SEAL: A BWWM BAD BOY NAVY SEAL ROMANCE

by Caldwell, Mia

  “Do you think you might have become impatient with your disability and tried doing too much, too soon? That can compromise your recovery, you know. Were you bored from having to refrain from too much activity?”

  “Was I supposed to refrain from too much activity? Well shit, somebody should have told me that darlin’ because I have definitely been a bad boy in that department. I always do too much………but never too soon.”

  She was smart enough to know I was just being facetious and flirting with her but she appeared put off by it. I rarely ever encountered that attitude in a woman. What was her problem, anyway? She seemed a bit tightly wound.

  “Let’s just stick to the matter at hand, Mr. Danes. I’m trying to help you, if you’ll let me.”

  “Sure. Of course. I’m sorry. I will absolutely let you. I’ll let you do anything you want to me, actually. But I really wish you would call me Devlin, Cali.”

  “Mr. Danes, if you can’t be respectful I’m afraid I’m going to have to refer you to someone else. Is that what you want?”

  “No. No, I don’t. I’ll behave, I promise. The pain brings out the devil in me... It’s how I cope… But I’ll stop. I apologize.”

  “Now, I need to know how you did with the home exercises that your former therapist prescribed for you. Were you able to successfully duplicate them on your own after each session?”

  “Of course I could do the exercises on my own. I just chose not to, that’s all. I was busy doing…….other things.”

  Cali had finally unearthed what she thought was the whole truth of the matter, which was that I had simply been too lazy to do my rehab exercises on my own time.

  “You CHOSE not to do your PT exercises? You were too BUSY? Well, that explains it. How did you expect your knee to fully heal?”

  I knew I didn’t have an excuse good enough to satisfy her. I attempted to explain while she listened with a skeptical look on her face:

  “The first thing they teach us in the SEAL program is to ignore the pain. You own it. You work through it… I hired a physical therapist to come to the house three times a week immediately after my surgery. He was an asshole and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him after what happened. I just accepted the pain… I never did the exercises.”

  By the time I finished, she just sighed and rolled her eyes. But I didn’t care. I could plainly see that her body was speaking to me in a much different way: Her nipples were definitely standing at attention and I couldn’t stop myself from picturing her topless. I wondered if she was wearing any panties.

  “If I’d have hired you, Cali, I’m sure I’d be back to my peak level of performance by now.”

  I raised my eyebrow and winked at her.

  My flirting went nowhere. She was unamused and didn’t smile at any of my sexual innuendos or jokes. Why was she so uptight? If she was going to play hard to get, fine. I was up for the challenge.

  I continued to study the all the subtle nuances of my adorable little interrogator as she plied me with more annoying questions, but something kept buzzing in the back of my mind.

  Why did her face look so familiar?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CALI

  So, Devlin Danes was flirting with me now? I felt my cheeks heat up. I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle it, at first. I decided it would be best to strengthen my resolve and resist any and all of his advances.

  I was determined not to give that insufferable prick the satisfaction of flirting with him. My inner voice made the formal announcement that the silly girl crush that I once had on that bastard was officially over. Maintaining my composure from here on in would not be a problem.

  “Well, you’ve caused your recovery to take much longer than necessary, Mr. Danes. You should have a range of motion in your leg of at least 115 degrees flexion by now. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “You know, Cali, we could work out at my house. I’d love to show you my equipment. I’ve got quite an impressive set-up.”

  “I’m sure you do, Mr. Danes, but I’m 100% sure that your rehabilitation would be best facilitated in a clinical and public setting.”

  I made sure I kept a purely professional tone and demeanor with him. I needed to keep my guard up to avoid giving him the wrong idea; the idea that he stood any chance with me.

  While Devlin lay on his back with a hot pack on his leg, I perused his medical records that had been sent over to our office. Holy shit! His knee had been pretty much torn apart by some kind of homemade bomb? It was a miracle he survived and another altogether that the military doctors managed to patch him back together.

  “Is that too hot for you?”

  I tentatively turned the dial on the ultrasound machine, wanting to make sure the heat setting was comfortable, as I touched the wand to his knee.

  “No…… It’s perfect, Cali.”

