“Did you find the enemy?” she asked shakily, finding it increasingly harder to play games when blood roared in her ears and her senses reeled with yearning.
He shook his head. “It was a mirage… an alluring mirage. But look, that forest up ahead could hold hidden perils.” He moved between her parted legs, kneeling. His erection stood out like a beautiful symbol of his love for her.
“What perils?” she said breathlessly, feeling the incredibly tantalizing brush of his fingertips over her soft curls. Did that groan just come from her, or him?
“Warm lagoons. Perhaps quicksand,” he said in a voice raw with passion as he dipped his fingertips into her slick need. She should feel embarrassed. Instead, she spread her legs wider for his exploring fingers.
“Do you know that you have freckles in the most scandalous places?”
She cringed. “I hate my freckles.”
“I love your freckles,” he said and kissed one of them that was, indeed, in a scandalous place.
“Channels,” he added then. “We have to look for treacherous channels.” He ran long fingers along her satiny folds to demonstrate.
“I want you,” she whimpered, reaching out her arms to pull him forward.
He forced her back down with a hand on her chest and a gentle kiss. “No, there’s more. Hidden caves, perhaps?” He slid one finger, then another inside her.
She began to writhe from side to side, begging unintelligibly, “Now… please… oh, oh… yes, I like that… please… RAFE! No, I don’t want to wait… I want… RAFE!”
“One minute, darlin’,” he said in a shaky voice. “I see something. Could be dangerous.” He slipped his fingers from inside her, and she cried out in protest. “Shhh,” he cautioned. “Don’t you want to know what it is?” he asked, lowering his head to look at her more closely.
“No,” she snapped.
“Now, honey. Patience. Remember the Army survival code.”
She said something vulgar about the survival code.
He chuckled, then looped his arms under her knees, raising them and exploring the creases with caresses that were tickling and surprisingly erotic. He abandoned that play momentarily and looked down once again. “As I was saying, sweetheart, I think I’ve discovered an ammunition dump.”
“A dump,” she sputtered.
“Ammunition dump. See this here… Aha, a bullet.”
She looked down and shuddered.
“Do you think it’s live?” he asked with mock seriousness.
“I think it’s about to explode,” she said waspishly. “Enough of the military strategy and games. I want…” Her words trailed off in a shiver as Rafe tested her with his tongue, then took the sensitized flesh between his lips.
“Definitely deadly,” he said against her throbbing center.
“No!” she cried out as the first tremors of her impending climax rippled over her. Liquid pleasure oozed from her. “I want you to come with me.”
He gave her one last flick of his tongue, then knelt upright. His eyes were glazed with passion, his lips wet and parted. Guiding her hand to his steely erection, he hissed with raw sensuality, “Take me then.”
She did.
The instant he filled her, she climaxed around his shaft, weeping with frustration. “Too soon, too soon.”
“No, it was perfect, cam mia. Perfect. I love you, I love you, I love you,” he said with each agonizing stroke.
When she was keening with mindless yearning, he reared back on his knees, the velvety tip of him barely inside her body. “And does the enemy yield?” he whispered in a plea cloaked with double meanings.
“She surrenders… everything,” Helen said, and raised her hips for his final plunge. Rafe’s ragged outcry blanketed her cries.
When they finally lay sated in each other’s arms, murmuring sweet love words, Rafe asked, “Did you like my fantasy?”
Helen thought, how like a man, always needing his ego to be bolstered, even when a woman had shown her appreciation in all the important ways.
“I loved it.”
“Good.” A decidedly mischievous tone marked his voice.
“Good?” What was he up to now?
“Yep. ‘Cause you get to reciprocate.” He jiggled his brows at her.
“Reciprocate?”
“Is there an echo in here?”
She cuffed him on the shoulder. “Explain.”
“Well, it’s only fair…”