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

by Cerise DeLand

She pushed his hair over his forehead, then rose to kiss his lips. He watched her, his eyes hazy with lust. “I’ve never felt so good.”

  He grinned. “Make that two of us.”

  She believed him, even if logic told her it couldn’t be so. He was handsome as hell, one of the finest specimens of strength and stamina in the world, and she could lay odds anywhere and win big that he had a girl in every town. Instantly. Even I’ve fallen to the charm and the lure within hours of meeting him. And what can I expect? Nothing but this. Only this. Now.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his mouth in a grim line.

  She lifted a shoulder. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. Did I hurt you?” He drew away, examining her.

  She shook her head. Telling him her whole story would drive him away faster than a speeding bullet. “I don’t fall into bed with men after knowing them for a day.”

  He cupped her cheek with one big palm. “Yeah, well. I don’t pick up women and haul them in bed in the bat of an eye, either.”

  His statement soothed her. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Believe it.”

  She was trying to. “Okay.”

  “In fact,” he said as he pulled out of her arms and out of her body, “I have to take care of this right now.” He looked down and so did she. He was still sheathed in the latex and decreasing in size. “I’ll be back,” he said and rose to head for the bathroom.

  She rolled to her back, rubbing a hand over her brow, tense with the turn of the conversation.

  When he returned, he crawled beside her and circled his arms around her. He kissed her forehead and sighed. “That was not the best time to leave you here, but I was worried about that condom.”

  “What? Why?”

  He winced. “Truth is that rubber was the only one I had in my kit.”

  Which meant he was apologizing for having only one or he was not planning on making love to her again or… Should she be happy, sad, or insulted?

  “I don’t know how old it was.”

  That made her head ache. “What are you saying?”

  “I didn’t plan on this happening tonight. I’m glad it did. Glad we did. But if you didn’t enjoy it that much, give me another chance, okay?”

  Was he nuts? Of course, she’d have him in the blink of an eye because…

  “I’ll buy a package. Maybe in the lobby restroom if they have a machine. Or nearby. Wait. Why are you laughing?”

  She found him endearing. Not only was he a great lover, but he did not go around demonstrating his abilities to just anyone. “You! You have one—one condom—in your kit?”

  “Well, I—” His cheeks were turning bright pink.

  “You’re blushing, big boy. And if you’re in good health and I am, too, we don’t need any condoms.”

  A muscle in his jaw jumped while he looked her over. “I don’t want you to think I was careless with you.”

  She ran a hand down his throat to his chest. “I don’t. In fact, I thought you took the finest care of me.”

  He leaned over her, his luscious mouth a breath away. His eyes brimmed with light at her words. “Compliment me again, and I’ll have to do it once more to show you I’m not a One-Time-Genius.”

  She hooked an arm around his neck. “Come down here and kiss me, Genius. Then tell me why you have only one condom in your travel kit.” She had to hear it.

  Kissing her quickly, he rolled to his side with his arm still around her and taking her with him. “Because I don’t bed hop.”

  “Good.”

  He curled one leg over her hip and pulled her close to him. “And I didn’t know I was going to meet a lady who would drive me crazy with lust.”

  She arched a brow, loving the admission. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I take the pill so that I’m regular. Not for other reasons.”

  He slanted a finger across her lips. “I get you.”

  “But I don’t do this. Sleep with a man, any man.”

  He brushed her lower lip with his thumb. “I got that, too. From word one.”

  She splayed her fingers through his hair. “I don’t want this to be a one-night stand.”

  “Better not be,” he whispered. “If it were, for the rest of my life, I’d waste away wanting you.”

  At his endearments, her heart squeezed tightly. She wanted to be as eloquent as he, but her brain wasn’t working. Only her body was throbbing, wanting him again. “How crazy can it be to meet you one day and fall into bed with you the next?”

