Never Surrender

Bay gasped as he removed his hands and settled them on her shoulders, standing quietly behind her. The room had been transformed by soft candlelight. She loved candles! And she remembered telling Gabe last year how candles created magic and transported her to the other worlds. She loved the dancing, flickering light and shadows because she could close her eyes and, in her wild imagination, see such incredible, mythical beings.

“Ohhhh,” was all she could manage, her throat tightening with tears of joy. “This is so beautiful, Gabe!” Bay gave a cry, turned and threw her arms around him. “I love you so much! Thank you! It’s such a beautiful gift! It really is!”

His arms encircled her, holding her gently against him. She felt his mouth against her temple, placing small kisses down to her cheek, and finally, as she raised and turned her head, she met and melded against his waiting lips.

He kissed her tenderly, and she couldn’t stop the sweet trembling. She was so easily touched. So easily moved. Pulling away from her mouth, he smiled down at her.

“You like it, baby?” he asked.

“Like it?” Bay whispered incredulously. “I love it, Gabe.” She loved purples, lavender and soft green-and-blue colors. He’d seriously thought about all she’d told him because on the dresser were four candles of varying heights, in the purple to lavender range. On the nightstand were four more candles ranging from pale blue to a cobalt color. And in the master bathroom, a group of them flickered, sending out muted, soft tones of gold flames.

They’d already showered, and although he’d kissed her, touched her, Bay wanted to love him here, in their bedroom. But this was their last night together. They didn’t need to rush. She would carry the memories of these last moments deep in her heart. It had to last her for six months until she returned home, to his arms.

Gabe leaned down, resting his cheek against hers, drawing her back more tightly against him. “The music? Do you hear it?”

Gulping back her tears, Bay heard soft unobtrusive classical music in the background. She immediately recognized one of her favorite classical songs, “Ode to Joy.” “Everything is so perfect, Gabe. Thank you.” She was profoundly impacted that he’d go to this much trouble for her.

His mouth curved faintly, relieved. “I had one hell of a time finding all those pieces of classical music you like.” He laughed a little shyly, holding her close, her head tipped back against his right shoulder, eyes studying him warmly. “The guys at HQ teased the living hell out of me when I sat down to use the computer at the office. Hammer, damn him, found out I was tearing my hair out trying to find those classics on iTunes. He was ragging on me, accusing me of turning into some kind of damned sissy.” Shaking his head, he grumbled, “I’ll never live it down. Classics aren’t what SEALs listen to.”

“You’re such a hero in my eyes, Gabe,” Bay whispered, meaning it. Bay was sure the word “sissy” had struck him like a dagger into his heart. She was sure Hammer didn’t know his father had called him that name, either. SEALs were a pack of male alpha wolves. Each was a consummate, confident warrior. And they mercilessly, ruthlessly teased and taunted one another, a constant unspoken game of one-upsmanship. “I grew up on the classics. My pa taught me all the Greek myths from Robert Graves’s books. I read voraciously as a child. My mama read me fairy tales every night before me and Eva-Jo went to sleep. I had so many dreams about the gods, goddesses and mythical beings. My dreams were in color and crammed full of excitement. I could hardly wait to go to sleep at night so that I could dream. Classical music inspires me,” Bay said, meeting and holding his gaze. She felt his heavy desire for her, felt it settle in her womb, between her thighs, so sweet with promise.

“I’d do it all over again for you, baby,” Gabe rasped, leaning over and lifting her into his arms. “I’ll take any kind of ribbing those guys want to dish out and hand it back to them in spades. They don’t love you. I do. Come on, let’s go to bed....”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE FLICKERING CANDLELIGHT danced around the darkened room, making movements on the walls, shadowing Gabe’s intent-looking features as he untied her blue silk robe. It had been a Christmas gift from him last year. The silky robe clearly outlined her breasts, the nipples already firm peaks beneath the superfluous material. Gabe eased the robe off her shoulders, allowing it to whisper and crumple to the floor.

He leaned down to capture one of the nipples. It hardened in his mouth. She moaned, arching tautly into him, tensing, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

Gabe heard a faint rush of air from between her lips. There was a fine line between pain and pleasure, and he gauged her response to keep it in the pleasure zone.

As her hands tightened on his shoulders, Gabe felt her strain to lift her hips and press hungrily against his thick erection. It made him feel powerful to hear the sounds caught in her throat. Bay trusted him fully. In every possible way. And as he moved his lips to the other nipple, tasting her, he heard her shallow breathing accelerate.

