A Broken Christmas (8 page)

Before she could even see him flinch, his fingers dug into her shoulders. He shoved her back against the wall so hard a picture fell to the floor. The impact ripped the air from her lungs, and as Aimee gasped, Kyle’s body pinned her in place. His kiss was hard and bruising. But beneath the rough assault ran something deeper, something more genuine than Aimee dared hope she could expose. She didn’t fight. Didn’t turn her head and protest. She wouldn’t. Not now. Not when Kyle had finally cracked, even if it was in fury. Because behind all that pent-up rage, she could taste the depth of his desire. The soul-deep connection they’d always shared that had bonded them even in the worst of times.

Kyle drew back, his face inches from hers, his eyes as dark as emeralds. “Is that what you want, Aimee? Proof you’re right? Proof I want to fuck you?” His right hand slipped between their bodies to cover her breast. He squeezed, the bite of his fingers harsh and punishing.

Aimee bit her tongue to silence a surprised cry. She held his gaze in defiance. He could bruise her, but she wasn’t afraid of Kyle. She refused to be intimidated by his crude words and rough fingers.

“I’ll give you proof.” He sank his hips into hers, his arousal hard against her belly. “I’ll show you how I can’t feel a damn thing in my hand.”

As if to prove his point, he gave her breast another rough squeeze. This time, Aimee couldn’t fully stifle a sharp yelp. It slipped through her clenched teeth, and she flinched.

Kyle dropped his hand, a cruel smirk dancing on his lips. “You don’t have the first fucking clue.”

As he took a step backward, Aimee reacted on instinct. She caught his face between her hands, lifted to her toes, and forbade his retreat with the firm, aggressive, hold of her mouth. He wasn’t running. She knew him too well to believe he meant to hurt her. What she heard behind his words, what she felt in the bitter pinch of his fingers, was the soul-deep anguish that for some unexplainable reason he didn’t want to share with her. She’d be damned if she let him retreat when all those ragged emotions were so close to the surface. He could try to push her away all he wanted. It still wouldn’t change what she had learned as Kyle’s wife. He had never been good about keeping things bottled up inside. Now was no different. He needed an outlet, needed to connect before whatever he harbored destroyed him.

His pursed lips softened.

With the tip of her tongue, Aimee nudged the corners of his mouth apart. Kyle’s breath caught. Then, his hands tangled into her hair, and he tugged, putting her where he wanted her as he took control of the kiss.

Nothing about the stroke of his tongue was gentle. Aimee didn’t care. This was Kyle. For better or worse, this was the man she had married, and at long last, he was responding to her with something other than intolerable silence. This kiss spoke volumes. Screamed out for her to give all she possessed, and then some.

Yielding, Aimee sank her weight into her heels and inched down the wall. Kyle followed, one arm winding around her waist as they hit the floor on their knees. He dragged her flush against his hard chest, bent her backwards, and pushed her to the carpet. His comfortable weight settling against her body was like coming home. So right. It had been so long. She dipped her fingers beneath the hem of his t-shirt, slid her palms up the firm contours along his spine.

Kyle dragged his mouth away from hers and reached behind his neck to grab the collar of his shirt. He doffed it in one yank and tossed it aside, giving her hands room to play across the hard planes of his chest. She curled her fingertips into muscle, reveled in the feel of his warm skin. God, how she’d missed him. How she’d missed this.

As a smile touched her tingling lips, he dipped his head, and grazed the side of her neck with his teeth. Heat rolled through her veins, igniting sparks of ecstasy that tripped down her spine all the way to her toes. She arched her back, slid her hands to his shoulders, and let out a quiet moan.
Kyle.

He brought his mouth back to hers, his teeth nipping the sensitive flesh of her lower lip. She sensed his urgency, understood the frantic need for all-consuming contact. They’d been too long apart, their mutual needs too long ignored, and now, they came together in one cataclysmic burst of spontaneous fire. Aimee’s hands entangled his, got in the way. His awkwardness thwarted her attempts to push down the waistband of his sweats. With a frustrated groan, Kyle broke their kiss and braced his weight on his good arm as he took charge of undressing himself.

Aimee followed suit, unfastening her robe and shimmying out of her flannel pajama bottoms. She kicked the cloth off her ankles, then reached for Kyle, urging his heated body into hers, craving the feel of his skin flush with hers. When he yielded and sank into her embrace, the hot hard length of his cock nestled between her moist nether lips, teasing her with the promise of absolute fulfillment. She spread her knees in willing welcome and glided her hands down his back to squeeze his buttocks. Lifting off the floor, she rolled her hips into his.

Kyle’s hard breath rasped against her cheek. A shudder rocked his shoulders. For one frightening moment, he went utterly still. Aimee’s thoughts careened, nearing the verge of panic. He couldn’t be retreating. She’d crack into pieces if he pulled away from her and locked himself in that dark place she couldn’t reach.
Stay with me.

Opening her eyes, she took in the tight lines around his mouth and the way his teeth pricked his lower lip. Not stopping—no, he fought for control.

Control she didn’t want him to find.

She speared her fingers into his short hair and urged his mouth to hers once more. Kyle’s hips drove forward, his erection slipping through her slickened flesh. As she suckled at his lower lip, she flattened her feet on the floor and rubbed against his swollen shaft. A low groan rumbled in the back of Kyle’s throat, the sound matching her pleasured mewl.

He pulled his hips away, and on one forceful thrust, slid deep inside her.

