And Able (7 page)

Claire woke up to the sound of a steady thumping. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound, like someone hammering. More like those heartbeat recordings played to calm crying babies. She’d read about it on the Internet and then listened to the wave files that accompanied the article. She had easily understood why the sound soothed babies. It was nice. Comforting.

So was the warmth against her cheek and sense of security she felt, from being held.

Oh, gosh, she was being held
. That heartbeat was Hotwire’s and he was underneath her, just like earlier. How had she gotten here?

Had she rolled over on top of him? She couldn’t see him pulling her into his arms, but then she would never have imagined him touching her the way he had before she slept, either. And not expecting recompense in her body. Men just were not that generous.

But he had been.

He had asked if he could give her pleasure to take away the pain. She’d agreed, but been totally unprepared for what he meant by pleasure. She’d never experienced anything like it, which was not so surprising. She’d be willing to bet few women had, but she’d never read about anything like it, either. And she read a lot.

It had worked, too. The dull ache in her head was now nothing like the sharp, slicing pain she’d experienced earlier.

But that still didn’t explain how she had ended up on top of him. She’d been a light sleeper for as long as she could remember. Claire simply could not see how Hotwire could have pulled her into his arms or how she could have rolled on top of him without her waking up.

Not only had she slept very soundly, but she had slept for
 
hours
. She could see the bedside clock from where she lay on top of Hotwire. Unbelievably, it was just a little after five
 
A.M
. And other than the almost negligible throb of pain in the back of her head, she felt great.

Ready for anything. If normal sex did this for a person, celibacy would be just a word, not her way of life by choice. What if sex with Hotwire was that good?

It was an interesting thought, but not one she wanted to explore at the moment. Even if maybe he was a guy who could make her feel things she had thought were pure fantasy before last night. He was still totally commitment-phobic.

The thought of trusting someone intimately who didn’t do the “C” word was just plain stupid.

“You awake, Claire?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.”

“How did you know?” She hadn’t moved.

“You’re tense and your breathing changed.”

“Oh.”

“You’re on top of me again.”

“I noticed.”

“It’s starting to become a habit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? Did I say I didn’t like it?”

“It can’t be comfortable to sleep with a woman draped across you like a dead weight.”

“Comfortable? No, I wouldn’t call the way I feel right now comfortable…”

She tried to move, but the arms he had wrapped around her tightened.

“Hotwire?”

“Uncomfortable isn’t the same as unpleasant. In fact, there are times I find it distinctly pleasurable to be uncomfortable.”

She shifted, trying to move, and felt an unfamiliar hardness against her thigh. She stilled, shocked by the heat pulsing off of it and awed by its dimensions. Those dimensions were all too evident to her, because there was nothing between her thigh and his erection.

“You’re naked,” she gasped.

“I
 
always sleep in the buff.”

“You were wearing jockey shorts before.”

“A concession to your modesty.”

She leaned up, propping her hands on his hard chest and doing her best to look into his eyes. However, he was little more than a vague shape in the darkness, though she could certainly feel him.

She was careful not to move her lower body against the blatant evidence of his arousal. “You don’t think I’m modest anymore because I let you touch me yesterday?”

It was a logical conclusion, but she didn’t like it.

“Does my nudity offend you?” he asked instead of answering her.

Did it? His nakedness titillated her. It intrigued her. It even scared her a little because it made her feel stuff she didn’t want to, but it didn’t offend her. “No.”

She could sense his smile, even though she couldn’t quite see it. “You allowing me to touch you had nothing to do with a lack of modesty and everything to do with trust. I’m honored you trusted me with your body.”

Coming on the heel of her earlier thoughts, she wasn’t sure she liked that conclusion any more than her first one. But it made even more sense. She did trust him. To a point, anyway. As he’d pointed out, she
had
 
trusted him to help her with her pain and not to push for what she’d been in no position to give. She also trusted him to keep her from harm.

“You are hero material through and through,” she mused, trying to work it out in her own mind. “A woman would have to be brain-dead not to realize you can be trusted on some level.”