She was a strong woman, and her hands, in particular, were fierce. Her tight grip on his shoulders showed him that he was pleasing her.

As he gazed at Bay, the candlelight softened her beautiful face, made her look almost angelic. She stood naked before him, and he could feel her knees weaken beneath his onslaught. Bay was slowly opening him up to another kinder, gentler possibility, the magic between them, the magic of her affecting and changing him in good ways.

Gabe eased his fingers slowly up her warm rib cage, felt her soft, smooth skin against his roughened fingertips. He couldn’t help smiling into her slumberous-looking blue eyes that burned with arousal. The candlelight made her flesh glow an unearthly but breath-stealing color. Golden, radiant skin beneath his exploring hands.

Magic.

He picked her up and carried her to the bed and then bracketed her thighs with his own.

Gabe ran his index finger from the lobe of her ear down the length of her neck and across her proud shoulder. He devoured Bay with his eyes and his heart. He could see the faint beat of her heart near her left, curved breast. She meant the world to him. Gabe could not conceive life without Bay in it. Her flesh was radiant beneath the flickering candles. He monitored her expression, listened closely to her breath, watched the sharp rise and fall of her rib cage. He slowly curved his hands around each of her breasts. Bay’s expression tensed as she anticipated the touch of his thumbs wreaking pleasure across her taut nipples.

Anticipation was one of Gabe’s favorite ways of bringing her to the edge, increasing Bay’s hunger for him, for craving his touch, getting her keyed and so damned close to an orgasm until she started coming apart in his hands.

Her lips parted with a hitched breath, and she gripped his arms, waiting, wanting.... Gabe held her pleading gaze and smiled a very male smile. Leaning down, he exhaled his warm breath across the first nipple without ever touching it. Bay moaned with anticipation. He slowly circled it with his tongue, never touching the hardened center, tasting her salty flesh, drinking it into his body, drinking her into his heart. Her skin was firm, trembling and incredibly velvet beneath his exploring tongue. Feeling her frustration, her need of him, he finally gave her what she wanted: he drew the peak into his mouth, suckled her strongly, listening to her give a sharp cry of relief.

Gabe practiced the same tactical strategy with her other nipple, listening to her sigh and then a catch in her breath, craving his touch. He’d planned this for days, how he would tease her until she was mindless, achy and wet with the promise. But he never wanted to see tears, just the pleading in her eyes, her husky cries, as he turned her inside out with his hands, fingers and mouth. And then, he’d enter her, take her with him, his final objective to have her orgasm as many times as she wanted before he unleashed his power within her that final time. He brought his knees inside her thighs, opening her.

Gabe stroked the inside of her thighs, feeling how damp, how ready she was for him already. Her entire lower body cramped and convulsed as he slowly traced her wet feminine entrance. He knew how much she needed him inside her.

His thick, heavy erection lay across her belly as he captured one of her nipples in his mouth, suckling her. He sensed her need, that feeling of urgency. But he only gave her that patient, heated grin and eased her gently back down on the bed, making her wait.

Leaning down, he rasped near her ear, “Now...how do you want me, baby? Just tell me. I’m yours....”

Moaning, Bay gripped his hips urgently, crying out, “I need you...please, Gabe, I ache so much I hurt...please...”

He nodded, spreading her thighs, his erection at her wet entrance, barely brushing her, seeing her eyes shutter close. Her hips bucked upward to capture him. She sucked him deep into her. A groan ripped through Gabe as he arched forward, his body straining as she pulled him even deeper into her core. He kept steel control over himself, swam into that shocking, heated pleasure of sheathing into her. Bay was first. Always. Forever.

Gabe watched her eyes go wild with yearning, her hands grasping his hips, pushing herself against him in a begging gesture. He smiled and captured her lips. Her ragged breath exploded into his mouth, and he drank it down, drank from her lips, drunk with the heat streaking through his body, hardening him even more, wanting to thrust so deeply they’d never be able to untangle themselves from one another when it was all over.

Bay gasped wildly, then moved her tongue into his mouth at the same time he’d thrust forward deeply into hers. As she shut her eyes, he could feel her orgasm building, empowering her even more. He thrust his hips at just the right angle to give her intense, jolting pleasure.

Suddenly, a serrated cry spilled from her lips, and Bay threw back her head, spine arching upward. Gabe’s large hand slipped beneath her hips, holding her just the right way, increasing the pressure times ten. Her cries grew stronger with each powerful rippling orgasm as it tore through her. The tide surged through her in invisible, violent waves. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t gasp, captured in the storm of her body releasing fully and completely. And then, she collapsed, breathing hard against the bed, her body shuddering and her limbs suddenly going weak, barely able to move.

