A Veteran’s Temptation (Wild Heart Veterans #3)

Jace

“I’m not doing fucking yoga.” My voice rings out across the training gym, and a dude on the leg press glances over at us.

Savanna, the physio, huffs out a breath, and I’m sorry I’m irritating her, but this treatment plan sucks.

“You need yoga.” She puts her hands on her hips and glares at me.

Savanna’s not the first medical professional to glare at me. I have a habit of annoying people, particularly during the past year of my long recovery.

“What I need are dead lifts. I can get better without flopping around in a scented room with some asshole’s foot in my face.”

I’m an Army Ranger, for fuck’s sake. I don’t need some woo-woo deep breathing and navel-gazing to get my body combat-ready. What I need is to get released from this place and go back into the field.

“It’s not like that.”

Savanna is nothing if not persistent. She’s had to put up with my complaining ass for the last six weeks since I arrived at Jake’s Retreat, and she’s not going to back down now.

“You can dead lift a hundred pounds, but you can’t touch your toes. Your body needs to stretch.”

My leg got twisted up on a mission gone bad in a Middle Eastern country I can’t admit to being in.

My official record says I was on a training exercise in Germany, and that’s the story I’ve been told to peddle.

It doesn’t matter where I was; the result is the same.

A bomb went off; I was thrown in the air and crushed by a wall, and suffered torn ligaments, a fractured hip, and a massive dent to my ego.

That was twelve months ago. I’ve had the surgery; I’ve done the work to walk again.

What I need now is to get fit and combat-ready.

I was such a pain in the ass in the field hospital that they sent me here, thinking the mountains of North Carolina would aid my recovery. And now they want me to do yoga like some domesticated metro-male. I’ll be growing a perfect beard and sipping craft beer next. Fuck that.

“I’m healed. I can walk on my leg. What do I need to do to get back to Ranger standards?”

Savanna looks away and shakes her head.

“What do you need to do to live without pain is the question you need to ask yourself, Jace, and yoga is a part of that.”

She huffs out a long sigh and picks up her tablet, turning the conversation to the safer ground of my exercise program this week.

I don’t mean to take it out on Savanna. She’s a good physio, and I’m the patient from hell.

We both know I’m not combat-ready. I can walk and I can run, but when I did a four-mile run on the treadmill last week, I came in at thirty-one minutes.

That time wouldn’t even get me past the qualifiers.

And it hurt like hell afterward. It didn’t help that I twisted my ankle helping Dean get his boy back a few weeks ago.

Damn, that felt good though. Working with a team, making a plan, getting shit done. That’s what I’ve been trained for all my life. That’s what I’m good at. What I’m not good at is sitting around in bed with nothing to do but stare at a mountain all day, even if it is fucking beautiful.

There’s a grunt from the other side of the gym and the clanking of a barbell hitting the mat as a singlet-clad muscled man comes out of a hundred and fifty pound deadlift.

If he’s here, then he must be recovering from something, but I don’t see his physio breathing down his neck about putting restrictions on his gym activity.

Watching the guy load up more weights makes me impatient.

Without the Rangers, I don’t even know who the fuck I am anymore.

“Let’s leave it here for today.” Savanna doesn’t mention the yoga again, and for that I’m thankful.

“Do your exercises, and I’ll see you same time next week.”

My hip is stiff as I leave the gym, but I hold myself upright and don’t let her see any sign of a limp. If I want her and the doc to sign me off, then I can’t show how much my injury still aches.

But I’ve been hurt before. It will all come out right.

The gym is in the main building of Jake’s Retreat, with the treatment rooms down the hall and Joel’s office to the right.

I’m wondering if I should stop in and see him and ask if there’s any work he needs doing around the place. I’ve been doing some basic maintenance while I’m here, anything to pass the time.

As I step into the corridor, I almost bump into a woman coming from the direction of reception.

She’s holding a bunch of rolled-up mats that block her vision, and I try to dodge out of the way, but I’m too slow, and she walks right into me.

The mats go flying and she stumbles, and my instincts kick in.

My arm shoots out and I catch her around the waist, but I’m unsteady on my leg and we both crash into the wall.

Her soft body rolls onto mine, and my arm tightens around her waist, keeping her upright and pressed against me.

Her eyes widen and her mouth pops open, and a scent I can’t name fills my senses.

It’s the pretty woman who turned up at the last bonfire night: Kayla.

