Page 22 of Luck Be Mine (The Defenders #3)

“You’ve come home to nothing for years. Get over it.” His voice echoed in the quiet.

He flipped the light switch, dropped his go bag, and shut the door. Light flooded their small living room, and the neat, decorated home left him undone.

His home.

He never got used to this.

The red velvet sofa had a new set of flowered pillows and a soft, white throw folded across one arm for chilly nights.

A half-filled bookcase beside the china cupboard held books, photo albums, and a few of Cait’s cookbooks.

A fresh mix of rugs warmed the floors and shaped a lived-in space.

It was becoming their safe harbor, a place you could sink into and breathe.

He stepped closer to the small wall by the recliner and studied the pictures. Their wedding photo. His medals, framed. It was a lot. She was proud of him, but he’d never openly showed these unless on a dress uniform. Cait’s weren’t here yet, but they would be.

The only messy spot was Cait’s art area in the corner.

The finished drawing of the USS Gerald R.

Ford sat propped at the back of her table, finally mounted on an art board.

He stepped closer to the tilted table to see what she’d been drawing and stared at the young man in Air Force camo standing by a Jeep.

“Man,” he sighed. Airman Rusty Dent. Again. How many times could she draw him before it would be okay to stop?

Her control journal, their method for staying in step with each other in absences, lay on the corner of the table. With all the neon sticky notes hanging on its edges, it was clear she had a few things to tell him.

The house smelled of candle wax, cinnamon, and lemon, and he’d bet there were frozen homemade meals in the freezer, or he could make breakfast. Should he wait for Cait or eat?

Not wanting to leave a mess in the clean house, he took his go-bag and went to the second bedroom. Cait had gone to great measures to organize his work room. Dropping the bag by the closet, he shed his boots and went to their room.

Showering on ship was a chore taking five minutes or less to minimize water usage. Growing up, he hadn’t had even that much time. Cait was the one who taught him to stand in the shower for longer periods and let the hot water pound the stress out of muscles.

He shed his clothes, dropped them in the laundry basket, and stepped into the hot shower. He took a long sniff and sighed at the lavender and vanilla scent of Cait’s lotions and soaps. Apple Blossom from Afghanistan had been retired. These aromas signaled safe to his tired body and mind.

He ducked his head under the spray and let the water beat on him.

The quiet, the privacy, the comfort pushed against the stress of mission readiness pounding his brain.

God, he needed this. These first few hours home were always a rocky time.

Settling himself from the field was never easy, a fact he didn’t tell Cait.

Sometimes it took hours, and sometimes it took days.

His shower products sat in the corner unused. He popped the cap on new shampoo and took a sniff. Benign, muted scent. He checked the bottle. Ocean breeze. He used it and decided it was okay.

A squeak from the bedroom alerted him. Hopefully, Cait was home and it wasn’t an intruder. He would look silly fighting naked. He leaned around the shower curtain.

“Hunt? God, I hope it’s you in the shower.” She hesitated in the doorway.

He did a quick head-to-toe sweep, not stifling a surge of overwhelming lust.

“Thank God. You should have called me.” She stepped further into the bathroom, slipped out of her shoes, and pulled her surgical top over her head.

The white tank she wore underneath was closer to see-through than to opaque, and her pink nipples pushed on the fabric begging for his mouth. “Guess what?”

“What?” His eyes still feasting, he was a step behind the excitement shining in her eyes.

“I’ve graduated full time to trauma surgery. No more training.”

Pride streaked through him. “I knew you could do it.”

“I’m glad you thought so because I had questions.”

“Sometimes in your gut you accept you’re good. It’s me. It’s you.”

“Knowing and doing are two different things.”

“Sometimes it’s both.” The semi-erection he’d been sporting in anticipation of some adult time with her shifted to full alert mode. “Want to join me? Let’s celebrate.” He quit masking the heat in his gaze.

“Yes.” Her smile spread the fire, the sweep of her eyes over his body all the invitation he wanted.

She ditched the rest of her clothes in efficient fashion, and he watched. Better than any strip tease in his honest opinion. She was fucking gorgeous in her pale skin, and he needed to touch in the worst way. He stepped into the water stream to make room for her.

