Coming Undone Read online

  By the time she’d lowered her arms, he’d already flicked his tongue over one nipple. She sucked in a quick breath when his mouth left it and the cooler air met the wet and made her nipple taut. He did the same with her other nipple and she tried to force his head back down to one of them. He resisted and she groaned in frustration.

  And then he smiled, caught her wrists easily in one of his hands and extended them over her head. His was a wicked, wicked grin that made her body pulse and she knew what he planned to do.

  She was really giving up control now, and he watched her carefully, waiting for her to nod her assent. When she did, he reached down and grabbed his discarded T-shirt and bound her wrists together, then held them above her head.

  His mouth was on her breast again, his hand between her legs, stroking her. She arched up to meet him, alternately tugging on her restraints and remembering she couldn’t stop him if she wanted to.

  She didn’t want him to, not at all. The skin on his cheeks and chin was rough against hers and she liked that, too.

  Carly heard him tug his zipper, smiled when she saw the tuft of hair and realized going commando was a way of life for him. He yanked the jeans down over his ass, left them down around his ankles and rolled on a condom with his free hand.

  She wrapped a leg around him and he was inside her that fast. Fast and hard and standing were becoming her new favorite ways to have sex. “Oh, yeah, that’s it.”

  She had no quarter and didn’t want it, moved her other leg up and locked both around his back. He shifted and pushed deep inside of her. Together they rocked until she was coming again, contracting around him.

  “Come with me, Hunt,” she murmured, although it came out more like a command. He groaned and began to pulse inside her.

  IT WAS A RUSH BEING WITH a woman who was in prime athletic condition and whose drive matched his. And, since Carly’s hands weren’t free, she used every available muscle to force him to force her to lose control.

  Come with me, Hunt….He held her wrists firmly against the palm tree as its leaves swayed and rustled in the light wind. Cushioning her lower back with his free hand, he drove into her until he couldn’t stand it another second and let himself come with a loud cry.

  Mind-blowing.

  That’s all he kept repeating to himself over and over as he closed his eyes and recovered. He let go of her arms and she eased them around his shoulders, although he hadn’t untied her wrists yet. Her body stuck to his. The two of them both damp with sweat from exertion, the kind that left you feeling as if you’d conquered the biggest roller coaster and still wanted to go for another ride.

  There wasn’t a feeling in the world comparable to this. Jumping out of a plane into a mission came close, but it was a different kind of heart-pounding, adrenaline-filled rush. This one lingered in his bones, left his muscles quivering and left a beautiful, naked woman pressed against his chest.

  This was far beyond any fantasy.

  “MMMM, LET’S STAY OUT here,” Carly said when he picked her up again, yet she really, really liked it when he picked her up and put her exactly where he wanted her.

  “Don’t want surfer girl getting swept up by the thunderstorm,” he told her.She opened her eyes and looked at the rapidly swirling wind and the lightening-filled sky. She heard the ocean surf pounding against the beach, and felt the first heavy raindrops hit her bare skin.

  The electricity blinked off, then on, once they were inside the house, and she tried to think candles and flashlights before realizing she didn’t care about any of that. She just wanted Hunt to keep his arms around her, to keep doing what he did so well.

  Candy Valentine certainly had the right idea. That woman deserved a raise. And she’d write to Total Woman Magazine and tell them that, as soon as she had another orgasm or two.

  He carried her up the stairs with no effort and when he laid her down on her bed, she pulled at his shoulders.

  “Don’t leave,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “The fantasy doesn’t end with you leaving,” she said.

  “I didn’t realize I was in the actual fantasy.”

  “You are now. Too far in for you to go.”

  “You’re shivering. And wet,” he said, but his hand wasn’t reaching for any kind of towel.

  She grinned, shifted and pulled the covers over both of them, and the lights came up again. He dimmed her lamp and glanced out the window.

