Seduced

by Angel Payne

  “Now, sunshine. Now!”

  His demand, coarse with control but silken with seduction, spoke to every drop of blood in her body. The walls of her control toppled, the shreds of her reserve were gone. Her pussy was flooded by a second wave of scalding sensation. Her scream of release tangled with Ethan’s harsh groan. Deep inside, she felt his cock pulse over and over again.

  They rocked against each other for long, lingering minutes, heartbeats hammering at each other through their pressed bodies. With a heavy sigh, Ethan finally rose, peeled the condom off, yanked a sommelier’s wipe off the roll on the marble tasting table, and then tossed them both into the trash.

  As she rose and walked toward her clothes on wobbly legs, Ava tossed him a wry laugh. “Guess that was a damn good vintage, right?”

  He didn’t take her up on the joke. Instead, he caught her around the waist, his bicep tightening to hold her back. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She pushed away. “Getting back to work.”

  She winced, instantly regretting the glacier she tossed in the wake of his sexual tsunami. With a guilty pout, she turned back and pulled his head down for a tender kiss. The move delivered on the payback. His hair, short yet so thick, felt wonderful between her fingers. “Thanks for the concern. I just don’t require huge cuddle time, okay?”

  Ethan unleashed a full glare. “The fuck you don’t.” Beneath his breath, way beneath, she heard him add, “The fuck I don’t.”

  It was a ripe opportunity for another teasing giggle. Instead, as Ava bent to retrieve her bra, the heavy sting of tears assaulted. She froze, horrified by why her emotions ratted her out like this but achingly clear about their reasoning too. She’d had a glimpse of heaven, and it had been good. Really good. Everything, everything, she’d ever longed to share with a truly dominant man. This one was so good at the helm, he’d commanded her into an orgasm damn near with his words alone.

  But it was done now. The sole bite of Ethan Archer decadence had passed her lips. She had to put the fork down and be thankful for what she had enjoyed. If you indulge any more, you’ll be puking by tomorrow morning.

  It might be too late for nausea anyway. She let out a sniff as the conclusion pummeled her full force.

  “Ava.”

  His orgasm hadn’t erased an inch of his Dom streak, reinforcing both his voice and touch as he cupped her shoulders from behind. Shit. Didn’t he understand that only made this worse? Couldn’t he get the message that she couldn’t do this stuff? The hardcore “lifestylers” even had a name for it, didn’t they? “Aftercare.” Right. Not happening. If it did, he’d aftercare her into a gigantic ball of needing him again. Yearning for him. Wanting him like a gooey, fresh honeycomb, complete with all the little buzzing buggers who’d created it, without an epi pen to be had for miles. It would kill her.

  “Ava.”

  And yet she allowed him to curl her back against his chest, engulfing her in his hard, wonderful warmth.

  Ohhhh, no.

  She lost the battle against breathing him in. Her senses filled with his scent, a mix of leather and sex…and her. His deep breath conveyed it wasn’t just her smell he’d taken in. His embrace alone—capped by him tangling one hand in her hair—told her he considered this just the beginning.

  The beginning. She laughed at the words through her tears. The beginning of what? Of giving her heart to this knight in camouflage, letting him ride off into battle with her favors tied to his “lance” of an M4, only to wait for the day when there was a knock on the door and the notifications officer stood there with the stare that meant only one thing? Or maybe it was the phone that rang and it was camo knight himself, calling drunk from Vegas to tell her he’d found the “soul mate” she’d never been and had just decided to marry the woman?

  Those were just the scenarios life had punched her with firsthand. There were thousands more. So many more ways to define how she could make the mistake of falling for a too-good-to-be-true military man again.

  She pushed away from him again. Wrapped her arms around herself. “What?”

  Lovely. She’d traded one-liners with TV stars, rock idols, and even Prince Harry during his set visit, and the best she could do was a tearful what?

  Ethan clearly agreed. His eyes darkened to the color of midnight. “What? Is that really where you’re taking this now?”

