Special Forces: Operation Alpha: December Chill (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Sealed With A Kiss Series Book 4)

by Margaret Madigan

  “Tell me about the job.”

  Dante filled him in on the history, Shonda’s threats, Dante’s suspicions, and the parameters of protecting everyone.

  “It’s nothing glamorous,” Dante said. “But I can’t watch out for three women in two different locations and still do any investigation.”

  Traffic was finally moving smoothly, but when Dante glanced over at Suede, he found him looking back with a big grin on his face.

  “What?” Dante asked.

  “You got a girlfriend?”

  “That’s your takeaway?”

  Suede put his hands up in mock defense. “Hey, man, I can do the protection detail, no sweat. But it isn’t every day Chill announces he’s got a girlfriend. Your nickname ain’t just because you’re cool under pressure.”

  Dante’s brows scrunched together in confusion. “It’s not?”

  “Hell no. You’re always a cool customer. You hold yourself close. Takes a long time to get to know you, and even still, you’re quiet and guarded. Face it, you’re no in-your-face Beast or Big Bad.”

  “True.”

  “And where the ladies are concerned, you don’t stay with one for very long. When it starts getting serious, you put her in the rear view.”

  Dante had never really thought about it that way. Sure, he liked women and had spent time with his share of them. But none had really meant anything to him. He always made sure going in they knew he wasn’t looking for anything serious, and they were always fine with it. It made things a lot easier.

  But December was different. He wanted to know her, spend time with her, hear her laugh, make her smile. He actually wanted to be with her. He acknowledged the weirdness of it, but some philosophical part of him just shrugged and said you just needed to find ‘the one.’

  “I guess things change.”

  “Well, I’m happy for you, man. When Beast got married, I thought the apocalypse had come because who the fuck would marry him? So I guess if he can find a mate, there’s hope for the rest of us, you know?”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Speaking of which, I know it’s your first day here, but I have a date tonight with December.”

  “Wait, your girl’s name is December? Like, the month? Who does that to a kid?”

  “I think it’s kinda cool. And it fits her. She’s a cake designer and a roller derby queen, so she’s just begging for an unusual name.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her.”

  “She invited me to a derby match tonight, so I’m going to have to leave you alone with my grandmother and Tamera.”

  Suede waved him off. “If I can’t handle a couple of black ladies, I’m in deep shit. They’ll love me by the end of the evening.”

  Dante snorted. “I’m sure they will.”

  Chapter Eight

  It took far less time than that. Both Grammy and Tamera had been on board with the idea of some protection, especially after Shonda’s attempt to lure Tamera away from school. And when Dante had suggested having one of his teammates come stay for a while, Grammy had got a glint in her eye and said, ‘I’m old, not dead,’ so it didn’t come as any surprise to Dante when Grammy was happy to see Suede.

  Dante introduced them, then left them all alone together while he went to pick up December for their date.

  She’d wanted to meet him at the stadium, but he’d insisted on picking her up. Anything he could do to eliminate her being a target, he’d do it, and driving her instead of meeting her allowed him to keep a watchful eye out for trouble.

  At her building, she tossed a duffel bag into the back seat, then climbed into the front and leaned across to kiss him.

  “Hey there, stranger,” she said. “Did your friend get in okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, pulling them out onto the road to head for the stadium. “He’s home now with Lanore and Tamera. It’s like a blind jump into the hot zone.”

  December laughed. “I don’t know what that means, but I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s a SEAL, right? If he can’t handle a grandmother and a ten year old, he needs to reconsider his career.”

  “I don’t know. My money’s on the ladies,” Dante said. December made him smile. Made him feel warm on the inside. Was this what it felt like to be happy?

  “As it always should be,” December said. “Are you ready for a rowdy night of fun?”

  He glanced at her and raised a suggestive brow. He was ready, all right, and it had nothing to do with roller derby. “I am,” he said.

