by Selena Kitt
And I might be in the middle of a nightmare and try to rip your head off.
"There is nothing you could say or do that would be any worse than what I've been through for the past five years." She reached up with her free hand and touched his cheek, tracing the scar with the tip of one finger. "Did you get this in your nightmare place?"
"No." He shook his head. "That's a souvenir of another bad time, but fortunately one in the past."
"And this one isn't."
"No, it isn't." Not even close, he wanted to tell her.
"I want to sleep close to you," she told him. "Sir."
He cupped her head and drew it close to him, realizing with a shock that despite the mind-blowing sex, he had yet to kiss her. "Despite the fact you might end up in the middle of a nightmare?"
She lowered her eyes. "It can't be any worse than mine."
Want to bet?
But then he gave in to temptation and took that kiss. Her lips were soft and cool, molding easily beneath his. When he traced the seam of her mouth with the tip of his tongue, she opened for him at once and he thrust inside. Oh, God! She was liquid heat, both sweet and sensual, and he couldn't get enough of her. But what penetrated his lust-fogged brain was the absolute innocence of the kiss, as if she'd not done it very often. With great reluctance he broke the kiss and looked at her. Hard.
"You haven't kissed much." It was a statement, not a question.
She looked away from him. "My Master said kissing was for weaklings."
Zane thought to himself that her so-called Master deserved to be erased from the face of the earth. He wanted to do a lot of kissing with this little waif, a thought that shocked him as soon as it entered his brain. And find out more about who she was. What happened to getting rid of her as soon as possible?
"Will you tell me your last name?" he asked.
"Hanover. Dara Hanover."
"Well, Dara Hanover, let's get through tonight and see what tomorrow brings, shall we?"
"Are-are you sending me away?" She asked the question in a timid voice.
"Hell, no." The words were out before he even thought about it. "But let's see what happens after tonight, okay?"
"Okay." She slid under his arms and off the bed. "But I still insist on fixing dinner."
He had to admit it was nice to have someone wait on him, ask what he wanted, make sure he had his food and drink. Part of Dara's problem was that she had a natural submissive's personality. That was why it had been so easy for the asshole to take control of her the way he had.
When she had cleaned up after dinner, they went out onto the porch. The storm had not abated at all. Zane was beginning to wonder if it ever would. But the air had warmed so they sat and watched the rain, quietly, for a long time. At last, without a word, he led her back into the cottage to get ready for bed.
"Take off your clothes before you get into bed," he told her.
She hesitated a moment. He knew she was self-conscious about the condition of her body.
"It's fine," he told her. "I'll turn out the light. But just this once."
And if someone had asked him what he meant by that, he'd have had no idea. All of a sudden he didn't want to let her go.
She fit nicely against him in bed. He had her lie down on the side closest to the wall, so if she tried to get up, he'd know in an instant. Curling her into his body, he fell asleep at once.
"We're hit, Zee." Swamp Man's voice was laced with pain.
"Motherfuckers knew we were coming." Zane swore viciously. "How's everyone else?"
Another explosion, followed by screams of anguish, answered his question. He tried to crawl over to one of the Humvees but as he belly crawled, a figure jumped on him and wrapped thick fingers around his throat.
"Get off me," he croaked. "I'll kill your motherfucking self. I'll—"
"Zane. Zane, wake up." Hands were shaking him. "Master. It's okay, I'm here."
He swam up out of the nightmare, sweat covering his body, his heart pounding. Small but strong hands gripped his face and then soft lips pressed to his. He forced his eyes open.
"Dara?" He could barely make her out in the thin light streaming in through the window.
"It's me, Master. Lie down."
She pushed him back on his pillow, then crawled over him to the bathroom. When she returned she had a washcloth in her hands which she used to wipe the sweat from his face and chest. When she was finished he took the cloth from her hand, dropped it on the rug, and pulled her over him into bed.
"I frightened you, didn't I?" he said.
She shook her head. "It would take a lot to frighten me now." She curled herself against him. "Hold me, Master. Sleep in peace."
He hadn't thought he'd fall asleep again, or sleep so soundly, but when he woke it was to find the storm had abated, both out on the bay and in his body. He hadn't had another nightmare after he went back to sleep. No disturbing images. Nothing. The sunlight bathed the bay, something he took as a good sign.
"I guess I'll be able to take you back to shore this morning," Zane told her, his heart filled with a sinking feeling.
Dara tensed against him. "Do you have to?"
"Don't you have someplace to go? Family? Anything?"
She shook her head and pushed herself harder against him. His morning boner was nestling quite nicely in the cleft of her ass, something that sent hot images to his brain.
"I want to serve you," she told him in a very small voice.
Would that be so bad, he asked himself. He, too, had no one. And he had another month to plan for the rest of his tour, to see if this would work between them.
"I'm not always an easy man to be with," he warned her.
She turned in his arms to look at him. "I would not expect you to be. But you will be a blessing in my life."
