He caught himself rubbing his thigh, as had become his habit ever since surgery to remove the shrapnel that shredded his knee and thigh. He prayed he never needed to go under the knife again. The rehab afterward sucked rocks.
“When do we start?” she asked abruptly.
It took him a moment to connect her question to her SEAL training and not to his knee. Belatedly, he mumbled, “In the morning.”
“Is there a hidden training base around here?”
He snorted, envisioning the ruin that would be their base of operations for the next few months. He had already humped in the bare basics they would need to survive, and his knee had thought the hard labor of repairing the old dock behind the house and crawling around on his knees repairing a roof were shitty ideas. He answered dryly, “I suppose you could call it a base.”
“Will you be training me?”
He winced. He had no experience training SEALs, and with just the two of them out here by themselves, he couldn’t rely on the same methods by which he’d been trained—with a bunch of other guys, a huge log, and the Pacific Ocean. “Here’s the thing. I’m not a BUD/S instructor. I’m a field operator. Or I was until I wrecked my knee a while back.”
She looked down in quick sympathy at his leg. Sympathy he neither needed nor wanted. His plan was actually to use her training to get himself back into good enough shape to qualify for field ops again. He would drag her along with him until he was field ready, and if she kept up, he would declare her fit to go out with the teams.
“The four weeks of traditional SEAL INDOC, which is mostly physical training, are meant to weed out the faint of heart and the quitters. Perriman feels like he’s seen enough from you in three months of pre-training to know you would make it through the physical demands of INDOC.” He added wryly, “Perriman says you don’t know the meaning of the word quit.”
“Bastard got that right,” she muttered.
Spoken like a true SEAL. Ford smiled a little.
Perriman and he had talked at length about how and where to train her. They needed an environment as challenging as the Pacific Coast of California, but much more secluded. Ford had been the one to suggest his family home. This incredibly difficult bayou environment would challenge her both physically and mentally as much as California. There, she’d run on soft sand beaches, paddled through heavy ocean surf, and suffered continual hypothermia. Here, she would battle heat, humidity, muck, and critters.
“Will it be like BUD/S?” she asked.
She sounded entirely too naïve and eager. Poor kid had no idea what she was in for. Perriman had been clear. Push her right to the edge of breaking. Find out where her limits lay and take her to them and beyond. Just like BUD/S.
He straightened abruptly and a hot knife of pain shot through his knee. He clenched his jaw until the pain subsided to bearable. “You’ll be a no-shit SEAL when it’s said and done. Assuming you survive, of course. The Pacific Ocean may have sharks, but we’ve got gators out here. They’re a whole lot sneakier than sharks, and you can’t punch a gator on the nose and get him to back off. He’ll eat your arm if you try it.”
She turned her head to study him, and her silky ponytail fell over her shoulder in a dark cascade that begged his fingers to run through it. The look in her eyes was determined. Intent. Focused in like a laser. In that moment, she looked just like a SEAL…but with firm, round breasts trying to fall out of her skimpy tank top, a lush ass begging to be grabbed, and shapely legs a mile long.
Man, she was a looker. Even her muscular shoulders and the pronounced veins in her bare arms were hot. Everything about her spoke of strength, confidence, and badassery. But it was all wrapped up in a package so fucking sexy he could devour her like his steak earlier.
“Let’s get out of here,” he growled. “I still owe you a decent night’s sleep.” She was going to need it if he did his job right.
She was silent on the ride back to the motel, but her excitement was palpable. Perriman said she wanted this worse than most men who came through the SEAL pipeline. Ford wondered if it would be enough to see her all the way to the end. No matter how much he might personally want her to succeed, he owed her future teammates nothing less than the toughest training he could possibly put her through.
He just hoped his own body didn’t give out before it was all said and done. He figured it was a 50/50 proposition at best. His doctors had argued vehemently against him doing this. They had warned him that if he overdid it on this op, he would blow his knee out again, and this time for good. But he refused to sit down and be a cripple. He would go down fighting first.
They got back to the motel, and Trina bounced out of the Jeep before he could get around to her side of the vehicle to open the door. He had to smile a little at her enthusiasm. He recalled all too well his own elation when he found out he’d been selected for SEAL training all those years ago. Almost a decade, now. Christ, he’d been young and naïve back then. He’d seen a whole lifetime’s worth of action, since. Would she be this jaded a decade from now? Taciturn and tense, living life balanced on a razor’s edge?
He closed the motel room’s door and turned to face Trina, who was standing in the middle of his room, frowning. “Problem?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. There’s only one bed.”
“You afraid to share it with me?” he arched an eyebrow in open dare. “What are you going to do when you’re bivouacking with a team and all of you are crammed into a hide like sardines, spooning with each other?”
Her mint green eyes narrowed, catlike. “I’ve got no problem sleeping with you. The question is: are you okay sleeping with me?”
He snorted. “Honey, I’m not fifteen. I’ve got my hormones firmly under control, thank you very much.” Which might not be entirely true where she was concerned. However, if she was going to be a SEAL, she had to be ready to live and work in very close quarters with her male counterparts. Starting with him.
