SEAL'D In Deep Page 8

  Staring into his eyes, she slowly inched her way down the bed, forcing Carter’s legs wider as she slid between them. She didn’t stop until his underwear was pooled atop his jeans on the floor and her head was between his legs, holding him in a firm grasp with her right hand. She stroked his shaft once, twice, then pressed a kiss to the tip. She felt him shudder and she smiled, pleasantly. It was always fun to test a lover’s control.

  Carter McIntyre would, of course, be no different.

  Well, actually…

  Something about him made this experience all the more special, in Liz’s opinion. He tasted better than she’d ever had. He was definitely bigger, definitely thicker, definitely more powerful than any other person she’d ever had. He held himself rigid above her, perched on his hands and knees, staring down at Liz as she moved her head up and down his shaft, keeping eye contact with him. His gaze with filled with that same intensity, almost daring her to finish him off. She decided to tease him with a few flicks of her tongue on the most sensitive parts of his cock, smiling around him when she felt him shudder briefly, losing some semblance of that control.

  It must have been too much for him, though, because the next thing she knew he was removing himself from her mouth and pulling away, causing her to moan at the loss of his taste from her mouth. She reached out for him, but one look from the intensity of his gaze sent her arms right back to her sides. She bit her lip, waiting him out.

  Carter stood in the center of her bedroom, fully naked, with his shaft standing at attention, his Navy tags hanging from the chain around his neck and his hair mussed from having had Liz’s fingers running through it for the better part of the last hour. She could still see rain droplets dripping from his hair from the downpour they had just narrowly escaped and she found herself licking her lips, wanting to taste their saltiness on his body.

  She resisted, waiting.

  Finally, he pointed to the space between her legs, which was still covered by the soaked sheen of her panties. “Lose them,” he ordered, causing a flush to immediately cover the surface of Liz’s body. She slipped out of her panties immediately, rolling them down her legs and throwing them off to the side, before looking to Carter for his next instruction.

  She couldn’t fight the flicker of her gaze down to the space between his legs, nor the bite of her lips once she met his eyes again, finding them full of hunger that she was certain was completely reflective of her own.

  “Move up the bed,” he said next, his voice low and controlled. “Sit up against the pillows.”

  Liz did as she was told, pressing her back against the pillows and taking a deep breath as she settled herself into a seductive pose, giving her lover a coy smile and a lifted eyebrow in a way that said, ‘Come hither’. Somehow, Carter still stay rooted to the ground at the foot of the bed, staring at her in all his glory.

  It seemed to take a lifetime for him to finally kneel down on the bed, placing his hands down on the blankets and stalking up the bed, over her body, until they were face-to-face, nose to nose, eyes boring into one another’s soul. Carter pressed a kiss to Liz’s lips and she moaned, attempting to deepen it, but he pulled away before she could, causing her to let out a sound of protest.

  It quickly turned into a gasp of surprise as she felt his teeth graze her collarbone, his lips moving down her body, grazing each nipple before circling her navel and sending shudders through her system. When he finally reached her hips, he kissed one and then the other, before moving down, inch by agonizing inch, until Liz’s fingers were completely clenched around the sheets on the bed, holding on for dear life.

  At the first touch of his tongue to her clit, Liz arched off the bed, moaning toward the high heavens as she felt even more tremors echo throughout her body. That was the quickest she had ever come and most of it had been from the sheer anticipation of his touch where she most needed it.

  Amazing. But he still wasn’t finished.

  Carter pulled her back down to the bed and used his muscular forearms as a weight over her waist, holding her down as he worshipped at the altar of her body, laving his tongue over her clit and running it through the pool between her legs, while Liz continued to moan and struggle against his arm, her hands alternating between tugging at the hair on his head to the sheets on the bed. She could feel his smile and it was infuriating, but then her mind went blank as another—somehow more earthshattering—orgasm rocked through her body. This time she held onto Carter’s hair as he lapped at her, extending her pleasure until she could take no more and pushed him away, panting and sweating, her body damper than before.

  Carter rolled over, but didn’t go far. He lay right next to her body, his hair tickling her side as Liz came down from the clouds she had floated up to. When she was cognizant again, she reached for him, encouraging to climb up her body until they were on their sides, facing one another. Liz leaned in and pressed a long, slow, passionate kiss to Carter’s lips, moaning as she tasted herself on his tongue.

  Before she could pull away, he had grabbed a hold of her thick thigh and slung it over his hip, pressing himself between her legs. He was still hard and she was very much still wet. He ran himself through her slit and Liz moaned, pulling him more firmly against her body. Carter positioned himself and, with one swift move, he was inside her, stretching her and causing Liz to let out a long, loud moan.

  She practically purred with pleasure as he began to move.

  It didn’t take long for her to finish for the third time. Carter held himself off until he was certain he could feel her pulsing around his cock. He helped her along with his thumb on her clit and his lips on hers, nibbling her bottom lip as she gasped and her body rocked against his, their lower halves grinding together.

  He came inside her with a guttural moan, practically growling Liz’s own name into her mouth. She whimpered his, her arms wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him to lie over her, like a blanket, their hearts beating in perfect harmony where they were pressed together.

