“I thought we were leaving,” Joe said to Helena.
“We can stay for one more,” Helena snapped.
Hayden blinked.
“You always want to stay for one more,” Joe clipped back.
“Maybe because I’d rather stay here than go home with you.”
Hayden shot Beck an alarmed glance. He met her eyes and shrugged. “So two palomas?” he asked the couple.
“Okay, why not.” Joe sighed.
Marco leaned across the bar to say in a low voice, “They fight all the time. No idea why they’re still together, but it seems to work for them.”
“Oh. They’re, uh, regulars here?”
“Yeah.”
Helena turned on her stool and smiled at Hayden. She was probably about Hayden’s age, with short, dark hair and stylish dark-framed glasses. “Hi. You’re new here.”
“Um, sort of, yeah. I’m Hayden.”
Helena reached over and they shook hands. “I’m Helena. This is my husband, Joe.”
“I was here the first time for the tequila tasting,” Hayden said. “That was fun.”
“You going to do that again, guys?” Helena looked over at Beck and Marco.
“Yeah, we’re thinking of doing it once a month.”
“I told you we should have come to that,” Helena said to Joe.
“No, you didn’t. You didn’t even know about it until after.”
“I did too! You never listen to me!”
Hayden sucked briefly on her bottom lip.
“Don’t worry, they’ve never come to blows,” Marco whispered.
“Okay.”
Beck served them their drinks, winked at Hayden, and said, “Be right back,” and headed down to the other end of the bar, apparently to check on other customers.
“So,” Marco said, back in a normal tone of voice. She turned her gaze from watching Beck to Marco and blinked at his intent scrutiny. “Beck invited you tonight, huh.”
“Yes. Is that okay? I won’t get in the way; I know he’s working.”
Marco laughed. “Not worried about that, belleza. There are many of us here to look after customers tonight.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“He said you two went paddleboarding last night.”
“Yes! That was so cool!”
Marco’s face softened and the corners of his mouth lifted. “Yeah?”
“It was really beautiful. Serene. Until I fell in.” She made a face. “Luckily we were just leaving.”
“Luckily you were with the Lead Diver of SEAL Team One.”
She tipped her head. “Beck?”
“You were with someone else last night?”
She shook her head, her cheeks warming. “No. I just…Beck hasn’t told me a lot about his SEAL days.”
Marco eyed her. “You want to hear?”
“I do!” Er, maybe she should tone down the interest she was showing, and play things more casual. Beck had been pretty clear he wasn’t into relationships and she didn’t want people getting the wrong idea about them. But the truth was, he fascinated her and she was eager to know…well, everything about him.
“I’m your man. And Cade, here.” He slapped a hand on the shoulder of the guy passing behind him. “Cade, this is Hayden.”
Cade paused, carrying a big tray of glasses. “Hi, Hayden. Oh, hey, you were here for the tequila tasting, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your friend?” Cade asked.
“The hot blonde,” Marco added helpfully.
Hayden laughed. “She’s doing a shoot in L.A. this weekend.”
“A shoot?”
“She’s a model.”
Marco closed his eyes. “Fuck. Of course she is. I knew she looked familiar. Where do I know her from?”
“She recently did a bunch of ads for bebe. And for Fashion Valley Mall.”
“Yeah! That’s it. Those were smokin’ hot.”
Hayden smiled. “They were.”
“You should bring her here again sometime.”
“Dude.” Cade nudged Marco. “That’s kinda rude when you’re talking to a pretty lady, drooling about her friend.”
Marco’s jaw dropped and Hayden laughed. “No!” Marco said, “She’s with Beck. Not me.”
“Ah.” Cade grinned. “Sorry.”
“Also, I’m used to guys drooling over Carrie,” Hayden added. “But I’ve known her since the days she had buckteeth and braces and was embarrassed to wear a bathing suit because she was so skinny.”
“She looks good in a bathing suit now,” Marco said with heartfelt enthusiasm. “I mean, in pictures. Not that I’ve seen her in person. Although I wouldn’t mind.”
