Healing Pleasure (5 page)

“What can I do for you?” Though he worded the question politely enough, his tone made it evident he wasn’t pleased by the interruption despite the flicker of interest she saw in his eyes.

Take me to the nearest bed. Strip me naked, tie me down, and touch me until I’m begging you to fuck me. Oh, and don’t forget to invite…

“Trey.” His name rolled from her lips as if completing the thought aloud.

Holy shit! Had she gone crazy? This guy was a client! Well, a potential client since she hadn’t yet given Trey her word she would work with Brit. Still, potential or not, she was a professional. She was here to decide if she could help this man though his grief, not to fuck him blind. She could do this. She could ignore the electric desire sparking in her head, sizzling through her body in a mad rush to be pleasured, and focus on her job. Couldn’t she?

His cheek flexed and she suspected if his face had been cleanly shaven she would’ve seen the muscle in the strong line of his jaw tick. “You’re here to see Trey?”

She nodded once, both in answer to his question and in an attempt to jar her mind from the quick plane to double-stud-land it seemed insistent on boarding. It fit with the ruse Trey had insisted they use. She was supposed to make Brit think she was dating Trey.

Heaven help me. This is going to be harder than I thought.

Brit averted his gaze, but not before she saw a spark on temper in his eyes. “He’s working. Try his cell.”

Realizing she’d walked close enough to him to invade his personal space, she stopped and knew in an instant the length of a football field wouldn’t be a safe distance from this man. His height coupled with the fact that he was still standing on the treadmill forced her to tip her head back so she could keep looking at him. Sweat beaded on the tips of the dark hairs that nearly reached his broad shoulders. He didn’t appear to be out of breath from his exercises, but she couldn’t quite tell if the tightness in his expression was from pain in his knee or her presence.

“I’m Lena Conley.” She extended her hand and waited for him to look at her again before she gave him what she hoped was a friendly smile.

His gaze dropped to her hand before lifting to her eyes. He hesitated, as if trying to decide whether to give her the brushoff or be polite, and finally closed his large hand around hers. “Brit Matthews.”

Awareness, swift and panty-wetting, zinged through her system at the contact. She tried to ignore the embers of white-hot need that rained through her and focus on the job she’d come here to do, on the role Trey wanted her to play in order to complete the mission he’d recruited her for.

She tipped her head back further to look at the sky. “It’s a beautiful day out here. I can see why you’re exercising outside.”

“It’s not by choice,” he grumbled and let go of her hand.

Because her palm burned to touch more of him, she curled her fingers into a fist at her side. “How did you hurt your knee?”

“Horse got spooked. I fell off and landed on it.”

The lie seemed to roll from his lips so easily she wondered how often he’d used it before. She winced as if she believed him. “Ouch. That sucks. I’ve never been on a horse.”

His gaze dropped to her legs and her pulse spiked. She actually
felt
the look on the bare flesh of her legs. He dragged his attention back to her face and she swore his eyes were a full two shades darker. “You’re short, but with the right stallion between your legs, I’m betting you’d ride you just fine.” His eyes sparked with a challenge that turned his statement into an innuendo. “I’m surprised Trey hasn’t taught a pretty thing like you how ride already.”

No, he definitely wasn’t talking about riding a horse. Heat filled her cheeks and she rushed to distract herself from the image of straddling his waist or Trey’s. “Are you a Navy SEAL, too?”

He shot a pointed look at his knee and the sorrow that moved through is handsome face before he quickly masked it tore at her heart. “I was.”

Lena planted her hands on her hips. “
Was
? What kind of SEAL talks like that?”
The injured kind. The kind with invisible wounds he doesn’t know how to heal.
“Don’t you frogmen have a saying, once a SEAL, always a SEAL, or something like that?”

“As a matter of fact, we have a saying exactly like that.”

