The mission had been a success, but Conrad couldn’t figure out what was wrong with Missy. She’d been having some kind of tizzy since they’d arrived at Red Flag. She’d been different, standoffish—like he’d maybe done something to upset her. He just couldn’t figure out what.
He’d done everything he was supposed to. He could say that he’d pushed her away, but she’d never really got that close to him. Never given him the slightest impression that would have legitimized the need that burned inside him.
And thank God. Sometimes he knew that his rampant desire for her would have totally taken him over if she’d even looked at him a certain way. He needed to get his head back in the game. He’d missed her after their last flight of the day because the crew chief needed to speak to him. But he couldn’t just hang out and wait for her to be ready to tell him what the fuck was up.
He swung by the barracks to find her, but Major Eleanor Daniels, Missy’s roommate, told him that she’d gone to the gym. So be it.
He changed into his PT clothes at his lodging and headed down to the base gym. As he expected, it was virtually deserted except for a few guys doing weights and Missy punching a bag.
“Oh, come on. Today wasn’t that bad,” he joked as he took in the ferocity with which she was victimizing the bag.
She paused, blew hair out of her eyes, and put her hands on her hips. “Where did you go? I waited for you in the briefing room.”
He frowned. This sounded serious. “The crew chief wanted to talk to me about something they found on one of the F-16s. I came to find you right after, which is why I’m here.” He definitely wasn’t going to mention the lipstick graffiti that had been left for Eleanor on the side of her aircraft. He hoped it had just been a prank. In bad taste, for sure. Lipsticking Bitch was bordering on criminal. He hoped Eleanor hadn’t seen it. Something like that was designed to get into someone’s head, throw them off their game. Whoever had done it didn’t have the balls to compete on a level playing field. If Conrad found the bastard who’d written it, he’d be toast.
Missy nodded toward the punching bag and he took hold of it to give her a better target. She hit it over and over, as if she was shivving someone in jail. Hard and fast. Really fast. He planted his feet farther apart to counter the thrust on the bag.
“Dude. What’s wrong?” he asked.
She stopped and wiped sweaty hair from her forehead with the back of her boxing glove. “I’ve asked for a transfer to MacDill.”
His brain stuttered at her bald statement. “What?” She couldn’t just leave him and live on the other side of the country.
“It’s time.”
“It’s time for what?” he ground out, trying not to sound upset and failing miserably.
“I’ve learned all I can from you…and the other pilots I fly with. It’s time for me to press on, or I’ll be in this squadron for another year at least. No one wants that.” She smiled as if she was making a weak joke.
His brain couldn’t process what she was saying. In the years they’d been in the same squadron, never once had he contemplated being without her. Not being able to fly with her. Not seeing her every day. It had never even…even crossed his mind. Shit.
He laughed, unable to figure out what to say, and her face froze.
“Why are you laughing?” she said. The expression that had been on her face while she’d been punching the bag returned. He stepped back.
“I don’t know.” He held his hands up. “I’m sorry. It’s just so unexpected. I assumed you—”
“You assumed that I’d just stay flying with you until you decided to move on to another job, right?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I mean—”
She stepped back and took a breath. He waited for her to say something, his mind whirring…how could she not see that he wouldn’t be as good a pilot if she wasn’t sitting behind him? How could she not see that she was changing their lives without even consulting him?
She said nothing. But her face reflected some kind of recognition or understanding.
Relieved, he exhaled heavily. “You see? It’s okay. You can take back a request for transfer. I can ask Colonel Bailey to ignore it. It’ll be fine.” Thank God she realized her mis—
She punched him in the soft spot of his shoulder, just over his collarbone.
He rubbed it and grabbed the bag again. “You missed it.” He smirked.
She pushed him with both hands and he was propelled backward toward the mats.
“What are you doing?” What the fuck is going on?
She advanced on him again and pushed him, making him almost trip on the corner of the gym mat. He held up his hands in surrender. “All right, Missy. Calm down.”
