“And I wonder why I’m so crazy about you.”
Lara swallowed, an odd mix of perplexity and happiness surging through her system. The way he’d said that had made her heart skip a beat. Was he really crazy about her? Or was he just saying that because he wanted to fuck her.
He’s your sweet SEAL, remember? He wouldn’t say things like that just to get into your swimsuit.
“I guess we can’t blame it on transference, huh?” People who were rescued from a life-threatening situation as she had been in Cambodia often unconsciously shifted the focus of their emotions and desires toward their rescuer. It didn’t normally happen the other way around, though.
“We might could’ve, only if you hadn’t kept your distance from all of us once we hit stateside that night.”
One of his hands flattened on the front of her hip while the other one splayed on her stomach, the thumb of that hand drawing lazy circles around her bellybutton. The touch felt so sensually possessive she couldn’t think to break away from it. Being in his arms, feeling his heartbeat against her back, and his hard body pressed to hers, short-circuited every sane thought in her mind.
“I had already gotten too close.” She closed her eyes on the admission, her head falling back to rest on his shoulder.
“You’re closer now than you ever got that night.” His voice had dropped so low and became so husky she likely wouldn’t have heard him over the crashing of the water around them if his lips hadn’t been so close to her ear.
“I’m in more trouble now than I was that night, too.” She opened her eyes, realizing her resistance had fled with the dolphin she could no longer see in the distance. So much for that distraction. There was nothing in the open ocean before her except endless water, nothing to come to her rescue, and nothing to save her from giving in to the desires winding through her mind, body, and heart.
“You’re safe with me, Lara. I would never hurt you.”
But you could. Worse, I might hurt you.
Being in his arms should’ve made her forget everything else in the world. It nearly did, except for John. What would happen to John if she gave herself to Brandon? What would happen to Brandon if she pushed herself out of his embrace right now and went to find John? And, forget about her, what would happen to the men’s friendship? John and Brandon were close. They’d been teammates. They’d put their lives on the line together to protect America, watched each other’s backs, and no doubt would’ve died for each other if it had ever come to that. She didn’t have to be a Navy SEAL to understand the strength of the bond that formed between men like them. How could she ever dare come between them?
“How can I get you out of trouble this time, baby? How can I rescue you?”
Let me go.
Don’t let me go.
Christ, I don’t know!
She lifted her head and turned it to look at him. It was undoubtedly the biggest mistake she could’ve made at that moment. The compassion and sheer sweetness she saw in his eyes formed a lump in her throat. She saw more, there, too, a carnal craving for her that had her mouth watering in a mirroring desire.
“Kiss me.” It was the absolute last thing she should’ve said, but she couldn’t stop the request from passing her lips. She wanted him to kiss her again. She needed to taste him, to share another of those world-tilting moments with him, and to let herself go if only for a minute. She knew she’d damn herself for it later, but as his lips lightly brushed hers, she couldn’t find the strength to care about that now.
Brandon kissed her and the ocean around them seemed to tilt. He kissed her and every thought raced from her mind. He kissed her and her body burned for more. She tried to get it by attempting to turn herself in his arms. She wanted to touch him as his tongue made deliciously sweet love to her mouth, but his arms tightened around her, holding her closer with a strength she couldn’t match. He managed to keep her that way, caged in his arms, even as his hands started to move. His hand on the front of her hip softly kneaded her flesh, the tips of his fingers brushing so close to her flaming pussy it made her whimper into his mouth. His hand on her belly eased up her torso, stopping when the knuckle of his thumb bumped the underside of her breasts, and glided back down.
Every cell in her body was hyperaware of his touch and even more aware of the places he wasn’t touching. Her breasts ached, her nipples beading to super-sensitive hardened points that pressed against the material of her bikini top. Her clit pulsed, the heat burning through her labia and snaking up her channel, coaxing cream from her that the water washed away.
