Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 9) (6 page)

That was a convenient shield that never should have been removed. There was too much hurt pinging around amidst all the sizzle, and he’d taken the admission the wrong way.

“That wasn’t some kind of green light, Charlie.” She crossed her arms over the worst of the ache in her midsection, but it would be impossible to salve it since there was nothing that could physically reach that deep. “There’s a reason we haven’t seen each other until now.”

He nodded. “Because neither of us are good at saying what’s going on inside. Unless it’s ‘take me now,’ ‘faster, Charlie’ or ‘race you to the shower.’”

There was little use in arguing with the truth. “Perhaps. But that part of us is over. I’m not averse to trying to be civil since we’re bound to run into each other from time to time. Anything more than that is off the table.”

But he was already shaking his head with a smile that made her very nervous. “Civil. I don’t think there’s even a small part of our interaction that could be described as
civil
. And you’re lying to yourself if you think the chemistry between us has fizzled even slightly.”

Oh, no. She had a strict policy of always being truthful with herself, especially since other people lied to her on a regular basis, Charlie included. Lying by omission wasn’t any less of a lie, and she was still waiting for the explanation as to what had happened in Iraq. There was more to the story, and she deserved to know why he’d dumped her so unceremoniously.

Especially after such a ridiculous point like
we agreed no promises
. Really? That was the best he could do? He’d broken her heart and then treated the whole thing like it could just be brushed under the carpet, no harm, no foul.

Besides, she’d never said he wasn’t liquefying her core with nothing more than his eyes. But just because he could turn her on didn’t mean they could pick up where they’d left off, like what they’d had was nothing more than a bunch of hormones.

“We are over Charlie. That ship has sailed,” she told him firmly. “The reason we haven’t seen each other is because we both knew it would be exactly like this. You ended things. I’ve made my peace with it. Don’t expect me to magically get over that in the course of one day.”

Oddly, his expression softened. “Maybe we both need to take a step back and let go of some mad.”

She nodded curtly.

And that’s when his mood shifted again, like mercury suspended in time. He flowed toward her, and she watched him approach, not backing down because he didn’t scare her.

“Better yet, let’s burn off some of that mad,” he suggested, and the once-over he slid down her body unleashed a shiver that she couldn’t control. Though she tried.

“It would be helpful,” she agreed and nearly bit her tongue off when the heat between them dialed up. “But that would best be done by a five-mile run. Or swimming. Or—”

“Hot, sweaty, up-against-the-wall sex.” He reached out then, threading his fingers through her hair to take nearly her whole jaw in his palm. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

God, his hands alone put an ache in her core that could not be denied. But while she would never lie to herself about what this man did to her, she’d never tell him the truth about it.

“I’m not interested.”

That’s when he laughed, low and rich, and it settled inside her, heating her from within. And it was delicious. But she had a lot of practice at denying herself things that she wanted. A lot of practice at healing from things that she couldn’t have.

“Now I know you’re lying. But we’ll roll with that for a moment. What are you interested in? Not Jared obviously. Who then? What turns you on these days?”

“We’re not doing this.” She backed up until she hit the wall, if for nothing else than to jump start her brain. It was too hard to think when he touched her, which she suspected was the point. His fingers fell away, but not one iota of the sizzling awareness diminished. “I filed my report regarding Ilhota Rosa, and I’m done here.”

His arm shot out to hit the brick behind her head, blocking her from leaving. “Oh, no. You are not done.”

She smiled because really? “That’s so cute. You might have military training, but I’m still a third-degree black belt. Besides, you know I can duck under your arm easily. Right?”

“You’re not going to.” Curiously, he eyed her. “What happened between you and Jared, anyway? Why’d you dump him?”

“None of your business.”

She crossed her arms and only succeeded in grazing his torso with her elbows. The man had an amazing physique, sun browned along his arms, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that shade of tan spread underneath his shirt. The line stopped below his belly button and extended around to the back, just above his spectacular rear end. She could picture it perfectly.

“He doesn’t know how to pleasure you like I do,” he murmured. “It’s okay. You can say it.”

