Page 58 of Cowboy SEAL Christmas

Monica crossed to the couch, pulling the handle so that the bed unfolded into the space of the living room.

She undid the button of her jeans and started to push them down her legs. “We’ll discuss itmuchlater.”

He grinned, doing the same. “Much.”

Chapter 15

She was too beautiful, Gabe thought. It seemed some great cosmic mix-up he even got to look at her. Acres of pale skin he wanted to bare completely and taste, and he in no way deserved any of that.

But he’d take it.

Then there was this ridiculous bed, with gingerbread-man-printed sheets. A mix of the ridiculous and the practical, which seemed so veryherit just about hurt. He didn’t understand her, didn’t want to, but something about her caused this horrible ache inside of him he couldn’t trust.

But he was here. In this pullout couch bed because she slept in the living room, so her kid could have his own room. It was a kind of sacrifice he’d stopped thinking existed. Not outside of war and famine anyway.

It swamped him with such feeling he was almost afraid to touch her, to move forward. She didn’t know what she was doing, dirtying herself with him.

“Oh, let me go get the condoms.” She blushed just saying the word, but she shook her hair back, sailing toward the dark little hallway. “You should be naked when I get back,” she said firmly, an order.

He wasn’t big on taking orders, but he had no problem with naked. No problem ignoring all the shit in his head and focusing on what they were doing. Sex. Naked together. The rest didn’t matter. He could self-flagellate all he wanted tomorrow, but first he was going to get something out of it.

He pushed off his boxers and slid onto her bed. There was a gingerbread man smiling up at him from the sheets, its creepy gumdrop eyes and grotesquely smiling, frosting-painted mouth repeating over and over in pattern.

“You’re going to be scarred for life, buddy,” he muttered, trying to focus on something that wasn’t the sheets. But everywhere he looked, Christmas paraphernalia glowed or smiled or downright creeped him out.

It wasn’t nerves. He had sex. Maybe not, you know, alot, and maybe not with women who were most decidedly in his life, but this was still temporary. A scratching of itches that would have no bearing on the future.

He wasn’t sure he really believed that, but he wanted Monica enough to pretend for the time being.

She returned to the living room and placed the condom on the end table next to the couch. She still had her underwear on, but she’d pulled her hair out of its band and the flyaway strands of blond somehow made her look younger, more…innocent.

Gabe couldn’t say he cared for that. The reminder she hadn’t been with anyone since her husband, that this might be important even if she didn’t want it to be. That they might be only a few years apart in age, but they were ages apart in experience and cynicism and—

“Do they hurt?” she asked, hovering there, studying his body. Not the kind of excited perusal he would have welcomed, but the careful, concerned study of the web of scars over his body. A few lines on his leg and hip, a web of marks on his shoulder, including the burns he’d sustained from the grenade blast that had exploded behind him.

He tried not to tense, worked on looking almost bored and relaxed lying naked on her gingerbread man sheets. “The scars themselves? Not so much these days.”

“But the injuries do?”

He shrugged, trying not to let irritation simmer through him. “Sometimes they ache a bit. Winter seems to make that more the case, but it’s bearable.”

She nodded, then looked at him solemnly. “I should probably be very, very gentle with you,” she said, and he might have fallen for that serious tone if her mouth hadn’t curved up at the end.

He grinned and crossed his arms behind his head. “Oh, baby, I was a Navy SEAL. We don’t do gentle.”

She laughed as he’d hoped she would. Then she bit her lip and reached behind her. Her bra went slack, then she let it fall to the ground.

She was…perfect somehow. More perfect than he could have imagined in his most detailed fantasies. It was so close to too much, but he was selfish enough not to care what he deserved and what he didn’t.

“It’s amazing how fantasy never quite measures up to real life,” he murmured, content for these few humming seconds to just watch her. To let it ratchet the anticipation higher and higher till it was almost painful.

He didn’t mind pain, not when it came in the most beautiful of packages.

She laughed, just the slightest hint of nerves edging it, so he got to his knees, drawing her closer to the edge of the bed. He ignored the sharp stab of pain in his hip and pressed a kiss to her chest, between her breasts, then her belly, slowly edging her panties down her legs.

She was impossibly soft, impossibly sweet. Every time she sucked in a shallow breath or let it shakily out, that tight edge of desire scraped sharper, and still he was slow, patient, careful. He moved his calloused hands over her hips, her thighs. He soaked up that rough against smooth slide until his body felt as though it was throbbing from the inside out.

Then in a smooth move he’d pat himself on the back for later, he flipped her onto her back on the bed.

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