Major Attraction (13 page)

“He can't hear us, he's playing the radio. And he can't see us through the screen. Since he's not speeding, we have at least thirty minutes left of uninterrupted time while he drives us across town.”

Ethan's hands eased their grip. He began rubbing charged circles against her back. When his fingers hit bare skin they jerked and returned to her waist.

“What about—?” He glanced at the door.

J.C. fluffed out her skirt and let the folds float down around them, hiding them both from the waist down. “No one will see a thing.”

“But—”

She pressed a finger to his lips to silence him. “Don't be such a straight arrow, Major. We're both adults. You're hot, and I'm hot for you.”

Ethan's hands slipped down to cup her bottom. He kissed her finger, then chased it away with a playful nip so he could speak. “I think you're the hottest damn thing on five continents. I want you so bad I can taste it. But this is crazy. We're supposed to be faking it.”

“Does this feel fake to you?” She reached beneath the cover of her skirt and cupped him through his pants.

“Jo!” He thrust up into her palm. But with a gut-deep moan he pulled her away. “We shouldn't.”

“There's nothing indecorous about sleeping with the woman you're supposedly engaged to. Not in this century. Your reputation's safe, I assure you.”

“Mine?” He eyes darkened with the battle between conscience and desire. “I was more concerned about yours. I don't want you to think I'm using you.”

“I'm a modern woman, Ethan. I can take care of myself. I always have.” Without further debate, she pulled
back her skirt and unzipped him, taking care to protect him as he sprang free.

“You asked me what I wanted. This is it. You. A nice, hot, lusty affair with a guy who really turns me on. Two weeks of fooling around and then we're done. No strings attached. I play your fiancée, we play with each other. I don't expect you to be there for me when it's over. I won't hold you to any promises.” She hesitated for an instant, bowing her head and turning away as she heard her bold words. Maybe she was selling something she couldn't really deliver. “I haven't had a lover for a long time. I haven't had one like you…ever.”

He nudged a finger beneath her chin and tipped it up. “One like me?”

“You make me crazy with just a look. Imagine what happens when you actually touch me.” Okay, now she was sounding desperate. J.C. threw up her hands. “God, Ethan. I'm throwing myself at you. If you're worried about my reputation, then save me from this embarrassment.” Was this the kind of rejection she was going to write about in her next column? “Don't you want me?”

He simply looked down at his cock.

J.C. grinned at the proof. “Then take me.”

The Marines hadn't stormed Omaha Beach with any more determination than Ethan McCormick making love to a woman.

True to form, he was more a man of action than a talker. In a flurry of hands and lips, he grabbed her bottom and pulled her squarely back onto his lap, bunching her dress up between them. Cocooned in the lush interior of the powerful car, everything was intensified—the scents of leather and flowers and dripping sex—the tastes of salty skin and champagne-kissed tongues—the lambent inten
sity of dark gray eyes telling her every graphic thing he wanted to do to her an instant before it happened.

While his lips tormented a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves along the side of her neck, Ethan reached behind her and unzipped her dress. “I warn you, it's been a long time for me, too.”

He tugged the slim straps of her gown off her shoulders. The rough pads of his fingers left a trail of goose bumps as they slid along her skin.

“Believe me, your skills aren't a bit rusty.”

“I might not be able to last.” He peeled the bodice down to her waist, exposing her breasts to his feasting eyes.

“Fast works for me, too.”

He wrapped his tongue around her engorged nipple and sucked her. Hard.

“Ethan!”

She clutched at his shoulders, dragged her palms up to grasp his head and hold him to her as he drew on her until she was clawing, squirming, throbbing. His hands slipped under her dress and squeezed her bottom through her panties. His erection nudged her thigh. He rubbed himself against her slick cotton crotch and groaned into the pillow of her breast.

“I want to ram it in you right now.”

