Secret surrender, p.19
Secret Surrender, page 19
She ground into him. Surrendering more, testing the new sensation of letting him have this. Have her. While she took, too.
Her need grew and she grew as a woman. She could feel it, the change. The strength she’d worn as a suit of armor, always believing it protected a fragile woman inside.
But none of that was true. Her façade of strength. Her hatred of fragility…
A surge of bone-melting desire overwhelmed her and her lips parted, allowing room for a low moan to escape. The guttural sound surprised her, but even this unintended release held strength. Maybe love didn’t have to weaken her. No. Everything about being with this man felt like a bold victory.
She softened some more, one muscle at a time, losing her urge to resist altogether. He wanted to love her, and just once, she’d throw herself all in.
The pleasure shimmying through her rewarded her risk, and his lips pressed to her forehead, yet another reward, as ecstasy brought her undone—light flooding her eyes and her muscles bracing against the swell expanding and exploding within.
Even as that intensity settled, she didn’t have time to gather her bearings. Dean pushed her back and pressed her into the bed, claiming her with his thrusts. Her fingers dug into his bulky triceps, and he repaid her with increased speed and intensity. More need took over, and she screamed out his name.
The pace he kept was just below punishing. He pounded into her again and again, as if making her pay for what she did to him. Well, the feeling was mutual. She needed him, when she’d never needed anyone, and for that she cried out again.
“Sarah.” His lips poised at her earlobe, and his movements slowed. Why?
Was he trying to prolong this? Or maybe like her, he wanted to avoid facing the aftermath.
Something had changed here. But what?
She stared up at him, at the sweat glistening over his brow, tendrils of jet-black hair plastered to his skin, his lips poised so close to her, and his breath lapping at her skin. He was in her and all over her, and, that ache in her heart again…
He’d broken her open, but what about him?
What had changed for him?
Her pulse climbed, more panicked than anything.
“My beautiful, Sarah.” His hushed tone acknowledged her inner battle, and there was the vise-like grip of his cobalt stare. “You promised me no holding back.”
He buried himself in her again, a slow and rolling sort of movement that once again broke her apart, one stroke at a time, while he moved his hands to cradle the back of her head.
His kiss met the gentle curve of her ear, his thrusts maintaining intensity but more intentional and made to savor.
“Dean, I…” She had no escape, the intimacy of his embrace a heavy brick weighing down on her heart. That intimacy stole her breath and stole her ability to revert to her old ways of hiding.
He pushed within her, cutting off her words. Her legs closed around him, and she cried out again. He groaned, lighting an awareness that as much as she thought herself vulnerable, he was close to breaking, too.
“Come for me again.” His words were a vulnerable plea more than a demand, soft and reassuring. He needed her. Needed to see she needed him too. In so many ways right now, they could heal or hurt each other.
“Sarah.”
Her eyes slammed shut, and she tried to shut him out, but a tear rolled from her eye’s outer corner and down her temple.
She wrapped her arms around him, unable to find words, but reassuring him either way. Her fingers pressed to his rippled back as he picked up pace, where every thrust drew from her new feeling.
As much as she tried to hold out, blinding light hit her eyes again, and her world shattered into a show of fractured sight and sound. She screamed for traction but tumbled further. Every cell, every piece of her, shaking and relinquishing control.
Dean’s forehead met hers, his face crumpled with broken refrain. A wild groan tore from him, and his heat filled her—the gravity of his release frightening and thrilling—a rush of sensation and meaning she simply couldn’t tame.
In time, her breaths slowed, though her lungs burned from the exertion, from the reality of what had just taken place. Dean sank against her, his head buried in the sheets at her neck, his back rising and falling from his sharp and heavy inhalations.
Each breath spoke of more than mere fatigue. He’d felt it too. The crumbling of barriers. That this relationship had irrevocably changed.
Thirty-Three
“I’ve never done that before…”
Sarah smiled and turned her head to Dean, who now lay on his back, his broad chest undulating and warm under her cheek. “What? Had sex?”
His low chuckle reverberated in her ear, filling her with a renewed wave of need. “You know what I mean. What we just did. That was different.”
She closed her eyes for only a moment and drew a slow breath, reticence holding her, even though she knew this man well enough that she should have guessed he’d cut straight to the point. To all that had changed between them.
That slow breath spilled from her lips now, and she opened her eyes again, rolling onto her tummy and pitching her chin on his pecs. “You know, around here, when someone says something is ‘different’, that’s really just their polite way of saying they didn’t like it.”
His easy grin grew, and he ran a finger over her hairline. “Oh, I liked that plenty.”
He shifted suddenly, pulling her up and catching her lips with his, driving in a deeper and more-passionate-than-expected kiss. Surprise ebbed and her body melted into him, an unintended moan breaking loose.
He pulled away and a full-scale beam took over his face, a beam she had the distinct feeling so few people ever saw. “See. You liked it plenty too.”
A quick and shuddering laugh escaped her, forcing her to press her lips together, and a heaviness shifted in her chest. Something about his clear happiness now—it lit an awareness that maybe he wasn’t happy all that often.