  She grinned, catching his meaning. Energy radiated from her like heat from an open oven. “You mind if I put in my ear buds and listen to music? It helps psyche me up.”

  “Go for it,” he said.

  Pulling her legs up onto the seat so she sat cross-legged, she popped her ear buds in and cranked up the music. It was so loud he could hear the tinny sound of it across the car. It wasn’t long before she’d closed her eyes and was jamming in her seat, occasionally singing some off-key lyrics out loud.

  He snort-laughed at her when she did it the first time and her eyes popped open. “Are you laughing at me?” Her voice was too loud as she compensated for the music in her ears.

  “No way,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis, since she probably wouldn’t hear him.

  She burst out a huge grin. “I know you are,” she yelled, then danced some more. “I don’t care.” She glanced out the window. “We’re almost there.”

  They pulled into the parking lot, and he actually had to search for a space to park.

  “There’s a lot of people here,” he said.

  “Yep,” she said, pulling out one ear bud so she could hear. “We’re playing our rivals, the Chi-town Cougars, so lots of people want to see it.”

  As they walked across the lot, he said, “I didn’t realize roller derby was that big a thing. Isn’t it kinda like what WWF used to be?”

  She stopped in her tracks and gave him a withering gaze. “You mean fake? Scripted?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “No.” She turned and continued walking toward the stadium, and Dante followed. “I mean, it used to be,” she said as she walked. “But at the beginning of the century it changed and now it’s a serious amateur sport. You’ll see. It’s still physical, but everyone takes it seriously.”

  Inside, she told the guy in the ticket booth that Dante was her guest, and she took him into the stadium. The place was big, and already filling up with people. The floor was marked with a series of rings, and to one side two sets of folding chairs were set up with a large space between them. He assumed those were for the teams. Waist-high barriers were set up on the outside boundary of the rings to hold the crowds back, and to give space for sponsors to advertise.

  December laced her fingers in his, and pulled him over to one team’s folding chairs where a couple of women sat lacing up skates.

  “Ladies,” December said.

  The women all looked up and smiled at December, then almost as one cut their gaze over to him and back to December, their smiles growing wider. So she’d told them about him already.

  “Hey Sweet Cakes,” one of the women said. “I see you brought your man tonight. You gonna introduce him?”

  Dante stepped up close behind her and under his breath said, “Sweet Cakes?”

  Over her shoulder, she said, “It’s my derby nickname. Kinda like your SEAL nickname.”

  His buddies were going to have a field day with the Chill and Sweet Cakes jokes.

  “Dante, these are some of my teammates. We’re the Windy City Wreckers. This is our team captain Darcy ‘Red Hot’ Kent, this is Ashlee ‘Kitty Claws’ Garrett, and Esmerelda ‘Latin Hammer’ Vasquez. Ladies, this is Dante ‘Chill’ Winters.”

  They all stood and surrounded him and December, holding out hands to shake.

  “What’s your nickname for?” Red Hot asked.

  “I’m a Navy SEAL,” he said. “It’s a thing with us.”

  Latin Hammer barked a laugh. “Hear that, senoras? We have
something in common with Navy SEALs.”

  They all busted up laughing.

  “It’s nice to meet y’all,” he said. “Good luck with the match.”

  “Bout,” Red Hot said. “You need to school your man on derby, Sweet Cakes.”

  “Gonna do that right now. C’mon Chill,” she said, directing him to the first row of audience seats behind the team. “Okay, crash course on derby: the bout is played in jams which last up to two minutes each. Each team has five players on the floor at a time—four blockers and a jammer. The blockers try to keep the other team’s jammer from passing. The jammer’s job is to pass. At the start of the jam, the jammers force through the blockers, then circle the track and get a point for each player they pass from the opposite team on every subsequent trip around the track. Got it?”

  “Sounds simple enough. Are you a blocker or a jammer?”

