When he pulled her ass closer toward the edge of the bed and plunged into her wetness, they both released groans of pure pleasure. His was a deeper—almost possessive—growl, but hers wasn’t any less animalistic. She wanted him to possess her completely, make her his in every way possible.
His hands firmly grasped her hips as he slowly moved inside her. With each thrust, he pumped harder and harder until he buried himself all the way to her very core. She was panting so hard she was almost dizzy.
The rush of her approaching orgasm didn’t surprise her. She’d learned last night that Gage could make her come almost anytime he wanted—and right now he wanted her to come right away.
Her teeth clamped down on the blanket covering his bed and she swore she could taste him on it. That thought, however crazy, only brought her climax on faster. She screamed into the bed, clutching the covers as her whole body shuddered violently. And when the first waves of orgasm passed, she got an even firmer grip. Because there was something else last night had taught her. Gage wouldn’t stop with making her come only once. He would take her like this until she was sure she’d pass out—then he’d make her come even harder.
* * *
Mac cuddled against Gage’s chest, running her fingers over the muscles and lightly tracing his tattoos. She’d never been into guys with tats, but he made them work. She’d seen the wolf-head SWAT tattoo during PT and when they’d made love the previous night. But she hadn’t gotten a good look at the other tattoo—the one he called his Ranger Scroll—until now. She traced her fingers along the black ribbon outline with its red inner line. Inside both lines were letters and numbers.
“Second Ranger, I get,” she said softly. “What’s BN stand for?”
It took Gage a minute to answer—he was pretty much comatose beneath her in his own post-orgasmic bliss. “Battalion. I was in the 2nd Ranger Battalion out of Fort Lewis.”
He said the words so quietly she wasn’t sure if she should ask him anything else about it. She remembered how he’d smiled in all the military pictures out on the wall, but looked almost somber in every photo after that. She wanted to know more about Gage, though. Hell, she wanted to know everything about him there was to know.
“I remember seeing in your public relations bio that you spent six years in the Army. Was all of it with the 2nd?”
“Not counting Basic and initial schooling, yeah, I was in the 2nd the whole time. I came in right after Desert Storm kicked off and was out by the middle of ’97.”
“I saw the pictures out on the wall. Were they your friends in the 2nd?”
Of course they’d been his friends—he’d taken pictures with them. But he seemed to understand what she was asking.
“They were more than that. They were like my family,” he said quietly. “First Platoon, First Rifle Squad. My brothers.”
Mac realized then that he’d never said a word about family until now, and when he did, it was in terms of the soldiers he’d served with.
“They sound like amazing guys. Do you stay in touch with them?”
Gage didn’t answer, and the silence stretched out until she lifted her head off his chest to look at him. His eyes were closed, and when they opened, she couldn’t miss the sadness in them.
“No,” he said. “They’re all dead.”
Crap. Why the hell had she asked that question? Couldn’t she have just left well enough alone?
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a painful subject.”
He gently twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known. It was a long time ago anyway. It hurts to think about, but not like it used to.”
She rested her head on his chest again, furiously trying to think of something that would help change the topic of the conversation. But her mind was completely blank.
“It was back in August, 1996.”
Gage’s voice was soft and so full of sadness that she almost stopped him, but she didn’t. If he wanted to talk, she’d shut up and listen.
“We were supposed to be on a simple training rotation in Kuwait. You know, run around, shoot some blanks, cross-train with the Kuwaitis and Saudis. But for some reason, somebody with a star on his shoulder decided to send First Platoon up to the northern part of Iraq—the part that’s called Iraqi Kurdistan now—to conduct some goodwill development with the regional Kurd forces. My squad leader tried to point out it wasn’t even a Ranger job, but nobody really cared about that, so we were sent up there anyway.”
He fell silent for so long that Mac thought he was finished. But then she realized she could hear his heart beating fast beneath her ear.
“It wasn’t so bad at first. Kind of fun, actually,” he continued. “The platoon leader had each of the squads farmed out, working with a different part of the Kurdish militia. They certainly needed our help, so none of us minded. Then on the thirty-first, Saddam got a hair up his ass and decided to send his forces up to the town of Irbil for a little ethnic cleansing. Right where our squad was set up. Nine of us, stuck right in the middle of a place we really weren’t supposed to be, with no support and almost no ammo.”
Mac held her breath, waiting.
“As you can imagine it didn’t go well for us. We were fighting side by side with the Kurds, and we put up one hell of a defense, but they didn’t have much in the way of heavy equipment, and we didn’t have any. A whole lot of people