He went rigid beneath her, an inexplicable sense of tension emanating off of him. “I am no hero, Claire. I’m a mercenary…a soldier for hire, a man who puts duty to the mission above everything else.”

“You are an ex-mercenary, as you are so fond of pointing out, and you can’t tell me you don’t care about the people you help. I trust you with my safety.” Why did she feel the need to keep saying it? It wasn’t like she enjoyed trusting a man to that extent and wasn’t entirely sure she was using all her smarts in doing so, no matter how heroic he was.

“Since keeping you safe is my current mission, that’s an okay bet to take, but don’t romanticize me, Claire. I’m no hero in a white hat.”

She laughed out loud at that. “I’m the last woman to do that…for any man. Believe me. But I don’t get why you’re so adamant about it. I would think that in your line of work, you would like being seen as the man in the white hat.”

“It’s an old story and not one I want to get into right now. Probably not ever.”

“Okay.”

He let out a startled sigh. “That’s it? No inquisition?”

“You said you didn’t want to talk about it. I respect that. There are things in my past I wish I could forget, things which cannot be changed that define who I am. I guess I’ll just be grateful that you see it as your duty to keep me safe and leave it at that.”

“Thanks.”

“For what, not badgering you?”

“For not moving,” he corrected dryly, but she wasn’t sure he wasn’t thanking her for the other, too. “I don’t relish another knee in my nuts.”

She accepted the topic change with grace. Like she’d said, she understood. “I’m sorry about that. I hope I didn’t do you any real harm.”

“I survived.”

“Barely.”

“Please. I’m not that fragile.”

“A man’s testicles are his most vulnerable spot.”

“Did you read that on the Internet?”

“Josette told me—well, all of us—during the self-defense classes she taught at the shelter.”

“What else did she teach you?” he asked, sounding genuinely interested.

“Some basic hold-breaking techniques. The concept of using your opponent’s size against him. That sort of thing.”

“She’s real good at that last one. I’ve seen her kick butt on men twice her size.” The blatant admiration in his voice for her friend stirred uneasy feelings in Claire that she tried her best to ignore.

She had absolutely no reason or right to be jealous.

“Josette’s good at a lot of things,” Claire said with a smile she didn’t have to force.

“Yeah. Nitro’s a lucky dickhead.”

She gasped and then laughed. “Do you call all your friends such nice nicknames?”

“Sure. You should hear the one I have for you.”

“What is it?” she demanded, instantly curious.

“Terabyte. Because that’s how much information I figure you’ve got stored in your head from all the reading you do on-line and otherwise.”

“Oh. Does Josette know you call me that?”

“Sure. They all do. They think it fits, too.”

“Oh,” she said again, not sure how she felt about that. Being a walking computer wasn’t such a bad thing, was it? It was better than being terminally stupid, naïve, or a lush.

“Does she know you call Nitro a lucky dickhead?” Claire asked, tongue in cheek.

“No, because I don’t usually. You going to tell her?”

“Nope, but if I ever meet your mother, watch out,” she teased. “I bet she would classify
 
dickhead
 
with the other words you aren’t supposed to say around a female.”

He groaned theatrically and she smiled. “This is really strange, us having a conversation in the dark with me on top of you.”

“That’s not the word I’d use for it.”

She choked on a giggle, surprising herself. She
 
never
 
giggled. “Maybe it would be better if I moved.”

“No doubt. We are definitely playing with fire here.” The heat emanating from his skin said he wasn’t kidding.

“So, I should move.”

“But I like this, don’t you?” He ran his hands down and over her backside, making her breath catch in her throat. They settled on her thighs, just below her panty line, a warm and tantalizing presence.

“Uh, yes…I like it, too.”

“Besides, I’ve never been a man to shrink from a challenge.”

She’d certainly gotten that impression so far. “I see.”

“Do you?”

“Actually, not very well. It’s pretty dark in here.”

“That’s probably best. If I could see you, too, I don’t think I could control my baser urges.”

Honestly, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to. What she really wanted was for him to slide his hands over her bare bottom. Which was really stupid. It was one thing to let a guy make you feel good and another to offer your body and the emotions that went along with doing that.