  “It’s a bad one,” she murmured.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “If it was going to turn into anything, I’d have been called back in.” This wasn’t a hurricane, or even a tropical storm because when either hit the Eastern Seaboard, every military person in sight was utilized. And he could think of many other ways he’d like to be utilized tonight.

  Carly had closed her eyes, her breathing deep and even.

  He planned on letting her nap and waking her up better than an alarm clock ever could. His hand stroked her thigh lightly, felt for the scar he knew was there. Her eyes opened, but she didn’t seem self conscious, didn’t turn away from his touch.

  “Your surgeon was good,” Hunt said. He lifted the covers and ran a finger along the faintly pink scar on the outside of her right thigh. And then he touched the other scar, the longer one he’d felt along her spine for the first time tonight.

  For a lot of women, the scars would’ve been the bigger blow, but Carly wasn’t most women. As an athlete, Hunt knew she saw her body as a tool to get her where she needed to go. Her self-confidence in that sense showed, despite the fact that she was experiencing a temporary setback in the surfing department.

  “Only the best for the Winters’ women,” she said. “The best high society has to offer. And you have a nice collection yourself.”

  “Wear them with pride, I always say.” He pointed to the nearly invisible scar on his side. “This is my most recent. The enemy decided I shouldn’t stop him from escaping.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t succeed in stopping you.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He paused. “Want to tell me about your scars?”

  “I don’t want to talk about work,” she said.

  “What do you want to talk about, then?”

  “I don’t plan on either of us doing too much talking right now,” she said, reaching down between his legs.

  Oh, yeah, he could live with that.

  He was already heavy and hard against her palm, and he rolled onto his back and let her stroke him for a few minutes. She leaned in, her breasts brushing his chest and she kissed him, then caught his lower lip between her teeth and sucked gently.

  He tucked one of his arms under his head while she kissed him, letting his free hand roam over her bare back. She continued stroking him with one hand, let her other move lower between his legs and smiled against his mouth when he moaned.

  “You’re a bad, bad girl, Carly Winters,” he murmured when she let him up for air.

  “What? You think I’m corrupting you?” she asked as her fingertips continued to tease probably the most sensitive area on his body next to his cock. His hips rose off the bed.

  “Yeah, I do,” he managed to choke out, sure he was losing brain cells to her touch by the second.

  Carly’s thumb circled the ring of muscle around the head of his cock as she nipped his earlobe. Then she licked along the outer ridge of his ear and down his neck, murmuring, “put it in my file, right next to that fax.”

  “You’re in so much trouble.”

  “I’m shaking,” she said, her teeth capturing one of his nipples, the sensation a direct hit to his groin.

  His balls tightened, he heard his own breath grow ragged and finally, he called uncle. “Not like this, baby. I want to be inside you when I come. Please.”

  She nipped his neck as she acquiesced, moved her hands away slowly and the sensations lingered on his skin. It was her turn to lie back on the tangled sheets, looking so damned sexy with a deep flush coloring her cheeks and her breasts.
He stopped everything so he could stare at her for a few seconds. He let her fingers trace her nipples, dark pink and taut and she met his gaze. Her lips parted and he knew she was ready.

  Hunt urged her onto her side so she faced away from him and toward the uncovered window that the rain continued to sluice against mercilessly. He discovered that he’d been right about his tattoo theory. Carly hadn’t stopped at one.

  He traced a delicate line of three small dolphins, outlined in a very light gray and filled in with an even lighter shade of blue-gray, in mid-jump from a series of waves. The whole thing was maybe three inches in length and unobtrusive—almost invisible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it and placed low enough to be covered when she wore a bikini.

  This one was personal.

  “I got that after the accident,” she whispered.

  “It’s beautiful. Just like you, Carly,” he said. He pushed his chest against her back. His hand skimmed her smooth stomach until his fingers dipped toward her sex and his face nuzzled against her shoulder.

  The storm shook the house.

  Carly was wet for him and he kept her legs spread with his thigh while he teased her. Eventually her thighs shook from the strain and she begged for him.

