SEAL Camp

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I think you’re afraid to get angry. Like, really melt-down, brain-boiling angry.”

  Ashley laughed her disgust. “And I think you’re afraid of… quite possibly nearly every other emotion. Including—especially—intimacy.”

  “I didn’t realize intimacy was an emotion,” he said.

  “You know what I meant,” she said. “Anger is just a cover for fear. And you’re terrified. And you know what? I am, too, but at least I admit it!” That verbal punch hit him hard—she could see it on his face as he flinched—and she immediately felt bad. “I’m sorry.”

  He swore again. “Don’t apologize! You’re always apologizing! And I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. I know how freaking hard this whole camp thing has been for you, and I made it worse by kissing you in front of a goddamned audience.”

  “Hello,” she said. “I was there, too. So you can beat yourself up all you want, but hey, I wasn’t exactly fighting you off.”

  “Because you don’t fight! You don’t let yourself get angry, and you don’t fight! You just fucking surrender!”

  He was right, it was true. In the car, she’d immediately surrendered, instead of arguing. Instead of saying, This thing between us is pretty darn hot, and I hear you, but I’d really like to see where this could go…

  “You’re right,” she whispered now. “I give up far too quickly, don’t I?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he said. And then he surprised her by running both hands down his face as he made a noise of both annoyance and frustration before admitting, “And you’re right, too. I’m scared out of my mind!”

  It was that look—the vulnerability—in his eyes that gave her the courage to do it. To take a step forward, and then another.

  He saw her coming—she saw that in his eyes, too. And at first it was an expression of disbelief, and if that’s all she’d seen she might’ve stopped herself. But then it turned to heat. It was a reflection of everything she was feeling—everything she wanted.

  So she reached up and pulled his head down and she kissed him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jim knew that he shouldn’t kiss her back.

  He knew it, but he didn’t let that stop him as he pulled Ashley hard against him, one hand wrapping around her waist and the other against the smoothness of her face, fingers tangling in the softness of her hair as he damn near inhaled her.

  Because in the cosmic scheme of things, what did it matter? Why not have a moment or two of pleasure while he could…?

  She seemed to want what he wanted, so… fuck it.

  As they kissed and kissed and kissed and kissed, Jim thought—a few times—about her penchant to surrender. And he wondered—briefly—if this was that. The path of least resistance. Yeah, he could tell she was uncomfortable doing this here, in Dunk’s outer office. But other than looking hard at the door to make sure it was locked after he’d backed them into it to latch it, she kinda wasn’t hesitating.

  True, she didn’t exactly unfasten his shorts to stroke him. But when he pulled her with him onto the sofa so that she was straddling him, she definitely pressed even closer, rubbing herself against his length. And she voluntarily adiosed her shirt, pulling it swiftly over her head and tossing it onto what Jim would forever think of as the grandpa-chair—the one that wasn’t as mushy as the others, and had solid arms so he could use his shoulders to help his less-than knees lift his body weight.

  It was possible that, after they did this, whether it be make-out session or sex—he still wasn’t sure whether or not she was going to stop them, but he knew damn well that she should—he was going to have to ask Ashley’s help in pulling himself back up, off the soft couch.

  And the shame of that added extra fuel to his fuck-it philosophy. His future was gonna be filled with pain of all kinds, but right now…? As Ashley made things more interesting by unfastening the front clasp of her bra…? Right now was pretty freaking awesome.

  The marks she’d gotten from the paintball game were already mostly faded, but even with them, she was unbelievably perfect.

  Her breasts were soft and delicious, and his mouth and lips on her nipples—first one than the other as he kissed and licked and sucked and breathed in her sweet scent—made her gasp and softly moan.

  But then she pulled back, and Jim braced himself for what had to be coming—a breathless confession that they’d gone too far but now sanity had intervened and they really had to stop.

  Instead, she said, “I have to…” as she tried to unfasten both her jeans and his shorts.

