J Saint - Collateral Damage

What he had to have suffered hit her deep inside and tugged her closer to him, emotionally and physically, making him so much less than the stranger he should be. She wanted him, wanted to go back to that moment in the condo when he'd said, I'd back you to that wall right there, or any place you wanted to go, and do everything in my power to wipe him from your mind.

She shivered as she stared at him. It was so easy for her to imagine his rock hard body driving her every want to completion, fulfilling her every fantasy. She pressed her hand to the warmth of his chest, reveling in his fresh spice and mint scent and leaned closer to him. Jack was so different from Bill; in look, in action, in beliefs, even in the way he interacted with Matt and Mitch. Jack had thrown all of himself into the race he'd set up for the boys. Whenever Bill had played with them, it seemed that he'd only given half-assed efforts to it minutes before bedtime after he'd checked his mail and read the paper.

Jack inhaled hard and reared his head back; his flaring nostrils gave testament to the hot desire radiating from him. He stood in front of Lauren and thought he would surely die on the spot. Color rode high on her cheeks and her eyes, that could be the softest blue, flashed with hot emotion. From the contour of her breasts and defined shape of her nipples beneath her cotton T, he could tell she was aroused.

Talk about waving a red flag in front of a bull.

She touched a scar along his collar bone. "How could you ever think you aren't a better man than Bill?"

He fought for control. "Because it's true. I ki-"

"Did you get these scars by being a traitor like Bill?" she demanded, cutting off his confession.

"No." He couldn't seem to start his sentence over again. It was just three words. I killed Bill.

"Did you do to your wife and child what Bill has done to us?"

"No."

"So what happened between you and her?"

He clenched his fist. Talking about Bill and Jill-Ha, the names rhymed!-was the last thing he wanted to be doing at the moment. "When I go on assignment, I never know how long I will be gone and I'm not at liberty to say where I am. Though Jill thought she could handle it, she couldn't. She grew very bitter, and in the end found comfort other places. As for Livy, that gets more complicated."

"Kids have a way of doing that to life and situations," she murmured. But he caught on that she wasn't focused on wanting answers anymore. Her gaze was on his chest, and hunger was in her eyes. She slid her palm down from his shoulder to touch the bruising by his left nipple.

The purplish injuries had faded to a yellowish-green, but the extent of the trauma he'd suffered was still visible. He gritted his teeth and tried to suck air into lungs that had forgotten how to breathe. He grabbed her wrist, intending to pull her hand from his chest. Instead, he groaned and pressed her palm deeper into his skin. For just a moment, he told himself. It had been so long since he'd been touched, so long since he'd accepted physical comfort from someone else that he literally did not have the strength to pull away. That's all his attraction was to her. He was a starved man and she was an appetizing woman.

Yeah right. He was old enough to have been both starved and in the intimate company of an attractive woman and never before experienced the strength and urgency fueling his desire now.

God help him. It was wrong, but he shut his eyes and absorbed her offering, wanting the impossible. Wanting to kiss her lush mouth and fulfill every promise throbbing in the air between them on the soft bed behind him.

He opened his eyes, meeting her gaze head on as he lowered his mouth to hers. The control that had governed his entire life lay in pieces at her feet.

"You're a hero, Jack Hunter." She tip-toed up and kissed the scar on his temple.

Jack shuddered hard at Lauren's kiss, too far gone to correct her. Her scent was up his nose, her breasts were inches from his chest, her lush mouth was ripe, and he had to taste her or die. Before he could think twice, he groaned and planted his mouth on hers.

She gasped, hesitated a bare second, then leaned into him, meeting his tongue with hers. Her breasts brushed his chest, her hard nipples a ready invitation he couldn't refuse. He let loose the full force of his desire. Cupping her ass with one hand, he lifted her and backed her to the wall, pinning her against it with a thrust of his erection to the heart of her crotch. He braced his fisted hand against the wall and pressed his chest into her soft breasts and groaned deep.

She moaned and arched into him, pressing impossibly closer as she wrapped her legs around his hips. She tasted and felt like pure lavender-scented heaven and he would have gladly died that very minute just to enter her pearly gates. The thought of sliding into her wetness, the feel of her body branding-hot against his, the taste of her sweet tongue, silky and seductive, had him trembling from head to toe. Her hands were everywhere, touching him, feeling him. He grew light-headed and had to fight off a wave of dizziness as his blood rushed south and filled his so-hard-he-hurt dick. Going for gold, he cupped her breasts, brushing her glorious nipples with his thumbs until she writhed against him. She was breathing and shaking just as hard as he. But it wasn't enough. He wanted more. He wanted her flesh against his flesh. He wanted to taste her everywhere.

He snatched up her T-shirt, more than ready to fill his mouth with her fullness. He pressed a kiss to the center of her chest and slid his tongue to her nipple, feeling her heart pound hard against his face.

A heart he'd yet to be honest with.

Had yet to tell that he'd killed Bill.

The father of her children.

Some hero…

He jerked back, releasing her shirt as he fought for air. She just gazed at him, stunned, mouth open, a mouth made plumper by his lust.

"Damn, I'm sorry," he gasped, shell-shocked by what he had done. Keeping her steady with a bracing arm, he eased himself back, releasing her from the wall. She lowered her legs and leaned back heavily. He stepped away and fisted his hands, thoroughly disgusted with himself.

"You're wrong, Lauren. I'm no hero. I kil-" he couldn't force the words "killed Bill" from his mouth, but he did latch onto painting a real picture of who he was and what he did.

"You want to know what my job is? I kill people. I go into a situation and I take out targets. Sometimes the only thing separating me from the bad guys is whose point of view you happen to be in. Freedom, our freedom, comes with a price and sometimes that price is really ugly to face. We take out targets, and it's my job to make sure each combatant is dead before I leave the room. As my ex says, in my line of work, hero is just another word for killer."

She flinched, and he turned away. He didn't want to watch her revulsion. He'd chosen which side he was going to fight on and he carried through with that resolve. Sometimes, there was a distinct line of good and evil, sometimes the line was blurred, and sometimes his side was in the wrong. But he'd given his oath and he stuck things out through the thick and the thin. Life wasn't perfect and neither was any issue or situation. Killing came with a heavy price. He would always carry the burden of the deaths in his life, both of the teammates he had lost and of the men he'd killed in the line of duty. He never forgot for a moment that the target had to be someone's son, husband, or brother. That the target believed just as strongly in the side he fought on as Jack did on his own side.

"Go to bed," he told her. "And next time, leave me to my nightmares."

They were so much easier to take than impossible dreams. She was an impossible dream.

His answer was to hear the door close. She'd left and only then did he let himself draw a painful breath.