  They fell asleep that way.

  *****

  When Carter woke up, he found Liz smiling at him, her fingers playing with a strand of his hair that had fallen into his face. She still looked spent, but he got the notion that she could go another round. So could he, with a little foreplay.

  Before he could suggest it, however, she spoke.

  “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “What?” Carter asked. “The sex or the sex with three orgasms?”

  “It was four, actually,” she corrected, gently. At his raised eyebrow, she clarified. “Yours counts, too.”

  “How egalitarian of you,” Carter cracked. Liz snorted, stroking his cheek in affection.

  There was a long moment of silence after that.

  “All of it?”

  “Hmm?” Carter hadn’t even noticed that he’d begun to drift off.

  “You asked which part I wasn’t expecting,” Liz explained. “I wasn’t expecting any of it. In fact, I’d forbid myself from even hoping for any of it.”

  “Did you think I didn’t want you or something?” Carter couldn’t see how that was possible. He’d thought he’d made his attraction to her very clear. There was no mistaking that Liz Morgan was as gorgeous as they came and it wasn’t like they hadn’t had sex before, right? Why would she think—

  “It’s not that I thought you didn’t want me,” she said, interrupting Carter’s thoughts. “Or that I don’t want you. I want you so damn much that it’s almost painful to constantly be keeping myself in check.”

  “Why do you, then?”

  “Professionalism.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Liz sighed and reminded him, “I’ve hired you to be my model for a series of photographs. And sleeping together could make that… complicated.”

  “Not if we don’t let it,” Carter said, thumbing her hip. “It can just be casual; a way to blow off steam.”

  “Can you do that?” Liz asked. “Can you really just…have sex with anyb
ody? Just to blow off steam?”

  “Well…not just anybody.” Carter lay his entire hand on her hip now, but didn’t move any closer. He kept some distance between their bodies. Liz felt her heartrate speed up. “And, if it helps, you can leave my paycheck on the dresser.”

  She huffed and swatted at Carter’s chest as he laughed and caught her hand, pressing his lips to her fingertips for a brief moment. “But, really,” he said. “If you’re not into this, I’m sure I can keep my pants on around you, so as not to temp you into submitting to your desires again.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Liz deadpanned, attempting to pull away.

  “Are you sure?” Carter asked. “Because I’ve been told that I’m rather irresistible.”

  “By whom?” she teased.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Liz rolled her eyes and thought about rolling away from him, but one more glance down the bed told her that he was ready again and she couldn’t find it in herself to resist the siren call of his body. “Well,” she said, rolling closer to him until their bodies were pressed firm and she could feel his hardness pressing against her soft belly, “maybe just one more time…”

  She pressed her lips to his and allowed him to roll her body under his for another round. The second of many.

  *****

  The next time he awoke, Liz was sleeping soundly on his chest, one arm slung loosely around his waist and her breasts pressed against him. The bottom half of their bodies was covered by a sheet and it was still dark out.

  They had spent all of the previous day in and out of bed. Liz had mentioned how unlike her it was to go against her self-made schedule, but she’d stopped thinking about it when Carter took her from behind at the kitchen counter, where they had been making a quick lunch to sustain their activities until dinner. They barely took any of it back to bed with them.

  They ordered takeout Thai for dinner.

  Carter remembered glancing at the clock sometime around nine, just before they drifted off for good, their bodies completely spent as they wrapped themselves in each other’s embrace. Carter had thought only briefly of sneaking out to make it back to his apartment, so that he wouldn’t wake Liz up with any of the flashbacks he tended to have in the dead of the night.

  He hadn’t been awake long enough to formulate a solid plan.

  It didn’t even matter, though, because the flashbacks hadn’t come. Instead, he’d been able to sleep more soundly than he had since he returned from the desert and was discharged from the hospital. He looked at the clock, which told him that it was almost five in the morning, and he marveled at the fact that he had also slept for so long without incident.

  Usually, he lay awake, staring at his ceiling until the sun rose and he pushed himself up for the day. And, yes, he did often drift in and out of sleep, getting enough to keep his body moving all day long, but never had he felt this energized and—

  Suddenly, the recesses of his mind seemed to flare up as he remembered what he’d been dreaming of just moments ago. Flashes of his nightmare came back to him, causing Carter to shut his eyes tightly and grit his teeth. He swore he could feel the red hot heat of fire and burning metal and the ragged burn of black smoke in his lungs, causing him to let out a few small coughs.

  When he opened his eyes, there was nothing.

  Nothing but Liz and her bed and her soft carpeting, topped with their rumpled clothing. Light was beginning to come in through the window as dawn began to break, but there was no broken metal, no smoke, and no fire to be seen.

  Still, Carter felt suffocated. He slipped out of Liz’s embrace, grounding himself on her soft flooring and looking around for his jeans. He slipped them on without even bothering to look for his underwear and was just reaching for his shoes, when he heard a soft voice call out to him.

  “Carter?” Liz asked. “Are you okay?”

  He turned back to her, forcing himself to appear calm, even as his heart threatened to beat out of his chest. He forced his face into a mask of indifference, but he wasn’t cold as he answered.

