Never Surrender

CHAPTER TWO

HOME. BAY STOOD inside the door of Gabe’s condo, feeling exhaustion sweep through her. He walked past her with her ruck and duffel bag, going down the hall to put them into the guest bedroom. She looked around, appreciating the quiet instrumental music in the background.

Gabe’s condo was one of six in the building and he owned them all. His individual condo reflected him: spare, understated and peaceful. The blond bamboo floor shone. Furniture made of the same wood and jade cushions gave Bay a sense of infinite calm. This was where someone who wanted peace and quiet came to live.

She lifted her head as Gabe wandered back down the hall toward her. He had gotten rid of his dirty, sweaty shirt already, pulling off the tan T-shirt that stuck to him like a second skin, revealing his dark-haired chest, powerful shoulders and lean torso. Her body automatically went to burn as she followed the dark-haired line down across his belly, disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers.

“Welcome home,” he said, pulling the door closed and then placing a light kiss on her lips. “Want to take a shower with me?”

She smiled and felt the heat coming off his body. The sweat was like an aphrodisiac to her. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”

He dropped the T-shirt on the couch and grabbed her hand. “Come on, then...”

She loved his large tiled bathroom. It was huge with a glass-enclosed shower for two, plus a Jacuzzi tub in another corner. She sat down on the small chair and took off her desert combat boots, setting them aside. After yanking off her socks, she sighed and rubbed her sore, tired feet. Hot water was going to feel good on them.

She glanced up and watched Gabe lean over to remove his dusty boots. His every motion was spare and clean. As his arm muscles flexed, the corded strength of his back was highlighted, and she sighed with pleasure. The man was beautiful in every way.

Gabe straightened and opened his pants, pushing them to his ankles. Heat curled in her lower body as he shoved the cotton boxers downward, revealing his erection fully. Her throat tightened with need. Though tired, she felt a wave of lust. Want of Gabe, his hands on her, loving her, him inside her, taking her to an unknown destination together.

When he turned and walked toward her, she met his eyes and clearly saw arousal in them. “Do I get a running start?” she teased, standing and unbuttoning her blouse.

“Maybe,” Gabe growled, going to the shower to turn on the two large, round raindrop nozzles. “Do you want a head start?” he teased, closing the door and picking up two towels and setting them nearby.

“I don’t think so,” Bay answered, setting her blouse on the caramel-colored granite counter. She wore a silky white camisole because she hated bras. Never wore one unless she really had to. She felt his masculine warmth and looked up to see him inches away from her. He lifted his hands and tugged at her waistband, opening it.

“How tired are you, baby?”

Bay trembled beneath his gritty voice heavy with passion. “I was tired. I’m not now.” He slid his hands down and around, bringing her cammie trousers across her hips and thighs. Her skin flamed wherever he grazed her as he pulled the material down and helped her step out of it. She wore silky boxer shorts, and he slowly slid his hands up the outside of her legs while he rose to his full height.

“Good,” he crooned, giving her a boyish smile. He eased his fingers beneath the soft, silky material around her waist.

“Ummm.” Bay sighed, her knees already growing weak. He must have sensed her instability because one hand left her silky boxers and curved gently around the small of her back to hold her steady.

He sighed. “Good having you here, having you standing so close to me, almost naked...”

His dark voice fell over her, and Bay closed her eyes, easily seduced by his hands, the soft shorts falling away from her thighs. She leaned against Gabe’s powerful chest. She could smell his sweat, the scent of sagebrush and hot sunlight on his sun-darkened flesh. She wanted to move closer, but he held her away from him.

“Not yet, baby... Your camisole has to go...” And he lifted it up and over her head. As it dropped to her feet, white-hot heat plunged through his entire body. Bay was five foot ten and a large-boned woman. Her breasts were perfect and her hips wide, the kind a man could hold on to. She was in top shape, her body taut and firm.

Gabe slowly slid his hands from her proud shoulders, skimming her strong arms and finally grasping her fingers. She opened her eyes, and he smiled down at her. “You’re so damned beautiful. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, baby, but I’m glad you’re mine. Ready to shower?”

She drowned beneath his hooded eyes that glinted with desire for her alone. Her fingers curved around his. “Let’s go, Frogman...”

He chuckled and opened the door, the steam escaping momentarily from the enclosure. “You have such a way with words, woman.”

The gentle water rained down upon Bay. She groaned as Gabe led her to a small seat, her hair becoming wet. In moments, he’d applied jasmine-scented shampoo throughout her hair, the fragrance swirling around in the steam surrounding them.

