You Were Always Mine (7 Brides for 7 SEALs Book 1)

by Cerise DeLand

  Yeah.

  Worry over Terry was one thing, but agreeing to stay in a room with a strange man—even though that man was her brother’s friend—was asking for trouble.

  Big. Trouble.

  She might have been better off in the room next door with good ol’ Mabry. After all, he was just air. Cold or hot. Didn’t matter. He didn’t look at her. Not with eyes like tropical waters. Not with a heavy-lidded intensity that turned her brain to mush.

  She stole a glance at Nick.

  In deep shadows, he lay there, naked to the waist. All honed, tanned he-man, he looked like an erotic ad for bed linens. Climb into bed with me and feel the softness of the night.

  She bit her lip to catch the giggle that erupted from her.

  Startled at her sudden good humor, she stared at the ceiling and marveled that she was laughing. Her day hadn’t started out that way. She’d been angry at herself and at a colleague at work who surprisingly wanted her to continue a relationship with a man she’d introduced her to. Some things you did not do for friendship. One of them was continue to date a guy whose idea of a relationship was based on total control—and sex.

  After her tirade earlier about her family’s marriages, Nick would think she was some prude. Which she definitely was not. She liked sex, just like any other red-blooded American girl. But she liked it slow and easy, natural and mutually satisfying. Most men she’d met who wanted to jump her bones wouldn’t recognize a female orgasm if they were handed a vibrator with printed instructions.

  She stifled another laugh. Here she was lying next to the most beautiful man she’d seen in the flesh and she was thinking about all the turkeys she’d ever met. She should be grateful to be here. She sure as hell knew she was happy.

  And restless.

  Her fingers twitched.

  Her mind raced. If she knew him better, then she wouldn’t be so skeptical of her attraction to him.

  Draw, baby, draw.

  Of course.

  Folding back the covers, she sat up and examined the light in the room. Not much. But she could sit in the desk chair and catch the moon glow through the part in the draperies. And if she walked on cat’s feet, she wouldn’t wake him up.

  Padding to the closet, she slipped her suit jacket from the hanger and slid it over her shoulders. Why was it so damn cold in hotels in San Antonio? Polar bears could live here in July. Her Christmas flannel pjs had kept her warm between the sheets, just like she hoped they would. And Nick had chuckled when he saw her in them earlier. Huddling into her jacket, she fished in her bag for her sketchpad and pack of pencils. Her favorite Japanese graphite in hand, she flipped a page, sat back, and propped a foot on the stool. One glance at her sleeping prince, then she let her fingers do the talking.

  She licked her lips, not needing to look at him as he slept but searching for him with her intuition. Her mind’s eye was always a more accurate gauge of how astutely she rendered someone on to paper. Recalling how he looked at her in the airport when she’d apologized and later during the banter at dinner, she paused and hovered a hand over the page. That tender regard, that silent courtesy spoke of his innate sweetness. More than that, he had gazed at her as if she were a mirage who might disappear any second. As if he couldn’t bear it if she did.

  She shivered, her belly flooding with desire for him. She pulled her jacket closer over her chest and let the spirit take her. Her pencil flew this way and that, defining the blunt square of his jaw, the sharp arch of his cheek. But the effect was wrong. She had made him too bold, too brutal.

  That stopped her. Cold. He could be diamond hard, but he was not rough or crude. Not by nature. Only by necessity when he’d lived in the streets…or on a mission.

  She examined once more the lines she’d drawn. She’d portrayed him as the adversary, the one no one wished to meet in a dark alley or a jungle or desert sands. She’d seen him as he was in the field, on the hunt, out for results with the wages of his success a bullet or death.

  That was not the man she had met. She had rendered him as an archetype, not as the man he presented to her. That was the version of the man she wanted on the paper. Here he frowned, not as she had seen him, polite to the elderly woman and to her. His eyes could be mellower. His lips, kindly.

