style="font-size:15px;"> “Bar fight.” His lashes drooped and she knew instinctively that he was looking at her lips.
Without conscious thought, she moistened them. His fingertips were tracing her spine, setting off all manner of sensations inside her. “Are you, ah, in a lot of bar fights?”
“One or two. I stopped more of them.” He shifted slightly, pulling her in closer till her breasts were pressed against his chest. “I was an MP in the army.”
Her breasts were pressed against his chest. “MP?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“Military Police.” His head dropped toward hers. “Former badass Sergeant First Class Fortune at your service.” As he said the words his head lowered toward hers. His breath fanned her mouth as he said, “I’m going to kiss you, you know.”
Heat flushed through her veins, collecting in her center. Her head felt heavy as she looked up at him. Any hope of maintaining a professional distance had gotten washed away. “Former Sergeant, I sure hope so,” she breathed.
One of his hands left her back to slide along her jaw.
Her lips parted and she drew in a deep breath. She felt the way he went still when she slid her hands around his neck. His thumb brushed over her lower lip and she couldn’t help the soft sound that rose in her throat.
“Damn,” he murmured. And then his mouth found hers.
His kiss didn’t feel damned. If anything, his kiss felt glorious.
And if she was going to go in a storm cellar, at least she was going to go like this.
He lifted his head way too soon. His eyes were dark and unreadable in the dim lantern light, but the searching in them felt as real as the moisture leaching from his clothes into hers.
She pulled his head down. “If you’re going to kiss me,” she said as she caught his lower lip between hers and lightly tugged, “kiss me.”
He groaned, kissing her even more deeply. His hands traveled down her back, down her hips, her rear, pulling her up and into him. He was hard and her head whirled even more. All she wanted to do right then and there was twine herself around him and he seemed to know it because he yanked his mouth away from her and lifted her right off her feet.
“Put your legs around me.”
She didn’t need the request. She was already linking her boots behind him and wishing there weren’t two layers of denim between them. She couldn’t do anything about that at the moment, but she could do something about his shirt. She yanked it upward, hearing a few buttons scatter before he let out a low, groaning laugh and managed to pull it off his head.
She pressed her open mouth against his collarbone, tasting the moist, salty heat of his skin. He cradled her backside as he crouched down, finally lowering her onto the sleeping bag. One corner of her mind wondered if the thing was floating in water yet, but that didn’t stop her from reaching greedily between them for his belt.
He jerked and caught her hands in his, pinning them above her head against the sleeping bag.
“Don’t tell me you want me to stop.” In any other world, she’d have been shocked by her own boldness. But this wasn’t any other world. The only world that existed was contained in a flooding dirt cellar from which they had no way out. She angled her hips against his. “I can feel what you want.”
“Yeah?” His hair brushed her cheek as he kissed the side of her neck. “Does that mean I have to hurry?” His mouth burned along the curve of her shoulder. Over the thin strap of her camisole and down to where her achingly tight nipples pushed against the cotton fabric. “You’re not wearing a bra.”
Was there any point in explaining the built-in shelf bra? “Maybe you do need to hurry, if we’re going to be flooded in this cellar.”
“We’re not getting flooded,” he said again.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know.” Still holding her wrists above her head with one hand, he peeled down the top of her camisole with the other, until she felt his breath on her bare breasts. She was coming positively unglued, anticipating the brush of his mouth, the slide of his tongue—
But instead of tasting her, he lifted his head a little. “What is that?” He reached for the lantern, pulling it near so he could look more closely at her exposed breasts. “A butterfly?”
She groaned, twisting beneath him. “Yes, it’s a butterfly.” All of an inch big in pale pink and black, tattooed on the upper curve of her right breast when she’d been twenty-one. She still couldn’t free her hands, so she arched her back, rubbing her rigid nipples and the tattoo against his hard chest. “You were in the army, Sergeant Fortune. Surely you’ve seen tattoos before.” In the scheme of things, her little butterfly was hardly a record breaker. Neither was the floral curlicue on her left shoulder blade.
His teeth flashed. “Sweetheart, I’ve seen things that would turn your hair white.” He ducked his head and kissed the point of her shoulder. Then the butterfly.
Heat flowed under the surface of her tingling skin and she bit back a moan when his lips finally surrounded her nipple. Even though she twisted her wrists, halfheartedly trying to free them, he kept them bracketed. She pressed her face against the top of his head. “Jayden, please,” she breathed.
In answer, he pushed his thigh between her legs and palmed her other breast.
Pleasure rocketed through her and she cried out.
Jayden made a low sound. Utterly male. Utterly triumphant. Then his mouth was on hers again, and her wrists were finally free, and he rolled over, pulling her over him.
Noise seemed to rage beyond the storm cellar, but she was far more aware of her heart pounding loudly inside her head, of the low sounds coming from Jayden, of the clink of his belt when he finally loosened it. Breathless, she braced one hand on the floor, reaching to undo her own jeans with the other. But instead of dirt, her hand sank into mud. “Jayden, the water—”
“I know.” He cursed and kissed her hard again while the pounding outside the cellar door got even louder.
Then suddenly, he went still. “Wait.” He sat up, dumping her somewhat unceremoniously onto her butt as he stood. Instead of finishing the job of undressing, though, he fastened his belt and headed up the stairs. He pounded on the door. “Nate,” he yelled. “That you?”
Ariana hoped she wasn’t hearing things when she heard a faint, indecipherable response.
“Yeah, we’re stuck,” Jayden yelled, pressing his head close to the wood.
Once again, her adrenaline seemed to want to blow the top of her head right off. She wiped off her muddy hand and scrambled up the few steps behind him. “Who’s out there?”
“My brother Nathan. So you, uh, might—” He gestured and she flushed, realizing her camisole was bunched around her waist.
Suddenly embarrassed, she turned and tugged the stretchy fabric back where it belonged, hiding her still-tight nipples and the butterfly tattoo. She would have put on her sweater for good measure, except
