Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 9) (5 page)

Didn’t stop him from wanting to taste her again, just to satisfy his curiosity about whether she could still send him into the stratosphere with simply a kiss. And now that he was thinking about it, he couldn’t unthink it.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said. “How would your boyfriend feel if he learned you were holed up in a very small alleyway with your former lover?” Her cheeks flushed pink, and she looked away so fast that it piqued his curiosity. That was a button he hadn’t intended to push so hard, but now that his finger was on it… “He’s the jealous type then? I know I would be. If I was him, I’d want to punch me in the face.”

“Why exactly would Jared want to punch you?” Her tongue flicked out to drag across her upper lip, and he watched it with more interest than he probably should. “You know, given that you outweigh him by at least thirty pounds of muscle?”

The compliment warmed him dangerously, even though he knew good and well she hadn’t meant it as one. Nothing beneficial was going to come out of this conversation if he didn’t get it back on track. But all at once, he couldn’t help himself.

“Because,” he said silkily. “If I was him, I’d want to punch anyone who was thinking about you the way I am. What you taste like, the way you kiss with your whole body, the smell of your hair in the morning.”

All of that—plus the way her gaze deepened with so many unspoken things when he finally pushed into her after an eternity of being apart. How she moved against him sensuously, her cries enflaming him until he was so full of her he couldn’t imagine anything more pleasurable.

It had been two years since he’d felt her body take his over and over again, and yet he couldn’t stop the soul-deep reaction he had to the crystalline memories.

The tension ratcheted up a thousand degrees as they eyed each other, and he had a pretty good idea she was remembering that wild two weeks with the exact same explicitness.

“You’re right. You shouldn’t be thinking about me like that,” she murmured in complete opposition to the heat radiating between them.

“Oh, I agree.” His hand strained to lift the stray lock of her hair that had separated from the rest and lay innocently across her shoulder, waiting for him to slide it along his fingertips. “I have absolutely no right to be picturing you naked, riding me with your head thrown back and your breasts bared. But the beauty of it is I can see you like that anytime I want because I have it here.”

He tapped his temple. Her breathing hitched audibly, and his own wasn’t too steady either.

“Stop saying things like that.” Her arms crossed over her midsection as if hoping to ward off the truth with that slim barrier alone.

Yes. He absolutely should stop talking about sex. His hard-on was approaching painful.

“Why, because you can’t handle the fact that you still think about me exactly the same way?” It came out more harshly than he’d intended, and she flinched.

What the hell was he
doing
? He was supposed to be securing her help, not goading her into admitting things that didn’t matter. This was why he’d stayed away so long, refusing to be in the same city, let alone in the same room, with the woman he wanted more than oxygen but couldn’t have. He’d let her go, which had been the right thing to do, then and now.

She was with Jared. And acting like a jealous ass wasn’t going to change that or change the events of the last eighteen months. Blowing out a breath, he raked a hand through his hair and opened his mouth to apologize when she shook her head.

“I don’t think about you,” she insisted. “I can’t.”

“Because you’re with Anderson,” he shot back grimly.

That was a mood-killing bottom line for sure, which was exactly what he needed to do under the circumstances. Their conversation thus far was tame compared to the things he’d like to be saying to her, preferably while driving into her from behind as she cried out his name on a long wave of release.

Didn’t matter what he’d prefer. Other people might be able to screw around with someone in a committed relationship, but this was one instance where he’d own his sainthood. It was imperative that he back off before he did something that would scrape at his conscience later.

“No. Not because of Jared.” Fire snapped through her expression and not the good kind. “Because I can’t do this with
you
. You broke up with me, Charlie.
You
. For all I knew, you’d found someone else and were too much of a pansy to tell me to my face.”

The accusation cut through him, scoring him far deeper than he was prepared for. “That’s not what happened.”

“Then what did happen?” she demanded.

“I—”
Can’t tell you.

Not just because it was highly classified. But because the
crack
of that IED exploding reverberated in Charlie’s head for hours some nights. He’d been at the back of the team on that road into Abu Al-Khaseeb. Evan Silva had been at the front.

The shrapnel wounds had been horrific, peppering the entire left side of Evan’s body. He’d escaped with his life, but left a lot of flesh behind. The villagers who had been guiding them—
Oh, God
. That stayed with him constantly.

The carnage had been horrific, ghastly, so red. Every spilled drop of blood was on Charlie’s head, and just as he’d started to accept that he’d be bringing home a lovely parting gift of PTSD from Iraq, he’d realized that he could not,
would not
, drag Audra through his hell.

“I can’t do this with you either,” he muttered.

Not only was he damaged beyond repair, he’d
made a mistake
. And people had died. Evan had quit talking, lost in his own version of hell.

How could he come up with the words to explain how unworthy he’d felt during those months after he’d texted her the five words that had torn them apart? The Saint had fallen from grace, and Audra had been a ticket back into heaven that he couldn’t purchase. He’d dreamed about her in a haze of memories, except he couldn’t close his fingers around the wispy, fragile bit of happiness. She was the Holy Grail he yearned to drink from but couldn’t bear to sully.

But he still held out hope he could set things right with her. So he’d clawed his way out of the blackness, trying to get better, or at least to the point where he thought he could talk to her without feeling like he would taint her with his bloodstained hands.

One week went by. Then two.

Evan’s recovery had been so difficult, hampered by his descent into alcoholism that Charlie couldn’t ignore. That monkey was on his back too, and he’d dedicated himself to the task of getting his teammate sober. Then he’d gathered up the rest of his guys, gotten the hell out of Iraq, and brought them to the Caribbean to start a new life.