“Great,” she said cheerfully. “Then you won’t mind if I take my pants off. They’re still a little wet.”
Well, shit. Give the girl points for calling his bluff.
She kicked off her combat boots and stripped out of her fatigue pants right there in the middle of his room, revealing legs every bit as lean, muscular, and wrap-around-his-hips-and-hang-on sexy as he’d thought they would be. She was wearing black bikini underwear that stopped an inch short of the bottom of her olive green tank top. She looked like a freaking high fashion model standing there defiantly. His gaze traveled slowly and thoroughly down her body, taking in every detail of her. Jee. Zus. Christ. She was freaking perfection.
Okay, then. If that’s how she wanted to play it…he reached for the back of the neck of his t-shirt and hauled it off over his head. He unbuckled his belt and shoved his pants down as well. His spandex sports briefs didn’t do much to conceal his raging hard-on, but if she was going to play with the boys, she would just have to get used to their reaction to her.
“Shall we?” he said casually.
Her bravado seemed knocked back a few notches by his casual strip down. Good. She might as well learn early just what a bad idea it was to dare a SEAL to do anything. Filters were not part of the SEAL mentality.
He reached for the light switch on the wall behind him, and the room was abruptly swathed in darkness. Her silhouette slipped under the covers and the bed springs creaked under her weight.
He moved over to the bed, lifted the covers, and laid down beside her, an image of her partially naked body swimming in his mind’s eye. Hell’s bells, it was tempting to roll over and pull her against him. Her warmth radiated across the narrow strip of mattress separating them, along with simmering sexual tension.
It was a double bed, and neither of them were tiny people, which meant it was a damned tight fit. And he was not a dead man. No way could he miss the fact that she found him as attractive as he found her. Which was going to pose a massive problem on this op.
He was not a SEAL instructor
. As of now, he wasn’t even sure he was technically an active SEAL. He was just a guy asked by Commander Perriman to come out here with a girl and teach her what she needed to know to be a SEAL. There wasn’t any real reason they couldn’t sleep together, he supposed. Other than the fact that she was going to hate his guts within the next twenty-four hours or so. And if he did his job right, she would continue to hate his guts for some weeks to come.
The scent of her shampoo drifted across the narrow space between them. Or maybe that was just her body scent wafting to him. It was sweet and soft and caressed him like a lover’s hand, as seductive as hell. His hard-on raged even more insistently, and he clenched his teeth against its throbbing discomfort.
Trina lay stiff and silent beside him. Tense, too, huh? Was she as turned on as he was? Their shoulders bumped every time one of them shifted even the tiniest bit. This bed was entirely too small for the two of them.
Finally, in frustration, he muttered, “Turn on your side facing away from me.”
“Why?” she blurted.
“That was an order. Just do it,” he snapped.
She huffed and the mattress shifted beneath him. He rolled onto his side facing her and scooted forward until her warm, sexy body was tucked against his.
“What the hell are you doing?” she squawked.
“Getting comfortable so we can both sleep. Now you’ll know where I am, and you won’t lay there all night wondering if I’m going to jump your bones.” He tucked his knees against the backs of hers, threw his arm over the inward curve of her waist, and pulled her back against his front. They fit like they’d been custom-made for each other.
Damn, she felt great. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this with a woman. His hands ached to roam across her satin skin, to test her curves, to make her moan. He needed to lose himself in her body, to plunge into her mindlessly, to find bliss and then oblivion. His jaw clenched. It was a hell of a fight not to act on his craving, but he corralled his lust.
“Go to sleep,” he told her tightly.
By inches over the next few minutes, she gradually relaxed against him, which added a whole new set of temptations to his misery. He followed suit with great difficulty, forcing his breathing to go slow and deep, to make himself slide toward sleep. She felt like a slice of heaven in his arms, soft and warm and trusting. All the things his life was not.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept with a woman. Actually slept with one. Most of his interactions involved horny, half-drunk sex and him getting up and leaving the woman’s bed immediately after, before anything more could begin to develop. No attachments, no feelings. Just physical release. That was his mantra. But Trina Zarkos had already busted through that boundary with him. Big time.
He eventually surprised himself by drifting off to sleep, and for the first time in months, he dreamed without nightmares. Maybe it was the companionship, or maybe it was how damned delicious Trina felt in his arms. But he woke up a couple of times during the night, tensing in anticipation of flashbacks from the night he should have died—the mission he’d been damned lucky to be medevac’d away from with a destroyed leg and no future on the teams. But tonight, the memories never came calling.
Nothing came to him except the sweet smell and quiet breathing of the woman pressed tight against him, filling the darkness with comfort and lulling him back to sleep. Sonofagun. Who’d have guessed Trina in his bed was the cure to what ailed him?
Chapter Four
‡
Trina arched her body in a cat stretch, moaning a little in the back of her throat as a confident male hand cupped her breast, thumb stroking lazily across her straining nipple. A thigh was heavy across hers, pinning her in place, and a heavily muscled arm acted as a pillow under her left ear. The smell and feel of man and muscle surrounded her, cocooning her completely in security.
