LITMIR.BIZ

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have been real. The way she’d felt couldn’t be real. The woman she’d been with him couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be her.

      Her back arched into him, seeking more, giving him everything he asked for without hesitation or thought. His tongue thrust inside, filling her up before his mouth moved lower.

      Her eyes wanted to close, wanted to surrender to anything and everything Chase wanted to give her. But she wouldn’t let them, couldn’t, although for the life of her she could not remember why. She focused on the skyline above her and he nibbled at the delicate center of her throat.

      A light revolved against the darkness, coming and going in a throbbing pulse that was echoed deep at her core.

      No. No, this wasn’t right.

      “Stop.” The word popped out of her mouth on a sigh that held not a wisp of conviction. But Chase immediately took a step away, opening a space between them that she desperately needed.

      Rina looked up into his face, ruggedly handsome and stamped with an unmistakable hunger she recognized as the twin to the beast roaring inside her.

      He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t collected. And he sure as hell wasn’t charming as his chest rose and fell with the same labored pattern as her own. Wild was what she’d have called him, if she’d had brain power enough to think of a label.

      “Too fast.” The words whispered up from somewhere deep inside her.

      “Not fast enough.”

      “Slow down, cowboy. I have no intention of sleeping with you.”

      “You may not intend to but you’re going to anyway.”

      Now that was the cocky pilot she knew.

      “I don’t think so. Unlike men, we women tend to think with our brains instead of our anatomy. I won’t deny that I’m still sexually attracted to you, flyboy, but trust me, I can resist.”

      His eyelids lowered to half-mast, covering glittering sapphire eyes. His lips turned up at the corners in a mocking imitation of his full-blown smile.

      “We’ll see about that.”

      Rina watched as he turned and walked back out to the crowded sidewalk.

      She let the wall take the weight of her body from her shaking, saggy knees. Her head hit the veined marble as she realized she’d just made a tactical error with one of America’s best aerial dogfighters. A tactical error that could mean the next few weeks of her life were going to be hell.

      She’d just issued him a challenge.

       4

      “HOW’D IT GO?”

      Rina looked across the tiny table in the back of the casino restaurant at her best friend.

      “You really want to know?”

      It was late. Later than she normally stayed out on a work night, but she’d needed time to decompress before going home and Sadie was the only person she knew in the city who’d be up and awake. Sadie enjoyed her job as night bar manager on the strip. She was tall enough, blond enough and certainly stacked enough to have a more high-paying job as a showgirl, but that wasn’t what she wanted—not that she hadn’t been asked by quite a few of the casting directors.

      Rina had no idea how they’d become friends. Maybe it was because they were complete opposites in just about every way.

      Not that it mattered. The moment she’d met Sadie her sophomore year of high school they’d clicked.

      “Yes, I want to know. How did he take the news?”

      Rina dropped her head onto crossed arms atop the corner table, the polished wood and cotton eating her muffled words. “I didn’t tell him.”

      “What?”

      She lifted her head but only far enough to see her friend over the safety of her arms. “I chickened out.”

      “Rina.” The single word reminded her more of her father than she’d like to admit.

      That man knew how to fill one word with more disappointment and censure than anyone she’d ever met. She’d spent her entire life trying to avoid provoking that tone of voice. Trying to be different from her mother, the woman he was constantly telling her she was the spitting image of. The woman who’d deserted them both before managing to kill herself and injure a father and his son while driving drunk.

      The woman she never wanted to be. The woman she saw in the mirror every time she looked.

      If the General ever found out about this mess, he’d be so disappointed.

      He’d run their house like he’d run his men. He’d always held high standards, for himself and everyone around him. Sometimes the pressure to live up to those expectations had been heavy to bear. But she had. Because she was a McAllister.

      Not that any of that mattered anymore. What did matter was the mess she’d gotten herself into. Which she had made infinitely worse by letting Chase kiss her. Where was her damn self-control when she needed it?

      “You’re right. I wouldn’t have told him anyway. I was too busy letting him suck the skin off my neck.” She let out a groan and dropped her head back onto her arms. She really didn’t want to see the look on Sadie’s face.

      “Sabrina McAllister.”

      The shock in Sadie’s voice was exactly what she’d expected.

      “It’s about time you had some fun. And I say who better to give you a little sexual satisfaction than your husband?”

      “Sure. If I wanted to stay married, which I don’t. The minute I sleep with him any hope of an annulment goes out the damn window. Before, we didn’t know we were married. Now we do.”

      “So what if the judge doesn’t find out?”

      Rina cut her eyes over the top of her arms.

      “Have you seen my life lately? He’d find out.”

      “So what? Then you get a divorce.”

      “Then the General finds out, along with my commanding officer, and all hell breaks loose. We’re breaking about a million regs right now. Frankly, I’ve spent most of my life avoiding disappointing the General. Somehow, I think causing an air-force-wide scandal would crash that effort.”

      Sadie rolled her eyes in a familiar gesture that did little to help Rina feel better. “You need to stop worrying about what your father thinks.”

      “Yeah. Easier said than done.”

      “No. No it isn’t.”

      Rina sighed. Her friend simply didn’t understand. She had no idea how to turn off twenty-nine years of pleasing the man. It was a firmly entrenched habit.

      For most of those years they’d only had each other to rely on. She’d watched him dedicate his life to a career that had often taken him away from her for long stretches at a time. His job was dangerous. Even at five she’d realized she could lose the only person in her life, the only parent she had left, at any moment. It had instilled in her a need to make him happy whenever he had been there. A need to be different from the woman who’d yelled, complained and made their lives miserable before deserting them both. A need to be dutiful and strong and perfect where her mother had been flighty and vain and selfish.

      “What I need is to figure out how to tell my husband we’re married.”

      CHASE HEARD the knock on his front door. For about five seconds he entertained the hope that Sabrina would be there on the other side. He knew it was futile but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He hadn’t exactly handled things well tonight.

      “There was a rumor you were back in town.” Nope, not Rina, but someone almost as good.

      “Jackhammer.”

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