  “Lots of people do it. But not like this, Abby. Not this way.” He captured her chin and kissed her as tenderly as if this were the first time his lips met hers. “Or this way.” He cupped her breast and slid lower to lave her there, sucking her up into his mouth as if this were all the joy he’d ever need in life. “Or this.” He slid lower still, to open her thighs and kiss her in the hollow, then to part her folds. His tongue stroked and caressed her clit.

  In the next second, he was back on top of her, his cock seated to the hilt inside her. She gasped. He groaned. His cock was as huge as before and now, so familiar, so dear, so hers.

  “I want more than tonight.” His voice was a rough demand against her ear. “More than tomorrow.”

  “Yes.” She drove her hands through his hair, clinging to him, swept into the thrill of his words. “Please.”

  He slid out of her, and she cried out, objecting, needing.

  Tugging her up into his arms, he carried her into the bathroom where he stood her against the wall while he reached inside the shower and turned on the spray. Grabbing her up to his massive strength, he kissed her as if she were about to dissolve, disappear from his arms. Then he urged her into the shower where he crowded her to the tile.

  In the stinging heat, he generated a new heat, a new sensation as he lathered up his hands and ran them over every inch of her skin. Behind her ears, into the whorls, the line of her collarbone, the arch of her lower spine, the curve of her ass—every bit, he defined. The crook of her elbow, the round of her shoulder, the underside of one breast and the outer swell of the other, he petted them all. The dip of her bellybutton, the points of her hipbones, the backs of her knees, and the fullness of her calves, he caressed. Her toes, her ankles, he smoothed and tickled, and then he settled before her on two knees and gazed at her mound.

  She squirmed, but he pinned her to the wall. Two hands on either side of her hips, he bent close and kissed the flesh beneath her navel.

  “Nick,” she managed his name amid her panting little breaths. “You are too good to me.”

  “Mmm,” he seemed to hum while his fingers strummed her upper thighs. “Gonna be better yet.”

  With two hands, he pushed her thighs apart, tipped her pelvis up toward him, and nuzzled his mouth on her mound. “God, you smell so sweet. Open wider for me, honey. I have to taste you. Drink you in.”

  His words melted her down.

  But he shored her up, laughing gently. “No swan acts here. You’re mine, and I mean to eat all of you, show you that there never was anyone like me, never will be again.”

  And with two deft fingers, he parted her sensitive folds and put his mouth to her clit. She screamed her delight, hands flat to the tiles, her nipples diamond-hard and her pussy pounding.

  “God, yes. Come for me, baby.” He traced her slit with one, two fingers and thrust them up inside her pounding core. “You come, darlin’. All you want. There you go. There, oh yeah. That’s good, huh?”

  She whimpered, her flesh liquid fire, pulsing, flaming, needing to lie down and take him inside her. “Have to have you,” she got out, her head thrashing against the wall.

  He licked her clit, unmoving, but holding her up while she quaked. And when her trembling died to shimmering tremors, he wrapped her close against his steely body and kissed her on the mouth. “Gonna do right by you always. Let me show you.”

  Turning the water off, he rubbed her down with a towel, did a curso
ry job of drying himself, and then, once more, she was high in his arms and he was marching toward the bedroom.

  He laid her down as if she were made of glass. His hands, when he ran them over her brows and nipples, were gentle as an angel’s wings. But his torso, when he lowered himself over her thighs, was hot as hell, and his tongue as devilish and ravenous when he parted her flesh and kissed her and licked her and sucked on her. She was his, all parts of her, as she had never been to any other man. She loved the moment. And she loved the man.

  He shifted up and inside her, and she marveled that she could love him. He slid inside her and retreated, his mouth teasing hers, telling her tales of how he adored her and how good she was to him, and she abandoned herself to the pleasure of his commitment. And when he rammed her and told her she was his, always had been, she agreed with him, for nothing in her whole life seemed as sure or as true as the fact that she loved him and would never love another.

  With that reality written on her heart, she curled up tightly to him and gave herself over to ecstasy.

  ****

  Suddenly cold, Abby reached for the covers and the warmth of his body.

