Strategic Engagement (Wingmen Warriors 5)

And at the moment Danny was giving her all she could handle … and more. She'd faced so many life-changing decisions in the past month, she wanted, needed a brief respite of light, simple.

This.

The rest would have to be faced eventually. If nothing else, she'd learned from the past months a person couldn't run forever. Right now she wanted to embrace Danny's playfulness and ignore the niggling questions in his eyes and her nervous belly.

Daniel watched Mary Elise's eyes slide closed, pleasure flushing her skin almost as rosy as the thin sheen of syrup. Victory chugged through him. He wanted her so hot for him she couldn't remember anything or anyone else. He wanted to drive them both into forgetfulness until he evaded the impending sense of doom dogging his steps. Not so much over McRae. That battle he could fight with strategy and logic and tangible defenses.

But he couldn't shake the fear that had gripped him once he acknowledged his feelings for Mary Elise. The risk of losing her multiplied tenfold without any formula or equation for what he could do to keep her.

This freaking intuitive crap was driving him nuts. And the best he could come up with was a damned heated jar of jelly to mark her.

"Well, 'Lise, my list would include everything I find totally hot about you." With dabs of jelly on his fingertip, he stroked, claimed her as his to touch, taste. Love. "But I need you to let me know what you want."

The million-dollar question.

"All of that. I adore it when—" her words jumbled over themselves in nonsensical affirmations "—I really like it when you…"

He filled her.

"Yes." A purr vibrated her chest against his. "When you do that."

He moved again. And again, all the while grappling for self-control, a damned elusive commodity around Mary Elise.

Love wasn't easy and warm like friendship. This gripped him and held him as firmly as her body gliding against his, faster, leaving him no choice but to just move with it, with her, because he'd tried running, only to find she would always be a part of him, anyway.

He gritted his teeth against release, waiting, watching her, touching until he saw, heard her unravel in his arms. Her purr swelled into a cry of pleasure so sweet he waited until the last echoes faded from his head before he cut the bands of control, surrendered to a flat spin fall, ending in an explosion of emotion and raw need.

Each slug of his heart taunted him. No, he wouldn't walk away, but this new Mary Elise had a will of steel he couldn't bend, and this time he could be the one left behind.

Mary Elise perched on a bar stool, monitoring the two laptop computers while Danny took a power nap on the sofa. He'd vowed no way would he be able to drift off in the water bed scented with strawberries and sex.

She smiled. She was officially a strawberry addict.The computers hummed reassurance beside her with video views of sunrise filtering over the trees, the marshy beach clear except for the occasional pelican or egret scrounging for breakfast. Alarms stayed silent.

Quiet settled, deep and odd after so long on the run with fear roaring in her ears. For the first time since she'd found that hypodermic needle in her bag, she allowed herself to contemplate a future beyond the cabin. She thought … and came up blank. She knew all the logical answers, but taking the last step toward them seemed a bigger stretch than everything that had come before.

Because of everything that had come before with Danny.

Start small. Think about basics. She picked up an ink pen and pad, paused, exchanged the blue ballpoint for a red pen, strawberry red. Surely that was a good omen to use for making a list of the things she would need to do to reestablish her life. Where?

Charleston?

Logically, yes. She loved Danny. Now admitted she always had. How could she not? She loved the boys too. So why the can't-breathe feeling constricting her chest?

The last step stretched further in front of her.

With Kent out of the way, she wouldn't have any more excuses. She would have to face Danny. Face herself. Face risking forever with someone. She should be rejoicing.

Instead she was scared to death.

It was one thing to dream of a future, another to actually live it. Risk it.

And therein lay her core fear—how much it would hurt to fail with him again. Taking Danny's diamond solitaire off her finger had been hell before. This time her emotions went well beyond the teenage swells of first love that had characterized her feelings for him a decade ago.

Her hand slowed on the paper. She glanced down at her list of things to accomplish, things she wanted to tell the boys. Her hand stopped altogether. How strange. Her list had taken on a more conversational tone than a note written in bullet statements.

Slowly she began adding connector phrases, and a letter to Trey and Austin took shape. She let the words flow into a second letter, this time to her parents. Another to Kent that left her hand shaking.

She was writing, certainly not anything like the editorials she'd once written in hope of shaping readers' thoughts and politics. But words poured from her fingers in a healing balm she'd denied herself as if denying the need for a cure negated the ailment.