  She rolled so she was on her stomach, pushed up onto her hands and knees and he covered her with his body, eased inside her and then helped her kneel up. His chest pressed her back as he held her hips in place and thrust into her. She put her hands against the headboard for support while he took her, her heat so welcoming that he buried himself to the hilt and she whimpered with pleasure.

  “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop, Hunt,” she cried out.

  “You’re still in too much trouble to give orders,” he said, and it was trouble she never wanted to be rid of, the best kind. It was going to leave her legs too weak to walk, the kind that made her abs clench and her moans throaty and constant and almost as loud as his.

  Sex had never been this good. Ever. She’d known, on some level, that it could be. That it should be. But this was as if her body finally got its act together and demanded its fill, and as much as she didn’t want this to end, she needed that release. Had to have it.

  She pushed backward, forcing him to her rhythm because she wanted him louder, wanted the bed to shake with the same kind of force and fury that shook her house. He took her challenge, took her with a single-minded intensity she wanted so much more of. When his hand moved forward to stroke her clit in tandem with his motion, she closed her eyes, listened when he groaned, now, baby, now, and let the orgasm rip through her. And when he came seconds later, with several intense, hard thrusts, he was yelling her name into the darkness.

  15

  SUN HIGH OVERHEAD, wind in his hair and salt water dancing in the wake of his wave runner, Hunt gunned it through the chop. He took a narrow turn by the reef and headed out for another run, prepared to fling his towed passenger, board and all, into the waves at full speed.

  “Tow me in right behind the next setup!”Hunt barely heard the shouted directive over the roar of the ocean, and he obliged by directing the wave runner toward the pounding swells, felt the line of the towed surfer and board tighten behind him. The waves were breaking off the far side, where he’d practiced rock portage as a BUD/s training for the SEALs. The dangerous, but necessary practice of transferring from rubber raft to the sharp and slippery rocks during some of the most brutal surf was hard to master. Judging by the swells he saw today, he knew any training exercises would’ve been called off.

  Some of the best surfing to be found here occurred a few miles from that spot, or at least the best spot to practice the kind of extreme surfing that Cash liked best.

  Cash had grown up in Tanzania, learned to surf amidst the sharks and waves of Dar Es Salaam. His parents were doctors who traveled to third-world countries for years at a time to practice medicine.

  His teammate and friend spoke nineteen tribal dialects, and the six main romance languages, including Catalan, and enough to get by in three others. And he could curse well in all of them, which was something that happened loudly and often. He’d surfed competitively for a bit when he was younger, joined the Navy at seventeen and entered BUD/s at nineteen, and was one of the few who had actually enjoyed surf passage. He was also able to get Hunt into more trouble than Ty ever did, and always on a moment’s notice, as evidenced by the previous night’s escapades.

  Hunt felt the tug on the rope and slowed down. “You don’t want to go out farther?” he shouted back, slowed, then turned to ask when Cash didn’t paddle past him into the swell.

  His teammate sat balanced on his board, staring at the ocean. He put up his arm and motioned as he told Hunt, “the swell’s maxed out. Not worth it.”

  He said this with a straight face, even as a ten-foot wave crashed against the rocks inland. It would’ve capsized the rubber raft. In these conditions, Cash had just declared it not extreme enough.

  “What’s getting thrown from one of those feel like?” Hunt asked, once they’d gotten to the dock leading to the Naval Base.

  “It goddamned hurts.”

  “I’ll bet it does,” Hunt agreed, trying to picture Carly in waves like he’d seen today. Waves he knew were nothing compared to what she’d surfed.

  “I didn’t know you cared so much about me,” Cash said. “I mean, why the sudden interest in surfing?” he asked, with a grin that indicated he knew exactly why Hunt was interested.

  It was Hunt’s luck that Cash had been with him and Carly last night, and subsequently knew the whole story about Hunt being the stand-in date. The evidence: Cash had started off the morning with, I think what you’re doing with surfer girl’s a really bad idea.

