No Surrender

She came up from the water, elated and laughing. “So that’s all it takes, huh? Did you forget I love that?”

“No, I didn’t forget.” He snatched her up again, his broad, strong fingers scorching where they touched.

Kentucky rested her palms on his shoulders, unable and unwilling to fight the heady rush that came from both his nearness and the thrill she got from being flung through the air.

He threw her easily and she laughed again before splashing down into the water.

Sean tossed her a few more times and they swam in the little pond until dusk fell and Kentucky began to shiver. But she didn’t want to stop; she didn’t want this to be over.

Even though the fact that it had to end made it more special somehow.

Her teeth chattered as the night air blew brisk on her wet flesh, but she could shiver and chatter later. When Sean and these moments were gone.

“That’s it for you, Kentucky. You’re going to catch cold. Out of the water.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” she teased, and stuck her tongue out.

“As if, woman.” He shook his head. “No one is the boss of you. Never has been, never will be. But—” he eyed her “—I am someone who cares about you and wants you to take care of yourself.”

She opened her mouth and snapped it shut again, chattering aside. Kentucky really couldn’t argue with that. It was one of the things she adored about Sean. Lynnie’s brother, Eric, had always been the “do as I say” “I’m in charge” sort. He had the same motivation for looking out for their group, because he cared. But Sean didn’t have to stamp his say-so on everything. He didn’t try to make her do anything, even if he thought it was best.

He never tried to crush the wild out of her.

“I suppose you could entice me with a fire.” She nodded to the makeshift fire pit that had been dug next to the pond.

“Hmm. I suppose I could if I knew how to start a fire.” He made a big show of shrugging his massive shoulders as if he were somehow helpless.

“Oh, please. You could start a fire with a piece of bark and a shoelace. Don’t be demure now.”

“Maybe I just want to see how long you’ll stay in the water to spite me.” He climbed out of the pond and headed toward the pit.

She laughed. “It’s not to spite you. If I stay covered, I’m warmer.”

“You’d be warmer over here. Next to me.”

She shivered again, but this time it wasn’t from the cold. Anticipation of what it could mean to share body heat with him, to be pressed up against his firm body...

“Come on, stubborn.”

Kentucky realized she was still standing in the water, staring at him, and he’d already built a small fire.

She bit her lip, indecision holding her back. Kentucky knew what she wanted, but did she want it enough to trade her friendship with him? They were both hurting and anyone who didn’t know where this little vignette by a fire under the stars would lead was kidding themselves.

Or naive.

They were both more worldly than that.

Kentucky had always been one to throw the cards up in the air and let them land where they may.

Maybe she was wrong about how Sean would feel. She’d just acknowledged they both knew how things worked. Maybe he’d take comfort in her and her in him and they could let it be just that.

She crept up out of the water and sat down on the sand next to him. She remembered how they’d all chipped in from their summer jobs to buy the sand to spread so they could have the fire pit. It was the old farmer’s one caveat to letting the kids stay on his property. Mossy Rock didn’t technically belong to him, but no one in Winchester County was going to tell him that.

His arm slid around her and he pulled her down with him. She settled against him, memorizing where their bodies touched and how the heat contrasted with the night air around them.

Kentucky looked up at the stars as they glittered in the velvet sky.

They didn’t speak for the longest time. Just two people clinging to each other in the dark, their chests rising and falling together in unison.

Part of her told her that she could still jump ship. She could make any excuse in the world to hop up and head back to the real world, where girls like her didn’t get boys like him, but she wasn’t going to. Kentucky had already thrown aside caution. Now she’d see what happened.

2

SHE FELT GOOD.

Like nothing had in a long time, Sean realized.

Wild Kentucky Lee calmed him, soothed him, made him feel as if no matter how screwed up the world was, everything would right itself.

It was so wrong.

He didn’t deserve to be soothed. He didn’t deserve to be reassured. Lynnie was gone and it was his fault.