She felt his cock, impossibly long and marvelously thick against the crack of her ass, and the burn spread there, too. Her butt cheeks flexed on their own accord as if attempting to squeeze around his shaft. Desperation took control of her muscles, her senses, her entire body, the need to feel him inside her growing until she didn’t care which hole he penetrated as long as he fucked her.
He licked his way out of her mouth, his tongue raking down her pallet and the back of her top teeth before traveling over her top lip and cruising to her cheek. He nudged her head to turn with his nose, his tongue continuing on its path until it reached her ear.
“Brandon.” She breathed his name as he licked her lobe between his lips and gave it a tender bite.
“I want to touch you,” he whispered in her ear. “Can I touch you, Lara?”
“Yes.” The word sounded more like a breathless plea than a grant of permission as the fingers of his hand on the front of her hip dipped lower, pushing beneath the edge of her bikini bottom. Nanoseconds that seemed to stretch for eternity passed as he eased his fingers closer to her pussy, exploring the sensitized flesh of her outer fold with his callused fingertips.
“Mmm,” he sighed in her ear. “Your pussy is smooth. I like that.”
She liked it, too, though she couldn’t find the breath to tell him so. She’d never been so pleased by her decision to keep her pussy cleanly shaved until she felt his fingers roaming her flesh. She felt every bit of his touch without the coarse barrier of pubic hair.
Her head returned to rest on his shoulder as his other hand danced up her abdomen to her breasts. His fingers delved beneath her bikini top, pushing it up until he could cover one boob with his palm. She closed her eyes as a riot of spectacularly erotic sensations raced through her system. Between her legs, his hand turned to cup her pussy, one long and wide finger slipping between her feminine lips to press lightly against her clit.
“Please.” She gyrated her hips, grinding her ass against the solid rod of his cock practically wedged between her butt cheeks. The move drew a low rumbling moan from his throat.
“Please what, sweetheart?” He squeezed her breast and pressed a little harder on her clit, but his hand didn’t move further down.
“I want to feel you inside me.” Her head lolled on his shoulder as the need built a level that drove her straight to madness.
“Not here, baby. This water isn’t clean. You might get an infection if it gets inside you.”
Leave it to her Sweet SEAL to think about her health when all she could think about was him fucking her blind. Finger or cock, right now, she didn’t care which as long as a part of him was inside her.
“I bet, if I rub your clit just right, you’ll forget about needing me inside you.”
Lara seriously doubted that, but as his finger started to draw her clit in pressured circles, she knew she was in the arms of one very experienced, very masterful man.
“Does that feel good, baby?” His voice was hot and gruff in her ear.
“Yes. God, yes.” Pressure mounted in her core as he manipulated her clit in moderately paced rotations that seemed to latch onto her orgasm and reel it closer.
“You’re trembling. Don’t hold back. I want to feel you come apart in my arms.” His finger picked up speed, just a little bit, but enough to tug her orgasm right to the edge. “Come for me, Lara.”
His heated command spoken in a voice that was tight with
his own tortured needs yanked her over the edge. She melted in his arms as the orgasm crashed through her, spilled out of her, and was quickly washed away by the ocean. He’d been true to his word. He’d made her forget, for those few precious moments, her need to feel him inside her.
As the water sloshed around them, she absorbed and cataloged the feel of him holding her tight, knowing nothing except his touch would ever make her forget that need again.
Chapter Four
John spotted Brandon as soon as he stepped beneath the thatched-covered triangular roof of Ménage a Drink. He sat in a stool at the bar with a shot of what appeared to be whisky in his hand, an empty shot glass in front of him, and another as yet untouched shot waiting to be consumed. Obviously the man was drinking alone. He noted the half-amused expression on his friend’s face as Brandon watched a typical, but no less comical, byplay between Arianrhod and firefighters Kalvin Fitzpatrick and Blaze Vardry at a nearby table.
Arianrhod spotted him, her starry blue eyes filling with a look of equal parts relief and plea as he neared their table. “Sheriff, would you please kindly arrest these fools so I can enjoy my drink in peace?”
