Falling for the Marine (A McCade Brothers Novel) (Entangled Brazen) (9 page)

Words swirled in his brain…curses and pleas…
Holy, shit, you’re killing me. Please. Don’t stop.
Thankfully, he was too busy sucking and rolling and tonguing her clit like a Tic Tac to even think about talking.

Her mouth kept right on working him. That finger of hers kept rubbing. Primitive impulses took over, and, before he could stop himself, he broke his longstanding rule and thrust into the soft, giving haven at the back of her throat. An apology sprung to his lips, but never passed, because she made a low, hungry sound, and then ground herself against his mouth in a flat-out frenzy.

He tried to hold himself back and let her have her moment, but something about those sexy noises she made and the way she rocked against him in an urgent, helpless dance, snapped what little bit of control he had left. His balls drew up. His lungs exploded. The back of his head slammed into the carpet as an orgasm tore through him with all the ferocity of a bunker buster. Her scream of release ricocheted through his oxygen-starved mind seconds before the flames consumed him.

Nothing even remotely like Chloe Kincaid had ever happened to him before. He wasn’t sure he’d live through it.

Chapter Nine

Chloe crawled off Michael, turned around, and collapsed beside him. He slipped an arm around her waist and snuggled her against him. “You win,” he grunted. She opened her mouth to mention the stash of condoms now handily tucked away in his guest room, but the simple, affectionate cuddle made her foolish heart roll over in her chest and beg like a neglected puppy.

Uh-uh. Sit. Stay.
Now was not the right time, and Michael was not the right man. “I think, in all fairness, we have to call it a draw.”

His low laugh melted whatever bones were left in her body. He nudged her chin up and pressed a kiss to her lips. “You started with a major advantage. Tell me, Chloe, do you always vacuum in stilettos?”

Mention of the shoes reminded her of her conversation with Lynne. The real world stepped in and bitch-slapped her out of her boneless stupor. “They’re my lucky shoes.”

Another laugh rumbled from his chest. His fingers threaded through her hair. “No kidding. I felt luckier the second I saw you in them. What had you feeling lucky?”

A big, stupid part of her wanted to stay wrapped in his strong arms, protected from her problems for a while. Instead she propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at him. “I had the shoes on because I need to attract some luck.”

He toyed with the ends of her hair, but his contented smile faded a fraction. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, there’s good news and bad news. My recruiter found me a new job at a fancy resort in New Mexico filling in for a therapist who’s going on maternity leave.”

Inexplicably, his smile slipped another notch. Her heart sank…that had been her
good
news.

“Congratulations. Sounds like a nice assignment.” He reinforced his smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Thanks, but here’s the thing…the job starts in”—she closed her eyes and winced—“four weeks.”

Silence met her announcement. She peeked at him.

To his credit, his expression never faltered. He reached up and wound a tendril of her hair around his finger. “So the shoes work.”

“Michael,” she shook her head, “it’s a disaster. When you offered me a place to stay, I’m sure you never imagined having me underfoot for the better part of a month.”

“I’m good with whatever time line you need. I want to help.”

“And I appreciate your hospitality, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do whatever I can to get out of your hair sooner. Lynne, my recruiter, knows I’m available for any assignments between now and then. I plan to pester her daily until she finds me something.”

His wide hand glided down her back, as if smoothing feathers. “Don’t. Just relax and enjoy the break. Four weeks is no problem, except—” He gave her a strange look she could only classify as guilty. Uh-oh.

“Except?”

“I guess you, ah, spoke to Mrs. Waverly today?”

Okay, she knew where this was going. “Yes, we chatted when I turned in my key. She asked for my forwarding address, so I told her I was moving in with you, and kind of…you know”—she moved her hand through the air—“flashed her the ring. She loves to gossip, and I figured you wouldn’t want her spreading the word we’d shacked up without also including the little detail of our ‘engagement.’ But don’t worry.” She used her thumb to center the diamond ring on her finger. “I’m pretty sure she bought the story. She ooh’d and ahh’d and asked for details. Even though I kept things vague, I know she imagines lightning struck the minute our eyes met. She kept sighing and saying, things like, ‘Time means nothing,’ and, ‘When you find the right person, you just know.’” She laughed, because she’d learned the hard way just how wrong those sentiments were.

Realizing her laughter sounded slightly bitter, she shook her head and forced her attention back to the matter at hand. “Why? Did I play it wrong?”

