He reached down and turned her heater on high. He wanted her turned on, warm and receptive. He didn’t want her blue with cold and goose bumps.

It was silent in the car for long moments. Nick flexed his fingers on the wheel and kept his gaze resolutely on the road.

“I–I’ll need to take my seat belt off.”

His jaws clenched as he slowed the car down to a crawl. “Do it.”

She unbuckled the seat belt, holding it over her body, hesitating.

Finally, she moved and ah, yes. There were the lovely little sounds of a woman disrobing, so different from men. A woman taking her clothes off was a miracle of nature.

Nick remembered all too well what it was like living in barracks. He and his teammates would come in from a fifteen-mile run, sweaty and smelling like goats. They’d strip down, swearing a blue streak, weapons and flak jackets and combat boots clunking heavily to the floor. Followed by the sound of twelve hairy paws scratching twenty-two hairy balls.

How did women do it? How did they make such cute, soft sounds? Everything so delicate and tender.

Nick could follow what was going on by sound alone. The little rip of the pants zipper going down. The seat creaking slightly as she lifted to slide her pants down to her thighs. The silky sound of her pants sliding off. Neat as always, she folded her pants carefully along the seam and put them down in the footwell.

“Stockings.” The word came out through what felt like a boulder in his throat. “Panties.”

Oh yes. Even more delightful sounds. The small thud of her boots coming off. The whisper of nylon-clad legs rubbing against each other as she slipped her stockings off.

Almost there. He felt a drop of sweat fall down his temple and plop onto his sweater. It was hot in the car after he’d turned up the heat, but even if it had been freezing, he’d have sweated at the thought of Charity almost naked.

She lifted again and he saw a scrap of pale yellow silk flowing down her body. Oh yeah.

“Take your bra off under your sweater.”

“Okay.” He heard her swallow. She was trembling but she was also excited. He could smell it. Over the leather of the seats and Charity’s perfume was the scent of her arousal. He’d recognize it anywhere. She was turned on.

Damned right. She had to be because he was going to start fucking her hard just as soon as they were in a place where he physically could without driving them both into a tree.

Charity reached up between her breasts under her sweater and in a few graceful moves had removed her bra, the same pale yellow silk as her panties. It joined the rest of her clothes in the footwell.

Nick would have given anything to make her take her sweater off. He loved her breasts, so pale and soft, with the pale pink nipples that turned cherry red when she was turned on. He’d take money on a bet that they were cherry red now. But he didn’t want her to catch cold, and he didn’t know if he could keep his eyes on the road with her bare breasts inches from him, so against his will, he let her keep the sweater on.

A second into her warm house it was coming off, though.

They were crawling slowly. Now that she’d taken most of her clothes off, they needed to make better time. “Put your seat belt back on.” As soon as he heard the little click, he pressed the accelerator. They had another quarter of an hour before they got to Charity’s house. He had fifteen minutes to get her ready. Or rather, she had fifteen minutes to get herself ready.

His jaw clenched, back teeth biting together. In his peripheral vision he could see the long elegant line of her legs gleaming palely against the black leather seat, a pale puff of hair between her thighs.

Charity naked was a wet dream. Fully clothed, she was the classiest lady he’d ever seen. With her clothes off, she became sex on a stick. Classy sex on a stick. The most erotic thing he’d ever seen.

“Tell me what you’re feeling.”

She let out a little breath. “All right.” She shifted slightly, arousal and her perfume billowing out with each slight movement. Nick’s hands tightened again on the wheel, slippery with sweat. “What I’m feeling. Whew. Well, um, the seat was shockingly cold at first but now it’s warming up. I feel—I feel the heat from the vents on my bare skin. I’ve never felt that before in a car. I mean, against my—my intimate parts.”

“Open your legs,” he said harshly. “Position the vent so that you have warm air directly on your pussy.”

Another little huff of breath, and hesitation. Not reluctance, he could feel it. Just surprise.

He was a little surprised himself, at how hard he was pushing her. It was like he had a fever, an itch he couldn’t scratch, just under his skin.

It was post-op horniness, he suddenly realized.

Oh my God.

He always had a hard-on that wouldn’t quit at the end of an op. All that adrenaline had to go somewhere and it always ended up in his dick. It was a kind of horniness that he could rarely fuck away, too, much as he tried. The women he found after an op, particularly if there had been a firefight, were used hard. He went at it for hours.

He hadn’t been on an op but he’d definitely been on a mission. There hadn’t been danger to him, but there had been to the old lady, like a wounded teammate who needed rescuing. He’d been super-charged while looking for her, he realized with hindsight. Every sense sharpened, heightened, totally focused like a laser beam on finding her and bringing her back to safety.

So he’d had an adrenalin dump and it was working its way out of his system through his dick. That explained the steel hard-on and his total inability to even contemplate foreplay or anything other than ripping Charity’s clothes off and entering her just as soon as it was safe to do so.

What it didn’t explain was that this time, it wasn’t just any woman who’d do. Oh no.

Usually, all he needed was someone reasonably attractive with the correct human number of limbs and female plumbing. He usually kept his eyes closed during sex, anyway. As long as she was wet enough, he didn’t care who it was.

This time, only Charity would do. No one else.

Fuck. For just a second, Nick tried to visualize getting rid of his hard-on with another woman and for the first time in his life, Generic Woman wasn’t enough. He put a couple of women he’d fucked, and whose faces he could recall, in his imaginary bed and his hard-on actually went down a little.

Nope. Just any woman wouldn’t do.

This was serious shit. He’d have to think about it. Later. When some blood had returned to his head.

Right now, he had to make sure that when he got Charity home, she’d be able to take him.

“Touch me,” he ordered. “Put your hand on my cock. Feel what you do to me.” Thank God he hated driving in a coat. There was only his jeans and briefs between her hand and his hard-on.

Charity reached out hesitatingly, then lay her hand on his crotch. His cock immediately lengthened as a surge of blood went through it at her touch. Her hand jerked in surprise. It must have felt as if he had a landed trout in his pants. They were on a broad avenue and he spared a second to look down at himself.

Her pale hand gleamed in the faint light coming from the digital readouts. After her initial surprise, she’d put her hand back on him, cupping her palm around him. He could feel the heat of her hand through the two layers of cloth. His cock and her hand started doing a little dance. She’d squeeze lightly, his cock would respond enthusiastically, which made her squeeze him again, while he surged against her.

It was torture. Why was he doing this to himself? Nick wasn’t big on teasing self-denial, but if this was all he could get, well, he’d take it.

He had to concentrate fiercely on the road and worked to keep his breathing even. She was driving him crazy, yet he’d kill himself if she stopped touching him.