  “Jammer. I’m small and fast enough I can squeeze through and around the blockers. I’ll be one of the two players with a star on my helmet.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sorry I’ve got to leave you alone, but I have to go get ready.”

  “I’ll be fine. Go.”

  She leaned in and kissed him, then hurried toward the locker room, while the rest of the women took off to skate the track and warm up. As the minutes passed, more members of both teams took the floor, and finally December burst from the locker room already in her skates, to join her girls on the track.

  She took his breath away, she was so fucking hot. In black spandex short-shorts similar to those volleyball players wore, her ass looked tight and round. Gorgeous. The pink tank top with black trim had the number 12 and her nickname on the back, and the team logo stretched across her front. Knee pads, elbow pads, and a helmet rounded out the uniform. As she skated by, she waved and blew him a kiss.

  His jeans grew incrementally tighter from that moment and through the bout as she skated like a wild cat. It didn’t take long for him to catch onto the rules of game play, and he got into it, yelling and cheering as December ducked between blockers, spun around them, and shoved her way through, racking up points for her team.

  By the time they won, he was working on a pretty good endorphin high, and a persistent boner.

  After the teams disappeared into the locker rooms and the stadium had mostly emptied, Dante sauntered down to wait for December. A decent crowd loitered near the locker room waiting for the skaters. They couldn’t all be family. He realized they were fans when a group of teenage girls shouldered past him and one said, “I need one more autograph and I’ll have the whole team.”

  So they were fans. He was dating a woman who had fans who wanted her autograph.

  “Who’re you waiting for?”

  The male voice pulled him from his thoughts. Dante blinked when he focused on the guy, not sure he could reconcile the image in front of him. Pushing three hundred pounds, if Dante had to guess, the guy was dressed in jeans, suspenders, and silver-studded black leather vest, and his graying beard hid whatever neck he had. The part that Dante found comical was the sparkle in his eyes and the same excited smile the teenage girls had worn. This guy was star-struck.

  “Waiting for my girlfriend,” Dante said.

  The man actually gasped. “You’re dating one of the Windy City Wreckers?”

  Several of the people around him had overheard, and suddenly Dante was the center of attention.

  “Uh. Yeah,” he said.

  “Which one?” the guy asked.

  “Dec…uh…Sweet Cakes.”

  “Oh my God,” one of the teenagers said. “I LOVE her. She’s, like, amazing.”

  Everybody chattered at once, not really wanting to hear what he had to say. They just wanted to talk about the Wreckers, and share their stories. He was fine with that. It gave him a chance to see the sport and the women through other people’s eyes.

  As the women from both teams trickled out of the locker rooms, they signed autographs and chatted with fans. December was one of the last ones out, and by the time she appeared the crowd had thinned some. Dante waited patiently while she talked to her fans. She gave them each her full attention and charm, and they left happy with their brush with celebrity.

  “What about you, sir,” she asked when she finally made her way to him. “You want me to sign something? A program? Your autograph book?” She leaned in close and whispered in his ear. “A body part?”

  His cock, which he’d managed to wrestle under control since watching her on the track sprung back to life.

  “How about we talk about it at your place?”

  Grabbing her hand in his, he led her out to the car. By now the parking lot had emptied of most of the cars. She squeezed his fingers tight and stayed close.

  As they approached the car he pressed the unlock button on his fob, and all the lights on his car flashed.

  He opened the passenger door for her, but she didn’t climb in. Instead, she stood close, her body touching his, and pressed her hands to his chest.

  “I’ve still got a lot of adrenaline.” She glanced up into his eyes, the answer to her next question clearly written in her bedroom eyes. “Any idea how I can burn it off?”

  “Jesus, December. You’re killing me.”

  She reached down to cup his cock in her hand. “We can’t have that.”

  “Get in the car.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, flipping him a mock salute before climbing into the passenger seat.

