Chapter Fourteen
Juniper
“W hat’s your name?”
It didn’t escape my notice that this whole time, he hadn’t offered his. “I’m not really into that.” But holy shit, I was into him. Every rock-hard, lethally muscled, inked, and dangerous inch of him. Then there was his stare. Unforgiving, piercing, and ice-cold blue.
He wasn’t beautiful.
He was rough, assaulting, and so aggressively rugged, he was mouthwateringly handsome.
“You’re not into names.”
He pretty much stated it rather than asked, but I answered anyway. “It’s more like what comes with it when you know someone’s name.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” He scanned the street for the umpteenth time like a predator.
“Problems.” Ones I refused to think about because just the mere presence of this man was messing with my head more than any other completely screwed-up thing that’d happened today. I didn’t even know how to process that.
I didn’t date. Or get involved with anyone. Reena had been the exception, and now I was feeling weak about that as I sat here next to this career soldier—if his uniform in the back seat was anything to go by. But it was more than that.
He was calm. Like super unnaturally composed because he’d seen so much shit in his life, nothing fazed him calm .
It was an addiction in human form.
Or everything I’d ever wanted to be around but never was. And now I was sitting next to all of this unmanageable temptation wrapped in impossible muscles on a day I was too vulnerable to see straight, let alone trust myself.
Because I wanted to have sex with this warrior of a man.
Oh my God , did I want to. Over and over.
Except I had a hard rule. Don’t get involved with men. Ever.
But I did have sex.
Crazy, dirty, insane, dangerous, put-my-life-at-risk sex.
The scarier the guy, the better.
I needed it that way.
Rough, dominant, and out of control. That was when I could just… let go.
It was also when I hated myself the most.
Before I could fall down my hole of self-loathing about just how messed up my head was, or worse, reason it away, a dark SUV turned onto the street and slowed to a crawl.
As if it were ingrained in his DNA and automatic beyond conscious thought, he immediately drew from a holster at the small of his back. Resting his 9mm on his muscular thigh, his finger on the trigger guard, he didn’t take his eyes off the SUV.
My core pulsed, my mouth watered, and I stared at the gun as I tried in vain to push down the devil inside me.
Like he had a sixth sense, his gaze barely flicked in my direction before he continued to watch the SUV as if it were a mortal threat. “Problem?”
Besides my body and mind betraying me, the taste of cold steel ghosting across my tongue, and Reena not telling me her neighborhood was gang central? Yeah. I needed a shower. And to get away from temptation. But I didn’t say that. I said what I thought I was supposed to, what a normal person would say. “Do you always carry a gun?” And what was that emblem on the barrel?
“Don’t worry about it.” His low-pitched tone that was all dominance drifted through the darkening interior like smoke. “I’m trained.”
That’s exactly what I was worrying about. And his voice. Because every time he spoke, it sent a heated shiver across my sensitized nerves.
Inhaling the scent of him that was more gunpowder, musk, and man than woodsy deodorant and laundry soap, I prayed for sarcasm to paint my voice any other color than fucked up. “Yeah, I bet.” I glanced behind his seat at the hanging uniform. “With all that fruit salad, I’m sure you are.”
His gaze immediately landed on mine. “You military?”
“Nope.”
“Military brat?”
Realizing my mistake, I tried to play it off. “I’ll own the brat part. Do you usually drive around Miami in a rental with your dress blues in the back seat?” There was no way this was his car. It had that rental smell to it.
“I didn’t say it was a rental. Do you usually avoid telling the truth?”
“I haven’t lied.” Yet.
Ignoring my comment, he scanned the street again. “Cops are wrapping it up. Wasn’t safe to be walking in a neighborhood with drive-bys.” He looked at me with his piercing cool blue eyes. “You do that often?”
I made the most unattractive snort of all snorts. “When you drink all day, it’s safer than driving. And I’m not telling you what I do or don’t do often.” I would. In a heartbeat—if he asked the right questions.
“The bar in Liberty City is three klicks out.”
Still tripping out that he had seen me and Reena, still not sure if he was a serial killer, stalker, rando, or had a hero complex, I tried and failed to do the math conversion from klicks to miles. “Trust me, in this heat, it felt like five miles walking back. I’m still hot.”
He turned the engine over and blasted the AC. “You didn’t say. You live around here?”
Not missing his smooth transition into seemingly innocent questions or how he turned on the air conditioning the second I said I was hot, I stole his line. “Something like that.” I looked up and down the street. No more gang-looking cars, the new SUV was gone, and the cops were finally leaving. “Well, thanks for the…” Fantasy? Save from stray bullets? Not staring at my tits the whole time? “Air conditioning and curb jumping.”
He shoved his gun back into its holster, pulled the hem of his T-shirt over it to conceal it, then reached for the gear shift. “I’ll take you home.”
“Ah, yeah, no.” I opened my door. “I’m good, Sergeant.”
“Not a sergeant.”
I shrugged like I wasn’t embarrassed because I knew exactly how disrespectful it was to get a rank wrong. “I saw the three gold chevrons and took a stab.” I got one leg out of the massive vehicle.
“You’re Army.”
“I’m not anything.”
“Married?”
I laughed nervously, but a tide of tingles washed across my back, then went straight to my head. I stupidly glanced back at him. “Why? Are you hitting on me?”
He stared.
“Okay, then.” Extra embarrassed now, I dangled my other foot out and was about to drop to the ground when a huge hand caught my upper arm.
“ Christ ,” he muttered under his breath. “Wait.”
A full-body flush of the most perfect, perfect cocktail of fear and desire rushed over me so bad that vertigo made me sway, but I managed to catch my voice. “So I can be sworn at some more? No thanks.”
