Fatal Heat: A Navy SEAL Novella (6 page)

He’d played the sex game all his life. He liked women and he liked sex, and though he wasn’t as slick as some, he knew how to say enough sweet honeyed words to get a woman into his bed. Some wanted romantic words, some wanted sexy talk. Some didn’t require much talking at all.

He’d never just come out with it like that. Crude and simple.
I want you
.

He scrabbled for more words, better words, but they just weren’t coming. In his head was heat and the image of them tangled together, skin to skin, so close they could feel each other’s heartbeat. He had a sensory hallucination for a second where he could
feel
what it would be like entering her, parting her lower lips with his cock…

He tightened all the muscles in his stomach and groin because he was a second away from coming.

He opened his mouth and all that came out was air.

Since there weren’t any more words he could say, he simply sat there, trying to control his breathing. Trying to give the impression of a man who was in control, who
had
control, when it was slipping through his fingers.

There’d been a flicker of something in her eyes. God, what?

Her small hand flexed under his. For a terrible moment, he thought she was going to refuse. Slide her hand out from under his and say no.

At the thought, it was if his chest filled with barbed wire. He was a strategic thinker—in the battlefield, under fire, he could always see the next step and the one after that.

Right now? He had no sense of what he’d do if she said no. None. He wanted her so much, it felt unthinkable that they weren’t going straight to bed to start having sex just as quickly as their legs could carry them.

Shit, if she said no, he couldn’t even drop to his knees and beg her. His fucking leg would crumple. He’d fall over flat on his ass.

But the god of wounded warriors smiled on him, after a whole year of fucking with him.

“I know,” she said softly. “I can see that you want me.”

He froze. She could see it? How? He felt as big as a house, but she couldn’t see him below the waist. Obviously his face showed his ballooning need. He hoped whatever she saw didn’t scare her.

He took in another breath in a gasp. Tried to get all the words out before speech was beyond him, because they needed to be said.

“I don’t know what you’ll decide, but if I do get lucky, then I need to give full disclosure. I haven’t had sex in two years. I was deployed in—well, a bad, sandy place for a year, and I spent the year after that in hospitals and rehab clinics trying to put myself together. I don’t have any condoms with me at all. Coming here it never even occurred to me because until about two minutes ago, sex wasn’t part of my life anymore. And now I can’t think of anything else but sex with you. But this no-condom thing has to be taken into account. I do know I don’t have any diseases. None. Bloodsuckers at the hospital drained me of half my blood, taking tests, and I’m clean.”

“Oh!” She gave a faint smile. “I—ahm. Me, too. I had a checkup just a couple of months ago. I haven’t had sex for a year—too busy, really. And… the work I do, it sometimes takes me to test fields and research stations in remote parts of the world. Some in countries that are not, ahm, always completely stable. So my company offers its female researchers birth control. We get monthly shots. I’ve just had mine.”

Max scowled, sex wiped instantly from his mind. “Your company sends you to
dangerous places
?” he breathed, the thought driving him slightly insane for a second.

Max had close-up intimate knowledge of what bad places were like. He knew hellholes the way a suburban dad knows the potholes on his street. The idea of smiling, delicate, pretty Paige in some of the places he’d been horrified him.

“What the
hell
are your bosses thinking, sending you—”

She shut him up by placing her mouth over his, swamping him with heat. Her mouth tasted exactly as he thought it would—sweet and hot. Fresh and exciting.

It was a brief kiss, two mouths meeting, but he broke away gasping as if burned. He looked at her narrow-eyed as she watched him, head cocked to one side as if he were a puzzle.

She was the goddamned puzzle. Max knew kisses, he knew sex, he knew women, and he knew his reaction to women. This was all completely new.

Fuck.

He’d nearly come in his pants with a mere kiss. A kiss that lasted two seconds, tops.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Max was The Man. Cool and in control, in bed and out. Not a man so excited that a touch to the mouth damn near set him off.

Probably it was two years of abstinence. Yeah, that was it. Two long years with only his fist in the Sandbox, and in the hospital nothing at all because his dick was a dead piece of meat between his legs. It had been painful to breathe. Sex just hadn’t been on his radar.

Maybe what he’d just felt was some… some anomaly in the space-time continuum. A one-off.

Try it again.

He touched his mouth to hers and again felt that electric shock.

She’d closed her eyes. They slowly opened when he lifted his mouth. The pupils were a little dilated and she looked dazed. Good, maybe he wasn’t completely alone in this, whatever this was. Because it wasn’t sex. Or at least it wasn’t sex as he knew it.

Again.

She watched him, watched as he moved his face closer to hers, closing her eyes at the last second. This time the kiss was longer, deeper, nerve endings concentrated in his mouth as he tasted her—one long, slow stroke of the tongue, her mouth silky soft and delicious. She tasted of wine and sunshine and woman.

When he lifted his mouth, she made a soft sound. “Max?”

Under the table, a scrabbling of furry limbs and a soft woof. He snapped his fingers and patted the air. “Not you, boy. Me.”

Paige smiled.

“I’m right here,” he whispered, reaching out a hand to cup her neck and bring her back to him. Another kiss, deeper, longer, sweeter, hotter.

When he pulled back she searched his eyes. “Where are we going with this?”

For the first time, he chanced a smile. He no longer felt as if his head were going to explode any second now. The smile felt odd, unused facial muscles working. “To bed,” he whispered. “I hope.”