He loved Lynnie. He always would. But for the last year before her death, he hadn’t been in love with her. She was an amazing woman, to be sure. Kind, warm, intelligent and red-carpet beautiful. She belonged to another world. A world where men didn’t get shredded by land mines; a world where people didn’t strap bombs to children. Lynnie belonged to a world with Sunday dinners and peach cobbler. A world that didn’t have a place for him.

When he ended things with her, she wasn’t even angry with him. She’d felt it, too. She just hadn’t wanted to put more on his plate while he was deployed.

Then they’d had to bury her with that ring on her finger. That ring that was a symbol of how both of their dreams had died. He supposed it was fitting that it go with her.

But if he hadn’t Skyped her, hadn’t told her how he felt, she wouldn’t have been out on that country road that night. She’d have been home, curled up in her favorite chair with her favorite tea and reading.

* * *

HE PULLED KENTUCKY CLOSER, her lush body a haven away from all that was bad. All the memories he didn’t want.

This moment between them was more than just a hiding place, though. Kentucky was hot and his body responded to her as it would any sexy woman. Whereas Lynnie’s appeal had been that she was so unearthly, a sort of fey loveliness with her petite pixie features and golden-blond hair, Kentucky was earthier. She was solid and strong but curved and soft. She was at odds with herself, as she was with most everything else.

Her arms were toned from her work as a mechanic, hands rough, but the swell of her hip seemed as if it’d be the most dangerous to ride. And her breasts in that lace bra... When she’d pulled off her shirt, he’d been so aroused.

Guilt had filled him, but it had done nothing to cool his desire. That was why he hadn’t wanted to get in the water with her. He didn’t want her to know how much of a bastard he really was.

Kentucky had always looked at him as though he were some kind of strange bug. The nicer he was to her, the odder she thought him. But underneath that, he’d always seen her secrets. When she started looking at him with a kind of longing, he knew it.

He also knew it was because he saw her, cared about her, and she didn’t have that. She didn’t have anyone she could trust. Except him. Except Lynnie.

But now Lynnie was gone.

And he wanted to lose himself in the woman next to him. For a moment, he wanted to feel something good. He wanted her to feel good, too, but he didn’t want to shatter the fragile trust she’d put in him.

“Thanks for today,” he said, finally breaking the silence.

“You, too.” Her hand settled on his chest. “It was good to know that some things can be the same.”

“But it wasn’t the same.”

“No? You didn’t have fun? You didn’t laugh? You didn’t wish for a single second that we had that cordial Rachel used to swipe from her cellar and some hot dogs on that fire? Not once?”

He found himself laughing again. “Yeah, you’ve got me there.” Sean exhaled heavily. “I’ve laughed more with you this evening than I have in a long time.”

“Well, you’ve got to do that for yourself now and again. Self-care, bro.” She elbowed him lightly.

“Yeah, a prescription of two doses of Kentucky Lee for what ails ya?” Damn, why had he said that? Because it was exactly what he’d been thinking, and she deserved better than that. He’d punched Robbie Carter in the face for saying something similar in cruder terms when they were sophomores.

Instead of taking offense, she just laughed. Not the kind of laugh that was false, or hiding some kind pain, but a genuine belly laugh. “Sure. Why not? It’s the first time I’ve ever been someone’s cure instead of their disease.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t see anyone lined up waiting for you to hand them that particular prescription.”

“Once upon a time, there was a boy named Robbie Carter—”

She groaned. “Don’t remind me. That’s so embarrassing.”

“You know?” He turned on his side to look at her.

“Wait, know what?” Her brown eyes narrowed. “Besides he didn’t show to pick me up for Winter Royalty. Didn’t call. Never spoke to me again.”

“He thought you were the cure, so to speak.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“Eric and I didn’t care for the way he talked about you in the locker room.”

She pushed at his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“He talked about how he was guaranteed to get in your pants at Royalty. He called you a slut, so I punched him.”

“Once?”

“Repeatedly. Then Eric hit him. Then the rest of the team told him if he said one more word about you, they’d leave nothing left of him but a grease stain on the floor.”

