The Stranger (4 page)

I lay there until the lethal heat in me was obliterated, until every part of me had chilled and my body began to shiver. Even then, I stayed for another minute or two, relishing a moment’s peace from the heat, listening to the wind’s eerie song, watching the flakes swirling in the wind, numb, inside and out.

Weird? What the hell. This was why I lived alone. A guy tested by death and tried by fire had to do whatever he could to survive.

By the time I stumbled back into the house, my skin tingled with fresh blood, flushing my body and pumping vigorously through my system. The heat was gone, replaced by cool, calm, and hopefully lasting numbness.

I locked the side door, dried off with my T-shirt, and donned my sweats. I heard a noise, so I padded out to the hallway with the wet T-shirt in tow. The bedroom door was open. I’d closed it before. I peeked in. The bed covers were thrown aside and the bed was empty.

I walked out to the great room and called out, “Summer?”

She didn’t reply, but a rattle on the other side of the house caught my attention. I set out toward the noise. I scanned the kitchen in passing and saw that the lid was off the pot. The soup was all gone. I turned the corner into the dining room and stopped dead in my tracks.

Outside, the storm was in full swing. The wind howled and swirls of snow gave the night a spectral glow that seeped through the shuttered glass doors. Inside, a configuration of feminine curves comprised Summer’s dark outline against the storm’s tenuous light.

I took in the proportionate build of her shoulders, the contour of her torso as it tapered at the waist and flared out at the hips, and the long line of her legs. She stood there, with her hand on the handle and her nose pressed against the glass, stark naked.

“Summer?” I said tentatively. “What are you doing?”

“I need to go.” She fiddled with the lock. “I’ve got to find her.”

“Who?” I said. “Your sister?”

“I need to find her.”

“You can’t go out there,” I said, not a little alarmed. “It’s freezing. You’ll die.”

“But I have to go.”

What the hell was she thinking? “There’s a storm, remember? A bad one.”

She either ignored me or didn’t care what I had to say. I had an urge to throw her over my shoulder and take her back to bed, but seeing as she was butt naked, I refrained from approaching her.

“Listen to me,” I said instead. “You’re naked. Summer, stop. Turn around. Look at me.”

This time, she listened. She turned around. The beam of a security lamp outside pierced through a high window and illuminated her face, framing her eyes in a rectangle of soft light. Her gaze fell on me. Her green irises looked almost translucent in the eerie light, glowing silver like a pair of light reflectors. Holy shit. For a moment there, she scared the crap out me. I stumbled back before I got it together and realized it was a trick of the lights.

And yet the intensity in her eyes unsettled me. Her stare flowed free and brazen over my body, taking me in without hesitation. She made zero effort to avert her eyes or disguise her curiosity. I remembered I wasn’t wearing my shirt. Dammit.

My stomach burned with a flush of acid reflux. I felt completely exposed, baring my scars for her perusal as if I were a circus freak. But if she found the sight of my burns repugnant, her face didn’t betray her revulsion.

I twisted the wet T-shirt in my hands. Anger burned through me. If she could look at me like that, then I could do the same. I raked my gaze over her body, equally brazen and bold. My stare tripped on her tan’s crisp outline. Pale triangles highlighted a pair of high breasts, contrasting against the rest of her bronzed skin. Inside the white triangles, the dark circles of her oversize areolas emphasized her body’s striking geometry. The visuals had me reeling.

She shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted at me. “You are...extraordinary.”

“Pardon me?”

“You’re amazing.” She reached out and, shattering the invisible boundary between us, traced her fingers over my jaw, pads rustling quietly against my stubble. “You’re like a solar flare.”

The contact zapped me with a burst of connectivity, setting abuzz every nerve in my body. Her fingertips brushed over my skin like the softest cotton, but her touch was also sharp and intense. My body coiled, my hands fisted, my jaw clamped down. I’d been cool and numb a moment ago. Now I was beyond hot, on fire all over again.

I bit out the words. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your aura.” Her fingers traveled down my neck, over my shoulder, and then detoured to settle over my heart. “Your life force. It’s very strong, impressive really.”

