Never Enough: Delos Series, 3B1 Read online

  “My life is a dream come true because you’re in it,” he told her, meaning it, looking into her eyes, which glimmered with tears because of his admittance. Matt wasn’t going to tell her not to cry. As much as tears tore him up, he knew they were a positive release. He still hadn’t climbed that mountain of getting comfortable with his own tears. He never cried in public. Instead, while in Afghanistan, after a traumatic mission, he’d cried alone, in a dark corner where no one could hear his sobs. In a way, he admired Dara’s ability to cry openly and without apology.

  She released his hand, giving him a longing look. “You are perfect for me, Matt Culver.”

  “Even though when you met me you thought I was just after your body, hmm?” he teased. Well, it was the truth. After watching Dara belly dance? Hell, he was like an alpha wolf in heat, and he’d just found his alpha female. And all he wanted to do was mate repeatedly with her. But there was so much more to Dara than just a sexual being. Never mind her beauty. Or that fabulous blond hair of hers; he would never get tired of running his fingers through those strong, shining strands. No, as he watched her work at the Hope Charity orphanage in Kabul, alongside her sister, Callie, Matt began to realize just how beautiful Dara truly was. Get her around a baby? The woman melted and became so maternal that he wished he were that baby in her arms receiving all the love and attention she lavished on the infant.

  That was another facet to Dara: the mother. There was a good reason she was a pediatrician, and Matt had watched her with those babies, those pregnant Afghan women and their small, shy children. His need for her, the reasons for his need, shifted and changed. Yes, sex with Dara would be great. That was a no-brainer in Matt’s world. But to watch her blossoming, to see and feel her love and care for others, melted his heart, and at that moment, his feelings for her became about far more than just physical desire.

  He had never seen himself falling in love, even though his mother and father were deeply in love with one another. They showed it daily to their children through respect, equality, smiles, touches, and sometimes kisses in front of them. Matt had grown up thinking that his family was like everyone else’s. But he quickly found out, after joining the Army at eighteen, that his family really was one in a billion, because so many of his other teammates’ lives and families were dysfunctional. Love had been distorted, twisted, made dysfunctional in those families, and he’d seen the emotional and mental damage that had wreaked upon the other Delta Force operators on his team. He began to understand that the family stamping of a child’s first eighteen years of life branded them forever. He began to grasp the enormity and responsibility of becoming a parent someday.

  When he met Dara, falling helplessly in love with her, Matt had gotten lucky. Or, his mother, Dilara, would archly point out, he’d been blessed by the old goddesses and gods. Dara had come from a family similar to his, he’d discovered over time. They were a Montana cattle ranching family, but her mother and father, and her grandparents, who owned the ranch, were no less in love than Dilara and Robert Culver were. That was a stunning realization that Matt had come to.

  He didn’t know about her loving family before the ambush, but as he tried to protect her, get her to safety, she showed an emotional courage that he saw in his sisters, Tal and Alexa. And maybe coming from a solid, loving family helped sustain her during that nightmarish humping over a nine-thousand-foot mountain pass in the dead of winter. Matt hadn’t been sure they would survive. He’d never told Dara that because she needed to keep her hope alive, keep battling to survive with him, to endure the brutal physical challenges they had to go through. He was a pragmatic realist, and he knew the situation could turn deadly, for both of them. Dara was too slow, not physically fit enough for the mountain challenge, and he was always watching for the Taliban. If not for his tracking skills, and a favorable turn in the weather, Matt didn’t think they’d be here, on this sunny, warm beach on Oahu, to appreciate what they had. Still, even now, he was in awe of her emotional strength throughout that ordeal. The fact that she’d come from a family similar to his own explained why she could keep trying, despite her lack of training.

