Semper Fi

  I lay back on the pillows with my hands behind my head, planning out the route and how long it would take to get to Genoa. I’d planned on driving further than that, but Caro had made it clear that riding pillion wasn’t her most favorite thing.

  But when she reappeared from bathroom, her whole face was lit with a sexy smile. Damn, that was a turn on.

  “Hi,” I said, wondering what she was thinking.

  “Hi yourself.”

  “You seem better.”

  “Why, Warrant Officer Hunter,” she smirked at me, “what masterful skills of observation you have.”

  “Yeah, much better.”

  “Well, now that you mention it, I am in a much better mood, although I’m rather hungry.”

  “Do you want to go down for breakfast or should I call room service?”

  “Let me think about that for a minute.”

  I was already reaching for the phone when she untied her robe and pulled the belt out of the loops, winding it through her fingers. I froze, watching the robe slide to the floor, leaving a very naked Caro standing there. Fuck. Me.

  “I was thinking about eating you,” she purred, “but as you’re such a stubborn, annoying man, who makes me pissed with every other sentence he utters from between his beautiful, badly-behaved lips, I thought I’d better tie you up first. What do you say?”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “I’d say, where is Carolina Venzi and what have you done with her?” I managed to croak out.

  Her grin grew wider. “I’m just taking your advice, Hunter.”

  I shook my head, confused, but liking where this conversation was going.

  “I don’t know what advice I gave you, but it must have been damn good.”

  “Let’s find out, should we? Put your hands on the headboard.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I wrapped my hands through the metal framework as Caro crawled up the bed, her thighs straddling my body. Then she threaded the belt through the headboard and tied both wrists tightly.

  “Have you done this before?” I breathed out.

  “Only in my dreams, Hunter. Now, be quiet, or I might have to gag you, too.”

  My mouth went dry. “Fuck!”

  “Maybe later,” she replied, her voice low and teasing.

  Then she whipped the duvet off the bed and stared down at my erection.

  “Now that’s a sight for sore eyes, Sebastian. Maybe I should just leave you here: the hotel maids might appreciate that. Or, better still, maybe I’ll take a photograph of you on my phone. Don’t worry, I won’t post it on the internet, it’ll just be my screensaver.”

  What the fuck? Was she serious? Was this some sort of payback? The look in her eye was making me nervous.

  “Caro!” I said, a serious warning in my voice.

  “Spoilsport,” she said, pretending to pout at me. “No sense of adventure.”

  I was relieved this was part of the game, but I felt vulnerable, too. I’d never let a woman tie me up before. I mean yeah, I was all for bedroom games, but I preferred to be the one in control. Everything was different with Caro.

  I tested the strength of her knots—they were pretty tight. I could probably get out of them, but only by destroying the headboard. That was plan B—I hoped plan A involved more sex and less damage to property.

  She leaned forward and placed a kiss on each of my biceps before sliding back down my body.

  I licked my lips as she knelt across my shins and then ran her tongue from my balls to my tip. Holy fuck! That was…

  But then she climbed off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back in a minute,” she called.

  Shit. What was she doing? I rattled the headboard and yelled out.

  “Caro! What the fuck?”

  “Are you getting impatient, Sebastian?” she called back.

  “Fuck, Caro!”

  But then she strolled back into the bedroom, pulling her hair into a ponytail. “Couldn’t see what I was doing,” she explained, her impassive face hiding a grin.

  “There’s going to be payback for this, Venzi,” I warned her.

  “Bring it on, Marine.”

  She knelt back on the bed and ran her hands over my chest and stomach, then took my dog tags in her mouth and sucked hard.

  Damn, she looked sexy doing that. I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply.

  My whole body was on fire as she kissed, nipped, bit, licked and sucked her way downwards. When she found a sensitive spot, I couldn’t help bucking my hips, cursing wildly, losing my final shred of control.

  “Sebastian, your language!” she teased.