“Wait…” She tipped his mouth up to kiss him, pacifying him as she scooted off his lap. But his hands cinched around her thighs and held her in place against his dancing, distended heat. Laughing breathlessly at his urgency, she leaned over and grabbed her purse. “I have…” He kissed the underside of her breast and she couldn't finish her sentence. She pulled out the foil-wrapped packet and tore it open as she straightened.

“You were planning this?”

“I was hoping.” His hands were there to help hers unwrap the condom. “I'm a relationship counselor. I always warn my readers to be prepared and be safe.”

A traitorous word slipped out, but she couldn't quite recall what danger would trigger that little niggle of doubt at the back of her mind when every atom of her body was focused on pending orgasmic release.

“Good advice.” He palmed her breasts. Played with them, fascinated himself with them—made it nearly impossible for her to focus on placing the protection on his engorged tip and unrolling it down his sleek, hard length. Ethan groaned, thrusting helplessly within her hands. “Hurry.”

“I am.” J.C. reached beneath her skirt to wiggle out of her panties.

“Jo…I can't wait.”

Ethan grabbed the crotch, shoved the material aside and plunged up inside her. He went deep and hard, without any finesse. It was a shock at first—so much man, and it had been so long. But J.C. was wet and ready. She stretched and filled and slipped down around him like a fitted glove.

Just like that, he ground his hips and emptied himself inside her. He tipped back his head and cried out a praise on a panting, low-pitched whisper. “Better…than I remembered.”

She was amused, touched, flattered—jealous—of the rapture on his face. “Ethan, I—”

“Not done,” he growled. Still joined, he rocked against her. “More.”

His face popped back up and he nailed her with a look so dark, so intense, that she trembled in anticipation. Ethan wasn't finished yet.

Not with her.

That storm-filled gaze never left hers as he slipped one thumb between them and rubbed her sensitive nub, coiling her tighter and tighter from inside and out. He tunneled his fingers into the short wisps of hair at her nape and dragged her down for a kiss. He drove his tongue into her mouth, drove himself into her. Rubbed her. Tongued her. Filled her. Look. Thrust. Nip. Stroke. Rub.

The throbbing pressure between her legs swirled in a tornadic spiral and burst. Her thighs clenched. The muscles inside gripped him tight and wept with pleasure. She gasped against his mouth, then arched her back against his clutching hands and savored the aftershocks winging through her body like jolts of pure energy that shot out through the tips of her breasts, her fingers, her toes, leaving her sated and spent in their wake.

“I knew it.” J.C. collapsed onto Ethan's chest, almost too tired to catch her breath. His head lolled back on top of the seat and he wrapped his arms loosely around her, as if he, too, had exhausted every last store of strength. Despite the observation that she was half-naked while he was still fully clothed, it had been a perfect mating. In all her days, she would never have expected a Corps-to-the-core man like Ethan McCormick could make her feel this good. She smiled against a sturdy brass button and murmured, “Bliss.”

His fingers traced a lazy pattern up and down her spine. “What did you say?”

Corps-to-the-core.

A sudden chill crept in to spoil perfection.

“Nothing important.” J.C. snuggled closer, trying to recapture that amazing afterglow.

“Cold?” Ethan misinterpreted her shiver. He pulled her stole from beneath her purse and draped it over her back
and shoulders before adjusting her less intimately in his lap, more securely in his arms.

She'd gotten what she wanted, hadn't she? Great sex. Outstanding sex. Thank-God-I'm-a-Woman sex. If her intuition was right, she would be getting it for two whole weeks. And then this fine-bodied Marine would move on.

“No strings attached.”
Those were her own words. It was the way she wanted it.

So why was she suddenly worried that two weeks in the major's arms wouldn't be nearly long enough?

“I
SCREWED UP
, T
RAVIS
. I had sex with her last night.”

“All right, bro!” His little brother would have slapped him a high five if the width of Ethan's desk wasn't between them. “I knew my training would pay off. Your methods might be outdated, your pickup lines for dummies approach pretty lame…”

“Gee, thanks.”