Then again, I’m no different. Though… lately…
She dropped her attention to the light sprinkling of jet-black hair across his chest. “Dean…”
“Sarah?”
She flicked her gaze back to his sparkling blue eyes, a tightness catching in her throat. “Tell me about your past… at least something.”
She tried not to wince at her huskiness and that damn returning prickliness in her eyes. For some reason, learning about him had become so important. She wanted to know all about the people and events that had shaped the man she was quickly falling in—No.
No. Not yet.
Right, well, learning about him seemed important, anyway.
The cobalt in his eyes deepened, and he squeezed his brows together. She couldn’t tell if he merely reacted to her strange behavior or genuinely resented her question about his past. “What do you want to know?”
She hadn’t thought that far ahead, mostly just assumed he would shut down her question, so now she gnawed on her lower lip while she decided. “Let’s start with what you were doing, say, at twenty-one? What sort of person were you then?”
The muscles over his forehead sagged, and he pushed out a rough breath, his focus snapping away from her and onto the dove-gray ceiling. A prolonged silence lingered, and she thought back to his previous insistence that he needed more time before he could talk about himself.
Granted, not much time had passed since that conversation, but he’d been the one to insist she let him love her, and she had, even though what he’d asked was huge. So now it was her turn to ask of him, and if he couldn’t be honest with her now, then when?
“Let me see.” He took a long pause, his gaze still searching the ceiling. “By twenty-one I was into my third year in the Marines. As for the sort of person I was—”
“Hang on now.” She grabbed his chin and made him look at her. “You were in the Marines?”
He raised a brow but said nothing. In fairness, so much about him did scream, “former military”, from his imposing physique to his shuttered demeanor, even his handling of the Chadleys the other week…
“Right.” She nodded to herself and allowed him to continue.
“I wasn’t too different to who I am now, a little more unsettled and brazen, typically impulsive. Though, there wasn’t all that much room for stupid mistakes.”
He reached across his body and ran the pad of his thumb down her temple, the gesture seemingly more to reassure himself than her, as though speaking about the past made him want to prove he was still firmly in the present.
“So, what made you leave the Marines?” She permitted a long silence while his chest rose with another sharp and hissing breath, the reaction and delay another clear sign this wasn’t an easy conversation.
“You mean apart from being young but not naive enough to notice that enlisting didn’t always mean ‘helping’ the people you thought you’d be helping?” His gaze left her again, his expression tense and twisted. A frown, but more than a frown.
His pause seemed more about grappling with emotion than thinking of what to say next. “And still, it wasn’t my choice to leave. The bad conduct discharge and two months in military jail saw to that.”
She shot up onto one elbow and tried, but failed, to slow her racing thoughts. “Whoa. Wait a minute. A bad conduct discharge and two months in jail? How’d that come about?”
He let out a sigh, his attention on the roof unfocused and distant. “By that point, I was just over twenty-three years old. I was in Afghanistan, and even though my commander was one prickly son-of-a-motherfucker, I was moving up the ranks nicely.”
He paused again, his long fingers collecting a lock of her hair fanned across his chest. He wound that lock over his forefinger while she watched the slow and meditative action. “Some of the guys in my squadron decided to go out one night. We wanted to let loose, do something other than work, eat, sleep. We ended up at a bar in Kabul. Nothing glamorous, just some family-run place where no rules applied, including the fact they had minors serving drinks. I had early patrol the next morning, so stopped drinking after a couple of beers, but stayed for a bit to chat with the guys. After a few hours, most were either drunk or had returned to base. I was on my way out too when I heard my staff sergeant slur, ‘You gotta learn sometime, honey.’ I turn and he has this girl pinned against a wall to my right. She couldn’t have been much more than sixteen—”
She pressed a hand to his chest. “Oh. No.”
A cold sensation washed through her, but he nodded all the same. “His hand was pushed under her skirt. She looked downright terrified, while two people who I figured were her parents stood behind the counter, their stares frozen. Probably because they wanted to step in, but figured there’d be a blood-price to pay.”
She reached out and ran her thumb over his rough jawline, her heartbeat settling when his gaze joined hers. “And based on your actions with the Chadleys at the nursery, I’m going to take a wild guess here and say you didn’t let that one go?”
“No. I pulled him off the girl. Told him to come back to base with me and sober up,” he scoffed, and lifted his hand so he clasped her wrist. “Except the sergeant told me to go fuck myself and took a swing at me. Of course, in his drunken state he missed, but he turned for the girl again. By that point she’d started to scream, and she slapped him repeatedly, trying to fight him off. Even her parents found their voices. The scene got loud and ugly fast. He ripped the top buttons on her shirt, still struggling with her. I didn’t have time to think, much less weigh up consequences. So, I knocked him out, and me and a couple of the guys dragged him outta there.”
“I don’t understand.” She took his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckle. In so many ways at work, though never that extreme, she’d been that girl in the bar. Just like her incident with the two college boys earlier tonight, it was rare to have someone stand up and help. “What about any of that would land you in jail?”
