Chapter 5
BOONE
The couch is too short, the blanket smells like her, and I slept better than I have in months.
That last part is the problem.
Her words from last night haven't let go. The directness, the way her fingers left that scar on her shoulder and her chin came up and she told me she was done pretending this was proximity and adrenaline.
I fold the blanket. Square the pillow. Make coffee with the same focus I gave it yesterday, because the routine is the only thing keeping my hands busy while I wait for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs.
Two mugs poured, hers in the blue one. I stand in her kitchen and drink mine and watch the early light fill the windows and the quiet is full of everything she said last night, and the only thing between me and acting on it is the fact that she's still asleep.
She's not asleep for long.
Her footsteps hit the stairs at 0548. Light, unhurried, the gait of a woman who moves with awareness of every joint and muscle because her body is her professional instrument.
She rounds the corner in a faded university t-shirt and cotton shorts, her hair loose and sleep-tangled, and every thought I've ever had about professional distance and appropriate timing goes quiet.
"Two mornings in a row," she says. Her voice is morning-rough and warm, and the smile that comes with it is the unguarded version, the one that exists before she puts on the clinical brightness she uses to move through her day. This one is just Ireland. "A woman could get used to this."
"Don't. My coffee at home is worse."
"Your coffee at home is a war crime. I tasted it when you brought some to the clinic.
I thought you were trying to poison me or make me grow hair on my chest." She takes the blue mug from the counter where I set it and wraps both hands around it, and her fingers brush the place where mine were a minute ago.
The contact is indirect and charged and neither of us pretends it's accidental. Her eyes come up to mine over the rim, and the blue in them is sharp and clear and completely aware of what last night's conversation opened between us.
"Sleep well?" I ask.
"Like a woman with a SEAL on her couch and a conversation she started that she has no intention of taking back."
"So. No."
Her laugh is low and genuine and lands in my chest like percussion. "No. Not particularly."
We drink coffee standing three feet apart in her kitchen while the early light fills the windows.
The distance between us is a formality at this point, a last inch of pretense that neither of us is maintaining with any conviction.
Her eyes keep finding mine over the rim of her mug, and the heat in them is not new but it's no longer being managed, and the honesty of that, the bare, undeflected want on her face this morning, is the final wall thinning.
She sets her mug on the counter and turns to face me fully. The t-shirt is soft and worn thin at the collar, and the freckles on her chest are visible above the neckline, scattered across skin I have been thinking about with a specificity that would not survive professional review.
"I have an implant," she says. "In case you were wondering about logistics."
The words land with the clinical precision she brings to everything that matters. She's not asking. She's clearing the path.
"Boone."
"Ireland."
"I'm going to tell you what I want, and then you're going to tell me if you want the same thing, and then we're going to stop having this conversation from opposite sides of a kitchen."
I don't answer. I set my mug on the counter and cross the distance between us in two strides, and my hand is on the back of her neck before she finishes drawing her next breath.
Her eyes widen, not with fear but recognition, the sharp, electric awareness of a woman who just watched a SEAL stop waiting.
"I know what you want," I tell her. My voice is low and rough and closer to the voice I use to give orders than the one I use in her rehab center.
"I've known since the first week. I've been watching you want it across treatment rooms and parking lots and text messages that stopped being professional around week three. "
Her chin comes up. The defiance in that gesture, even with my hand on her neck and my body crowding hers and every inch of space between us gone, is so completely Ireland that it makes my blood run hotter. "Then what took you so long?"
"Discipline."
"And now?"
"Now I'm done being disciplined about you."
I kiss her with moment of restraint behind it and no intention of holding any of it back. My mouth takes hers and my hand tightens on the back of her neck and the sharp, broken exhale she lets out against my lips, equal parts relief and greed, is the best thing I've ever heard.
She fists the front of my shirt and pulls, and I let her pull because the friction of her fighting for control while I'm already holding it is exactly the dynamic I want.
Her mouth opens under mine and the kiss goes deep and filthy, tongues and teeth and the taste of coffee and underneath it the taste of her. My free hand grips her hip hard enough to feel the bone and hauls her flush against me.
