Locked and Loaded (23 page)

He couldn’t even smile or return her teasing now. He’d wanted her so badly for so long … There was minimal blood flow to his brain at the moment. The only way he knew to tell her what she meant to him was through touch … to become delirious in the fragrant scent of her silky brown hair, nuzzling her neck and planting heat-filled kisses against her satin smooth skin until she gasped. Finding the small dimples in her lower back, paying them homage with his thumbs beneath her soft, cashmere sweater just before he palmed her exquisite ass and drew her to him harder … that’s how he would let her know.

He was a man of action, not a man of many words. No, he couldn’t play with her or tease her right now. For him, this was no game. It had become as real as it could get. And when her breathing changed, he knew she knew that too.

Her touch went from gentle caresses to a more urgent tug against his sweater. That was all he needed to feel to make him strip the garment up over his head. What started out as her request became her direct order. No words were exchanged, just her touch and her hitched breathing when she felt the burn of his torso. She pulled off her sweater and allowed it to hit the floor, then saved him the trouble of having to fight with her black lace bra. Hands behind her, she unhooked it. His palms caught the bounty when it fell away, and he moaned with her, savoring her ripe lobes of flesh.

Piece by piece, shoes and jeans and boxers and lace fell to the floor. Third-degree skin-on-skin contact caused hissing air to be sucked in through clenched teeth. Kisses wild, wet, and deep, became whale song moans submerged in open-mouth chasms. His hands begged her forgiveness for taking so long to get back to this, to get back to her, for being deployed, for having to be anywhere other than here. And her body told him that it didn’t matter what words hadn’t been spoken as he fell back with her on his lap. His apology was accepted as it slid into her hot, slick sheath on her wail.

God knows, this time he’d been prepared. The box was right on the nightstand so she could see that he wasn’t playing. But she wasn’t hearing it, wasn’t playing with him either at all this time. To be sure he was clear about her intent, she rode him hard where he sat on the edge of the bed, arching his back as she held on to his neck, burying his face against her breasts … begging his pardon for not being able to tease him or wait for him to reach across the king-size bed.

Each pull back into her heaven practically made him stand with her still on his lap. Muscles corded in his thighs, back, and neck. His arms trembled not from lifting her, but from the pleasure rushing through every limb. Wet friction heat skin-slapped him senseless; he could hear it keeping time with his heartbeat and the throb in his shaft.

Burning Sage purified him on the white-on-white duvet, became a shaman’s spirit walk, a pilgrim’s journey, ecstasy and religious experience no respecter of age or gender. He cried out, wept, held on to her body unable to stop. Her hair became his private confessional for all that he’d done in uniform and out, as he filled his hands with it, buried his face against it, whispered “I love you” into it … Absolution came from her as a chant of his name, devolving from Anthony to Tony to T … then a shrieked
papi
 …

It was that last mea culpa that broke him, that dropped the bottom out of his scrotum and offered her name up in baritone breath segments, seed pulsing from his body in waves of combined pleasure and pain.

He sat on the edge of the bed with her on his lap, held tightly in his arms, panting. This was so not how he’d planned it. He was going to be cool, take his time, do the damned thing right … taste her, touch her, drive her crazy all weekend.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life,” she murmured against his neck, still breathing hard and then broke down in tears.

Truth be told, neither had he—not where he wanted to plant some seed, make a baby, and put down roots.

He rocked her and held her, not sure what to do, not having any frame of reference for handling a woman’s tears, especially when she was naked and trembling and still sheathing him.

After a few minutes he sought her mouth and wiped her cheeks, then kissed away where the tears had been. “I want to show you who I am and what you mean to me, okay?”

She bit her lip with tears still shimmered in her gorgeous brown eyes. “Okay.”

“But we have to get dressed.”

“Really? Now?”

The way she’d said it made him smile. It was just four o’clock in the afternoon, and they’d been in the room maybe forty-five minutes tops. What had just happened was hot and frenetic, the same way they’d met … but he had an important mission that he now knew couldn’t wait.

