Read Online Aegis Security 02 - Sinful Surrender by Elisabeth Naughton - Free Book Online

neck, and pulled herself up so she was plastered to his chest. “Stop! Stop. I’ll make it up to you in other ways. How about that?”
    His hand was still clutching the snow, but his other arm slid under her torso to hold her close. “Depends on what you have in mind.”
    Grace lifted her mouth to his jaw and pressed her lips against his cool, scruffy cheek. Why was it so damn sexy when men didn’t shave? “Well.” She moved her lips a fraction of an inch. Kissed another spot. “If you don’t have plans tonight, you could come back to my room and we could open a bottle of wine.”
    “You don’t particularly like alcohol.”
    He’d figured that out, huh? Grace’s lips turned up in a grin. She kissed another delectable spot. “Okay, then, we’ll have diet root beer.”
    “I hate to tell you this, honey, but that’s not overly enticing.”
    “Naked.”
    He drew back from her and stared down into her eyes, and Grace saw that look again. That dark, brooding look that told her there was something going on with him. Something she might not want to know.
    “Grace, I need to tell you something.”
    Her stomach tightened. “This isn’t the part where you confess you have a wife, is it?”
    “No.” A strange look passed over his face. “Not a current one, at least.”
    “You’re married?” Grace asked, pushing away and sitting up on her own.
    He let go of her and frowned. “Divorced.”
    “Oh.” She wasn’t sure what to say. A lot of people got married and divorced. It definitely shouldn’t bother her. But she couldn’t stop wondering what kind of woman he would marry.
    “She was young,” he said. “Really young. And it didn’t last long. Which is why I don’t get involved with women in their twenties.”
    Grace glanced at all the snow around them. Then her gaze shot back to his. “That’s why you were asking me how old I was last night.” When he nodded, she couldn’t stop herself. “What happened?”
    He yanked off his glove and scratched the back of his head just under the edge of his knit cap as if he didn’t want to tell her. “I was already in the military when we got married. We met through a friend, and I knew she was quite a bit younger, but I thought she could handle the whole wife-of-a-soldier thing. I got shipped out to Afghanistan only a few weeks after the wedding. She didn’t adjust to the separation so well. Used to send me these long e-mails about how lonely she was. Anyway, I’d been there about six months when we had this really intense mission. After it was over, my CO gave us all an unscheduled two-week furlough. I didn’t tell her. Thought I’d surprise her instead. And I did. Surprised all of us, actually.”
    “What do you mean by ‘all’?”
    “I mean, I caught her with my ex -best friend.”
    “Oh. Ouch.” Grace cringed. And that would be why he didn’t date younger women. Because to him they were all as immature as his young wife.
    “Yeah, well.” He turned to look at her. “You’re not like her. I know that. I just have…issues.”
    Any guy would after that.
    Grace drew in a courageous breath. “The last guy I dated had a history of indecent exposure. I didn’t know about it until after I broke up with him, when the cops came to question me about a case where he’d exposed himself to some poor, unsuspecting teenager. You’re not the only one with issues.”
    One side of his lips turned up, and he rubbed his eyebrow. “That’s…pretty sad, I’ll give you that. But I can top it. When I walked in on my wife and my ex-friend, they weren’t just having sex. She was tied up in ropes and handcuffs and hanging from the ceiling. I thought she was being tortured. They had to explain to me what was going on. I didn’t even know she was into that BDSM shit.”
    Grace barked out a laugh and covered her mouth with her gloved hand. “Oh, you win. That’s terrible.”
    His smile widened, and a space around her heart contracted at the sparkle she saw in