“Tip your head back a little,” he coaxed, standing near her left shoulder, kneading the soap gently across her scalp. He saw her lips part, her eyes closed, a look of utter pleasure on her face. Gabe always wanted to see that look. He loved Bay so much. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her to always keep her happy.

“Ohhhh, Gabe...” Bay uttered with a sigh. “That feels so delicious...what you’re doing....” She trembled as his strong fingers wreaked relaxing magic across her scalp, the water softly drizzling warmly around her. The way he massaged her scalp, she was putty in his hands. The soreness in her shoulders disappeared. The tension she’d been carrying dissolved beneath his slow, sensual ministrations. As he took a large cup, catching the water from the showerhead and rinsing the shampoo out of her hair, Bay made a soft sound in her throat.

“I think your hair’s clean now,” Gabe said later, setting the cup on the shelf. When she opened her eyes, her long lashes framing those incredible blue irises, he felt himself grow even harder. It was always a balance and a matter of control on his part. He loved her, wanted to pleasure her, hear her soft, husky sounds, watch her expression melt into utter joy.

“You always come first, baby.” Gabe leaned over, brushing his mouth against her wet, parted lips. A moan vibrated in the slender column of her throat, and he absorbed the happy sound into his body, his soul.

In one smooth motion, he lifted her and brought her into his arms, the raindrops surrounding them. Gabe didn’t want to leave her lush mouth, meeting her tongue as it shyly danced with his. Her breasts pressed against his chest. He felt her belly taut against his erection. Easing his hand down her spine, his fingers splayed outward, cupping her hips, pulling her more tightly against him. Now, he groaned. He had to have the control and wait. But her sleek, wet body sliding against his was undoing him.

Bay eased from his mouth, stepped back and picked up a bar of soap. “My turn...” She lathered the soap between her hands and skimmed her fingers across his scalp. Next, came his hard, weathered face. Gabe rested his hands lightly on her hips, and he closed his eyes. There was such trust between them as Bay gently began to remove the dirt and sweat encrusted in his short, gleaming hair. The dirt dissolved, and she lathered more soap, tracing his deeply lined brow. A brow of a man who thought a lot, said little, but had a mind like a steel trap. Her fingertips moved lightly across his straight, black brows and feathered across his closed eyelids. She felt his hands grip her hips a little more firmly, and she smiled, wanting to give him equal pleasure.

Gabe gratefully absorbed her healer hands as they washed his face, neck, arms and chest. Every touch was building a fire within him, stoking his need for her until he wasn’t sure he could last beneath her tender foray. As her soapy fingers glided toward his narrow hips, he drew in a sharp breath, clenching his teeth. Her fingers wrapped gently around him, and his entire body locked up on him. Gripping Bay, he hauled her against him. He drowned in her wide blue eyes that were filled with love for him. Her lips were parted, and she licked her lower lip. It was damned near his undoing.

“Just a little longer,” she pleaded huskily. “You want to be clean, don’t you?”

He sucked in a ragged breath of air, feeling her clean him slowly, thoroughly. Gabe thought he was going to lose it. Her hands skimmed his hard thighs, sliding down to his knotted calves and finally, his large feet. Every stroking touch of her fingers was healing. At every scar, Bay stopped, kissed it gently and then moved on. Gabe didn’t know whether to cry or scream. No woman had ever loved him with her hands like Bay did.

The first day Gabe had met Bay, he’d noticed her long narrow hands. Her fingers were tapered and beautiful, nails blunt cut. He remembered thinking how much he’d wanted to feel her touch on him. And when he learned she was a medic, it had made even more sense to him. Healing hands. Loving hands. Compassionate hands that knew...they just knew...and Bay knew he needed this...needed her touch like this. But by every name in his book of life, Gabe couldn’t stop loving her for who she simply was: a very kind, sensitive and caring woman. Who loved him.

What the hell had he done to deserve Bay? Gabe hadn’t led a stellar life. It had been ugly and dysfunctional throughout his childhood. He knew abuse. He knew a man’s fist, his belt lashing his flesh until it welted and bruised. He’d never known the tender touch, the loving touch that she now shared with him alone.

Bay watched all the tension drain out of Gabe’s face, out of his hard body. The sexual tension that replaced it was as it should be. She washed herself as he stood beneath the streams of water, soap sloughing off him, his flesh clean and glistening. Gabe looked at her beneath hooded, burning eyes, not making a move toward her. Simply watching her.