She gasps when she feels how hard I am, the full length of me pressed against her belly through two layers of fabric, and the gasp turns into a low, hungry moan that vibrates against my mouth.
"Upstairs," I say against her mouth. It's not a question.
"Are you giving me orders, Senior Chief?"
"Yes."
She bites my lower lip, a sharp nip that sends heat straight down my spine. "Good."
I don't let her lead. I bend, catch her around the thighs, and pull her over my shoulder in one motion. She lets out a sharp breath of surprise, and her hands flatten against my back for balance.
"Did you just throw me over your shoulder like a duffel bag?"
"Move faster next time." I take the stairs with her weight settled and her fists already beating a half-hearted protest against my lower back, and the laugh she's trying to suppress vibrates through my shoulder blade.
Her nails drag down my back, deliberate and stinging, and the provocation in it is designed to test exactly how much of my control she can strip before I snap.
Her bedroom is warm and light, the early sun coming through windows that face the water. I set her on the edge of the bed and she looks up at me with flushed cheeks and swollen lips and an expression that is equal parts dare and demand.
"Take this off," I tell her, catching the hem of her t-shirt.
"Take it off yourself."
I do. One hand, one motion, and the shirt is on the floor and the morning light catches the freckles scattered across her chest and her shoulders, more of them than I'd imagined, spilling down her collarbone and across the swell of her breasts.
She's not wearing a bra. My hands find her ribs, thumbs tracing upward, and she arches into the touch with a sharpness that tells me she's been thinking about my hands on her skin for as long as I've been thinking about putting them there.
I push her back onto the mattress and drop my mouth to her collarbone, tracing a path between the freckles with my tongue. She digs her fingers into my shoulders and her breath catches.
I close my mouth around her nipple, sucking hard enough to make her hips buck off the bed.
"Boone." My name in her mouth goes lower and rougher, and the clinical precision is gone.
"I'm busy."
"You're taking your time."
"I've been waiting for this since the day you laughed at my chart notes. I'll take as long as I want."
I switch to her other breast, teeth grazing the peak before I suck it into my mouth, and the moan she lets out is long and throaty and exactly what I want to hear.
She reaches for my shirt and I pull back long enough to let her strip it off.
Her hands are on me immediately, fingers tracing the scars she can see and the ones she can only feel, the raised line across my ribs from shrapnel in Mosul, the puckered mark on my shoulder from a graze that bled more than it should have.
Her touch is professional in its precision and absolutely unprofessional in its intent, and the combination, a healer's hands mapping a healer's body, is specific to these two people and nobody else.
Then she pushes against my chest and I let her, because what she does next drops the floor out from under me.
She slides off the bed, sinks to her knees on the hardwood, and reaches for my belt.
The visual alone nearly ends things. Ireland Calloway on her knees in a rectangle of morning sunlight, red hair falling across bare shoulders, blue eyes looking up at me with a heat that is deliberate and unhurried and fully in control.
This is not submission. This is a woman deciding to take me apart, and the challenge in her expression says she intends to be thorough about it.
She works my belt open with steady, capable hands and pulls me free, and the first contact of her fingers wrapping around my cock makes my jaw clench and my hand brace against the doorframe.
"Responsive," she murmurs. Her thumb drags across the head, slicking through the moisture already gathered there. "Good clinical presentation."
"Ireland."
"What? I notice vital signs." She leans forward and licks a slow, flat stroke from base to tip, and the groan that tears out of me is involuntary and guttural. "Your vitals are very promising."
Her mouth closes over me and she takes me in deep, her tongue working the underside in a slow, dragging stroke that makes my abs clench and my hand brace harder against the doorframe.
She pulls back to swirl her tongue over the head, lapping at the slit, tasting me with a deliberate thoroughness that turns my breathing ragged.
Then she sinks down again, lips stretched around me, cheeks hollowing as she sucks, and the wet, slick heat of her mouth swallowing me inch by inch makes my vision go white at the edges.