I was high on painkillers, but I remember her name and I remember her curvy ass and the sound of her laugh in the firelight. It’s about all I’ve been thinking about lying in my bed at night.

Now that ass is inches from my hands, and her body is pressed against mine, and her scent, something sweet and spicy, is making my head spin.

My dick stirs to life, which is good news. I’ve barely heard from my cock since the accident, and I was beginning to wonder if something was damaged down there. I can confirm it is not.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

She doesn’t move out of my arms, and I don’t release her. Instead, we stare at each other as we lean against the hallway wall. I register the moment she feels my cock harden, because her eyes go even wider and her mouth forms a perfect O.

“Is that…?” She wiggles in my arms, and I release her.

She steps backward and out of my grasp. Her gaze flicks to my gray sweatpants, which do nothing to hide the hard-on that’s sticking out of them.

“Sorry about that.” I adjust my pants, but there is no hiding the effect of her body against mine. “It’s been a while since a beautiful woman pushed me up against a wall.”

“I did not push you against a wall.” Her cheeks flare with indignation. “I fell.”

“Call it what you will, sweetheart.” I hold my hands in the air. “But I like to be taken on a date first before any woman gets close to this.”

Her eyes bug in her head. “I was not trying to get close to…” She waves her hand in the direction of my crotch but misjudges it, and the back of her palm brushes against the fabric at the end of my cock, sending shock waves through my body and waking me up to what I’ve been missing.

“Oh, my God.” She covers her mouth with her hands, generally horrified. “I did not mean to…”

“Touch my cock?” I finish for her.

She sinks her head into her hands, and I can’t help but laugh. “It’s alright, sweetheart. Let’s have that date, and then I’ll decide if I let you do it again.”

She peers at me through her fingers, and her expression is a mix of horror, embarrassment, and irritation, which are generally the emotions I inspire in people.

“I do not want to touch your cock again.”

At that moment, Joel comes out of his office just in time to hear Kayla. He stops in his tracks, and his eyebrows shoot up his forehead. Kayla gives a squeak and buries her head in her hands again.

“Morning Joel.” I grin at him.

Ignoring the ache in my leg, I gather up the dropped mats from the floor. Joel narrows his eyes at me. He looks at Kayla, and she’s bright red.

“Is this guy harassing you?” There’s an edge to his voice, and while Joel has at least a decade on me, I wouldn’t want to fuck with the ex-SEAL Commander.

Kayla shakes her head. “We bumped into each other, and there was a misunderstanding.”

Joel looks between the both of us, and my grin widens. “If anything, she was harassing me.”

“I was not,” she protests as her cheeks flame red, which accents the green in her eyes.

I hand her one of the mats, and our hands brush. There’s a flash of heat between us that makes her eyes widen. She felt it too. This attraction isn’t one-way.

We stare at each other a beat too long until Joel coughs, and this time there’s a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

“Good luck,” he mutters, leaving us in the corridor.

I wonder what the hell he’s talking about, but I’m too distracted by the hair that’s come out of Kayla’s topknot to think too much about it.

It wafts around her face and falls in front of her eyes.

When I catch it between my fingers, it’s silky smooth.

I tuck it behind her ear, and for the first time I don’t want to be a cocky asshole.

I want to be someone she wants to talk to, not someone she gets irritated with.

I want to get to know her and find out if those blushes are just for me.

“Let me help you carry these.” My tone is soft, no cockiness creeping in. “Where are we headed?”

She eyes me warily as I take the mats off her.

“To the yoga studio.”

It triggers a memory from bonfire night when I met her.

I was jacked up on painkillers and the doc had prescribed bed rest due to the recently sprained ankle, but I hobbled out of bed anyway and slipped from my room, like a teenager sneaking out to a frat party.

Aside from having a perfectly round ass and silky smooth hair, Kayla is a vegan and teaches yoga.

“You’re the new yoga instructor.”

Which should have been obvious considering she’s carrying a bunch of yoga mats, but the proximity of her has vastly lowered my ability to notice anything else, apart from the details of her.

She has a dusting of freckles on her nose, smells like a spice I can’t name, and her waist is the perfect size for my arm to fit snugly around it.

Suddenly I want to do that yoga class very much. Sign me the fuck up.

“I’m taking your class. It’s part of my rehabilitation program.”

“Great.” I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or if she means it. “But it won’t rehabilitate you from being an asshole.”

Sarcastic then. A grin spreads across my face. Kayla has a bite to her; this is going to be fun.