  As Dara gazed adoringly up at him, he drowned in her deep blue eyes, which shimmered with love for him alone, and Matt knew how fortunate he really was. All the money in the world couldn’t buy a person’s love. He knew that, had been raised to understand that money was a tool to do good with, but that it could not buy love or happiness. Love, as his mother had taught her children from a young age, was in the hands of the old goddesses and gods of her country. He, Tal, and Alexa, she told them, would be led to the right man or woman, who would hold their heart peerless and pure within their hands. Dilara was passionate about it, certain, without knowing how or why, that her three children would each attract a mate who would cherish them, love them, and be with them forever—just as she had been drawn to Robert Culver, an Air Force combat pilot, a man from another country, another reality, she gravely told them one night. Their mother would often laugh when they gathered around her feet before bed for a nightly story, and she would tell them of how she and Robert had met, and how profoundly and swiftly she’d fallen in love with the handsome, young Air Force captain with the broad shoulders and confidence to burn. She said he was a real hero, and he was for her, to this day.

  As Matt stood with Dara on the beach, the warmth of the sun surrounding them, the breeze bringing the life-giving scent of salt air to their nostrils, the shrieks of the gulls celebrating his good luck in finding her, he smiled down at her. Matt was no poet; he wasn’t good with words like Dara was. His emotions always choked him up when it came to her. He was a man of action. He always would be. All Matt could do was show Dara with his kisses, his loving her, his sensitivity toward her, the way he treated her every day, that she meant everything to him and was his world. As he tunneled his fingers through Dara’s loose golden hair, he leaned down, whispering against her lips, “Tonight, I’m going to show you just how much I love you …”

  CHAPTER 3

  Dara wanted to sneak up behind Matt and place her hands over his eyes. But she knew better. He’d been black ops for far too long; if she silently approached him from behind, she’d be in danger of triggering his muscle-memory response to defend and kill when an enemy tried to catch him off guard. He’d repeatedly warned her never to do that, and she’d taken his advice seriously.

  Instead, as he was puttering in the kitchen of their rental home after their evening meal, putting the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, she stood at the entrance to the open-concept living area, her hand resting on the doorframe of their bedroom. They’d gotten home at five p.m.; Matt had bought fresh blue-striped snapper from a local fishmonger and gotten everything else he’d need to fix them their first Hawaiian meal from a local market. By six p.m., Dara was stuffed. They’d sat down on the bamboo couch and caught up with the international news from Al Jazeera America. It was the only station that Matt would watch for what he called “real news,” without the sensationalized drama that other news networks trotted out. He also liked BBC World News, broadcast from London, England. Those two, he said, he could sift through and get relevant, true news reporting. They both watched the two news-hour presentations and then discussed the events of the day.

  Dara had discovered early on that Matt being a sergeant—an enlisted person in the Army and not an officer—was a fact that had no bearing on his innate intelligence, knowledge, or experience. The truth was, he’d taken courses long-distance and on campus for eight years in order to get his degree in politics. He never used the degree to become an officer in the Army, which he could have done. He liked being in the trenches with his men and his team. That was more important to Matt.

  Dara had seen that leadership side of him at Bagram when they’d first met. She’d seen it when he’d rescued her from that ambush and was still seeing it now that he was home for thirty days’ leave.

  This week in Hawaii was his last on leave. Dara was already mourning the fact t
hat after their vacation he’d have to go back to Bagram to finish out his enlistment, which was up on March 1. Back into the hell of black ops and the possibility that he’d get wounded or killed. She worried a lot about that. She loved him with a desperation she’d never known. Craved his nearness, his thoughts, how he saw the world and how he loved and saw her. She was privy to his gentle side, and how she craved that closeness and tenderness with him! Dara didn’t know how she was going to survive without Matt’s presence. He was larger-than-life but humble, quiet, and an intense warrior and man. He knew who he was and made no excuses for it. He had a job waiting for him at Artemis Security, heading up the KNR—Kidnapping and Ransom—division. And he was looking forward to becoming a civilian and living with her, counting the months until June, when they would wed. Matt was anxious to leave the Army, anxious to have her in his bed every night and share his life with her.