  When he folded himself into the driver’s seat, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to take the time to kiss her now, or let the anticipation as they drove back to her place ache in his balls. If he kissed her now, he’d want to just take her right there in the car, and while he was pretty sure given how hard she was coming onto him she’d be okay with that, he’d rather wait until he had her at her place with more space and time to work with.

  Also, he wanted her naked, which wouldn’t be possible in the car.

  “Buckle up.”

  She put on her seatbelt, but when she put her hand high on his thigh and squeezed, she said, “Not a chance, Chill.”

  Fuck. Me.

  He didn’t remember any of the drive back to her apartment, other than the charge of sexual tension in the air.

  When he opened the passenger door for her, she stepped out of the car and brushed her fingers against his cock again as she reached for his hand. His cock twitched at her touch.

  Instead, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her up against him, then leaned down and kissed her, forcing her mouth open with his tongue. It wasn’t too hard since she opened right up for him, but holy crap she tasted good. Tangling his fingers into the long waves of her hair, he held on tight, and if she hadn’t groaned deep in her chest and melted against him, he probably would have stayed there kissing her all fucking night. But that needy sound reminded him what they wanted, and he couldn’t give it to her out on the sidewalk.

  He turned her and pushed her toward the front door, where she keyed in the access code, and they tumbled inside and hurried up the stairs, her ass swaying in his face tempting him to take a bite out of it.

  At her apartment, they barely got inside the door before they were on each other, kissing and tearing at each other’s clothes.

  By the time Rusty came scurrying out of a bedroom, barking his yapping bark, both December and Dante had lost their shirts and he was faced with a pullover sports bra that had no hook.

  He wanted her naked, dammit.

  “Not now, Rusty,” December said, her voice full of breathy need. To Dante she said one word. “Bedroom.” Then led the way, locking Rusty out in the hall.

  She stripped out of the sports bra as if it weren’t an unpassable elastic barrier, and closed the space between them. But he caught her by the shoulders and held her back.

  He’d caught his breath and wanted to throttle things down so they could make it last.

  Instead, he cupped her cheek with one hand and rubbed his thumb over her lips, before cares
sing the line of her neck, and collar bones with both thumbs. Her eyes closed and her head fell to the side as she luxuriated in his touch.

  Tracing the curve of her breasts earned him a soft moan, but when he flicked the nipples with his thumbs, the moan grew louder and she arched into his touch. They puckered to tight brown nubs, and he wanted to suck them into his mouth and roll them around with his tongue.

  She reached to undo his pants, and he grabbed his wallet before the pants slid to the floor, pulling out a condom and tossing it on the bed.

  Urging her toward the bed, he helped her out of her pants, which she kicked aside before hopping onto the bed and wiggling out of the little thong she wore.

  Laid out in all her nude glory on the bad, she waggled her brows and shook the condom and said, “C’mon Chill. Don’t keep a girl waiting.”

  Well, shit. He swallowed hard. She looked like a goddess, curvy, luxurious, and beautiful, and all his.

  He shoved his shorts down and stepped toward the bed, stretching out next to her, his now fully erect cock resting across her hip bone. She glanced down at it, then took it in her hand, gently, slowly stroking the length of it, drawing out the most embarrassingly choked moan he’d ever made. If she wasn’t careful, he wouldn’t be able to hold back for long.

  As he lavished his attention on her breasts and body, bringing them both as much pleasure as he could, something happened he hadn’t experienced before, or expected. He was no shrinking virgin, and had always had a healthy sex life, but it had always been just sex. His life was too busy and complicated for relationships. He thought he got all the camaraderie and emotion he needed from his friendships and family.

  He’d fallen into a trap of his own making that he didn’t even know existed—his life was missing love.

  The realization shocked him, even as he kissed the soft skin of her belly.

  Did he love December?

  He hadn’t known her long enough for real love. At least that’s what he assumed. But for the first time ever he cared about a woman beyond sleeping with her. He was interested in what she did for a living, what she did for fun, what she thought. His interaction with her was more than superficial.