Free Dance With Me by Kristin Leigh Page A

against the urge.
    The major took one last, lingering look and turned away. He moved silently through the house and locked the door before closing it soundlessly behind him. He couldn’t stay. With a resigned, painful sigh, the major walked away, trying very hard to ignore the tightness in his chest.
    As he’d done countless times, he tucked his humanity into a deep, dark corner of his subconscious and let the Black Ops soldier take over.
    * * * *
    Rebecca’s alarm went off at six in the morning, the irritating screech jolting her awake and into a sitting position. She looked around groggily, trying to find the rolling alarm clock. It was quite possibly the most irritating alarm clock on the face of the earth, which also made it the most effective.
    When Rebecca was in college, her friend Tara Marshall had given her the stupid little thing in an attempt to cure Rebecca’s chronic tardiness. The first rolling alarm clock had suffered a tragic accident. It had rolled off Rebecca’s nightstand and under the bed before it had taken a one-way flight out of a third-story dorm room window.
    This was Rebecca’s fourth moving clock, and she had a sneaky suspicion it would soon suffer a similar fate. As she crawled under the bed in search of the offensive screeches, Rebecca muttered, “I’ll get you, you little bastard.”
    She squeezed herself as far under the bed as she could and finally reached the alarm. She flipped the button on the top to turn it off and scooted backward until she was no longer in danger of whacking her head on the bottom of her bed.
    With an irritated sigh, Rebecca leaned against her bed and closed her eyes. A warm stickiness between her thighs became obvious and then uncomfortable. Rebecca snapped her eyes open when the events of the previous night came back.
    Major. The major. Whatever. Is he still here? Trying her best to be silent, Rebecca turned and glanced into her bed. No one. She sat back down with a plop and buried her face in her hands as the memories came back in graphic detail.
    “Squeeze me. Like you did before.” A deep groan, then, “Holy fucking hell, that’s incredible. Again.”
    Rebecca shook her head from side to side, hysterical laughter spilling from her lips.
    “What are you doing?” Rebecca watched Major nervously.
    “Cleaning you.” He wiped gently with a washcloth. “I want to make you come with my tongue. And then I want you to return the favor.” A cynical smile then, “If you want to.”
    Rebecca peeped from between her fingers, a little giddy from the realization that she’d finally had great sex. She stood with a little hop and giggle and danced across her room to the bathroom. Great sex. Capital letters, bold, italics, underlined.
    And now Major was gone and Rebecca would never see him again. Her little dance halted and her smile faded. Where did he go? Is he safe? Will he come back?
    Rebecca may not have known the answer to the first two questions, but she certainly knew the answer to the third. No, he’ll never come back. Her heart thudded and dropped. Already she wanted to see him again. Not Rick, with his falseness, but Major. Major, who was plagued by his past, present, and future, but stood tall anyway, shouldering responsibility like Atlas and asking nothing in return.
    Rebecca’s eyes burned and she blinked back tears. She would not cry. She’d known the instant she reached her hand out to touch him that he couldn’t stay, that one night was all they would ever have. And she’d touched him anyway.
    “Don’t.” His eyes were fierce, heated, and desperate with a longing she knew he didn’t want to show. “Not if you’re just teasing me.”
    Rebecca closed her eyes against the remembrance and braced herself. Keeping her mind carefully blank she began her morning routine to get ready for school.
    The day dragged by for Rebecca, filled with flurries of children that were constantly excited. They were always high-strung for weeks after Christmas