“Jesus.” Was she one of those new age hippies who embraced weird ideas like auras and nudism, at least after working hours? “Don’t tell me you believe in that junk.”

“You don’t see it?”

“No!”

I don’t know why, but my heart raced and the room felt off-kilter to my spinning head. Those eyes. When she looked at me like that, my brain shut down. My gaze wandered and ended up roving over her breasts again. I forced myself to focus on her face.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I’d brought a strange woman to my house and she stood before me, naked, talking about auras and shit. Maybe the fact that she seemed to feel perfectly comfortable in her skin rubbed me the wrong way, since I felt the exact opposite. She didn’t fear or shun me. She seemed completely undaunted by my scars and at ease, whereas I was having more than a little trouble concentrating.

Maybe I also felt rotten because I’d had the day from hell. Danny’s death had shaken me much more than I first realized. Life didn’t seem to amount to much lately. Hell, I couldn’t even trust members of my own damn family. What was the purpose of living like this?

“I’m really sorry,” Summer said, with alarming kindness.

“For what?”

“For your pain,” she said. “For your sadness.”

How the hell could she know?

“The tendrils in your aura.” Her eyes explored the space around me. “They’re beautiful, but those dazzling explosions must hurt inside.”

I gritted my teeth. “That’s a load of bullshit, you know that? Can you stop talking crap and acting weird?”

She shrugged and that’s when I noticed a trickle of soup smearing the side of her mouth.

I wiggled a finger by my lip. “You’ve got something there.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“You didn’t get it.” I grabbed a towel from the kitchen counter and wiped it off myself. “Now it’s gone.”

“I was hungry,” she said as if apologizing. “It was good.”

“No problem,” I said. “I left it out for you. Is that a dribble of soup on your chest?”

“Oh?” She looked down at herself.

On impulse, I reached out and wiped the drops off her breast. The impressive span of her areolas wrinkled. Her nipples puckered in unison. They weren’t the only body parts hardening in the room. For the first time since my Pave Hawk went down in Afghanistan, my body coiled with urgency and my cock swelled with a rush of blood that squeezed the breath out of my lungs.

Jesus fucking Christ. After all this time, I was horny as hell.

Get it together
,
Erickson
. I tried to disguise my body’s reaction. “We ought to get you back to bed,” I said. “That bruise on your leg is probably hurting just about now.”

“I don’t feel any pain.” Her translucent eyes widened into immense saucers. “But you did. You still do.”

Her fingers traced the scar that ran from the heel of my hand, behind my arm and over my shoulder. My skin reacted to her touch. Not with pain or discomfort, but rather with a prickle of...anticipation?

She examined the long scar then circled behind me to trail its path on my back. Her touch was light over the raised divide where healthy skin met healed flesh. A pleasurable tingle traveled through my spine. It resonated through my body as if amplified by a loudspeaker. It reminded me that most of my burns had healed and contact could feel good.

I closed my eyes, enjoying her light, feathering strokes, astonished at my new skin’s ability to feel pleasure. Her touch sent tingles all over my body, like fine snow cascading over my shoulders. Her fingers were gentle and yet the contact rattled me. Other than the doctors and nurses, I hadn’t allowed anyone else to see or touch my scars. Until now.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“I burned, isn’t it obvious?” I lashed out like a goddamn adolescent.

Her hands traveled the scar’s arbitrary path down my back. “You healed well.”

“I guess I was one of the lucky ones.”

I’d sustained burns over twenty percent of my body. Half of those, about ten percent, had been third-degree burns, mostly on my torso and back. Top-of-the-line, grueling medical treatment, skin grafts, surgery, and therapy had reduced scarring and minimized loss of skin elasticity and function. But some of my skin still had a raw, mangled, leathery look and there were days when my nerves misfired loads of phantom pain.

Summer’s touch burned too, but in a completely different way.

She came around and faced me. With a single finger, she traced the scar down my chest. My body flooded with waves of euphoric tingles. Her hand tripped on my waistband. I caught her wrist and stilled her hand. What the hell did she want from me?

“I can help,” she whispered, barely audible.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?” She tilted up her face, daring me with her lips.

Why was she looking at me like that? Was she teasing me? Mocking me? Provoking me?