“Yeah,” he murmured, standing with her legs wrapped around his waist. “Gotta take a shower and get dressed, because I have something really important to show you.”

As they laughed together, he carried her into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub, and turned on the water and adjusted the temperature, then cut on the shower. When she tried to climb off him, he shook his head, making her laugh harder.

“Don’t get my hair wet, then,” she squealed as he gave the spray his back.

“You lather … I’ll scrub.”

Damn, he loved the W’s wide showers. She did add soap and
Hoooah,
he damned sure made it lather. But she’d turned around all his plans, had changed everything he was gonna do … now he knew what it was that would best explain what she meant to him. A dinner and a candlelit evening was too cliché. That wasn’t how they’d met. The bottom had dropped out for both of them. She needed to know how much it had for him, that he’d never recovered and was still free-falling.

*   *   *

Sage took her time tracing his back as she dried it with a thick towel and then just let it fall to the floor. She knew he had something to show her burning inside him, but he was all she really wanted.

Didn’t the man understand that they’d made it out alive? He’d made it home from all his tours of duty and this most crazy one yet. That was all she needed to see of Chicago, but because whatever this thing was that he wanted to show her was important to him, it was important to her.

Yet the heat that he’d planted between her legs wouldn’t go away. Dark copper bronze skin glistened under her hands and she couldn’t stop pelting it with reverent kisses until he moaned. Dropping the towel, she let the bathroom steam cloak them in a humid blanket, tracing the thick cords of muscle in his back, across his broad shoulders and down his tightly ridged biceps.

“If you keep that up, we’ll never get out of this room,” he murmured as her cheek rested against his back and her hands slowly splayed against his chest, then trailed down the hard bricks in his abdomen to his groin.

“I can’t help it,” she murmured, telling the truth with her words and her touch. “I love the way you feel as much as I love the way you make me feel … and I’ve missed you so much.”

When he turned around and kissed her, then slid down her body, she backed up against the sink and braced herself on her palms, almost afraid she’d pass out.

“If you do that,” she murmured hoarsely, “we definitely won’t get out of this room.”

Ignoring her, he ran his hand up her leg and lifted it to hook it over his shoulder. “I’ll take my chances,” he murmured against her bud, teasing it with the mere vibration of his voice. He spoke to her there, as though that part of her had a mind of its own, which for him it did. “You told me I could take the hill … the beach … plant a flag … didn’t you say that the first night we knew this was real?”

Head back, eyes closed, the only answer was the elongated truth, “Yessss…”

He kissed her deeply, gently suckling the tender flesh. “Then let me take the beach before we go out…”

There was no defense against this man of DELTA Force. He’d captured her mind, owned her heart, and was conquering her body one sweet tongue flick at a time. If it was his mission to take the beach, then mission accomplished, as her head lolled back and her breaths became staccato surrender.

Pleasure built in a slow, undulating wave that crested higher and higher, now blending her voice into the surrendered breaths, making her grip tighten along the edge of the marble, making her body ebb and flow with his rolling tongue until her sanity came crashing down and washed against his face.

Breathless, she leaned so far back her head rested against the bathroom mirror. He smiled up at her, wiped his face with a discarded towel, and then kissed his way up her belly to claim her mouth.

Gathering her in his arms, he attempted to get out of the bathroom, but made the strategic mistake of allowing his hot shaft to rest against her. The heat of it demanded attention, even though he tried to act like it didn’t. His moan gave him away as she slipped him inside her, and his body buckled with the shudder that erupted from her. For a moment they just had to cling to each other as the intense pleasure event passed through them, his forehead resting against hers before he started moving.

“I can’t get enough of you,” he whispered, thrusting slowly.

“And that’s a problem how?” she murmured and then gasped as he began to pump harder, sliding his hands between her ass and the smooth marble.

“Because I have something I’ve gotta show you … outside … before it gets too late.”

“Okay,” she whispered. “Just … this … last … time—then we can go, baby.”

“All right,” he said against her damp hair, lifting her up under the stretched lobes of her ass and walking her back into the bedroom. “Just … this … last … time.”

