Arrogant Brit

“How… how did you do this?” I asked him, barely able to coherently string thoughts together, either in my head or aloud.

“I pulled a few strings,” Dalton chuckled, watching me take in my surroundings with warm and reflective affection. “I had to pay a little more for this one, but as soon as the opportunity was available… I knew I had to have it.”

“Do you do that often?” I asked slyly.

“What’s that?” He asked, setting our to-go plates of dinner into the premium refrigerator. He quickly withdrew a bottle of red wine and a pair of wine glasses from the attached wine cooler.

“Take opportunities as they arise.”

“I don’t like to let things pass by,” Dalton shrugged, setting the glasses on the counter as he began to uncork the wine. “Call me what you will, but even before the Marines… I acted on instinct. Followed my gut. It even saved my life a few times.”

“Is that so. Like when?”

Dalton went quiet, staring into space. For a moment, I thought he was thinking about how to answer the question, but then I realized that the bottle of wine was being to shake slightly…

I took it from his hand, setting it beside the glasses, and took his trembling hand in both my own.

“Dalton? Are you okay?”

He blinked a few times.

“What? Yeah. I’m fine.”

I wasn’t convinced. “Are you… sure?”

“Yeah, just a, uh, a flashback,” Dalton chuckled as he shook his head. “Lately, I’ve been having a few flashbacks to a particular moment during my time in the desert…”

“Do you want to talk about it? I asked.

He looked strained for a moment. As he resumed uncorking the bottle, he poured us a pair of glasses of wine. “I was a ground trooper in the United States Marine Corps, placed into combat zones in the Iraq War. There are things that I’ve had to do … things that I’m not necessarily proud of, and things I’ll take to my grave. But never, ever have I done something unless it was to save my life or those of others.”

I nodded carefully, taking the glass of red that he handed me.

“One particular time, there was this insurgent… I was trying to save another member of my platoon, an older Marine by the name of Darren. Darren was wounded by mortar fire. I was trying to drag him out of the rubble of a building when an enemy trooper got the jump on us… he knocked my gun away, but I managed to keep him away from it. It came down to him versus me, both reduced to our combat knives, and I was just trying to save my friend…”

“You don’t have to say any more,” I reassured him, running my hand along his. “Whatever happened out there, it doesn’t matter to me. You were saving a life. Did he make it?”

Dalton looked up.

“Yeah. He made it. He retired a couple of years later. We got him to medical, patched him up… lost a leg, but he wears that prosthetic proud now.”

“Then you did the right thing,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about kind of zoning out about that.”

“No! God, no. Don’t apologize for a thing,” I whispered, setting the glass of wine down and throwing my arms around him. “Listen, Dalton… you were in war. You had to fight for this country… and you had to save your people.”

“That’s right,” he nodded thoughtfully.

The thought of him out in the desert with a knife, protecting wounded warriors, tugged at my heartstrings… but it also made him look even tougher, ever stronger than ever.

It ignited something deep inside me.

I took him by the hand and led him towards the bed, then tried to weakly push him down.

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be then, huh?” He chuckled, amused by my reactions. “Didn’t know war stories did it for you.”

“Shut up and get into the stupid bed.”

“Yes ma’am,” he winked, kicking off his shoes and climbing backwards onto the bedding. I did the same, curling up next to him, feeling the lust begin to burn deep inside me.

I knew then that I had to have him.

Dalton pulled me up against himself, his fingers threading into my hair to pull me into a deep and passionate kiss. I submitted to his demands, returning his zealousness with my own – I tugged his bottom lip between my teeth, slid my nose across his as I slightly adjusted my positioning, and flicked his lips ever so lightly with the tip of my tongue.

He grinned into this last part, and our lips parted together to allow our wet tongues access to one another.

I loved the strength and the cunning of his tongue against mine. With the warmth and power of his broad body pressed up against me, and his fingers tenderly stroking the contours of my jaw and my throat, I lost myself in that deep, carnal kissing of ours.

There was no denying it.

This just felt so absolutely right.

I don’t recall exactly how my dress came off, but soon I was in just my bra and thong against him, tugging off his blazer and diving for the buttons to his button-up.

As I slowly revealed his abdomen, I gasped in surprise; not only was he built broad and strong, but he bore a panty-drenchingly firm six-pack under his clothes.

“You like what you see, huh?” He cockily asked, grinning confidently.

“Duh.” I shook my head, taking in his heavily sculpted build. “Good god, you’re buff.”

“Yeah, it turns out that a few years in the Marines will do that for you,” Dalton shrugged. “I was already in fairly good shape before, but all those drills and marches really helped me hone my physique…”

“You’re telling me,” I nodded. I wanted to lick the contours of his abs…

Instead, I settled for kissing along them, feeling the taut skin beneath my lips. Whatever resistance I might have still put up to this idea was now long gone. The rest of the world was an afterthought… it was just Dalton and myself, alone in this lavish room with the stunning evening view of the city…

His shirt came off, leaving me in my underwear and him in his jeans. I could already sense the frustrated erection beneath, but I wasn’t ready to make that move yet.

Sensing this, Dalton didn’t skip a beat in shifting me onto my back into the bedding. His hungry lips found their way to my throat, and I slipped my arms around his neck as he began kissing beneath my jawline, eliciting a string of quiet moans from me.

I felt the chill of nervousness glide down my body, but I did my best to ignore it. The anxiety crept up slowly, gradually working its wicked magic against my pleasure.

He must have picked up on that, because he pulled back after a moment.

“Is something wrong?” Dalton asked hesitantly, watching me carefully. After a moment, recognition flared across his eyes. “Is this your first time?”

He started speaking at a thousand words a minute, his English accent blending his words together. “If we’re going too fast, it’s fine, I mean we can slow things down a little, I just don’t want you to be hurt—“

“It’s fine,” I smiled serenely, sliding my hand to palm his cheek. “This isn’t my first time, it’s just that… well… I didn’t have so great of an experience last time, is all.”

Dalton bit his tongue, but I pushed him on.

“Go ahead. Ask, if you want. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”

Quietly, he pressed: “Were you raped?”

My palm paused against his cheek. “No, nothing like that,” I answered calmly. “But the guy was… controlling, in a lot of ways. Some were subtle. Some… weren’t.”

He remained quiet, listening to me.

“Jeremy, the guy from the restaurant earlier… he was my ex-boyfriend. I spent two years with him. He was my first… everything. And I gave him that, willingly. He seemed like such a sweet guy.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I caught him cheating on me,” I shrugged. “People were telling me that he was, but I just didn’t want to believe it. He was always so convincing. I wanted to take him at his word