Seduced

by Angel Payne

  Seduced

  Honor Bound: Book Three

  ANGEL PAYNE

  This book is an original publication of Angel Payne.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2017 Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Design by Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Photographs: Shutterstock

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  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For Thomas…for always

  * * *

  And special thanks to…

  Charlie and Matt—I love both of you so much, as well as the beautiful love you share.And to Hudsy—for being my first guide and friend down the rabbit hole. You truly have no idea how much it has meant.

  * * *

  To every single man and woman selflessly serving in our nation’s military—

  Profound and deep thanks for your service!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty–One

  Chapter Twenty–Two

  Chapter Twenty–Three

  Chapter Twenty–Four

  Chapter Twenty–Five

  Continue the Honor Bound Series with Book Four

  Excerpt from Wild: Honor Bound Book Four

  Also by Angel Payne

  Acknowledgments

  About Angel Payne

  Chapter One

  “Is this a dream?”

  The words were whispered into Ethan Archer’s ear by the forest goddess he was seconds away from kissing. Corny comparison? Roger that. Completely true? Double affirmative. She was mesmerizing. Thick mist rolled around the pine tree to which he’d pressed her, stroking the waves of her auburn hair, leaving droplets on the long lashes bordering her indigo eyes, caressing every inch of light-bronze skin the cowl of her sweater would allow. Lucky bastard, that mist.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” he murmured. “Maybe we’d better do some recon, just to be sure.”

  “Yeah. Recon…”

  Her voice trailed away into a needy sigh, suffusing his chest with warmth and his cock with fire, as they leaned toward each other. He caught the end of her breath with a brush of his mouth to hers.

  His gentle intent lasted two seconds.

  The second he tasted her, he needed more. Strawberries. Mango. Sunshine. Sudden summer in this chilled bower. Fuck, yes. He used his lips to spread her, demanding deeper entrance. When she yielded with an eager mewl, he swept in, coaxing her tongue into a sensual dance. By raw instinct, he found both her wrists with his hands. With one sweep, he had them locked over her head against the tree’s trunk.

  He pulled away to lock his gaze on her. “My dream includes this,” he growled.

  A slow smile curled on her lips. “Mine too.”

  “That’s not what your eyes are telling me, sunshine.”

  Her lashes flew wider, exposing those indigo depths even more. “Wh-What do you—”

  “What is it? What are you holding back? Tell me now.”

  “I…umm…”

  “What?” he demanded.

  “Tighter,” she finally rasped, working her wrists against his grip. “I need it tighter, Ethan. Please…”

  She had him at the throaty delivery and the subtle Spanish accent, but the request itself ignited his lust from a spark to a rager. With a snarl, he rammed her wrists harder to the tree. With a gasp, she gave him the full-access pass to kiss her again. Forget sweet preludes. He went to the depths of her mouth with passionate intent, spearing her throat just like he yearned to get his dick, now aching to the point of pain, inside her body.

  A set of words echoed in his brain. They’d come from his Army Special Forces teammate, Garrett Hawkins, as glasses were raised to toast the guy’s upcoming wedding.

  Fate gives you the best shit when you least expect it, guys.

  Ethan was way on board with that credo now. When he’d shown up to help with Hawk’s last-minute ceremony, none of his wildest expectations had yielded someone like Ava Chestain, especially after he introduced himself by tackling her in Garrett’s living room in a misguided rush of paranoia.

  When she’d grinned and joined the banter in teasing him about the incident, he’d been intrigued. When she’d agreed to join him on a hunt through the woods for the bridal bouquet flowers, he’d been encouraged. When she’d given him that beautifully submissive whisper, he was a fucking goner. Just like that, a piece of his spirit plunked out into her gorgeous little palm—

  And had remained there for the last seven months.

  “Shit.”

  The self-directed oath blasted him out of the memory like an air horn. In an instant, he opened his eyes to the current suckage that was his life. The mist, the trees, and the once-upon-a-time forest were gone, leaving a Mexican desert sunset that matched the battlefield in his head. Orange, red, and yellow shot at each other past billowing cloud boulders. It was over thirty-eight degrees Celsius, which sounded a lot better than a hundred Fahrenheit. It was well over that inside his boots and BDUs.

  He slumped against one of the unit’s mud-caked Hummers.

  Every minute of the last seven months suddenly weighed on him like lead.

  Could it be because you’ve fixated too many times on that kiss, dumbass, and not enough on what came after it?

  Oh, yeah. All that. Never mind that thanks to the criminal who crashed the wedding, he’d ended that day in battle gear and a debriefing instead of in his dress blues, hogging every dance with her. And the rest, what came after? He forced himself to remember that too. The phone calls she never picked up. The texts she never answered. Even the acknowledgment that never came after he sent her a goddamn florist’s shop worth of birthday flowers.

  “Fuck.”