“No.” He stroked his hand down her back again and circled her tattoo, absently, as if touching her was a habit. “You played it perfectly…and I’m sorry I had to ask you to ‘play it’ at all, but this leads us into the one little problem.”

Her stomach tightened at the mention of a problem. She propped her chin on her linked fingers and tried for a carefree grin. “So much for my lucky shoes. What’s the issue?”

“Mrs. Waverly wasted no time calling my CO’s wife to spread the happy news. She, in turn, instructed my CO to invite us to their house tomorrow evening to celebrate our engagement…which is code for get a look at us and try to figure out if we know what the hell we’re doing.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, the carefree grin required too much effort. This was his
life
. What if she didn’t pass muster? It had happened before. She sat up and started pulling on clothes.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly and sat up as well. She watched with no small amount of regret as he yanked his shorts up. Her mouth went a little dry and she lost track of his words when he zipped his pants. She licked her parched lips and tried to refocus on what he was saying. “…so I know this puts you in an awkward position, and I hate to ask it of you.” He pulled his undershirt on and left it untucked. “I can try to push them back, but I doubt I can dodge the invite for four weeks without offending the colonel and Mrs. Harding. Especially not with Mrs. Waverly here, on the inside, reporting all our comings and goings.”

“I don’t have a problem posing as your fiancée. I said I would, and I try real hard to keep my promises. I just”—she turned her back to him and reached for her shorts—“I doubt giving your CO and his wife an up-close, personal look at me is going to do anything positive for you, professionally. I’m not exactly ‘perfect wife’ material.”

He laughed, which worried and annoyed her. “Glad you think it’s so funny.” She stood and kicked off her shoes, then shoved her legs into the shorts, and tugged them up.

His hands shot out, quick as missiles, and intercepted her, preventing her from finishing the job. He drew her shorts down a few inches and brushed his lips over her hummingbird.

“I know pretending to be engaged and ready to settle down makes you uncomfortable. It’s not who you are or what you’re looking for.” He traced the tattoo with the tip of his tongue, while she bit her lip to keep from sighing. “But I don’t think the Hardings are going to get quite this up-close and personal over one dinner. To them, you look exactly like ‘perfect wife material.’” He kissed her one last time, and then stood, pulled her shorts up, reached around front and buttoned them for her.

Good Lord, not five minutes ago the man had used his mouth to suck a crippling orgasm out of her, so why did the small, comparatively chaste gesture of dressing her make her knees weak? She turned, expecting him to back off, but instead she collided with him.

Her heart hammered in her too-tight chest. She opened her mouth to ask him for some space, but instead blurted, “I failed the perfect-wife test before, back when I was married.”

…

Married?
That certainly put her tattoo in an interesting new context. Michael opened his mouth to say something flip and lighten the mood, but her pale face told him whatever scars he’d accidentally uncovered ran deep. A lame joke about finding the bright side of a failed relationship and tattooing it on her ass wasn’t going to help. Instead he took her hand, led her to the living room sofa, and sat her down. “How about I pour you a drink and you tell me about it?”

She looked up at him with big, anxious eyes and nodded.

“Beer, or…?” He walked to the refrigerator, opened it, and paused for a moment as a whole bunch of girl food stared back at him. Vanilla soy milk, some kind of probiotic yogurt he wouldn’t eat if he was starving, more fresh fruits and veggies than he’d ever seen outside of the produce section of the commissary. A casserole dish covered in tin foil took up almost an entire shelf. Nestled next to the familiar dark green bottles of his favorite beer was a light yellow bottle of Chardonnay. He took the chilled bottle and held it up. “Wine?”

“Wine, please. I didn’t want to toss perfectly good groceries, and you had a ton of room in your fridge, so I brought a few things with me, and I made Mexican lasagna for dinner. I hope you don’t mind.”

Mexican lasagna? Sounded like the kind of kitchen-sink recipe his mother would make up to combine random leftovers into a meal. “Of course not. I love Mexican lasagna.” He’d have a bite to be polite and make himself a sandwich later. No need to hurt her feelings. “I don’t have what you’d call a stocked kitchen, but help yourself to anything.” He dug a wineglass from the cupboard and poured her Chardonnay. For himself, he popped open a beer, and carried the drinks back to the sofa. He handed her the wine and sat beside her.

She put her glass on the coffee table and twirled the stem a few times. He got the sense she didn’t know where to start and he understood perfectly. They really didn’t know much about each other. A lot of questions circled his mind, so he latched onto a reasonably easy one and tossed it out.

