Framed (10 page)

“He was watching me.”

***

Jared White listened while Ian Drum bitched like a little girl. He was droning on and on about how invincible the SEAL was. White passed the time as Drum detailed the two missed opportunities by envisioning Drum chopped into small pieces, then fed to the sharks just like Raff their former, and very dead, colleague.

“Failure is not an option if you want to stay out of jail,” White advised on a growl.

“Yeah, I get that, asshole. He’s been lucky so far, but we’ll get him.”

“When does he get out of the infirmary?”

“Today we think. The wounds were superficial, it was his head that took the brunt of the attack and that’s why they kept him overnight for observation.”

“He’ll be on guard now; you’ll have to find a different avenue. Got any arsenic?”

“Sorry, don’t carry it in my hip pocket,” Drum replied sarcastically.

White opened his mouth to answer, but he stopped when the hottest piece of ass he’d seen in a while climbed out of a Jeep. White took in the curve of her ass, the size of her breasts, and became instantly hard.

“Are you listening to me?” Drum asked then turned his head to see what had caught White’s attention. “That’s the dog trainer.”

“Interesting. I’d like to train her to suck my cock.”

“You and every man here,” Drum answered.

“She comes here to train dogs?” White asked, his attention still on the length of her legs and how they’d look wrapped around his face.

“Three days a week. I get a hard-on every time she’s here.”

“Good to know. Maybe I’ll run into her sometime and she can become better acquainted with my cock.”

Drum rolled his eyes. “What about the SEAL?” He had five minutes before his shift started and he didn’t have time to stare at the dog trainer’s ass.

“Tell Fat Bastard to make him dead or I’ll make
him
dead. Simple as that,” White answered, then peeled out of Drum’s car and headed for his van.

***

Sweat poured down Kade’s back as he looked through binoculars. He was trying to find an unknown sniper on a gray jagged cliff when movement caught his eye. Fifty yards to the right of his position, strolling along a stretch of white sandy beach that shouldn’t be in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, he saw Harley walking a butterscotch colored dog with a rhinestone-studded lead. His heart began to race when he realized she was out in the open, a perfect target for the sniper. Adrenaline pumped through his veins and his breathing increased as he stood and called out her name. When she didn’t respond to his alert, he took off down the ridge, dodging bullets the whole way to the bottom. As soon as his feet hit the white sand, the world around him turned from sandy beige and dull to bright light as the Florida sun beat down on him. As he kept moving towards her, his fatigues melted away into swim trunks and his boots became bare feet. He looked down at his hands as he moved closer and he was no longer carrying his MK20 but two bottles of ice-cold beer. The sniper long forgotten for the tanned beauty in front of him, Kade moved in behind Harley as she stood gazing at the ocean. Large vessels dotted the horizon as small sailboats dashed across the surface of the water two hundred yards offshore. Wrapping his arms around her middle, he pulled her back into his chest and rested his chin on the top of her head.

“It’s just a dream you know,” Harley told him as she leaned her head back against his shoulder.

“I know.”

“Will you wake up soon?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“It seems like we’ve been heading towards this moment since high school,” she whispered.

“You know what they say . . . ‘Good things come to those who wait.’”

“Will you do something for me before you wake up?” Turning in his embrace, she looked up at him with chocolate-colored eyes that felt like home.

“Anything.”

“Will you kiss me before reality tears us apart?”

Cupping her face with his hand, Kade stared back at her and memorized the color of her eyes, the freckles on her nose, and the fullness of her lips before he leaned in and brushed his lips gently across her mouth.

“That was sweet,” she breathed out in her husky voice, “but I’ve been dreaming about something a little more . . . rewarding.” Kade had always followed orders as a soldier and he damn sure wasn’t going to stop now.

Dropping his beer, he grabbed both sides of her face and claimed her lips. His tongue breached the warm, sweet recesses of her mouth as she wrapped her arms around his neck, rubbing her breasts against his chest. Growling deep in his throat, he began to lower her to the sand, determined to taste more than just her lips.