  “Come on, lazy bones,” Nick said, dragging the sheet away and flicking a towel at her naked backside. “Eight o’clock. Want to get to the pool before the world wakes up.”

  Up on one elbow, she gave up her quest for covers while she ogled his muscular perfection in a really small white towel. She rolled her eyes at him. “Swim? Really? Before coffee?”

  He loomed over her, tickling her ribs and making her squeal like a two year old. “I have a cup for you. Got it from the lobby. Now get your pretty ass out of that bed before—”

  She flipped her pillow at him. “Before you join me?”

  He cast a wary eye at her. “Join you and no one swims this morning.”

  She pouted, pursed her lips, and closed her eyes. “Kiss me then.”

  “Not that either, lady.” He barked in laughter, grabbed one of the paper cups from the dresser, and marched over to her. “Drink. And put this on.” He threw the store bag with her swimsuit at her.

  She took it from him, frowning. “Bossy, aren’t you?”

  “You have not seen the half of it.”

  She sipped and considered his words. “Should I?”

  Narrowing his eyes, he stared at her. “Does that mean more than I think it does?”

  “Yes. Are you dictatorial, hard to get along with, a pain in the ass? If you are, tell me now.”

  “Because…”

  “I’m not. And I don’t want to be your right-hand girl. Carrying out your orders. Know what I mean?”

  He scratched his head. “I do. And I’m not a tough old bastard. Just…determined. Organized.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?” he challenged her, hands on his hips.

  She shifted, uneasy with his state of undress and her own while they discussed a serious topic. She shifted and managed some modesty with a corner of the sheet. “Explain it to me, just to make certain I know who you are.”

  “Okay. I do what I can, the best I can. I do it fast, no complaints. I’m not a dictator in civilian life. But I say what I mean. Always. And in case we are talking about us amid this business about me, I meant what I said last night when we were locked together like two pieces of a puzzle. I’m not a man who’s said those things to any woman, ever before. I don’t intend to say them again to anyone. Except you.”

  She licked her lips. “Good to know.”

  He looked her over. “And you?”

  Her chin came up. “What about me?”

  “Tell me who you are.”

  And he meant who she was with him. She got it. “I do my job the best I can. But I don’t lose myself in it. I want to leave it someday. Maybe soon. To paint and sketch. I’ve lived my life looking for a man I could care for completely. Trust implicitly. Want forever by my side. And in case we’re talking about us amid this business about me, I’ve never wanted a man like I wanted you last night. Never had one like that. I’m not a woman who has had that kind of intimacy with any man, ever before. I’d like to hope that you and I could have that again. Soon.”

  Like the sun dawning, he grinned and headed for her, a goofy look on his face.

  She scrambled backwards in the bed, then rolled off the mattress to stand at one side, totally trapped among the bed, the wall, and the man who strode around the end of it to haul her up in his arms and kiss her like she was his saving grace.

  They broke apart, and she was gasping.

  He was chuckling.

  At once, she was flat on her back. “Hey, big boy, I thought we were going swimming.”

  He rained tiny kisses down her throat, groaning. “Later.”

  She giggled, pushing at his chest. “But I need my coffee.”

  “Later.”

  “We’ll miss breakfast in the dining room.”

  “That, too.”

  And then he showed her with his tongue and teeth and lips that a new, more entrancing kind of sustenance substituted for the buffet in the main dining room.

  ****

  He cut the water with a precision that gratified him, reminiscing about the hours he’d recently spent making love to the luscious Abigail Stuart. On a turn, he glimpsed her in the chaise under an umbrella. She read a book, huge sunglasses shielding her eyes and hiding part of her elegant face from his contemplation. As if he could forget her for a second.

  She lived in his mind like a melody he’d heard as a child, memorized as a teenager. Each moment he spent with her was easy, as fluid as though he had stood and talked with her before. Every time he gazed at her, her looks struck a spark in his mind, as if he had seen her laugh that way or frown, as if he could predict how she would react to one topic or another.

