Tied Up in Knots (Marshals 3)

“You don’t think she knows that?”

She made her eyes flutter like I was giving her fits.

“Just go down there and be the bigger person.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“But you do want to, ’cause you actually really like her too.”

She waited another moment, but she got up, kissed me on the forehead, and left to go confront her mother-in-law.

Feeling better, I got out of bed and went to change out of the pajama bottoms and T-shirt I’d had on all day. My plan was to go downstairs, but once I was in jeans and a heather gray sweater, I lost steam. I was sitting on the bed debating socks when Ian appeared at the top of the stairs.

“What’re you doing?”

“Gearing up to be sociable,” I said, chuckling.

He walked over to the bed and sat down beside me. “It’s breaking up soon, anyway. Just gonna be us and the guys.”

I sighed. “Not that I’m not thankful, but everybody’s not coming up here to say good-bye, are they?”

“No,” he murmured, leaning sideways to nuzzle my cheek before he planted a kiss there.

I made a noise he must have liked because he slipped a hand around the side of my neck and turned my head with gentle pressure from his thumb on my jaw. When I was staring at him, he leaned in and kissed me.

I wanted to soak up every drop of his attention, so happy with him, with his choices, with how things could be now that he’d really given us a chance. I could feel my stomach that had been in knots for so long finally begin to unclench as I parted my lips and let him in.

I felt it, instantly, the spike of raw pleasure driving to my core, heating me from the inside out, filling me with the familiar need to have his naked skin all over mine.

“Ian,” I panted, driving him down under me on the bed. “Take off your clothes.”

“Oh, I would love to,” he said, threading his fingers through my hair and pushing it back from my face. “But like I said before, it ain’t happening until Monday.”

I grunted and sat up, straddling his thighs, content to sit there and look at him beneath me, all beautiful and mine.

“I’ll make you a deal.”

“I’m listening.”

“You get all rested, and next month we’ll go somewhere, just us.”

“A vacation?” I said drolly. “You’re saying you’ll take me on a vacation.”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“We both have a crapton of time saved up.”

“Yeah, but—” And then it hit me, that I had him, he wasn’t leaving me anymore because he was, in fact, leaving the Army instead.

I took a quick breath.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“What’s that?” I said, trying to keep it together. It wasn’t every day your whole life started. The overwhelming feeling of joy was swelling inside my chest and it was hard not to scream or cry or just lose it all over the man I loved.

“Me being around.”

I coughed. “I’m good with it now.”

He laughed softly at me, hands on my thighs, squeezing tight.

“So, a vacation?” I rasped.

“Yeah. Wherever you want.”

I nodded. “I’m holding you to it.”

“Good.”

I rolled off him and lay down close, still touching. “So tell me, how does it feel to be ex-Special Forces?”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “I’m not really sure yet. It’s so new. Not even official yet.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I wanna tell you,” he insisted, “I do. But it’s just an us thing, no one else.”

“Okay.”

He got to his side to face me and trailed his fingers along my jaw. “I mean it. I want to talk to you and bore you with every little detail, but there are way too many people here, and once I get started, I won’t want to stop, much like when we’re screwing.”

I laughed. “That’s so romantic.”

His smile was arrogant. “I knew you’d think so.”

“Ian—”

“I know you wanna know everything, M, and I promise to tell you.”

“It’s important.”

“I know,” he agreed, tracing over my eyebrow with his thumb.

“Will you at least tell me why the inquiry into Lochlyn ended so abruptly?”

“There was nothing new for them to find out from the past. Clearly Lochlyn was unstable, and that was pretty evident from all the reports. Keeping us there was not gonna shed any new light on anything, so they let us go.”

I was very thankful. “I missed you more than normal the last time.”

“Me too. I felt the times between me going getting shorter and shorter, and when leaving makes you physically ill—something’s gotta give.”

His words were guaranteed to make my heart stop.

“You know it’s gonna be different for us.”

“What’s that?”

“Me being around all the time,” he explained as he pushed my hair out of my face again. “I know guys who got divorced after they quit ’cause they drove their wives nuts.”

I slid a hand over his chest. “Yeah, you don’t hafta worry about that.”