Badass: A Stepbrother SEAL Romance (5 page)

When Mom died four years ago, Dad had pulled the sailboat out of the water and stuck it in storage. I’d been the one who had urged him to get the boat fixed up and ship it out to San Diego when he’d decided to move here from Boston. I’d also encouraged him to begin sailing again. I’d thought it would be good for him, especially when I wasn’t around because of school and work and stuff.

Dad had moved out a year before I had, when I’d still been in my senior year at Penshurst College in Massachusetts. I’d already planned to do my graduate study at UCSD because of the Oceanography Institute, and he’d been lured with a really great offer of a chair at the private school, University of San Diego, so it had seemed the right decision.

I knew he went deep sea fishing sometimes, to relax. I’d even gone out with him here a couple times. I never caught anything and I was always too worried about accidentally hooking some species that was already fished out and should be left alone. I didn’t like messing with the local ecology.

Lately Dad had been going trout fishing, too. Fly-fishing, catch and release. He loved it, but I’d rather be snorkeling or diving, admiring the marine life, than trapping and killing it.

Anyway, Shane hadn’t liked hearing about my father. I got the impression that he wasn’t too impressed with my graduate studies, either. During the rare moments when he’d engaged in any conversation that wasn’t sexually oriented, he’d seemed intelligent, even though he hadn’t gone to college. “Self taught,” he’d claimed. That was cool. But maybe he had a chip on his shoulder about the whole thing. Or maybe he imagined that I thought I was better than he was because my dad had a university job and I had a good education.

Had I given him the impression that I was slumming by having sex with him?
Did
I think that?

Well, he hadn’t exactly behaved like a gentleman. What did he expect me to think?

Bottom line, I didn’t know much about the guy. He hadn’t revealed whatever he was really thinking. He’d been too busy exercising his thick dick. Give the old pelvic muscles a workout.

Maybe he was one of those man-whores who only did it once with each woman before moving on to the next. Hungry cock types who only got off on the chase and the conquest. Incapable of ever having a real relationship.

A real relationship? Listen to me. It was a hot hookup. Get over it, girl.

It took a while, but after a few weeks of nothing, I stopped checking for texts that never came. Weeks turned into months without a word.

Clearly I hadn’t been as memorable an experience for him as he had been for me. My bad for being fool enough to hookup with an obvious pussy-chaser who didn’t give a shit whose body he sank into as long as she was female and willing.

Jerk.

Chapter 8—Shane

Nine Months Later

I woke up, sprawled in my bed. First good night’s sleep I’d had in nine months. After a hellish deployment with my smelly brothers, not a pussy in site, I was so happy to be back in San Diego.

I walked into my bathroom and my eyes focused on something on the sink. A hair tie, black, with a few red hairs in it. It was hers.

Cassie. Sweet Cassie.

Fuck. I couldn’t get her perky ass out of my head. Her soft skin, her full lips, the shade of green her eyes turned as she looked up at me while blowing me. Being alone in a dirt hole in Afghanistan for days at a time, nothing to do but jerk off had given me plenty of time to fantasize. I remembered the way that black mesh thong of hers split her ass into two perfect ovals, like a goddam heart. She had a fucking heart-shaped ass.

I’m sure she’d already found someone else. Some other douche bag was fucking her from behind, staring at her heart-shaped ass.

I threw on some civilian clothes. Wearing shorts and sandals seemed so liberating after sleeping in my crusty cammies and boots for weeks on end.

I grabbed my keys and saw the note pad on my counter, her name and number written in cursive.

Cassie Bennings.

No heart dotting the “i”, no overly flowery letters, just sleek and to the point. Like her. Fuck, why was I still thinking about her? I grabbed her note and threw it into a drawer. Time to go.

A few minutes later, I was already at my go-to dive bar. It was all decked out for Christmas—a decorated tree in the corner, some colored lights hung on the walls, an “Elf on the Shelf” creepily staring at me from behind the bar. Before I could sit down, the bartender embraced me, thanked me for my service. He handed me a beer, which was on the house and I sat at the bar. Kid Rock played on the jukebox. I stood up to start a game of pool, when I saw it.