Hand still cupped around her neck, he bent forward until their foreheads touched. “I think I remember how it’s done. But I have to warn you, I don’t have smooth moves and smooth words.” They’d been blasted right out of him.

Her lips curled up. “Maybe not smooth words, but those are the right words. I don’t like players.”

Nail it down. Get it right.
For all he knew, in the two years he’d been out of the scene, the rules had changed.

“That’s a yes?”

Paige pulled away, angled her head, observed him for a full minute. He let her. If he passed muster, he was just about to become the luckiest guy in the universe.

“Yes.”

Yes!

Chapter Four

T
his was so unlike her, Paige marvelled at herself. She was really picky and fussy when it came to men. How did she end up saying yes to a man she hadn’t even known for twenty-four hours?

Because of all those muscles? Even if he was very lean it was obvious he was a big man. Give him another couple of months and she was sure he’d bulk back up. Muscles were good, though she’d never really thought of herself as a Jersey Shore kind of gal.

She wasn’t. She was cerebral. True, his size was a plus, and that macho air—which she usually disliked—surprisingly worked for her. But macho wasn’t enough. He was an officer, he was a SEAL. Presumably he had smarts, and so far he seemed bright enough, but they’d barely conversed much beyond generalities.

So—not so much the muscles or the macho or the mind.

Nope.

He’d been kind to her dog.

She’d have berated herself for her stupidity if it weren’t for the fact that her entire body was tingling as he brought her hand to his mouth, eyes never leaving hers.

His mouth was warm, but she knew that. When he’d kissed her, the warmth of his mouth had spread all through her. There was a tiny bite of beard around his lips. He’d recently shaved but he looked like he’d had a heavy beard.

He kept her hand in his and rose. She rose with him, and into his arms, the most natural thing in the world. He was very tall. She was so close to him she had to tilt her head back.

He had that grim look again, only maybe it wasn’t grimness. Maybe it was just his default expression—the expression of a hard man who’d seen bad things. And though he didn’t seem like the type of man to tnt alk about it, she imagined his leg was hurting.

“I’d give anything to pick you up and carry you to the bedroom,” he said. A long finger was tracing the contours of her face. Just the merest touch, but it felt exciting and tender at the same time. “It would be romantic and it would get us there faster. A twofer.”

She laughed. “Well, I’ve never been carried anywhere, so I guess I don’t know what I’m missing.”

“And I don’t know where your bedroom is,” he pointed out. “So I couldn’t carry you there anyway.”

One hand was still in his, the other had gone around his back. She didn’t have any spare hands so she indicated with her chin toward the back of the house. “Second room to the right. The first is my study.”

He kissed the tip of her nose, kept his face close to hers. “Well then, Paige Waring. Why don’t you lead us to it?” His wine-scented breath washed over her.

So. She was going to do this. Amazing. She watched his face for another long moment. Not making up her mind, because it wasn’t her mind that was involved here. Just checking her body that this was what it wanted.

Oh, yeah.

His face was so interesting. Hard planes, weather-beaten skin that made him look older than he probably was; dark, observant eyes; hard-looking mouth that had been surprisingly soft when kissing her.

And there was… something. What? What made this man out of all the men she’d ever met the one man she’d go to bed with after the shortest acquaintance in her social history?

Whatever it was, it was potent, because now that the decision had been made—and her body, having been duly consulted, enthusiastically shouted
Yes!—
she couldn’t wait.

“Come with me then, soldier.”

He smiled. “That would be sailor, but you bet I’m coming with you.”

He limped. If Paige hadn’t had her arm around his waist she wouldn’t have noticed, but there was a slight hesitation every time he put his weight on his left leg.

Max trotted right behind them, tongue lolling out of his mouth, wondering if this was a new game.

“We’re being followed,” she whispered.

He glanced down at her. “I noticed. I think the kid needs to stay outside, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t want him to lose his innocence. He’s only eight months old.”

“Yeah, too young for this.”

They reached her room and he gently closed the door in Max’s muzzle. There was a puzzled bark from the other side of the door. “Sorry, big guy,” Max called out. “Wait till you’re old enough to have a beer. Now.” He put his hands on her hips and looked her up and down. “Oh God,” he whispered. “I don’t know where to start.”

She smiled. “From the top.”

The setting sun outside the window shone directly into the room, bathing it with a golden light. Everything in her room seemed to glow, as if enchanted. She had a small collection of silver vases which gleamed on her dresser. There was utter silence, broken only by the silver surf splashing on the beach. A moment out of time, magical.

He seemed to understand the magic of the moment too, holding her eyes as he slowly undid the buttons of her dress until it hung open. It was too hot for a bra so she stood before him in panties and an open dress.

He closed his eyes briefly then opened them, gaze dark and hot. “Did you wear those panties just to drive me crazy?”

She looked down. Pale pink silk and lace. They were pretty and they were expensive, too. She had to wear an anonymous lab coat at work and it always gave her a thrill to know she had on sexy, uber-feminine undergarments. She met his eyes. “There’s a matching bra, too. I can put it on if you like. So you can it take back off.”

He sighed. “Tempting as that sounds, I’ll pass.” He placed his big hands on her shoulders, leaving them there for a moment. A cool breeze fluttered her curtains, filling the room with the scent of sunshine and ocean. His hands were warm and heavy, the skin of his palms slightly abrasive as he smoothed them over her shoulders, shucking off the dress.

It was pointless trying to cover herself with her hands, so she stood straight under his scrutiny. That warm,ton. That dark gaze felt like hands caressing her as he looked her up and down, finally meeting her eyes again.