by Anne Marsh
“He didn’t say no sex,” Ro counters, and my dick perks up, which is just wrong. Nothing Ro says should be such a turn on. “He said no sex outside a committed relationship.”
Huh. I run the word committed through my memory banks, but the word doesn’t compute.
“You could find a long-term honey,” Ro explains, and I doubt the images that pop into my head at the word honey are what he has in mind.
“Have a relationship?” Nope. I can’t quite keep the horror out of my voice. If variety is the spice of life, my sexual spice cabinet overfloweth.
Ro arches a brow. “Or wait fourteen more days to get laid.”
“Committed relationships take time,” Vann points out. The man was probably a Buddhist monk or an ascetic in a previous life, because he doesn’t seem bothered by the idea of a four-week sex embargo. Of course, he’s also not the one who has to not put out. That’s a key difference.
Ro nods, and I have a new target. “How would you know?”
This is apparently exactly the right question to ask, because Ro flushes. This is the man who stormed a hostile beach in his skivvies once because we were under fire, and he had time to grab clothes—or his gun. He went for the firepower, and the rest is history. He never blinked, and he flushed the enemy off that beach in record time. He’s swum through shark-infested waters in the near dark, and he might have knifed one or two of the bastards. So what could possibly make him uncomfortable?
“I was married once,” he says gruffly.
“Past tense?” I haven’t heard this story. Ever.
Ro winces. “I’m divorced. I think.”
I’m pretty certain that you’re supposed to know your precise marital status, but Ro doesn’t look like he wants to discuss it. I consider giving him shit about his secret but decide against it. It’s gonna be real hard to run Search and SEALs if I’m in traction or dead—and Ro isn’t looking friendly at the moment.
“Define committed relationship,” I suggest, just in case we’re operating with different mission parameters. Hope isn’t a strategy, but I’m desperate—and horny.
“You spend lots of time together. When you go to the store, you’ve got more crap for her in your cart than you do for yourself. She has a key to your place—and you have a key to hers.” Ro starts ticking his points off on his fingers while Vann nods along like a bobble-head.
This key business, for example? Not so difficult. I knew how to pick locks by the time I was fifteen. Now I know how to blow a door open, kick it down, or otherwise get it open courtesy of my military training. I don’t need a key.
“You buy big things together,” he continues. “Like a car or a house.”
“A boat,” Vann interjects. “Boats count, too.”
“You take vacations together,” Ro adds. “The good kind, like the ones Costco advertises in those brochures they pass out by the exit.”
I’m fairly certain he means the expensive kind that feature overwater huts in Tahiti and romantic flower leis and beach dinners. While the sex after that is probably spectacular, it’s also not happening tonight or tomorrow for me. Even if I invited the next female I saw to fly off to Bora Bora with me, it would still take us twenty-four hours to get there—and then I’d bet she’d want a nap. Alone. Jet lag is a killer.
“You talk about your bodies,” Vann adds. “Not the good parts—the broken parts. The shit that doesn’t work right, doesn’t feel right, or that you saw the doctor for.”
“None of us hit up the doctor,” I protest. “Ever.”
We’re more into duct tape—if you cut your leg off, sever an artery, blah blah blah… you just throw some duct tape at it and problem solved. We’re the MacGyvers of the medical world—we should have our own fucking reality TV show for some of the shit we’ve fixed in the field.
“We should,” Ro growls, and he’s not wrong—even if it’s still not happening. “If you don’t see yourself sharing a future with her that’s more than a couple of days away, you’re not in a committed relationship.”
I eye the bartender. She’s nice, and mentally undressing her is loads of fun. And I know it makes me sound like an asshole (which I am—I can own it), but spending weeks or months… let alone years with her? I’m not ready for that. My imagination is way too stunted to entertain the possibility.
“How?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “You meet the right woman, and it just seems right.”
Right. I don’t think so. Not unless she’s Superwoman and a porn star rolled into one. I enjoy that mental fantasy for a few seconds until Ro punches me in the arm. He’s the one who’s divorced, so I’m not sure why I’m the relationship screw up here. When I tell him that, though, he just shakes his head.