“Ha.” She shook her head with an amused smile to cover the way her pulse bobbled under his careful scrutiny. “That’s the last thing I’d say.”

“Because you feel some sort of loyalty to him.” Charlie clicked his tongue in dismay. “That’s honorable. I can respect that. But he’s not here. I won’t tell if you want to just go ahead and admit that he doesn’t get you humming the way I do. That he never once bent you over the railing on a balcony in broad daylight and made you scream in full view of a beach thronged with people.”

Her core flooded instantly and she shut her eyes. That balcony orgasm was indeed imprinted in her soul. As was the one on the beach at Ilhota Rosa—the first climax Charlie had brought her to and still her favorite because it had happened on the heels of swimming with the wild dolphins there.

Nothing Jared had ever done could compare.

“My relationship with Jared is not up for discussion,” she told him. Again.

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“I already know the truth. There’s nothing to convince myself of.”

The truth? Jared liked women and had a lot of experience pleasuring one. She’d had plenty of orgasms in his bed. She’d had plenty of orgasms by herself too, and they ranked about the same. Nice. Nothing to write home about.

“Prove it.”

She blinked at the crafty expression on Charlie’s face. “Prove what?”

“That you’re not interested in me anymore. That you’re so satisfied with the way Anderson pleasured you that you won’t incinerate under my mouth.”

“What, you’re going to go down on me right here in the alleyway?” The second it left her mouth, she regretted it—of course he’d take it as a challenge. He’d been doing that from the moment she’d opened her mouth to ask him if he was waiting for her. She should have just laughed and walked away.

Too late. His gaze latched onto the area in question and then traveled oh, so slowly back up to her eyes, burning everything in its path.

“Are you asking me to?”

Yes
. Oh, please God, yes. Her body wept with the promise of his tongue against her fevered core.

“No! We’re in public. I might have had sex with you on a balcony, but we were eighteen stories up in the penthouse. The odds of people actually seeing us were slim.”

That had added to the thrill though, no doubt, and he knew it. Just like he knew he’d sparked something inside her that was going to be so much harder to deny than she’d anticipated. Especially given that the look in his eye said he’d immediately clued in on the fact that her protest centered on their current location. Not the activity. Or him.

“Are you sure?” He didn’t touch her, but she felt him inside as surely as if he had. “You know it would be good. You know I know exactly how you like it, a little rough, a lot dirty. The thrill turns you on as much as the motion. Let me show you that I haven’t forgotten one blessed thing about how to make you come.”

“Your memory isn’t the problem,” she said loftily, her heart pounding as she imagined what he’d do if she said yes. “Your hearing is. I told you I’m not interested.”

And then he’d challenged her to prove it. Walking away would accomplish that. Standing here salivating over how good they could make each other feel did nothing but play into his hands. She didn’t move.

“Let’s just see about that,” he murmured and cupped her face, brought his mouth to within a hair’s breadth of hers, and stopped a frustrating millimeter away. “Tell me to stop.”

To hell with that.

Fisting his T-shirt, she yanked until their lips connected, and oh, God yes, Charlie was kissing her. His dazzling, talented tongue swirled against hers, claiming it with strong licks, and her back bit into the brick as he crushed her between his brutally hard body and the wall behind her.

Moaning, she let her need flow, and he swept it up easily, taking her deeper into the maelstrom. His thigh wedged between hers, shoving his cargo shorts high on his leg. Hard muscles lodged right at her sweet spot, and
yes
, that was what she’d been lacking.
Charlie
. Exactly like this, holding her, feeding her desire, catching her when she fell.

God
, she’d missed this, missed the way he made her feel, missed his solidness.

He pulled at the hem of her skirt until he’d bunched it at her waist and there was no barrier between her hot flesh and his leg except a thin scrap of lace. She strained against him, desperate for him. Desperate to get back to that place they’d been two years ago when the world made sense. The longing for that, for him, unfolded inside her with so much fire that it pushed her to the brink.

She cursed. He
was
going to shatter her in under a minute. Right here, a block from her workplace, and that was enough of a cold bucket of water to introduce reality once again.

