A Few Good Men. Tori Carrington

squinted into the growing dusk, trying to make out Truman in the distance. She hadn’t thrown the stick that far, had she?

      There. There he was. Standing by the dunes some hundred feet up, his tail wagging a million miles a minute. She moved closer, thinking he might have found a bird’s nest or a crab or other small animal.

      Then she saw him.

      The man in fatigues who was crouched down petting the retriever.

      Sara’s heart hiccupped in her chest.

      Andy…

      How many times had she dreamed scenes like this? Of Andy popping back up into her life as if he’d never been gone? As if he’d never shipped out to serve first in Afghanistan and then later in Iraq? Too many to count. But none of them had ever been this vivid. This real.

      The man spotted her and gave Truman a final pat before rising to his feet. The heart that had hiccupped now surged up into her throat, threatening to choke her. She wasn’t losing her mind. There was a man there. A man in fatigues. But it wasn’t Andy. On closer inspection, he looked nothing like her late husband.

      Where Andy had been short and stocky, this man was tall and lean, although no less powerful. Where Andy had had blond hair, this man’s close-cropped cut was dark. Where Andy had always been ready with a smile, this man had frown lines etched deep into his striking face.

      Sara’s footsteps slowed and then stopped altogether three feet from him, shimmering need pooling low in her stomach.

      “Hi, Sara,” Eric Armstrong said, the greeting nearly lost in the sound of the surf. “Or should I say Samantha?”

      Chapter 3

      ERIC STOOD STOCK-STILL, staring into Sara’s confused face, watching emotions slide like clouds across the setting sun. When she hadn’t immediately returned to her house, he’d shadowed her footsteps, following her to the beach. There, he’d found her hugging her arms around her slender body, looking so small against the endless sea that he wanted to encircle her with his own arms.

      Now, her lips popped open, as if needing to say something, but without the words to say it.

      God, he’d never really realized how tantalizing her mouth was before. How downright naughty. Her lips were provocatively full, the upper larger than the lower. He couldn’t seem to drag his gaze from them, wanting to trace the lines with his tongue.

      The minute he’d come face-to-face with Sara, she’d stopped being merely “Samantha” or Andy’s widow…she’d become a woman to whom he felt an irresistible attachment. With whom he’d joined virtual hands when he’d most desperately needed human touch.

      The waves crashing against the beach mimicked the need surging within him.

      “Eric…”

      The wind snatched the softly said name from her even as he leaned forward to claim what it seemed he’d been waiting his entire life to have.

      Her lips were moist and cool, the tang of seawater only adding to their appeal. Eric groaned and curved his hand around to the back of her neck, pulling her closer, demanding a deeper meeting. Sara complied, parting her lips to allow him to plunder the depths of her mouth with his tongue.

      It was both the greatest pleasure he’d ever known and the greatest torture. He wanted to follow the desire in him to its natural conclusion, to fulfill all that he’d dreamed about over the past six months, the thoughts of which had kept him alive, and claim Sara body and soul right there on the beach. But he couldn’t. Not because it was a public place and the act would be behavior unbecoming, but because while he tasted the sea on her lips, he became aware of the tang of salt from another source: her tears.

      Eric groaned and broke contact, drawing her into his arms instead. She snaked her hands so that they grasped his shoulders from behind, her face tucked into his chest.

      “God, oh, God, Eric…I’m so, so sorry. This…you and me…” She drew back.

      He marveled at the dampness in her eyes glistening like the stars beginning to emerge on the eastern horizon. “I should never have contacted you. Should never have let things get out of hand…”

      “Shh. We don’t have to talk about that now.” Eric found it impossible to swallow past the dryness of his throat. “I just want…need to hold you right now. Please. Just for a little while.”

      Her response was instant and complete. She burrowed further into his chest, her hip resting against his arousal. Eric closed his eyes and rested his chin on the top of her sweet-smelling head. In that one moment, he knew that if the option were offered him, he’d sell his soul to the devil in order to remain like this with Sara forever.

      AN HOUR LATER BACK at her house, Sara felt as if she was violating some sort of unwritten code. Against her better judgment, she’d invited Eric in. He now sat in the old wood rocker next to the cold fireplace, holding a beer in his hands, the chair looking comically too small to hold his large frame.

      She’d forgotten how big he was. Much larger than Andy had been. He seemed to fill every corner of the house with his presence. Something lost not even on the dog; the golden retriever lay at Eric’s boots, his head on his paws while his watery eyes watched his every move in case there was another pat in the offing.

      “I…I think the pasta must be done,” Sara said quietly, breaking the silence that had settled between them.

      She couldn’t have ducked out of the room more quickly had there been a pack of coyotes nipping at her heels. It wasn’t until she was alone in the kitchen again that she allowed herself a deep breath that did nothing to steady her.

      What was he doing here?

      She leaned a shoulder against the refrigerator, having imagined Eric’s return countless times in her dreams. Her fantasies, really. Harmless musings that found him claiming her mouth the way he had on the beach and much, much more.

      Of course, she’d never intended for them to come true. Had been convinced that she’d done a good job covering her cyber tracks.

      How had Eric found out it was her? Was it something she’d said along the way? Oh, God, had he known all along?

      “I think I have you figured out,” Eric had written three months ago.

      Sara’s fingers had hovered over the keyboard, afraid to respond, wondering if she should shut down, pretend she hadn’t heard what he’d said. She hadn’t wanted it to be over. Needed for exchanges between her and Eric to continue for as long as she could safely arrange it.

      “There’s a bad girl lurking within you, Samantha. And I want to tempt her out.”

      She’d relaxed when he’d used her alias. He hadn’t been talking about her real identity at all, but responding to her sometimes-raunchy posts about what she’d like to do to him if they were in the same room together.

      “Sara?”

      The sound of Eric’s voice behind her nearly made her jump out of her skin.

      The pasta!

      She forced herself to take the pan from the burner and emptied the contents into a colander in the sink, following with a burst of cool water to cease the cooking process. No matter that her fingers burned from where she’d left the metal handle over the heat, her mind kept marrying the contents of their e-mails to each other with the fact that they now were in the same room.

      And damn her wanton soul, she wanted to act out on every one of those cyber fantasies. Her favorite of which had taken place right here in this room.

      “How can I help?” Eric asked.

      His voice sounded right behind her, too close, too intimate.

      The bottom dropped out of her stomach, making her feel oddly weightless. She turned to ask him to wait in the other room until she finished, to tell him that she couldn’t think when he was this