  To which he gallantly responded with, “I got mine,” and made fast work with the button and zipper as she pushed herself off of him and did that distinctly female dance of shimmying out of her skinny jeans.

  She wanted to be more naked, not less. Which was fine with the part of him that wanted to orgasm himself into oblivion in an attempt to stop feeling this hair-on-fire panic.

  But the other part of him—the part that really, really liked her—controlled his vocal cords, so he opened his mouth and said, “In full disclosure, I just had a phone call with my CO. My former CO. I just got notified that… my days of active duty are over.”

  Ashley had finally managed to kick her feet free from her jeans, but now she froze—all blue eyes, golden hair, pink panties, and bare breasts.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Jim, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She must’ve realized that she was nearly naked, because she hugged her jeans to her chest even as she came to sit beside him on that sofa, her concern nearly palpable. “If you’d rather talk about—”

  He stopped that insanity by kissing her. And pulling her back onto his lap when she kissed him back.

  Talk.

  Right.

  He was following the time-honored SEAL tradition of going commando, yet he hadn’t freed himself from his pants—it had seemed presumptive.

  But as Ashley kissed him—as he kissed her back and ran his hands over all that gorgeous, soft skin—she straddled him and pushed herself against him and he was well aware that there was only a slip of pink silk keeping him from doing something seriously stupid.

  “Please tell me,” she breathed between kisses, “you have a condom.”

  He did. So he told her that he did, and she quickly shed her panties as he used it to cover himself, even as the stern or stupid part of him felt the need to say, “We shouldn’t do this.”

  But she just kissed him again, her hands around him, stroking him, guiding him…

  And then, God, he was inside of her.

  * * *

  Ashley pushed Jim deeply inside of her as she heard herself cry out.

  This was better than the A-plus-plus fantasies that she’d imagined. The way he was looking at her, the way that he kissed her, held her, moved both with and against her…

  She honestly hadn’t known that making love could feel this perfect—this all-consuming and complete. And she’d had plenty of great sex in her life with which to compare.

  But Ashley could see more than fire in Jim’s eyes—she glimpsed the fear and hurt of his still-raw loss beneath his desire and need—and she knew that she was seeing it only because he was letting her in. She was seeing a soul that he’d bared for her alone.

  She tried, through touching him, kissing him, making love to him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay—that she’d help him, gladly, as he transitioned into the next phase of his life. That he was going to do something amazing and important and satisfying. That moving into the unknown didn’t have to be scary—it could be exhilarating, and bring him great joy.

  A lot like the joy she was feeling right now.

  This man—this amazing, smart, funny, thoughtful, intelligent, caring, imperfect, complicated human being—was the man that Ash been waiting for, all her life.

  And she came undone even as she held his gaze; until she had to give in and close her eyes because it was just too much to let him see into her soul, to let him see all she was feeling as s
he unraveled.

  But her chagrin at coming too quickly—she wanted to do exactly this for hours and hours and hours—was tempered by the fact that he then came quickly, too. Bucking beneath her as he groaned, “Ashley…”

  The sound of her name ripped from him like that was everything she’d ever wanted, and she kissed him again and again and again.

  And then there they were. She could feel his heart still pounding as fast and as hard as hers as he held on to her as tightly as she clung to him.

  “Jesus,” he breathed into her ear.

  She laughed softly.

  But then he said it again. “Jesus, what have I done…?”

  And Ashley stopped laughing as she pulled back to look at him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “What have you done?” Ashley asked. “You do know that we did this…? I mean, this was definitely a we.”

  As Jim looked at the gorgeous naked woman whose soft, warm body still surrounded him, he knew the truth. He wanted this. He wanted her. He wanted more. And most of all, he wanted it to be real.

  But he was going to mess it up—how could he not, considering the high stress and flat-out bitter unhappiness he was facing. Hey, what a brilliant idea! Simultaneously learn how to not be a SEAL and make a relationship work for the very first time in his life.

  He was going to decimate her, except no, he, too, would be road-kill when this dust finally settled. He was going to decimate them both.