Eventually he'd want to know all about her, whether she had stuff to retrieve, and especially who the asshole was Zane planned to destroy limb from limb. But for now, they had thirty days to learn about each other. To discover all the ways she could serve him and he could please her in return. He would care for her, show her what a solid D/s relationship was like. Somehow, in the raging storm that had brought them together, they had managed to take steps toward healing their internal storms. Toward healing each other. What could be bad about that?
That was good. That would work.
"We'll give it a shot," he said.
"Good." She smiled. "And how would my Master like me to serve him first thing in the morning?"
He told her, so it was quite a while before they got to breakfast.
The End
Desiree Holt
I believe I am the oldest living (and still publishing!) writer of erotic romance. My writing is my hobby, my avocation and my job. In other words, my life! I didn’t begin writing until 2006 but it’s been a wild ride since then. My children continue to encourage me. I have been on CBS Sunday Morning, interviewed in The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal and several local papers like the San Antonio Express News. I am a winner of The Holt Medallion, The EPIC E-Book Award, and several at Authors After Dark including Author of the Year. I recently moved from Texas (where most of my books are set) back to Florida (where my newer stories are set). This year saw the launch of my Kindle Worlds, The Omega Team, a very exciting project. I live with my three cats—Blanca, Grace and Bast—who think they actually write my books.
Visit her website here:
www.desireeholt.com
Visit her blog here:
www.desiremeonly.com
Here's a selection of other exciting titles by Desiree Holt!
Series
Naked Cowboys
The Omega Team
Game On
Rawhide
Hot Moon Rising
Single Titles
Blitzed
Runaway Billionaire
Nightfall
Daring To Chance It
Wet Heat
&n
bsp; Ghostly Seduction
SEAL of Her Dreams
SEALs of Coronado Series
By
Paige Tyler
Dedication
With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband, without whose help and support I couldn't have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You're my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant any girl could ask for!
Thank you.
Author's Note:
This book is a prequel to my SEALs of Coronado Series. If you've read SEAL for Her Protection (Book One), then you already know all about Melissa and Kurt. This is the story of how they met and fell in love back in the early 1990's. As you read, notice there aren't any cell phones (which were super expensive and not common back then) but I had fun including pagers, answering machines, and payphones.
You can dive into the world of my Navy SEALs of Coronado Series here!
http://www.paigetylertheauthor.com/BooksSEALsOfCoronadoSeries.html
Chapter One
San Diego, California, 1994…
Petty Officer Kurt Travers had faced some scary shit during his time in the Navy SEALs. He'd been shot at more times than he could count, had vehicles blown out from under him, charged a machine-gun nest on the back of a horse, and had a bull shark take a hunk out of his scuba tank during a nighttime dive. He'd never once been as nervous and tense as he was right now. Given the option, he'd much rather be staring down the barrel of a gun than facing the menacing group eyeballing him.
The Navy might have taught him how to defend himself when in enemy territory, but they'd never gotten around to teaching him how to deal with a classroom full of first graders. Maybe he should talk to someone at Special Operations Command about that.
He'd once been told that kids could smell fear. If that was true, then the boys and girls in front of him must be getting a good whiff right now because he absolutely reeked of it.
"Do you eat raw fish and balance a ball on your nose?" a boy with blond hair and blue eyes seated in the front row asked.
"Do you work in the circus?" a dark-haired girl with glasses wanted to know, completely unconcerned that Kurt hadn't even answered the first question.
"Why are you wearing a uniform instead of a scuba suit?" an African American boy by the window quipped.
Kurt cursed silently. He was this close to losing control of the group. They knew they had him on the ropes and they were pressing in on all sides. Even the crayon drawings the kids had made sometime during the school year that were now papering the walls seemed to mock him.
He glanced over his shoulder at Joe, the mountain of a man dressed in the dark green uniform of a city sanitation worker, hoping for a little backup, but the big guy simply shook his head as if to say, I just got myself out of that meat grinder. No way in hell I'm going back in there of my own free will. You're on your own, dude.
In hindsight, maybe coming here hadn't been such a good idea. But when his neighbor asked if he could fill in at her son's school's career day for her Navy husband who was currently on a ship somewhere in the Persian Gulf, he hadn't had the heart to say no.
Kurt threw a desperate look at the dark-haired, sexy teacher leaning casually with one hip against her neatly organized desk. She might be slender and petite, but she seemed more than capable of handling this daunting crew with ease.
She merely arched a brow at him with a look on her face that said I told you so.
The worst part was that she had told him so, nearly ten minutes before the crowd of terrifying kids had come bounding and swarming into the room like a pack of killer bee kangaroos.
"You can't stand in front of a classroom of six-year-olds and tell them what a Navy SEAL really does for a living. They're not going to be able to understand it."
And she was right. The moment he'd started talking about what the Navy's premier shadow warriors did for a living, he'd lost them. When he'd told them he was a SEAL, they'd assumed he meant the thing with the cute face, wet fur, and flippers.
