The Player - By Rhonda Nelson Page 0,50
back up. She lathered him up, washing his hair in a way that was gentle but not overtly sexual. It was nice, Jamie thought, to be able to be with a naked woman—one he admittedly wanted more than any other on the planet—and yet be content not to act on that desire. He supposed that’s what happened when you found the right one.
In short order, she had them both clean, warm, dressed and situated in front of a small fire. She’d tossed a couple of easy-start logs into the grate and a cozy warmth soon permeated the room.
Her hair still wet, she sat down beside him wearing one of his shirts, and offered him her hand. A simple gesture, but one that had a singularly profound effect on his heart. His throat clogged.
Okay, he thought, blowing out an uneasy breath. She wanted to know about Danny. Where to start? “You were right,” Jamie told her. “Danny was in my unit. I’m assuming your grandfather told you a little bit about him and—” he cleared his throat “—what happened?”
She nodded once. “Some. He mentioned that you’d lost a good friend recently.”
“That’s the watered-down version.” He traced a finger over her palm. Then he swallowed again. “Danny was more than a good friend. He was more like a brother. Our unit was like that. Tight. We met in college, the four of us. Me, Danny, Guy and Payne.” Jamie smiled, remembering. Young and dumb, he thought, hell-bent on changing the world. “Guy and Payne are my business partners in Ranger Security,” he added as an aside. The silence yawned between them, then he shook his head. “When Danny died, we…We all wanted out.”
“That’s certainly understandable,” Audrey told him. “Surely you don’t fault yourself for that?”
“No, not for that,” Jamie said. “I fault myself for not saving him.”
“Oh, Jamie,” she sighed, smoothing the hair above his ear. “You can’t fault yourself for that either.”
He could and he did. Tears burned the backs of his lids, his chest ached with the pressure of guilt. Jamie swore, wiped his eyes. “I was supposed to have his back,” he said, his voice cracking. “Not Payne. Not Guy. Me. I was the one who was supposed to make sure nothing happened to him.”
In an instant, Audrey was in his lap. She straddled him, framed his face with her hands, forcing him to look her in the eye. “Jamie, your intentions were good, but we both know you were setting yourself up to do the impossible.”
“But—”
She shushed him. “Let me ask you something. Did you follow procedure?”
“Of course.”
“Didn’t vary from what you were supposed to do and took every precautionary measure?”
“Yes, but—”
“Were you operating on good intelligence?”
She was definitely the Colonel’s granddaughter, Jamie thought. He’d asked many of these same questions. “Yes.”
“Then what went wrong?”
A cold chill slid down his back. “We were ambushed.”
Her thumbs gently swept his cheeks. “Then how were you supposed to have his back?”
Jamie started to reply, but found he couldn’t answer.
“You would have had to have been psychic to know what was going to happen,” she said softly. She bent forward and kissed him, causing the flow he’d been holding back for eight months to come rushing forward in a cleansing torrent he didn’t have a prayer of stopping. He cried for Danny, he cried for himself, he cried for his friends.
“Let it go,” she said, hugging him tightly. She rocked him back and forth, the movement soothing and tender and heartbreakingly sweet. “I’ve got you,” she murmured. “Just let it all go. If he was the kind of friend worthy of this grief, then he wouldn’t want you holding on to it like this, would he?”
No, he wouldn’t, Jamie thought. Odd how he’d never looked at it that way. It was sobering. He felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off his chest.
Audrey drew back, showered his face with healing kisses, sprinkled them along his jaw, lingered around the corner of his mouth. Jamie turned his head and caught her lips, fitted his hands on the small of her back. God, she tasted wonderful, he thought, savoring the flavor of her against his tongue. What had he ever done without her?
Knowing what he wanted—what he needed—she upped the intensity of the kiss, slid her hands down his chest, then back up again, over his neck and into his hair. An arrow of heat landed in his groin, stirring his dick beneath her.
Audrey groaned into his mouth—the sound desperate and erotic—and wriggled