“Wasn’t cursing at you. You’re short as hell, barefoot, and smell like you threw back half the bar’s stock. Before you jump down and crack your head on the pavement, wait. I’m coming around to get you.” He let go of my arm, cut the engine, and opened his door before I caught up.
I glanced at my worn flip-flops in the footwell that I’d forgotten I’d slid out of while we were waiting. “I know how to get out of a car.”
“Good for you.” He slammed his door shut.
I looked down at the pavement, and no lie, it swam.
Then giant boots appeared in my line of vision and more good-smelling musk hit me in the face.
I looked up.
He was huge. Like muscles on muscles, and about double my height. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but not by much. Still, he may as well have been a giant compared to my five-foot self, and he was just… trouble.
Serious trouble .
I smiled. “Hi.”
Without so much as a twitch of acknowledgment in his locked expression, he grabbed my waist, and it happened. A full assault attack of consuming addiction shot through my body and exploded in crippling awareness.
Then he lifted me out of the SUV, set me down like it was nothing, and I was just gone.
Stand in place, forget my names, lose all sense of reality, stare at him gone .
This was bad.
Really, really bad.
I’d never had this happen, not even close, and not like this. And especially not before he’d done even one debasing sexual act to me. But that’s what it felt like. Like he’d already done his worst and left me in a wounded puddle of humiliation and regret as I drew in those few precious breaths of pure nothingness.
It was terrifying.
He was terrifying.
I’d never encountered a man with this caliber of raw dominance that just… emanated off him without him even having to say a word.
I didn’t know how to handle it. I wasn’t even sure how to process the onslaught of fiery nerves and racing tingles radiating from my waist.
And then he reached past me.
His wintery scent sank into my lungs. He became larger than life. His bicep rippled with hard muscles and ink, and every defined vein became a braille map I wanted to read.
Without my consent, my control that was hanging by a thread and all the thoughts I’d managed to keep inside when we were in the SUV went to shit.
I vomited an unfiltered reaction to his closeness. “ Whoa .” The sheer size of his arms. “I mean, what are you doing?”
Pulling back, he held up my shoes. Then he dropped them to the ground in front of me.
Oh. “Thanks.” I looked up.
And up.
Holy shit .
“You’re tall.” Like at least six-four, tall.
“You’re short. Which way?”
I suddenly understood how Reena could marry a stranger.
Oh my God, Reena .
“I, um….” Shit, shit, shit . “I’m good. I got it from here.” I couldn’t walk to my Jeep in front of him. I wasn’t even sure I should drive right now. And I definitely couldn’t let myself into Reena’s in front of him. I never let anyone know where I lived. Ever. Not that I lived at her house, but I needed a shower, and the motel’s bathroom was gross on a good day, and I didn’t want to go back there yet.
“Walk or ride,” he stated. “Your pick.”
Suddenly, I knew I couldn’t do this. The thoughts I’d been pretending I wasn’t having, my reaction to him, the way I needed to live my life. This was no longer about a sexual fantasy or an itch I needed to scratch every so often when I got so desperately lonely that the world felt like it was dissipating under my feet. I couldn’t have sex with this man and walk away unscathed. Not that every sexual partner I’d ever had wasn’t a fuck-with-your-head kind of experience, but this man?
He would be different.
So different, he would make me fall faster into that dissipating nothingness, and I had to stop this now. “Ever hear of stranger danger?”
He stared down at me for two wild beats of my heart. “You’ve seen my fruit salad. Not strangers.”
“Wait.” Oh God , like he could hear my thoughts, he played right into my weakness. “Did you just make a joke? Do you make jokes?” Monsters didn’t make jokes about themselves.
He scanned the street in both directions. “Not safe standing out here.”
His shirt stretched across his solid chest, and my resolve wavered. I wondered what kind of ink he was hiding underneath his clothes. “I do it all the time.”
“Which house?”
Oh, he was good. “You’re quick on the draw.”
“I better be.”
“Right.” I may have slightly slurred the word as I drew it out. Was he making me drunk again? “Mr. I’m-not-a-Sergeant Sergeant.”
Using that ice-blue stare on me again, he kept his expression locked up tight. Then he spoke, and it was like he was chewing gravel. “Chief Special Warfare Operator.” The rank growled from him like he both resented it and hated saying it.
But that wasn’t the alarming part.
“Special Warfare Operator?” Oh. My. God . Was he…? “Are you…?” All those medals on his uniform.
“Chief Petty Officer,” he immediately amended. “Similar to a Chief Warrant Officer in the Army.”
“I didn’t say I was Army.” But I knew what a Special Warfare Operator was, and he couldn’t take back what he’d just given away.
“You didn’t have to. Which way?” he demanded.
Dear God, he was a SEAL. “I’m not telling you where I live.” A Navy SEAL .
“Then get back in the car.”
Desire surged as all the indignation of a waning alcoholic buzz came to my defense, but I still had to force the words out because now all I was thinking about was SEAL sex. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
Dominant, rough, legendary SEAL sex. I wouldn’t even care if he broke me. Actually, now I wanted him to. Then I could feed my depravity and live for years off the remains of what he’d leave behind.
Oh my God , I wanted this.
But I saw his locked expression. I’d watched him in the SUV. He wasn’t looking at me how I was at him, and I couldn’t blame him. I needed a shower, a toothbrush, and probably half the weight of my ass gone for him to even notice me like that. “I don’t think you heard me. You can leave now.” Hopefully before I did something really, really stupid. Like throw myself at him.
“You’re not staying here.”
Oh God , that dominance. “Maybe I live here.”
“Which house, woman?”
Woman .
One word, spoken as a demand, and that was it.
Without an ounce of self-preservation, I stepped around a lethal wall of muscle and headed toward Reena’s.