Bound By Seduction (A Red-Hot SEALs Novella Book 2) (12 page)

As she hauled the bags—which were getting heavier by the moment—into the lobby of her building, a tall, thin, frustratingly familiar man with a wispy shock of sandy hair exited the elevator. He caught sight of her and made a beeline in her direction.

Chester. Well…hell.

Too
bad Aiden wasn’t with her. He certainly had a way of driving off unwelcome admirers.

Regardless of her defense of Chester earlier, he often pressed past his welcome. Nor could she convince him that no meant no, or that she was uninterested, and would never go out with him. Maybe Aiden had been right. Maybe she
had
been too nice in her rejections. If she’d been harsher, and hadn’t worried so much about hurting his feelings, maybe he’d have given up by now and moved on to someone new.

Maybe it was time to slip into her four-inch stilettos and give him a swift jab in the ass to get him moving along.

“Demi, my dear,” he said stopping abruptly in front of her. “I am so happy to see you. We really need to talk. Here, let me help you with those.”

How strange; his demand was eerily similar to the conversation she’d forced on Aiden earlier.

She sidestepped the hands reaching for the grocery sacks and hurried toward the open elevator. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want to miss the elevator.”

Ignoring her, he grabbed a bag in each hand. “Nonsense, there’s no sense in you carrying all that weight when I’m right here to lend a hand.”

Except that I don’t want your help…

But as usual she swallowed her irritation. After a slight tug of war over possession of the grocery sacks, she gave in. Much more of this back and forth struggle and the bag’s contents would end up all over the floor.

“Look, Chester,” she said as soon as the elevator doors closed behind them. “Obviously I haven’t been as adamant as I should have been.” She glanced at his long, bird-like face and girded herself. Time to drive the point home. “So let me make this crystal clear. I’m not interested in going out with you. Not now. Not ever.” She stiffened her shoulders as hurt filled his droopy brown eyes.

You’re doing him a favor, Demi. Repeat after me: you’re doing him a favor. He’s far too fixated on you. Maybe this will sever those ties.

“I’m in a relationship with Aiden now, okay?” she continued. “You need to let go of this infatuation you have with me.”

“This is exactly what we need to talk about,” Chester said, his own shoulders stiffening. “He’s not the right man for you. Surely you can see that? He’s all wrong.”

Seriously? He was telling her who was right for her. Did the guy have no social sense?

“Right.” She snorted and rolled her eyes, relieved when the bell sounded and the light for the fifth floor lit up. “And I suppose you’re the right man for me?”

It had been meant as a sarcastic retort, but she knew the moment his eyes lit up and he leaned forward, that the question had been a huge misstep.

“Yes. Exactly!” He reached for her hands, pure earnestness on his face.

As his hands caught hers, their grocery sacks collided. Wine bottles clinked.

“I swear to God, Chester, if you break any of my wine bottles I’m going to slap you up one side of this elevator and down the other.” She’d seriously had it with the man. But as usual he totally ignored her.

“If you’d just give this emotion between us a chance, you’d see how perfect we are for each other. We were meant for each other, Demi. I intended to give you more time to recover from Donnie’s death, but now that that horrible man is in the picture…” He gulped down a shallow breath. “No matter. You’ll see that we’re soulmates once we make love.”

What the…had the damn man gone deaf and insane?

“
There is no emotion between us, you dickhead,” she snapped, marching out of the elevator the second the doors slid open. “Except for intense irritation. Give me my damn bags and stop bothering me.”

She couldn’t get any clearer than that.

When he didn’t hand over the bags as requested, she stopped to glare. “I’m serious, Chester. Aiden’s waiting for me in my condo. And he doesn’t like you, so I’d take off while you can still see out of both eyes.”

“He’s at Ms. Winchester’s,” Chester said. “Which gives us the perfect opportunity to explore these feelings between us without his interference.”

Chester was spying on them
?