  The sketch of him needed—what? Ah, yes, the lock of hair… The curl that dipped over his brow. Longer hair, down to his chin. That hair declared he’d once been a boy, a child, lonely and scared. His essence was a blend of the wild and lawless in his soul with the integrity of his present. Dimples! My god, he had dimples in both cheeks, and she’d been so taken with the impact of meeting him that she hadn’t consciously noticed them. They were a part of his gentle demeanor, the way she knew him to be when he wasn’t fierce, wasn’t sent to fight someone. Or kill someone.

  She rubbed the tips of her fingers together. Her sketch was black and white, but as if someone turned on a thousand lights, she saw him in brilliant color. His eyes glimmered with the blue-green hues of sky and sea. His skin could be pale with exhaustion or glow from days in the desert. His sun-kissed hair could streak with shades of gold or platinum. But his hair would always be thick, the strands silky, the texture a lure to dip her hands into the wealth of it and bring his face closer so that she could taste him.

  She gasped, inhaling air to cool her ardor for him. But her desire flamed higher. Soon she’d touch him, kiss him, and with a hunger she hadn’t known she possessed. She’d want his lips on her skin, her throat, and her breasts. His tongue dipping into her navel. His hands parting her thighs, his mouth whispering words of praise and longing.

  Her whole body gushed in sexual expectation.

  More. She needed to learn more of him than how she wanted him sexually. She had to discover why.

  She embellished the soft waves of his hair. Redrew the arch of his scalp.

  As if doors opened, she saw into his past and paused to marvel.

  He was educated. Had argued with and abandoned his old friends to shine in school. He had left them behind without regret to gain an appointment to West Point. He’d become one of the chosen few. But he didn’t stop. He’d reached higher, worked harder and earned a slot in the finest special ops corps. That took dedication above and beyond. His confident aspect reflected the demands of the harsh life he’d chosen. But his large limpid eyes stared out from the white page and told her a subtler tale.

  Of what?

  She leaned forward into more light, scratched her head, and stared at the outline of his face and throat. She corrected the bridge of his nose to show that it had been broken once. She shaded the hollow of his cheeks, masculine and oh so starkly perfect. Staring into his eyes as she’d drawn him, she viewed a man who saw her differently from all other women he’d met.

  Astonished at that, she fell back in the chair. She mustn’t delude herself, ascribing sentiments to him that she had not heard from his lips. Running from the disappointment of that, she hurried to refine his image. With deft strokes, she corrected this and that. Smudging the last few marks, she worked with a fury that left her lifting her hand and shaking out the kinks.

  Holding up the pad, she stared at her creation. Was she accurate?

  Her gaze strayed to Nick—and discovered his glistening eyes glued to hers.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked, his voice filled with low allure.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t. I’ve been listening to your brain pound nails for the past hour or so.”

  Her gaze fell to her drawing of him. Comparing her rendering to the live man, she saw how meager her talent was. As sensuous flesh and blood, he was infinitely more intriguing than her flat, black and white sketch. “That loud, huh?”

  “I’m trained to notice when conditions change.”

  Still dazed in her artist’s perceptions of him, she allowed herself the pleasures of the real man before her. He was so much more than she’d imagined.

  “What’s o
n your mind?” he asked in that spare, drowsy baritone.

  “How did you get out of the gang?”

  He frowned. “Why?”

  “Curious.”

  He pushed up and back against the headboard, the sheet sliding to below his hipbones in the move.

  She gulped. Was he naked under there? Hadn’t she seen him walk out of the bathroom in boxers? All that rippling male muscle had her body humming with appreciation. “I’m sorry. Intrusive of me.”

  “No. You’re not.” He turned his head toward the drapes. Outside a group on the sidewalk below walked past, laughing, joking, belching, all drunk. “I was big enough, twice their size, and I knew how to be intimidating. So when I said I wanted out, I went without much trouble.”

  “How did you have the courage to go?”

  He pursed his lips. “Not courage at all. Fear.”

  “Surely not,” she shot back. “I mean—”

  “SEALs don’t live off fear. They thrive on training and planning. This is what I am now. But then? I was a kid. Young. But not so stupid to stay in a system that meant I’d die soon.”

