In five days Kyle and Maxie were going to be married.
In six days he was leaving for Desert Storm.
The possibility that he could lose her, his life and the only sense of belonging he’d felt since he was twelve hit Sergeant Kyle Hayden like a barrage of artillery. He tightened his arms around the woman he loved, knowing nothing could soften the news he’d always expected.
“This is so unfair,” she cried, her tears wetting his olive drab T-shirt.
“I know, baby, I know,” he soothed, brushing his mouth over her hair, her temple, inhaling and memorizing her lush scent. “But orders are orders.” He peppered kisses over her cheeks, tasting her tears, wishing he could erase them, yet even as she sobbed, something tugged hard inside him. No one had ever cried for him before. No one had ever cared enough.
She tipped her head; tortured green eyes filled with doubt gazed up at him. “Oh, Kyle. This isn’t one of your thrillseeking games. This isn’t racing a car or a dirt bike where you can stop if you want.” Her nails dug into his bare arms. “War is real Real bullets, real danger.”
He silenced her with a deep kiss. Yes, it was war, but for five years he’d been training to fight. The need to put himself to the test meshed with nightmarish scenes of battle suddenly flashing in his mind, yet he kept tasting her mouth, kept running his hands familiarly over her plush body, pushing aside the images and focusing on the physical, the tangible... the woman in his arms.
“I’ll be okay.” His breath rushed with hers, his insatiable craving to get closer to her, get naked with her, right now, raged along his blood. “I’ll keep my head down. I swear it.”
“You better keep all of you down,” she said.
He met her gaze, grinning. “Any parts you were particularly worried about?” He wiggled his brows.
Suddenly she shoved out of his arms. “Is everything a joke to you?” she said, swiping at her tears. “My God, Kyle, are you itching to get yourself killed?”
“Come on, baby, don’t start this now.” He tried to coax her back into his arms, but she wasn’t buying it, skating out of his reach.
“Then when, Kyle? When you break your back instead of your leg bungee jumping out of a helicopter?” She flung her hand toward the now forgotten crutches propped against his wall locker. “Or when you take a bullet because you want to experience it ripping through your flesh to see if it compares to one of those ridiculous stunts you’ve already pulled!” Maxie knew she was nearly yelling, but she was so scared, for him, for their future.
Her temper was amazing, he thought as she paced like an anxious colt, his gaze dropping to her short red shirt and her long muscled legs. He wanted to be between them. “You’re overreacting. That stuff never bothered you before. You even came along.” He looked her over, long and heavy, his mind on the fringes of the conversation. “And I thought you liked that about me.”
Maxie remembered first meeting him when he raced stock cars in Long Beach. And the collision he was lucky to walk away from alive. “In a man I was just getting to know, yeah. It was intriguing.” She paused, leveling him a look. “But not in a husband.” The shift in his features told her he was at least listening this time, and she took a step closer. “I’d like the future father of my children around long enough—”
“Don’t,” he cut in. “I can’t think that far ahead, Max.” He jammed his fingers into his short dark hair. “Babies?” The thought terrified him, and his voice pleaded. “Why are you bringing this up now?”
Because we’ve pushed the wedding ahead three months because of the war, and I feel rushed. Because you’re not acting at all like a man ready for a wife. Instead she told him her most recent reservation. “Because I honestly feel you love cheating death more than you love me.”
The fraction of hesitation was far too revealing for Maxie.
“That’s not true. I love you, but I have orders.”
“I know that,” she said impatiently. “But this is affecting us already, Kyle, and I want you to see beyond it.” Why did she always have to be the levelheaded one in their relationship?
He straightened, folding his arms over his chest. “It’s affecting you, not me.”
Hurt sprang in her eyes. “Isn’t that enough?”
Kyle knew he was being selfish. But he could be gone for months or a year—or he could get killed and never see her again. He didn’t want to talk about kids and a home. He and his older brother, Mitch, had been alone since they were abandoned when he was twelve, and the picture she painted was too foreign to him anyway. He loved her, loved everything about her, yet because he was obligated to the Marine Corps and going into a war, he couldn’t give her what she wanted with any kind of certainty. Suddenly Kyle was more afraid of losing her over this than he was of an Iraqi bullet.
He lifted his gaze, hoping she didn’t see how scared he was. “I love you, Maxie. This is all we have right now.” He held out his hand, waiting.
She hesitated, gazing into his hopeful eyes. Then in a heartbeat, she flew to him, clinging to him.
And he clung back, covering her mouth with his. His kiss was fierce and savage, his lips grinding over hers with his need to draw her into himself, to take part of her with him to Saudi. He needed her, and she gave and gave, and then plowing her fingers through his hair and pressing her hips into his, she gave some more.
And Kyle took, grasping, greedy. He couldn’t think that in a few days he was going to leave his new bride alone, that he was trading her smile on their honeymoon for a taste of enemy gunfire. He thought only of Maxie Parrish. Sleek and sexy and here for him. His hunger mounted to unfathomable proportions, his hands driving beneath her blouse, riding roughly up her warm skin. So soft, so Maxie. And when she leaned deeper into him, yanking up his T-shirt, sliding her hands over his flesh, he knew her mind was on the pleasure they would share, knew she ached with the same unrelenting hunger that always raged between them. The anticipation of being inside her nearly undid him as he quickly unfastened her bra, his hands sweeping around to envelop her breasts.
Maxie moaned with dark pleasure, helping him strip off her blouse, her nipples already tight and hard for his questing fingers. He has the most incredible mouth, she thought as he bent her back over his arm and dragged it over her naked flesh, lips tugging, drawing heavier and closer to the center of her breasts. Expectation heightened her nerves.
“Kyle, Kyle,” she breathed, hesitating against his kiss, struggling with the swamping sensations to see beyond desire. He was leaving for who knew how long, and apart, they would change. It was inevitable. But how drastically would it affect their new marriage? “Maybe—” She gasped for a breath as his mouth drifted closer to her nipple. “Maybe we should postpone the wedding till you come back.”
Suddenly she was upright and he was cupping her jaw in his broad palms, his dark eyes intense with quick fear. “Don’t even think it. I need you.” He closed his eyes, briefly, tightly. “I love you, Max,” he murmured against her mouth, then kissed her again and again. “I need to know you’re my wife.”
Maxie felt the anxiousness in his kiss, his embrace. “Oh, Kyle. I love you, too, but we have to be realistic,” she managed to say, hurriedly peeling his T-shirt over his head.
Abruptly
