by Zoe Dawson
“I want to tie you up.”
He got off the stool and backed up. “No way, lady.”
He turned, and she walked after him, still as calm as the day was long.
“I think it will help. Shibari isn’t the answer, you are.”
Almost to the door, he stopped and turned around. “Shibari?” He frowned. That was an ancient bondage that stemmed from the samurai. “How can that help me?”
“Specifically, mugnawa,” she said, and he narrowed his eyes. “It’s a practice of letting go. Letting go of comparing your here and now with your past or future. It frees you from trying to change it while holding onto your emotional and physical wellbeing. It’s all about deep trust. Vulnerability. Tying contrasts between surrender and power. When done as a form of discovery, it empowers intimacy, healing, and growth. I’m a master rigger and I want you to be my bottom or model. We can explore our feelings and emotions together. You understand,” she whispered.
He wasn’t sure about this. He could barely stand anyone to touch his wrists or him when he wasn’t drunk off his ass. But her argument had appeal and he understood the boundaries and how being bound had an energy all its own.
“We would have to develop a bond for you to trust me deeply, surrender yourself, and let go of whatever it is that you need to let go of. It frees you from doing, judging, and keeps you from listening to the insistent voice in your head. It’s a paradox, contrasted between holding your space and actively expressing your power. It’s a practice of deep listening and presence. It’s also about desire.”
He eyed her. “Desire? Do you mean sex?”
“Yes.”
“Is that part of the tying?”
“It can be. I find you very attractive, primal. Being bound is a common sexual desire, either the symbolic gesture of giving up power or the physical feeling of restriction. Some experience the play of power as part of their primal instincts.”
“You want to bind me with ropes and…what, do me?”
“No. I want to bind you with ropes and give you a place for you to explore yourself and your trauma. The sex is just icing on the cake.”
“What the hell is your name?”
“Charlie.”
“Well, Charlie, if I were to take you up on this, how would it work?”
“You could come here and stay with me for a while. We get to know each other, and we’ll move slowly. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.”
He turned back to the doorknob and clasped it, scared and hopeful at the same time.
“Blue, take the chance. I know it will turn out all right.”
She had a hold of him. He could feel the light pressure and having her tie him up excited him even as it scared him. He needed to get himself back. He needed it desperately or he might as well drop into the dark hell of his thoughts, lose his connection to reality, his place on the team, the brotherhood that grounded him. If he said no, he was sealing his own doom. “All right,” he murmured. “I’m in.”
It was all about getting back to the team. She was beautiful, and she had comforted him through some bad shit, stopped him from walking out into the ocean and ending his life. He would have to face his fears, but goddammit, he was a Navy SEAL and he lunched on fear. He could do this, finish out this damn mission and then get back to Coronado and to the brotherhood. Maybe if he could do this, he would deserve them, deserve the honor again. If only he could redeem himself.
The next morning, he entered his classroom and went to the front of the class. He turned to face the class. He froze. Charlie sat in the front row.
Fuck it!
She was one of his students.
This just went from interesting and weird to freaking criminal and complicated.
6
Charlie sat there, and her brain was firing off: Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!
The class started looking around because her instructor, Blue was standing there staring into space, but those aching blue eyes were on her.
They exchanged one more oh, shit look and then he said, “I’m Special Operator Ocean Beckett. I will be co-instructing this course for the next month while I teach you about mental toughness. As you can see from the syllabus, we will be doing open water dives and controlled pool dives. This is an advanced class, and if you don’t think you can handle it, take a hike.”
He stood there waiting for a few minutes, but no one moved. He nodded. “All right. We’ll see how many we have left once this class comes to a close. The navy doesn’t tolerate anything but the best. Keep that in mind as we progress,” Blue said.
He continued to speak, but Charlie’s thoughts were on how she was still going to make this work. They’d already crossed the line. He’d taken her up against the wall in her shower. They were far from rope work. She had some trust exercises for him to perform. Before she realized it, Blue was standing in front of her with an expectant look on his face.
“You not paying attention, sailor?”
Oh, shit! “Sir?”
“We’re going around the class and introducing ourselves. You dropped the ball. Drop and give me twenty.”
She looked up at him and realized he was enjoying this. For the first time since she met him, his eyes twinkled. “Twenty?”
“Okay, make it fifty. Do we want to go for an even hundred?”
“No, sir,” she said.
She got out of her chair and started to get into the position to perform her fifty when he said, “What is your name and what is it that you do for the navy?”
She turned and faced the class. Some were smirking, others were checking her out and some were wondering if she could do fifty push-ups. She smiled and said, “Petty Officer Charlotte Coventry, a member of Mobile Diving Salvage Unit 1, also known as MDSU-1, salvage and recovery diver.” Then she dropped down to the floor and started pressing out her push-ups. Blue went through the rest of the class.