“Just the part where the staff sergeant was a sour pissant who used his higher rank to craft some story bad enough to lump me with a court martial. All the rest followed after that.”
“But you had so many witnesses. Why didn’t anyone vouch for you?”
“Simple. The family refused to talk. I can understand why. They’d already been through so much, and this war-zone was their home. Soon enough, we’d be moving on, they wouldn’t. The other guys? They were either too drunk at the time to be a credible witness or too chicken-shit to speak up. By the time we got to court, the staff sergeant spun a story where the roles were reversed. I was the drunk and would-be rapist. He was the one trying to stop me and I assaulted him in the process. Our age and rank difference made it a credible enough tale. There were no guarantees I’d be found innocent, or that anything would happen to the staff sergeant. I guess the other guys figured they’d be stuck working with him, and he’d make their lives hell too if they spoke up. So, the rest is cut and dried. I did the time, then got booted back home.”
She shook her head and clasped at his hand, his warmth seeping into her palm and a heavy sadness gripping at her insides. For all the good he’d done, his life had been ruined. “It’s hard enough as it is for most returned service people to start over.”
“Yeah, and in my case, with five years scrubbed off my resume and a prison record, it was impossible.” He held her gaze, his cheeks slack, and his expression pleading for her not to judge him. Not that she would… “I tried LA, figuring it was a big city. Maybe it would be easier to disappear and find work. It wasn’t. I tried. I really did try. But the bills kept growing, and I was on the edge of being yet another homeless vet. So, I gave up. I figured, what the hell? I was already guilty. What difference would it make if I got my money from the wrong crowd?”
Thirty-Four
“Wrong crowd?” Sarah pushed herself up and sat away from Dean, clutching the bedsheet to her chest, as if this man hadn’t seen her naked a bunch of times before. But his story. The one about working for “the wrong crowd”. She already had feelings for him, but hell, how had she been so ignorant? “You mean crime?”
“Not exactly.” He reached for her hand, which she let him hold, but kept her fingers limp. “I never killed anyone or stole anything.”
She spat out a laugh and scuttled back even farther, ripping her hand out of his. “Oh, well, that makes everything so much better.”
“Sarah, listen.” He sat now too, leaning in her direction, pleading that she stay put, though still giving her space. “The crowd I worked for kept me around to look scary and intimidate. Occasionally I’d use my military skills to track someone down. The job paid well, and no one cared about my past. I didn’t hurt anyone in any critical way, do you understand?”
“What about your family?” She jutted her chin at him, not sure where to look, her heart aching because she didn’t want to believe him to be a bad person. “Couldn’t they have helped you?”
“What family, Sarah?” His voice was husky and hurt, a dull cast overtaking his eyes. “I was twelve when my mother ditched me, and eighteen when I aged out of foster care. Just like many kids in that situation, I enlisted the second I could. Serving my country was my ticket to freedom, to being self-sufficient. Except, I blew my chance at having any real sort of life.”
She stared at him for a long while, still clutching the sheet to her chest, his line about blowing his chance bouncing around in her head. There’d always been a sense of familiarity with this man. She’d asked him for the truth. He’d given it to her, hadn’t he?
She knew about growing up too soon. About paying the price for other people’s actions. About needing to survive. And for that he’d been judged and tossed aside time and time again. Yet, he’d never done a thing to hurt her or anyone she knew. At what point did a person get to have a second chance? She could hear him out or at least not slam yet another door in his face.
She held the stand-off a moment longer, the tight tug of her heart telling her to take him in her arms and promise those harsher days were long behind him, but she still had reservations, so she offered acknowledgment instead. “You had no choice.”
He gave a small shrug, holding impossibly still, as though he feared any sudden movement might send her away completely. Maybe he wasn’t all that wrong. “Choice or not. My past is what it is, and I’m trying to leave it behind.”
The musk of his skin still clung to her, drawing her in, even though his story filled her with doubt over what he’d spent his last years doing.
She flicked her gaze back to his, those cobalt eyes holding her, arresting her breath, as if he sensed her emotional step backward and pleaded with her to see the little boy in him. The one who’d already been abandoned and didn’t want her to do the same. What that must have been like for him.
Sure, her parents had skipped out in their own ways too. She could relate, except he’d been so much younger and without the support she had here in Harlow. And what about the years prior to his abandonment? How had it all come about? The rest of his adulthood didn’t seem any warmer either.
She found her words again, seeking to put at least some of the pieces together. “Are you still with the ‘wrong crowd’?”
“No.” His fingers curled into the bedsheet, as though he wished to reach for her but stopped himself. “That’s why I stayed in Harlow. I needed to start over, Sarah, and you—”
She shook her head, demanding he stop, the heat behind her eyes building again. Her heart pummeled in her chest, taking with it her desire to fight.
The hint that she might have been the reason for his “restart”. He’d mentioned something to that effect before, but she hadn’t thought much of it, figured he was just talking about the complexities of moving states. Now that information, along with all the rest, was more than she could process.
How many times had she wanted to hit STOP on her life and change course?
More than she could count.
But unlike her, Dean here had actually done it.