****

Aimee’s sharp cry barely registered in Kyle’s mind. The wet heat of her willing flesh eradicated all ability to consider her comfort and sent him barreling headlong down the path of unchecked desire. For fourteen long months he’d done everything he could to convince himself he didn’t want Aimee. Bent over backwards to convince
her
of the same. But the need he felt for her refused to die the death he wished upon it, and the warm grip of her inner muscles as she gloved him tight was the homecoming he’d fantasized about every night in the hospital beds in Germany.

He no longer cared about complications. No longer concerned himself with what came after. All he knew was the brush of Aimee’s lips against his, the jagged fall of her raspy breath, and the absolute ecstasy of sliding through her flesh.

Pleasure soaked through him. He shook with the force of his need and clamped his teeth together to keep from spewing nonsensical murmurings he wouldn’t be able to explain later. What mattered was here and now. Feeling her around him. Savoring the way she lifted her legs and locked them around his waist, taking him even deeper. Shit, he wasn’t going to last long. Not like this.

Then again, he didn’t care. Aimee had provoked him. She refused to listen to what he tried to tell her—her fault if he spent himself before she was ready. Though, strangely, she didn’t seem at all offended by his callous quest for release. She met his hard thrusts with her own insistent counter rhythm. Angled her hips so each deep plunge stroked the sensitive nub between her legs.

He pulled in a short breath and drove in deep, until he touched the mouth of her womb. Her inner muscles contracted around his throbbing erection, and she let out a low, guttural moan. Ecstasy pounded at his senses. She surrounded him, dominated his awareness. The sweet fragrance of her perfume carried him to a place of innocence, a place where Afghanistan and Denton couldn’t touch him.

Aimee offered him forgiveness he didn’t deserve yet he desperately needed.

Lost to a tidal wave of indescribable pleasure, he shifted his weight to his good arm and glanced down to where they joined. The sight of his hard flesh, slick with her arousal, slipping in and out of her was like an electric current to his already overcharged body. He ground his teeth together against a surge of sweet pain and thrust into her feminine depths once more.

Aimee keened. Her nails bit into his shoulders, the painful pinch erasing the last of his awareness. Release rocketed through his body, and on a hoarse groan, he pumped once more, then spilled himself inside her. She held on tight, her feminine flesh pulsing in time with his cock, milking him dry. His body slowly stilled, and Kyle lowered himself into Aimee’s sated embrace.

How she could have possibly found pleasure, he couldn’t explain. Yet, she had, and the part of him that couldn’t carve her out of his heart took a modicum of relief in the fact he hadn’t completely failed her.

He glanced down at her swollen mouth and heavy eyelids, and that same part of his soul kicked him in the chest. Christ, what had he done? He’d let her push him where he didn’t want to go. Where he
couldn’t
go again—right back into her arms.

Disgusted with himself, Kyle pushed to his feet and ran a hand through his cropped hair. He snatched his pants off the floor, stepped over her as she panted for air, and locked himself in the bathroom. Both hands braced on the countertop, he stared at his reflection. He didn’t recognize the insensitive bastard looking back at him. That man had turned into a savage animal. One who sensed willing woman, and without a single thought to consequence or how Aimee might interpret sex, he’d selfishly gone after his own pleasure.

Only a monster could treat a woman who’d never been anything but tender with that kind of disregard. He’d
fucked
her for Christ’s sake. Aimee deserved better than that. She deserved better than him.

Chapter Seven

Aimee slowly dragged herself to a sitting position then eased to her feet. Muscles she hadn’t used in over a year twitched with exhaustion and strain. But making love to Kyle was worth every moment of the dull aches that would come later. Sure, he’d used her body as an outlet, she didn’t try to fool herself into believing what just happened in her hallway was anything less. Beyond that obvious truth, however, lay something deeper—she’d connected with Kyle on a level they both understood. A plateau no one else could infringe upon or influence.

She glanced at the locked bathroom door as she pulled on her pajama bottoms. Kyle needed that connection. She couldn’t count the number of times he’d returned home from a mission and dragged her into bed the minute he walked in the door. Not just because he missed her, but because something he couldn’t talk about drove him to seek out the living, the reality of life, not the horrors of war.

The same underlying need filtered through moments ago, despite his rough hands and even rougher body.

Pipes shuddered as Kyle turned on the bathroom sink, and Aimee retreated into the privacy of their bedroom where she stripped out of her clothes. Red splotches on her inner thighs from his hipbones marked flesh that would inevitably bruise in the next few hours. Not what she wanted denim rubbing against. Instead, she tugged on a pair of heavy cotton workout pants and pulled a hooded sweatshirt over her head.

She’d leave him to his solitude—time to tackle that Christmas list she’d put off for far too long. With two shopping days left, she couldn’t piddle around any longer and hope to find a decent selection in the stores.

Grabbing her purse off the chair near the door, she tossed it over her shoulder and bounded down the stairs. At the front door, she called out, “I’m going to the mall.”

Silence answered.

Aimee shrugged. Let him lock himself away physically. He would have to confront her eventually.

She pulled open the front door to discover big fat snowflakes falling from the sky. A thin layer of white blanketed the tips of the surrounding trees, and a hush had descended on the sparse woods. Grey skies overhead promised significant snowfall. She smiled. From the looks of things, they’d have a white Christmas after all.

A twinge of melancholy settled around her shoulders. Christmas had always been their favorite holiday. Kyle brought home a tree if he was home. They decorated together, she hanging all the ornaments save for the star, which Kyle placed seconds before they turned the tree on. Without fail, they finished at nightfall, and while she poured them both a glass of wine, he lit the fire.