It had only gone downhill from there. The more he dug, the deeper the hole got. It was obvious the teacher—Melissa Drake—didn't think much of him and wasn't thrilled to have him in her classroom mucking up her carefully orchestrated career day activities. It wasn't his fault that only two adults had shown up when there were supposed to be a half dozen.
When Kurt had first gotten there, the kids had been at lunch and the city sanitation worker hadn't arrived yet, which had left him alone with the pretty Ms. Drake. He had to admit he wouldn't mind spending time with her in a setting that didn't include twenty-five three-foot-tall germ factories with feet. Unfortunately, Melissa seemed impervious to his charm—and his biceps. Kurt wasn't a vain guy, but he usually did okay with the ladies. Melissa had shut him down the moment he'd suggested getting together, though. Her complete and total rejection had stung like a son of a bitch, that was for sure. To make matters worse, he had to hang around with a big smile on his face and look like he was having fun.
He was only glad none of his teammates from SEAL Team 5 were around to witness this. They'd probably immortalize the moment on a big plaque and mount it in the Team's workout facilities for all to see.
In front of him, the kids impatiently fidgeted in their seats, swinging their legs back and forth under their small desks as they pelted him with questions about why the aquarium had let him out on his own and whether he slept in a bathtub full of water.
"You're not really a seal, are you?" one precocious little girl with pigtails accused in a trembling voice. "If you were a seal, you'd balance a ball on your nose for us."
Tears formed in the little girl's enormous blue eyes, threatening to spill out over cheeks already starting to quiver.
Kurt groaned inwardly. Oh God, not tears. Bamboo slivers under the fingernails, but not a little girl's tears. He couldn't handle that.
He threw another beseeching glance in the teacher's direction. Melissa had straightened up, concern in her dark eyes, but she didn't look like she was ready to bail him out yet. He was on his own here.
Crap. If he didn't do something in the next ten seconds, little pigtail girl was going to start crying and that would get the rest of the kids rolling. In thirty seconds, he'd be looking at a complete meltdown of Three Mile Island proportions. Even his next door neighbor's little boy looked on the verge of tears.
Kurt took a deep breath. He was a Navy SEAL, dammit. He needed to do something. Now.
So he turned to the little girl with the pigtails and did the only thing he could think of—he lied.
"I promise you that I really am a seal. And I balance a ball on my nose all the time." He smiled. "What kind of seal would I be if I couldn't do something as simple as that, right?"
The girl's eyes grew huge. "Really?"
He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him. Melissa must have just figured out that he was about to throw himself on a hand grenade to save everyone.
"Really," he assured her.
"Show us!"
"We wanna see!"
"Yeah!"
Kurt chuckled. "I would, but I didn't bring a ball with me."
"We have lots of them!" a kid in the back of the room practically shouted.
Before Kurt could say anything, the little rug rat jumped out of his seat and ran over to a brightly painted toy chest near the wall. Lifting the lid, he scooped out a red rubber ball and raced up to the front of the room.
He held out the ball to Kurt, an expectant look on his face. Behind the little boy, his classmates seemed just as eager.
Over by the desk, Melissa was regarding him curiously.
Kurt sighed. Ah, hell. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Keenly aware of Melissa's dark gaze on him, Kurt took the ball from the kid, then got down on his knees and proved that he could indeed balance a ball on his nose—something even he wasn't sure he could do until that moment. Behind their little desks, the boys and girls ga
sped, oohed and aahed.
From the corner of his eye, Kurt saw that even Melissa looked captivated. He didn't know why—maybe it was his inner jock showing off —but when he'd mastered balancing the ball on his nose that way, he lay back on the floor and did it again, this time while doing crunches. Unfortunately, in this position he couldn't see if Melissa was impressed, but the kids giggled like crazy.
Moments later, they were out of their seats and converging on him, shouting that they wanted to be seals, too.
Kurt sat up, his gaze going to Melissa to see what she'd think about that, and found her smiling. Damn, she had a beautiful smile. He was so mesmerized, he almost forgot he was sitting on the floor surrounded by a whole class of screaming first-graders until one of the kids tugged at his sleeve with a small hand.
With Melissa and Joe's assistance, Kurt spent the next hour teaching each child how to steady a ball on the top of their heads until they were good enough to balance it on the tip of their noses. It turned out to be way more fun that he'd thought. Even Melissa was laughing and having a good time. In fact, if he didn't mistake his guess, she was looking at him completely differently than she had an hour ago.
A little while later, Melissa announced that seal training was over for now, but that all the kids could practice to their heart's content outside during recess. Joe bailed then but Kurt hung around, standing by Melissa at the back door of the school and watching the first-graders run wild on the school playground. When kids were like this, he could imagine himself having a few of his own someday. They were pretty cool.
"Thanks for stepping up and making this career day thing work," Melissa said quietly. "It wasn't the way I'd planned it, but the kids loved it."
Kurt glanced at her. The breeze coming off the ocean had pulled some of her long hair free from its bun and he had to resist the urge to tuck it behind her ear.