“Kade?”
he heard
Harley call out as he devoured her mouth. Freeing a hand to cup her breast, impatient to have her beneath him, he paused as she called out to him again.

“Kade? Are you asleep?”

The tranquil tone of her voice slowly broke through his dream and Kade opened his eyes. Not quite in the land of the living, with visions of Harley in his arms, Kade didn’t hesitate when the scent of vanilla overpowered his senses. He reached up, grabbed hold of her neck, and dragged her onto the bed with him. He pinned her body with his as she gasped and then covered her mouth and began his dreamlike seduction all over again.

“Been dreaming of doing this since I laid eyes on you at seventeen,” he mumbled as he attacked her mouth.

Encased within the curtains surrounding his bed, Kade grabbed her shirt and pulled it from her shorts as Harley tried to catch her breath.

“Kade, stop, we can’t—”

“I left you alone ‘cause I was too messed up and wild for someone like you,” Kade continued, still caught between dream and reality. “But you stayed with me all these years. Christ, you were the sweetest and purest thing I’d ever seen,” he whispered as he filled his hand with a breast so soft it made him want to worship at the altar of her body.

“Kade,” Harley gasped when he ran the palm of his hand over her hardened nipple. “You have to stop, the doctor is talking to Hinkle, but they’ll be here any minute. You have to—Oh, God . . . .”

“I knew you immediately that day at your dad’s garage. I’d been dreaming about you long enough. I’d know you anywhere, Harley,” he whispered, punctuating his confession with tender kisses up her neck.

Pulling back, he looked down at her swollen lips and grinned, feeling arrogant that he’d put that look on her face. He was about to lean down to kiss her again, determined to wipe away any memory she had of other men, when he remembered he wasn’t the only man he knew who had kissed them recently. “Finally tasting your sweet lips reminded me of something . . . I don’t want you alone with D,” he ordered as the reality of his situation came crashing back in. The drug-induced dream was gone, replaced with total awareness and an overwhelming possessiveness. He was stuck in prison while she was free to see whomever she wanted.

“What?” she gasped.

Moving his lips back to her mouth, unable to keep from kissing her, he mumbled, “Wait for me, baby,” before he captured her mouth in another kiss, knowing he had to release her soon before they were caught.

Having her beneath him as he’d envisioned over the years, he couldn’t help himself. As he swept his tongue back into her sweet mouth, he ground himself between her open legs and his cock grew harder. Moving to her ear, he nipped it, then ran his nose down her neck, his tongue snaking out to taste her skin so he’d have that memory to get through the long prison nights. His hand stayed buried beneath her shirt, his thumb flicking her nipple of its own accord as he moved back and plundered her sweet mouth one last time. “Wait for me, gorgeous,” he mumbled again against her quivering lips. She was shaking from top to toe, her breathing erratic as she lost herself in his passion.

They finally heard footsteps and Hinkle’s voice calling out to her, so they disentangled quickly from one and other. The curtain that surrounded his bed had hid their passion from prying eyes, but he knew she only had a moment to keep from being caught in his arms.

It burned in his gut that he was scrambling around like some kid afraid of being caught. That his life wasn’t his own, that he’d have to let her leave when he finally had her where he’d wanted her since high school. What he wanted was to strip her clothes off and sink into her warm depths as they cemented their relationship. Instead, he was forced to lie there and watch as she tried to pull herself together so she wasn’t fired from her job. He felt less than a man and wanted to ram his fist into something hard to vent his frustration.

“Did you get what you needed from Kingston?” Hinkle asked as he pulled back the curtain that surrounded his bed. Hinkle paused at the entrance and looked between the two of them as Harley tried to fix her hair.

Busted.

She was standing with her back to Kade so he couldn’t see her face. But when Hinkle scanned her hair and her clothes, taking in the half tucked in shirt, and hair that had fallen from its holder when he’d run his hand through it, he could see a blush run up her neck.

“I, um, he was asleep when I came in and well—”

“She’s protecting me,” Kade interrupted immediately when Hinkle narrowed his eyes. “I was asleep and she startled me awake. I was dreaming about Afghanistan and a night we’d been attacked. I reacted as if she was an unknown and I wrestled her to the bed before I realized who she was.”

