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Desperate to chase away negative thoughts that threatened to steal this fantasy moment from her, she stroked his shoulder blade. “You have green footprints tattooed here.” A strange color that seemed as out of place on his skin as the lights misting overhead. “What’s the reason behind it? Because if it’s a bar story, I’m betting it’s a good one.”
Laughing, he kissed the inside of her elbow, their legs brushing underwater. “It’s a pararescue thing. Most of us have them somewhere on our body. It dates back to the Vietnam War, when the H-3 Sea King was the helicopter used most often to drop PJs in and pull us back out. The chopper was big and green—thus its nickname, the Jolly Green Giant. PJs started getting green footprint tattoos.”
Her fingertips sketched along the rougher patches of inked flesh, her nerves still on heightened alert from the power of her orgasm… orgasms actually, as he’d brought her to completion three times since they’d entered the pool. “Any other tattoos I should know about ahead of time?”
“That’s it. But you’re welcome to look again.” He kissed up her arm. “And again.”
He pulled her closer until she pressed flush against him. The gush of water from the geyser echoed her speeding pulse in her ears. Her ni**les skimmed his chest, his swirls of hair a gentle abrasion. She was definitely too spent to have sex again so soon, and even if she weren’t she knew he was talking about the future. Which wasn’t unreasonable, given the tenuous connection forming in spite of roadblock after roadblock.
He tucked her hair behind her ear, the longer ends floating out around her. “What am I going to do with you, Sunny Foster?”
“Could we just have sex twenty-four/seven?” she whispered against his mouth. “Seems like we communicate best that way.”
He nipped her bottom lip. “Believe me, I would if I could.”
“You mean you’re not a superhero?” She stared at him in mock surprise.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, not meeting her eyes.
Her hands grazed down his back until she cupped his tight, amazing butt. “No comeback, for once? That’s a shocker.”
He shrugged. “I don’t really know how to joke about it. I’ve spent a lot of my life training for this.”
“How long? Spell it out,” she asked, hungry for everything she could learn about him. They had so little time left together, with his impending deployment, her own uncertainty about her future. “I can’t know what you don’t tell me.”
“PJs spend nearly two years training overall. Indoctrination course at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, then on to Airborne School at Fort Benning. Combat Divers School next.” He paused. “Are you bored yet?”
“I’m impressed. Please continue. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”
“Okay, since you asked… Then Navy Underwater Egress Training at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Survival school up in Washington.” He shivered melodramatically. “Freefall Parachutist School after that.”
Now she was more than impressed, she was awed. “What else could be left to learn?”
“Special Ops Combat Medic Course, then our PJ Recovery Specialist Course, finishing up at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.”
“I knew PJs were a highly specialized group… but, wow, I didn’t have a clue.” She sifted through it all. So much training, so many places. “How do couples manage to stay together during all that time apart?”
He angled his head back, his cocoa-brown eyes meeting hers somberly. “If a couple can’t handle the training, they aren’t going to be able to handle the stress and separations of military life. Our divorce rates are high.”
Her breath hitched in her chest at the shift in the conversation, the seriousness. The possibility behind the warning. “Are you proposing or warning me off?”
“I’m just telling you the facts so you have all the information.”
A nonanswer if she’d ever heard one. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to push for more, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Your parents stayed together, in spite of everything life has thrown their way.”
He stared up toward the northern lights, his eyes taking on a distant look. “Maybe I should bring my mother to one of the other, more accessible hot springs in Alaska, let her experience the hot springs, the healing waters.” He glanced back down at her with a half-embarrassed grin. “I suffer no delusions that it’ll fix everything for her, but at least I could give her something.”
“That’s a lovely thought.” She cupped his neck, stroking along the shaved hairs at his nape, bristly crisp with freezing water. How ironic that she’d brought him out here for the soothing power of the healing waters without realizing how it might touch a deeper hurt than a couple of stitches in his shoulder.
His shoulder.
Just that fast, the levity evaporated faster than the steam dispersed by the cold Alaska air. How could she have forgotten even for a second that just earlier that week, Deputy Smith had shot wildly at them, trying to crush them with an avalanche?
Something tugged at the back of her brain, some detail, some sense that she was missing something. She searched though everything that had been said—tougher and tougher to do with Wade’s hands making tantalizing forays over her breasts, his thigh working gentle, arousing pressure between her legs.
Her body warmed from the inside out, coming back to life as it always did with Wade, and she struggled to follow the elusive whisper of logic tap, tap, tapping. God, following it was as futile as kicking through an ice wall with bare feet. She needed serious firepower to let loose the avalanche.
She slid off Wade’s leg and nearly slipped under the surface. Spluttering water, she resurfaced.