As soon as she was done, he said, “Were you paying attention, Ms. Coventry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“First names of the last two rows of sailors.”
She looked to the men and women there.
“How about another fifty—”
She named them down to the last sailor. Blue smiled again in that sexy, barely-there grin. “Take your seat.”
She sat back down, and the class progressed. As soon as it was over, she waited until all the students filed out.
She approached him, unable to keep herself from noting he had just as fine an ass in those perfectly creased trousers as he did in his boxers…and nothing at all in the shower.
He turned, caught where she was looking, and frowned. “Stop that,” he said as he took her arm and pulled her away from the door to the hall.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in my class?”
“I didn’t know. Maybe if you’d told me your name, I would have realized you’re Ocean Beckett.”
“Yeah, right. This puts a kibosh on our plans,” he whispered.
“It doesn’t have to. Does it?”
“I think the Uniform Code of Military Justice would agree. The regulation is pretty clear. We’re the same rank in the navy and there are no restrictions about petty officers getting involved, but that changed when they made me your instructor. It’s against the rules.”
“Do you want your life back? Do you want to get back on the teams?”
He looked away his jaw like granite. “You know I do. But if we get caught, my SEAL career is over.”
“Then I can help. Breaking the rules is imperative in this case. In fact, I have a trust builder for you.”
“Homework?”
She laughed and said softly, “Yes, and if you don’t perform it well, there will be sit-ups in your future.”
“Touché. But why sit-ups?”
“Because I’ve already seen your ass. I want to see that six pack again.”
He shook his head with a laugh. “You are a piece of work, Coventry.”
“Tha
t’s like the pot calling the kettle black.”
“Maybe. What’s this task?”
“You have to slip something to me without me knowing. Something that could potentially get you in trouble if you’re caught. You have to trust me to keep it quiet. Can you do that?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Between sit-ups and push-ups? No. The item is up to you.”
“It can be any item?”
“Anything you choose.”
She met his eyes. “Ocean, huh?”
They softened, and he said, “Yeah. My parents were hippies.”
She laughed and shifted toward him as if she couldn’t seem to help it. He stepped back. Apparently, he was able to only approach Elena, but from what she got from his guilt-ridden confession last night, she was dead.
“Mr. Beckett?”
Blue shifted away from her, completely and cleared his throat, then said, “Yeah?”
“I have a question.”
“Come in.”
He gave her a loaded look, then he turned his attention to the student who had interrupted them.
Charlie couldn’t seem to pull her eyes away from him as he took his time to explain a dive technique to the young guy. He glanced at her as if to say, take off, and it broke her out of that strange bubble.
He might feel the pain of losing the woman Charlie was sure he was in love with, but God, what else had this man been through.
He had only agreed to being tied after she’d mentioned shibari. She wondered if he had some connection to the samurai. His eyes had flashed, and he’d changed his mind. She had been totally honest with him. She was so closed off, so deeply flawed herself. She couldn’t seem to let anyone in close enough. Working with him would open up her mind and heart. He was the key, she could feel it.
She desperately needed him as much as he needed her. She felt like she was losing herself, too. Helping him to heal and get back to the SEALs would make her have to face her own fears. She needed to get close to him to understand what his deep-seated issues were, teach him to accept human touch again and find his center. Rope bondage wasn’t for the faint of heart. He would have to completely open up to her about what he had gone through before she could begin to help him.
She gave him one more glance and left the room. He scared her. Not something she wanted to admit. There was something about him, something…spiritual, cosmic, exciting.
Her one and only goal was to become a master diver.
She completely understood his need to get back to the teams.
The thing that she couldn’t do under any circumstances was get attached to him. Attraction was something else. The thought of giving him a place where he could find himself made everything in her tighten.
No losing your heart, Charlie.
If she could even open it up far enough for that to happen.
She would be putting herself in the kind of danger she’d avoided for a long time.
Dammit, giving a shit about what happened to him would be her undoing.
Hopefully it would be to her benefit, and then they could both move on.
* * *
As the week progressed, Charlie attended her classes, then did some extra PT. She felt the need to run off some nervous energy. Halfway through her run, she heard someone coming up behind her. She expected the person to pass, but he came up alongside her.
“Coventry.”
“Mr. Beckett.”
“You an overachiever?”
“I keep myself fit for duty. I love my job.”
“How long have you been in the navy?”
“Ten years. Right out of high school.”
“Always wanted to be a diver?”
“Yes. I wanted to conquer the ocean.”
“Conquer the ocean?” he asked, and she realized how that had sounded. “Sometimes conquering something helps us to see that we didn’t need to overcome it to get past it. Ever thought about that, Coventry?” Someone bumped her into Blue. He caught her against him, then immediately let her go. “You okay?”
“Yes, thanks.”