It was supposed to be therapy. It was supposed to put him back in Audra’s world, in close proximity until he could tell her everything, beg for her forgiveness. If he’d meant anything to her at all, there was always a possibility she’d waited for him.

Instead, she’d moved on. With Jared Anderson. It was poetic, actually, that she hadn’t waited for him to sort out his nightmares because, against all odds, she’d managed to heap a few more onto the pile.

“Can’t do what, talk about your pathetic breakup text? Don’t like your sins thrown back in your face either, huh?” she challenged him, her voice rising. “I spent months wondering what happened. Waiting for more explanation. Nothing. I started to realize you’d probably just shacked up with a CNN reporter.”

“We agreed no promises—” he shot back and cut himself off before he said something he regretted. It had been a lame excuse then, and it was no better now.

God, he should have given her that closure, but he… couldn’t. It would have been too permanent, too hard to look her in the eye and lie about his feelings. It was still too hard.

“Don’t you dare, Charlie. I agreed to that for
you
.” She stabbed him in the chest with a finger, but he didn’t miss that her hands were shaking. “Because I didn’t want to hold you to anything. But I was still here waiting for
months
, even though I knew better. Men have always let me down, but I
trusted
you with the crap about my dad, trusted you with…”

Her voice broke on a sob, and it instantly dissolved his own anger. Her pain was on him. He could own that, despite the sudden confusion over how she could still be so upset after all this time. She’d been matter-of-fact so far, like she was mad about the way he broke up with her, but not the fact that they were over.

This was… heartache.

Audra’s shoulders quaked and she buried her face in her palms, muffling the sounds of distress, and there was no mistaking the fact that he had hurt her far more than he’d ever guessed.

Hell if he was going to stand here and let her suffer. Pulling her into his arms, he grabbed on to her with every ounce of unspent passion, physically unable to keep from touching her when she cried.

She shouldn’t let him hold her like this, so closely, so intimately. He shouldn’t have done it in the first place. But she didn’t push him away, and God above, he lacked the will to relax his muscles and let his arms drop.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair, aching to find the lost pieces of themselves they had no hope of reclaiming. Aching over how cleanly they fit together. Aching because once upon a time, he’d believed in the possibility that they fit so well because she
was
his missing piece.

But while he’d left a chunk of his heart with her, he’d left a much bigger chunk of himself in Iraq—pieces that he could never get back, and Audra did not deserve half a man no matter what she’d done to hurt him since then.

They’d both made choices that had more lasting consequences than he would have ever supposed. And trust was still a precious commodity that neither of them had funds to purchase.

She shifted. Closer. Her hands spread across his back, and there was absolutely no mistaking the awareness in the soft little sigh that heaved through her chest. His blood heated instantly, and that was enough to get him to step back. Fast. The last thing they needed to be discussing was the blistering hard erection in his pants. Or how he was convinced that only her slick center could relieve it.

Apparently his body only remembered the good stuff between them.

“We can’t,” he told her simply. “I’m not like Anderson. I respect the fact that you’re together, even if he didn’t have the same respect for me.”

Charlie turned to get the hell out of this shadowed little alcove before Audra drove him insane. Before he forgot that she was off-limits and reacquainted himself with her mouth right here in this alleyway.

“Charlie.” Her sharp bark brought him up short. “I ended things with Jared a couple of months ago.”

A
udra cursed whatever stupid compulsion had caused her to blurt out that gem. She didn’t owe him any explanations, nor had he earned any.

But God, the feel of him surrounding her—she’d obviously lost her senses to have allowed such a thing, never mind blurting out a statement designed to keep him from storming off in a huff of righteous indignation because he’d thought she was two-timing Jared. Of all things to be up in arms about.

It had worked though. Charlie stood at the edge of the alleyway, his body vibrating with tension, not turning around.

Then he did, and she wished he hadn’t because something wholly seductive had taken over his demeanor, as if he’d been thinking of exactly the same thing she’d been imagining while in the circle of his arms.

“The opportune time to mention that would have been earlier,” he said, his voice rough with unchecked need that she was very afraid was reflected on her face.

That hug had woken up her insides in a way that she hadn’t been
awake
in a very long time—two years. Since the day Charlie had taken a plane out of her life. Jared had been there when her world fell off a cliff, and she’d always have a soft spot for him in her heart. But Charlie had claimed a much bigger piece of her—and then crushed it into smithereens.

Which didn’t seem to be enough to kill the physical reaction he’d always elicited in her from the very first moment she’d met him. It pissed her off.

She should have let him go. “Why? Does it matter so much to you that I’m single?”

It mattered to her.

Independence was her gig now. It was the whole reason she’d had to firmly tell Jared that she loved him for being there for her but she wasn’t in love with him. Hell, she barely liked him some days and definitely not enough to keep living in fear that she’d lose her job if she said or did the wrong thing. He was used to people kowtowing to him, and he liked to use people’s weaknesses against them.

She’d had to end things if for no other reason than to prove she didn’t need a crutch to hold her up. Maybe she had once—much to her sorrow and chagrin—but not anymore.

“Oh, yes,” Charlie purred. “Your relationship status is very relevant to this conversation.”

Charlie’s gaze burned into her with that strange heat that seemed so wrong for his icy blue eyes, and she had the distinct impression everything had shifted the moment he’d heard
not with Jared.