Seduced

by Angel Payne

He hated this. Dancing on the line between truth and fiction…this wasn’t how he did things. He was called in when the op called for someone to dig at the reality, uncover the facts. Bending them made him feel like a wolf in a bad sheep fleece. Sure, he’d pulled on the wool before, just never after one of the lambs had let him strip her, dominate her, and bury himself inside her until reaching one of the best climaxes of his life. Just the recall of it tempted him to pull the window shades, lock the door, and take her all over again, spread-eagle under him on one of these desks…

  Fuck. That stick had better turn up soon.

  Dwelling on that mirage wasn’t doing squat to help him right now. C’mon, asshole, you do remember at least a few things about the art of tact, right?

  “Okay, so her communication style is…unique.”

  “You didn’t seem to be minding ‘unique.’”

  Ava deliberately dropped her gaze to his crotch. Crazily, he opened his stance, letting her look her fill of the engorged space between his thighs. The flush that filled her beautiful cheeks turned the moment into agony, every inch of his dick on fire, every drop of come in his balls boiling, but he didn’t waver as he summoned the strength for a reply.

  “I’m a man, Ava. Biologically, I responded to her—after she rubbed and stroked and dry-humped me for close to an hour. You’ve done this inside of twenty seconds with your eyes alone.”

  She didn’t say anything to that. But her silence, tremulous and thick, was three times worse. She wrapped arms around herself and rasped, “Is that supposed to make everything okay?”

  He looked to the floor. And was pretty sure he saw most of his gut mixed with the grime between a couple of loose floor tiles. “I can’t tell you what’s okay and what’s not.”

  “Really? You had no trouble doing exactly that last night.” She sniffed and there was no mistaking why. The sob that followed overlaid her next words. “And I thanked you for it. Dios mio, I adored you for it.” She shot out of the chair and paced to the kitchenette. “Qué tonta eres. I’m such an idiot. Zoe was right, wasn’t she?”

  He moved toward her in a couple of silent steps. “Zoe?”

  She started. His new proximity took her by surprise. Good. That was his intent. Keeping her off guard would keep her truthful. He didn’t expect her to spill anything on Lemare, believing every instinct he had that she was ignorant of his Lor side, but maybe this was his way of getting all the way inside her emotional window and gaining her trust despite everything he had to hide from her right now.

  “My sister,” she explained, bracing hands on both sides of the little sink. “She called this morning before I came to work. I told her about you.” Bitterness stamped her conclusion. “She wasn’t happy.”

  “Because my carpool van is a Black Hawk and my negotiation suit is a set of BDUs.”

  She sliced another glare over her shoulder at him. He was used to getting such a look, that mixture of how did he know and thank God he knows. “A little bird named Rayna talked, huh?” Her fingers pressed against the counter, betraying how she intended to deal with her cousin about it.

  “She was only trying to help,” he contended. “Just like Zoe.” One more step brought him to the kitchenette as well. As much as he ached to pull her close, breaching her personal space would shatter both their composures, so he maintained a stance against the other end of the counter. “I was starting to snap it together for myself anyhow.”

  That got him a longer look. It came attached with a wince. “You snap too much,” she whispered.

  He threw back a gentle smile. “Hazard of the job, sunshine.”

  The wince crumpled into another sob. “Don’t pull out ‘sunshine’ on me right now. Don’t you dare.”

  He held up a hand. “Fair enough. As long as you help me in return.”

  She only answered by rolling her eyes before shoving away from the counter. How was it that on any other subbie, that shit reeked of gum-smacking twelve-year-old, but on her it was a gorgeous invitation to harness her sass with the power of his tongue—or any other means necessary?

  He gritted back the arousal to focus on her more carefully. She trembled from head to toe as she walked to the opposite side of a small round conference table. Yeah, she was still pissed, but a new epiphany hit as he studied her. Witnessing the new “closeness” between Bella and him didn’t comprise all of her anguish. That had only hit the start trigger. If his intuition was running true, and there were few occasions when it wasn’t, her torment was tied directly to his presence itself, to the fact that he still stood here at all.

  In his dress blues.