She wished she could believe that sex was as much of a no-brainer as the sexual revolutionaries of decades past had preached it was. But it wasn’t. Not for her, anyway. Even when it had been dismal, and that pretty much summed up all her experiences with the opposite sex, she had still felt emotional connections she would have been happier never experiencing.

“What’s your name?” she asked, to get her mind off of the feel of his hands on her thighs.

“What?”

“I want to know your name.”

“Last time I checked, it was Hotwire,” he said as if speaking to a woman severely hampered by a head injury…as opposed to one only slightly hampered.

She glared at him through the darkness. “I mean your real name, dufus.”

“Dufus?”

“Uh-huh. Just think of it as another friendly nickname.”

He was silent for so long, she didn’t think he was going to tell her, and then he sighed. “Folks back home call me Brett.”

“I like that.”

“Why?”

“Because it fits you.”

“I mean, why did you want to know?”

“We’re friends.”

“Josie’s my friend, too, but she calls me Hotwire.”

“Are you saying she doesn’t know your real name?”

“No.”

“Are you bothered I do now?”

“No.”

For some reason, that made her feel good. “I’m glad.” She felt him twitch against her and realized that no amount of subject-changing was going to diminish the risk of their position. “I think I’d better move to the couch.”

“We’ve had this discussion before.”

She remembered. When he’d come to help Josette and Nitro on their last mission, Claire had offered Brett her bed, but he’d refused to put her out. Even though, at her size, she was infinitely more suited to sleeping on the sofa than he was. He’d made a pallet on the hardwood floor and refused to be budged.

The sofa in the suite was even smaller than the one at the house. “Your feet would hang off the end. Heck, probably half your legs would. You are not short.”

“I’ve slept in worse places.” He’d said that the time before, too.

“But the point is, I’ll fit better on the sofa.”

“No, the point is you have a concussion, and no way in hell am I letting you leave this bed.”

“You are not my boss.”

“I might as well be, because you are in no physical condition to defy me.”

“I could just move back to my side of the bed.”

“Won’t work. We’d just end up like this again, and that would play hell with my self-control.”

“And that would bother you, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m no masochist.”

Neither was she. Usually. If Norene had taught her anything, it was that men could not be relied on, but here Claire was, relying on him to keep her safe. Of course, her dad had done a fair job of teaching her that lesson as well. So, why did she feel so darn protected? Secure, even?

Must be her brain was still scrambled from the concussion. Because physical safety was not security, and that was all that he was offering her.

“Claire?”

“Huh?”

“I think you should move so I can get out of here.” His strained voice told its own story, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with her being too heavy for him.

“Oh, sorry. You’re right, Brett.”

He sucked in air. “I prefer Hotwire.”

“I like Brett better.”

“Only my family calls me Brett.”

“You don’t want me to use your real name?”

Hotwire sighed, knowing he was going to give in and wishing he wasn’t. But damn it, she sounded wounded and he didn’t like hurting any woman, but he positively hated doing it to Claire. “Go ahead. I’m used to Hotwire. That’s all.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Fine. You’re welcome.” But she was right. It was a big deal.

The only woman besides family to use that name since he was eighteen and joined the army had been Elena. He had asked her to use it, wanting to hear his name on her tongue when she came under him.

He hadn’t even had sex with Claire, and yet he felt closer to her than he wanted to be. Damn it to hell, anyway.

Unwilling to wait another second for her to move of her own volition, he lifted her off of him. He was careful not to jostle her and relieved when she made no sounds indicating pain.

He rolled out of bed and headed for the living room. He doubted he was going to sleep any more anyway, so where he lay down really didn’t matter.

“Brett.”

He stopped at the door. “What?”

“I want to get up and take a shower. I feel a lot better.”

“How’s your head?”

“It hardly hurts at all.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t say it like you’re giving me permission. I would have done it anyway. I don’t want you getting the impression you can boss me around, bigger and stronger or not.”

“No doubt. You are one determined woman, Claire Sharp.”