Like a flame.

A wisp of red hair. The back of a girl’s head, sitting in the farthest booth, with a couple of girl friends.

No, it couldn’t be. She didn’t even seem to like this place, although I didn’t blame her. She was probably used to fancy five-star dinners overlooking the bay.

I had to know. I walked over to the table. The girl’s head whipped toward me, but it wasn’t Cassie.

I eye-fucked the group. A blond, a brunette, a redhead. But Red looked nothing like Cassie. This chick had way too much make up on, her lips were painted a frosty pink, and she had huge fake breasts. Before I could say anything the redhead started speaking.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

“Shane.” I really wanted to get some pussy so I figured I’d play along.

“Hi Shane, I’m Veronica. I saw you staring at me from the bar. You’re hot. I’ll let you buy me a drink.”

“Let me? Sorry, princess. You’re not that hot. And I’m not drunk.” Fuck that. I could get laid by any girl in here. I called the shots. In everything, in my life, in my career, in the bedroom.

This chick was vain, nothing like Cassie, who didn’t even seem to have a clue how fucking beautiful she was. Fuck, there I was again thinking about her.

Maybe, I should call her. I could see if she was up for a rematch. But I’d never told her I was a SEAL about to deploy. She had moved on, I’m sure, that fine ass was bound to have plenty of men after it. Educated men, rich men, not men who killed other people for a living.

After I downed my beer, I thanked the bartender and left, headed back to my place.

Once inside, I rummaged through my seabag until I found my notebook. After my dad left us, I’d been consumed with anger. My teacher taught me how to express myself by drawing, and I’d been sketching ever since. In Basic Underwater Demolition /SEAL training, I’d been elected class cartoonist, and doodled funny events from our days. I thumbed through my sketchpad, staring at the drawings. Cassie with the sea lion, Cassie on the back of my bike, Cassie sitting on my sofa. I’d tried to convince myself that my obsession with her was based on the fact she’d been the last girl I’d been with, but I wondered if there was something more.

I shed my clothes, and stepped into the shower. The warm water cascading down on me.
I reached for my cock and stroked myself.
I’d gotten off so many times during the deployment, reliving our epic night. The way her pussy clenched around my cock every time she took me deep inside her, fuck, I barely had to stroke myself. The image alone of her wicked smile as she rode me was about enough to get me there.

The heat rose to my dick, my hand a poor substitute for her tight wet pussy. I clamped my hand at the base of my cock, and closed my eyes. I loved the shape of her body, her firm thighs, her juicy ass. Her breast—real breasts, small, soft. I didn’t need more than a mouthful. I could almost feel her riding me, smell her intoxicating scent. Salty and sweet. An image of me taking her harder deeper filled my mind. In my head, I could see her swiveling her hips around me, biting her lip down, her face flushed in ecstasy, coming again and again.

Cassie!

I cleaned myself up, this letdown worse than the others.

I got out of the shower, redressed, and left my place again. I climbed on my bike and headed to the cove.

Tonight, I’d go on a nice dive, and maybe Cassie would be there fucking around with the sea lions again.

Chapter 9—Cassie

“Molly’s coming down to stay for a few nights,” my father announced.

I felt a twist of panic. He’d been seeing Molly for several months now, but I’d been so busy with school that I’d been able to pretend it wasn’t going on. But with Christmas coming up soon, I’d have to deal with Molly directly. And that was a bit of a problem for me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like Molly. I’d only met her once, but she was down to earth, friendly, and she struck me as much more confident and independent than any of the other women Dad had dated since Mom had died.

She was a vast improvement over the San Diego hussies, as I called them—the women who had first started chasing after Dad when he’d moved out here from Boston. It had been as if word had gone out over the Country Club hotline that a lonely, well-to-do widower had come to town. Every single chick from age 30 to 60 wanted to get her brightly-painted nails on my dad. When they’d seen that he was a good-looking guy for a man in his fifties—fit and active and still with a full head of hair—they’d been even more eager.

