He dips his head to kiss my cheek, my jaw, then lower, peppering featherlight kisses down my neck as he peels my jacket off my shoulder, my blouse with it, so that my skin is exposed to his lips.
My breathing quickens. I look up at him, my tongue snaking out to wet my lips, as he straightens then copies the affection on the other side. On his journey back up my neck his mouth inches closer to mine, so close I can breathe him in. He stands up tall again, towering over me, and I watch as his denim-blue eyes become hooded, and dark.
My heart and hands and all of my erogenous zones reach for him, hungrily, impatient.
“I want to kiss you again,” he murmurs, “now that I know how good you taste.”
“Please,” I say between panting breaths.
He issues a deep, jagged groan. “I’m warning you, baby, once I do I won’t be able to stop. I want to fuck you, Gemma. But first I want to feast on you.”
“I’m right here.” I bat my eyes up at his, smiling coyly. “So go ahead. Feast.”
And then his lips are on mine again, dizzying me as he breaks only to pull off my blouse and push off my jeans and shove out of his own clothes, everything except our undergarments. A complaint sits lodged in my throat. We can’t get close enough with all of this infernal fabric separating us…
On his knees before me, Shane’s callused hands become swaths of silk as they glide up and down my thighs, and my sides, sending swells of pleasure and anticipation against my flesh. My nipples tighten into peaks. He kisses my inner thigh, then higher, and I gasp when his warm breath hits the damp spot on my cotton thong.
“You smell exquisite, baby,” Shane praises me, pressing his face between my thighs and dragging in a full breath. Did he just…
He better be quick—before I fall into a boneless puddle on the hardwood floor.
“Shane, you’re torturing me!”
“Payback,” he grouses, examining me more intimately. First with his eyes, roving over all of my parts, then his hands, skating softly against my skin, then his lips, peppering kisses in the wake of his touch, gifting me, and killing me, with gentle nibbles and slow, slow licks.
He rears back his head and looks up, gazing deep into my eyes. “Tell me you love me, Gemma,” he whispers, his fingers teasing the edge of my panties.
“I love you, Shane.”
“That’s a good girl.” It’s too soon, and way too fucking late, when he finally peels my thong, slowly, down my legs and off my feet. “You are a natural redhead.” Shane grins. I suck in a sharp, strangled breath when his finger slides up along my bared, heated, glistening entrance. “Say it again.” One finger dips inside, then out, spreading my juices over my clit. His finger goes exploring again, barely faster, barely deeper, barely enough to satisfy me but way, way too much to stand here and bear.
“Shane…” I whimper. I lay my hand over his, mindlessly circling my hips against the charge of his finger. “Please.”
“Tell me you love me,” Shane commands, his lips and his breath so, so close to my apex. “Louder.”
“I love you,” I cry, too quietly, then I try again. “I love you, Shane!”
He growls out a coarse word, and adds a second finger between my folds, pumping me harder, faster, as I buck and mewl against his sweet, sweet aggression. I feel my wetness drip out of me, coating his knuckles with each rhythmic squelching sound he makes of my core.
Oh my god, I could come like this. I bite back a scream.
“Beautiful…” Shane exalts. “I’ve thought of you every day since I first saw your face, almost three weeks ago.” He looks up at me with a dark, pained, leveling stare. “Fucking pulled my dick raw imagining this pussy wrapped around me.”
“You…” Words escape as I rock my hips to meet the ever-increasing depth of his movement, his fingers petting and curling inside me, finding my g-spot and then—
Then his mouth.
“Oh god, Shane!”
I’m so close when a shrill, high-pitched alert pierces the air inside the cabin, instantly stealing my breath and cooling me down, everywhere except the spot on my chest that my heart is beating harder against.
“What is that?” I cover my ears. Shane bolts upright and moves away from me in a flash. “What’s going on?” The pager is relentless.
“That’s HQ. I have to leave.”
“You have to leave…now?”
He balls up my clothes and tosses them to me. “Yes, now! Get dressed!”
Thoughts are whizzing through my head faster than I can get to them and put them in any sort of tidy, sensical order. I put on my clothes as Shane gets dressed, not in the clothing he wore on our date. These are a complex assembling of straps, clips, and then…tactical gear.
“Are you coming right back?”
“Yes,” he says, then quickly says, “no. I don’t know.” He scrubs a hand down his face. “Maybe.” There’s an ache etched to his face. “Just…wait for me here,” Shane says, returning to hyper speed. “I never know exactly when I’ll be back but—”
“Shane,” I interrupt him, shaking my head regretfully. “I can’t.”
He looks at me. “Right. When I get back, then. I want to see you again.” He says it as if it’s a question at all.
“Let me know where and when, Shane, and I will be there.”
On our way out, he stops, holds my chin, and presses a kiss against my cheek. His voice in my ear is a gentle rumble that ripples across my skin as he whispers, “I hope so.”
Five
Shane – One week later
I feel like an ass.
A jerk.
A total, complete idiot.
Why am I still sitting here, waiting?
What reason would a girl like that have to actually show up? To come back…here? After what I put her through…
Some first date.
Gemma’s got a life, a kid. I have no life, only my work, and training and volunteering to pass the time when I simply have too much of it.
I live alone. I don’t even have a spare room.
She’s too damn good for me.
I look around the lonely cabin. Too tidied, too sparse. The coffee I made an hour ago has gone cold.
I don’t recall the look on her face as we rode back into town that night, a week ago now. At best she was curious. At worst, humiliated. Maybe she felt both, or some emotion in between. I was too single-minded to notice or even look. The second I was paged, I was no longer off-duty.
I was SWAT.
I got her home and floored my truck to HQ, ready just in time to go out with the team.
Of course she ain’t coming. I get it; no woman likes being left like that, so abruptly, without warning. But that’s my life.
‘Let me know where and when…and I will be there.’ In the moment maybe that sounded easy enough for her to say. She liked me, wanted more, wanted to see me again. Then the reality set in. That any moment we spend together could end all of a sudden; the heat between us snuffed out with the crack of the alarm.
That one of these days I might get called out, and not come back.
What woman in her right mind would willingly sign up for that? It’s no wonder half my SWAT team is single. Plenty of girls come around wantin’ to play. They like the uniform, the guns, the brawn. They don’t like the reality. The life.