Hayden laughed again. She couldn’t wait to tell Carrie about this conversation. And yeah, maybe bring her back here to meet these fun guys.
“So tell me more about Beck’s SEAL days.”
“Oh no, no, no.” Beck returned, slinging a bar towel over his shoulder. “No talking about me behind my back.”
“It’s not behind your back when you’re right here, man.” Marco elbowed him. “Your girl wants to know more. And we have stories to tell.”
“Fuck that,” Beck said mildly. “I know what kind of stories you assholes will tell her.”
“Ah, we won’t embarrass you too much,” Marco said.
“Then what are we going to tell her?” Cade asked, eyebrows raised. That earned him a punch from Beck and he laughed.
“How about the time you failed the four-mile timed run on the beach by one second.”
Beck groaned. “Christ. That was so fucking hard. We were running on the beach in long pants and jungle boots. When I failed, I got sent with four other guys to form a goon squad. We had to run sprints up and down the sand, jump into the cold water, then roll in the sand. I had fucking sand in my eyes, my nose, my ears—even my dick and balls were sandy.” He winced. “The sand was rubbing my wet skin raw and nearly every muscle in my body broke down. It was my first and last goon squad—I was determined that would never happen again. Failed by one second.” He shook his head.
Hayden couldn’t even imagine that kind of torture and determination.
“How about the Hell Week where I pissed on your hands?” Marco asked.
Hayden’s eyes bugged out, but she still laughed. “What?”
Beck laughed too. He looked at Hayden to explain. “It was Hell Week—that’s the third week of BUD/S training.”
“It’s five and a half days of cold, wet hell,” Marco added.
“You get about four hours of sleep,” Beck continued. “While they test your physical endurance, mental toughness, your tolerance to pain and cold, your teamwork, attitude, and your ability to work under stress.”
“For most of us, it was a defining moment,” Cade added. “That’s when you realize either how much you want to do this or you don’t want to do this. And when you’re finished, you realize you can do way more than you ever thought possible. It’s like the greatest achievement of your life.”
Hayden’s chest bloomed with heat, thinking about how difficult that must have been, and these three men had succeeded.
“Yeah,” Beck agreed. “When you’re in combat you look back on that and remind yourself that you’re capable of so much more. Anyway, it was Hell Week and we’d been floating in the fucking ocean for hours. We were all in the early stage of hypothermia when we got out and they made us lie naked on the steel pier and sprayed us with cold water. I was shivering so hard I thought I was going to break a bone.”
“Oh my God.” Hayden’s eyes widened.
“Marco had to pee. I told him go ahead and pee right there. So he pissed on my hands. It was warm and it felt so goddamn good.”
Hayden bit her lip on a smile.
“Anyone who thinks that’s gross has never been that cold,” Beck added fervently.
“Wow. They really torture you guys.”
“Yep.”
“Good times,” Cade said. “Rememb
er when you tried to assault a tray table with a butter knife?”
“Ha.” Beck’s smile was wry. “Yeah.”
“That’s how he got his nickname,” Marco said to Hayden. “Bear Hunter.”
She smiled uncertainly.
Beck shook his head. “And I never heard the end of that, the time we accidentally ended up in a gay bar.”
Hayden blinked blankly.
“A bear is a—” Marco started.
“Never mind,” Beck said. “So, we’d had about three hours of sleep all week. I swear Hershall told me to kill the bear in the corner with the butter knife. Sure enough, I looked over and there was a goddamn bear in the corner of the chow hall. So I started to do it. I was hallucinating.”
“He was stalking it,” Marco said, laughing. “Sneaking up on it, lifting the knife and ready to leap onto it. Cade and I grabbed him and told him to sit his ass down and eat. The instructors all got a good laugh out of that one.”