  Would Matt remain safe in Bagram? He had tried to explain to her that, during the winter months, the Taliban left and things quieted down in Afghanistan. It was only when spring arrived in April that there was an influx of Pakistani al-Qaeda and Taliban coming across the border, flooding back into war-torn Afghanistan, and Delta Force had to become more active and vigilant. Dara wasn’t completely convinced, because she knew how much Matt hadn’t told her during their run from that ambush. Only after the fact did he tell her the real shape they were in and how close they had come to getting captured. And it was all because of her lack of physical stamina, but he’d never said anything of the sort to her. Dara knew she had been too slow, clumsy, out of breath, out of shape, for hard winter mountain climbing. Matt had been like a nimble bighorn sheep, acclimated and enduring physical hardship with ease in comparison to her. But still, she worried about losing him over there when he returned to Afghanistan. She tried to push that worry away and focus on only now, only Matt.

  “Hey,” she called softly, watching him lift his head from the dishwasher, where he’d placed the last of the dirty dishes. Matt grinned as he straightened.

  “That sarong looks damn nice on you,” he said, shutting the dishwasher and turning it on.

  Her whole body reacted heatedly to his burning inspection. “Like it?” Dara’s heart beat a little faster as she saw him wash his hands in the sink, dry them, and drop the towel on the counter, heading in her direction with focused intensity. Her breasts firmed, and her nipples hardened beneath that hooded, hungry look he was giving her as he approached.

  “Like it?”

  Matt gave her a dark look, absorbing her as she stood barefoot before him in her sarong. “Sweetheart, you give ‘sexy’ a whole new level of meaning,” he said, reaching out, lightly trailing his fingertips along her naked shoulder. She had fastened the sarong just above her breasts, the two ends of it pulled through a wooden clasp, so that the folds flowed down to her knees. The silk fabric was gossamer, and he saw her nipples clearly pushing outward against it. She had brushed her hair until it gleamed with molten highlights, the strands thick and heavy, curling against the top of the sarong. His erection responded when he saw how that sexy piece of nothing lovingly outlined her tall, graceful body. “I’d like to take a picture of you in that sarong. I want it for my cell phone, so when I’m in Afghanistan, I can open it up when I’m alone, look at it, and remember us …” He trailed his fingers up her slender throat, seeing the pulse of her artery fluttering against her thin flesh.

  “I’m up for it,” she said, her voice wispy, unsteady. His fingers barely grazed her, more like a whisper than actual contact. Dara closed her eyes, absorbing that feathery touch of his, aching in her channel for him, feeling the heat burn bright and strong deep within her. Already, her inner thighs were damp with the promise of what he would share with her shortly.

  Matt pulled out his cell phone and then moved back far enough to take the photo. Then he put his phone on the lamp stand next to the bamboo sofa. “You look incredible, like a vision.” He approached her, his fingertips trailing from her high cheekbones downward, outlining her lips, which parted beneath his touch. “Or,” he rasped, smiling into her upturned gaze, those midnight-blue eyes of hers dappled with gold in their depths, telling him how sexually starved she really was, “you’re one of the ancient goddesses. Maybe Artemis herself? Coming to visit a poor, mere mortal like me?”

  She sighed beneath the skittering heat his stroke had created, her lips tingling, hungry to taste him, inhale his male scent and open herself up to him in every possible way. “I like Artemis. Can I pretend to be her tonight? And you’re that handsome mortal I saw from the marble steps of my temple at Ephesus?”

  His smile increased as he studied her passionate expression, inhaling her womanly scent. He knew that Dara had found some plumeria oil, and he could smell its delicate scent on her skin. “I think,” he murmured, skating his fingers down her bare arms, making languid, slow patterns across them, “that you put Artemis to shame. You’re already my goddess.”