“Now, Ari,” Blaze drawled. “Think of what would happen if your cottage caught on fire tonight and we weren’t there to put it out ’cause you had us locked in jail.”
Arianrhod rolled her eyes before sliding a glance Blaze’s way. “I’m sure I and my cottage would survive. You two aren’t the only firefighters on this island.”
“But we’re the best,” Kalvin countered. “If you’d give us a chance, we’d prove it to you.”
Arianrhod closed her eyes this time and John watched as her shoulders rose and fell in a slow, deep breath. “Why do men have to be so hardheaded?”
Since she mumbled the words before opening her eyes, John figured she wasn’t really expecting to get an answer. He shot a warning look at first Blaze and then Kalvin, knowing them both well enough to guess the retort that sprang to their tongues. If they let it spill, it would be something along the lines of referring to her beauty and the hardhead between their legs rather than the one on their shoulders. Smartly, both men heeded his warning and bit their tongues.
“Determination isn’t being hardheaded, darlin’,” Blaze told her, sounding utterly convinced by his own words. “It’s being certain. If anyone’s being hardheaded about the whole situation, it’s you, sweet thing.”
The whole situation being the fact that Blaze and Kalvin had been chasing after Arianrhod since they had stepped onto the island and Arianrhod had made it politely clear she wasn’t interested.
“I’m not the girl for the two of you,” Arianrhod said with the patience of a true goddess.
Kalvin shook his head. “I still say you’re reading those tea leaves of yours wrong. Isn’t she, Sheriff?”
“I don’t read tea leaves. I read tarot cards,” Arianrhod said before John had the chance to answer Kalvin. Good thing, too, because John was getting tired of playing the mediator with the three of them. “And I’ve already told both of you, the woman of your dreams isn’t even on this island yet.”
Kalvin nodded, though his expression was one of pure disbelief. “She’s some broad with dyed jet-black hair and frightened blue eyes.”
“Her hair is dyed ’cause she runnin’ from somethin’ or someone, but you don’t know who,” Blaze added.
“And, when she hits the island, there’s going to be trouble,” Kalvin finished. “We heard you the first time, Ari.”
“Then you should have listened the first time.”
John bit back a grin as he continued past them and settled into a seat at the bar next to Brandon. He didn’t believe in tarot cards or tea leaves or any other such nonsense, but he’d heard from other islanders that the predictions Arianrhod had told them had always been right on the money.
“Think she’ll give in after another round of that wine she’s drinking?” The amusement John had noted in Brandon’s expression rang in his whispered words.
John glanced over his shoulder before looking at Brandon and shaking his head. “Not a chance. If she was going to, she would’ve done it a long time ago. Those two have been pretty relentless in their pursuit and she’s held strong the whole time.”
“Tough cookie, huh?”
John grinned. “She is that.” He rested his forearm on the edge of the bar and angled his head. “I didn’t see you around this afternoon. I wondered if you’d jumped island and headed back to the mainland.”
“You mean you hoped I did?” Brandon asked dryly.
“Come on, Ace. You know I’m glad you’re here.” Although, he wished Brandon would’ve come a few weeks earlier or a month later, any time other than when Lara decided to visit the island. Damn, he didn’t want to fight with his best buddy over a woman, but the churning in his gut telling him it would no doubt come to that wouldn’t go away. “You borrowed Magee’s boat to get out here, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, he said to keep it as long as I wanted.”
“Then you’ll be sticking around a while?”
“As long as my two-week furlough allows.” Brandon slid the untouched shot toward John. “I think the bartender here is trying to get me drunk. I ordered a shot and she brought me three.”
John chuckled. “There’s a reason the place is called Ménage a Drink. Everything comes in threes around here. You can get them to mix and match or hold the other two behind the bar until you’re ready.” He picked up the shot glass, brought it to his nose, and sniffed. “Uncle Jack?”
“The best uncle in the world.”
“You know I don’t drink whisky, man.” John considered himself a lightweight when it came to alcohol. He drank, but he stuck to beer or wine and rarely indulged in more than a six-pack or a couple of glasses at a time.