Hayden laughed too, even though inside she felt a weird mix of emotions. Imagining Beck being physically challenged like that, to the point of pain and exhaustion and hallucination, actually made her ache for him. The strength of body and mind it must take to get through something like was unimaginable. But she was also warmed by the obvious affection and respect among the three men. Sure, they were giving Beck a hard time, but it was clearly done with fondness, and he accepted it that way too.
She’d never had a sibling, although she and Carrie were close. But seeing the three men together reliving those experiences, seeing the bond they had, made her a little envious.
“Body shots!”
The call came from down the bar and all three guys looked that way. A young man was helping a girl up onto the bar.
“Oh Christ,” Cade muttered. “Here we go.”
Chapter 14
Hayden watched wide-eyed as the girl stretched out on the bar. Cade and Beck rushed down the bar to clear some glasses out of the way. The girl pulled her tank top up to bare her belly above her low-rise jeans, smiling broadly.
Cade handed her a wedge of lime, which she held between her lips, and Beck poured a shot of tequila. “Ready?” he looked at the man.
“Yeah!”
Beck poured tequila over the girl’s navel and the guy bent down and lapped it off her. A cheer rose from the people around them, watching. Hayden’s belly did a little flip. Then the guy used his mouth to take the lime from the girl’s, sucked on it, and spit it into his hand. He pumped a fist into the air on another cheer.
“Whoa,” Hayden breathed. “I’ve never seen that.”
“No?” Marco shot her an amused look. “Want to try it?”
“No! I mean, I don’t think so.”
“I’m sure Beck could be convinced to drink a shot off you.”
She bit her lip. It was a ridiculous thing to do. Why did she feel this crazy urge to be wild like that?
Another girl was taking a turn. Beck handed over a shot, grinning, and another cheer erupted. He looked up at her and met her eyes.
“Your girl here wants to do a body shot!” Marco called to him.
Beck’s eyebrows rose and his smile went wicked. “Come on down here, Hayden.”
She shouldn’t. She couldn’t. Her feet wouldn’t move.
“Come on, gorgeous,” Beck called.
Somehow she was walking toward him. Someone helped the girl off the bar and then Cade was there, helping her up. She was vaguely aware of smiling faces, music, and encouraging words as she stretched out on the bar. She eased her top up, not too high, exposing her stomach.
Beck leaned over and spoke in her ear. “Nobody touches you but me, gorgeous. Got it?”
“Got it.” That reassured her.
He brushed his lips over her cheek, then popped a lime wedge into his mouth. She watched in fascination as he bent closer and rubbed the lime against her lips. She opened and closed her teeth around it. The puckery taste of lime filled her mouth.
Beck poured a shot and this time he was the one who dribbled it over her belly. The cool liquid made her shiver. With another wicked grin, he bent his head and licked. His tongue was warm compared to the tequila, and it stroked sensuously over her skin, swirling in her navel, licking down low to the edge of her jeans, then back up. And up. He licked all the way to her top, bunched beneath her breasts, then he rubbed his face between her breasts, licked up her chest, and plucked the lime from her lips.
The crowd cheered, even louder this time. He’d made the show even sexier, and Hayden’s pussy pulsed with lust. Beck sucked the lime briefly, his eyes on hers, then removed it and dropped it. He leaned over to kiss her again, this time long and slow…and in front of a bunch of people. She tasted the spice of the tequila and the tang of the lime and Beck’s sexy taste. Then he drew the hem of her tank top down and helped her sit up.
She grinned and did a fist pump.
“Wow, baby.” Beck smiled into her eyes. “How was that?”
“Crazy. I keep doing crazy things around you.”
“It’s just fun.”
“I know.”
Cade helped her off the bar, and that apparently ended the body shots for the evening. Hayden straightened her tank top. She looked down at herself, her skin still damp from Beck’s tongue. She swallowed. Damn. Now she wanted his tongue to lick her everywhere.
She returned to her seat, Beck following on the other side of the bar. Marco and Cade were busy looking after customers.