The dark desire was evident in his eyes. And he loved her. She gave him an impish look as she approached him, placing her hands lightly on his powerful shoulders. Leaning up, she whispered in his ear, “I’m ready to swim with the sharks, Frogman....”

Her smile dazzled his senses as she eased away to see his reaction. “You’re mine,” he rasped, and he began a slow, sensuous path, starting with her mouth.

Bay leaned into him, the water nestling in nooks and crannies between them, liquid flowing heatedly down her body as he took possession of her mouth. At the same time, he brought her hard against him. His other hand moved toward her breast, cupping it, moving his thumb languidly across the hardened peak. She uttered a small, fierce cry into his mouth as an electric shock bolted from her nipple straight down to her womb. Her entire body convulsed.

“Easy, baby, easy,” he coaxed, moving his hand even farther downward, exploring her waist, her hip.

She felt his lips leave her breast and then kiss the area between them. Gripping her hips, Gabe held her as he continued the trail of kisses down her stomach, across her abdomen. Giving a whimper, she gripped his thick shoulders as his mouth followed the crease where her thigh met her torso. Her knees shook with anticipation; she wasn’t sure she could remain standing, his tongue slowly following the crease down, down, down....

“Oh, Gabe,” Bay whispered, nearly crumpling if not for his steel strength holding her. Tightly shutting her eyes, her breath became ragged and shallow. He parted her, leaving her open and available.

“I can’t...stand...Gabe...”

He rose swiftly. “I’ve got you, baby. Just let me do the heavy lifting.” He gave her a heated look. “Ready to swim?”

Her heart fluttered wildly. The warm water only increased the heat already scalding her aching lower body. “Y-yes...” she whispered brokenly, her knees beginning to give way. In the next moment, she felt Gabe’s arm slide beneath her thigh, and she lifted upward. He guided her legs around his waist and then gently pressed her back against the warm, wet tiles, holding her in place.

“Open your eyes,” he rasped. “I want to see the look on your face when I enter you....”

Water sluiced across Bay’s face in rivulets. Her body was cramping, almost painfully, wanting him inside her. She was more than ready as she barely opened her eyes, her breath uneven. His eyes were narrowed, focused solely on her. Gabe was a sniper. No one had more focus than a sniper. They sighted their quarry, and they never let it go. She was his quarry. Gulping, she whispered, “Hurry...oh, please, Gabe....”

As Gabe gently entered her, he watched her eyes widen. It wasn’t from fear but from raw, welcoming pleasure of their bodies meeting like fiery, melting flesh into one another. Slowly, so slowly, he brought her down upon him, watching the wildness come to her eyes, the yearning and then the feverish heat enter them as they fused completely into oneness. He captured the hard nipple, suckling her. It made him feel so damn good to give Bay this kind of pleasure. Her fingers spasmodically gripped his shoulders, her head moving side to side. He increased the pressure, feeling her tighten and so near climax. That was what he wanted for Bay, utter, wild sensations that only he could give her.

Thrusting quickly, he established a fiery rhythm. Gabe felt her tensing, so close to orgasm. Bay cried out, gripping him, arching into him, spinning into the heat and light as she came, a cry tearing out of her. He prolonged the rippling sensations, urging her to let go, to fully give him the gift of herself, her love. And she did. Bay leaned forward, arms around Gabe’s tense shoulders, gasping for breath, sobbing.

And then, his entire body stiffened. His breath hissed between his clenched teeth, his hands tightened around hers as he released deeply into her. Bay rested her cheek against his wet shoulder, the raindrops sliding gently across her face and soaking into her hair.

Gabe dragged in air, his body quivering beneath the onslaught of his release. He steadied himself, using Bay and the wall to remain standing. Feeling her lips against his taut neck, her breath mingling with the water, he gently removed himself, holding her, easing Bay away from the wall. The water made it easy for her to slide down the length of his hard, quivering body and through his arms. Her feet touched the floor. Their brows rested against each other, noses touching, lips millimeters away from one another as they leaned against one another for support. Breathing shallow and fast, Gabe held Bay tightly in his arms, loving her fiercely. Loving her forever.

“Are you okay?” he rasped unsteadily. They hadn’t made love in months. That was a hell of a long time. He was worried about her.

Bay managed a strangled laugh. She slowly raised her head, caught and held his sated gaze. “I’ve decided to call you Shark Man. You’ve graduated from being just a frogman.” She gave him a drowsy, sweet smile radiant with love only for him. “Helluva swim, Shark Man...”