  He muttered it before dropping his head between his shoulders. A glance in the Hum’s rearview showed that he looked as defeated as he felt. Dust had transformed his nearly black hair into a weird blond. His blue eyes were bloodshot. His lips were as dry as a concrete gargoyle’s.

  He was tempted to laugh. If only all those talent scouts and modeling agents, always ready with their business cards and glam offers, could see him now. Because the best hunk of the minute was the guy covered in five inches of dirt, ten inches of rage, and fifteen inches of what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-with-myself, right?

  Behind him, the creak of a rusty door sliced the air. The shack to which the portal belonged nearly collapsed from the movement, a strangely appropriate symbol of the interrogation that had taken place inside. Ethan grimaced. Nothing like the sound of a grown man’s sobs to kill the lure of humor, appetite, or any hope of forgetting about the head fuck he’d just performed o
n the poor shithead.

  “Bernardo, it’s been a pleasure.” Every word was dipped in Rhett Lange’s mix of highbrow London and cocky New York. Ethan almost expected the man to whip out a party bag stuffed with plastic favors but knew better. A month back, Rhett had used the same tone before filleting a double agent’s gut.

  “Chupa mi pito, Captain America,” wailed the guy who stumbled from the shack behind Rhett. His wrists were still secured behind his back with plastic cuffs. When he lifted his tear-streaked face and noticed Ethan, he shuddered and cried harder. “You too, culero. You and your devil word tricks. I curse you to the bowels of the hell you came from!”

  Ethan parked his ass against the Hummer’s front tire and, with a shitload of weariness, mumbled, “Bernardo, my man, you may be on to something there.”

  Pounding footfalls yanked his head up. The stomps also came from the shack, making the thing look like the San Andreas Fault was opening beneath it, as a third man emerged. Daniel Colton, whom they’d nicknamed CIA Ken in honor of his flawless haircut, ducked to avoid whacking his trademark locks on the shack’s awning before strolling free, thumbs hooked into his Dragon Skin vest, a chortle on his lips. “‘Devil word tricks’? ‘Bowels of hell’? Been catching up on your comic books between those heroin runs into California, Señor Galvaz?”

  “Screw you, Colton. And your puta mother. And your whore of a sister.”

  “My mama’s baking bread with the angels, muchas gracias for your concern. But I’ll thank you right now to refrain from the sister references, amigo. They’re not gentlemanly. Or wise.”

  Bernardo glowered. “Or what? You gonna come after me, big bad spy man?”

  Colton let out a low growl. “She’ll come after you, little narco.”

  “Bah. Just keep centerfold boy away from me.”

  Ethan kept his stare locked on the ground. The heroin dealer had laughingly given him the nickname when they’d started the interrogation this morning, and nobody had suggested a revision. The call was correct. When a prisoner thought he was nothing more than a set of dreamy blues, some lucky bone structure, and a well-worked pair of biceps, it made his mental scalpel that much easier to use. Less painful for everyone concerned.

  And then there were the exceptions—like Bernardo. Guys who resisted every cut, making his job a sheer hell. He’d had to slice deep today, digging into emotional marrow he hadn’t expected. By the time the dealer had finally spilled, weeping his way through the details they had needed to stop the truckload of heroin and illegal guns bound for the States tonight, Ethan had staggered to the shack’s sink and scrubbed himself from fingertips to elbows. Not that it helped. You didn’t wash the dirt of a man’s soul off your own with rusty water. You barely did it with holy water. He should know. He’d tried.

  Are you seriously pulling a pity party about this, dickface? You were the one who joined this machine to feel more valuable and connected to the world, remember? To feel like you mattered beyond your pretty face and your prettier checkbook, right?

  Guess he’d just stepped into a pile of the world’s biggest lesson-learned-the-hard-way. Careful what you wish for, shit-for-brains.

  Colton’s harsh pfft broke into his funk. “Damn, Galvaz. Why’re you still all Bambi tears on me? We haven’t touched a hair on your head, man. What the fuck?”

  His pragmatic tone matched the gray matter under the government haircut. As spooks went, Colton was one of the better ones. He’d wisely listened to the advice of his peers—let Archer do his prisoner whisperer thing and then stand back and reap the benefits—and now his cocky swagger emulated his triumph in the decision. “It’s time for you to grow a pair, man. You only have a few tiny scratches from where we cuffed you. Keep your wrists covered for a few days and nobody’s going to suspect you’re the one who surrendered the playbook on this shit for tonight. If it makes you feel any better, you saved some lives. Even without the smack on the truck, you know the family who paid the cartel to be hidden in the back would’ve never seen San Diego alive.”

  “Save your emo act for a fourteen-year-old who cares, cabron.”

  Dan’s answer to that was a soft thwick, the ejection of his pocketknife blade. “I’m cutting you out of these now, Galvaz, but try anything weird and we’ll toss you right out of the transport. If you survive that part, you can play man against nature, Sonoran Desert style. Glad to see you don’t like that option, because I sure as hell don’t. Your return to the Aragon Cartel is of much better use. You’re clear on that? Sí, amigo? You get back in there and stay alert. We may be coming by for a play date with you again soon.”