“Those guys never gave a damn about me. Why would they do that?”

“They cared about what Eric and I cared about. That was enough.”

She sighed and flopped back on the grass. “Well, you could’ve told me he wasn’t coming.”

“We didn’t want him to bail. We just wanted him to treat you with respect.”

“My knights in shining armor, trying to keep me celibate since tenth grade.”

“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you really wanted your first time to be with Robbie Carter.” They’d moved into dangerous territory, he knew. This wasn’t something they should be talking about.

“Well, I did just want to get it over with. I definitely didn’t want to be trite and wait until prom.”

“So who was it?”

“You wouldn’t know him. He lives in Canada.”

“Don’t go Sixteen Candles on me. Come on. I’ll tell you mine.”

“Yours was Lynnie. At Winter Royalty.” She rolled her eyes, but then she smiled. “She told me all about how magical and special it was.”

“Was it?” Those words punched him in the gut. “I’m glad.”

“Wasn’t it for you?”

“Of course it was. Then eight months later she broke up with me.”

“Because she knew you were the one. She wanted to make sure neither of you ever had any regrets.”

“I’ll be honest—all of my junior year, I thought I was dying. I dated other girls, but there was only Lynnie.” Only Lynnie, until he became someone else. Until his job changed him. Or maybe it unearthed who he really was, deep down in his bones. Because even though he saw horrible things, he made a difference. He loved what he did. He wished that the world didn’t need people like him, but as long as it did, he’d be there in the thick of it.

“Enough about me. You already knew that. Answer my question.” He searched her face. “Unless you really don’t want to.”

“So you’re telling me the state of my virginity and nonvirginity has been a burning question plaguing you since high school?” She smirked.

“What if it has?” What was he doing? This had gone past the boundaries of their friendship. He could lie to himself and say that friends shared these details all the time, but that wasn’t what this was. Not for him.

Especially because he knew not for her either.

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Jason Carter.”

“Robbie’s brother?”

“I was so pissed at him that I went to his house. Jason was home from KU for winter break. He took me out to dinner and we ended up having sex in the back of his Mustang outside Paisano’s.”

He’d admit, he kind of hated Jason in that moment. He didn’t expect to feel angry. He pushed the thoughts aside.

“Should I punch him next time I see him?” He tried to retreat, to lighten the mood.

“No, he punched himself. He married Angie Rhem.”

She was super high-maintenance, and with a mean streak wider than Stranger Creek.

They laughed and then fell into that silence that seemed to keep sneaking up on them. At first it had been companionable, comfortable. Maybe even peaceful.

But now there was something between them. Something heavy and electric. Their gazes met and held, soldered together. Neither of them able or willing to break the moment.

Her lips parted, pink and soft, as she drew in tiny sharp puffs of air. The firelight cast a warm glow over them and he could see her eyes, wide dark pools he could drown in.

Sean Dryden had always believed himself to be a good guy and at this moment, if he’d been a “good guy,” he’d have said something.

We shouldn’t.

No, we can’t.

This isn’t right.

But he didn’t say anything. He waited for the moment to bloom, to become whatever it was meant to be.

She reached out tentative fingers and cupped his cheek.

It was the lightest, gentlest caress, and it devastated him. In that single connection, he felt the comfort she offered him. Her grief and her understanding of his.

And of this moment. What it was. What it could be.

What it could never be.

She drew him closer and his emotions choked him. He buried his face against her breast and tightened his embrace around her, holding her so tight that nothing could ever pry her away from him.

Kentucky stroked his brow, cradled his skull and then slipped down his back only to return again.

“Share your pain with me. Let it breathe, Sean. You’re not going to smother it. It’ll smother you.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. All the people I’ve lost? My parents, my aunt, Lynnie... It’ll drown you. But you’re not dead—they are. So don’t let it.” She continued her soothing caress. “I’ll miss them forever. I’ll love them forever. I’ll even hurt because of those things, but that’s not all there is to feel.”