  She bit her tongue. He was in a system now where he might die soon. Or get hurt. She knew that first hand, and she was suddenly afraid for him.

  As if he’d read her mind, he brought himself up short, inhaled, and tipped his head to one side. “I had a friend, a guy who lived next door to me for a couple of years. We liked to play cards and dice. Bardo was his name. Sweet kid, my best bud. He and I had run together since third grade. We played ball, smoked weed, stole from the local grocery store and the taqueria down the street. We were also good at using knives.”

  Her jaw dropped.

  “Yeah. I was a regular menace. I had bought myself a Bowie knife that… Well, let’s say I used it as well as a gypsy. Or a butcher. No, I never killed anyone. But I did use it to persuade people to my point of view. But then, one day, I didn’t want to any longer.”

  She waited while he grimaced, a muscle working in his jaw as he thought over his words.

  “Bardo did a foolish thing one day. He argued with one of the rival gang members in town. The Feos, the ugly ones, they called themselves. And the name was appropriate because they were ruthless. They controlled the drug trade on the four blocks around my house. Bardo had a run-in with one of the Feo sergeants. They challenged him to a fistfight. He was a little guy, a runt, no sense of how to use his hands. They beat him until he couldn’t move. And he died two days later, brain dead.”

  “Nick,” she managed after a long minute. “I’m so sorry.”

  His eyes flashed bright with anger and anguish. “He died and his mother and his sisters wailed for days. He was their only boy, their hope, and they were heartbroken.”

  Another silence fell over the room.

  “A couple of days after that, Josie got me out of that house. The foster mother was happy to see me go.” He picked at the sheet across his hips. “I went with Josie like a dying man grabs his last drink. I knew the Feos would get me, too, eventually. They didn’t like competition, even if it was just nickel and dime theft. The Feos needed their block to be all theirs. And Bardo was dead. I’d seen him laid out in his tight little black suit in the blue satin-lined coffin, and I decided then and there…”

  Abby hung on his last word.

  “I decided then and there that if I was going to die—and someday I would—I’d do it for a better reason than using my fists against a boy who wanted to control me for his own greed.”

  Nick stared at her. Then he smiled, the memory no longer a living horror in his eyes. “I went to live with Josie and got myself straight. Very straight. No more weed. No more stealing. Good grades. Clean living. And a career I could be proud of. Very proud of.”

  She beamed at him.

  “So tell me something,” he said.

  “Anything.”

  He lifted his chin toward her. “What are you drawing?”

  She hugged her pad to her chest.

  “Me?” he asked with pale brows darting high.

  She bit her lower lip. “Yes. Do you mind?”

  “I’m honored.”

  She gave a short laugh. “You might not be.”

  “Doubt it.” He crooked his fingers. “Come over here. Let me see.”

  She clutched her pad more closely. “Tell me about leaving the gang.”

  “Does that go on the page?”

  She nodded, a bit too eagerly. “Sure. It’s part of you.”

  He gave a laugh and patted the edge of the bed beside him. “Come here first.”

  “Hard bargainer,” she muttered but got up and moved to face him. Her thigh touched his warm one and beneath that same sheet, his cock was firm and rising.

  He cleared his throat, dared her with large eyes, and put out his hand for her pad.

  With a snort, she surrendered the thing. But her eyes had a will of their own and they admired how high the sheet was rising.

  Shaking a finger at her, he laughed as he took her pad and placed it so she couldn’t see the length and breadth of his growing erection.

  Damn him.

  “Nice,” he said. “Better than. You’ve got me all right. The hair intrigues me though.”

  “Oh?” She bent over the pad, her breasts beading at his nearness, her thighs clenching with the swell of interest. “I—I thought it was good.”

  His forefinger ran over the wealth of one wave on the page. “I don’t have hair that long or thick.”

  “Not long but thick. Of course you do.” She shrank back, aware she’d just made a big mistake saying that.

  “How do you know?” His voice was all midnight enchantment.

  “Well, it’s what I thought when we first met.”

