SEAL'd Perfection The Complete Collection: A Navy SEAL Romance (23 page)

“Fuck, Kat,” I slipped a finger over the dark patch, feeling her wetness on my fingertips. She smelled amazing and I wanted to devour her. My fingers were hungry for her silky center, and I couldn’t help but tear the panties down in a swift flick, not patient enough to take my time and unwrap her properly. Kat didn’t seem to mind, panting and clawing at my bare back as I knelt down before her, easing one thigh over my shoulder to part her. I sucked in a harsh breath at the sight of her, fully exposed. Her pink lips were dark and swollen with desire and I dove in, licking up and down, getting every drop of her pussy with the tip of my tongue. Kat arched and bucked, her nails digging deeper into my back as she tried to keep from crying out as my tongue worked faster and deeper.

When I thrust two fingers into her, she moaned so loud, I figured the whole fucking diner could hear, but I didn’t care and she didn’t seem to either, begging me for more as she chanted my name. Kat’s fingers worked up my neck and got lost in my hair, tugging on the roots as I worked her. “Come for me, baby, come all over my face,” I told her, before plunging my tongue back between her folds, thrusting my fingers harder and faster, until she was shaking uncontrollably. When I found the spongy sweet spot inside her, she went ramrod still, sucking in her breath, and after a second of hot tension, released with another loud moan, closely followed by a “Fuck! Jace!”

I smiled to myself, knowing I’d done my job.

But I wasn’t done yet.

I dropped her thigh from my shoulder and when she was stable on her legs, I stood and threw my jeans to the floor. “Open your eyes, Kat,” I instructed, before pushing down my boxers. I wanted her to see what she did to me, the way I needed her. She was still panting and coming down from her orgasm, but at the sight of my cock, she flashed another wicked smile and took me in her warm hands. It was my turn to lose it, as she stroked my skin, paying special attention to the tip until I was dribbling pre-jack all over the fucking place. She pushed on my chest, forcing me back a few shallow steps, until I was backed into the pile of boxes in the middle of the room. She glanced at the boxes and I sank down, understanding her non-verbal cue. When I was seated, she straddled me, spreading herself open for me and I clenched my jaw.
Hot damn
.

She smiled as she lowered herself to me, her soaking wet pussy taking me in slowly, inch by inch, until I filled her completely. She was so tight and hot and wet, I nearly exploded right then, and when she started rocking back and forth, her tits brushing against my bare chest with each move, I bit my tongue to keep from yelling out. My hands gripped her hips, keeping her pace as she rolled and rocked on me.

“Jace, you fit me so perfectly,” she purred, between sharp pants.

“Yeah, baby, we do fit perfectly.” I said, my voice gravelly and thick.

She arched back and her pussy tightened even harder around me. She was close and I was determined to hold out until she got a big release. I slid my finger up her taut stomach and over her breasts, teasing her nipples as she laid her head back and rocked a little harder and a little faster against me. My cock thickened and I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer, but right as I was about to go, she shuddered with her own release and sent me over the edge, both of us rocketing up and crashing down at the same time. She met my eyes as we shook and pulsed together, and I knew I’d never seen her look more beautiful. Her hair was slicked back, little drops of sweat on her forehead, but her eyes were shining bright and the satisfied, half crazy smile on her face took what was left of my breath away.

“I can’t believe we just did that,” she said before laughing softly. “Wow.”

I wanted to hold her against my chest, to stay with her the rest of the afternoon, but before I could say anything, she climbed off of me and turned away to get dressed. I watched her and when she turned back to me, she gave me a questioning glance. “Why aren’t you getting dressed?”

“I was just taking in the view,” I replied with a lazy smile.

She rolled her eyes and snatched my jeans from the ground, tossing them into my lap with a huff. “Come on, Jace. I gotta get back to work.”

What the fuck?
Her tone slingshot me from the satisfied, intimate moment. She was already dressed, and paused by the door long enough to pat her face dry with a paper towel and slick back her hair, making sure there wasn’t anything out of place. “Go out the side door. No one can know you were in here.”