He turned his face up into her neck, his lips close to her pulse. “What if I don’t deserve to feel anything else?”

“Of course you do. Lynnie loved you. She’d want to know you missed her, but she wouldn’t want you to stop living because she’s gone. Let yourself grieve, Sean.”

“What if I’m not ready to grieve? What if I want to feel something else?” Like the softness of Kentucky’s body under his while he buried himself inside her. The taste of her skin on his tongue. Her nails on his back while she screamed his name.

God, but he was a bastard.

The worst part of all this was he knew that if Lynnie could see him, she wouldn’t begrudge either of them whatever solace they could find together. She’d only want them to be good to each other after.

He wasn’t that noble.

“Do you want to feel, or do you want to forget?” Her touch was still soothing, but it made him burn hotter, too. “Because after the orgasm is over, you realize those things you were hiding from never left.”

“Wasn’t this what you wanted when you brought me out here?” He lifted his head and met her eyes. “If it’s not, tell me to stop and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

Her eyes were luminous and open. He could see all the way to her bones. She wanted him, but she wanted more than what he was offering her.

“I don’t want to forget it happened, and I especially don’t want you to forget I happened. As good as this feels—” she shook her head “—it’s not worth our friendship. I don’t want to do this and then you can never look at me again because I’ve become a single-use item.”

“I hope you’d know me better than that, Kentucky.”

“Sometimes when we’re hurting, we don’t know ourselves.”

He pushed her down in the sand and pressed her beneath him. Color was high in her cheeks and her eyes glittered in the firelight. Her arms twined around his neck. She obviously didn’t give a damn that they were out in the open, that her hair was fanned out in the sand or that their wet underwear clung to them.

She was singularly focused on him.

He gripped her hips and pulled her forward to meet him, grinding his hard cock against her cleft.

“Live a little.” He threw her words back at her and his mouth descended toward hers oh-so slowly, building the heat and tension between them so they had no choice but to see where the explosion took them.

3

THIS WAS HAPPENING, Kentucky thought.

The fulfillment of a fantasy.

If she wanted it.

She could say no, deny him and herself. Or she could take her own advice and “live a little.” Except she was starting to see the fallacy in that being a life philosophy. It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem.

If she did give in to this and then he left her, it would destroy their friendship.

But her wild heart answered the question for that part of her that was afraid. If these moments between them could shatter years of friendship, then it wasn’t a friendship worth having. If a simple merging of flesh was enough to lose him, she never had him to begin with.

That was the root of the problem. She wasn’t ready to face that possibility. Kentucky wanted to keep the illusion a little while longer. It was a fairy tale. A night-light in an unknown darkness.

Kentucky was too old to be afraid of the dark, and too old to need stories to lull her to sleep. No, she would rather burn in the fire every time.

Even this one.

So she met his hard mouth, colliding with him in an explosion of sensation. He tasted like Scotch and mint, and the heat from his body dispelled any other further chill. She could feel nothing but him. She’d always imagined if he kissed her, it would be like this. It wouldn’t be gentle touches. It would be primal, animal. Something he did by instinct, not choice.

Only he had chosen. He’d chosen to be with her here and now. He’d chosen to kiss her. He’d chosen to move his hand up her torso and beneath the damp cup of her bra.

Kentucky opened her eyes to watch him as he touched her, memorizing their joined topography, the way his tanned, callused hand looked on her breast, the shape of his thumb while he drew lazy circles around her taut pink nipple.

“Are you on any birth control? If not, I have a condom in my wallet,” he said.

She shook her head. “I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”

“Me neither. Not since my last deployment and I was tested when I enlisted and tested again when I was brought back Stateside. Clean bill of health. You?”

“It’s been a year, but I haven’t been with anyone since I was tested either.”

She liked that he asked. She liked that he was mindful. Safety was incredibly sexy.

“A year? That’s a long time without touch.”

“But not long enough if it’s not with the right someone.”

