Bound By Seduction (A Red-Hot SEALs Novella Book 2) (3 page)

“Okay.” Brett pushed his chair back and rose to his feet.

The scrape of their chair legs grating against the wood floor echoed in Demi’s ears as she followed him up. Her palms picked up a greasy film and her stomach rolled. Okay, maybe she wasn’t quite so sure after all.

This time the arm he slipped around her waist felt like a strait jacket. By the time they stepped through the tavern door, and into the humid San Diego night, her cold feet had stiffened her entire body.

“Relax,” he said with wry amusement. “I’m just taking you home.”

Possibly he’d picked up on her misgivings through the sudden rigidity that had infected her muscles.

She gulped down a deep breath of the thick, floral scented air and sighed. “I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t as ready as I thought.”

“You’re allowed second thoughts. Thirds and fourths, even,” he said, dropping his arm from her waist.

“You don’t need to take me home. I’m perfectly capable of driving. Besides, I live in Coronado.”

“Sweetheart, you’re unsteady as hell. It’s either a cab or my truck. Just keep in mind that if you choose a cab, we could be waiting here forever. If you choose my truck, I’ll have you home lickety split.”

She paused. “I’m not used to these shoes.”

Which was true, but a good share of the unsteadiness he’d commented on came from the wine on an empty stomach. He was right. It wasn’t safe for her to drive. But was it any safer to crawl into a stranger’s truck? Other than his name, she knew nothing about this guy, and she could hardly call Aiden or Kait for his report card, not if she wanted to keep this night’s folly to herself.

But the thought of waiting in the parking lot while a steady stream of leering men passed by on their way in and out of the tavern…she shuddered.

“Tell you what, to ease your mind about climbing in the rig with me, why don’t you call a friend, give them my name and the truck’s plate number.”

There he went again, reading her mind and the suggestion did have merit—
if
she had someone she could call. Unfortunately, over the last three years she’d lost touch with all her friends except for Kait.

But he didn’t need to know that, did he? All business, she opened her clutch and grabbed her cell phone, picked a number at random, and texted his name along with the plate number of the huge black truck he stopped in front of. She pretended to hit send, before dropping the phone back into her purse.

“You all set?” he asked, holding the passenger door open for her.

She nodded and hoisted herself inside, feeling her barely there skirt slide indecently high up her thighs. Lifting her butt, she tugged it back down before securing her seatbelt. As Brett shut the passenger door and walked around the hood to the driver’s side, she stared at her Volkswagen Beetle. She’d have to collect it in the morning.

“So where we headed?” he asked as they pulled out of the parking lot.

Demi rattled off her address and driving directions, and sat in silence as he navigated out to the freeway. With each rotation of the truck’s wheels, the sense of letdown sank a bit deeper. This wasn’t how she’d pictured the evening ending, or with whom she’d be ending it.

Half an hour later they pulled up in front of her condo building and he cut the engine. Turning to face her, he offered a slow smile. “Well, you livened up my night, I’ll give you that.”

On impulse, she leaned over and pressed her lips against his, then held her breath…hoping.

His mouth was soft and warm against hers, but…nothing.

No tingles, no sparks, no chills.

His arms lifted, slipping around her waist.

Man, she was being so unfair. From the way his arms were contracting and drawing her closer, the kiss had stirred something in him, something she had no intention of appeasing. Unable to face what might be lurking in his eyes, she ripped herself out of his arms, scrambled out of the truck and bolted for the entrance to her condo building.

It wasn’t until she was in the elevator, on her way up to the fifth floor, that she realized she’d forgotten her clutch in his truck.

Chapter Two

His hair still wet from the shower, Aiden Winchester opened his bedroom door and followed the scent of freshly brewed coffee and frying bacon. The condo lay quiet around him as he made his way down the hall. Both his roommates’—Tag’s and Trammel’s—doors were closed, but the smell of food was a clear indication that Trammel at least, their resident cook, was up.