A chill raced down her arms and legs. Aiden might not have been too far off in his earlier assessment of the man. For the first time in her three year association with Chester, a sense of foreboding struck.

This wasn’t a case of a socially awkward misfit. Chester, obviously, had lost most of his marbles. It probably wasn’t such a good idea to lead the man to her door. If he shoved her inside, and shut the door behind them…Aiden didn’t have a key.

She was vaguely aware of Chester’s voice yammering on in the distance as she tried to decide what to do, whether she should call out for a neighbor, or head to Kait’s. And then suddenly his tall, thin body pressed into her, pushing her against the wall.

Her eyes widened as his head loomed closer. His mouth opened and fetid breath washed her face. She watched his eyes close, as his mouth headed toward hers.

Oh, hell no.

Without thought her knee rose—hard. There was plenty of room for it to build momentum as it headed toward his crotch. She jolted beneath the collision, but managed to hang onto her bags.

There was one short, intense moment of silence. The kind of silence that hung thick in the air after a major accident. And then he squealed like a greased piglet snatched from the mud, and dropped his bags—thank the good lord they were the ones without the wine. Crumpling into a moaning heap at her feet, he cradled his genitals.

“Hell,” Aiden said from the open stairwell door to her right, the strangest mixture of amusement and satisfaction in his voice. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

Chapter Eight

His heart still pounding from the breakneck race down the flight of stairs from his sister’s floor, Aiden stepped into the hallway and let the stairwell door close behind him. For the first time ever, in the twenty odd years he’d dealt with the gift his Arapaho ancestors had unleashed on him, he’d known someone was in trouble.

It hadn’t been a gradual dawning of knowledge either. Out of the blue, the absolute certainty had struck that Demi was in trouble. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know where, he just knew she was. He’d reacted on instinct. Escaping from Kait’s apartment by rambling off some vague excuse he didn’t even remember now, he’d let his body take over. It had driven him down the stairwell to the fifth floor—Demi’s floor. He’d arrived just in time to watch that asshole from the elevator push her against the wall and try to kiss her.

“Try,”
being the operative word, since the attempt hadn’t gotten ol’ Chester far. Demi, bless her, had corrected the bastard’s behavior with a forceful knee to the groin. She’d dropped the bastard on the spot, and from the squealing coming from the hunched over heap of clothing at her feet, the guy wasn’t likely to present much of a threat anytime soon. Still, it never hurt to completely neutralize the enemy, regardless of how complacent they appeared, so he headed for the quivering mess on the floor.

He shot Demi a hard glance as he approached. “You okay?”

She gave him a jerky nod, briefly lifting her eyes to his. They were dark, slightly shocked, slightly outraged, and definitely filled with warning. “I don’t need any I-told-you-sos.”

Grinning, he stepped back, raising his hands—palms out—in the universal gesture for surrender. “Yes ma’am. No lip here. I like my family jewels where they are.”

She smiled slightly at that and shook off whatever paralysis had her in its grip. Hefting her bags slightly, she stepped around Chester. “These bags are getting heavy. I’m going to drop these off at the apartment. I’ll be back to collect the rest in a moment.”

She meant the two her admirer had been carrying, and then dropped beneath the impact of her knee.

“I’ll bring them in a second. After I’ve had a little chat with our friend.” He waited, watching her carefully, but she didn’t protest his intentions. Apparently Chester had used up all his good boy points with that asinine maneuver.

As she headed down the hall at a leisurely clip, the weight of the grocery bags dragging her shoulders down, Aiden squatted next to the man who’d tried to kiss her.

“You’re lucky you’re incapacitated,” Aiden said in a casual voice. “Otherwise you’d be missing a couple of teeth, along with your balls.” He paused, to let that threat sink in, but the asshole never lifted his head or gave any indication he even knew Aiden was there. “Since you’re apparently unable or unwilling to take a hint, let me make this very clear. “If you pull this shit again, your balls will be the least of your worries. I’ll rip your heart out and feed it to you one fucking slice at a time. You don’t go near her, you got that? You don’t think about her.” The jackass still hadn’t lifted his head, but he’d stopped rocking and moaning. “I’ll be watching. You get within fifty feet of her and you’re done.”