  He spread his arms, making a damn good case why Michelangelo got it wrong with the original model for David. Ava forced herself to look away from his naked beauty, now matched in intensity by his frustration.

  “I’m sorry,” she rasped. “It’s…PMS, okay?” Good save. That one always worked. Guys pretty much started for the exits once that three-letter card got played. “I’ll be fine in a few—”

  “Bullshit.”

  She lifted a glare. “Excuse me?”

  “You know what I said. But just so we’re clear, I call bullshit.” He shifted closer by a steady, noiseless step. Another. He didn’t try to hold her again, though the proximity of his body, with the bottom of his rib cage hitting her elbows, had her again feeling swallowed by the force of his focus and the power in his stance.

  She wetted her lips in lieu of backing up. “Ethan, I don’t think now is the right time—”

  “Now is the perfect time. I’ve waited seven damn months for now.” He took her bra from her and tossed it onto the tasting counter in one motion, and in the next, swept an arm around so he could brace her jaw, forcing her face up. “And something tells me you have too.”

  He emphasized his meaning by brushing her tears with the tips of his fingers. Like his voice, the sweeps were soft but ambitious…emotional ninjas. She had to fight back. She had no choice, despite the sorrow that still welled and the tears that still came.

  “It was worth the wait,” she finally murmured. She tried lightening the air with another laugh but gave up when his face didn’t change by one solemn inch. “It was amazing, Ethan. But you…you’re…and this…”

  “Is pretty fucking awesome.” Despite the earnest words, his features steeled. “You going to squirm away from that one too, sunshine? Go ahead. I’ve got the juice to go a hundred rounds with you on why I’m right.” His mouth quirked in humorless triumph. “But something tells me you’d be lucky to last three.”

  “Something tells me that’s pretty accurate.” She gazed up at him, smiling softly with the confession. “Fucking awesome is a pretty good way of putting it. I don’t think I’ll look at that couch the same way again.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing.”

  “I’m making it sound like a real thing,” she clarified. “Ethan, look—”

  He shifted his thumbs to lock on top of her mouth. “You want to know about real?” he growled. “Fine.” For the first time, he dipped his gaze—making her know, with better-than-high-def clarity, that she was really in trouble now. “Real is what I felt, for the first time in a long time, the moment you smiled at me from Sage and Garrett’s living room floor. Real was the way my spirit got zapped when my lips met yours in the forest the next day. Real was the thing my life missed for seven fucking months before I saw you again on the soundstage today. Real is this, Ava. It’s rare. A treasure that’s been given to us. We should—”

  “Whoa.” She finally jerked from his hold. “Okay, stop. Just stop.” Stop before I break every promise I’ve made to myself over the last three years and let you shred my soul into pulp for your nobility smoothie. “A treasure? Don’t you mean your treasure? The kill you chased and finally shot down?”

  It was brutal. She knew it. Ethan’s face reflected it. His lips twisted as if he were nauseated. “Is that what you think? That you were some kind of conquest for me?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  His jaw went the texture of steel. Ava bunched her hands into fists in order to control herself from negating him, from running back into his arms and blubbering that of course that wasn’t what she thought. That in the first second of his hold
on her in the prop room, she’d felt the agony of every moment he’d waited to see her again and the torture of plodding through life without knowing he ever would.

  Treasure. He had to have found the perfect word for it, hadn’t he?

  But sometimes treasure was cursed. Especially if the wrong person found it. Especially if they weren’t the one meant to have it. The treasure always knew that part, didn’t it? And then it turned to dust.

  With a heavy gulp, she pivoted and picked up her bra.

  “I have to get back to work.” She deliberately picked panties and slacks next. That made it easier to keep her gaze down, away from where he’d be able to see it. To probe her in that way where he could read her thoughts in 3D. Her thoughts weren’t his business now. And her heart sure as hell wasn’t his “treasure.”