  Smacking her in the face with memories. Painful ones. Likely the stuff that Rayna was going to tell him last night before Colton and his team put their unique dent into things.

  What the fuck had happened to her?

  Half hating himself for the move, he pulled one of the chairs at the table and lowered into it. Yes, he knew the impact of what he was doing. Visually, it made him submissive to her. He emphasized the impact by opening his arms and laying them flat on the table. “Pretend I’m Rayna and Zoe too. Pretend I just want to help. Help me understand, Ava. Talk to me.”

  Silence fell. Outside, a truck beeped as it was thrown into reverse. A costume rack squeaked by. Leaves skittered in the wind. Hollywood clamored on. The world spun.

  The woman who plummeted into the chair next to him didn’t care. One look at her face, contorted in her misery, told him why. Her mind wasn’t here anymore. It was in the past, facing the heartbreak that waited for her there.

  He ordered his arms to stay where they were. Grabbing her and holding her isn’t going to help her through this. You can’t help her climb a mountain if she’s on your back.

  After several long minutes, she spoke.

  “I had a few boyfriends from the base when I was very young.” Her voice was a wobbly rasp. “They were fun, but it always ended once a long deployment came up or a girl came along who wanted to hitch up, get a little house, and start having babies and swing sets.” A little smile twitched her lips. “I wasn’t the girl who wanted all that. My mamá—my mom—died when I was nine, and watching what my dad went through, to say goodbye to her…it broke my heart too. It broke me in some ways, I guess. Crazy, huh? One day you’re a kid who cares about nothing except the next school dance. The next you’re wondering if your dad will ever smile again. And it wasn’t Papí’s fault. Things just get…broken. And so do people, right?”

  Ethan wasn’t sure if she wanted an answer or not. He chose silence. These were strange waters for him. Listening to people, even the things they showed instead of spoke, was part of his job, natural as breathing, because he was always behind a window of his own. But that neutrality didn’t exist now. He felt the ache in each of her softly accented syllables. Burned with the sadness that clung to the indigo depths of her eyes.

  “Oh God,” she finally murmured. “Why am I telling you any of this?” She shook her head, pulling nervously at her hair. “You have to get to some meeting, right?”

  “It can wait.” Until next year if it had to. Especially because his instinct didn’t want to shut up now. Despite that, he dreaded giving voice to it. “So who was it that didn’t make you feel broken anymore? Colin or Flynn?”

  Her head yanked up. Across her face, a race of emotions took place. First she gazed at him in fear. Hot on its heels was amazement. Then trepidation again. “How the hell do you know—” She visibly hauled back her thoughts from that gallop and confessed, “Colin. It was Colin.”

  He was a little surprised to watch a soft smile tug at her mouth. Surprised and jealous. Tying back both the useless sentiments, he ventured, “He was from the base?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She lowered a hand and scooted it toward his. As she curled their index fingers together, she went on, “I’d never met anyone like him. He was like a rock star with a yut-cut. Bigger than life, so cocky and silly… He made me forget I’d ever been sad in my life. I think I fell in love wi
th him inside a week. The day before he shipped out to Kirkuk, he proposed. We didn’t have time to go find a ring, so he made me one out of some wire and pieces of a seashell we’d found on Alki Beach. He told me—”

  She stopped herself with a hard swallow.

  Ethan’s chest clenched. “It’s okay.” He added the rest of his hand to their clasp. “Ava, you don’t have to do this.”

  “He told me he’d come back,” she bit out. “He promised…we’d buy a real ring.” She pulled in a ragged breath. “A lunatic with an IED made sure that never happened.”

  Again, he didn’t speak anything in response. He let her have the silence. The normal things people said with news like this…were just that. Normal. Standard niceties used to make a story from hell feel less horrific. He’d buried enough friends, grasped enough widows’ hands, to know the silence was kinder.

  After a few minutes, he took a chance on letting his instincts gain voice again. “And…you thought it would be different with Flynn,” he said softly.

  She gave a ragged nod. “Sure did.”

  “Was it another IED?”