  And the idea of that much failure, all at the same time, was too much.

  “Ashley, I can’t do this,” he admitted. “Except, we already did. I should’ve stopped before we… Shit, I’m so sorry, this is entirely my fault.”

  “No, it’s not. That’s just… not… No.” She was clearly shocked at his words, and even shaken by what must’ve felt to her like a complete 180 turn-around. Yet she still somehow managed to be concerned for him as she climbed off of him and quickly pulled on her clothes.

  How could she not be angry? It was mind-blowing as Jim made equally quick work of the condom then he, too, adjusted his shorts and zipped. And he felt a hot rush of anger himself—at the world, at himself, and even at her. “Can I be… brutally honest with you?”

  “Please,” she said as she pulled on her shirt and sat on the very edge of the sofa—close but not too close. “I’d very much like to talk about this, because… also to be honest, I really don’t understand what the problem is. I mean, I know you’re upset—and you have every right to be—by the news about—”

  “I screwed up by letting this happen,” he said, knowing that she would notice his word choice.

  And she did. “You didn’t want… You let it happen…?” But then she went too far. “Oh, my God, but… you did consent, right…? Please tell me I didn’t miss the part where you said no…”

  “No!” Jim said. “Jesus! I mean, yes, I mean, it was completely consensual! It was just really, really stupid. I’m your instructor and I just fucked you in Dunk’s office, and that’s not okay.”

  She flinched at his brutally inelegant description of what they’d just done. But she still said, “I can assure you that I wasn’t thinking of you as my instructor when we—”

  He cut her off. “That’s not how it works, and you know it.”

  She nodded, but then shook her head. “I get that, but I very much wanted this. I’m the one who kissed you first, out in the mess hall.”

  “No, I’m the one who kissed you first—earlier this afternoon and it was…” Jim couldn’t finish because it wasn’t quite true. He’d kissed her out by their trailers because he’d temporarily lost his mind. But now, he took a deep breath, and told her, “I like you, I do. I think you’re amazing. You know that.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, because she was clearly familiar with the coded subtext that reinforced what he’d already told her—about wanting to be her friend.

  It both was and wasn’t a lie, and Jim clung to the shreds of his very real desire not to hurt her—or rather to hurt her quickly now, when it would only briefly sting instead of break her heart.

  “I’ve been… actively trying to, um, make you snap. Piss you off.” Also not a lie, despite having nothing to do with what just happened here. “All that… excessive touching on the paintball field…? That was part of my strategy. To come on too strong and push you into fighting back. Only you didn’t. Fight. And suddenly it all… went too far.”

  Except the way that she was looking at him now—as her shocked confusion turn to horrified disbelief—made his own heart break. Because this wasn’t just a small, sharp sting. She looked as if he’d just stabbed her in the heart.

  But he was a SEAL, and he’d learned the importance of never leaving a targeted threat half-dead, so he administered the emotional double-pop needed to make her walk away from him and not look back.

  “I even talked to Dunk about it—about you,” he admitted, and now embarrassment mixed with the disbelief that was swimming in her eyes. “About the best way to push you into getting angry—he disagreed with me, by the way, and ordered me to stop. But I didn’t. I thought if I did what Bull and Todd did, that you’d, you know, unleash your rage on me, and you’d see that it’s okay for you to get angry.”

  “So this was… some kind of a… twisted SEAL World exercise?” She laughed as she stood up, but it was part sob. “A lesson…? How was it supposed to go? What was I supposed to do to get an A? Slap you across the face and say Unhand me, sir! Like that has anything to do with real life…?”

  Jim nodded. “Good. Get mad. You should be mad. And yes. I thought you would stop me—us. Stop this from happening. And when you didn’t…? Well, I know that you know…” He forced a shrug and a laugh, and torched the remains of their relationship. “Boys will be boys.”

