More than enough to make for comfortable living, particularly for a man used to roughing it. He’d do just fine here, until he moved into Caroline’s bedroom, which he vowed would be just as soon as humanly possible.

The mechanics of that—getting from being a boarder to a lover—was something he’d have to work on. But he was good at strategy. Sooner or later it was going to happen. She was single, that much was clear, even though there was probably a boyfriend in the background. How could there not be? It was unthinkable that any man with a pulse and working equipment could be in the same room as Caroline and not want her.

The bathroom was the same as before, too. Large, with white fixtures and cream-and-green tiles on the walls. The sink was cracked, and a few wall tiles were missing, but for someone who’d been on shit-burning detail in Iraq, and who’d dug his own latrines in Afghanistan, it was superluxurious. As promised, there was a stack of white towels in a big white wooden cabinet. The towels were clean, but old and threadbare. Who the hell cared? In a second, his dirty, rumpled clothes were on the floor, and he was under the shower.

The shower stall was equipped with shampoo and soap in a holder. The water was only lukewarm, but it still felt good as he lathered up.

Both the soap and the shampoo were rose-scented. The smell went straight to the primitive part of his brain that associated roses with Caroline.

Damn! It was precisely the part of his brain that was connected to his cock, and had been for twelve years. Roses equaled Caroline equaled a hard-on.

Jack took his time washing up, getting rid of more than the dirt and sweat of a forty-eight-hour trip back from Africa. He was washing more than the grime of travel off—he was washing his old life out.

For twelve years, he’d been the Colonel’s to command. The man who’d found a starving, half-mad mongrel behind a trash can and taken him in had had his undying loyalty. Colonel Eugene Nicholas Prescott, man of honor, the father of his heart. If the Colonel hadn’t gotten ill and died, Jack wouldn’t be here. He’d still be helping the Colonel run ENP Security.

He’d never allowed himself more than the vaguest kinds of daydreams of an alternative life while the Colonel was alive. He’d been as loyal to him as any feudal knight to his king. But now, in the space of a week, Jack had buried his father, sold the company and the house and shut down the rogue Sierra Leone mission. All the ties with his old life were severed.

It was all over. He was starting a new life, right here in Caroline’s shower, smelling of roses.

Now his skin smelled like hers, though it sure as hell didn’t feel like hers. Hers was so pale, so smooth. Smooth and incredibly soft to the touch, too.

Jack remembered every second she’d spent in his arms in the car. It had taken every ounce of self-control not to tilt her head back and kiss her. He’d had to clench his teeth, hard, because what he’d wanted more than his next breath was to open her mouth with his and plunge inside.

Her mouth was made for kissing, soft and pink, a little honey trap he’d wanted to fall into so badly he’d ached. Only a lifetime of self-discipline had stopped him.

They’d been in real danger out there, and not just from the truck. All her tires were basically shot and if another one blew, with no other spare, they’d have been done for. There was no way they could have lasted out the blizzard in the car. So he’d been a real good boy and held her for comfort, just long enough to let her regain control of herself.

She’d trembled in his arms. His job had been to hold her until the worst of the trembling stopped, then get them both to a warm place as soon as possible.

His imagination had run riot. In his head, he got rid of his jacket, sweater, jeans, shorts, boots. Her thick coat, sweater, bra, panties, stockings. In his head they were naked—not in a chilly car in the middle of a blizzard, but on a sunny deserted beach. A place where they had all the time in the world for him to explore her body, touch all that luscious rosy ivory skin. Run his mouth along that long, pale neck, down to the breasts he’d seen outlined by the sweater.

The adrenaline of the close encounter with death had pooled in his cock, and he’d been as hard as a club. He’d wanted to mount her, enter her, fuck her, more than he wanted his next breath.

It was an enticing thought, but dangerous as hell. They weren’t on a sunny beach, they were in real danger of freezing to death.

So he’d dropped a kiss to the top of her head so light she couldn’t feel it, then let her go, to concentrate on getting them to Greenbriars safely.

But now…now that he was in a warm, wet cabin that smelled of Caroline, his mind went wild. He imagined licking his tongue into that beautiful mouth, his nose up against her skin, the scent of roses filling his head. Biting her lips, urging her closer, closer still. Sliding his hand along that long, white neck.

Jack looked down at himself and groaned at his enormous, painful boner, red and swollen, hard as a pike. Harder than in the car.

He knew why he had a hard-on that wouldn’t quit.

Part of it was that he hadn’t had sex in nearly six months. Afghanistan was as close to a no-sex zone as had ever existed on earth. After Afghanistan he’d spent the past month at his father’s bedside, then in Africa, cleaning up after Vince Deaver. True, six months was a long time for him to go without sex, but he’d done it before, on long missions.

Part of it was the male reaction to surviving danger. Or his, anyway. It happened every time he survived a firefight. His cock went up in celebration of life and thanksgiving that he wasn’t six feet under. When he could, after combat, Jack went out hunting for a woman for relief, and when he couldn’t, his fist worked just fine.

He and Caroline had been in as much danger as if they’d been on a mission in downtown Baghdad.

He hadn’t said anything—Caroline had been massively freaked as it was—but they’d nearly died out there on the road. While fighting the wheel of her car, the part of his mind that was always calm and thinking ahead to the next step no matter what the emergency had appreciated the irony.

Jack had survived the worst life could throw at him, time and again. He’d cheated death a thousand times while waiting for Caroline. Being crushed beneath the wheels of a truck half an hour after finding her again would definitely come under the category of “shit happens.”

But these reasons weren’t really why he had such a boner.

What had set him off was being in the same house as Caroline, having talked to her, touched her, held her in his arms—that’s what had his cock swollen and weeping. After so many years in which she’d haunted his dreams, he was finally with her, and it was scary as hell.

Do. Not. Fuck. This. Up, he told himself.

He couldn’t count the nights lying on a cold hard cot when her face swam before him. At first, he’d been ashamed to jerk off thinking of her, but it turned out that no matter how many women he had, she was the only one who could turn him on simply by thinking of her.

Jack liked women. He liked the way they smelled, the softness of their skin, their voices. He liked sex, too. He was courteous to his sex partners, even if it was a one-night stand, which most of his encounters were. A little foreplay, in for a while, then out, then get up and go. Oh, he had stamina, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was he couldn’t remember much about the woman after walking out the door.

He remembered everything about Caroline. Everything. How she looked with her hair in a ponytail, or loose around her shoulders. He remembered every item of clothing he’d ever seen her in and every expression she’d ever had. He remembered every single word she’d ever said to him. It was all seared into his mind, and it would probably take a shot to the head to get rid of it all.