  When she ran her tongue down my dick and held my precious man-jewels in her teeth, I stopped breathing altogether. If she didn’t stop soon, this was going to get very ugly.

  I may have sent up a prayer of thanks when she released me without injury or maiming, but I wouldn’t say I relaxed because she kissed the tip of my dick and then took the whole all of me in her mouth. It was the mother, father and holy spirit of all blow jobs, and I think she took me from heaven to hell and back again.

  She started increasing the speed at the same time she increased the pressure, and I knew I was close. I tried to warn her, but it was too late. I thought I was going to pass out as I shot my wad into her mouth and she swallowed around me. I saw stars, galaxies, whole fucking universes as my heart pounded hard enough to break through my chest.

  When I felt strong enough to push against the ton weights that were resting on my eyelids, she was snuggled up on the bed next to me. I swallowed several times before I could speak.

  “Jeez, Caro! That was … that was … wow!” I tried to pull her into my arms but realized I was still tied to the headboard. “Are you going to untie me now?”

  She shook her head sleepily. “Don’t think so. I like having you as my beck-and-call boy.”

  I laughed quietly, then rattled the headboard again. “Seriously, I want to hold you.”

  Grumbling to herself, she untied my wrists. I flexed my hands as the blood began to flow again, a tingling sensation shooting up each arm.

  “Where did you teach yourself to do that?” I asked teasingly, as she settled back onto my chest.

  “Night school,” she said with a yawn.

  I laughed and kissed her shoulder. “Is it my turn now?”

  “I thought you wanted to take me on a road trip,” she said sleepily

  “Yeah, but I could be quick…”

  She was definitely considering it and my dick twitched back into life. Bastard never knew when he was beaten.

  “I’ll take a rain check,” she said at last.

  Wrong answer.

  “Okay. In that case, I guess we should get going.”

  I started stroking her ass with one hand, and teasing her nipple with the other.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes still closed.

  “Nothing,” I whispered, as my hands drifted down and I slipped a finger inside her.

  She gasped and her eyes flew open.

  “Sebastian!”

  My name came out in a long moan.

  “Shh, baby,” I said, reaching for another condom.

  She wouldn’t let me shower with her afterward, on the grounds that we wanted to leave the hotel before nightfall. She was packing up her suitcase when I finished my shower, although that didn’t stop her checking me out, and yeah, I may have posed for her, enjoying the feel of her eyes on my body again after all these years.

  I dressed quickly and watched as she pushed her camera into her bag. That and the laptop she used looked expensive. I guess they were the tools of her trade, but it also showed that she was a serious and successful journalist. I was proud of her for achieving her goals, but it made me wonder what she was doing with me. God, I hoped this wasn’t just a pity fuck.

  “Do you want to get breakfast here?” I asked, going for a casual tone. “You didn’t ea
t anything after lunch yesterday.”

  She shook her head.

  “No, it’ll take too long. You must know some little café we could stop at? Maybe on the lake?”

  “Yeah, okay. But I need to swing by my place first and pick up a few things.”

  We headed down to the lobby, and while she went to settle her bill, I collected my bike from the hotel’s underground garage.

  Then I drove to the front entrance and lifted the visor as I reached for her suitcase.

  “Where are you going to put it?” she asked, her voice bemused.

  It was a good thing she traveled light, because I was going to have wedge the suitcase between me and the handlebars. I nodded at her to get on behind me.

  It wasn’t exactly legal to travel like that, but we weren’t going far.

  When I cut the engine outside my apartment, Caro pulled off her helmet and almost fell sideways off of the bike. I couldn’t help smiling at the chagrined look on her face.

  “Nothing to laugh at, Hunter. Just because you’re about a foot taller than me,” she huffed.

  “Shrimp,” I said, then had to dodge out of the way as she tried to swat my backside.

  “You’re feisty this morning,” I grinned at her. “I think I like it.”

  She muttered something I couldn’t hear—probably just as well.

  I grabbed her suitcase and opened the door into the hallway.

  “Sorry,” I told her, “no lights.”