  Devlin looked deeply into my eyes, like he was searching for something. He smiled up at me with a bad-little-boy smile, as he lay on the therapy table. His eyelids got increasingly heavy as I continued to slide the gelled wand around on his knee muscles. I hoped that maybe I would get lucky and he would relax enough to doze off and shut up.

  “So, is there a man in your life, Cali? Are you seeing anybody?”

  No such luck. I tried to steer the subject back to a medical one:

  “So it appears you’ve been through quite a lot during your tour of duty? Your medical reports are pretty graphic regarding the destruction of your knee cap. You didn’t write anything about the cause of your injury in the paperwork you filled out. Why is that?”

  Devlin surprised me with his humble answer, because I wouldn’t have thought he had a humble bone in his body.

  “Because I don’t remember any of it. I lost a friend and I don’t remember the last time I saw his face. I don’t like talking about what happens, and I really didn’t want you to trouble anyone with my shit. I just want to get better…”

  At that moment, I had a sudden, and profound realization about this man on my table: He was physically and mentally wounded, but he was too proud to talk about it. Tough guys never wanted to reveal their weakness.

  “So, I’m starting to get the impression that your lack of motivation with your earlier physical therapy went way deeper than an asshole trainer?”

  I looked directly into Devlin’s eyes with all the compassion that I could muster, so he could feel the sincerity of my words:

  “You know, you can be real with me. I can be a much better therapist to you if I have all the facts…..Devlin.”

  “I’d been having some pretty fucked-up nightmares and flashbacks of the explosion. They were really doing a number on me. I really just wanted to feel better, so I’ve been avoiding responsibility as much as possible. I figured my leg could wait. But, I guess I was wrong about that.”

  Devlin sat up on the table, and gave me what seemed to be somewhat of a defense for his irresponsible behavior:

  “It’s true that most of my spare time has been spent self-medicating, since I got back. But, I’m ready to get really serious about my leg now. And my life, too; I’ve already started seeing a counselor for PTSD and I’m going to take this knee recovery seriously… I sure as hell don’t want to end up with a limp or any other physical limitations... If I’m every going to get back out there I need to be… Whole…”

  He seemed earnest; another quality I would never have guessed he had. As I turned off the ultrasound unit, I wondered if he actually had more substance than I had given him credit for. I mulled it over while I began a therapeutic massage of his knee.

  “That feels great Cali. You have stronger hands than I thought. Oh yeah….. fuck that feels so good.”

  I felt the heat of his stare as I dug deeply into his manly leg flesh with my fingertips. I was starting to sweat. Goddammit Cali! Concentrate! Don’t fall for this player’s bullshit!”

  The way Devlin moaned the words, “Fuck that feels so good”, was now swirling around in my brain and playing over and
over again, like a top-forty pop tune.

  My sexual tension prompted me to cut the massage short by about two minutes. I composed myself and told him to follow me out to the gym area, where I had him do knee-stretching exercises with some rubber therapy bands before directing him to get on the stationary bike and pedal.

  In my attempt to keep the conversation as un-sexual as possible, I unwittingly changed the subject in the wrong direction.

  “So what was Afghanistan like?”

  He had just barely begun to pedal the bike, when he stopped abruptly and turned in my direction. He squinted his eyes at me for a minute, like he was trying to see through fog, and then he suddenly popped them wide open like he had just discovered plutonium.

  “How did you know I was in Afghanistan? I never mentioned that.”

  “Uh, I think I read it in your medical records.”

  Fuck! Serious damage control was needed! I was trying hard to look unshaken, while I attempted to recover from my slip-up, but I could tell he wasn’t buying it.

  “You couldn’t have. Afghanistan isn’t mentioned in my medical reports. My injury didn’t occur there.”

  Devlin stared at me hard, like he was trying to solve a puzzle. Finally he blurted out exactly what I was hoping he wouldn’t…

  “You’re the girl I was with that night at Mobey’s!”

  “You’re Allie?”

  Allie? I thought to myself, my heart racing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DEVLIN

  My mind traveled back with the speed of light to the night before I deployed for the Middle East, six years ago.

  A SEAL isn’t supposed to be afraid of anything, but that wasn’t stopping me from consuming an enormous amount of booze that evening.