“I’m a screw up, but you’re the virgin,” he says.
“Not last time I checked,” I counter smugly. In fact, I’m pretty sure there’s photographic evidence to the contrary.
“A relationship virgin,” he growls and slaps me on the back. Not sure what that’s for, but I rock forward in my seat and almost spill the beer I’m not really drinking.
“You need to pop that cherry,” Vann says way too cheerfully, and I glare at him.
“Have you had a committed relationship?”
He shrugs, which I interpret as a no. “I’m not the one desperate to get laid.”
“I’ll think about it,” I mutter, and then I hightail it out of there. When the waitress passes me her number on my way out the door, I have to throw it away. I’m hurting her feelings, and it’s all Xander’s fault.
This is shaping up to be the longest month of my life.
T-12 days and counting
VALI
Trees grow in dirt—they don’t sprout out of a perfectly good highway. This palm didn’t get the memo, however, because it encroached on the side of the road… and that’s before it dropped a load of dead fronds. Right in front of me. Any other time, I’d chalk it up to plant kingdom weirdness, but this particular sighting absolutely goes in my oh chica, no category. Because I’m feet from pile.
And still traveling fifty miles an hour. Damn it.
Palms whip by my window as I jam my flip-flop onto the brake. The bright blue water that put the Florida Keys on the map winks at me through the trees, calm and tranquil. All adjectives that I’m most definitely not, because my cell phone flies in one direction, my coffee cup heads in another, and I start praying to every known saint.
Too little, too late. My VW Bug avoids the tree trunk by inches, sideswipes the pile of loose fronds, and then I’m flying left, left, left, nose-down into the ditch. Stagnant water sprays up, the car bottoms out with an expensive-sounding thud, and my hair flies over my face.
Not being able to see isn’t a bad thing—I’ve landed in shit enough times to know I’m in deep this time. I can fix the damage. It’s only a car, right? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last eighteen months, it’s what can and can’t be fixed.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text. Automatically, I reach for it. Of course it’s Mami.
Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?
Mom Radar never breaks. Of course, she also sends me texts like this one almost hourly, which means she’s bound to hit me when things aren’t ideal. It’s sweet. Most of the time. And if occasionally I wish she’d just assume I’m fine and ask about something other than my health or my feelings? Oye, I mentally tell her, I’ve got this.
The green ditch water seeping in the crack of the door contradicts my attempts to stay positive. Houston, we have a problem. Drowning in a ditch seems difficult, even for me, but it’s not like I want to chance it. My vision board for this year did not include freakish death by drowning in three inches of stagnant liquid.
Shoving my phone in my back pocket, I pop the seat belt and roll down the window. Climbing out seems more prudent than throwing open the door and sticking my almost-naked feet into the (very) dirty ditch water. It’s alligator season, and ditches in the Florida Keys frequently doub
le as critter nurseries. I suspect my toes would make the perfect gator snack. It takes a few seconds to figure out how to balance myself on the edge of the window because I’m not the world’s most coordinated person, and it turns out I’ve got the shakes—just a little—from my airborne-hitting-a-ditch routine. The window bites into my butt, reminding me that I probably shouldn’t taste test every dessert that I make.
Restraint isn’t one of my virtues.
A sharp bark from somewhere above me drags my attention away from my balancing act. An enormous dog bounds toward me, lips peeled back from an impressive set of canines. Dios. I hope that wasn’t the dog’s favorite tree I hit.
FINN
When the pink Volkswagen Bug drifts left the first time, I debate honking. The second time it crosses the divider line and the crazy-leaning palm tree pops into my field of vision, I know it’s too late. I have that all too familiar moment of clarity when time slows down and I can catalog the individual seconds. My memories start speeding up to fill in the wait, images of my last accident flickering through my head. The Abrams in my mental playlist shoots off the Iraqi highway, five-thousand pounds headed for a canal at sixty miles an hour in my least favorite director’s cut of that particular day. As if reading my mind, the pink car hits an enormous pile of dead palm fronds and then speeds up, bumper aimed for ocean and palms instead of asphalt.