At first, to my disgust, Dad had done some dating with those local barracudas. When I’d expressed alarm, he’d laughed and told me not to worry—he wasn’t serious about any of them. I’d remembered that Mom had once told me that Dad had been a player before they’d married; she had an old picture of him dressed in a leather jacket and kissing my mother up against a motorcycle. It was such a different image than I usually associated with my professorial father that I’d forgotten all about it until he started taking what the women here were offering him.

I didn’t blame him for having some fun, and at least he’d waited a decent interval after Mom’s death. I knew how much he’d adored her, but she’d made him promise on her deathbed that he wouldn’t stop living just because she was gone. She’d wanted him to be happy. To find another partner to brighten up his twilight years.

Fine. But I didn’t have to like it. If he’d taken up seriously with any of the botoxed bitches who hung out at the golf course, I think it would have broken my heart.

Molly was different. She wasn’t from Southern California. He’d met her when he’d gone on a trout fishing trip to Montana last May. She had been his fishing guide on the Big Horn River. A woman. I’d thought that was pretty cool when I heard about it. I guess they’d spent several days in the wilderness together, and he’d come back all charged up.

He’d gone back a few weeks later, with Molly guiding again. I didn’t want to think about what else she might be doing. Pretty soon Dad was finding all sorts of excuses to go fishing, and it had to be Montana because that’s where the best trout were. Until it got cold up there and he started inviting her down to California.

At the rate they were going, Dad and Molly were both racking up a lot of frequent flyer miles between San Diego and Billings, Montana.

Molly was almost as old as Dad, and similarly fit and active. She didn’t bother with all the fripperies of Southern California women, though—her hair was dark and mixed with grays that she didn’t bother to dye. Good honest laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. And she didn’t take any shit from anyone, not even Dad.

The one time we’d met at a local restaurant, Molly had insisted on paying her own way. “She’s very independent,” Dad told me later. “She’s run her own hunting and fishing guide service for years, and she employs a staff of eight. She’s quite the entrepreneur.”

I knew that was a compliment coming from Dad, who was an economics professor and did some independent consulting for various business ventures.

I shied away from the idea that he might be getting serious with Molly. I knew it was silly. I didn't want Dad to be lonely. But it was really hard to think of any other woman taking Mom’s place in his life.

“How long is this Molly coming for?”

My dad pursed his lips, looking the way he did when he had something serious to say. Uh oh.

“She’s not ‘this Molly.’ Just Molly, okay? She’ll be staying through the weekend. Maybe a little longer. I’m going to take her sailing and we’ll probably do some deep sea fishing as well.”

Sailing? Shit. That was something we’d all done together, the three of us, when Mom had been alive. Sailing reminded him of Mom. It reminded me of Mom, too. And of happier times.

I felt that deep ache inside that never seemed to go away. I beat it back down. My mother had died and bad shit like that happened. Life sucked sometimes. But other people had their problems, too. “No self-pity” was my mantra.

I wasn’t going to let my father know it bothered me that he was taking her sailing. It was his life, right?

“Are you saying you’d like me to make myself scarce for the weekend?”

He actually seemed embarrassed when I put it that way. “No. No, of course not. In fact, we would
like to invite you out to dinner this Saturday at the Del Coronado.”

We
would? “Um, sure. What’s the occasion?”

I could have sworn my father flushed a little. What the hell? “Nothing special. I just thought it would be nice if we all went out to dinner.”

I wished I could say no, but no good excuse came to mind. When I agreed to go out for a nice dinner with him and Molly, my father beamed.

Looking back on it, I feel as if I ought to have known what was coming.

Maybe, in a way, I did know. The mind is strange. Things get put together deep down underneath the surface, where they don’t quite rise into our awareness. Little things that don’t make any sense to us rationally, like the quirks of a smile or the shape of an eye.