Soak (A Navy SEAL Mormon Taboo Romance) (6 page)

Chapter Nine

Dinner was a blur of small talk, not-so-subtle Mormon
missionary cajoling, and carbs. Ry had a hard time keeping track of the
conversation. Even Elder Johannes, usually so above-it-all, made a comment on
how the skating day seemed to have “sapped most of us of our energy.”
Oh
good sir, if you only knew...

Ry was convinced that so much as looking at Chloe would give
something away—and given his dick’s recent imagination, this wasn’t literally
impossible. But he still felt the charge in the air. Getting into the car, he’d
accidentally-on-purpose brushed the back of her thighs as she climbed into the
back seat of the van. It was easy enough for people who weren’t going to fuck
to brush by a brush-by, but he’d caught the look on her beet-red face. This
flirtation, it no longer belonged to the province of his dreams. He just had to
wait.

Well, he had to wait, be patient, and follow the signs.
There were a hundred trillion reasons why he should drop the pursuit of the
pale, pretty Mormon girl, but after she’d tolerated his touch in the parking
lot, some part of Ry had committed to the chase. He was a man who finished what
he started. Instincts were the highest law of his land.

She didn’t look at him, either. Though their smallest
interactions felt charged. At one point, Chloe passed him the salt with her
eyes pinned to the table-cloth, and the shaker went tumbling. Celeste shrieked
when the salt hit the table, throwing some over her shoulder—which necessitated
a whole conversational detour about how silly superstition was. The irony
wasn’t lost on Ry, as he refused to look at the woman he planned to have
tonight. Wanted to have. Hoped to have.

“Bro, you okay?” John muttered into his ear at the end of a
Sara Lee dessert. “I know that conversion stuff can be a little hard to hear,
but you’re acting a little
spacey.
”

His buddy’s eyes were wide open, and perhaps glossed with a
little suspicion. John had been pretty vocal about his disapproval of weed and
other narcotics while the pair of them had been recovering in rehab together;
Ry’s fellow SEAL thought such “crutches” were “weak.” If he suspected his buddy
was using under the family roof, Ryder knew there’d be hell to pay. He summoned
all his energy and tried to look normal. Or at least like a guy who wasn’t
spending every cell’s energy on
not
lunging across the table at the coy
ballerina, tearing aside her gossamer petticoats, and
having
her.

“Don’t worry, man. I’m totally cool.”

“That spill on the ice looked pretty bad today.”

“I’ve been using my relaxation techniques,” he half-joked.
John slapped him on the back. His eager smile returned, and his attention spun
off in the direction of one of the twins.

It seemed to take longer than usual for the Christiansens to
dodder off to sleep that night. Mrs. Christiansen wanted to play Scrabble for a
full hour after dinner, and Elder Johannes had some odd piece of scripture to
read aloud for the family’s “consideration.” As the hours ticked by, it became
harder to ignore Chloe, breathing beside him, occupying the same close spaces.
Ry got close to praying that she wouldn’t interpret the familial stalling as
some kind of sign, some reason to avoid what he now considered inevitable.

It wasn’t that he was so cocky. It had been ages since he’d
had sex with a woman, but it wasn’t pure lust that governed his instincts. It
never exactly had been. When every other man in his unit—hell, even John, who
was tearful about it later—had solicited prostitutes on a lay-over in
Amsterdam, Ryder had spent one glorious night in a weed cafe, attempting to
obliterate painful combat memories. This had been just before his first tour
with the SEALs, near the conclusion of some on-the-ground training. Ryder mused
that it was a little shocking, how he could look back on his early days in the
military with an amount of nostalgia—especially given how the whole adventure
had ended.

The point being: he’d never fancied himself the kind of man
who was governed by his cock. The girls he’d preferred in Queens and Brooklyn
were the same as he; other crazies, Roman candles he could bump into for brief
spells and then leave without fear of heartbreak. He liked competent, confident
women who knew who they were and liked to feel good. From what he could tell,
Ballerina was the opposite of this type. But in a twisted kind of logic, it was
this fact that was making him so certain that they needed one another, needed
something from one another. They were...unlike.

