Page 13 of A Little Love

“Is that Daddy logic? Just because?”

He smiled. “Absolutely. Well, that and the fact that my little girls are never weird.”

And she was his. Even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to kiss the hell out of her yet.

Chapter Five

Two days later, the first fireworks of the season went off. It was a quarter to ten on the last night of June, and it brought Nolan up out of a dead sleep, up off the couch—heaving and shoving to get out from under the warm weight he only belated realized was Tricia, right before they both fell on the floor. It was the first time since he’d been discharged that Nolan had felt that irrepressible urge so many Vets claimed to feel when certain sounds triggered them. Had he not been dreaming he was back in his unit, he never would have come up fighting. He certainly never would have thrown Tricia off him or landed on top of her, with every muscle screaming for him to army crawl behind the sofa arm before enemy incoming shot his fool head off.

“Upff,” Tricia said, rubbing the back of her head. She blinked twice, and in the fuzzy light of the blue TV screen (the movie they’d fallen asleep to having long since finished playing; oneof these days, he really ought to think about signing up for satellite), she looked at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Nolan said. But he was anything but okay, and he knew she knew it the minute their eyes met. He pushed up off both her and the floor.

“What happened?” When he offered, she accepted his helping hand up.

“I don’t know,” he lied. Another burst of sporadic pops and crackles made him flinch, however, and she saw it. And then he saw it too—thatlookthat came over her face. The one that was half cautious and half concerned. It was the same look his aunt had given him back when he’d first been discharged and she found him sitting in nothing but his boxers in a corner of her kitchen because he hadn’t slept in three days. Because no matter what he did, it was too damn quiet for him to sleep. His irritation shot a notch higher.

“Time for bed,” he said shortly, and shut the TV off.

Tricia perked. “Together?”

Instant images flooded his mind: the hills and valley slope of her body lying on its side beside him, the welcome heat of her bottom pressed back against his groin, the fan of her hair—soft brown with a swath of pink fanned out across his pillow—so much for taking it slow. How in the hell could he be expected to sleep with that and keep his hands to himself? No. No fucking way. The platonic feel of those images vanished beneath a rising tide of a whole different kind: Tricia lying flat on her back, her creamy thighs splayed as wide as the bonds above her knees could make them, leather restraints as pink as her hair binding her wrists to his headboard, the equally pink bow of her mouth yawning eagerly as he crawled up to kneel upon the pillow beneath her head and feed his cock into the wet sensual heat of her mouth.

His skin was still crawling, and yet his cock stirred and his balls grew tight. Neither sensation helped his mood. “Honey, I don’t think I’ve got it in me to be a gentleman tonight.”

For the second time that night, she blinked at him. “I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but when did I ever say you had to be?”

Exasperation that had everything to do with how he’d awakened and nothing to do with her lit his temper like a Roman candle. He tossed the TV remote onto the couch where they had been lying and then swatted her. “Bed,” he ordered, without bothering to answer that question.

She went, rubbing at her bottom (although he hadn’t struck anywhere near that hard) and shooting him a disgruntled look over one shoulder. He could have swatted her again for that, but he didn’t. He followed as far as the door before she whipped around, bouncing on the balls of her feet, all signs of disgruntlement gone and a sunny smile now in its place.

“I have a novel idea,” she declared, clasping her hands behind her back. “How about I sleep here for the night?”

“On my lovely fold out couch—oh wait! Sorry, I forgot.” He gave her a pointed look. “My couch doesn’t fold out. My ex-couch did. Which is probably why my ex-girlfriend took it with her when she ex-left me.”

“Oh, we are grumpy tonight.”

“Yeah, well, falling on the floor will do that.” His skin crawled as another burst of fireworks crackled somewhere out in the night. He had his hand on the doorknob, but was having trouble making himself open it. He rolled his shoulders and tried hard to convince himself that there was nothing wrong with opening his front door. His tightly knotted gut was not convinced.

Tricia smiled again, though not as brightly as before. “You could come stay the night at my house. I’ve got a really comfy queen-size bed.”

Instead of his headboard, he now envisioned her bound to her own. Spread-eagle now. Wrists and ankles both tightly restrained and ass arched up high on a small mountain of pillows, baring her precious, vulnerable body to his every whim, every desire… when, of course, he wasn’t jumping half out of his skin each time the fireworks went off, showing his baby girl in irrevocable detail just how much of a basket case he really was.

Nolan didn’t answer her. He couldn’t. Instead, he jerked the front door open and gruffly said, “I’ll walk you home.”

Her smile faded a little bit more, but never quite disappeared entirely. Ducking her head, she fell into step beside him. All the way from his porch and across the lawn to hers, they walked in silence. He reached her porch first and, following what had become his tradition, started up ahead of her to open her door, but that was when the silence broke.

“Daddy,” Tricia said, her tone as grown up as it could be without any trace of her usual, bouncy Little side. “What are we doing?”

Another burst of fireworks. Nolan popped his neck, but could find no relief for the tension mounting on tension, mounting on tension, currently building up the ladder of his spine. No matter how fiercely he tried to relax, all he could feel was the systematic tightening of every muscle he owned. “What do you mean?”

He tried to keep calm, to sound normal. Like a civilian instead of a soldier with every nerve screaming to get behind something sturdy enough to take the barrage of bullets that mentally he knew—knew—weren’t anywhere incoming. And yet his body was on full physical lockdown, stubbornly ignoring the ranting of his common sense and supplementing its own remembered reality to overlap what he knew was real.

Thin beads of sweat began to gather along his brow. For a moment, he almost felt sick to his stomach. No matter how hard he tried to focus on her face, his eyes kept drifting, checkingboth ends of their street. Quiet yards. No street lamps. No tanks or insurgents, either, despite the reddish glare of fireworks reflected off a distant garage door.

She knuckled fists onto hips, irritation flickering across her features as she said, “You know what I mean.”

Her irritation made his spark and flare. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking for clarification.”

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