“Harper Drummond.” I tilted my head. “You’re stationed at Fort Lee?”
“Sure am. What gave me away?”
“Might’ve been the haircut.” I shrugged. “Or maybe I’m just that good at guessing things.”
“Ah. Maybe that’s it.” He rubbed his hands down my back, and I shivered. “Are you local?”
I nodded. “I live in Petersburg, and I work at a restaurant just a little beyond there.” I paused a beat before adding, “I’m a chef there.”
“Hey, that’s really cool. I always thought it sounded like a fun job.”
“Fun?” I shook back my hair a little and grimaced. “Not sure that’s the word I’d use. High-pressure, intense, crazy ... the kind of environment that makes you want to slit your wrists one moment and then two minutes later, you feel like you can do no wrong. Until you do, and everyone acts like it’s the end of the world.”
“Really? Wow. Consider my bubble burst. I guess I’m crossinggo to chef schooloff my bucket list.” Jake raised both his eyebrows as he gazed down at me.
“Sorry.” I let my fingers drift down toward the collar of his shirt. “This is my night off. My first night off in over two weeks. I knew I needed to let off some steam, but I guess it’s a little worse than I thought.”
“It’s okay, I get it.” He gave me a crooked smile that sent a zing of lust shooting down between my legs. “My job can be a little insane at times, too.”
“I guess so.” I didn’t mention that I knew any other soldiers from Fort Lee. The last thing I needed was for anyone here—especially the guy I planned to bounce on tonight—to connect me to Max Remington. Not that I didn’t like Max; I did, and the fact that he’d made my best friend Samantha so blissfully happy made him tops in my book. But he was also a straight-arrow, the kind of man who saw things in black and white, with very few shades of gray. If he heard through the grapevine that I was routinely banging random hotties in a series of hook’em up and set’em free one-night stands, he would freak the hell out. Sometimes he acted like he was the second big brother I never wanted, scolding me about locking my doors, warning me to be careful when I had to drive home from the restaurant late at night, and offering to introduce me to ‘good’ guys he knew from his battalion. Somehow, Max was under the impression that I was looking for happily-ever-after, when the truth was that I was really only interested in happy-for-one-night.
Which brought me back to the task at hand. The night wasn’t getting any younger, and I wanted to make sure Jake Robinson was on the same page I was. He was smokin’ hot, and I had some seriously wicked ideas about how the two of us could spend the next four or five hours.
“You have the most amazing eyes.” He spoke before I could, but his words took me aback. He wasn’t talking about my ass or my rack; he was complimenting my eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time any guy had done that. It was usually something more like, “You’ve got a really sexy body.” Or maybe, “You’re so hot.” All nice to hear, sure, but after a while, that didn’t mean so much.
“Thank you.” I glanced down, uncharacteristically flustered.
“Hey.” Jake touched my chin and tilted my face back up. “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all.” I stared into his face and felt something within me twang like a well-tuned guitar. “But I think I’d like to do ... this.”
Standing on my toes, I touched my lips experimentally to his, just to check for reaction. I needed to see if the chemistry between us was real and attraction I was feeling was legit. The minute our mouths met, something big and deep gave way inside me, and I groaned. The floor under me seemed to shift as though the earth was quaking. Need and lust surged so fast that I forgot where we were and all the people around us.
Jake slanted his head, urging me to open for him, and answered me with strong, steady thrusts of his tongue that I felt in every nerve of my body. He was tasting me, I realized, testing the waters just as I’d been doing. I hoped he was intrigued as I was.
When he let me go, I almost fell over, trying to catch my breath. Somehow, I managed a smile. “That was ... pretty much perfect. But I’m a little warm now. Want to grab a drink?”
“Sure.” He dropped one hand from my waist and slid the other to the small of my back, guiding me around the grooving bodies on the dance floor, through the tables adjacent to it and over to the bar. “What’ll you have?”
I lifted one shoulder. “I’m easy. Whatever you’re having, unless it’s something with Grand Marnier.” I wrinkled up my nose. “I hate that taste.”
Jake laughed. “Duly noted. How about a beer?”
“Absolute perfection.”
“My thoughts exactly.” He smiled down at me as he said it, as though he weren’t talking about booze at all. A warmth kindled somewhere in my middle and spread out over my body. It was a little unfamiliar: not straight lust or desire, but something strangely more. I wasn’t sure if I liked it.
I watched in silence as he caught the attention of one of the bartenders and held up two fingers, leaning forward to spell out what he wanted. “Coronas with lime. Extra, not light.”
The woman nodded at him. “Coming up.”
The bar area crowd had swelled even since my arrival. Jake managed to carve out a little space for us, bracing one arm against the oak bar itself, using his body to shelter me from being jostled too much. I felt oddly protected, and again, it was a new sense.
“Sorry. I didn’t even ask if you preferred light.” He bent down to speak closer to my ear.
“Nope. If I’m going to drink beer, I’m not doing any of that light shit.” I grinned. “I don’t do anything halfway.”
“Good to know.” His hand was still on my back, and now it moved up a little, rubbing against my spine, and then over toward my hip. “That’s my life philosophy, too.”