Across the room, Ryder watched Chloe jam little wooden tiles
back into the black Scrabble bag. She’d thumped everyone in the room, and an
adorable little winner’s smile played at the corners of her lips. He forgot the
evening’s pledge for a moment, and managed to catch her gaze in his. They both
blushed and looked down. Ryder saw a flash from his dream life—Chloe’s naked
body, hanging over his.

Then again, maybe the lust thing was much simpler than he
was making it in his head. Maybe it was just that Chloe was a new kind of
incandescent light and he was a helpless, dumb moth.

“Goodnight, Christiansen clan!” Elder Johannes hollered from
the foot of the stairs. Jesus-Christ-God, finally! Ryder had to resist the urge
to jump in the air, as one by one the family filed up the stairs to put on their
freaky Mormon pajamas. He made a brief mental note to stop thinking such evil
things about the religion of his woman-to-be.

“Chloe, don’t forget to turn off the lights!” Marie cooed,
the last to ascend the stairs. Ryder didn’t move a muscle until he heard the
twins’ bedroom door slide shut, with a click. Then, he listened to the house
breathing.

They were alone.

He wasn’t going to be the one to speak first. He definitely,
definitely wasn’t going to be the one to speak first.

“Listen, Chloe...”

(Fuck.)

“About today,” he continued, sounding lame even to himself.
She played the Sphinx, methodically cleaning up the rest of the game. When she
finished with this, she fluffed pillows.

“Is your knee feeling better?” she asked, a little coolly.

“It’s fine. Your wrist?”

She nodded, sitting beside him on the living room couch.
Now
is the moment,
spoke some horny little boy in his head. But just as he was
about to close the distance between their bodies, there was the sound of some
heavy object being dropped upstairs, and rolling across the floor.

Chloe sprang up, as if pinched. They both listened like deer
caught in headlights, ears alert, bodies frozen. Finally, they heard John’s
audible, “Crap,” and the slow movements of a man on new legs mopping up a
spill.

Chloe turned her big eyes on him. Ryder stayed caught.

“We can’t do this,” she said. “I mean, whatever
this
is.”
Her voice trembled, but her chin was set. Ryder thought she’d never looked more
beautiful, quivering there before him.

“Chloe,” he began—but for once in his damn life, words were
not forthcoming. He couldn’t give her a reason to be with him that trumped
family, faith, and a lifetime’s worth of carefully grown convictions. Not to
mention common sense.

“What?” she prompted, when he stayed quiet. He dared to
believe there was an edge of pleading in her voice.

“You’re the most annoying woman I’ve ever met,” he blurted,
punctuating this with a weary laugh. “You drive me absolutely crazy.”

“That is so not the way to get into my pants, Ryder.”

He couldn’t help himself.

“I didn’t realize good Mormon girls talked like that.”

“I didn’t realize good Navy SEALs
looked
like you.”

“Oh yes, you did.” He stood to meet her gaze, and suddenly
they were nose to nose in the living room. Their words came in rapid streams.
“Don’t kid yourself, Chloe. You
wished
we did. You’ve spent your whole
life wishing for a man who can protect you and keep up with you. I know you’re
not getting boo from these reedy little Mormon boys, with their goddamned
name-tags.
”

“You know what, Ryder? You are arrogant. And intolerant.
And...”

“You know what, Chloe? You are stuck-up. You’re almost as
stuck up as you are petrified.”

“What do I have to be petrified of?” Her lips were moving an
inch from his face. He felt like his face was in a cloud of her shampoo.

“Me,” Ryder said. “Us. This.” Then, he kissed her.

He kissed her in a way he hadn’t kissed other girls, in
maybe ever. The violence of his lust nearly scared him. He reached into the
blond mass of her wavy hair and peeled her head backward, feeling like a lusty
film star from the 30s. When their lips touched, he felt himself sucking,
pillaging the warm, wet hollow of her mouth like a spelunker in a cave. He
wanted to know every cranny.

Every part of her was soft to his touch. As his fingers played
with the creamy, smooth expanse of her neck—grabbing, kneading—he felt her body
mold to him. She sank into him willingly, and without a moment’s hesitation.
There it was again: that feeling that this had been inevitable. He also felt
the certainty in his jeans.