  Bernardo took advantage of his physical freedom to wipe the tear-streaked grime off his face with his forearm. “If you bring the centerfold bitch again, you can eat my shit. And I expect to be paid next time, spy man.”

  Colton rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure you’re square with how this whole thing works, amigo.”

  “Oh, I am ‘square,’ chingado. Make sure your palms are growing lettuce next time, or stay home and let them whack you off to videos of your sister.”

  “Hell,” Ethan spat. He pushed off the tire, expecting to pull Dan’s fist out of Galvaz’s face any second. But again, CIA man impressed him. Though Colton’s chiseled features went tight as stone, all he did was swing his weary gaze back toward Ethan, like they wrangled an obstinate teen together.

  Ethan shrugged during his approach back to the shack’s porch. What mental poker would be the best to shove back up Bernardo’s ass? He had a lot to pick from. A childhood of abuse and poverty. Teenage days capped by being blackmailed to make his first drug run, followed by getting tossed out by his grandmother when she’d learned of his involvement with the cartels. The girlfriend who left him when she discovered the same thing. Terrifying, what the mind believed once the heart lost its trust.

  Silver lining? Galvaz was trying to do the right thing now. Too bad the dickwad was being a snot about the process, including the dramatic sob as Ethan got near. “Get away from me!”

  Ethan turned up his hands. “Shit, ’Nardo. You need to chill.”

  “Don’t come another step closer!”

  “Not a problem.” He let his left eyebrow kick up. “As long as you treat my associates with better respect.” Squaring his stance sent up a small cloud of dust. “To be clear, that’s an ongoing request. If I hear otherwise, I’ll be happy to hop back on the helo and come for another visit. They know how to reach me real quick.”

  “Fine. Fine.” Bernardo’s lips trembled as he inched a step backward. “Just stay the fuck out of my head. And watch out for my family. You promised you would.”

  “That we did.” He exchanged an affirming glance with Colton. “And that we will.”

  “You fuck me over on that, centerfold boy, and I’ll be up inside your head—with the barrel of my pistol.”

  The guy stalked away. Colton and Rhett grabbed him by the elbows and walked him toward the dry riverbed serving as their helipad. Soon a Black Hawk helo hovered into view, though the modified bird made as much noise as a pinwheel, allowing Dan and Rhett to exchange a hearty handshake and promises that they’d get together when Dan made his way through Seattle, where their battalion was based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Colton tossed a wave to Ethan as well before joining more government Ken dolls aboard the helo, who’d already latched Galvaz in.

  As the Black Hawk arced away into the sky, Rhett strolled back at a pace that suggested he was about to strip down to a Savile Row suit and whip out a perfect martini. Once they stood together again, he gave Ethan a solid clap on the shoulder. “You,” he uttered, “are a bloody god.”

  Ethan feigned swatting at a fly to break the contact. Damn, he craved a shower. “And you’re full of shit.”

  He went back into the shack. Wrong move. Bernardo’s tears, sweat, and resistance clung to the air, uploading every hellacious minute of the day back into his mind. Rhett followed him in and started packing the recording equipment from the interroga
tion, which had fed all the data straight to the big heads at Special Ops Command. By now they were scrambling a team to seize that truck as soon as it crossed the border tonight at the time Bernardo had just supplied to them.

  “You want to vent?” Rhett ventured.

  “No.”

  “All right. Rephrase. You need to vent. So let it rip, asshat.”

  He sucked in a hard breath. Shot up half a sardonic smirk. “Seriously? You pulling rank on me, old man?” Rhett had three ranks and two years on him, though the difference was always used by either of them as a joke more than an operating procedure. He really hoped the guy didn’t start that bullshit now.

  “I’m pulling concerned buddy on you and nothing else.” Rhett stilled halfway through closing the camera bag. “Look, mate…you were amazing this afternoon. You know all the work that brought us here. Two teams, three continents, and twice that many countries. You may not be digging lead out of your hide, but everyone knows what you did for the cause. You swam into the psychological thick of it with Galvaz so we’d get one step closer to the Aragons and hopefully to the bigger strings of this thing in Afghanistan and Somalia.”

  “Hurray, team.” He swirled a finger in the air. And yeah, he probably should’ve said more after that, pulled out maybe one more stupid one-liner to reassure Rhett this wasn’t the first time he’d been through this. It would’ve diverted the guy from guessing at the sick truth: that his sole attempt at the “venting” thing had nearly caused the brain bashers at Mental Health Services to slam a temporary disability card on his ass. Not going to happen, assholes. He hadn’t defied his parents and given up a cushy ride to college with the promise of a Silicon Valley corner office to be told his head was too fucked up for living his dream. At the moment, he just needed to scrub it out a little. Some bleach, wax stripper, maybe a few lye pellets, and he’d been right as fucking rain.