Keep it together.
Now’s not the time to get lost in my head. The fuckwit driver of the Bug needs an assist, not a former soldier with a bad case of the PTSDs.
The Bug disappears into the canal. Mentally, I calculate its trajectory. Four feet down and then another four or five feet of muddy water. The local kids like to jump in using the drainage pipe as a launch pad. When the afternoon temps hit triple digits and keep on rising, I want to shuck the commando gear and join them. No. Wrong canal. That canal’s a lifetime and a continent away in Iraq.
The Bug. Keep it together, Callahan.
People drown if they don’t get out in time.
I need to reach the canal, need to get my boys out this time.
I pull in, throw the Jeep into park, and swing onto the ground. Good thing I took the doors off. It makes exiting that much quicker. Rex One barks longingly from the front seat, and I gesture for him to join me. We’re training him for search and rescue, and he can use the practice.
The palm trees rustle as I sprint across the road, scanning for hostiles. Wait. I’m not in Iraq. I’m in the fucking Florida Keys, dumbass. Rex One nudges my thigh, pointing me in the right direction. He’s got his mind on our search-and-rescue job.
“Seek,” I order, and Rex One lunges into action. Unlike me, he doesn’t fucking hesitate. He knows what his job is, and he’s doing it.
Pussy. That’s what I am. I force my legs to start moving. I won’t step on a landmine. I won’t find B.B., his legs crushed and his eyes begging for a rescue I can’t provide because I’m a SEAL and not Jesus or fucking Superman. This is a ditch. It’s only five feet deep, and maybe six inches of brackish water floats around the bottom. No dying today. I scan for gators, not insurgents. See? Nothing.
I’m okay.
The Bug’s driver is already half out of her car, and she’s also okay. Really, really okay. She’s got gorgeous sun-kissed skin, generous curves, and dark hair currently headed in a half-dozen directions from her airborne seconds. She assesses the ditch water like she expects sharks or killer piranhas to launch out of the green ooze to eat her, huffing out a breath as she picks an entry point. Rescue her, I tell myself. Rescues are always good for gratitude—and gratitude can easily lead to sex. A guy can dream, and I’m pretty fucking good at making my own dreams come true. Plus, when I’m having sex? My mental playlist stars porno fantasies about the woman in my arms (or on top of me, in front of me, or sitting on my face, because I’ve got lots of favorite positions) and not Humvee crash landings.
My maiden in distress exhales and intones one of those weird yoga mantras women love, a husky ommmmm that also makes me think of sex. Of course, pretty much every action leads to sexy times inside my head because when my brain’s focused on getting some, it doesn’t have the bandwidth to remember what happened to B.B. in Iraq. Orgasms trump nightmares anytime, and right now I’d really, really like to get my ommmmm on with the woman half out of the Bug. Her mouth is purple, or maybe violet, the slick color sparkling in the sunlight. My dick immediately volunteers a few really dirty fantasies of what we can do with that mouth. To that gorgeous mouth.
Vow of celibacy, I remind myself. One million dollars. Twelve days until fun time.
She swings her legs over the edge of the window, teetering as she eyes the dry spot on my side of the ditch.
Focus, soldier. She doesn’t have to jump in. I’ve got her.
“You want a hand?” I call.
Please say yes. And then list your top ten favorite places to be touched.
VALI
The guy who follows the dog down the embankment is something else. I’m honestly not sure what that something else is, but my girl parts immediately volunteer to brainstorm a list. A long list, topped by one word. Spectacular. Any other adjective would be an understatement.
My dating life has starred cupcake men—sweet but more icing than cake and nothing that could keep my mouth busy for more than a few minutes. This man? He’s cake. A five-layer, lusciously frosted gateau. He’s big and built, with a muscled body that screams I work with my hands. I can think of a few tasks for his mighty fine hands. In fact, I practically drool, my brain shutting down and my hormones rampaging gleefully. This guy makes the men my Mami picks out for me look boring. He’s the ultimate baby daddy, even if I’m almost certain he’d deposit his super swimmers and then swan right out of my life. He’s too gorgeous to be a keeper—but he could be a whole lot of fun for a night or two.