He tracked Trammel to the stove, where he was standing with a spatula at the ready, staring intently at a skillet packed with fluffy, sunny-side-up eggs. As Aiden helped himself to some coffee, he glanced at the paper towel-shrouded platter with its mountainous cargo of bacon.

“You expecting the whole team?” he asked around a jaw-cracking yawn.

Trammel shrugged. Dragging a skillet of hash browns off the back burner, he expertly flipped them. “You get your run in?”

Aiden simply nodded. He’d traded an extra hour of slumber for a long, quiet jog through the streets of San Diego while the city slowly came awake around him. It wasn’t like he’d been getting any sleep anyway—at least, not of the restful variety—not with Demi climbing into his dreams and taunting him with her bare, silken skin.

He glanced at the stove’s clock, urgency buzzing through him. He’d hoped the long, slow jog would curb the edgy tension, but it was getting harder these days to control his hunger. He’d waited a long time to stake his claim—too damn long. The reasons behind the endless wait had been sound, but that hadn’t made the intervening years any less frustrating.

It was time to make a move.

He would have done it last night, if not for the damn bachelor’s party, an invitation impossible to reject, since he was the best man.

He glanced at the clock again and grimaced. At barely six-thirty in the morning, it was too damn early to show up at her door. He needed to kill at least another three hours, which gave him plenty of time for breakfast.

“Tag up?” Aiden asked around another yawn.

“Not yet.” Trammel took a couple steps to the right and opened a cupboard dragging down a stack of mismatched plates. “Looks like he has company.”

“Company?” Aiden’s coffee cup paused on its way to his mouth. “He’s got a woman in there?”

“Looks like it.” Trammel’s lip quirked. “Assuming he hasn’t taken to carrying a purse.” At the lift of Aiden’s eyebrows, he laughed. “There’s a black purse sitting on the mail table,” he said, referring to the waist-high wood table just past the entry where everyone dropped their keys, mail, weapons, or anything else they happened to be carrying when they walked through the door. “Didn’t you notice it?”

Aiden shrugged. While a purse should have stood out in a house full of men, he’d had other things on his mind.

“Well, that’s a first,” Aiden said, around another yawn.

Tag hadn’t even brought Sarah to the condo before the big split, but then he and Trammel hadn’t exactly hidden their disapproval of that relationship either. What the hell had Tag been thinking, anyway? You didn’t poach a teammate’s girl, and Sarah had been
engaged
to Mitch, for fuck’s sake. She’d been off limits.

Still, Tag hadn’t looked at another woman since she’d gone back to Mitch. And last night would have been a tough one if he still had feelings for her. A reminder her wedding was right around the corner. Maybe he’d taken another woman into his bed in the hopes of driving Sarah from his mind.

As Trammel filled two plates with eggs, hash browns and a pile of bacon a rat-tat-tat sounded on the front door.

“Mooch.” Aiden instantly recognized their teammate’s signature calling card. “How the hell does he do it?”

Somehow the damn man always managed to show up when food was about to hit the table. He was particularly clever about showing up after the pizza delivery guy had been paid and sent on his way.

While Trammel let Mooch in, Aiden filled up a third plate with eggs, hash browns and bacon. If they let Mooch fill up his own plate, there wouldn’t be anything left for Tag and his new lady.

“Hey,” Mooch said as he walked into the kitchen. “Either of you get a look at Tag’s new piece of tail?”

Aiden handed Mooch his plate and rummaged in the silverware drawer for a couple of forks. “Not yet. You?”

Mooch shook his shaggy blond head, absently accepting the fork Aiden handed him. “They were gone by the time I hit the BU last night. Been hearing about her all night, though. Squirrel says she’s grade one dyn-o-mite. Dressed to score, with spiky pink hair.”

Spiky pink hair…

A heart-shaped face with a stubborn chin, brown—slightly tilted—eyes, and a prickly mess of spiky pink hair burst into Aiden’s mind. The bright pink hairdo had given him pause the first time he’d caught sight of it, mostly because he’d been dying to dig his fingers into the cloud of soft brown hair that had floated around her shoulders prior to the new hairdo. But not even the neon blast of color and texture riding the top of her head had smothered his craving for her.

