Page 52 of Delta Force Defender

There were too many what-ifs. The day had been filled with broken promises and family, but not the family she was used to. And Caradine couldn’t handle any of it in her usual ways.

She couldn’t pick a fight. She couldn’t order folks out of her restaurant. She couldn’t issue bans, then close up early so she could head to the Fairweather, throw back too many shots, and cheat at pool.

She couldn’t sneak up to the hot springs and indulge herself with a long soak sometime after midnight when no one would see her.

And she couldn’t goad her favorite commando into slamming her up against a wall, because he was here already. Worse, he knew too much about her—like the fact she wasn’t going anywhere, at least not tonight.

Not to mention a great many other truths.

But she could fight with him to get that T-shirt off. She could tip herself forward into the unending glory ofhis chest. She could taste him, reveling in those hard, lean muscles and that particular taste that was only and everIsaac.

Salt. Man. Him.

Hers—but she shied away from that word, that thought, that possessiveness, because she knew better.

She was greedy enough without laying a claim. She was desperate, maybe, and she knew this was more than one of their spiked, temper-fueled tumbles. This was a reunion. A reminder.

A reckoning, she thought.

He wrapped the length of her hair around one hand and held it tight, and then he rolled them over, baring her neck to him so he could taste her. Tease her.

It was almost too much to bear.

When she sat back and looked down at him, she planted her hands on his ridged abdomen and marveled in the lean, hard muscles of his thighs. And she worried that he could see all the wonder inside of her that only he brought out in her.

But for once, she didn’t try to hide it. They’d almost lost each other. They likely would again.

She could taste that, too, when he kissed her.

Isaac tugged her down again, setting his mouth against her collarbone, then moving, so slowly it made her worry she mightexplode, along the line of her neck. Caradine couldn’t handle it. She wriggled against him, trying to remind him how much more fun it was when he was inside her.

But he only laughed.

“You’re much sweeter after you come.” His voice was a dirty little growl in the hollow of her throat, but it thudded through her like a series of blows, one right after the next. She couldn’t catch her breath. “And I need you sweet, baby. Because this is going to take a while.”

She meant to snap at him, she knew she did, but hisbig, tough hand found its way beneath the wide waistband of the stretchy pants she wore, and her mouth didn’t seem to work the way it should.

Isaac unerringly found his way to the place where she ached for him, scalding hot and needy. At the same time, he lifted himself, that terrible, wonderful mouth of his finding one stiff nipple through her shirt.

He sucked on her like she was candy, and his fingers were magic, and he knew her far too well. He knew her body. He knewher.

And almost before she knew what was happening, the twin sensations tangled together and fused into something brighter, wilder, hotter. Caradine could do nothing at all but arch herself against him, her head falling back, nothing but Isaac and the things he could make her feel washing through her.

Helpless, something in her whispered, but as if that were a gift, not a warning.

Because this was the only place on earth where she allowed herself to feel that way. Where Isaac made her feel that way and she exulted in it, to be more specific.

She was still shuddering when he moved, hauling her with him to stretch her out over his body.

Her hair fell around them. He smoothed it back from her face, then cupped her cheeks in his palms.

“Now we’re going to take it slow,” he said, and there was that challenging glint in his eyes. “Really, really slow.”

She felt dizzy and giddy, her body was humming, and she would normally show him the door before she was tempted to indulge herself in him too much. But everything was different today. And for once she could settle herself over him. She could stretch herself out like a cat and rub herself all over him, and not because she was in a hurry.

But because she liked it. All of it, all of him.

Especially the part where she could move against the hard ridge of his desire and make them both shiver. And better still, make his eyes go silver.

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