  His words were so beautiful, so heartfelt, that Dara melted, because she knew Matt always said he wasn’t a man of words. But he really was. When it counted, he said the most incredible, heartwarming things to her. She stood quietly, allowing him to do whatever he wanted with her. She trusted him with herself. And always, he approached loving her as if she were indeed some beautiful goddess from the ancient past, worshipping her, respecting her, pulling her into himself, allowing her the freedom of her innate feminine expression, sharing it with him. Dara had never felt so valued, so important, to any man as she did with Matt. He adored her. And she’d never been cherished by a man until she met him. Before she could say anything, he scooped her up into his arms. She gave a little cry of surprise but quickly relaxed against him, feeling his strength, his hardness, and relishing that dark, hungry look he gave her.

  “Well, goddess of mine,” he told her while walking her into their bedroom, “I am going to love you so well tonight that you will agree, upon waking tomorrow morning in my arms, to remain with me all week. Are you in agreement with my desire?”

  She kissed his sandpapery cheek, inhaling him, tasting the salt on his skin, the scent of Hawaii upon him. “If you love me well enough, my mortal, I will deign to remain in your presence.”

  “I believe,” he said smugly, depositing her on the bed, “I can please you, my lady. Stay there. I need to get a quick shower. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Dara sat there, her legs tucked beneath her, the folds of the sarong partly open between her thighs. She was sure Matt would find that exquisitely sexy. The man loved it when she wore seductive nighties, because he so enjoyed the slow torture that he put her through as he removed each scrap of cloth. It would be no different tonight because Matt, she had discovered, was a very tactile person. Taste was vital to him—licking her skin, driving her to distraction with that skilled tongue of his. He would inhale her scent and she would hear him growl with satisfaction, because he loved the fragrance of everything about her body. She was amazed that he could discern the subtle differences in the skin between her thighs, her breasts, her neck, and behind the lobe of her ear. He had an unerring sense of where the thinnest areas of her flesh were and would wring pleasure out of those super-sensitive areas until there were times when Dara thought she would faint from the intense sensations he gave her.

  She was so deep in thought about him, she didn’t even realize he was coming out of the master bathroom until he was halfway to their bed. He’d washed his short hair, and a few strands dipped across his broad brow. As he drew near, she could smell the subtle odor of lime around him, and her channel tightened from that scent alone. Matt was teaching her how such subtleties all combined to make a session of lovemaking so very, very special and one of a kind.

  “I’d take a cell photo of you just like that,” he said wryly, dropping the thick pink towel he carried over a nearby chair, “but if someone ever got on my phone and found it, they’d accuse me of downloading pornography.” He closed the bedroom door, shutting off t
he light. She had lit two tall yellow candles that sat on the dresser opposite their bed, and they lent just enough light.

  She laughed with him as he knelt on the mattress, which dipped with his weight as he moved behind her, trapping her between his opened thighs. “Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” She could feel the heat of his body, inches from her own, her breasts tightening with anticipation. His thighs were long, incredibly honed, hard-feeling against her outer hips as he bracketed her. Matt was teaching her to use her sense of smell, and she inhaled the dampness of his skin as it tantalized her flaring nostrils, that teasing hint of lime combined with the sensation of tense, controlled masculinity. Dara wasn’t sure where imagination began or ended with him. Matt had admitted once that Delta Force put them through a lot of training to enhance their six senses, and yes, he was sharing what they’d taught him with her. Only he was opening up those remarkable, intriguing senses in a sexual way, which only made her burn hotter, need him more and much sooner. Dara was impatient to release her orgasms, which he could easily trigger. But he was what she termed a slow lover, someone who appreciated sensual nuances, gloried in them, drowned in them, before moving on to the next level, which was orgasms for her and a climax for him.

  She groaned as he sat behind her and rested his hands on his long thighs. “You aren’t going to tease me to death tonight, are you, Matt?”

  She heard him chuckle, that rumble across the expanse of his broad, dark-haired chest. “Why?” he asked, lifting her gold hair, moving his tongue languidly across her nape, feeling her react, hearing her breath catch, the sound feathering through him, telling him how much pleasure that one small touch gave her.