The SEAL's Rebel Librarian (11 page)

And, if she were truly honest about what she felt, the thrill of the hidden and the danger of being caught.

“This isn't like me,” she said, making herself a liar by bracing her elbows against his chest and stroking his hair, his ears.

“What isn't like you?”

“Thinking with my body, not my mind.”

He captured her hand, now resting against his neck, her thumb on his pulse, and kissed her palm. “How do you feel? Right now. What's your body telling you at this very moment?”

She tipped her forehead to rest against his, closed her eyes, and sank deep inside her skin. Her body was talking to her, the message subtle but insistent in a way it hadn't been before she bought the Duc. The pain flaring with each gentle curl of his fingers against her bottom only added to the clamor. “I don't know,” she admitted. “The signals are so mixed. I should be terrified. I should be in pain. All I am is turned on.”

She breathed the last word into his open mouth, his lips plush and resilient against hers, while her fingers stroked the ruthlessly shaved skin of his jaw. Her index fingers brushed the corners of his mouth as she kissed him, his tongue flickering out to taste hers, then lick the tips and suck them into his mouth.

A beat of pleasure pulsed through her, lingering in her nipples, her sex. His gaze met hers unashamedly as he bit down ever so gently on the pads of her fingers. “What's your body telling you, Erin?”

She paused for a split second to consider the messages dancing along her nerves: arousal, desire, excitement, and a connection she could no longer deny. She was falling for Jack, and falling hard. Her heart all but stopped when this fact burst into awareness in her brain, her stomach doing a slow loop. She'd already broken one promise to a man, a big promise. A “love, honor, and cherish until death do us part” promise. But the promise she'd made to herself was just as important, the promise to live her life as fully as she could, throttle open all the way, engine screaming at the redline, the wind pushing her back as the machine bore her forward.

She would do this, everything her body asked of her, and she'd let him go. She'd keep both promises, and damn the cost. It was easy enough to tell herself that. The only thing left on her list was skydiving, and Jack had already booked them flight time to make the jump.

He was still looking up at her, eyes expectant, hands a warm weight against her bottom. In response she hitched herself forward just a little, wrapped her right arm around his neck, slid the fingers of her left hand into his hair, and kissed him. “I want this,” she breathed between kisses. She was slick and hot and quivering with eagerness, and all she could think about was how good it would feel when he stretched her open and slid inside. “I want this,” she said again.

“Me, too,” he murmured.

He hoisted her to her feet and backed her into the wall beside the door, then swung one of the chairs around and wedged the back under the handle so the door wouldn't open.

“Wait,” she said, and wriggled free to yank the stretchy key ring from her arm. She opened the door, locked it from the outside, then let it close again.

“Did you just lock us in?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“That's my girl.”

She reached over and flicked off the light switch, plunging the room into near darkness. The fluorescents from the stacks lit up a rectangle on the table, but otherwise, the room was in shadows. He backed her into the wall again, and claimed her mouth; she let out a strangled yelp when her bottom hit the cement. The noise quickly became a shuddering moan when his strong arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her into his body and away from the wall.

It was a smearing, intense kiss, too much pressure and slick, hot tongue, and yet not enough, not nearly enough. She arched into his body and wound her leg around his calf, desperate to get him against her, inside her. One day on a bike and she was an adrenaline junkie, sliding down that slippery slope to wrack and ruin.

Yes. Oh God, yes.

Jack braced one arm against the wall and used his hips to shove her back, grinding against her. She gasped again and reached for his belt, tugging his shirt up, running greedy hands over his ridged abdomen, gripping his waistband and pulling him closer.

“Fuck, yes,” he growled when her fingers brushed his straining shaft. “Get … come on…”

She went to work on his belt and zipper while he flicked open the hook-and-eye closure of her trousers. The weight of her belt and the lining sent her trousers to the floor. She hooked her thumbs in her panties and dropped them, then stepped out of one leg opening, listening for any sounds other than Jack's deep breaths and the tear and slick sound of a condom rolling down.

