Blue Knight by Tracy Cooper-Posey

mental taunt played over and over in her head. She was playing with fire and she didn’t seem to know how to stop. She had accused Daniel of being two-faced, but it was really she who was playing the double game here. Daniel thought the stakes on the table was just sex because she wasn’t being honest.
    At least she had managed to halt it before it had gone too far. It had shocked her to discover he had wanted her after all. It had taken her shock-stunned mind minutes to recover while Daniel had felt her respond positively to him and learned the truth, that she wanted him, too. That damage was irreparable, but she had at least pulled back as soon as she had realized what was going on. He was just going to have to live with being puzzled about why she’d said no.
    She was never going to explain to him that the complicated, emotional, relationship-heavy thirty-something stuff he’d spent a lifetime avoiding was exactly what she wanted…with him and no one else. Daniel was not about to be converted to the glories of love and stable relationships. She knew better than to think he might be. So she would have to forego even a simple relationship with him because she didn’t trust herself around him.
    If she did indulge herself with Daniel, she knew what would happen. The danger signs were all over the situation. She would do something completely stupid like fall in love with him and then have to break her heart when he left, as he would do in the end.
    She had to end it here. End everything.
    Except she suspected it might already be too late for her.
    * * * * *
    Even as she tapped on the door of the eighteenth cabana at the far end of the bay, cold steel touched her neck and Téra froze.
    “How did you find me?” Lucas asked. He withdrew the gun and stepped out of the shadows thrown by the moon sinking into the sea, at the end of the cabana. He was wearing his army pants and shirt, but was barefoot and his shirt was unbuttoned.
    “How did you know I was out here before I knocked?” she asked.
    “You don’t know how to walk silently.”
    “I’m barefoot and walking on sand,” she pointed out, lifting the hem of her gown.
    “You breathe heavily and you’re wearing French perfume. Why are you arguing the point? I had the gun at your throat. It’s academic.”
    True. She watched him step up to the door of the cabana, as if he intended to go inside. She caught at his hand.
    “Don’t do this, Téra,” he said simply. “I will have to reject you. Then you will be upset and will hate me.”
    “How can I hate you?” She tugged at his hand. “Come here.”
    “I’m too old for you.”
    “So what?”
    “Your brother will kill me.”
    “He gave me your billet number.”
    Lucas sighed and stepped down onto the sand in front of her. “How can I make you stay away?”
    She reached for his trousers and began to unfasten them. “You can’t.”
    “Téra, no.” He stilled her hands. “I beg you, give this up.”
    “Give me a good reason why.”
    “I don’t want you.”
    “You’re lying.”
    “You’re confusing lust with love, little one. Yes, I want you in a crude way. Who wouldn’t? Look at you. I am a man.” He shrugged.
    Two armed guards walked past and saluted. Lucas returned the salute, with a hiss of impatience under his breath. “Grounds security,” he murmured.
    “Let’s go inside,” Téra said, stepping around him.
    “No, Téra, wait,” Lucas said.
    She evaded his hand and climbed the three wooden steps. She pushed inside the cramped cabana they’d assigned him as his private quarters and came to a stop.
    There was a camp bed that he’d clearly just abandoned, a gas lamp turned low on an army box that he was using as a desk. That was it for furniture. There was a window in each of the two short walls, but on the wall opposite the camp bed, he’d tacked pictures, newspaper clippings, and printouts from the internet, photos and more. Nearly half the wall was covered.
    They were all of her.