I know I should probably stop sending you these letters, but I just can’t seem to help myself. I’m bleeding my fantasies of you right onto the page--albeit anonymously--and it feels good to finally give voice to my feelings. My desires. I’ve wanted you...forever, and telling you in detail is the next best thing in absence of the courage to actually admit who I am. Cowardly, I know, but...
“Levi?”
Levi looked up and saw a couple of his unit mates standing in the doorway. The grave look on their faces made his heart rate skip into a frantic rhythm and a cold sweat break across his shoulders. And they’d used his given name, not his “Remington”--as in Steele--nickname he’d been given in Jump School. Paper crackled in the wretched silence as his fingers involuntarily tightened.
“It’s Adam,” Will Forrester told him. “Another damned IED.”
Miserable road-side bombs, Levi thought as nausea clawed the back of his throat. A punch of panic landed in his gut, momentarily disabling his ability to breathe. This had always been a possibility--they were at war, after all, soldiers on the front line of the battlefield. But no amount of mental preparation had readied him for this. He swallowed, dredging deep for the courage he knew he was going to need.
“Where is he?”
“They’re bringing him in.” Will swallowed. Hard. “He’s in bad shape, Levi.”
Yeah, well, bad shape was better than dead, Levi thought, relief flooding through him. He’d seen too many damned flag-draped coffins lately and putting his little brother in one was more than he cared to contemplate.
Hang tight, bro’. I’m coming.