Page 32 of Buck

The room was dim, only the light from the bathroom’s ajar door filtered into the shadows. He thought he was in control. He thought he was going to be able to compartmentalize his emotions into iron-clad boxes. But when she stepped out, he knew he was fucked. There was no numbing himself where Mari was concerned. She would feel it, and at this moment, he was incapable of shutting down.

“I’ve missed you,” she said softly.

His shoulders sank with resignation. He couldn't stop drinking her in, his heart doing that crazy pounding when he saw her. She was here, breathing, so near him, touchable. He clenched his fists to keep from reaching out.

“You have to remember, first and foremost, I’m your bodyguard. I’m deployed and on a mission. This isn’t normal. There’s a viable threat against your family and that includes you, as well.” Especially her. “My…our job is to keep you safe, and it will go so much more smoothly with your cooperation. Got it?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

She was so goddamn sweet, looking so tempting in her see-through gown. He wanted to fuck her until the pain went away. She crossed the distance between them, grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.

He pulled her flush against him. He didn’t have to seek, she was there, and he took her mouth, then took more. His relief swelled and he unleashed it, his hands mapping her contours as the kiss turned raw, primitive. She was the hunger inside him, and he hooked her knee, drew her leg up and ground into her softness. She thrust back, her tongue pushing between his lips and doing amazing things as her fingers sank into his hair. He ached, throbbed, and died inside at what he had to do as her mouth molded savagely over his. He trapped her against the wall, her passion flooding over him, not even a SEAL could handle those kinds of waves.

There was a rushed knock against the door, the handle turning, “Zazu? I have a couple more shoes to show you. I need your opinion,” she called, caught up in her teenage angst. He knew it all too well.

He tore his mouth from hers and drew back, then he carefully laid his hands flat on the wall alongside her head. She made a soft, whimpering noise. “Ah, I love my sister, but I could kill her right now.”

He chuckled low, his dick as dangerous as a loaded weapon. He couldn’t resist her before, and now… His breathing labored with hers as he met her gaze.

“God, I love how you kiss, feel,” she breathed. She captured his mouth again, her hands running over him.

“Za? Are you asleep? Wake up!” Carmen demanded.

Mari growled, “Hold on. Give me a minute.” He let her go and hot-footed it to the French doors. She looked at him, her passion crossing the distance and like a physical caress, stroked his erection, hardening it into a painful agony.

Then he slipped into the night, knowing that there was only one thing he could do to relieve this need, and solidify his mission. Regardless of his conscience, he wanted her, and he was going to have her.

10

Mari yawned as she entered the roasting shed, turning on the lights and firing up the roaster. She had bags and bags of green beans to roast into their signature blend bags. It was going to be a full morning.

Strangely, the job ahead of her hadn’t been her first thought when she’d woken up. It was Buck who was heavily on her mind. There had been a time when she couldn’t wait to get home, but that time with him in San Diego had changed something in her. Now…now she wanted to be wherever he was. It seemed so impossible before, maybe because she always considered this her home, which, of course, it was. She’d been born and raised here and had only left briefly for schooling. But now something about it felt suffocating, limiting, as if she’d receded and disappeared once she got back to the plantation.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was because she hadn’t grown. Maybe she’d put together that plan for expansion to…what? Travel, get away so she could see herself as an individual instead of a collective?

Look at her family. Everyone was married and having children, and she was almost thirty and still alone. By design? Or by her stubbornness to think that her family couldn’t survive without her? There was that hollowness in her she’d discovered when Buck hadn’t answered her texts, drunk off his attention and that passion he never even tried to hide. Then he’d shown up here, and her attraction was off the charts. If Carmen hadn’t interrupted them when he’d come to her room, she had an inkling she’d still be in bed.

How did she not know how God-awful lonely she was? So hot, intense, and alone?

Buck was someone special. How often did a man like him come along?

How long was she going to wall herself off and hide in her lush and safe home?

She didn’t have any answers, but time wouldn’t stop for her. It stopped for no one.

The roaster was nearing the right temperature, and she threw several scoops of green beans into the pan to begin the roasting process.

She didn’t have to turn around to know Buck was in the room. He made no sound at all. Disconcerted by his natural stealth, she could feel all that power emanate from his deliciously male body, and the potency, the courage…everything. She remembered his face when he’d been in survival mode and was in pain yet had carried his commander on his shoulders. Fierce, unyielding, a fight-to-the-death intensity that was concentrated and beautiful in its harshness. No, this man wouldn’t back down from anything.

“Hello, Buck,” she said as she stirred the beans, the green changing to yellow.

When his arms came around her from behind, she thought she was prepared for the reality of him, but she was wrong. Her heart skipped a beat. “Hard at work already,” he murmured.

“Yes, of course. Although, if we hadn’t been interrupted last night, I might have been inclined to stay in bed.” The husk in her voice was unmistakable.

Judging by the restless shift of his body against hers, he seemed to have had the same thoughts. She shivered, her gasp audible in the room when he buried his face against her throat and warmed her skin with his breath and the hot press of his lips just beneath her jaw.

“That’s an interesting smell,” he said. “Somewhere between cut grass and toast.”

---