“…but something must be working for you.” When he flashed that way-to-go, locker-room smile, Ethan rolled back his chair and stood.

Guilt was a heavy weight for his code of honor to bear. He'd never meant for it to go that far with J.C. The chemistry between them was all well and good—it made the charade more convincing. But he'd intended to be a perfect gentleman for two weeks. He could doff his hat, buy her a nice gift, thank her and walk away. Neither one of them would get hurt. There would be no regrets.

But she'd been so hot, so tight, so damned persuasive. He'd been… “Hell.” He started his inevitable pacing, but spared a daunting glare for his brother, as if this whole mess was his fault. “You're not helping.”

Travis braced his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I'm just glad to know there's some real McCormick blood still flowing through your veins.”

“Fine. So I haven't tarnished the family name. Glad you're happy. But I didn't call to brag.” Ethan perched
on the corner of his desk and pleaded with the expert. “I need to know how to back this up a notch so it doesn't happen again.”

“She wasn't any good?”

She was freaking fantastic.
Maybe the year or so he'd sworn off women had… No. He had to be honest here. Josephine C. Gardner had been everything he wanted in a lover. Honest. Funny. Daring. She'd even made dancing a worthwhile risk. She wasn't afraid to go after what she wanted yet was vulnerable all at the same time. She was a healthy handful of temptation with plenty of curves and attitude to grab on to. And those lips. And
those
lips. Hell.

Travis's knowing grin swam back into focus. “Oh. She was
that
good.”

Ethan launched himself to his feet and resumed his pacing. “It wasn't supposed to happen. This isn't the right time to indulge any underused body parts. I enlisted her for two weeks to impress Craddock. Period.”

“Did she?”

“Big time.”

“She sounds like a keeper to me. I don't see a problem.” Travis adjusted the rolled-up sleeves of his camouflage shirt around his biceps and stood. “My team's running a rescue drill this afternoon. I could have gone in early to prep for it. I don't understand why I'm here, answering your panicked, crack-of-dawn phone call—”

Ethan stopped. “I wasn't panicked.”

Mimicking him in a tone that, minus the cusswords, sounded annoyingly familiar, Travis replayed the call.
“‘Can you stop by? We need to talk about this woman plan of yours.”'
He grabbed his cap and shrugged. “My God, Ethan. Who calls picking up chicks a ‘woman plan'? I think you're analyzing this thing way too much.”

“J.C. isn't just some chick.”

“Obviously.” Travis strolled to the door, leaving without giving him any answers. “Why can't you just enjoy what's happening? You found a girl who turns you on. She's gettin' the job done you asked her to do, and you're gettin' great sex. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.”

Ethan pursued him. “I don't want a relationship. I want that promotion.”

“Why can't you have both?”

“Two words. Bethany Mead.”

Travis halted, sympathy clear in his voice and expression as he faced him. “All right. So Mrs. Mead screwed you royally—pardon the pun.” Ethan wasn't in a mood to laugh. “But from what you've told me, she was a piece of work. Not all women are like that, Ethan. She was looking to make trouble. To make her husband sit up and take notice of her. You were just the poor guy who fell into her trap.”

“Yeah. Hook, line and sinker. I got so consumed with her, I couldn't see the big picture.” Ethan scrubbed his palm at the tension building in the back of his neck. It didn't take half a second to remember J.C.'s hands there, stroking, grasping—pleasuring herself and demanding more from him. He jerked his hand away from the erotic memory and jabbed it into the pocket of his blue uniform slacks. “I wasn't thinking last night with J.C., either. I can't afford to get blindsided by any surprises until this job is in the bag.”

Travis finally took this conversation as seriously as Ethan needed him to. “J.C. isn't married, is she?”

“No.” Even if he couldn't trust her word, her apartment had been sized for one person and decorated with funky, female tastes. All the locks on the door indicated she was a woman who defended herself. There wasn't another man in the picture.