“Gonna have to be quiet,” he said, and unceremoniously wrapped his arm around her waist again and hoisted her.

“Okay, yes, hurry,” she said, ready to promise whatever with his hard cock nudging into her folds.

A tentative thrust, then he adjusted, and slid in. She made a shocked, disbelieving sound when he breached her, and with a stifled curse he tipped her head into his shoulder. “Shh,” he said, predatory and soothing all at once.

Her legs, already overtaxed from riding the bike, were quivering. “Hold on,” he said.

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. He adjusted his hold on her, bringing both hands forward to grip the sorest part of her bottom. She gasped, writhed, then gasped again when her squirming set off signal fires flaring from her sex to her nipples. In the back of her mind, she was shocked she wasn't glowing.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” she breathed. The pain was there, steady, manageable, and making her crazy hot. “Oh, yes.”

He leaned forward, using his shoulders to brace her back against the wall. With each thrust she trusted more of her weight to his strong arms and hips, tightening her crossed legs above his loosened jeans, sinking into it. There was no kissing, no touching other than his hands on her aching bottom and his shoulders pinning her to the wall, his plush mouth hot and open against her ear. Each thrust was slow, measured, devastating, until all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears, his staggered breathing, and the dirty, slick sounds of his body taking hers.

She came with her face buried in his shoulder, choking on the sounds trying to tear free from her throat. With one final deep thrust he pinned her to the wall, shudders ripping through his body. They rode out the aftershocks together, tension slowly seeping from their bodies until she could relax her legs. He disengaged their bodies, stepping into the darkness at the back of the study room. With trembling hands she patted at her hair, her blouse, then bent to untangle her trousers and panties from her ankle. Faint sounds reached her ears, the rustle of a plastic bag, cotton against skin, a zipper.

“Can you bring me my backpack?” she whispered, giving up on working out the knot of clothes and kicking off shoes, pants, panties.

He set the bag down in front of her. She dug through the front pocket for tissues and cleaned herself up as best she could. When she looked up, he was holding out a paper with the remains of his fast food dinner and a tied-off condom. She added her tissues, and dressed while he folded the top of the bag over, hiding the evidence. “Food is not permitted in the study rooms,” she said in her primmest voice.

“You gonna turn me in?” he asked, one corner of his mouth lifted in amusement.

“I'll let it slide this once,” she said, the sound of her zipper belying her prim tone. “Do I smell like sex?”

“The whole room smells like sex,” he said, but leaned in and sniffed her. “You actually smell like leather and sweat.”

“Great,” she said, relieved.

“It's pretty hot,” he murmured, his lips brushing her skin sending a shiver along her nerves. “Really sexy, actually.”

She turned to kiss him, his tongue a velvety flicker of heat teasing without pressing for entrance. “I've got to get back to work.”

“Okay,” he said, but his hand slid into her hair, holding her close.

“I really … really have to … stop that,” she said, smiling and holding him at bay. “I have to get back to work.”

He stepped back, hands raised in a feigned innocence she found laughable, and very amusing. She unlocked the door. “Wait here,” he said, and walked out, his booted feet echoing off the stacks as he checked first one hallway, then the next. “You're clear.”

“Thanks,” she said, preparing to make her escape for the stairwell no one ever used that led to the storage rooms.

“Wait,” he said. “I made an appointment for your tandem jump. A friend of mine can take us up on Friday morning. The weather looks great.”

She blinked, felt a smile flicker across her face. “You did? You made the appointment.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I hope that's okay.”

“You're not going to talk me out of it.”

He bent his head and kissed her. “Never,” he said. “I will never try to talk you out of something that matters to you.”

She reached up and ran her hand through his hair, making it come up crazy cowlicks. “Thank you,” she said. “Friday's my day off, so that sounds great.”

*   *   *

Friday found Jack standing in a hangar, watching Erin as she zipped herself into a borrowed jumpsuit. “Laces tight?” he asked with a nod at her running shoes.

