Kenna stepped closer, bringing her breasts within an inch of his mouth, and his entire body shuddered. “What was the question again?”

“Your first time.” His puffs of breath made her nipples tighten. “Me on top? Or you?”

For a split second, she thought he might give in and suck one of her peaks into his mouth, but he remained in place. “When I first saw you, I thought of…”

“Tell me, Major,” she whispered hoarsely. “Say all the bad things in your head.”

His swallow was audible. “I wanted to hold you down and—and fuck you. Without holding back. I wanted to push your legs wide open and fuck you while your nails made my back bleed.” The words were rushed, out of breath. “Even if you screamed, I didn’t want to stop. Just wanted to pump and fuck until I stopped thinking and only felt you.” His hands shot out to grip the sides of her open shirt, closing the material over her breasts with a heavy, relieved exhale. “But I’d want you on top, Kenna. I don’t think we could do it the other way. Wouldn’t I hurt you, darlin’? You’re so small compared to me.”

Very few times in her life had Kenna been struck speechless. Beck’s graphic description of what he wanted to do with her blazed through her middle like a lightning storm, but the sweetness that followed, his covering her breasts, laid a balm over the scorched earth left behind. She felt pulled in two directions and each one was equally appealing. Sex with him wouldn’t be as black and white as she’d hoped. The tingling in her neck said run, run away and don’t look back, but when she remained silent too long and a hint of vulnerability crept into his expression, she knew it would never happen.

Messy or not, she was running headfirst into the oncoming storm.

Chapter Five

Beck studied Kenna from the passenger seat, wishing like hell she’d say something.

See? This is why he kept his sinful thoughts to himself. Since Beck could remember, he’d been tested by desires that a good man had no right to feel. At age fourteen, he’d even gotten the nerve up to confide in the youth minister at his church, but instead of giving Beck a way to control the urges, he’d been instructed to ignore the need to…rut. Not just to have sex, but to recreate the sweaty, flesh-slapping images his mind conjured up. He’d been told that they were the work of the devil, that lovemaking was a quiet, caring act shared between husband and wife. Over time, he’d learned to keep the thoughts at bay until late at night, in the dark, when they wouldn’t remain caged any longer. It had worked well enough until Kenna had sauntered up to him at the landing zone and mental hell had broken loose.

Everything he’d said to her had been truthful. The afternoon he’d woken up to find her gone, he’d been so painfully erect, he’d been forced to ease himself before rising from the bed had been an option. She’d poked the sleeping bear inside him and now it roared through his insides, looking for its mate. Last night in the bar, he’d only been capable of mustering a mild appreciation for other women, much like he’d felt for the female soldiers he’d encountered overseas. But he’d needed Kenna. Only Kenna. Didn’t even want to consider someone else’s hands on him. Or hers on someone else.

Beck had to close his eyes and count to ten, surprised once again by the depth of jealousy the thought of her with someone else incurred. He was leaving Thursday morning, the day after the ceremony. Leaving for good. There wasn’t a man alive with the power of sight who wouldn’t want her for himself. On top of being every male’s sexual fantasy on two legs, she had a quick sense of humor. She was interesting. Intelligent. Mysterious. Knowing how quickly she’d be spoken for, he could already tell boarding that plane on Thursday would be like getting caught in a tunnel blast a second time. Worse.

His dark realization was cut short when Kenna pulled up outside a greasy, dilapidated garage. “Tell me you don’t live here. Please.”

“Afraid so, Major.” She cut off the car’s engine. “Still want to come inside, or have you changed your mind?”

“I have not changed my mind.” Great. Finally, he gets her talking only to insult her home. “I beg your pardon, Kenna. I didn’t mean to come off rude.”

A smile entered her eyes. “You’re begging my pardon?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He looked back toward the garage, noticing the sign advertising break inspections was seconds from plummeting to the ground. “It just doesn’t seem safe for a girl living alone, is all. Doesn’t your father object?”

“I’m an adult, Major. I decide where to lay my head.” She shrugged. “Besides, I think as long as I moved out and gave Tina room to move in, I could have gone to the moon for all he cared.”

Beck experienced the same irritation he felt when the lieutenant general hadn’t thanked her for the beef jerky, and then again when Tina hadn’t offered her a drink. “I don’t like you being treated that way.”

She stared through the windshield for a moment before returning her attention to him. Gone was the forlorn quality in her expression. Invitation had taken its place. “You know, talking about this doesn’t put me in a sexy mood.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned across the console, casting a net of her incense scent to drag him under. Her hand landed on his thigh, but it might as well have been his cock from the way it immediately strained against his fly. “I want to hear more about what you want. What you told me back at the house…I liked it, Major. A lot.”

“You ought to start calling me Beck, now, Kenna.” Lord, her breasts swelled against her shirt as she leaned toward him. “Seeing as how you’re taking me home.”

Her hand skated higher on his thigh. “Okay…Beck.”

That was it. Kenna saying his name blew a fuse in his head, short-circuiting his self-control. A boomboomboom started in his ears as he yanked her across the console, dropping her firm, little backside onto his lap. Every second of resistance he’d managed back in that dining room demanded repayment and nothing could settle the debt, save her. Before he knew his own mind, he ripped her shirt open and upclasped her bra, growling as those rosy-peaked, bad-girl tits popped free. “I’m going to suck them. Need to suck them.” He bent his head and dragged her right nipple into his mouth, drawing on it with a loud moan. “Move around on my dick while I suck you, Kenna. I’m so hard. You make me so hard to be inside you. How is that possible when I don’t even know what it feels like?”

She turned in his lap to straddle him, one palm smoothing down the side of his face. “Take me upstairs and I’ll show you.” Her breathing was erratic, but she stopped after one mind-bending buck of her hips. “Don’t you know you make me just as achy?”

Awe and relief and lust battered him. “I want to see that spot where you’re achy. I want to look at you there, watch you touch it. I want to touch…your pussy. Want to lick it.”

Kenna fell forward onto his chest, forehead dropping onto his shoulder. “Beck, if you keep talking like that, I’m going to come before you get inside me.”

“I don’t think I want that to happen.” With an iron will she continued to diminish with every hot breath against his neck, Beck pushed open the passenger door and stepped out, smiling through the pleasure-pain of Kenna clinging to him like a lifeline. Ah hell, he liked that. Like her compact body wrapped around his like a missing piece, her curves accommodating his ridges, the valley between her legs, warm and inviting, settling on top of his throbbing dick. “Tell me where I’m going, darlin’,” he choked out.

She ran her open mouth up his neck. “There’s an alley on the left…staircase around back.”