She hung her head for a second, and he put both his hands on her shoulders. She looked up, forced his hands away from her, and grabbed one of his arms and pulled him toward her, while blocking his legs from moving with her right leg. Effortlessly she threw him over her left hip. Boom. He landed on the mat. Damn.
A couple of the guys doing weights sniggered. Awesome.
He propped himself up on his elbows. “Are we done now? Is this all sorted now?”
“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “You have no idea how to even be a human being. How to think about anyone other than yourself.”
Well that wasn’t true. He thought about her all the fucking time. About what he wanted to do with her, about kissing her—she just didn’t understand. He whipped his legs around to the side and tripped her. “What exactly is going on here?”
She fell to the left of him, but so close he felt the breath poof out of her as she fell. He jumped up and held his hand out to her. She ignored it, getting to her feet herself, and charged him from a crouching position, using her weight below his center of gravity to hit him back to the mat.
This time she landed on top of him. She held his gaze for a couple of seconds, and then scrambled to get off him. He held her firmly by the arms. “I’m not your punching bag. Whatever you have going on—”
“Then what exactly am I to you? Just some person whose only job is to make you look good up there? Your…sidekick?” She bucked against his arms, managing to get a knee to his groin, but thankfully missing all the important parts. He roared and spun her onto her back.
Before she fully made contact with the mat, she spun away and leapt to her feet. Crap, but she was slippery when she was pissed. He realized in that instant that he’d never seen her pissed. Or even sad or ecstatic. Around him, she’d always been in work mode. Professional, a little sardonic, occasionally lighthearted.
One of the lights went out in the gym, and he looked toward the weight machine and realized everyone had left, presumably to go party downtown, as most people did when they were in Vegas. In his moment of distraction, he had only a split second to react to a kick to his chest. Reeling from the impact, he still managed to grab her foot and hold it up.
“Well, I’ve got you n—” he started.
She bent her remaining floor-bound leg and sprung. A second foot caught him in his chest and he went down. As did she, gratifyingly.
He had no idea why they were fighting, but as he lay there, catching his breath, he realized that he’d never touched her like this before. Never held her arms, never laid that close to her. He took a breath, during which he pleaded with every ounce of willpower in his body to not get a hard-on.
“Get up,” Missy said. He’d been concentrating so hard on his dick that he hadn’t noticed that she was already on her feet.
What was going on? He needed to get the fuck out of here before…
“Get up.” He looked up. She was standing next to him, hands firmly planted on her hips.
“Are we still fighting?” he asked, trying not to let the strain show in his voice. He rolled over and sat up, hiding the bulge in his shorts with a casually slung arm.
“You can. I’m heading for the shower,” she said, holding her hand out.
At that image, his self-control fritzed and everything in his life faded except the woman in front of him. He took her hand, as if he were going to get up, and pulled her down to him.
A cry of surprise echoed around the empty gym as she fell on him. Full-body contact. Full-body contact.
She wriggled as if to get up, and then she paused. And then wriggled a tiny bit more. “What’s that?” She pulled her head up and stared at him, a frown marring her beautiful face.
He hesitated, once again in the real world. He should push her off him. Apologize, and head back to his—
She pushed her pelvis against his hard-on. He closed his eyes and groaned. And then it was game over.
He opened his eyes and pulled her toward him, rolling so that he was on top of her. “Tell me to stop,” he said. “Just say the word, but say it now.”
She opened her mouth but said nothing. Her eyes trailed down his face and rested on his mouth. She took a shaky breath. He was afraid of what she was going to say, but she remained silent.
In that second, his body acted before his brain. He was going to say something—something clever, or cute maybe. Or sexy. But instead he pulled her to him and kissed her. She utterly yielded beneath him. Her mouth opened, and her tongue dueled with his. Heat—pure volcanic heat—rushed through him as he took what he had wanted for so long. What she was finally giving him.
