Surrendering To Her Sergeant (12 page)

“Yes…I understand.”

Christ, she moved him. So committed in
her passion. So complete in her submission. He kissed her again,
gently this time, before asking, “Are you ready?”

She nodded. Smiled. And kept thrusting
those beautiful, curvy thighs like he was really inside her…like he
yearned to be inside her. “Yes. Do it. Make me come,
Ethan—please!”

She was seriously messed
up. She had to be. In a recess of her mind, Ava knew much of
this,
most
of
this, wasn’t real—but right now, reality was her enemy. Right now,
the illusion was all she wanted, all she craved, all she needed.
The way Ethan wove his words into her mind and his scenes into her
imagination had her breasts thudding with dual locks of pain, her
arms flexed against invisible ropes, and her pussy dripping as it
ached for final release. Every cell of her body simmered and
strained, quivered and clenched, reaching for the fulfillment only
he could give.

That settled it. Ethan
Archer didn’t just look, smell, and sound like a beautiful, wicked
warlock. He
was
one.

She felt his fingers tracing the top
of her pubic line. Her heartbeat stuttered. Was his touch real this
time? As he trailed two fingers lower, parting her swollen labia as
he did, she wondered if it was worth questioning…even as the tips
of those digits closed over the center of her clit and
squeezed.

“Ohhhh!” she cried.
Ow.
And yet
yum
, too. His pleased
growl enforced the latter.

“One,” he murmured. And pinched her
even tighter.

“Damn!”

“Two.”

Yeah. Harder again. “Ethan!” she
screamed. “Seriously?”

“Three.”

It was barely a breath above her lips
as he pressed a thumb along her clit. When he spread his fingers
back, the heat was unlike anything she’d ever felt. She screamed as
her body broke into a million shards of blinding, beautiful
sensation. And her mind? It was collateral damage from the blast,
annihilated into ecstasy-filled mush. Nothing mattered or existed
but the white ball of fire she’d become—and her longing to engulf
Ethan in its flames, too.

“Please!” She managed
beneath desperate pants. “N-need you, Ethan. N-no more just in my
head. You.
You
.
Please!”

She was making as much sense as a
bimbo who’d had too many shots in the party limo. But somehow he
understood. The rough sough from his chest told her so. His
insistent kiss showed her so.

The slide of his cock into her core
told her so.

“Ahhh!”

How the
hell
could he have asked her to
imagine this? Nothing she’d dreamed came close to what he really
felt like, stretching and filling her, driving her toward a second
detonation of light, lust, flames, fulfillment. When he grunted and
gripped her hips, sealing her body completely around his, she
abandoned her grip on the couch to throw her arms around his neck.
Their slick torsos slammed together. His approving snarl gave her
the impetus to hold tighter. So close. Oh hell, she was so
close…

“Now, sunshine.
Now
!”

His demand, coarse with control but
silken with seduction, spoke to every drop of blood in her body.
The walls of her control toppled, the shreds of her reserve were
gone. Her pussy was flooded by a second wave of scalding sensation.
Her scream of release tangled with Ethan’s harsh groan. Deep
inside, she felt his cock pulse over and over again.

They rocked against each other for
long, lingering minutes, heartbeats hammering at each other through
their pressed bodies. With a heavy sigh, Ethan finally rose, peeled
the condom off, yanked a sommelier’s wipe off the roll on the
marble tasting table, then tossed them both into the
trash.

As she rose and walked toward her
clothes on wobbly legs, Ava tossed him a wry laugh. “Guess that was
a damn good vintage, right?”

He didn’t take her up on the joke.
Instead, he caught her around the waist, his bicep tightening to
hold her back. “What the hell are you doing?”

She pushed away. “Getting back to
work.”

She winced, instantly regretting the
glacier she tossed in the wake of his sexual tsunami. With a guilty
pout, she turned back and pulled his head down for a tender kiss.
The move delivered on the payback. His hair, short yet so thick,
felt wonderful between her fingers. “Thanks for the concern. I just
don’t require huge cuddle time, okay?”

Ethan unleashed a full
glare. “The fuck you don’t.” Beneath his breath,
way
beneath, she heard
him add, “The fuck
I
don’t.”

It was a ripe opportunity
for another teasing giggle. Instead, as Ava bent to retrieve her
bra, the heavy sting of tears assaulted. She froze, horrified by
why her emotions ratted her out like this, but achingly clear about
their reasoning, too. She’d had a glimpse of Heaven, and it had
been good. Really good. Everything,
everything
, she’d ever longed to
share with a truly dominant man.
This
one was so good at the helm,
he’d commanded her into an orgasm damn near with his words
alone.

But it was done now. The
sole bite of Ethan Archer decadence had passed her lips. She had to
put the fork down and be thankful for what she
had
enjoyed.
If you indulge any more, you’ll be puking by tomorrow
morning.

It might be too late for the nausea,
anyway. She let out a sniff as the conclusion pummeled her full
force.

“Ava.”