It had been three years since her husband’s death. Three endless years. He was done with waiting. It was time to step up and remind Demi that she hadn’t followed her first love into the grave.

He carried his plate into the living room and settled on the couch, resting his feet on the coffee table. As he worked through the food, he strategized the coming siege. Although ST7 was fresh off rotation, that didn’t mean much these days. With the world in a constant state of unrest, and new terrorist cells trying to make a name for themselves every day, his team could be called into action at any moment. He needed to make sure Demi was bound to him permanently by the time he was dragged away again. He needed to make sure she was as obsessed with him as he was with her. It was the only way to make sure she’d still be single and available when he returned from the next rotation.

He’d just scooped up the last bite of egg topped hash browns when he heard the front door open. Since Trammel was sitting in the recliner across from him, Tag must have been outside. Jogging, most likely; the man ran as often as Aiden did, and probably for the same reason. To make sure his body was too damn tired to react to memories of a woman.

Sure enough, when Tag stepped into the room his t-shirt was soaked with sweat. So was the waistband of his sweatpants. The guy had been going at it hard, for a long time, but from the tension carving his face it hadn’t helped a damn bit. Apparently, neither had the gal he’d brought home the night before.

Aiden could sympathize. Almost. Tag should have never gone after Sarah in the first place, not with Mitch in the picture. He’d avoided the hell out of Demi when she’d been married, and her husband hadn’t even been a teammate.

“Bro.” Mooch dropped his polished plate onto the coffee table and leaned back against the couch cushions with his fingers laced behind his head, watching Tag disappear into the kitchen. “You’re supposed to spend that energy on that sweet little thing you picked up last night, not on pounding the pavement all by your lonesome.”

“You heard about that?” Tag asked, reappearing in the kitchen doorway with a piece of bacon in hand.

“You picked her up at the BU. Everyone heard about it,” Mooch said absently. His eyes locked on the table next to the entryway and he rose to his feet. “Well now, what do we have here?”

Aiden had to admit the shiny black rectangle of leather looked odd sitting there next to the sets of keys, boxes of ammo, and the guns.

Tag followed Mooch’s gaze. “She left it in my truck when I dropped her off last night. Guess I’ll pay her a visit later today.”

“Ah, the classic move a woman makes when she wants an excuse for the post-fuck meet up,” Mooch drawled, his voice brittle with cynicism. “Don’t fall for it, bro. Mail the damn thing back to her.” But a few seconds later the cynical tone shifted to admiring. “Hey, this is a sweet piece.”

The reverence in the statement brought Aiden’s head up. There was no way in hell the man was talking about a purse. He grinned on finding a sleek, black beauty of a gun in his teammate’s hand. A shiny, compact, unidentified pistol.

He exchanged intrigued glances with Trammel and they rose to their feet in unison, converging on the table. He recognized the weapon on closer examination, even though he’d only seen it on Smith and Wesson’s and Shooting Illustrated’s websites.

“Hell, you picked up the
Shield?
” he asked, moving in for a closer look. “The .40 caliber?”

At Tag’s nod, he turned back to study the pistol in Mooch’s hands. While the
Shield
had released over a year earlier, they’d been on rotation at the time. But the early reviews had been stellar. It had been heralded as the first compact, single stack, conceal carry weapon that retained the ergonomics and handling capacity of the original Smith and Wesson M&P. He’d been dying to get his hands on one since reading that first review.

“Picked her up yesterday,” Tag said, polishing off the first piece of bacon. “She’s a real sweetheart too. Sent two boxes of ammo through her yesterday, and not one malfunction.”

“How much you pay for her?” Aiden accepted the gun Mooch passed to him. He hefted it, checking the balance. It felt perfect in his hand—fit his grip as though it had been made for him alone. Comfortable as a veteran pair of combat boots.