It was moments and moments of raw, angry kissing before
Chloe first peeled away. The look she gave him, when their sweaty foreheads
were bent together, was not one he’d seen on her face before. It was something
to do with the skin around her eyes. She looked relaxed, to be held fast in his
arms. Relieved.

He hoped she wouldn’t say something cliche, like the dreaded
“we can’t do this” again. For once, she met his expectations by diving back
into his mouth. Now it was Chloe’s turn to demonstrate fearlessness. He felt
her eager, virginal hands explore his bulky surface, testing their strength
against first his biceps, then his taut middle. He flexed for her, but she
settled her dainty fingertips on his cheeks, framing his face. When she came up
for short, lusty inhales, he could search the blue expanse of her eyes.

“Oh my God,” she murmured, finally. Their first words in the
new world. Then, as if the possibility had just occurred to them, they took a
moment to listen for any movement on the stairs, or in the rooms above. Ryder
realized he’d given no regard to how loud their arguing might have been.

Thankfully, no other Christiansen made a peep. Chloe—or this
new sexy alien who’d replaced her, leaving bedroom eyes in the place where
perpetual grimace had been—gripped his fingers again, and led him over to the
family couch. The sofa was an uncomfortable leather monstrosity, but it didn’t
seem as likely that he could offer her his bed when his room shared a wall with
her brother’s. The rest of the evening was fully in his lady’s hands. He was
happy to keep it so.

She shyly guided him down to the sofa’s surface, so they sat
side by side kissing, like kids in a soda shop. This was nice for a moment. But
as their mouths were turning raw and sore with the greedy gnawing, prodding,
sucking, Ryder felt his cravings compound. He wanted more of her. He lowered
himself to the shag carpet before her, rising to his knees so his face was
level with her breasts.

A shadow crossed his lover’s face. Ryder mistook this for
virgin jitters. He leaned forward and murmured into the hollow of her
collarbone: “Don’t worry, baby. I’ve done this before.”

“But,” Chloe started to say, just as Ryder began to leave a
trail of light kisses across the exposed triangle of skin, at her throat. When
his lips found fabric, they brushed it aside. He brought his hands up to her
shoulders. She moaned softly, and her lovely swan neck sank back against the
couch.

“I’ll go slow,” he reassured her, even though his cock was
so rigid in his jeans that he feared early arrival. But more than his own
satisfaction, he wanted Chloe to feel good. He wanted to banish the grimace,
the fear, the shame.

Gingerly, he began to fumble with the mother-of-pearl
buttons on her paisley cardigan. She tolerated this. When he moved to strip
away the shirt she wore below, Chloe pushed his hands away. They continued
kissing, and he Ryder made another vain grab for a breast. His left knee began
to throb against the ground.

“Please let me taste you,” he murmured after a while,
sounding plaintive and desperate. He was sure she would decline, show repulsion
for the mountain of his want, but Chloe surprised him again. “You have to turn
around and shut your eyes,” she said.

He did so, trying not to get too excited at the sounds of
cloth rustling. There was still no sound coming from upstairs. They were still
alone, and free.

“Open,” she whispered, breathlessly. Ryder felt a little
fluid seep into his briefs as his eyes obeyed her command. Chloe sat their
shyly, beet-red on the couch. Her body was hunched as if to hide what she’d
intended for him to see. Her shirt, bra, and some unidentifiable muslin mass
(the Mormon undergarment of myth??) sat neatly folded beside her on the couch.
The light was dim, but Ryder could see the swollen, sweat-dampened mounds of
her tits. Her pink nipples blinked at him invitingly. He thought he’d never
seen a better rack, either in a magazine or real life.

The look Chloe gave him continued to telegraph her
insecurities, and instantly, Ryder moved to sate her. He pushed himself back
into her body with renewed aplomb, sore lips apparently rejuvenated at the
sight of such perfect, cuppable breasts. He put an exploratory palm around her
right mound and squeezed. Chloe tilted her head back and made a guttural, deep,
un-ladylike sound. He put a palm over her hot mouth to quell the noise even as
his mouth rushed to the source of her pleasure. He began to flick his tongue
back and forth over the slightly salty, slightly sweet surface of her nipple.
This part of her was hard as a pebble in his mouth, though the rest of her
massive, beautiful tit was soft, soft, soft.