With that, she was gone, leaving me in the literal, and figurative, dark as the storage room door closed behind her.

After dealing with Patrice’s cat-that-ate-the-canary grin for the rest of my shift, I was bursting to get out of the diner and race home. I went out the side door, to avoid crossing paths with Jace on the sidewalk out front. Our quickie in the storage room had me reeling and I wasn’t ready to see him again. Not just yet. I got behind the wheel of my mid-range sedan and rested my head on the steering wheel, taking a full breath, holding it to the point where my lungs were burning before releasing it slowly, like a balloon deflating through a small hole.

“What are you doing Kat?” I whispered to myself.

Jace’s confession of his past had thrown me way off track in regards to my feelings for him. His voice had been so raw and real, the ache audible with each fragment of the story. My heart had torn a little more with each sentence that he said, until it finally shattered. I had no experience with the military or really any knowledge of the war Jace had been involved with. It wasn’t that I didn’t care—I’d just been so consumed with my own drama for the past several years, I didn’t spend much time reading or listening to stories of war and conflict. My life was tumultuous and out of control, I didn’t need more layers of anxiety added on top of everything else. Maybe that was selfish…maybe it was survival. I didn’t really know, but after listening to Jace share his truth, I was compelled to find out more about what had happened, what he’d seen and experienced that had driven him to the breaking point.

Jace’s past was heart wrenching and it was disgusting to think about Mitch spinning it for his own personal gain. Picturing him sitting in his lawyer’s office, all smug and secure, thinking he’d won made me even sicker to my stomach. I turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the small lot, turning left instead of right. I wasn’t going home.

I was going to see Mitch and put an end to the nonsense.

My hands were shaking by the time I found a parking spot in the lot below his office building. I stared up, out the windshield, at the windows for the office I knew was his. Or, at least had been the last time I’d visited. The memory of that day gripped my stomach, and the force of the wave of nausea that rolled over me, was almost enough to make me pull back onto the street and go home.

Almost
.

I took a deep breath, willing the panic away, and gave myself a couple of minutes to get myself together, before I got out of the car and went up the elevator to the top floor. I pushed through the frosted glass doors, sneering at the logo bearing Mitch’s name, and strode right up to the reception desk. “I’m here to see Mitch,” I stated, surprising myself with my firm, don’t fuck with me, tone.

The receptionist, an older woman in a hounds tooth blazer that I wasn’t sure had ever been considered “in fashion” looked up at me, over her square glasses frames, and cleared her throat, as though I was interrupting her. “I’m sorry,
Mr. Martin
isn’t in the office right now,” she said, placing special emphasis on Mitch’s title, as though reminding me this was a professional office.

Something in her face told me she was lying. Mitch was in the office and I wasn’t leaving until I got what I wanted. It had taken quite the internal pep talk to get me upstairs, and I wasn’t going back down empty handed.

“I’ll wait,” I said, turning away from her desk and marching to a seat in the corner of the office. The receptionist shot a look of disgust at me, before rising and disappearing from sight down the main hallway that led to the personal offices. I smiled to myself, knowing that it was likely she’d gone to alert Mitch to my presence. I took special pleasure in picturing his irritated expression when she gave him the news.

Moments later, Mitch himself appeared in the deserted lobby. “Katherine,” he said, his voice flat, his face conveying his distaste.

I stood and strode to meet him. “We need to talk. Right now.”

He studied my expression for a moment, before shooting a look back at his receptionist as though only then remembering we had an audience. Finally, he sighed, letting me know just how put out he felt, and then gestured for me to follow him. “In my office.”

“Fine,” I said, following him down the hall. Only when we were shut inside his office did I continue, “This has to stop, Mitch. I’m not here to fight with you, but we have to figure this out between us, like adults.”

Mitch took his time sitting down behind his desk. “That’s what the hearing is for, Katherine. We’ll sort this out in court in just a few days time.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean right here, right now. It’s not right to drag our son through court. It was bad enough when he was a baby, but this? Even you must see how damaging this is for him!”

“Even I? Wow, you sure know how to get what you want, don’t you Katherine? You really don’t think I keep Jax’s best interest in mind?” He paused, baiting me into answering.