“And this, right now, is it right enough?” His eyes searched hers. He wasn’t being glib; he was asking her again, giving her the chance to say no. Making sure she was going into this with both eyes open. It was such a far cry from what she’d imagined when she first began to consider that being alone with him now could lead to this.

Neither of them would be able to say this was some heated descent into madness. That it was some kind of accident where they’d been swept away by a tide of desire.

A tide of emotion maybe, but not mindless. They weren’t unthinking animals, but cognizant, aware complex creatures.

“Yes, Sean.”

He’d been waiting on tenterhooks, it seemed, when the expression changed on his face. He’d thought she might say no.

As if that would happen in a million years.

Still holding her gaze, he hooked his thumbs into the waist of her panties and tugged them down slowly. She bit her lip and lifted her hips to help him. His fingers sparked tiny jolts of electricity where they grazed her skin.

His lips were so close to her inner thigh, his breath ghosting against her flesh as he continued to divest her of her panties.

She tried to keep still, keep from shuddering and quaking at every new sensation. Kentucky didn’t want him to know just how bad she wanted this—him.

“Don’t hide from me now. Let me see it. All of it. Show me what I do to you.”

He worked his way back up her body, lips branding her as he went. First the inside of her ankle. That had never been something that struck her as particularly sexy, but the heat of his mouth on that neglected and oft-forgotten place sent shivers all through her.

Then her calf, the back of her knee—she squirmed and squealed, his breath tickling her in the most delightful way. He laughed and did it again, grasping her hips and holding her in place for the blissful torture of his mouth.

She knew exactly where he was headed with his mouth and if it could make her squeal just behind her knee, Kentucky realized she was in deep trouble.

Deep and hard trouble.

She didn’t want to be anywhere else.

He moved up her thigh, tongue drawing hot little circles in her flesh.

But instead of her cleft, he continued up the softness of her belly, to the V between her breasts, to her throat—she was sure she was going to have a hickey, but she was too dizzy with lust to care.

His mouth found hers again, his hands on the back of her bra, freeing her breasts. He pulled back then and stared at her—no, stared was too banal a word for what he was doing. He drank her in, devoured her. She hadn’t known someone’s regard could become a physical thing, not like this.

She’d felt people try to stare holes in her head when they wanted to shame her into doing something or pressure her to behave differently. It felt nothing like this. The way he looked at her was intense, but it didn’t try to tear her down. It made her feel like a goddess. Like something sacred and beautiful.

Something perfect.

And she needed it to stop or she’d crash down the rabbit hole. As it was, this was going to be painful when it was over. She didn’t need to give that future pain any more ammunition. So she reached for his boxer briefs and pushed them down his hips.

“You’re beautiful,” she murmured. He was. He was perfect, as though someone had designed him for her pleasure.

“I don’t have the pretty words that you deserve,” he said slowly. “But you can see what you do to me.” Sean drew her hand over his engorged sex.

She began to stroke him slowly and he didn’t close his eyes or look away; he held her gaze. He did that a lot, looked into her eyes while doing things that would cause others to close theirs. It made it so much more intimate.

That act itself was better than any pretty words he could summon.

His flesh beneath her hand was solid, real. There was no mistaking his intent or his desire. There’d be no picking apart his words later, wondering what he really meant. Or if he was just saying flowery things to get into her pants.

This, right now, it was honest and true.

When the morning light burned this to dust, these memories would be solid and whole. She’d remember the feel of him in her palm, the way he looked into her eyes. Kentucky knew he was there with her in the moment, not taking refuge in the memory of another woman.

Even if that woman was someone they both loved.

He dipped his head and kissed her, his mouth claiming hers with renewed vigor as his hands traveled her body deliberately—bringing her pleasure was a planned military campaign.

His mouth followed the trail his hands blazed, lips hot and seeking on her heated flesh. She couldn’t get enough of him. Kentucky wanted to touch him, explore him, but he was determined to indulge her first, as evidenced by the way he caught her wrists with one hand and held them over her head.

“Ladies first. I’m a gentleman.” He bent between her thighs, his mouth on her mound.