“You can chase it down with a beer. I’ll order us one.” Brandon made a face. “And, I guess the first one to finish theirs can lay claim to the third.” He motioned for the bartender, a cute, petite bleach-blonde named Amie, and ordered a Michelob Ultra on tap. Amie flashed him a brilliant smile, her deep brown eyes twinkling as she hurried off to fill the order. She was obviously flirting her pretty little ass off, but Brandon wasn’t biting.
“Have you seen Lara around?” John had half expected to find them together. He’d finished out his shift at the department with the few hours left of the afternoon consumed by thoughts and images of Brandon and Lara together.
“She went back to her cottage a while ago to freshen up for dinner.”
Despite the confirmation of his suspicions that Brandon had spent the afternoon, or at least a part of it, with Lara, John knocked back the whisky in an attempt to hide the smile around the shot glass. He’d worried he might have come on too strong by all but ordering her to have dinner with him tonight. That worry had manifested to a downright niggling fear she would end up at dinner with Brandon after spending the afternoon with the man and he’d be left out in the cold.
“Your plans for tonight have changed, by the way.”
The smile faded from John’s lips as the whisky burned in his chest right along with Brandon’s newsflash. Brandon wasn’t looking at him. Amie had returned with the three draughts. He’d slid one closer in front of him and was now staring into the deep yellow liquid.
“You fucked her, didn’t you?” John knew Brandon nearly as well as he knew himself. His friend was holding something back. The man was far too damn freaking sweet to kiss and tell, but if he’d fucked Lara today, it would eat at him simply because he knew John was hot for her, too.
“No.”
Brandon met his gaze and the seriousness in the man’s eyes told him that he was telling the truth. Still, he knew there was something more Brandon wasn’t saying. He nodded slowly as realization dawned. “But you did make her come?” Brandon quickly looked away, leaving him no doubt of the answer to that question.
“There’s something else you should probably know.”
John’s chest co
nstricted. It had happened. Brandon had spent the afternoon with Lara, got intimate with her, and Lara had professed her undying love for him. Fuck. Fuck. Triple fuck! “You won?” He reached for one of the two remaining glasses of draught, needing something to wrap his hand around before he latched it onto his best friend’s neck.
Brandon made a raspberry sound with his lips. “I doubt that, dude.” He sighed, turned on his barstool to fully face John, and lowered his voice, obviously not wanting anyone near them to overhear. “She may have let herself go with me out in the ocean this afternoon, but I’m not too stupid to miss the fact that you were in her thoughts, too.”
“And did you tell her she’d have to choose between us?” When Brandon merely shook his head, John asked, “Why not?”
Brandon let out a half laugh fully devoid of humor. “I may not want to know her answer.”
“Sounds to me like we’re both in the same boat on that one, man.” John sipped his beer as he contemplated his next words. “I don’t suppose you want me to remind you that you’re the one intent on making her choose?” When Brandon didn’t answer, he added, “Is this really all so weird to you? We know people in ménage relationships and they’re happy.”
“Name two, or rather six as the case may be, that don’t live on this island.”
John searched for the names of the couples he’d talked with Magee about over the phone the last time they’d talked and pulled the names out of his ass. “Ford Harris and Cory Nox have been sharing Rayne Jasper for years. Thaddeus Carter, Adrien Bingham, and Cameron Stone seem to have a good thing going on, too.”
Brandon held up a finger. “One, the only person of those six you just named you’ve ever met face-to-face is Cameron Stone.”
True, John silently admitted. Cameron Stone had been one of the FBI agents present on John’s final op with the SEAL team.
“Two.” Brandon held up a second finger. “Cameron, Thaddeus, and Adrien are gay.” A third finger joined the other two. “And three, both couples live right there in Silver Springs.” He pointed with all three fingers toward the mainland, though it wasn’t visible from their current place on the island. “That’s not much of a stretch from Silver Island even if ménage relationships aren’t the norm over there.”
Safe and SEALed with Ecstasy [The Heroes of Silver Island 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 7