*   *   *

The only way to get out of the room two hours later was for each of them to go into the bathroom alone, shower, and dress in the bathroom. It was beyond ridiculous.

He dragged her by the hand through the lobby with damp hair and her scarf half falling off, and they laughed as they got in a cab at the curb. Knowing she would object and try to eavesdrop, he told her to cover her ears while he leaned forward and quietly gave the cabbie the address.

“No … it’ll ruin the surprise,” he said laughing and loving her kisses and light shoves. “You can’t break this soldier. Name, rank, and serial number only.”

“But…”

He stopped her questions with deep kisses the entire way, not caring if the cabbie watched his very public display of affection. If the man told him to get a room, he was in such a good mood that he’d tell him he already had one—but was on a mission.

They got out at 233 S. Wacker Drive. Amusement filled him as he paid the man and watched Sage survey the street with a frown of confusion, her eyes canvassing the downtown area. She never looked up. Perfect.

He caught her hand and moved her toward the destination building with a tug; that’s when she gasped and threw her head back and laughed. “The Willis Tower! Oh my God! I always wanted to do that!”

Pleased, he just shrugged, trying not to allow her squeal to run all through him too badly in public. “It used to be named the Sears Tower … so I figured this was as good a place as any to visit. We had aliases, this is now different, and … you know … I guess we’re different.”

She didn’t say a word, just kissed him and leaned against him as they entered the building and got a ticket on the 103rd floor. His stomach was in knots the entire way up, but he hoped that she’d never know that. And of course, there was a wait … until he went to the admissions attendant and whispered in the woman’s ear.

The older woman beamed at him and then hugged him, and then held him back to look up at him. “My son was in the service and I wish he could do this. So I’m letting you to the front of the line. Thank you for what you do for our country.”

“Thank you, ma’am, I can’t tell you how much I really appreciate this.”

“No, we appreciate
you
.” She then spoke loudly to the throngs that had been waiting. “This man is a DELTA Force veteran—let him through, folks. He’s home on leave and got his sweetie visiting Chi-town … now y’all step aside.”

To his surprise, there were no sulking glances or murmuring comments. People stepped aside for him and Sage, stood taller, and an older man in the group began the applause. Sage hesitated, clearly not wanting to put people out, but the good nature of the crowd spurred her onward.

“C’mon,” he said quietly. “We won’t hold up the groups for long. I just wanted you to see my city from a thousand or so feet off the ground.”

He loved her smile and her giggle as she stepped out into the clear Plexiglas enclosure, looked down for a second, and then squeezed her eyes shut.

“Oh my God, Anthony! Get me out of here! Okay, okay, I did it. I’m getting dizzy!”

It was clear from the laughter behind them and the way people were craning their necks that, a private confessional was out of the question. So he held her hand tightly and dropped to one knee, not knowing the exact words to say. But the older ladies behind him were in his amen corner, squealing and swooning before he could even form the words he wanted to give just to Sage.

“I brought you up here,” he said, looking up at Sage and holding her hand. “Because this is how you make me feel … like I’m on top of the world, but the bottom is dropping out from under me all at the same time. Pure vertigo. And … I hope I make you feel like that, too … just a little bit. I’ve been all over the world, but never felt like I could be home or was home, until I met you. So I know I didn’t say all I could about what you mean to me, but … Sage Wagner, will you marry me?”

He never heard her answer as the crowd erupted in a spontaneous cheer behind them. Kids started a stadium wave as Sage nodded profusely and started crying. He dug into the pocket of his leather jacket for the thing that had been burning a hole in it since he’d picked her up at the airport.

All of his fingers felt like thumbs as he extracted the small velvet case and popped the top, praying to God that three karats would be big enough and that she liked the oval shape surrounded by a cluster of tiny diamonds.

Trying not to drop it, he slid the ring on her slender finger and kissed the back of her hand, and then watched her slide down to the Plexiglas floor to kiss him long and slow and deep before a cheering crowd. That’s when he knew his mission was accomplished.