Harley turned when he began to explain and he saw her rigid body relax as relief and gratitude washed across her face.

“Are you okay?” Hinkle asked Harley.

Turning back to the man, she nodded. “Yeah, fine. He didn’t hurt me, I was just taken off guard, that’s all.”

Seemingly convinced, Hinkle nodded before stepping aside so Harley could move past him to leave. She turned back and looked at him briefly before leaving. Her eyes were still shadowed with lust and she had a soft, sweet smile on her lips, one that reminded him of the first time he’d seen her. His mouth pulled into a cocky grin and he winked before she followed Hinkle down the hall.

As he listened to her footsteps retreat, Kade curled his hands into fists to keep from shouting in frustration. Rolling to his side, the faint scent of vanilla hung in the air so he took a deep breath. The sweet scent calmed and tantalized him at the same time, calling to him in a primitive way. He replayed their brief encounter in his mind, trying to memorize each sound she’d made as he kissed her. It was their first kiss and as long as he lived, he would never forget it or the sweetness of her lips, the husky moans in the back of her throat, or the softness of her skin.

Wondering why she’d come to visit, he smiled when he realized that he’d kissed her so thoroughly that she left without telling him. Then he remembered he’d kissed her so thoroughly that she hadn’t promised to keep away from D and he frowned.

While Kade envisioned wringing D’s neck, he was unaware of eyes watching him from across the room; eyes hidden behind a curtain in another cubical as they both waited for the doctor to release them. They’d been watching Kade for the past ten minutes. Those eyes belonged to Steven Hightower who was doing a nickel for breaking and entering and they wondered if this turn of events was worth anything to Fat Bastard.

Battered and bruised from his own attack from the Godfather’s crew, he’d sell his own mother down the river if it meant the beatings he’d taken would stop. He was a meth head, not a criminal. He’d only stolen to feed his habit. He needed drug rehab, not being locked up with hardened criminals like Kingston. And considering the SEAL was a killer, what did he care if the pretty dog lady was used against him. Just as long as his time spent in prison was free from daily pain, he could live with that.

The doctor finally made his rounds, releasing both Hightower and Kingston back to the general population. He followed the big SEAL, trying to stay invisible as they made their way back to their block. He watched Kingston head towards old Cooter’s cell to collect the dog he was training. The instant the dog saw him it ran towards him whining and licking his face, ecstatic to be reunited with the man.

“Animals got no taste in humans,” he mumbled as he approached Fat Bastard.

“What are you mumbling about?” Fat Bastard called out as he held court in the center of the recreation area.

“Nothin’. I, ah, got some information that might be useful to you. I was wondering if we could come to some sort of an arrangement . . .?”

***

I’d been useless in the training session with the other inmates after my encounter with Kade. So much so, I’d had to ask Michelle Reed to take over the class. I begged off, saying I was under the weather, and then sat off to the side pretending to watch as my mind played back over what had happened in the infirmary. Then I called my dad and begged off work, too, until I could get my head straight. Knowing Kade wanted me was one thing, but actually feeling his lips on mine had sent me into a tailspin. It was like wishing for a puppy and then finally holding it in your arms. The reality was a hundred times greater than the fantasy and I realized immediately if not for my own inaction, I could have been experiencing that kind of passion in my life for years. Which, of course, meant if I had, Kade wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. It was all my fault.

God, if I’d only gone outside the minute I saw him pull up on his bike, things would be different. I could have spoken with him and found out he was deploying. He would have asked me out, said something like, “I gotta leave on a two-year mission, but when I get back, I wanna take you to dinner.”

If he had, I would have waited. I never would have dated, let alone married Michael. I’d have written him letters and kept in touch while he was gone. If I had just walked outside and talked to him, he and I would be married by now . . . If we were, he wouldn’t have gone to Fire that night because he would have been home with me having crazy welcome home sex after his mission. “God, this really sucks!” I shouted as I pulled in front of my father’s house after a day of brow beating myself. “It’s all my fault!”