“Has she led you on in any way? Done something to make you think she's not being straight with you?”

You asked me what I wanted. Two weeks of fooling around and then we're done.

It didn't get much more straightforward than that.

“No.” Ethan wandered back to his desk and mindlessly shuffled through the papers on top. “She says she wants to have an affair during the two weeks we're faking this engagement.”

Was that a snort he heard? “Let me get this straight. She wants to have more sex with you, and then let you off the hook when it's done.” Travis faced off on the opposite side of the desk. “You're nuts for even debating this.”

“There has to be a catch, right? Either we're involved or we're—I'm—in trouble. J.C. and I went from fake to real way too fast for me.” Ethan propped his hands on his hips and looked down at his brother, unable to shake the feeling of hidden danger waiting just around the corner. “I'm not like you, Trav. I don't think I can do casual sex.”

Travis snapped his shoulders back and folded his arms across his chest, reminding Ethan of when they were kids and his little brother would dig in his heels and threaten to cause trouble if big brother didn't let him tag along. “There's nothing
casual
about it when I go to bed with a woman. I have to feel something before I can hook up with her.”

Ethan had never backed down from those challenges growing up. He didn't now. “
Something,
huh? I don't see you engaged or married. As far as I know, you've never even considered it.”

Travis laughed as the moment of defending his impugned honor passed. “I get it now.” With a sagelike
nod of his head, he circled the desk. “We need to have an advanced version of the birds and the bees talk.”

“Trav.”

He tapped Ethan's shoulder and urged him down into his chair. Then he propped his hip on the edge of the desk and leaned in as if he was sharing the ultimate secret of the female species. “Here's addendum 1-A. No matter what Dad told us in junior high, as adults, you don't have to be in love with a woman to have sex with her. Sure, you gotta care about her on some level—as a friend, someone fun to hang out with, someone you'd like to get to know better—but you don't have to promise the rest of your life to her just to get in the sack.”

“I didn't say I was in love with J.C.”

Captain Smart-mouth ignored the protest. “Addendum 2-B. Women can have the same attitude about us.”

“I didn't say—”

“You've got feelings of some kind, Ethan.” Travis's sigh punctuated the allegation and resonated deep in Ethan's conscience. “I think that's what has you spooked. You wanted a business arrangement and you got a relationship instead.” He reached out and laid a commiserating hand on Ethan's shoulder. “Maybe if you got laid more often, you'd be a little less uptight about this whole sex thing.”

Ethan leaned back and glared at his brother. So he should take J.C. up on her offer and pray to God that whatever he was feeling didn't come back to bite him in the butt when the affair was over? Whether it was his old-fashioned moral code or getting burned by Bethany that made him hesitate, Ethan didn't get a chance to decide.

The sharp rap at his door switched him into business mode and put his personal life on hold. “Come in.”

He pushed himself up from his desk as his aide, Kyle
Black, bustled into the office with a stack of reports and newspaper in hand. “Good morning, sir.”

Travis slowly stood up and turned, his wary posture suddenly more special forces than kid brother. “Captain Black.”

Black acknowledged Travis with a nod. At equal rank, no salute was necessary. But Ethan saw the slight hitch in his aide's step upon recognizing Travis, and sensed an unspoken rivalry of some kind between the two captains.

“You two know each other?” Ethan asked.

Travis nodded. “We went through basic training together. It's been a while.”

Whether that was merely a statement of fact or an overture to catch up on old times, Kyle ignored it. He set the memos and correspondence on top of the desk. “How'd it go with J.C. last night after the party, sir?”

Travis squirmed beside him, suppressing a grin at the innocent question. Ethan stayed tough. “That's none of your business, Captain.”

“But you two had a good time, right?”

Oh, yeah. The limo ride home had been the highlight of the evening for her. And him. Travis ducked his head to hide his amusement at the unintentional double entendres.