His orgasm hadn’t erased an
inch of his Dom streak, reinforcing both his voice and touch as he
cupped her shoulders from behind. Shit. Didn’t he understand that
only made this worse? Couldn’t he get the message that she couldn’t
do this stuff? The hardcore “lifestylers” even had a name for it,
didn’t they? “Aftercare.” Right.
Not
happening. If it did, he’d
aftercare her into a gigantic ball of needing him again. Yearning
for him. Wanting him like a gooey, fresh honeycomb, complete with
all the little buzzing buggers who’d created it, without an epi pen
to be had for miles. It would kill her.

“Ava
.”

And yet she allowed him to curl her
back against his chest, engulfing her in his hard, wonderful
warmth.

Ohhhh, no.

She lost the battle against breathing
him in. Her senses filled with his scent, a mix of leather and
sex…and her. His deep breath conveyed it wasn’t just her smell he’d
taken in. His embrace alone, capped by him tangling one hand in her
hair, told her that he considered this just the
beginning.

The
beginning
. She laughed at the words through
her tears. The beginning of what? Of giving her heart to this
knight in camouflage, letting him ride off into battle with her
favors tied to his “lance” of an M4, only to wait for the day when
there was a knock on the door and the notifications officer stood
there with the stare that meant only one thing? Or maybe it was the
phone that rang and it was camo knight himself, calling drunk from
Vegas to tell her he’d found the “soul mate” she’d never been and
had just decided to marry the woman?

Those were just the scenarios life had
punched her with firsthand. There were thousands more. So many more
ways to define how she could make the mistake of falling for a
too-good-to-be-true military man again.

She pushed from him again. Wrapped her
arms around herself. “What?”

Lovely. She’d traded
one-liners with TV stars, rock idols, and even Prince Harry during
his set visit, and the best she could do was a tearful
what
?

Ethan clearly agreed. His eyes
darkened to the color of midnight. “‘What?’ Is that really where
you’re taking this now?”

He spread his arms, making
a damn good case why Michelangelo got it wrong with the original
model for
David
.
Ava forced herself to look away from his naked beauty, now matched
in intensity by his frustration.

“I’m sorry,” she rasped.
“It’s…PMS, okay?”
Good
save
. That one always worked. Guys pretty
much started for the exits once that three-letter card got played.
“I’ll be fine in a few—”

“Bullshit.”

She lifted a glare. “Excuse
me?”

“You know what I said. But just so
we’re clear, I call bullshit.” He shifted closer by a steady,
noiseless, step. Another. He didn’t try to hold her again, though
the proximity of his body, with the bottom of his rib cage hitting
her elbows, had her again feeling swallowed by the force of his
focus and the power in his stance.

She wetted her lips in lieu of backing
up. “Ethan, I don’t think now is the right time—”

“Now is the perfect time. I’ve waited
seven damn months for now.” He took her bra from her, tossing it
onto the tasting counter in the same motion. In the next, he swept
an arm around so he could brace her jaw, forcing her face up. “And
something tells me you have, too.”

He emphasized his meaning by brushing
her tears with the tips of his fingers. Like his voice, the sweeps
were soft but ambitious…emotional ninjas. She had to fight back.
She had no choice, despite the sorrow that still welled and the
tears that still came.

“It was worth the wait,” she finally
murmured. She tried lightening the air with another laugh but gave
up when his face didn’t change by one solemn inch. “It was amazing,
Ethan. But you—you’re—and this—”

“Is pretty fucking awesome.” Despite
the earnest words, his features steeled. “You going to squirm away
from that one too, sunshine? Go ahead. I’ve got the juice to go a
hundred rounds with you on why I’m right.” His mouth quirked in
humorless triumph. “But something tells me you’d be lucky to last
three.”

“Something tells
me
that’s pretty
accurate.” She gazed up at him, smiling softly with the confession.
“Fucking awesome is a pretty good way of putting it. I don’t think
I’ll look at that couch the same way again.”

“You make that sound like a bad
thing.”

“I’m making it sound like
a
real
thing,” she
clarified. “Ethan, look—”

He shifted his thumbs to
lock on top of her mouth. “You want to know about real?” he
growled. “Fine.” For the first time, he dipped his gaze—making her
know, with better-than-high-def clarity, that she was really in
trouble now. “
Real
is what I felt, for the first time in a long time, the moment
you smiled at me from Sage and Garrett’s living room floor.
Real
was the way my
spirit got zapped when my lips met yours in the forest the next
day.
Real
was the
thing my life missed for seven fucking months, before I saw you
again on the soundstage today.
Real
is this, Ava. It’s rare. A treasure that’s been
given to us. We should—”

“Whoa.” She finally jerked
from his hold. “Okay, stop. Just stop.”
Stop before I break every promise I’ve made to myself over
the last three years and let you shred my soul into pulp for your
nobility smoothie.
“A ‘treasure?’ Don’t you
mean
your
treasure? The kill you chased and finally shot
down?”

It was brutal. She knew it. Ethan’s
face reflected it. His lips twisted as if he were nauseated. “Is
that what you think? That you were some kind of conquest for
me?”

She didn’t say anything.

His jaw went the texture of steel. Ava
bunched her hands into fists in order to control herself from
negating him, from running back into his arms and blubbering that
of course that wasn’t what she thought. That in the first second of
his hold on her in the prop room, she’d felt the agony of every
moment he’d waited to see her again, and the torture of plodding
through life without knowing he ever would.