kids. He had so much goodness in him, a gentle and playful side to his nature that she sensed only children would bring out in him fully. He’d probably marry someone like her mom had been, someone soft and ultrafeminine, who didn’t know the difference between a pistol and a nuclear warhead.
She threw back the covers and scooted off the bed.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to take a shower, too. I feel sticky.” She’d always thought it was the man’s ejaculation that made a mess after sex, but she’d gotten so wet, she was slippery with it.
He didn’t say anything, and she went into the bathroom. She didn’t know why, but she locked the door before turning on the light. She avoided the mirror because she didn’t want to see what a wreck she must look like after all that sweaty rolling around. Stepping into the old-fashioned claw-foot tub, she pulled the curtain around her and turned on the shower.
The hot water cascaded down out of the oversized shower head, and she began the task of washing Daniel’s scent from her and the feel of his touch from her body. At least she tried, but no matter how much hot water she let pour over her, the sensation of his fingertips on her skin remained.
She finally gave up, hoping she’d taken long enough for him to fall asleep, and turned off the shower.
When Josie came back to bed, she got in on the side opposite Daniel and stayed there, keeping the expanse of the big mattress between them. After making love the first time, they’d gone to sleep wrapped in each other’s arms. Now she seemed intent on keeping the distance of the great divide between them, both physically and emotionally.
Daniel hadn’t expected anything different, not after hearing the quiet snick of the bathroom door lock before she took her shower, but he could try to bridge the chasm between them. He wasn’t very good at that sort of thing. However, if it meant getting her back into his arms, he would do it.
“Come here, Josie.”
“I’m too tired to have sex again tonight.” Her voice was clipped with anger, not drowsy with fatigue.
Men and women were so different, and despite the way she’d been raised, Josie was Y chromosome all the way through. She was mad and didn’t want to make love, but anger would never diminish his hunger for her. Hell, even if she really was too tired, he couldn’t relate. He could be coming off a three-day assignment without sleep and summon up enough energy to make love to her.
However, despite the always there burn of desire, he hadn’t been attempting to renew their passion. “I can hold you while you sleep.”
“No.” The one word held a wealth of repudiation.
“Why not?”
“I’m used to sleeping alone.”
“You slept with me earlier,” he ground out, frustrated by her emotional distancing masquerading as logic.
“That was then. This is now.”
“Damn it, if you wanted me to sleep on the couch, why didn’t you say so?” He got out of the bed with jerky movements, his muscles tight with the effort it took not to give vent to his temper.
“I have no problem with you sleeping in the bed.”
He wasn’t playing these man-woman games. He was no good at them. His responses weren’t subtle enough. “I can’t promise not to roll over and touch you. If I do, I’ll probably wake up and want to make love. You don’t want that to happen, so I’ll see you in the morning.”
He’d reached the door when her voice broke through the silence. “I don’t mind if you want sex again, but I don’t want to cuddle.”
He spun around to face her and saw that she was now sitting up in the bed. “What?”
“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“What kind?”
“The caring kind.”
“You don’t care about me?” He didn’t believe her. She was too vulnerable to him not to care at all. “You think I don’t care about you?” he demanded before she’d answered the first question.
“You said you didn’t.”
He headed back to the bed. “Like hel—heck, I did.”
“It’s just physical.”
Standing over her, he vibrated with outrage at her accusation. “If that were true, I could have gotten as big a high off my fist as I do your body, and lady, let me tell you, that’s never gonna happen.”
“You said—”
“That I wasn’t looking for a forever. I didn’t say anything about not caring about you in the present.” Damn it, why did she have to make everything so complicated in her own mind?
“If you cared about me, wouldn’t you want a future?” she asked, sounding more confused than condemning.
“I don’t want a future with anyone.”
“Are you saying you do care about me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Oh. I care about you, too.”
He’d never doubted it.
Before she could ask how much he cared or get into one of those emotional discussions at which he was so hopeless, he decided to take action.
She gasped when he pushed her back into the pillows and gave a half-hearted protest when he claimed her mouth, but an hour later, when she lay sated and curled into his body like the other half of his soul, he figured she wasn’t thinking about how much he didn’t care anymore.
One thought nagged at him as he tried to sleep.
If Josie thought wanting a future together was a sign of caring, did that mean that despite what she’d said, she’d hoped for one with him?
Daniel woke up with two thoughts uppermost in his mind. The first was that despite the fact Josie had allowed him to become her first lover, she didn’t see herself as his woman.
Not only had she tried to sleep separate from him, even though she’d denied wanting him to leave the bed, but she had put a time limit on their relationship. Because they didn’t have a long-term future, she didn’t see herself as belonging to him in the present, and he wasn’t sure how to change her mind.
The second thought that came close on the first was that Hotwire would be arriving in Portland today. A man Josie freely acknowledged as a friend and admired in ways she’d never expressed admiration for Daniel, Hotwire fit into the new life Josie was creating for herself.
Daniel didn’t. He was a soldier, and she wanted a life free of them. She wanted a future, and he didn’t have one to give her. She wanted to be normal, and he’d accepted long before he left home that he wasn’t like other people.
That didn’t stop him from wanting her to belong to him right now, and the need to cement what connection he did have with her before they left the hotel that morning rode him hard.
She’d slept cuddled into his body, her bottom snug against his groin, her head resting on one of his arms, his other arm looped over her waist. He savored the sensation of physical closeness for several minutes, pressing his hand against the warmth of her belly and rubbing his thigh against hers. Josie didn’t stir. For a woman who had said she didn’t want to be held, she slept remarkably well wrapped up against him.
He derived satisfaction from that even as he planned how best to wake her. Carefully pulling his arm out from under her head, he guided her onto her back. She sighed in her sleep and turned toward him, subconsciously seeking the heat of his body, but he gently pressed her to her back again, wanting her open to his touch.
Using the same skills he’d honed to almost superhuman precision to disarm a bomb, he lightly brushed the pads of his fingers along her curves. Tiny bumps of sensual pleasure rose to the surface of her silky smooth skin, but she didn’t waken. He explored every inch of her tantalizing softness, stopping every time she moved toward wakefulness.