The side of her body that had touched him tingled, and she remembered what it was like to hold him against her a few days ago as he poured his heart out to his dead girlfriend. The way he had sounded, the deep connection he’d had to her. She had saved him, and she could only thank that poor woman who had lost her life. The guilt must be overwhelming for him. She couldn’t help but be affected by all that muscle, the softness of his hair, the scratchiness of his stubble, and his heartache and fear.
“What did your parents do?”
He turned to look at her. “Is this part of the process? Getting to know each other?”
“For trust to build, that’s an important building block, yes. It’s a simple question. It’s not like I’m asking for access to your bank account.”
He laughed suddenly, and she really liked the sound of it. She hadn’t seen a full-blown smile from him since she’d met his surly self on the plane. Now she understood why. Her intuition hadn’t ever let her down. But here he was, not even a week after meeting her, and he was smiling like she’d just told a great joke.
It was devastating.
What a beautiful man. It hurt her physically that he’d wanted to just walk into the ocean and end all that he had going. She understood trauma. She’d been through it, and she’d survived. She wanted him to come out the other side pain free, and she was confident that she could give him the space he needed to heal. She could give him time to close all those wounds and find his way back to himself. A shiver cascaded over her thinking about getting into him, finding out about him, about every nuance of his psyche, learning the lines and contours of his body, touching and caressing his nerve centers and delving into what made him tick. Mind and body went together, and he hadn’t just been physically assaulted, he had been mentally raped as well. A body could heal, but the scars of having his personal power taken away from him like that was even more damaging. Then add in that he was an alpha male, a warrior, a corpsman, and she could see the layers of pain and the layers of self-recrimination.
Being a victim was much more difficult than being a SEAL. One came from confidence and honor, and the other had nothing, no power, no honor, no recourse but to believe that somehow, he had brought this on himself.
But she was pretty sure there was something else going on there, an old wound, a ghost that was chasing him. She wanted to name that, bring it out in the open and get him to deal with that first. That was imperative. Whatever that bitch had done to him, it was just as much a mindfuck as what she had done to his body.
“That’s pretty powerful,” she said, giving him a sidelong glance. Wanting more of that smile that was still on his lips, as if it was more than her silly comment that was making him smile. She’d like to think it was about her.
“What?” he asked as it faded into amusement, his eyes warm.
“You should laugh more. I’d like to hear that again.”
He looked away as if he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “I haven’t had much to laugh about lately,” he murmured.
“So, I might have to make that a priority to make you laugh at least once each day.
That intimate look was there when he swung his gaze back to hers. “Oh, yeah? I think it might be a challenge, Petty Officer Coventry.”
“Like one hundred push-ups.”
“I was messing with you, so yeah.”
“You liked it when I was able to name all the sailors in the class, didn’t you?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t have had a problem with you doing one hundred push-ups. I think you got that in you.”
“I can do quite a few, so I think so, too.” She nudged him. “So, Mr. Beckett, what do your parents do?”
“They run a surf shop on Maui. Still at it after all these years. My dad’s a surfboard shaper. He was once a pro a long time ago. My mom took care of the family and was a stay-at-home, cookie-baking, nurturing force of nature in my life
. She is awesome.”
“Sounds like your childhood was idyllic.”
His eyes clouded over, and she saw that shadow for a moment. Aha, there it was, that thing, that wound. She’d definitely get there with him. “For the most part,” he said. “I loved surfing. I did that as often as possible. Now that I’m in the SEALs and stationed in Coronado, I do it in my spare time.”
“The waves are gnarly?”
There was that smile again. Connecting him to something that he loved would always bring out the joy inside him. Remind him that he wasn’t really truly lost, just couldn’t quite find his way at the present. She’d continue to find moments like that to show him who he had been, who he had become, and then where he was now. All three of them would then mesh into one, and then maybe he could move on.
“Yeah. Do you know what the impact zone is?”
She looked at him, and it was her turn to smile. “At the exact moment when the wave breaks. It’s the most chaotic part of the wave and packs the most punch. Most surfers don’t want to be in the impact zone. Bad juju. Lots of bruising.”
He chuckled again, and his brows rose. “You do surprise me, Charlie.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, maybe once we get to know each other a bit more, that will be evident.”
“Maybe,” he said with another small smile. “I’ll see you around.” He peeled off, and she unabashedly watched his big, gorgeous body move away from her. It was clear to her now that he hadn’t even been taxed as he ran beside her. Navy SEALs, wow. Muscle-packed, intelligent, lethal gunslingers.
What a strong and beautiful challenge.
Once she got back to the locker room and was stripping off her shorts, a pair of black lace panties fell to the floor. Frowning, she picked them up. They were delicate, intricate lace, and as she looked at them even closer, she realized they were a thong.
She couldn’t imagine—oh, my God. Blue. He’d planted them on her when that guy had run into her as he’d passed them. Her breath caught at the intimate and sexy thought of wearing these with him knowing that she had them on.