  He sucked in air, his eyes wide.

  She trembled, shocked that she’d uttered words that sprang from thin air.

  He grasped her hand and pulled her toward him. “Feel my hair.”

  She stared at him. That would be too bold, too—

  He lifted her hand, bent to her, and sank her fingertips against his scalp.

  Oh, god. His hair was whisper soft, dense as she had imagined, as she had known it would be. She traced the shape of his skull, recalling the planes and small curves she somehow predicted would be there behind the ear, along his nape, and up, up, up into the full width of his noble head.

  “Abby, Abby.” He seemed to breathe her name as he drew her against him, his hand holding hers tracing his ear and throat. “I’ve wanted your hands on me all night.”

  She leaned in the cradle of his arms, his thighs drawing up her back to brace her to him. He cuddled her, treasured her, and she splayed her fingers around his shoulder. His skin was hot satin, his musk of soap and slumbering male a hot turn-on. “You feel wonderful.”

  He leaned down to kiss the back of her hand. “So do you.”

  She shook her head.

  He smiled with a small apology in his gaze. “You’re very talented.”

  She chuckled a little. “You’re very blind.”

  “That’s almost a photo of me.”

  “I wish it were.” I’d take it home with me and—

  “You won’t have to have a picture of me if you see me again after we go back north.”

  Her hand on his shoulder moved involuntarily. She cupped his jaw, the one she’d drawn and defined and refined. “Yes.”

  He drew in short breaths. “I’ll come up to Washington first chance I get, and we’ll— What will we do, honey?”

  Oh, he was dissolving her in his endearments. “Go to the movies.”

  He nodded, and his eyes drifted closed as she traced the swell of his lower lip with one fingertip. “What else?”

  “We’ll go dancing.” She smiled, flowed against him, his solid chest a barrier against anything that could be wrong in this world or the next. “Please tell me you like to dance.”

  “You bet.” He nipped her fingertip, and the sharp pain whipped through her like a melody of joy. �
�And sing.”

  She threw back her head to chuckle. “You sing?”

  “Karaoke. Why? Don’t you?”

  “God, no. I bray.”

  He laughed, his whole body shaking and in the process rubbing her nipples, enticing her to do bad things to him. “I doubt it.”

  “I do. Don’t ask me.”

  “No.” The lines of his face stilled. “I want something else.”

  She didn’t have to ask what. She felt his gaze on her mouth, his mind on one fine thing. Her brain shut down while the rest of her went wet and needy.

  “We’ll do this,” he said, his rough words sounding stern as a vow. “And then we’ll curl up and go to sleep.”

  Oh, she wanted to curl up all right. She wanted to kiss him until the world ended. He would know, too, because hadn’t she just answered him by vibrating in his arms?

  He licked his lower lip, his blue gaze probing hers. “Honest. You and me and all your Santas. We’re going to kiss.”

  She cuffed him, laughing all the way.

  He did, too, and crushed her against him. “Kiss me. Make it long and make it worth four more hours to wait for another.”

  “You are evil, do you know that?”

  The sun and moon and stars blazed across his features with delight. “Yeah. It’s what I’m paid for. Do it.”

  He wouldn’t move first. That she understood. It had to be her, now or never. She leaned closer to his lips. A breath separated them. “What if once isn’t enough?”

  “It will be.”

  Disappointment rang through her.

  And he smiled, consolation ripe on his lips. “Tomorrow, I promise to kiss you anytime you ask.”

  She could live like that. “You could get in trouble for conduct unbecoming.”

  “Baby, with you in my arms, I’ve already got that trouble, and if you don’t kiss me, I may just die before they come to throw me in the brig.”

  She sank her fingers into his luscious hair, cupping the back of his head, her breasts boring into his hard naked chest. She put her mouth on his, his lips firm and soft, his breath heavy and rapid. She brushed her lips on his once. He hauled her up, and her skin met his. He groaned, and she slanted her mouth this way. He took her up and pressed her down. He followed her, his lips drinking her in, his tongue tangling with hers.