  My apartment was at the top of three flights and I’d chosen it for the view. I didn’t need much, but it occurred to me that it might look a bit bare to her.

  “This is it.”

  She stepped into the room and gazed around, an oddly blank look on her face. I frowned, trying to see the place through her eyes. The walls were painted white, and my single bed was covered with a USMC-issue blanket and pushed against one wall. Some old paperbacks were resting on the bookshelf and my dress uniform was hanging from a hook on the wall, still inside a drycleaner’s bag.

  I had a wooden chair by the window and a chest of drawers next to the door with my iPod and laptop.

  I pointed toward the window.

  “It’s got a great view.”

  Caro walked over to stare out across the tiled rooftops toward the lake.

  “Yes,” she agreed softly, “very pretty.”

  I shrugged. “It’s all I need.”

  She turned away, taking a moment to flick through my books.

  I resisted shoving my hands into my pockets. Shit like that got drilled out of you in the Marines, but I felt exposed having her here in my room.

  “Still the Conrad fan,” she said, her voice sounding tight, like she was in the grip of some strong emotion.

  Because I read Conrad? I know ‘Heart of Darkness’ isn’t exactly a chuckle a page, but it’s a classic, right?

  “You should get yourself an e-reader,” she said, trying to find a normal tone of voice. “The whole of Conrad’s oeuvre for two bucks.”

  I was reaching under the bed for my overnight bag, so my voice came out muffled.

  “Yeah, I guess I should—if I knew there’d always be somewhere to charge it up when I’m in some shithole Stone Age village.”

  I was being polite, but an e-reader would have been fucking useless for me when I was in Iraq or Afghanistan. With the kind of jobs I was given, I didn’t get to go back to the main camp at night; I’d be in some godforsaken village, eating air-dried goat, and trying to persuade some village elders to work with us. I could be gone for weeks at a time. And even some of the guys who got stationed in the ass-end of nowhere like Helmand Province where I was going next, they could be there for months. No laptops or skype chats, just 20 minutes of sat-phone home a week, if you were lucky. Not that I’d ever had anyone to call. Most of the time I gave up my minutes to one of the married guys. It was hard enough to keep a relationship going when you were overseas.

  I tossed my bag on the bed, then pulled a bunch of my t-shirts out of the drawers, along with skivvies and a couple of pairs of socks.

  “What happened to all the colors?” Caro blurted out suddenly.

  Puzzled, I turned to look at her. For some reason she looked upset.

  “Sebastian, the most colorful thing in this room are your Dress Blues,” she cried. “The first time I saw you again, you were wearing those ridiculously bright red boardshorts.”

  I looked down at the pile of white t-shirts, gray briefs and black socks. I kind of saw what she meant. And I remembered those boardshorts.

  “Oh yeah. I’ve still got those somewhere. In a box in Ches’s garage, I think.”

  “It sounds like Ches has all your worldly possessions.”

  I could hear something that sounded like sadness in her voice, although I didn’t understand why.

  “Pretty much. I didn’t take a lot when I left my parents’ place. But what the hell—it’s easy to pack up and move on when you’re not laden down.”

  She looked so sad and I hated to think that look was for me. I didn’t need her pity. I changed the subject.

  “Caro, how much of this stuff do you need?” I asked, pointing at her suitcase. No way we could take that into Italy.

  “I definitely need my laptop and notebooks…”

  “I mean clothes, Caro. I wouldn’t dare suggest to a reporter that she goes anywhere without the tools of her trade.”

  “That’s right,” she said sharply. “You’d just stop her going where she needed to go in the first place.”

  Were we back to that? I wasn’t going to apologize again for wanting to spend time with her. I decided that ignoring her comment would be best for both of us. Maybe she thought the same thing, because she started digging through her suitcase and putting clothes into my overnight bag.

  “See,” she said, pointing. “Pink, green, blue, yellow and orange t-shirts. These are called ‘colors’. They’re what you get when you’re not wearing black, white or gray.”