It was wrong, so very wrong. But nothing could tell his soul that she was wrong for him. Nothing could convince his crazed need for her to fit neatly back into its flight suit. It was out.
Her back arched against the pressure of his lips and teeth on her neck. And then she stiffened. He pulled back immediately. Sanity rushed into his head.
“Fuck,” he said, rolling her off him and staring at the ceiling light. “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t have an excuse. It shouldn’t have happened, and I apologize.” His chest heaved under the intensity of the kiss and the immense feat of willpower it had taken to push her away.
She took a breath, and he turned his head to hear what she had to say. But she just stared at him before getting up and running to the locker room.
Fuck. What had he done? He lay there, wondering what the fuck was going on. The one constant in his life had gone nuts, and then kissed him, and now his whole world had changed. He’d kissed her. Felt her body under his.
Nothing would be the same now.
What had she done? Missy had run back to the barracks and stepped into the shower as if the water could wash away what she’d just done. She’d fucking kissed him. It felt like some kind of self-betrayal.
It was so confusing. Kissing him was…It had scared her. She’d never seen him lose control like that. Never witnessed him act on anything other than precision and professionalism. But it was bad. Bad that she’d liked it so much. Bad that she hadn’t wanted it to stop. The one thing that had stopped her was her realization that in all the years they’d flown together, he totally considered her a sidekick. There only to make him look good, to make his life easier.
And as she realized that he only saw her as an extension of him, it was as if a curtain had been parted, shedding light for the first time into a dusty room. He didn’t know anything about her. He’d never asked her about her family—not that she would ever have wanted to go there—or her friends. He’d never even asked her where she was from, what movies she liked—nothing. He’d never gone out socially with her, and now that she was putting all these things together, she was furious with herself for wasting two years of her life pining for him.
Assuming no one would match up to the awesomeness that was Conrad. What utter fuckery.
It was a bitter discovery. Conrad was, and always had been, just about himself.
And now, goddamn it, she’d betrayed herself in one stupid moment of anger and passion. She winced as she thought the word passion, but that was how she’d always thought about him.
As for him, he probably just wanted another conquest. Judging by his endless revolving door of women, he probably had a hard-on for every female he came across.
She’d fucked everything up—but that made her even more determined to move on, to get away from this situation that was fast becoming more and more toxic. The transfer was legit. It was the right thing to do. She couldn’t stay.
Missy stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her head. Sinking onto the foot of the bed, she touched her lips, where he had touched her with his. They felt…plundered. His kiss, their fight, the feeling of his hardness against her…God, but her libido had kicked in so damned fast.
Hell, no. She wasn’t Monday-morning-quarterbacking this one. She had to shake it off. Forget it.
Her phone rang. Conrad. Shit. She took two deep breaths and picked up the call. “Hello?” She was proud of how even and normal her voice sounded.
“Hey. Look. Can you come get me before you go back to the hangar? We can talk on the way. We…need to…”
“Talk?” she said, enjoying his discomfort.
He sighed. “Yes. We will talk all night about it, because if we have to sleep on those god-awful cots in the hangar, I’m going to make it as uncomfortable and awkward as possible for everyone. Because that’s the way I roll,” he said.
She laughed. She hated hangar duty, but after the people meddling in there the previous night, she was never going to complain about it again. If she had to sleep in the hangar to make sure her aircraft wasn’t touched by anyone else, then that was what she’d do.
“Sure. But if you think you’re going to make me feel awkward, you better bring it, because I can tell you about girl stuff that’ll gross you out and make you squirm,” she said. And then she realized that squirm could be taken more than one way. She rolled her eyes at herself in the mirror.
He sounded as if he were choking down the phone. “Room 2123.”
“I’ll be there.” She ended the call.
She slumped back on the bed. At least he’d seemed a little more himself. And she was going to be totally professional too. She was leaving the squadron, and that was it. She didn’t need to feel bad, or explain it to anyone, let alone him. Taking several deep breaths, she relaxed.
