thrillseeking games. This isn’t racing a car or a dirt bike where you can stop if you want.” Her nails dug into his bare arms. “War is real Real bullets, real danger.”
He silenced her with a deep kiss. Yes, it was war, but for five years he’d been training to fight. The need to put himself to the test meshed with nightmarish scenes of battle suddenly flashing in his mind, yet he kept tasting her mouth, kept running his hands familiarly over her plush body, pushing aside the images and focusing on the physical, the tangible... the woman in his arms.
“I’ll be okay.” His breath rushed with hers, his insatiable craving to get closer to her, get naked with her, right now, raged along his blood. “I’ll keep my head down. I swear it.”
“You better keep all of you down,” she said.
He met her gaze, grinning. “Any parts you were particularly worried about?” He wiggled his brows.
Suddenly she shoved out of his arms. “Is everything a joke to you?” she said, swiping at her tears. “My God, Kyle, are you itching to get yourself killed?”
“Come on, baby, don’t start this now.” He tried to coax her back into his arms, but she wasn’t buying it, skating out of his reach.
“Then when, Kyle? When you break your back instead of your leg bungee jumping out of a helicopter?” She flung her hand toward the now forgotten crutches propped against his wall locker. “Or when you take a bullet because you want to experience it ripping through your flesh to see if it compares to one of those ridiculous stunts you’ve already pulled!” Maxie knew she was nearly yelling, but she was so scared, for him, for their future.
Her temper was amazing, he thought as she paced like an anxious colt, his gaze dropping to her short red shirt and her long muscled legs. He wanted to be between them. “You’re overreacting. That stuff never bothered you before. You even came along.” He looked her over, long and heavy, his mind on the fringes of the conversation. “And I thought you liked that about me.”
Maxie remembered first meeting him when he raced stock cars in Long Beach. And the collision he was lucky to walk away from alive. “In a man I was just getting to know, yeah. It was intriguing.” She paused, leveling him a look. “But not in a husband.” The shift in his features told her he was at least listening this time, and she took a step closer. “I’d like the future father of my children around long enough—”
“Don’t,” he cut in. “I can’t think that far ahead, Max.” He jammed his fingers into his short dark hair. “Babies?” The thought terrified him, and his voice pleaded. “Why are you bringing this up now?”
Because we’ve pushed the wedding ahead three months because of the war, and I feel rushed. Because you’re not acting at all like a man ready for a wife. Instead she told him her most recent reservation. “Because I honestly feel you love cheating death more than you love me.”
The fraction of hesitation was far too revealing for Maxie.
“That’s not true. I love you, but I have orders.”
“I know that,” she said impatiently. “But this is affecting us already, Kyle, and I want you to see beyond it.” Why did she always have to be the levelheaded one in their relationship?
He straightened, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s affecting you, not me.”
Hurt sprang in her eyes. “Isn’t that enough?”
Kyle knew he was being selfish. But he could be gone for months or a year—or he could get killed and never see her again. He didn’t want to talk about kids and a home. He and his older brother, Mitch, had been alone since they were abandoned when he was twelve, and the picture she painted was too foreign to him anyway. He loved her, loved everything about her, yet because he was obligated to the Marine Corps and going into a war, he couldn’t give her what she wanted with any kind of certainty. Suddenly Kyle was more afraid of losing her over this than he was of an Iraqi bullet.
He lifted his gaze, hoping she didn’t see how scared he was. “I love you, Maxie. This is all we have right now.” He held out his hand, waiting.
She hesitated, gazing into his hopeful eyes. Then in a heartbeat, she flew to him, clinging to him.
And he clung back, covering her mouth with his. His kiss was fierce and savage, his lips grinding over hers with his need to draw her into himself, to take part of her with him to Saudi. He needed her, and she gave and gave, and then plowing her fingers through his hair and pressing her hips into his, she gave some more.
And Kyle took, grasping, greedy. He couldn’t think that in a few days he was going to leave his new bride alone, that he was trading her smile on their honeymoon for a taste of enemy gunfire. He thought only of Maxie Parrish. Sleek and sexy and here for him. His hunger mounted to unfathomable proportions, his hands driving beneath her blouse, riding roughly up her warm skin. So soft, so Maxie. And when she leaned deeper into him, yanking up his T-shirt, sliding her hands over his flesh, he knew her mind was on the pleasure they would share, knew she ached with the same unrelenting hunger that always raged between them. The anticipation of being inside her nearly undid him as he quickly unfastened her bra, his hands sweeping around to envelop her breasts.
Maxie moaned with dark pleasure, helping him strip off her blouse, her nipples already tight and hard for his questing fingers. He has the most incredible mouth, she thought as he bent her back over his arm and dragged it over her naked flesh, lips tugging, drawing heavier and closer to the center of her breasts. Expectation heightened her nerves.
“Kyle, Kyle,” she breathed, hesitating against his kiss, struggling with the swamping sensations to see beyond desire. He was leaving for who knew how long, and apart, they would change. It was inevitable. But how drastically would it affect their new marriage? “Maybe—” She gasped for a breath as his mouth drifted closer to her nipple. “Maybe we should postpone the wedding till you come back.”
Suddenly she was upright and he was cupping her jaw in his broad palms, his dark eyes intense with quick fear. “Don’t even think it. I need you.” He closed his eyes, briefly, tightly. “I love you, Max,” he murmured against her mouth, then kissed her again and again. “I need to know you’re my wife.”
Maxie felt the anxiousness in his kiss, his embrace. “Oh, Kyle. I love you, too, but we have to be realistic,” she managed to say, hurriedly peeling his T-shirt over his head.
Abruptly he lifted her against him until her breasts were level with his face. “This is the only reality I want.” His lips closed over one nipple, drawing it deeply into the hot suck of his mouth, and Maxie threw her head back, dark auburn hair spilling along her naked spine.
He’s putting me off, she thought. He had, every time she’d mentioned waiting. But his touch, his sensual power, overwhelmed her and she surrendered to it, wrapping her legs around his hips as he back-stepped toward the bed. He brought her down with him as he sat on the mattress, his hand already beneath her skirt, pushing aside her panties.
Breathless, Maxie held his gaze as he carefully parted her, her body on some tenuous edge until his fingers plunged into her. Her eyes closed, and she rocked against his hand.
“You’re always so warm and wet,” he growled, and smiled at the blush racing up her body. “You pulse for me.” His fingers moved inside her with deep, deliberate strokes, and he watched her desire escalate, was sure of it as she tore at the button fly of his camouflage trousers. With a look of retribution on her face, she reached inside, enfolding him.
He thrust against her touch. “Oh, Maxie,” he groaned in a way that she loved.
“Is this enough reality?” she whispered against his lips as they stroked each other to frantic pitch. “Enough when you’re—”
He covered her mouth with his. He didn’t want to hear her uncertainties, didn’t want to admit he would be alone in the desert, without connection, without family. He needed her here for him, waiting for him. Wanting him.
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