  He finally moved. The very air seemed to shift around him as he did, like afterburn of his ire. With two violent sweeps, he scooped his own stuff off the floor but made no move to get redressed. “Fine,” he spat, “but this is far from over, Ava.”

  She didn’t give him a response. Oh, she had one, but the chasm between thinking it and saying it was unbridgeable—and painful. As she jammed her top back over her head and picked up her boots, that didn’t stop the retort from blasting open a few tormenting holes inside her head.

  The hell it isn’t, Sergeant Archer. The hell it isn’t.

  Chapter Seven

  Ethan had only steadily dated one woman in the four years since breaking up with Bella. Fallon was an airline flight attendant who didn’t just understand his insane life but often had a wackier one. As luck had it, her routes often landed her close to him if the team was forward deployed to a major city, making conditions ideal for enjoying each other’s humor, fondness for foreign food, and passion for hotels with four-poster beds and thick walls.

  Though Fallon topped too damn much from the bottom to be his longtime submissive, Ethan never sidestepped her aftercare. Yeah, including the cuddling. Letting Fallon watch Sex and the City reruns always assured he’d get to shower her with more than ten minutes of it, too. He even tried to understand the show, though that cartridge never clicked in his chamber. Did women actually talk like that? Did women actually dress like that? And his gut clenched at watching the scenes where the women sneaked away in the morning light, in such a hurry to get home and regret what they’d done that they couldn’t bother to put on their shoes.

  Ava left the wine room without putting on her shoes.

  Even through a wardrobe change, exchanging her work jeans and blouse for a classic black sundress with a matching bikini underneath, the shoes were neglected. He knew it because he kept track with a stare that was likely a cross between an evil eye and a fuck-off glower. And he knew that because everyone made distinct efforts to steer clear of him.

  Normally, that would be okay. After so many years of being put on display at Mom and Dad’s soirees, paraded into jokes about early marriage offers to someone’s sweet Diana or Lizbet or MarySue, he valued his solitude at things like this. But tonight was different. Tonight, he wanted to be in the middle of the room. Right next to Ava. Telling her to put her damn shoes on and stop looking like she’d killed someone this afternoon, instead of making him the most fulfilled man on earth.

  All right, so Bella lived on the beach. And once she and the guys arrived for the party, swimsuits and cocktails made shoes an afterthought for everyone. Not the thought to make him ease on the demonic stare. He wasn’t going to settle for hopping back into Ava’s “afterthoughts” basket, a truth that would start with making the woman talk to him about the real reason behind her cut-and-run this afternoon.

  From what he could see, a palm tree would work as well as a pine for pin-down purposes. After that, it was just a matter of creatively guiding the conversation. Thanks to his hook-up with Bernardo Galvaz three days ago, he was scalpel-sharp on that skill too.

  All he had to do was wait.

  Just a few minutes longer…

  He’d watched her carefully from the juncture of the terrace to the living room. He was dry, having gotten into his trunks but too tense for a dunk with the guys. Her swim outfit went unused too since she hadn’t ventured past the terrace herself while handling the party logistics. About a half hour ago, she’d stopped for a plate of food plus a glass of white wine and a bottle of water for balance. She was breaking into the second water now because Tait had dared her to a spicy-shrimp-eating contest. The result ended in a tie, but her cheeks were adorably red and her eyes watered as she chugged half the bottle. A trip to the bathroom for relief wasn’t long off.

  “Two minutes tops,” he muttered to himself.

  She barely lasted one.

  The second Ava turned from Tait, who now had ten shrimp tails on his fingers and choreographed them to an off-key version of the latest Lady Gaga hit, Ethan was ready. As he expected, she headed for the palace-sized bathroom off the living room’s upper landing. Perfect. He moved as well, starting down the terrace in a deceptively calm stride. She glanced at his new course—part of her I’m-avoiding-you-but-tracking-your-every-move thing with him now—but the glass between them did its job. After she realized he was outside, her stride visibly relaxed.

  As she closed the bathroom door, she had no idea he’d be past the slider on the far end of the terrace, through the den beyond that, and on the landing waiting after she’d washed up with Bella’s gold-flecked hand soap.