With the warning delivered, Aiden collected the items sprawled across the carpet and returned them to the grocery bags. Rising to his feet he stared down at the thin figure curled on the ground. Most men would have shaken the pain off by now and headed for an ice pack and aspirin. This asshole looked like he had dropped anchor and intended to stay.

“You’d be wise to find a different place to live,” he finally added, dispassionately.

With one last glance to assess whether the bastard was planning a sneak attack once Aiden’s back was turned, he walked away. From the look of the guy, Demi’s countermeasure had dislodged more than his balls, it had taken out his spine as well.

He reached Demi’s apartment to find her door wide open. Shutting the door behind him, he continued into the kitchen and set his bags on the counter next to the ones she’d been carrying.

“There’s beer in the car,” she said abruptly.

She looked in one of the plastic bags and picked it up, carrying it to the fridge.

“Okay…” Aiden said slowly, watching her shove packages of meat into a compartment of the refrigerator.

Her body was stiff, tense—she wasn’t nearly as blasé over what had happened in the hallway as she wanted him to think. When she closed the fridge door and headed back to the groceries, he moved to intercept her.

“Hey,” he said softly, drawing her into his arms. For a moment it looked like she was going struggle against his hold, but then she wrapped her arms around his waist.

“I’m okay,” she mumbled the words against his chest. A huge sigh shook her and her body softened, melting in his embrace.

“I know you are.” He kissed the top of her hair, and ran a soothing hand down her back. “But I’ve wanted to get my arms around you for a very long time.”

He drew her closer. Christ—she felt good against him. Warm. Soft. Feminine. The scent of roses hung heavy around them. Did she taste like roses, too? Not that he knew what roses tasted like, but he sure wanted to find out.

“He just surprised me, that’s all,” she said, tilting her face up to his. “I guess you were right about him.”

Yeah, and wasn’t that a surprise considering he’d been talking out of his ass at the time. He froze for a second as it occurred to him that he could use this new development to his advantage.

“Between your knee and my chat, he’s probably got the message. But I’ll stick around for a couple of days to make sure he doesn’t try anything stupid again.” With a little finagling he could turn those couple days into a week and from there into a lifetime.

“Hmmm.” A smile feathered across her face. “So trying to kiss me is stupid?”

“Only if it’s unwelcome, and that knee of yours is cocked.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, and glanced down at her leg. “So tell me, Ms. Barnes, is your weapon holstered?”

The smile spread to her eyes. “I’m beginning to think you’re a tease. There you go again making promises—” She broke off, her gaze sharpening and zeroing in on his lip. “Holy shit, the swelling is almost gone.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she reached out to stroke his mouth. “Kait?”

The caress was tender and sensual, and without pain. He caught her hand and kissed her fingers. No stinging, no burning. Just cool, silky skin beneath his mouth. Dropping her hand he raised his fingers to his lip and prodded the wound, still nothing. And Demi was right, the swelling was barely noticeable.

“I’ll be damned. Apparently, cuts and bruises are easy for her to heal. It must take a hell of a lot more energy to knit bone and restore cartilage.”

Or completely regenerate a spine.

She pulled back far enough to push up the t-shirt he’d pulled on back at his place. Tag and Trammel had been gone, thank Christ, so he’d managed to avoid the looming apologies. After packing a duffle bag in record time, he’d vamoosed. The apologies could wait. Getting Demi beneath him couldn’t.

“The bruises are mostly gone too,” Demi said, after a moment, wonder echoing in her voice. She ran her palms up his chest and then down his ribs. “Do they hurt?”

An electrical current zipped along the path of her hands, sparking a fire in his veins. His blood turned molten. His spine tingled. His scalp tightened. His dick sat up and howled.