CHAPTER THREE

“COME HERE, BABY.” Gabe hauled her into his arms as he settled into the bed. They were clean, dried off and so damned weak it had taken them leaning on one another to make it to the master bedroom together. Bay had fallen asleep immediately. Gabe felt Bay’s softened breath, the warm moisture flowing across his chest as she slept deeply, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder. Her hand across his pounding heart. God, did life get any better than this? Hell, no.

Gabe closed his eyes, his woman in his arms, her body pressed wantonly against his, their legs entangled. Her hair was still damp, although he’d done his best to dry it off with a towel afterward. He’d seen the exhaustion in Bay’s half-closed eyes and knew she had to sleep off five months of brutal training. The darkness was complete in their bedroom. Gabe felt himself begin to utterly surrender against her warmth and curves.

He lay awake for a long time, his body still vibrating with simmering heat after having made love with her. Bay’s background was as a Hill person from the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. She was a woman of the earth, wild and completely natural. Her spontaneity was unfettered, freeing him from his dark and miserable past, infusing him with hope of a bright future. Love did incredible things for a human being, Gabe was discovering.

Closing his eyes, his arm wrapped firmly around Bay’s shoulders as she slept, Gabe couldn’t shut off his mind. Bay had come from a happy family, deep in the mountains, away from most of civilization. She’d lived and hunted in those mountains. Not only was she a crack shot, but her mother, Poppy, was a Hill doctor. Bay obviously got that healing gene from her. Her father, Floyd, had been a Marine Corps sniper and had started teaching her at a young age how to hunt and shoot. When her father died of Black Lung, she’d entered the Navy afterward to make money for her economically struggling family.

Moving his fingers slowly across her firm, warm flesh, he felt her inborn strength, her Hill backbone. Lowlanders, people who weren’t Hill-born, would say she was backward and uneducated. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bay was simple, homespun, and had a strong sense of right and wrong. When her father had become ill, she’d picked up the family mantle of responsibility, being the oldest, to feed and care for her mother, father and her mentally challenged younger sister, Eva-Jo.

A sigh slipped between his lips as he savored the darkness embracing them. He felt Bay’s hand twitch and move slightly on his chest. She was moving more deeply into a healing sleep, and that was good. His mind revolved back to her, back to her simple way of living.

When he’d met Bay last year in Afghanistan, he’d instantly felt attracted to her. It was her humbleness, the idealism she saw in others, her compassion, that called powerfully to him. In those four months of combat, they’d known they had something good between them, but they could never act upon it. Not in a combat team. Fraternization could tear a team apart. And it could get people killed. They’d cooled their heels, looked, but hadn’t touched one another. And only after Bay had come home after her six-month rotation out of the combat zone, did they realize the beauty of what they held in one another. Real love.

Frowning, Gabe thought about how at twenty-nine he’d thought he’d known what love was. He’d married Lily after five days of sex and heat. It was the stupidest choice he’d ever made in his entire life. He was divorced before he’d met Bay, hurting and wounded by the experience. He’d thought he’d known what love was, but he hadn’t.

Meeting Bay changed his life, but Gabe had been afraid to act on it for any number of reasons. And only in those thirty incredible days after she’d returned home to his arms, did he understand what real love was about. She’d given him her heart without games, manipulations or lies. That was the only way Bay knew how to be. And she had healed his heart in the process, taught him how to laugh once again, to love another once more.

A ghostlike smile curved the corners of Gabe’s mouth as Bay’s shallow breath continued to calm him, anchor him to the here and now. At Camp Bravo as soon as they’d made eye contact, something magical, something beautiful, had occurred between them. He ran his fingers slowly up and down her arm. Her heart thudded slowly against his rib cage, and Gabe absorbed every beat of it into his soul. Bay was alive, so sensitive and kind to everyone.

He continued to be amazed that she’d spent three years, half of them in combat with black ops teams, and still retained that sweet, simple disposition of a woman who held hope out for the hopeless. Bay had the inborn ability to pick someone like him up and, literally, change his life for the better. What kind of titanium steel backbone did she possess? A damned strong one, for sure. Combat changed people, and yet, Gabe had watched her handle it. Bay was...remarkable. A stunning example of a strong, passionate woman who knew what she wanted out of her life.

Gabe felt the corners of sleep tugging at him, dragging him downward as his heart started to beat in rhythm with Bay’s. She had chosen him as her partner. How lucky could he get? Of all the men on earth, Bay chose him. His last feelings were a deluge of love smothering him, dissolving his mind and taking him to that place of peace and tranquility, his woman in his arms, at his side. As it should be.