  But as they often said on the team, a funny thing happened on the way to the ambush.

  Clearing the terrace was an effortless hump. The glitch came once he hit the den—and found the room occupied. Sage Hawkins and Rayna Chestain were relaxing on the plush furniture, looking like new recruits to host one of those midmorning girlie chat shows. Their giggles had a naughty bite, as if they were discussing trendy sex positions or new condom flavors. But for all he knew, the subject could’ve been repurposing dryer lint into Christmas ornaments. Didn’t matter much. They hushed the second he entered. A second later, the edge in Rayna’s laugh climbed into her gaze, gaining a determined light.

  Hell. Maybe this was more than a glitch.

  “Ladies.” He nodded and attempted a cordial smile. “Good evening.”

  “Well, hi there, Sergeant Archer.” Sage lifted a hand off her rounded stomach to wave. “Damn. It still feels good to say that.”

  “Ethan.” Rayna issued it with a little more purpose. “You’re just the guy I was hoping to see.”

  Way more than a glitch.

  Shit.

  He spread his hands. “Ah, well…here I am. Now you see me”—he started toward the door—“and now you won’t. Sorry I interr—”

  “You’re not interrupting. We were just catching up. We have lots of time to chat again tomorrow.” Rayna shot one of those glances at Sage, comprehensible only if someone had matching chromosomes. “Can’t we, sweetie?”

  “Damn straight.” Sage nodded and started scooting off the couch. “Best that I go check in with Sergeant Hawkins anyhow before he gets paranoid and sends a drone to scout for Little Hawk and me.”

  Ethan offered his arm so Sage could rise all the way up. After he helped her toward the door, Rayna motioned for him to shut the door. “You want to sit down?” she asked as he walked past a flat screen and sound system that practically begged for his drool.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Rayna answered the smirk he gave it with a little laugh as he lowered into a leather easy chair. If he wasn’t so sure what was coming next, he’d groan his thanks to the thing for making butter-soft love to his ass, but Rayna was the closest person on earth to Ava, and her scrutiny told him she wasn’t here to banter about the genius of Bella’s interior designer. Realigning his features into a determined stare, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He was ready for this conversation. Had been ready for seven months. Let it rip, woman.

  “So, hey, Runway.” Her bright tone was a sham, and they both knew it. “Did you and my cousin hav
e a fun time this afternoon?”

  He let half his smile linger, enough to tell her he’d clearly understood her meaning behind “fun.” Since he hadn’t noticed Ava exchanging more than a fast hug or two with Rayna tonight, he also assumed the query was an informational fishing expedition.

  “Ava worked,” he said. “I helped.” He purposely didn’t put anything on the hook but that. If Rayna wanted to make this the share-and-care hour, that was fine, but she’d be the one sharing. He had the caring part covered. After this afternoon, more than he wanted to admit.

  “Hmm.” Rayna tilted her head, her dark-green eyes probing toward him, her dark-red hair falling over the shoulder of her swimsuit cover thing. “She works hard.”

  “Yeah, she does.”

  “Nothing got handed to her on a platter. The career she has is all because of her efforts. And it’s important to her.”

  The talk show banter had progressively vanished from her voice. Though its newest inflections of accusation were slight, Ethan combined them with the woman’s battle-ready body angle and chose to speak his impression out loud.

  “Is this where we cut through the bullshit, Rayna?” He squared his shoulders. “Because I’m ready if you are.”

  The woman’s lips lifted. Her pose straightened. He’d expected as much. The collar at her neck declared she was Zeke Hayes’s sole submissive, a distinction requiring a woman of guts, fortitude, and brutal honesty. His statement conveyed he respected her for all that and more.

  “Fine.” The word was snippy, but her tone was warm. “It was clear to me, after I caught you with my cousin on Sage and Garrett’s wedding day, that washing Ava’s lipstick off your face wasn’t going to get her off your mind.”