Then and only then did Gabe release the steel control over himself. He swam in the heat and slickness of her gift to him. He could do no less for Bay, surging into her soft, accommodating body that so tightly surrounded him. The heat seized him, and he could feel the glovelike tightening pushing his hungry body into overdrive. His lips lifted away from his teeth as he pumped relentlessly, hungrily, into her. His release exploded out of him. Beads of sweat popped out across his brow, his eyes tightly shut as he rode that hot, fiery explosion hurtling down through him. He had no idea how long it lasted, but it was a damn long time. Finally, Gabe collapsed on top of Bay, fighting to keep his full weight off her.

“Come here,” he said, his voice rough. He didn’t want to leave her body just yet, and he pulled Bay against him, his one leg between hers so they could remain coupled. “I love you, baby. God, I love you,” Gabe whispered against her lips, taking her gently this time, with all the tenderness he possessed as a man. Tonight was her night. Tonight, he wanted to love Bay with every cell he had in his body, make her his.

* * *

THEY REMAINED TOGETHER in every way, Bay’s head resting tiredly on Gabe’s massive chest, her arm limp across his torso. She dozed with him. The clock read three in the morning when Bay drowsily awoke, still in Gabe’s arms. He stirred, sensing her coming awake. Taking her to his side, he nestled her against him, tucking her in, his arm sliding around her shoulders. He kissed her brow. Her hands grazed his chest, her fingers tangling in his soft hair. His skin grew taut, muscles reacting to her gliding touch.

“Mmm,” Bay said, pulling back just enough to catch his sleepy gaze. “That was world-class, Griffin. You continually surprise the pants off me.”

He chuckled darkly and raised his hands, tunneling his fingers through that soft, curled mass of hair across her shoulder. “I like surprising any pair of pants off you. You look damn good naked.”

“That was a Hill expression,” she said archly, leaning up on her elbow and placing a kiss on his smiling mouth. A mouth that knew how to take her to the rim of the universe and back. Bay absorbed the tenderness burning in his eyes and rested her brow against his. “I just don’t want this night to end, Gabe.”

He sighed and moved his hand across her shoulder. “It will, baby, but you can always take it with you. Remember it and us in the quiet moments over there in Afghanistan.” Not that there would be many.

Bay didn’t want to discuss leaving. “I want to talk to you about our wedding.”

Gabe woke up a little more. The seriousness in Bay’s softened expression forced him awake. “Sure.”

She traced invisible patterns across his upper chest with her finger. “Our wedding is something positive. And right now, that’s all I want in my life, Gabe.”

Nodding, he understood. “Is this about your Grandma’s dress you want to wear?” A UPS box sent by her mother, Poppy, had arrived the third day she’d been with him. Inside the box was a long, cream-colored lacy wedding dress her grandmother had worn. Bay fiercely loved her Grandmother Lilac. He remembered watching tears come to Bay’s eyes as she’d gently removed the old but beautiful dress from the box. The sadness in her eyes over the loss of her grandmother had touched him. Lilac had died when she was seventeen years old. Bay had wanted to wear her grandmother’s dress for their wedding. Gabe wished his family had had that same closeness.

Bay stirred, kissed the damp column of his neck. “Mmm, yes. Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” he whispered, moving his fingers through the soft strands of her curly hair. “I want you happy, baby. I want you to plan that wedding at your mother’s cabin.”

She smiled a little, nuzzling his jaw and placing a slow kiss to his sandpapery flesh. Her body glowed hot, and her womb felt as if it contained deep, simmering coals. Pleasurable, subtle heat was still radiating throughout her. Bay couldn’t get enough of Gabe. She moved her hips, watching his length already hardening once more. He was so incredibly masculine, so incredibly tender with her, making her body sing. Her mouth was dry, and she swallowed. “I already promised Grace and Mama that we’d work out all the details in emails. Mama has Skype, so I can talk to her directly sometimes, when I can.”

“Good,” he murmured, inhaling her womanly scent, the fragrance that was only her. Bay fed his soul. Gabe knew she wanted to take part in the wedding plans, no matter if she was in Afghanistan or not. He cupped her shoulder and looked deeply into her eyes. “Listen, you can’t give yourself away over there this time, Bay. When you were with our team, I finally realized you were burning the candle at both ends, working seventeen hours a day helping others medically. It was taking a toll on you, baby.”