Midnight Man (Midnight #1)(20)

“Yessir,” the taxi driver answered, wide-mouthed. John stared at him for another long moment then slapped his hand on the roof and stepped back.

“Okay, then.”

The driver took off like a bat out of hell and Suzanne didn’t have the courage to look back. But she could see perfectly well in the driver’s rear view mirror. John stood smack in the middle of the street, big as a mountain and looking just as immovable. He watched, scowling, in the rain as the taxi pulled away.

Men.





Women.

Why the hell hadn’t she asked him to drive her, if her car was in the garage? Why call a taxi when she could call him? He’d gladly drive her to freaking Iceland, if she asked.

He knew why she hadn’t asked. For the same reason she kept trying to slither away from him.

Jesus, he’d handled that badly. He’d meant to smooth Suzanne’s ruffled feathers, reassure her that he was an okay guy, not some crazed sex maniac, because that was what she obviously thought. It was true that he’d been obsessed with the idea of taking her to bed since he’d first laid eyes on her, but he wasn’t an animal.

The way she’d watched him, warily, those big blue-gray eyes wide open, ready to jump if he so much as moved, would have made him angry if he didn’t know that he deserved her wariness. He was the one who’d acted like an asshole, ripping her clothes off and taking up her against a wall. Now it was up to him to make up for it.

He needed to make this right. He needed to find a way to make this right. But hell—just seeing the woman sent him into overdrive. Damn, but she’d looked pretty this morning, and even more desirable than last night, though he wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible.

Still elegant, still graceful, still achingly feminine but now he didn’t have to speculate about what her breasts looked like, tasted like. How soft her mouth was, how smooth her skin was, how it felt to be deeply buried inside her. He knew.

He wanted more. More of the same, only in a bed this time, with hours at his disposal to kiss that pretty mouth swollen again. He’d do it right next time, make sure she was ready, and maybe go down on her first. Make sure she was wet, and then enter her slowly. She’d been surprisingly tight.

She carried the signs of his lovemaking. Lips slightly bee-stung, a dewy sexy softness to her.

He’d given her a hickey.

He could remember every second of his mouth on her neck, the taste of her. He’d sucked hard at her skin while coming. It had felt as if the top of his head was going to come off and he was lucky he hadn’t taken a bite out of her.

He’d wanted to. He still did.

He wanted to bite her, kiss her, suckle her, penetrate her. He wanted it all, every single thing she could give, and more. But if he didn’t play his cards right, he was never going to get into her pants again. Right now it looked like he had better hopes of becoming a ballerina than of taking Suzanne Barron to bed. She was shying away from him as if he were the Antichrist.

He knew what the problem was but he didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

It was a problem he’d had all his life, though it hadn’t made much of a difference in the Navy because the Navy was full of men just like him.

But out here in the civilian world, it was a real problem. If he hadn’t been so good at his job, it would have stopped him from making his business a success.

There were two kinds of people in this world. Those whose thoughts and emotions were on a dial and those whose emotions were on a switch. He was a switch man himself and had spent his entire lifetime among switches.

Something either was or wasn’t. Had happened or hadn’t. You either could do it or couldn’t. It either worked or it didn’t. You were either happy or unhappy.

Dial people were different. Their emotions ran up and down a scale and you had to guess at what point they were and try to coax them to go in the direction you wanted.

Commanding men who risked their lives in battle required a working knowledge of human psychology. John knew he was a good leader. He’d worked hard at that. But there were limits to what he could do.

His men were just as susceptible as the next man when it came to women problems, family problems, and money troubles. But soldiers had less slack to fart around. If his men had troubles John had to know—right now. He couldn’t put up with bullshit and they didn’t give it to him. If one of his men had a problem, John tried to help him resolve it. If it couldn’t be solved, and it affected a man’s performance, that man was out of the Teams. The soldier knew it, he knew it, everyone knew it.

John wasn’t used to pussyfooting around or cajoling.

He’d almost lost the Western Oil contract because of his nature. The CEO, Larry Sorensen, had invited him to dinner at his house and to his golf club the next day. John knew he was being tested and he’d damned near failed the test. Sucking corporate cock wasn’t his style.

Dinner had been pure unadulterated hell, with Mrs. CEO trying to plant her foot in his crotch under the dinner table and Mr. CEO trying to talk art, about which John knew exactly zero.

And the golf club episode—that had been right up there in his all-time personal list of crappy things he’d had to do in his lifetime. Worse, much worse, than an underwater incursion through the sewers of Jakarta on a hunt for a nest of tangos.

He’d had to endure Sorensen trying to bond with him while trying to smack a little white ball into a hole, just about the most useless activity the mind of man has ever invented. All of that while riding a golf cart—a golf cart for Christ’s sake!—around the course.