I kissed her.

Her lips were soft beneath my mouth and her tongue replied with urgency that matched mine. Ignition. My motor roared to life and my rotors engaged. The longer my lips lingered on her mouth, the more intense my need got. She tasted like my favorite meal, warm soup, enhanced by her tongue’s sweet addition. My hands craved the feel of her healthy skin. Should I allow myself to touch her?

Christ. I was caught in a wind shear and heading straight for a high-voltage wire. It took every ounce of my willpower to break off the kiss. When I finally did, she let out a little moan of protest. I rested my forehead on hers and struggled to regain my breath. I didn’t know her and she didn’t know a goddamn thing about me. I didn’t want to harm her, physically or otherwise. For God’s sake, just yesterday she’d been in a car wreck.

There were also other considerations. She could still be a trap, was certainly acting as one, despite my gut feeling and even though Spider had found no evidence to that effect. Hell, I couldn’t afford mistakes right now. The attraction felt strong, too powerful for my own good. I was used to being in control, even if this moment felt a lot like a burst of turbulence.

My mind radioed a warning signal.
Walk away
,
Erickson
. Then my brain short-circuited and went out of commission. Fool. I wanted to clobber me silly. After all this time living on automatic, going through the motions and feeling nothing but anger, loss and regret, she’d shown up and, suddenly, I was up and going at last. Hell, I even knew from Spider’s hack that she was healthy and on birth control, so I had an all clear. How long was I going to keep delaying life? Until I was old, bitter, and alone? Until I turned into a rusted wreck of myself? Until I gave up, like Danny had done today, and put a bullet through my head?

No, I wasn’t going to end up like that. Seize the moment and forget the rest. It wasn’t often that life offered a truce, a gift, whatever the hell you wanted to call this. What was wrong with accepting it?

Ultimately, the choice wasn’t mine. It was hers and she made it, showing none of the trepidations that paralyzed me. She cased my face with her hands, rose up on the tips of her toes and kissed me. Jesus. The sweetness of that kiss. I was caught for good and committed to her flight path.

She trailed a line of kisses down my neck, sliding her lips over my nipples, running her hands over my body, tasting old and new skin with the tip of her tongue. I couldn’t have moved away from her even if I’d wanted to. She made me feel healthy, as if there was nothing wrong with my body; free as if there was nothing wrong with me.

The moment felt a lot like a dream, like a young man’s fantasy, fashioned in a hospital bed in between operations and debriding sessions. But the moment also felt more real than anything I’d experienced since my helicopter went down. I gasped when she eased herself onto her knees and kissed my belly and my groin, sliding my sweats down my legs until they crumpled at my feet.

She didn’t hesitate. She took my erection in her hands and ran her lips up one side and down the other, planting little kisses along the way. All my blood surged toward her lips. I clenched my jaw as she swallowed me whole. The world spun. Her mouth was hot and wet, swirling with the currents of her rippling tongue. Months of pent-up need clobbered me like an RPG. My legs wavered.

I leaned on the kitchen counter and clutched the granite until my fingers hurt. Her mouth felt...incredible. I wanted to explode every single time she swallowed me. It was as if I were the most succulent treat she’d ever tasted, as if she was famished too, and her hunger just added to my starvation.

The hell with the world.

Some days, life was a lift from an inaccessible mountain ridge; a dump from a high hoist on the smoldering flames of someone’s existence; a stranger with the lips of an angel kneeling at my feet. I had no defense to fight this, no will to evade whatever the hell this was. My hips conformed to the rhythm of her mouth, pumping obediently into her throat. My fingers entwined with her hair, attempting to steer her head and mouth, which needed absolutely no guiding.

“Christ.” I swore under my breath. “For your sake, you better stop.”

She mumbled something impossible to understand.

“I mean it,” I rasped. “You ought to stop now.”

She paused and looked up, lips glimmering in the light, eyes luminous, fist pumping me softly. “Do you really want me to stop?”

I gulped. “I’m thinking about you.”

“Aw, you’re very kind.” She offered me a small, smug smile that made my dick jerk in her hand. “I can see that about you. You worry. But you need me and I need to please you. Do you want to come?”