“Dr. Gardner enjoyed her evening.” Ethan put an end to the personal questions. He nodded toward the paper in Kyle's hand. “Is there something you needed, Captain?”

“I thought you'd want to see this.” Kyle rounded the desk and unfolded the paper on the blotter so that each of them could see. He pointed to the heart and fig-leaf logo marking the column at the top of the page. Ethan groaned inside. With his own screwed-up perception of relationships, he wasn't in any mood to hear how the infamous Dr. Cyn might handle his situation. “Dr. Cyn's
started a new series of columns about dating men in uniform. Craddock's pretty steamed about it.”

Ethan snatched up the paper and read the less-than-flattering editorial.
Have your fling. But don't count on a Marine.
“Who the hell does she think she is?”

Travis read the same words over his shoulder and whistled. “She's got balls. Telling it like it is.”

Ethan slapped the paper down on the desk. “It's damn near libelous. A fifty-dollar bet to prove we're a bunch of jerks?” He turned to his aide. “Is Craddock doing something about this?”

“He's letting it ride for now. But he wants us to keep an eye out for any negative feedback in the ranks.”

“There's positive stuff in there, too,” Travis insisted. He pointed to one line in particular. “‘Thousands of gorgeous guys in uniforms—all sizes, shapes and colors.' She admits there are exceptions to the love-'em-and-leave-'em reputation, and she welcomes questions and comments from her readers.” Ethan steeled himself at the twinkle of challenge in his brother's eyes. “Maybe you ought to go to Dr. Cyn's Web site or write a letter if you feel so strongly about it.”

“I'm not going to dignify this woman's misconceptions with any kind of response.”

Kyle chimed in, playing devil's advocate, as usual. “Can you imagine what it would do to recruitment if people start believing this stuff? Men will second-guess going into the service if they think it'll cost them a woman. I'll bet that Dr. Cyn is a frustrated old biddy who's not gettin' any.”

Ethan wasn't sure he liked the tone of Kyle's humor. But Travis jumped in to defend the unknown writer before he could. “She states flat out that she plans to back up
her allegations with research. Sounds to me like she's looking for somebody to prove her wrong.”

Captain Black's chest puffed out, and Ethan quickly asserted his authority to defuse the tension in the room. He rolled up the paper and tossed it into the trash where it belonged. “It doesn't matter. Nobody will read this. Nobody will buy it.”

“Millie Craddock reads it,” Kyle stated. “If Mrs. Craddock thinks it's worth pointing out to the general, then the general's going to expect something to be done about it.”

Ethan grit his teeth. This was not the kind of business he wanted to attend to. But even though public relations wasn't his area of expertise, he'd sworn an oath to protect the integrity of the Corps. “Put in a call to the general's office,” he ordered. “I'll find out how he wants us to handle it. Anything else, Captain?”

Kyle pulled a note from his pocket and handed it across the desk. “Yes, sir. I ran down those two names you asked for. Guerro and Rodriguez. Both men are stationed at Quantico. Mechanized support unit.”

“And they've been on leave?”

“Yes, sir. But they're due to report back to camp today.”

Ethan nodded, pocketing the names and personnel information Black had gathered. “Follow up on that. Make sure their unit can account for them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get me Craddock on the phone. That'll be all. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” Kyle clicked his shiny black shoes together, then turned slightly to acknowledge Travis. “McCormick.”

Quantico, Virginia was an easy drive from D.C. Was
that far enough away to keep them from pestering J.C. again? She'd had three locks on her apartment door. Did she worry about men like that? Or was she just practicing good common sense for a woman who lived alone? “Captain?”

Kyle turned in the doorway at the summons. “Sir?”

“Put in a call to my fiancée, too. I've got her cell number if you need it.”

“Will do, sir.”

J.C. could complain all she wanted about his old-fashioned sensibilities. He didn't like her going home alone. Not at night. Especially not until he was sure Guerro and Rodriguez understood that accosting a woman in a dark parking lot was not an option he would allow.