  “Yeah. I just have something I need to do and I have to take a shower first.”

  “Mm,” Liz hummed, sitting up to stretch. “Maybe I could join you?”

  Carter forced a laugh and shook his head. “Don’t you have to go jogging or something? Maybe you should wait until you get back so you don’t end up taking two showers.” It was a lame excuse and they both knew it.

  Liz didn’t argue, though. She just nodded in compliance and reached up, pressing a kiss to Carter’s lips before returning to her place on the bed, cocooning herself in the blankets to spend the last couple of moments before her alarm went off in peace. She was asleep in seconds.

  Carter stood and watched her for a long moment and, for a few brief moments, he considered returning to bed and curling up next to her body with his lips pressed to the back of her neck. Perhaps he could even convince her to skip her jog in favor of a different form of exercise.

  But then he got another flash of his dream and he nearly stumbled backward, gritting his teeth as he made his way to the door, scooping up his shoes and leaving his shirt and boxers littered on Liz’s floor. He could get them later, he reasoned, as he reached for the doorknob and exited the apartment.

  He took the stairs to his apartment two at a time.

  *****

  He was at Admiral Maxwell’s office before even the receptionist got there. He had to wait twenty minutes outside the door for her to show up with the keys. She eyed him wearily and Carter suddenly realized how he must have looked. His hair was uncombed, there was a slight shadow on his jaw, and the clothes he’d thrown on were wrinkled with a very noticeable stain on his shirt, right over his left breast. He looked homeless.

  Carter had run his hand through his hair and offered a charming grin to the young woman, but she had still looked wary, hesitating before she unlocked the door to the office and allowed him in. He had tried to break the tension with a small bit of conversation.

  “How are you doing this morning, Miss Marlowe?” Her nametag was on her desk, but she looked shocked that he knew her name. She furrowed her brow as if trying to recall who he was.

  “I’m doing just fine…” she said. “I’m sorry, do you have an appointment with the Admiral?”

  “No,” Carter replied, honestly. “But I do need to speak with him.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but Dr. Maxwell’s schedule is—”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Excuse me?” Miss Marlowe blinked up at him and he took out his wallet, flipping it open to flash his I.D. badge.

  “I’m Lieutenant Carter McIntyre,” he informed her. “I’m one of Admiral Maxwell’s patients and I very much need to speak to him.”

  The receptionist nodded and returned to her desk. “Alright,” she said. “Well, he’ll be here in just a few moments if you’ll just sit and wait. I can’t promise that he’ll make the time to talk to you without an appointment, though. As I said, he has a full roster and—”

  “Lieutenant McIntyre,” came a voice from the doorway and both Carter and Miss Marlowe turned to see the man in question enter, leaning heavily on his cane. He gave Carter a kind smile and held out his hand. “It wasn’t expecting to see you today, young man. What brings you by?”

  “It’s complicated,” Carter replied, evasively.

  “I see,” Dr. Maxwell said. “Let’s speak inside my office then, shall we? Miss Marlowe, let me know when my first patient arrives; this should only take a moment.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Dr. Maxwell led Carter into his inner office, limping ahead of the younger man and placing his bag just inside the door, before collapsing onto one of the couches. He took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and dabbed at the sweat on his forehead. He grimaced in pain and took a deep breath before straightening his back and offering Carter a smile. He motioned to the couch across from him.

  “So, what brings you by?” he asked, in his ca
lm tone of voice. Carter wondered how it was possible for him to have been in the armed forces at all with a demeanor like that. He was far too gentle to have risen the ranks to Admiral.

  “I had a dream,” Carter informed him, not bothering to sit down. Instead, he paced. “Of that day. I could see the smoke and the fire and my friends…my comrades…dying.” He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

  “Have you never seen these things before?” Dr. Maxwell asked. “You don’t have flashbacks?”

  “No,” Carter said. “I mean, yes. I do have flashbacks. All the time. But usually I just blink a few times and…” He waved his arm like fanning away smoke and the Admiral nodded in understanding. “This time, though…the images just won’t leave me alone. Every time I close my eyes, I can see and hear and smell everything all over again. It just won’t stop.”

  “And what would you like me to do about it?” asked Dr. Maxwell.

  “Fix me,” Carter huffed, turning to him with anger in his eyes for the first time since he’d gotten there.

  “How do you expect me to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Carter hissed. “But you’re the doctor, aren’t you? You must be able to do something for me.”

  “Well, I could prescribe you some kind of medication for…”

  “No,” Carter interrupted. “No meds. If you put me on meds, I won’t be allowed to serve again. I’ll be marked as mentally unstable and discharged.”

  “Is it really more important for you to serve and risk your life than to be healthy.”

  “You don’t get it,” Carter sighed.

  “No, I don’t,” Admiral said, standing up again and leaning even more heavily on his cane—almost pointedly—as he limped toward his desk and began rummaging through his drawer. “But I can’t exactly force you to start taking medication, now can I?” He pulled something out and tucked it under his arm as he walked back to Carter. “But I can give you an assignment.”