The Army Doc's Baby Secret

‘To step away,’ he rasped.

The charged silence arced between them and still he steeled himself.

‘I’m not moving,’ she whispered, her voice cracking.

‘No,’ he agreed.

The undercurrent rolled. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she lifted her shoulders to him. A silent plea for him to move.

He held his ground.

‘Suddenly I find I want to be sure,’ he ground out. ‘If you want more, come and get it.’

‘Zeke...’

Her eyes gazed at him, tortured. Another victory, he told himself, forcing his expression to remain neutral.

‘Your choice. I don’t want there to be any question about this, Tia.’

For a moment she didn’t move but then slowly, seemingly painfully, she lifted her clenched fists off the desk and pushed herself backwards, if only half a step.

Zeke could feel himself teetering on the edge of the abyss, struggling to keep his footing even as he knew he was too far gone. The ground felt as though it were shifting beneath him, even though he knew it was merely in his head.

And then, incredibly, she stepped forwards again. Towards him. Unsteadily. As though her body was acting on its own orders rather than any executed by her brain. But the expression on her face was so painfully familiar it was as though he were igniting from the inside out.

As she finally moved in front of him, going toe to toe, the last of his control went up in spectacular flames.

What the hell was she thinking?

The question flitted briefly into Tia’s mind, but then Zeke pinned her against the wall, his deliciously hard body bearing on her with wicked heaviness, and everything liquefied.

The past few hours had been so charged, so heady, that she’d almos

t lost sense of herself. Thrown back into the past, yet still rooted in the present. It felt surreal.

The first kiss had been like coming home, Tia thought weakly, even as it made her entire body ignite at his touch. But this one had her as though her body was no longer under her own control, reacting to him on an utterly primal level, whilst her brain had no say whatsoever in the matter.

She was vaguely aware that she should object, but instead her hands were threading through his hair, her mouth tingling with every brutal pass of his tongue, her body exalting with the hard, altogether too familiar pressure of Zeke against her.

‘Where the hell did you go?’ he demanded hoarsely, as though he was barely able to drag his mouth from hers enough to ask. As though he hadn’t intended to ask, but instead the words had been ripped from somewhere deep inside.

She didn’t know how to respond other than to shake her head minutely and press her lips to his again. Words could only complicate things.

And ruin them.

She just wanted to revel in the kiss that was still pounding through her, hammering along her veins, firing her up as though the last five years had never happened.

Something sloshed around her head, a thought perhaps, maybe a reminder—no, more than that, a warning—but she couldn’t grasp it. She didn’t even want to try that hard.

So instead she simply obeyed as he tilted her head this way and that, testing her, tasting her. He was gentle one moment, demanding the next, his tongue sliding against hers, driving her wild, making her respond every time. It had been too long.

Far too long.

She heard the desperate, needy sound that escaped her lips. She felt the way her fingers clung to him, almost biting into the solid biceps, which time had done nothing to diminish. She experienced the ache—the yearning—as it flowed down through her very core, turning everything hot. Molten. Releasing five years of pent-up frustration.

The more roughly he kissed her, the more she pushed back, as if seeing his offering and raising the stakes. It was a dangerous game. A thrilling game. One that she was helpless to stop. Her overriding thought—need—was to reacquaint herself with every plane and contour of his body. To make up for all these awful years apart.

Lifting her arms, Tia wrapped them around his neck, shuddering when he let his hands trail down her body with such control that she was certain he was only trying to torment her.