“Mind if I ask how old you are?”

“I’m twenty-four. And no,” she lifted her glass and gave him a weak smile over the rim, “I wasn’t some starry-eyed teenager when I tied the knot.” She drank deeply and swallowed. “I was twenty-one. Old enough to know what I was doing.”

“And what were you doing?”

“Trying to replace my parents’ miserable marriage with an even more miserable one of my very own, though, obviously, at the time, I believed with all my heart I was doing everything right. Marrying the man of my dreams—someone who drowned me in attention and needed me like nobody else ever had.”

“You loved him.”

“Oh, yeah.” She sipped her wine and twisted her pretty lips into a grimace. “In the blind, idiotic way most people get out of their systems at sixteen or seventeen.” She raised her glass and saluted him. “Here’s to the late bloomer.”

The thought of her head over heels in love with some guy, and hurtling toward disappointment, brought up a whole tangle of emotions he didn’t want to examine too closely. “Late or not, you bloomed spectacularly. What happened?”

“Drew swooped into my world high on prospects and newly signed to an Atlanta Braves farm team. We fell for each other immediately and got married much too quickly.” She shook her head at the memory. “I ignored the whisper in my head saying stuff like, ‘You don’t really know him. This is a whirlwind and you’re letting yourself get swept away,’ because I was so desperate to belong somewhere, to call someone my own and believe he felt the same way about me. Maybe I can blame the desperation on my parents, for dismantling our family while I still needed one, but whatever the cause, I bought in to Drew’s lines completely. My heart drew a picture of us in a cute house with a white-picket fence, two-point-three kids, and a dog. Sadly, I should have listened to my head.”

So Chloe hadn’t always been a free bird. Her ex-husband had turned her into one. “Last time I counted, there were two people in a marriage, so don’t take on all the blame for yours not working and assume you failed the perfect-wife test.”

“Oh, I don’t take all the blame. Drew gets his fair share, but I know I don’t come across as June Cleaver. I overheard a couple of his coaches talking shortly after the marriage. One said something like maybe having a wife and a stable home life would help Drew settle down and focus on his game. The other one—an older guy—said, ‘Nah,’” she dropped her voice to a gruff growl. “‘Girl like her wouldn’t know a stable home life if it bit her in the ass. She’s not going to be able to keep him on his leash, much less keep his head on his game.’”

He took a pull from his beer to buy himself a second to get his temper in check. “Shitty thing to say, especially considering it wasn’t your job to keep their player’s head on the game.”

She tipped her head to one side and lifted her hair off her neck. “My job or not, turns out the old guy was right. Had I taken things a little slower, I would have realized Drew loves shiny, new things, and that’s what I was to him. Unfortunately, after about six months I no longer qualified as shiny or new. The convenient thing about playing ball, for Drew, was that every away game brought out a selection of shiny, new things for him to sample.”

“He sampled?” Correction, not her ex-husband, her
asshole
ex-husband.

“Like a kid in an ice-cream parlor, and being the dumbass I am, I overlooked the clues for a long time, because I couldn’t bear to let go of my happy-ever-after fantasy. Heck, I might still be sitting in Memphis overlooking the obvious if one of his shiny new things hadn’t called and informed me she was pregnant with Drew’s shiny, new baby.” She took a large sip of wine and swallowed before continuing. “I confronted him. He confirmed the information. I filed for divorce, registered with Helping Hands, and got on with my life.”

Her flippant tone didn’t completely conceal the depth of the wound. She’d trusted and been paid back with betrayal. Of course that hurt. He resisted the urge to gather her up in his arms and promise he’d never let anyone hurt her again. First, because she wasn’t his to protect, and next, because he had the funny feeling any protective instincts he displayed would be met with a complete and total freak-out on her end. Hell, it freaked him out too. She was a temporary decoration in his life, not a permanent fixture, and he wasn’t looking for more complications. Their situation was already complicated enough. Getting back into the cockpit required all his focus. He needed to remember that. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too, but my point in bringing this up is, his coaches knew from the start I wasn’t perfect-wife material.”

“He wasn’t perfect-husband material.”

“No, he wasn’t, but they weren’t talking about him. They sensed something about me. A lack of”—she rubbed her thumb over her fingertips, searching for the word—“I don’t know what exactly, but you sensed it, too, the night we met. Don’t deny it. When you looked at me, you didn’t think, ‘There’s someone to take home to Mom.’”