“Stop.”

He did instantly, stepping back and taking all his delicious heat with him.

Expression hooded and implacable, he stood there, torso rising and falling erratically. Watching her. Reason returned along with a healthy bit of remorse. This man had the power to break her, and she’d forgotten far too quickly that she couldn’t rely on him.

“All that proved was that you kiss like the devil and that my girl parts are in working order,” she said, but her body wasn’t on board with the distance between them and swayed toward him.

At that, he laughed. Wickedly. “Wrong. It proved that you’ve been severely neglected and are in desperate need of a man in your bed who’s worth his Y chromosome.”

The simmering testosterone in that statement should have her rolling her eyes, but she was still too raw and achy to ignore how his laugh crept into every last pore of her skin, heating it. “I’ve never denied that you have a singular ability to turn me on. The problem is that I don’t want you to.”

“Still have a thing for Anderson then?”

“Will you get off that subject?” Hands jammed down on her hips, she stared him down. “Jared has nothing to do with this. I don’t need either one of you, frankly. My vibrator doesn’t ignore every word I say or drop me in the middle of a territory grab between two grown men. Both of you should know better than to poke at each other because I had the audacity to exercise my God-given right to sleep with whomever I choose.”

Instantly, his expression closed in. The chill crawled down her spine and not in a good way.

“You’re right,” he said softly with an undertone that warned her it wasn’t agreement in any way. “You do have the choice to sleep with whoever you want to. Just like I have the choice to be pissed that you
deliberately
picked a man you knew was my friend.”

He let that settle with a brief pause, but before she could fire back, he interrupted her.

“Just imagine how much fun it was to hear from him how you’d moved on. Especially since he got a little graphic with his description of how close the two of you were. That’s why I didn’t come running to you with an explanation of why I sent that text message. I
could not
take it, knowing that he’d had his hands on you. That you’d been with him the same way you’d been with me.”

No
. Not the same.
At all.
Jared had never penetrated her head, her soul. Just her body.

She snorted, but it came out as shaky as her insides. “So this is just a competition thing. You hate the idea of him pawing at your woman, right? You staked your claim first, and how dare Jared betray you like that.”

“I don’t blame him,” Charlie bit out. “Your choices are one hundred percent on you.”

Speechless, she stared at him as a glint of pain surfaced in his pale blue eyes, then vanished as they turned back into ice chips. He wasn’t just pissed off about Jared encroaching on his “territory”—it was far more personal and deep than that. She’d hurt him.

Where was all of this coming from? She’d have sworn she didn’t mean anything to Charlie. Until this moment.

“If it’s so upsetting to you, maybe you might ask a couple of questions about the genesis of my relationship with Jared then,” she said, bewildered at the turn the conversation had taken.

Her stomach turned as she internalized that while she’d been drowning in grief, yearning for Charlie, wishing he was there to keep her from going under, she’d instead reached out to Jared. Only to wind up here in this alleyway in Freeport with the niggling, unsettling feeling that it had been a huge mistake.

If she hadn’t been with Jared, would Charlie have sought her out for that conversation she’d desperately wanted but never gotten? He’d come back to the Caribbean after unceremoniously dumping her, a move that had totally shocked her. What if he’d intended to seek her out, maybe to explain, maybe to try again, and hadn’t because she’d removed that possibility?

“I don’t care.” His derision cut through her chest like a machete. “That’s why I haven’t asked.”

“I can’t go back and undo it, Charlie,” she whispered. Numb all at once, she stared at him. Had she somehow lost what she could have had with Charlie before even realizing it was in her grasp?

“I’m not asking you to. The only thing I want is another shot at the goods you gave up to Anderson.”

The cruel twist of his mouth almost hurt worse than his derision, and that stopped the anguish and uncertainty cold. He’d come sniffing back around for a reason, all right, but not because he wanted to start over or soothe soul-deep injuries. It was yet another round of obnoxious, arrogant male pandering. Like she’d always assumed. How dare he cheapen what she’d had with him and what she’d had with Jared in the same vulgar sentiment?