He took her fork and held a bite of cobbler to her lips. They parted, making him think how soft they’d feel if he felt them moving against his, and he slipped it into her mouth. She closed her eyes in bliss as she chewed. He couldn’t help imagining how she might react to other sorts of bliss. Destiny seemed to be a woman who lived life to the absolute fullest, enjoying its pleasures and facing its hardships without a flinch.
She opened her eyes—her big, beautiful, deep brown eyes—and Ethan knew what she wanted. What he wanted. It wasn’t too soon. It was exactly the right time.
He leaned across the table and kissed her. Her mouth was hot and tasted like peaches, and she grabbed his shoulders and pulled him a little closer in. Her soft little hands were deceptively strong, and he loved knowing that she wanted him even nearer. He could feel her passion in her tight grip, in the exploring flicker of her tongue, in the way she sighed into his mouth.
A rush of heat swept through his body, and he suddenly found himself picturing the back seat of Destiny’s car. It was big enough for both of them, and they’d have plenty of privacy if they parked in the woods…
A sharp noise made them break apart, startled. It was Aunt Lizzie, banging a spoon on the table. “All the world loves a lover. But not on top of my tables, if you please.”
They both leaned back hurriedly. Destiny’s skin was too dark to show a blush, but if she felt anywhere near what Ethan did, she’d be fiery red right now. He was pretty sure he was. They mumbled their apologies, and Aunt Lizzie departed with a stifled snicker.
Ethan and Destiny looked at each other. Her lips looked fuller than ever, her braids were tumbling into her face, and her skin glowed with a light mist of sweat. She looked like they’d actually made love, not just kissed for a few seconds. Or maybe it had been a lot longer than a few seconds. Who knew how long Aunt Lizzie had been standing there trying to get their attention?
“You look like a maraschino cherry,” Destiny said.
“Good enough to eat?”
“I guess I set that up. Let me re-phrase: you look like a five-alarm fire.”
“Smoking hot?”
She kicked his ankle. “Shut up and finish your cobbler.”
They finished theirs in record time, paid and said goodbye to Aunt Lizzie, and headed outside. The cool of the night made Ethan even more conscious of how hot he felt. His heart was pounding. He reached out for Destiny’s hand, and was rewarded by a grip that he already felt like he knew by heart: small and strong, soft and warm.
“How about we find a nice stretch of deserted woods to park the car?” he suggested.
“Yeah.” Her voice was husky, almost a purr. He’d never heard a woman sound like that before, and it set him on fire inside. “Yeah, let’s do that. Not here, though. I don’t know this area, and we might end up accidentally parked in Aunt Lizzie’s backyard. Let’s get a bit farther out of town. There’s a bunch of dirt roads going nowhere that would be perfect.”
She took the wheel, driving with one hand on his thigh. It felt like a hot coal, burning through his camo pants. He put his hand on her thigh, feeling her bare skin and soft curves. Ethan hoped he wasn’t distracting her as much as her hand was distracting him, because if he was, she’d go off the road.
“You want me to move it?” he asked.
“Nah.” There was that purr again. It made him so hard, he didn’t know how he was going to be able to stand the entire fifteen minutes or whatever he’d have to wait before she pulled over. “Nah, you leave your hand right where it is. You put it in my space, so it belongs to me now.”
Ethan barely stopped himself from blurting out that all of him could belong to her, if she’d take him.
Too soon, he told himself.
That other voice inside him, the one that had pointed out that he couldn’t be a Recon Marine forever, said, Yeah. Wait a couple days. Or at least till tomorrow.
She got back on the freeway and drove until the fields yielded to forests. Ethan breathed in the pine-scented air. Only twenty-four hours ago, he’d been humping a sixty-pound rucksack through Afghanistan, hot and dirty and exhausted but unable to relax in case he missed the signs of an ambush. He’d been so focused on the danger, he’d actually forgotten that he was going to go home the next day. Now he was driving through the woods, with the taste of peaches still in his mouth, to make love to the most incredible woman he’d ever met. And after that… who knew?
All it takes is an instant for your life to change forever, he thought. One gunshot. One look into a pair of brown eyes…
A movement in the rear-view mirror jolted him out of his musings and into full combat-readiness. A gun barrel had just poked out from the passenger window of the car behind him.
“Duck!” Ethan’s hand slapped against his hip, instinctively reaching for his gun. Only then did he remember that was in his duffel bag in the trunk of the car.
At the same moment, Destiny yanked her hand off his thigh and swerved the car off the freeway, flinging him into the side of the car. “Get down!”
The familiar crack of a rifle sounded, and an equally familiar zing of metal told him that the car had been hit. To his immense relief, Destiny was unharmed. She floored the car along the rough mountain road she’d pulled on to. Ethan twisted around, with difficulty due to the jolting from the rough road, and saw that the shooter’s car had followed them off the freeway.
Another rifle shot. This one missed.
Destiny had said she had a Sig Sauer in her purse. He rummaged inside, found and loaded the gun, and hit the button to roll down the passenger window.
“You drive,” he said. “I’ll shoot.”