Trey’s words were the only warning Lena got that he’d joined them before his strong arms wound around her and pulled her back against the hard wall of his body. Instinctively, she tipped her head back and turned it to look at him. She saw his intention in his eyes a nanosecond before his mouth came down on hers.

When she’d fantasized about him kissing her—and she’d done so repeatedly since he’d walked out of the diner yesterday—she’d never imagined he would take it slow. She’d expected to be devoured and possessed, not tenderly finessed into parting her lips for him. She did so on a sigh and felt herself melt in his embrace as his tongue swept into her mouth, tangled with hers, and controlled the kiss in an easy dance that stole her sanity.

Yeah, going suddenly insane was the only explanation for the way her hand lifted and reached behind his head to cup his nape as he slanted his mouth to take the kiss deeper. It was the only explanation for way her nipples beaded to hardened points, pulsing with the need to feel his hands and mouth on them. It was the only explanation for the flame that ignited in her pussy, coaxing a flow of juices from her cunt that she wondered didn’t start to drip from beneath her skirt.

He eased back, his breath fanning her lips when he spoke and sending desire raining through her system. “I’m glad you came out today, sugar.”

Lena gulped, lost in the dark promises and challenges that mixed a heady concoction in his eyes. “I…” She didn’t know what to say. He’d caught her off guard to the point that she couldn’t manage to gather a single intelligible sentence.

The corners of his lips twitched in a sinful smile as if he knew exactly what he’d done to her. “I see you’ve met Brit.”

Unsure if she should slap him or be grateful for his help, she decided to go with the latter and follow his lead. She’d give him a good smack for the stunt he’d just pulled later. Her hand was still cupping his nape and she forced herself to let her arm drop to her side, though he didn’t make a move to release her. His arms stayed around her waist, holding her tightly against his front. Ecstasy, hot and intoxicating, pumped off him in waves and there was no way she could miss the impressive hard rod of his cock pressing against the small of her back.

She looked at Brit and felt a wicked thrill move through her at the hard way he was watching her. “Brit was just telling me how he’d hurt his knee when he fell off the horse.” She felt Trey’s body tense against her back.

“Fell off a horse, huh?”

Brit’s attention snapped up, warning filling their depths as his gaze locked with Trey’s. “She doesn’t know how to ride. Why don’t you go teach her?”

“That’s not a bad idea.” Trey actually sounded pleased. “Why don’t you come with us? You can stand back and watch if you’re afraid of getting hurt again.”

It took every ounce of control Lena possessed not to gape at Trey. Maybe he didn’t understand the hidden meaning in Brit’s statement. Or maybe he did. They were men of Pleasure, after all. Then again, maybe she’d gotten it all wrong from the start.

Son of a bitch, she’d known this would happen. She’d known from the moment she’d started closer to Brit, from the way her hormones had spiked from simply looking at him, that this would happen. She’d had the same instant bodily reaction to him that she’d had with Trey yesterday. She couldn’t think being this close to them. Worse, she’d stopped within inches of Brit and Trey was now pressed against her back, putting her between them. If Brit stepped off that treadmill in her direction, she’d become the main slice in a Navy SEAL sandwich.

“I’ll pass.” Brit pushed the button on the treadmill that got it going again, his movements far stiffer than they’d been earlier as he started to walk on the moving belt beneath his feet. “I’m not done with my exercises.”

Lena felt the muscles in Trey’s chest flex against her back as he shrugged.

“Suit yourself. I’m going to take Lena inside and introduce her to May. We’ll be around if you change your mind.”

* * * *

Trey led Lena into Horace’s office and closed the door. He’d made a pass through the house before going out front and knew the place was empty save for May in the kitchen, but with so many people on the ranch, there was no telling when someone might decide to come in. Though he didn’t mind a crowd of strangers now and then, he’d rather not get caught by people he thought of as family.

He stopped in the center of the office floor and used his hold on Lena’s hand to spin her around before yanking her against him. Her chin came up, surprise and temper flashing like twin bolts of lightning in her eyes as she stared at him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m about to kiss you again. I didn’t get a good enough taste of you outside.”