Protection. A completely foreign concept to her, especially coming from a man. Slaps and fists were her childhood fare from most men. Her whole life, she’d been responsible for taking care of herself. Seeing to her own safety. If she didn’t do it, no one else would. And yet, here was Ford, doing it unconsciously. As naturally as breathing.
She had never spent the night with a man before, and certainly not in a man’s arms. It was shockingly…nice. The intimacy of it was staggering. It was something she could definitely get addicted to.
Although, her decision to become a SEAL pretty much precluded her having a long-term relationship with any man where she got to do this on a regular basis. A pang of regret coursed through her. She really didn’t need to have glimpsed this other existence she might have had.
She could still have a life like this. A boyfriend or husband to sleep with every night and wake up to every morning. All she had to do was quit. Walk away from Ford and the SEALs. His job was to do everything in his power to make her go; he wouldn’t stop her if she decided she wanted this more than being a trained killer.
Safe. She felt totally safe. Her gut warned her that she wasn’t likely to feel this way again until she left the SEALs for good—either by choice or in a body bag.
Was a life of constant danger really what she wanted? It was all she had ever known growing up. But Ford had given her a glimpse of another world. Another way of life. She lay there, caught between sleep and wakefulness, contemplating the choice. All the while, the big strong warrior claimed his woman—
Whoa. Wait. What? She jolted the rest of the way to consciousness with a mental lurch. Holy crap. Ford was draped all over her, and she was practically purring and rubbing herself against him like a cat in heat.
Well, okay, then. Apparently their subconscious minds had no qualms about crawling all over each other. No matter that this man was about to be her trainer in a super-secret and super-intense program that didn’t officially exist. Which meant there would be no rules. No oversight. She had no illusions what his orders would be: make her into a SEAL or break her.
His thumb flicked across her nipple and she gasped in spite of herself. Liquid lust shot straight from his thumb to her crotch. She squeezed her thighs together tightly, but it didn’t help. Her core throbbed hungrily, desperate for this man. It had been way too long since she’d had sex. It didn’t help that she had utter faith he would know exactly how to scratch that particular itch.
She tried to move away from his hand subtly, without waking him. But the mattress was so narrow she had nowhere to go, and his arm tightened with easy strength, holding her snugly against him. Was he awake? Was this her first test?
Her eyes narrowed. She never had been the type to walk away from a challenge. She rolled over in his arms to face Ford and insinuated her thigh between his. The guy had an impressive erection. Not lacking in that department at all, she noted. She rested her palms on his chest, tracing the gorgeous collection of muscles there and letting her left hand drift around his narrow, muscular waist to his back. Her nose nestled against the junction of his neck and shoulder, the heat of the man furnace-like.
Abruptly, he was wide awake. He didn’t move in any way to indicate that he’d woken up. One minute he was relaxed, open against her, and the next she was clinging to a deadly predator thrumming with tension, prepared to pounce at any second and eat her alive.
Ford was so appealing to the eye that it was easy to forget just how dangerous a man he was. His pretty boy looks lulled a girl into a false sense of security. Memory of that cold, flat, killer’s calm in his eyes last night in the restaurant flashed into her head. She wasn’t just playing with fire, here. She was playing with a lit blowtorch.
“What are you doing, Zee?” he growled.
“Saying good morning,” she replied brightly.
“You do like to live dangerously, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?” she challenged.
And just like that, she was on her back, her legs pinned beneath his thighs, his body weight smashing her down into the cheap mattress, her hands yanked up over her head, her wrists cap
tured in an iron grip. He stared down at her from a range of about six inches. Their bodies fit together perfectly for sex. “Don’t tease me, little girl.”
Gulp. She scraped together all the false bravado she could muster and replied lightly, “I’m a lot of things, Ford, but a little girl is not one of them. I’m all the woman you can handle and more. You’ve never met anyone like me.”
She stared up at him bravely, although doubt over the wisdom of engaging in this little game of cat-and-mouse with a pissed off lion shivered down her spine.
One corner of his mouth turned up. Whether it was in amusement or disbelief, she couldn’t tell. He spoke with quiet certainty. “I guarantee you’ve never met a man like me. I’m going to warn you once, and once only. Don’t play games with me. You will lose.”
Yeah, but losing to him didn’t sound too bad at the moment, not with that massive erection pressing at the juncture of her thighs and his weight and strength making her feel sweetly overpowered all of a sudden.
He pressed up and away from her abruptly, leaving the bed shaking in his absence. The little voice in the back of her head swore angrily at her for letting him go, and she shamelessly watched him retreat into the bathroom. The man had an ass fully as sculpted and magnificent as the rest of him. Nope, her personal instructor was not hard on the eye. Not at all.
She bounded out of bed, feeling better than she expected. Maybe it was the adrenaline in anticipation of what was to come, or maybe it was last night’s protein bomb of steak and muscle relaxant of whiskey that had helped her muscles recover overnight.
Or maybe, a little voice in the back of her head whispered, it was sleeping in Ford’s arms that had her feeling so fantastic this morning. She told the voice to shut up and reached for her pants and combat boots.
“Hungry?” Ford bit out as she finished dressing.
“I know I’m never supposed to turn down an opportunity to eat, but I’m actually not hungry after that huge meal last night.”
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