Drawing the shower curtain so they were closed in the tight space with the hot spray of water, she quickly slid against him like three weeks apart had never happened.

“Hello, frogman. You going to share your water?”

“In a minute.” He took her mouth, unleashing the desperate want he’d kept in check for too long. They said make-up sex was the best, but the coming home kind was his favorite.

She stroked his body with nimble fingers. His skin simmered in hot bursts where she touched, and her mouth enticed a deeper dive.

She pulled away and kissed the middle of his chest. A small kiss on a random spot on his body seized his attention.

“Everyone get home okay?”

“Yes.” He didn’t want to talk about the team or the mission. He didn’t want to focus on what he could tell her and what he couldn’t. But sometimes she needed to talk, to settle herself. “All good.”

Her hands shifted to his waist while he waited for another question. One always came. Except, this time, it didn’t.

He drew in a sharp breath as her hands closed over his erection. His heart jumped in time with a spike in his adrenaline. She covered him with both hands and used the water trickling down his chest to lubricate her fingers.

He groaned, struck mute by her soft hands.

She smiled and explored, using her knowledge of anatomy to stroke him until the air backed into his lungs. The pleasure on her face kept him from protesting, but fuck if he didn’t want her under him.

Anticipation tightened his nerves.

He tried to coax her out of the shower and to the bed, but her hands slid over his body. She dropped to her knees on the shower floor and took him into her hot, wet mouth.

His knees wobbled, threatening his balance.

He slapped a hand onto the side shower wall to keep upright.

With all his away time and Cait’s injuries with dead nerves affecting her hand, oral sex wasn’t a frequent thing in their lovemaking.

She stunned his senses with the ebb and flow of her mouth over his cock until he couldn’t be sure he was breathing.

He had the record on the team for holding his breath the longest under water, but this choppy, ragged sensation knocked him sideways.

She pulled back and blew gently across the tip.

She followed with fingers touching and tongue tasting until he was seated firmly in the warmth of her mouth.

The suction and quick strokes of her tongue shoved him to the edge, too long with no sex triggered a tingle down his spine in warning.

She gazed at him, obviously enjoying the moment from the satisfaction in her eyes, then she moved her hand to fondle his balls with firm strokes.

He shouted her name, tipping into a hard orgasm that spilled into her mouth. Jesus!

He kept a hand on her shoulder and collapsed against the side of the shower, lost in sensation with words jammed in his brain and nerve endings not transmitting.

Finally, he opened his eyes. Her smug grin left him stuttering before finding his center again. “You planned this?”

She bit her lip to hide her smile. “Possibly.”

He helped her stand and pulled her into a deep kiss. She tasted of peppermint and sex, and he mimicked what he wanted to do to her. Switching places with lips sealed together was a careful maneuver, but he succeeded. She groaned as the water hit her back.

He lifted her soap and shampoo, resigning himself to smelling like lavender and vanilla. She kept her eyes closed, staying under the spray, while he washed all of her.

“We need a house with a bigger shower.” He turned off the lukewarm water on her protest. He pulled back the curtain and grabbed two towels from the rack.

“Are we ready for home ownership?” Her sneaky hands stroked the scar down his leg. Her scar.

The long-ago memory of her surgical care on his sliced open ass mellowed him. “It’s what I promised.”

“So I’m told,” she teased.

He dried her back and let her do his. “We’re going to need a house – with a big kitchen and a porch, and a backyard to barbecue,” he quoted. “You asked for those.”

She shut her eyes. “We’ll make memories there, and we’ll know all our neighbors. We’ll have lots of friends, a big yard front and back, flowers and a green, green lawn. And a dog and an iguana and some frogs. There will always be cookies in the cookie jar.”

“Safe harbor.” He kissed her forehead. “But no iguana.”

Her eyes narrowed, calculating. “Niles offered to help search. I’ll call him.”

“Quaid’s butler?”

“Oh, he’s so much more.”

Hunt finished drying her off. “Whatever works. We only have to figure out what we want.” He held a towel for her hair and enjoyed taming the strands.

The spark was back, her expression shining with excitement. “I can see the house in my head. I’ll draw it. When shall we start searching?”

“Now.” He laid a quick kiss on her eyes, her nose, her mouth. “Your turn, honey. Come to bed.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”