She could forget the kiss, the burning intensity of his gaze. The weight of him on top of her, the way she had involuntarily arched against him. Closing her eyes, she could visualize him. Her body started to replicate the heat and need that had coursed through her when he’d asked her to tell him no. She’d had every intention of saying no, but her mouth and the air in her lungs refused to cooperate. There was no one in the world who could have said no right there and right then. No one. Least of all her.
But it was a momentary lapse. It was not going to happen again, regardless of how her body had melted into his.
She was tempted to touch herself. To finish what he’d started. But that was no way to move past it. No way to get over him. No way to make a clean break. And she was determined to get away in one piece.
She needed a career that wasn’t dependent on the one person who made it impossible to have a personal life. God, she wished there was alcohol in their room. She checked the mini-fridge in case Eleanor had left some. Nope.
There was nothing else to do but press on, address the “kiss” and get over it. She blew out a puff of air as she chose some clothes to wear for the evening. Yoga pants, a tank top, and a sweatshirt for when it got cold. She bundled her Kindle, phone, and flashlight into a tote and strode out of the room with her shoulders squared and her head up. She was going to face him with no embarrassment and no fear. She had nothing to lose.
As she left the barracks, Sergeant Cripps was going in. He raised a hand. He opened his mouth to say something, but she interrupted him, knowing full well what he was going to ask.
“Yup. Absolutely. Colonel Conrad and I are on our way now.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he replied, holding the door open for her.
“Have a good eve…night,” she said, casting her gaze to the already darkening sky.
“You too, ma’am,” he replied.
“Just how likely do you think that will be?” she asked, thinking about the metal cots the crew put up for the watcher shift.
“Not too likely, ma’am,” he said with a grin. “We made your beds up for you, though.”
“Thank you. Now you go have a good time sleeping in your regular comfortable bed and leave me alone to my misery.” She rolled her eyes with a smile and ran down the steps to the street.
She looked both ways as she crossed the street to the base lodging—essentially a hotel where the senior officers got to stay during Red Flag. As she reached the sidewalk, someone bumped into her. She apologized without seeing who it was, too busy trying to figure out how not to blush when she saw Conrad.
“No, it’s my bad. Oh, hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” he said.
She stopped, jolted out of her thoughts. She turned and saw a man with long hair and really white, perfectly formed teeth—the type that were clearly implants. He held out his hand and automatically she took it. He shook it and grasped her shoulder as he did.
It was the man who had been in their hangar the previous night. He squeezed her hand hard. “Nice to meet you,” she said, taking her hand and arm back. She fought the impulse to shake her hand to get the feeling back in it. It was a good thing she was wearing a sweatshirt because she was fairly sure that she’d have been skeeved out by him touching her skin.
“We know each other, right?” he persisted. His tone made her wary for some reason. She listened to her gut.
“No, we don’t. I’m sorry—I have to go,” she said, turning away. She ran up the few steps to the hotel and looked back at him. He was still staring at her, but this time he had a phone to his ear. That was…weird.
She found Conrad’s room and knocked on the door. It opened.
“Hey. Is it that time already?” Conrad said with an easy smile—almost as if nothing had happened.
“I guess,” she said, trying hard not to let her gaze skate away from him. She didn’t want to appear shifty or awkward.
He leaned down to pick up a backpack and turned to the small table to reach for his key card.
The elevator doors binged as they opened in the middle of the corridor. She looked to see who had gotten off, just so she wouldn’t be looking at Conrad in his faded T-shirt and absurdly well-fitting jeans. The warm, humid mist from the shower he’d obviously just taken emanated from his room, sending his unique scent out into the hallway, almost begging her to step into his lair.
The man who stepped off the elevator looked the other way down the corridor. It was the guy from outside. Oh God.
Without thinking, she rushed the few steps into Conrad’s room and closed the door so he wouldn’t see her. In the process, she ran straight into Conrad, almost pushing him off balance.
He wrapped his arms around her. “Okay, that works too,” he said, regaining his balance from her surprise breach.