“Double knotted,” she answered.

“I'll take those,” Jack said, pointing at Erin's earrings. They were pretty, long and gold and nestled into her hair, and definitely a hazard.

“Why?” she asked.

“At a hundred and twenty miles an hour, they could get tangled in your hair, or the harness, and rip right out of your ears.”

“Ouch,” Erin said, obediently taking them off. Jack stowed them in one of his cargo pockets. She then pulled her hair back into a ponytail, catching his eye as she did. “That was my next instruction,” Jack said, smiling. She thought ahead. He liked that, liked how she stayed with him, every step of the way.

Tandem dives were a piece of cake to arrange and pull off. Jack already knew how to orient his body and control the canopy during free fall; the trick was making sure the passenger knew what to do to basically be nothing more than extra weight. Erin paid close attention as he guided her through how to position her body under his, how to keep her arms extended from her shoulders, her legs tucked together, between his, because he was so much bigger than she was. He walked her though the actual jump moment, how to cross her arms over her chest and trust her weight to his, getting nods of understanding at each step.

“Thumbs up?” he asked.

“Thumbs up,” she replied, giving him two and a big grin.

He'd packed their chutes himself, layering the tandem parachute into the deployment bag, then loading the deployment bag into the pack. Hefting the pack in one hand, he kept a firm grip on her harness as they walked to the waiting plane. Disdaining the stairs, he cupped his hands for her foot and boosted her into the plane's cargo area, then planted his palms and swung himself aboard. The pilot fired up the propellers and taxied to the end of runway, and in moments they were airborne. A delighted grin on her face, she watched out the window as the ground dropped away at a sharp angle.

She was fine while he shrugged into the pack and secured the straps.

She was fine when he beckoned her to sit in front of him so he could secure her body to his at the shoulders, chest, and hips.

Of all people, Jack knew how someone's mind could change in an instant. In his case it took a firefight gone wrong for his mind to wig out. In Erin's case, it was the moment he shuffled their harnessed bodies across the plane's floor to the hatch. She took one look down at the patchwork fields below them, and went rigid, bracing her sneakered feet and pushing back.

“Jack!”

“What?” he shouted back, running through his mental checklist. He'd packed the drogue chute himself, and the main tandem chute, and the reserve chute, too. Cords hung freely. Harness secure, Erin's harness secure, the straps harnessing them together. He adjusted his mirrored goggles, then tried and failed to wiggle a finger under the strap of Erin's pair, borrowed from the jump school's equipment. Her hair was secured at her nape in a ponytail, leaving her elegant cheekbones and stubborn chin visible.

“I can't do it.”

The body's instinctive reaction to heights was to either back away slowly or tip over the edge. “It's going to be fine,” he said.

“No, it's not!” she shouted.

“One minute!” the pilot shouted back toward them. Jack checked the altimeter on his watch and gave him a thumbs-up.

She reached back, blindly grappling for something. To keep her away from the chutes, he guided her hand to the loose fabric of the jumpsuit. It went taut as she fisted her hand in it, all color blanching from her face.

“We're
above the clouds
!”

“Yup,” he said. “Gonna be a good jump.”

“Nope. Nope, nope,
nope
. This is crazy. This is
insane
!”

He gripped the bar bolted above the door, as did she. Her knuckles popped through the thin fabric of her gloves, giving away the death grip she had on the bar.

“Thirty seconds!” the pilot yelled.

She had to let go in order for them to jump. “Erin,” he shouted next to her ear. He could see the whites of her eyes as she stared at the ground under them. “The fear is normal. But think ahead! If we call this off, what will you feel the moment we touch down, and you walk away from the plane? Relief?”

“
Yes!
”

“Or regret?”

Silence. “Yes,” she shouted, “but I'm scared, Jack! I'm really, really scared.”

“I know, sweetheart,” he said, patting her abdomen. It fluttered under his palm; she was all but hyperventilating. “But you're not alone. I'm going out of this plane with you.”