He keeps right on coming for me after he crests the top of the ditch. Long, muscled legs in faded blue jeans eat up the distance, bringing me closer and closer to a pair of motorcycle boots and a faded T-shirt stretched across a truly spectacular chest. Frankly, I’m almost scared to check out his face, because how could it possibly be better?
But it turns out that his face is the cherry on top of a fabulous man cake. His skin’s bronzed from time spent outdoors, and his hair tumbles about his face in unrepentant waves. That mane of his reminds me of caramel with its streaks of honey and gold threaded through the brown. Or maybe that’s just because I want to lick him from head to toe. He’s the kind of man who makes a girl rethink her anti-one-night-stand stance, and that’s before I get the chance to admire the strong line of his jaw roughened with stubble and the dimple. It’s not like I haven’t seen gorgeous men before, but there’s something extra-special about this one. I’d impulse-purchase him in a nanosecond.
He doesn’t hesitate when he hits the bottom of the ditch, splashing through the shallow water toward me. He signals, and the dog skids to a halt. Wow. He knows how to give orders, too. I should probably wipe the drool off my chin.
He looks right at me. “Are you okay?”
Funny how the question sounds so much better when it comes from Mystery Man. His voice is low and rough, with an unexpected but really sweet note of urgency. For all his bad boy good looks, he seems genuinely concerned. Maybe his insides are as sweet as his outsides. Maybe today actually is my lucky day.
But probably not.
“Today requires a do-over,” I admit.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he says. He wraps his hands around my waist, plucking me effortlessly from my car. While I’m not tall, I’m not precisely small, either, so my girl parts immediately cast a second vote in favor of our rescuer. It’s probably some cavewoman throwback in me, wanting to pick the biggest, strongest, most virile hunter of them all.
He scoops me up against his chest and slogs up toward the road. Going for broke, I link my arms around his neck. It’s that or tuck them awkwardly between us, and I’m selfish. I want to touch him.
His skin is warm and shockingly soft where my fingertips brush his neck. He’s wearing a silver chain that disappears inside his T-shirt, and I wonder what kind of necklace a man like this would choose. Cross? Shark’s tooth? Dog tags because he’s actually a Secret Ops soldier on a covert mission to protect the Florida Keys from dangerous enemies?
I’ve never been the kind of girl who likes to be carried. I’ve checked the independent female box in every relationship I’ve had. Apparently, I’ve missed out. Being carried by a big, built guy has to be the sexiest thing I’ve done in months. Years. Of course, given how long my dating life has been on hold, I’m definitely ready for a slice of this guy’s cake.
“You’re not a cop, are you?” I’ve learned to double-check my assumptions, and I need to make sure I don’t incriminate myself on the texting-and-driving front.
He grins and shakes his head. “I was voted most likely to get arrested. No one’s trusting me with a badge.”
He takes the ditch easily, even carrying me. There’s a battered, muddy Jeep parked on the highway. The vehicle has been stripped down to the bare essentials and screams military surplus. This is apparently the white horse that my rescuer rode in on, so now I’m betting shark’s tooth or dog tags for the win.
“Muddy,” I observe, because apparently I’ve left my ability to seduce a man with my brilliant banter somewhere back there in the ditch. But honestly? I don’t even know where you find mud in the Florida Keys. This guy’s an overachiever in the off-roading department.
“Camouflage,” he tells me.
Is he serious?
I sneak another look at his face, and he winks at me. We probably have more national holidays than he does serious moments. Not that it matters, because he takes me straight to the Jeep, effortlessly holding me with one arm while he sweeps a pile of leather bits off the front seat. If I’m lucky, this is a kidnapping attempt, and he’s about to carry me off to his castle for really hot sex. Maybe the leather is his kinky gear, although I suspect it belongs to the dog trotting along next to us.