  Of all the responses he expected, her full-throated laugh wasn’t anywhere near the list. As he arched a bewildered brow, she blurted, “It was one hell of an explosion. You got that part right.”

  “Officially lost here.”

  A blush actually claimed her face. She shook her head. “Flynn was just the mistake who taught me that boys in this”—she stabbed a finger into his uniformed chest—“are not a great idea for this.” She pointed back at her heart.

  With that, the energy in the air shifted. Her grief got clearly sidelined for antagonism. Once more, silence seemed the wisest plan for response.

  “I’d been weeping in my wine about Colin for over a year,” she explained. “My friends finally decided that getting me drunk and laid would help with that a little. Flynn was just in the right place at the right time. He was a cute, smart PFC who worked on helicopters with his big, rough hands—better than chocolate to a girl who’d gone without for a while.”

  He still rendered little else. The story about Colin had been easier to handle than imagining her in a girls-night-out dress minus a few inhibitions thanks to Señor Patrón, then going home with some asshat who only wanted one thing. For the moment, he ignored the realization that he probably appeared that way now too.

  “I ended up giving him my number afterward.” She blushed again. “Stuffed it down his pants to be exact, right after learning he’d never be shipped out due to a nasty high school football injury. In my mind, the universe was telling me the grief dues were paid and I’d finally won the jackpot. We got very serious, very fast. Well, what I thought was serious.”

  “Engineer Flynn wasn’t on the same page?” The man must have been a damn idiot, but Ethan wasn’t about to voice that.

  Her gaze drifted out the window. “That’s one way of putting it.” She let out a raspy laugh. “The signs were all there; I just didn’t want to see them. Flynn was like Colin in all the big ways—the sex, the laughter—so like a fool, I jumped straight to the next logical conclusion.”

  “That you two were connected enough for marriage.” After accepting her grimace as confirmation, he ventured, “So you really are the cute house and swing set girl.”

  She swept to her feet in a furious rush. “People break, Ethan, remember? And who wants broken goods?”

  Okay, no more Mr. Calm and Understanding. He surged up as well and advanced straight toward her. “And that’s logical how? Just because Flynn the Fuckhead didn’t want to walk down the aisle?”

  She turned back before he got to her, stopping him in his tracks. Every inch of her face was possessed by raw defeat. “Because he didn’t want to walk down the aisle with me, Ethan.”

  He scowled. “What are you saying?”

  Another sad laugh spilled from her. “He went to a training meeting in Reno sponsored by a civilian contractor. On the second night, he called sobbing at me—in happiness. Apparently, he and a girl from the base workshop decided to come clean about a mutual attraction, and they’d just tied the knot. That knot. He’d called to ask if I’d go to his apartment and clean out my stuff so his new wife wouldn’t have to.”

  “Fuck.”

  It wasn’t eloquent. He doubted it was even comforting. But it was the only thing his fury could coherently create. It turned him into a slab of awkward uselessness, unsure whether to hug her, punch a wall for her, or ask her for Flynn’s last name so he could hunt down the prick and turn him into a soprano for her.

  Ava was somehow able to read all that across his face. “It’s all right,” she said with a shrug. “I should probably thank the guy. After Zoe helped me get my head and heart back together, I decided that after everything the Lewis-McChord boys had put me through, the Hollywood jungle would be a breeze. It’s when I moved down here and took a shot at styling the big-timers.”

  “And here you are.” He let her hear the encouraging pride in his tone. It seemed to surprise her. Then unnerve her.

  “Right.” She flashed a smile more falsely bright than her voice. “Here I am.”

  “Successful, confident, beautiful.” And never imagining that the corporal you kissed in the woods back home was going to be the sergeant who brought all that shit screaming back to your front door. “I’m really proud of you.”

  He dared to lift a hand to brush some hair from her face. Somehow he had to make her see that he wasn’t another Flynn, that everything from yesterday still meant something to him today, probably more. But in doing so, the curtains from the ruse with Bella had to stay up. He had to save face without tempting her to claw the skin off it. Easy-peasy, yeah?

  While he deliberated what the hell to say and do now, she’d obviously been doing the same thing. From the sad vacillation in her eyes and the little bites she dug into her lips, he already knew he wouldn’t like her outcome. “Ethan…”

  “What?”