  Ashley’s eyes widened. But she didn’t get loud. She didn’t scream Fuck you at him, as he completely deserved. Instead, she got quiet and still—her eyes enormous in her face as tears brimmed. And when she spoke it was in a whisper. “Wow, I really failed your life lesson, Instructor. Worst of all, I failed mine. I just keep making the same idiotic mistake. God, I’m a fool. I actually thought you were… But no, you’re Brad two-point-oh. New and improved and extra shitty.” She wiped her eyes and her nose and sniffed and it was as if she’d hit her own reset button, because she was instantly more composed. “I would prefer it if what happened in here—the instructor-fucking—stays in here, but… it really doesn’t matter who you tell. I’m leaving in the morning. I’m done.”

  And now it was Jim who was getting angry—because she wasn’t. “Oh, perfect! I screw up, and you run away—you quit. That’s great. That’s definitely what should happen here. Instead of, you know, me leaving.”

  She unlocked the door, opened it. “I’m not running, and I’m certainly not quitting. I’m leaving because I’m graduating. Lesson learned—ironic, huh? You really are quite the skilled teacher.” But then she paused and looked at him, and whispered. “Boys will be boys because of the toxic things we teach them, but… I mistook you for a man. Maybe someday you’ll finally grow up, Lieutenant, because until you do, you’re not going to find whatever it is that you’re looking for. And I hope someday you grow up and find it—I really do.”

  And with that she left the room, closing the door silently but tightly behind her.

  Jim sat there, forcing himself not to go after her—to apologize, to grovel and confess that he was lying, but he knew…

  She’d be better off without him—non-SEAL-him, adrift and so fucking angry, and yes, toxic. She got that word right.

  Although, maybe in a few years… Yeah, right. He shut that shit down. Who was he kidding? Her face and eyes, right before she’d left this room… He’d burned this bridge completely. Full flame-thrower. Also…? There was no way a woman as fantastic as Ashley wouldn’t be married with one-and-a-half kids in a few years, if and when he was finally ready. Assuming, that is, he survived not being a SEAL.

  No, she would definitel
y find someone who deserved her. Who would appreciate her and cherish her and love her, endlessly…

  And no way was he crying. He used Ashley’s reset. A swipe of his eyes and nose. A deep breath.

  Fine. He was fine.

  But, shit, he had to text Chief Taylor with the sign-in info for the account he’d created for the security cam app that they’d set up with those cameras both outside and in Ashley’s condo. Double-shit, because if she was really leaving camp, she’d be walking back, directly into that nightmare. He checked his phone one last time, looking at the glimpse of her life, both outside of her front door and inside her living room, before he signed out of the app for the last time.

  And by the time he finally locked Dunk’s office door, and limped his sorry ass all the way back to his trailer, Ashley’s lights were off.

  He’d get up early and talk to Dunk, because he was the one who had to leave. He’d promised the senior chief that he wouldn’t quit, but it wouldn’t take much explaining to get himself fired. And enough campers had quit that it wouldn’t take much shuffling to rearrange the remaining people into workable teams—including Ashley who absolutely should stay.

  Still, he stood there, in the dark, wishing he could time travel—to just a few years ago. He’d find Ashley, pre-Brad—he still didn’t know what Brad had done, although her calling him Brad two-point-oh had stung.

  But he’d step out of his time machine and he’d still be a SEAL, with two good knees and many years in the Teams ahead of him.

  Although, even as he imagined finding Ash and sweeping her off her feet, he realized he probably would’ve screwed it up because, back then, he wasn’t even close to ready for a woman as amazing as she was.

  And in that moment of despair, he almost did it. He almost limped over to Ashley’s trailer and pounded on the door, to apologize, to explain, to beg her not to hate him.

  But Jim knew that tonight’s panic about the future was nothing compared to what was coming at him tomorrow. The bullshit of paperwork and the printed acknowledgement that he was finally done. He’d have to tell his teammates, his family. His mother would see his retirement only as a good thing, which would hurt, because she wouldn’t understand the impact of his loss.