  “My jeans are blue,” I smirked at her.

  She rolled her eyes. “So they are, Sebastian. Way to go.”

  “I could maybe get into colors,” I commented, holding up a really fucking sexy lace bra in dark pink.

  “I don’t think it would suit you,” she smiled.

  “No,” I said evenly, “but I’m really looking forward to taking it off you.”

  “That’s assuming you get lucky, Hunter,” she shot back. “You promised me separate rooms, remember?”

  Ah shit, I did say that, didn’t I?

  “You’re not going to hold me to that, are you, Caro?”

  Her bright smile was teasing.

  “I don’t know—depends how irritating you are.”

  “What if I promise to be on my best behavior, ma’am?”

  “Mmm, maybe. I was impressed how well you took orders earlier today.”

  Oh fucking yeah!

  “And there’ll be payback for that, Ms. Venzi,” I said challengingly.

  She tried to step away as I paced toward her, but I caught her in my arms, brushing against her cheek and kissing her throat.

  “And I’m looking forward to collecting. Maybe we should christen this bed,” I said, tugging her toward it.

  “Christen it?” she said, sounding surprised. “I would have thought it had seen plenty of action.”

  I paused, looking up at her. She still didn’t get it.

  “No, you’re the first woman I’ve brought here. It’s … private.”

  Her eyes widened, then she wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling my head down, meeting my lips with a kiss that had me hardening against her thigh.

  “We’ll christen it when we get back,” she whispered.

  “Something to look forward to.”

  She pulled away and continued with her packing. It didn’t take long. Not like some women who take an hour just to re-touch their lipstick and put on a sweater. I guessed that being a journalist she was used to packing fast.

  “Okay, I
’m done,” she said, zipping up the bag. “By the way, where exactly are we going? It’s a pretty long way to Salerno, so I presume we’re going to stop somewhere en route.”

  “Yeah, it’s just over 1100 kilometers, so…”

  “Give me that in good, old-fashioned US miles.”

  I laughed. “Seven hundred miles. I thought we’d stop at Genoa tonight—that’s just under 200 miles—take us about four hours.”

  Or less, if she let me drive the speed I liked to go.

  “How come you know all these distances off the top of your head?” she asked, as I stuffed a map of Italy into my jacket pocket.

  “I’ve been planning to do this road trip for a while.” She seemed surprised. “You and I talked about it once, you remember? All the things we were going to do, all the places we were going to see? I just figured that as I was here, I’d go anyway. And … I remembered that you said your dad came from that village near Salerno. I thought I might find … I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to see it.”

  Shit, I was telling her too much too soon. I didn’t want to come over like I’d done nothing but obsess over her for the last ten years, even though that was pretty close to the truth.

  She shook her head in disbelief, but at least she was smiling.

  Outside, I loaded up the bike, packing everything away into the saddlebags.

  “We could go straight to Genoa, using the Mont Blanc tunnel,” I suggested, “but I really like the idea of going up through the high pass. There’ll still be quite a bit of snow around—you up for that?”

  I didn’t want to stress her out by saying that the mountain route was 100 percent hairpin turns.

  She weighed the options, then said, “I vote for the route over the Alps.”

  I picked her up, swinging her around, then kissed her firmly.

  “God, you’re amazing, woman!”

  “Wait, I should write that down,” she laughed, pretending to make a grab for her notebook.

  “No way! You might use that against me in court. Do I have the right to an attorney?”

  “Get on the damn bike, Sebastian, before I change my mind.”

  I could definitely get used to the feel of her thighs against mine as she sat pillion on the bike.

  Before we left Geneva, we had a quick breakfast of sweet rolls and coffee in a café overlooking the lake, then headed up into the mountains. Soon we were seeing heaps of snow at the sides of the road. Some were as high as six or seven feet: they’d been piled up by snowplows clearing the road. I was glad I’d insisted that Caro got some quality ski gloves to keep her hands warm. The woman argued too much.