I pursed my lips in response and he continued, “Jax is doing just fine. Hannah has him working on some preschool curriculum while we wait to get him started with a proper preschool. We go to the park, the zoo, the aquarium, and the toy store. He’s thriving—happy!”

Each word was a dagger in my heart, imagining Jax running around with Mitch and Hannah, as though I’d never existed. The picture Mitch was painting for me was like something out of a perfect parenting magazine, a standard I’d clearly not lived up to between working full time and going to school. In the back of my mind, I knew it wasn’t as white picket fence as Mitch was saying, but it stung nonetheless.

“I’m his mother, Mitch. Like it or not, once upon a time, you loved me and married me, and we made the choice to bring our little boy into this world. You don’t get to take that away from me just because you decided you liked fucking your secretary more than me!” I said, my voice getting sharp and leaning towards hysterical at the end.

Mitch’s face clouded. “Sit down, Katherine, and kindly refrain from that type of language. This is a place of business, not some biker bar…”

Red hot anger jolted through me at Mitch’s not-so-subtle dig and it took every ounce of self control not to reach across the desk and slap him right across the face. My conversation with Jace was still fresh in my mind and my defense mechanism towards him and his past were on high.

However, when the flash of anger passed, my blood was still boiling, but I knew I needed to keep it together. For Jax. For Jace. For myself. I sat in the chair across from Mitch and took a silent breath before asking, “Why are you really doing this to me Mitch? What did I do to merit such hatred and wrath?”

He looked surprised by my question, sitting back in his chair a little further. “This isn’t about you, Katherine, or my feelings towards you. This is about what’s best for Jax.”

“And you think that’s to be dragged out of his home by a social worker at eight o’clock in the morning? To not get to see or even talk to me, his mother, on the phone at night before he goes to sleep?” My voice was quivering, and despite my resolve not to cry in front of Mitch, hot, desperate tears flooded down past my lashes. I swiped them away and continued, “That’s not about our son, and you know it. You’re angry with me. God, I wish I knew why…” my eyes couldn’t look at him anymore and drifted off to look out the window beyond his shoulder.

Mitch let out a cold, callous peal of laughter. “Wow. You really don’t get it, do you? You know, this whole time, I was convinced that this innocent, victim routine of yours was on purpose, to make people feel sorry for you and take your side. But that’s not it, is it? You
actually
think that you’re in the clear. That you didn’t do anything wrong?”

“What are you talking about?” My eyes narrowed at Mitch.

“
You
pushed me away, Kat,” he said, suddenly deathly serious, no trace of humor or sarcasm left on his face. “I did every fucking thing to make you happy. I busted my ass building this business to get you all the things we used to talk about—a bigger house, nice clothes, a better car, and when Jax came along, we had the top of the line stroller, a custom designed nursery, and I offered to get you a full time nanny to help you out. Why do you think I did all of that?” He stood from his seat and raked his hands through his thinning hair as he looked out the window for a moment, leaving me to stew in his question, before he snapped back around to face me. “I did it for you! I did it for us! But did it mean anything to you? No. Of course not. All you did was complain, shut me down, and shut me out. I swear—I was just an ATM wearing a suit to you.”

I couldn’t breathe. Mitch had never spoken to me that way, and each hateful sentence pushed me closer to the edge of the cliff that overlooked the ruins of our broken marriage. I had spent years putting space between myself and those horrible memories, and as Mitch railed, all of the emotions surged back. “You were never an ATM to me, Mitch! That’s never how I looked at you.”

“Kat, the only time you
talked
to me was when there were problems. You needed something for the baby, or the trash was overflowing, or the garage door was acting up. That was it.”

“Why didn’t you say this before?” I asked, my eyes frantically searching his face. “We could have gone to counseling or something. We could have got help before you…” I let the rest of my words trail off, not wanting to speak the truth out loud.

“Hannah listened to me. She opened a side of me that I thought had died. She looked at me like I was a man, Kat,” Mitch said. His expression was angry, but his voice had an edge of sadness to it.