Chapter 17 Rebound
SEVENTEEN
Rebound
RYKER
Oh, hell no! There was no way he was going to let that look of mortification, regret, and terror fill the face of the woman he’d just fucked.
He had no future plans in his head. It wasn’t like he’d married them off and filled a home with kids, but this wasn’t a one-and-done kind of thing for him.
From the look on her face, that was exactly what was going through her head. What kind of man did she think he was?
“Stop,” he ordered, layering his voice with the first command he’d ever laid at her feet.
She scooted away, trying to pull her BDU trousers up and over her hips.
He grabbed the waistband and jerked it back to her knees. “Stop.”
“Lyons,” she hissed.
“No,” he said, leaning over her, crushing her back to the hard ground. “Not until we talk.”
“Talking is the last thing I want to do right now. Look…”
“If the next words out of your mouth are, This was a mistake, you can just stop. What just happened is what you call an inevitability.” He placed his hand between her thighs and forced them apart.
She squeezed against him, but he overpowered her, moving his hand to cup her mound.
“I don’t regret what happened, and I’ll be damned if you do the same. Talk to me, Tia.”
Her eyes widened when he used her full name. Come to think of it, he didn’t think he’d ever used her name before. She was T when he’d joined the unit, and like everyone else, he used her nickname.
“I won’t be one of your—”
“One of my what? Is that what you think of me?” He curled his fingers, stroking them through her folds.
Her low moan swirled between them and tunneled first to his gut where it sparked an insatiable need and then coiled to his cock where he hardened again.
“P-p-please stop that,” she said, gripping his shirt.
He needed to find a more private place for this, somewhere he could strip both of them down to nothing and truly worship her body. He sank two fingers into her channel, stroking her walls with only one goal in mind.
“Lyons,” she screeched, arching her back.
The woman was damn responsive to his touch.
Part of what she said held truth. He’d had more than his fair share of women in his bed.
Sex was a drug, one best shared, and he’d learned his way around a woman’s body over the years, taking more pleasure in giving than receiving.
Tia’s responses surprised him. It almost seemed as if she’d been made for him.
Either that, or he was more in tune with her body than he’d ever been with another woman before.
He loved the soft sounds coming from her throat and the gentle vibrations rattling in her chest. He really loved when her fingers dug into his scalp, clinging to him as she rode her climax.
He smothered her scream with a kiss, claiming her mouth with the promise of more as she rode his fingers through another orgasm.
He nibbled at her lips, enjoying her delicate taste, while her body shuddered beneath him.
He didn’t let up until the aftershocks of her orgasm fluttered away into the night.
“Don’t run from this,” he said. “I’m not done with you.”
He might never be done. With a groan of his own, he shifted, concerned she might not be able to breathe with his full weight on top of her body.
His cock was rock hard again, thick, aching, and needing release.
But he’d have to wait. Tomorrow, he’d make a trip to the base exchange where he planned on buying out the entire stock of condoms.
“Goddamn you,” she said.
“That’s not usually what I’m used to hearing after sex.”
His chuckle was a cover because he couldn’t tell what direction Tia’s thoughts were taking. At least, she wasn’t trying to scoot away from him any longer.
Her soft laughter surprised him, and she brought a hand up to cover her face, peeking out at him between her fingers. Her dark chocolate eyes drew him in, and he kissed the tip of her nose. Laughter was much better than her trying to run away.
“Now, what is that for?” he asked.
“I…I don’t really know.” She dropped her hand, and her brows drew together. “This is fucked up, Lyons, what we just did. You know that, right?”
“It’s only as fucked as you want to make it,” he countered.
“We shouldn’t have done that.”
“So you keep saying, but I have proof that you liked it.”
She shook her head. “Always the confident one.”
“And hard again,” he said. “It’s a shame we only had that one condom because I could do this all night.”
“I’m sure you could, but we can’t do this again.”
“Why not?”
“Because we work together. Because I’m an officer, and you’re enlisted. Because every regulation in the book says this is a bad thing. Because we’re on a team together. For fuck’s sake, if it ever gets out that we—”
He kissed her forehead. “This is never getting out. Despite what you think, I don’t kiss and tell.”
It was the truth. Despite her belief that he fucked every young airmen on his time off, that wasn’t the whole truth of it.
And, of those he had taken to his bed—because there was more than a kernel of truth to those rumors—the stories told during the light of day didn’t come from his mouth.
He never once bragged or boasted about a woman he’d slept with, and he wouldn’t do that with Tia either.
On the flip side, he never downplayed the rumors.
Perhaps that made him cocksure, but he didn’t kiss and tell, and he certainly never fucked and talked about it afterward.
“Nobody needs to know we’re sleeping together,” he asserted.
“We’re not sleeping together. That’s not what this was.”
“What do you think this was?” he said in a warning tone. “Did you forget what just happened?”
“I know exactly what happened. We fucked.”
“We had sex. Wild. Unhinged. Passionate. Sex.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“Not in my book.”
“Well, what the hell is the difference?”
“Oh, there’s a whole hell of a lot of difference. This…” He pointed to her chest, cupping her breast for the first time. Soon, he would have her stripped and enjoy her full body rather than what was between her legs. They had a lot of exploring ahead of them. “This is mine.”
“You don’t own me, Lyons.” Her eyes widened, alarmed as he moved his hand beneath her shirt.
He cupped her breast. She bit at her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut as he toyed with her nipple, drawing it into a tight bud.
“We’ve barely begun,” he said. “I plan on making love to every inch of your body. Until I do…” He was ready to make love to her for a long time to come, but he wasn’t bold enough to say those words. “Until I do, we’re not done.”
She gripped his hand, forcing him to stop his assault on her nipple.
“Lyons, we simply can’t. It’s too dangerous. Too much to lose.”
“Then, we’ll be discreet.”
Voices sounded in the distance, halting any further conversation.
He rolled off her. “Get dressed.”
Tia slipped her trousers up and over her hips, tucked in her undershirt, and fastened the buttons of her overblouse in half the time it took him to do the same.
A wild look filled her face as she felt the disarray of her hair.
With a curse, she pulled at the pins holding her bun in place, fitting them between her lips.
Then, she finger-combed her long hair, twisted it back up and around, and secured the last pin in place before he had his belt buckled.
“How do you do that so damn fast?”
“Years of practice,” she said with a smile.
The voices grew louder.
“We need to get out of here,” she said, her voice hushed.
He pulled her back, drawing them deeper into the maze of pallets. With an ear out for the voices, they moved off in another direction.
“Tia,” he soothed, “it’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”
She pushed his hand away, and a tear spilled down her cheek. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
“Get that you’re worried about your career? About getting caught? We’re going to be careful. I swear to you—”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Then, what is it?”
“You weren’t supposed to be it.”
Be it? Like it? His heart lifted to think he might mean more to her. He hadn’t examined his thoughts, but the idea appealed to him.
She spun and walked away as she whispered, “You weren’t supposed to be my rebound guy.”
Those words slammed into his gut, and he would have let them take root, except he knew something she didn’t. He wanted her, and one way or another, he would have her. Not just in his bed—there would be plenty of that in their future—but in his life.