  Like the one last night, when they talked about condoms and birth control pills. He knew, at once, she didn’t sleep around. She wasn’t the type, and while he was happy to hear that, he understood her embarrassment to talk about rubbers and pills. He even welcomed the fact that she wanted a man she could trust and keep for the long term.

  While he remained a SEAL, he could never promise her tomorrow, but he could offer her a fidelity that honored the affection he bore her. Even the word affection paled beside the emotion that welled up in him when he heard her talk or when she sighed or when she trembled in his arms. Yes. He smiled. He knew what a woman in love looked like now. When Abby Stuart convulsed beneath him, he saw Heaven on her face and love in her eyes.

  And he could say he felt the same.

  But if he told her how much he cared for her, she’d run from him.

  He groaned and made another turn in the pool, pushing off the edge. If he’d only met her sooner, even a month ago, he might have stood a chance with her for the long run before he was deployed or moved to California. As it was, he had only today and part of tomorrow to show her how perfect they could be together. So if he had rushed her into making love last night, he excused himself and called their sex natural, racy, raw, and necessary.

  Rushing to finish his laps so that he could sit beside her, he couldn’t waste a minute left to be with her. He climbed out of the water.

  She sat, the book across her ribcage, her long svelte legs glistening in the summer sun. Her mouth was partly open, and she slept.

  He toweled dry and lay down next to her. His eyes all over her, he shifted as his cock rose. He needed her legs around his neck again, her lips on his. He couldn’t just walk away from her tomorrow. She was meant for him. Meant to be with him. In Washington. Virginia. California. In bed. The place didn’t matter. How could he persuade her of that?

  “I think,” she said in a sleep-drugged voice, “you are staring at me again.”

  “Reliving last night.”

  She rubbed her thighs together, a grin teasing her ripe lips. “You shouldn’t speak to me like that out here in public.”

  “Come upstairs then.” He leaned over and kissed her mouth, nippi
ng her lower lip as he left her.

  She burst out laughing. “You’re supposed to be recovering from thirty laps at Olympic speed.”

  He gave her a wan smile. “I can’t seem to recover from making love to you.”

  “Nick—”

  “And I don’t want to.”

  She swallowed. Hard. And sat forward, her gaze trained straight ahead. “I’ve never spent a weekend in bed with a man. That was for movies and novels. Not for me.”

  He waited, his breath non-existent.

  She faced him, removing her sunglasses. “Until you. And now. And how I feel about you.”

  “Unusual doesn’t describe it.”

  “Earth-shaking does for me.”

  He grasped her hand. “Come back to bed with me. Let me love you again.”

  Her chest heaved with the force of her excitement. “I’m afraid that if I do it again, I may not want to leave.” She seemed to fight a sob. “And then where will I be?”

  Rising, he tugged her to her feet and wrapped his arm around her waist. “You’ll be with me.”

  “We’d better do it fast. All these people will complain about the two making goo-goo eyes at each other in the pool.”

  “Let’s go.” He led her from the deck into the hall and toward the elevator. Thankfully, no one else was in it when the doors opened and he swung her in. He thrust one of his thighs along the inside of hers. “God, you feel like Heaven. I want all of you. Can’t get enough.” He grabbed a fistful of her magnificent hair. “I want to comb your hair, wrap it around my wrist, show you that you could be mine and love it.”

  “I do now. Every minute.” She rose on her toes and rubbed her mouth on his. “Every kiss.”

  The doors swished open, and someone cleared his throat.

  “Sorry.” Nick stepped away to give the man an apologetic smile.

  Abby left the elevator first, holding his hand and pulling him along the corridor as she raced to their room.

  He fumbled with the damn key and hauled her inside, where he backed her to the wall and in two strokes, stripped her of the two utterly small pieces of bikini.

  She sank her fingers inside his swim trunks and between kisses, said, “I continue to be impressed.”

  He picked her up like a sack of wheat and flung her over his shoulder, chuckling. At their bed, he placed her down and arranged her, legs spread, arms over her head. “Like that. Just like that. Abby, sweetheart. Let me impress you with how I love you.”