“You are not going to kiss me again. What you’re going to do is let go of me.”

She flattened her hands on his chest and pushed, but the lack of force left him wondering if she was really trying to push him away.

“Is that really what you want, sugar? It damn sure didn’t feel that way out in the yard.” It didn’t feel that way now either. He’d loosened his hold on her, giving her enough room to move just in case she had been trying to push him away. She stayed right where she was.

“I’m supposed to be pretending to be your girlfriend in front of him. Wasn’t that the plan?”

It was, but that didn’t mean he didn’t intend to take full advantage of it every chance he got, whether Brit was watching or not. He wanted her. He’d tried to convince himself differently last night, figuring he might have imagined the instant need he’d felt for her. The moment he’d wrapped his arms around her out in the yard, he’d known he hadn’t imagined a damn thing.

“He’s lying to you.”

She made a raspberry sound with her lips. “Duh! You already told me how he hurt his knee. I didn’t tell him I knew because I want him to open up to me on his own.”

“Sugar, I know Brit better than anybody and the only thing he wanted to open up out there was your sexy legs.”

Her cheeks turned redder than the town’s fire engine, but she didn’t back down. He liked that about her. Even when he rattled her or caught her off guard, she managed to keep her composure.

“I’m not stupid or naive, Trey. I understood the hidden meaning in the byplay between the two of you. I also understood the hidden meaning behind the things he said to me before you walked out there.”

“Oh?” Brit had made a move on her? Hot damn! “What did he say?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I understood what he meant by it.”

“You’re not getting it, sugar. It
does
matter. Him putting the moves on you is the first sign of the real Brit any of us have seen since the op.”

She scoffed. “I wouldn’t really call what he said a move. At least not one that would entice any woman with an ounce of standards to spr—He was being a jerk. A polite one, mind you, but a jerk, nevertheless.”

Trey didn’t think he’d ever heard a woman put the brakes on a statement so fast. Spread her legs. That’s what she’d been about to say before she’d obviously realized the context she’d started with. “Sugar, you’re full of standards. It doesn’t take a man two seconds in your company to see that.” He didn’t think her cheeks could get any redder, but they did. “It’s okay to admit you’re attracted to Brit, even if he was being a jerk.”

“You hired me to counsel him, to talk to him, and see if I can help him cope with what happened on that op. There’s nothing between you and me except this scam you concocted that’s supposed to make it easier for me to get closer to Brit.”

Trey tightened his arms around her again and slowly started backing her toward the nearby wall. “It started out that way, but it sure felt like more a few minutes ago in the yard.”

“You surprised me out there. If I hadn’t reacted the way I did, your plan would’ve been blown before it even really got started.”

She took an audible, shaky breath when her back reached the wall. Trey didn’t stop until his front was fully pressed against hers, until he had her caged between him and the wall with nowhere to go. He’d let her go, of course. If he sensed any indication in her whatsoever that she wanted to get away from him, he wouldn’t make a move to stop her. What he saw in her eyes as she stared up at him was an excited hope he would keep going, a plea that he wouldn’t stop.

“You want to tell me again there’s nothing between you and me, Lena?”

She swallowed visibly, and his attention locked on her throat. The vein pulsed in her neck, beckoning his tongue and teeth. “There’s nothing between you and me.”

“You don’t sound so sure.” He moved his hands to her hips, dipped his head, and dragged the tip of his tongue over the line of her jaw. “Tell me you don’t want me. Tell me you aren’t ready to strip for me, to spread your beautiful legs for me, and wait for me tell you what to do next.”

Her quick intake of breath told him all he needed to know. He’d taken a gamble going this far this soon. As he gazed into her eyes and saw the wicked desires burning hot and ready in their depths, he knew the jackpot would payoff far sooner than he’d dared to hope.