  Hunt had started off the morning ignoring his friend.

  Now, Cash shrugged. “I hadn’t heard of her, but that doesn’t mean anything. I follow a different side of the sport. And women don’t get a lot of press, even a hot one like her,” he explained. “You know, she and I would have a lot more in common if she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend.”

  “Maybe you should keep your eyes off my hot surfer chick. Besides, she’s not looking for any kind of commitment, and I think she’s officially done with surfer dudes,” Hunt said.

  Cash held up his arms in surrender and mumbled something about how no one used the phrase surfer dude anymore. “And hey, you were the one who brought it up, remember?”

  “She was hurt badly. As a result, she’s afraid to go back in the water,” Hunt admitted. “And if you tell her I told you, she’ll kill me.”

  “I won’t say a word. But it sounds like all she needs is a little bit of juju. You know, a good luck charm. Something that makes her think she’s protected.”

  “I don’t know if that’s it. She seems so strong. Maybe she’s just scared of being physically hurt again.”

  “That’s not it. We’ve all been hurt bad, and I can guarantee that wasn’t the first accident she had, even though it might’ve been the worst.”

  “So what now?” Hunt ran his hands through his hair in frustration.

  “Whatever happened took away her confidence. And fear’s a killer if it’s not channeled,” Cash replied.

  For a second they were both silent. Hunt knew they were thinking the same thing, about Hunt and Carly’s time out, about how the two of them would put the fear to work for them, or else they wouldn’t have a chance in hell of surviving.

  “How do I do that?” Hunt asked.

  “Slip her some juju. Although, judging by the way you were whistling this morning, you already did that,” Cash said innocently, then took off down the dock as Hunt ran after him.

  “ANY NEW TATTOOS I should know about?” Carly asked her friend through the cell phone’s earpiece as she stood like a mannequin, on a raised pedestal, wearing the itchiest fabric known to man. Long abandoned by her mother and sister so Nicole could try on her wedding dress again, Carly got ahold of Samantha, who’d had her phone turned off for most of the morning.

>   “There might be. I tried my best to avoid all mirrors this morning before coming to school.” Sam’s voice sounded groggy, but there was a hint of something else in it, as well.“Are you feeling that bad?” Carly was feeling really good after a ride up the coast that morning. The wind had been in her hair, the sun beating on her bare shoulders. Surprisingly, the feeling hadn’t left her, even when she’d climbed into the bridesmaid’s dress.

  “I didn’t get much sleep, so it’s more a feeling that there’s not going to be enough coffee in the world today. Ben, no headlocks in the hallway!” A pause, and then Sam spoke again. “Sorry, didn’t mean to yell in your ear. Although I think my head just split in two.”

  “Well, it seemed you had a blast last night, and it obviously continued after then. When I didn’t hear from you first thing this morning, I thought maybe you’d run off with Ty.”

  “One of us ran off, but it wasn’t me,” Sam said quietly. Carly cursed inwardly because she’d known this was going to happen. “Can I help?” she asked.

  “I wish. But no, it’s something I’ll have to deal with on my own.”

  “That’s something I understand all too well. But I’m here if you need me.”

  “Bell’s ringing. I’ve got to run.”

  “We’ll talk later,” Carly promised, and clicked off. All she wanted to do was get out of the heels she’d stuffed her feet into and stretch.

  She’d slept later than she had in ages, missed the dawn completely and woke firmly into Friday morning sun-up. Hunt wasn’t in bed with her, but she could hear him. That was enough to cause her to move, although she was sore and ached in places she didn’t remember ever aching in.

  She’d liked that feeling. She had to try this stand-in boyfriend fantasy thing more often, especially with a man who was thoughtful enough to leave her notes that said, see you for the dawn patrol tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, at dawn, she had plans to distract Hunt from his quest to surf. She’d make her stand-in help her play out her fantasy over and over again.