She picked up her paloma and drained it. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“Nobody was harmed in the doing of the body shot.” He smiled at her. “And you have the sexiest stomach.” He leaned closer. “Wanna lick you more. Everywhere. Come back to my place tonight so I can do that.”
“Will you be licking tequila off me?”
His eyes darkened. “If you want.”
“What about if I wanted to lick tequila off you?”
He sucked in air through his teeth. “I’m down with that.”
“Or up for that.”
His slow smile made her blood heat. “Yeah. That too.”
Now she couldn’t wait for the rest of the evening to be over. But the bar was a fun place. Helena and Joe talked to her, surprisingly nice when they weren’t arguing with each other. When Beck couldn’t stay and talk to her, Cade or Marco was there, sometimes both of them.
“You guys both parachute too?” she asked them.
“Yeah, that’s a requirement.”
“Beck told me he was afraid of heights.”
They exchanged glances. Uh-oh. Had she told them something she shouldn’t have?
“He told you that?” Marco asked slowly.
“Yeah.” She hesitated. “He said it was hard to rock climb too, because of that, but he conquered that fear.”
Cade nodded. “Yep. We all had to conquer a lot of fears.”
“I wouldn’t think Navy SEALs were afraid of anything.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something, belleza.” Marco smiled.
“Not me,” Cade said.
“Bullshit.” Marco grinned and gave him a push. “Go back to your office, numbers boy. Go do what you’re good at and leave the bar to us.”
“Happy to,” Cade muttered, and disappeared.
“Numbers boy?”
“He’s our business guy. We all have different responsibilities. He’s good with numbers. He’s the one who tells us if we’re making money.”
“Ah. So Beck is the charming bartender everyone likes to talk to. What’s your role?”
“I’m the tequila expert.”
“Right.”
She turned her head to watch Beck, down at the end of the bar, chatting with a group of women. Gorgeous women. As he had last weekend, he attracted a lot of female attention. Hayden’s chest tightened, watching him smile at them, nodding at something one of them had said. That smile that made her panties melt was probably having the same effect on them.
“He looks like that a
t everyone,” Marco said, leaning closer. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
She repressed her sigh and turned to Marco with a smile. “I know.”
Which meant it didn’t mean anything when he looked at her that way. And she needed to remember that.
She glanced around the bar, which had grown somewhat quieter. It was getting late. Fatigue settled over her, the euphoria from her earlier adventure deflating like a balloon. She wanted to go home. She watched Beck approach behind the bar, drying his hands on a white towel, looking so damn gorgeous, his tattooed biceps flexing against the short sleeves of his black T-shirt, his dark eyes intense, his smile blinding. Marco disappeared.
“I’m going to head home,” she said to him. “I just got so tired all of a sudden.”
His smile vanished. “Thought you were coming to my place.”
“Yeah.” She dropped her gaze to her nearly empty glass. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
He leaned in and growled, “You thought it was a good idea when I was licking tequila off your hot little body.”
What the fuck? Now she was tired?
Beck eyed Hayden. “Those assholes weren’t telling you more shit stories about me, were they?”
“No!”
“Then what’s the problem?” He paused. “Are you upset because I was talking to those girls?”
“Phhht. Of course not.”
“Good. Because they’re customers.”
“I know that.” She sighed. “I wasn’t jealous. Exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” She blew out a breath, her forehead creased. She shoved a hand into her hair and pushed it back off her face. “I told you…I’m not experienced at this. I’ve never had time for this kind of thing and I don’t know how to do it.”
Yeah, he got that. He had plenty of experience when it came to women, but not when it came to actually getting to know a woman. Usually getting to know someone meant finding out whether she liked to swallow or spit. So this was new territory for him too.
Why had he invited her to come here tonight? He’d never done that before. Sometimes girls he knew showed up and hung around, but he’d never asked them to come to the bar. For some strange reason he’d wanted her there, and he’d wanted her to meet Marco and Cade. Even though they were going to bust his balls about it.
Body Shot (Last Shot) Page 14