  “You’re still officially on duty, right? How do you guys say it? ‘The op’s in play’?” She asked it in a rasp softer than the breeze on the windows. Damn it. He could deal with her in pissed-off whirlwind mode, but this permeating sadness simply froze him in place.

  “Yeah,” he growled. “Right.”

  Though she ran reverent fingers along his lapels and name badge as she did, the motions were more goodbye, soldier than hello, Sir. “That means you’re working with Bella more.”

  Ethan expelled a hard breath. He wrapped her fingers in his, dragging the depths of his self-control not to grip until he had her hauled against him. “What does that have to do with us?”

  The beginning of a new sob crunched her face, though she beat it back by defiantly jerking up her chin. “It has everything to do with us and you know it.” The tears finally broke through, falling in thick, silent tracks down her face. “It always did, from the second Bella saw you again yesterday. I knew it and I ignored it…and I was stupid to do so.”

  His own teeth locked, barring his snarl until he spoke. “Ava—”

  “I just hoped…” she stammered. “I…I just thought that maybe…”

  When she couldn’t finish, he decided to do it for her. Why the fuck not, when his gut-deep growl phrased everything so perfectly? It resonated through him as he dragged her against him. In a heady instant, her scent surrounded him. Oranges and jasmine filled his nostrils as her sweet nearness ignited his body. His skin blazed. His blood was liquid fire. His cock felt like a goddamn signal flare. He tunneled his other hand into her hair, positioning her face for his commanding kiss. In another second, he’d prove that her hopes weren’t for nothing. That he hoped too. And wanted. And needed. And craved. And—

  She’d be even more shattered than before.

  Fuck. He couldn’t do this. No matter how it got choreographed, taking her in the horizontal mambo now would be doomed to disaster. Even if he gave her a dozen screaming orgasms, it wouldn’t redeem him from what had to happen when they retur
ned to real life. The Don Juan veneer with Bella had to continue until he, Rhett, and Rebel cracked Lemare’s inner sanctum. Compounding that by getting naked with Ava again would officially ink him onto her Flynn and Assorted Other Assholes list.

  But if he took her into confidence and revealed the true purpose of their on-set presence, he risked the security of the entire team as well as her own. They had no idea what the Aragons and their producer friend were actually up to. Letting her bite that apple of knowledge would only replace her fury with fear, exhuming Colin’s ghost when she was blatantly reminded of how dangerous his work really was.

  He stood in the middle of Hollywood, California, but he might as well be on the road between Ramadi and Fallujah. Screwed no matter which direction he chose.

  He pressed his forehead to hers as he sucked down air in hard heaves. Her chest pumped with the same ferocity. Fuck. Fuck. Just another inch, a few millimeters, and he’d at least get to taste her once more. Drink in the nectar of her sweet, hot mouth…

  With tight chokes, they pulled away from each other.

  “M-Maybe,” she whispered, “this all happened for the best.”

  The fuck it did. “Sure.”

  “Don’t growl. I’m serious.”

  Serious was a few miles back, sunshine. I’m pretty much at miserable now. “Uh-huh.”

  “We…we have closure now, Ethan. Seven months ago, we didn’t. We got it all out of our systems. Now we can move on.”

  She had the audacity to urge him into a “friendly” hug. But as he enveloped her back in his arms, breathed her back into his senses, let her warmth permeate him like a bath in the summer sun, only one blowback of thought blasted through his mind, charring the edges of his soul.

  “Out of my system?” That’s one place you’ll never be again, Ava. Ever.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’m never going to complain about surveillance on hostiles again.”

  Kellan’s remark, mumbled between a couple of swigs of energy drink, brought out a commiserating chuckle from Tait. They’d been parked on this soundstage roof from six in the morning until ten at night for four days now. Nearly sixty-five hours of watching nothing but rolling costume racks, trucks full of plants and props, carts full of electronics, and golf carts full of arguing people roll by. If gathering intel in the Mideast desert was tedious, spying on this rogue state of creative combustion was a goddamn soul sucker.