  I had never forgotten that extraordinary girl I was with, even if the little details were blurred by time and alcohol. Her name was Allie and I remember she was wearing a sexy little red dress. She wasn’t the kind of girl I’d usually go for… I knew she was too good for me the minute I saw her, but I went for it anyway. I’d seen her type before… A good girl out looking to be bad for a night. I put my needs first. My very hard pressing needs……

  After bringing her up to the hotel room, I intended on showing my lovely lady no mercy by giving her every inch of my sexual prowess. Before I could so much as pull that pretty red dress off her stunning body, she went limp in my arms.

  Guess the girl had more to drink than I did…

  I carried her over to the bed and covered her with a comforter then called myself a cab. I always regretted not leaving her a note, but at the time I figured it was useless anyway. What was the point? I’d be flying to Kabul in the morning, and I knew she would be better off if I completely disconnected.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CALI

  Did he just call me Allie?

  And at that precise moment, the light bulb went on in both are our heads, at exactly the same time. I could see it on his face. It suddenly dawned on Devlin and me that I was his Allie. I was unsure if I really wanted to go through with things that night. When he asked me my name, I made up the first thing that came to mind. “My name is Allie.”

  Maybe it was a little too close to my real name, but I was too far gone to care.

  Just then, another revelation occurred to me; he actually had remembered me, and he had also remembered my name, or rather, what he thought was my name. Either way, that was somewhat flattering. Right? I wasn’t forgettable after all! But, the fact still remained that he had left me alone that night. Disappeared without so much as a goodbye…

  My mind was swimming with confusion. Unprofessional confusion. Devlin’s physical therapy session had come to a standstill. I wanted to run out of the gym in humiliation, like a high school girl who just realized she got her period while wearing white pants. Tears started welling up in my eyes.

  Devlin turned out to be a quick study. The range of emotion displayed in his facial expressions, told me we were on the same page. It was apparent that he had always assumed he hurt “Allie” but since he had no way of knowing for sure, he could probably easily dismiss it. Except now, he positively knew he hurt her. Even more importantly, he also knew that I was her………. and that I still hurt.

  “Cali, I’m sorry. I acted like such an asshole that night. Can you ever forgive me?”

  Devlin Dane’s eyes were filled with pain and humility. He had me believing he was truly sorry but was he really? Or was it just another ploy that players like him used to get naïve and trusting girls like me back in the sack? I didn’t have the time, energy or patience for games.

  “You should keep pedaling the bike, Mr. Danes, so I can at least justify charging you for this session.”

  “Now I’m Mr. Danes again? Come on Cali. I would think especially under these circumstances that you would call me by my first name.”

  “These circumstances? What circumstances? The fact that you suddenly feel like you know me INSIDE and out? The fact that I had SEX with you six years ago? Are those the circumstances that you’re talking about?”

  Apparently, I said the word SEX a little too loudly, because when I did, several heads in the vicinity immediately spun around in our direction. Shit! This was my business as well as my work environment and I felt like I was losing my professional credibility with each passing minute. I just knew everyone in the gym was shaking their head saying, “Tsk, tsk, what a shame. Look at that poor, scorned bimbo.”

  “Wait a minute, Cali…. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  It was clear we would not be able to continue our discussion with all the curious eyes and ears on us, so I helped Devlin off the bike and led him back into my private therapy room.

  “Are you gonna tell me what’s goin’ on babe?”

  I closed the door behind us as I held back my tears. One thing I wasn’t going to do was cry over some cocky bastard from the past, who, until today, didn’t even know my name.

  “First of all, don’t call me babe. And secondly, I’d like to know how you can apologize for what you did one minute and then the next minute, you pretend like it never happened?”

  “I don’t even know what it is you think I’m pretending I didn’t do!”

  I had to admit the conversation was taking a rather convoluted turn.

  “I thought you were genuinely sorry for what you did that night we were at the hotel.”

  “I am. I totally am. I feel horrible about it. Look, I was a different man then. I was headed off to war. I thought it was better if I didn’t stay till morning.”

  “Then you admit it?!”

  “Here we go again……Admit what?”

  God he was frustrating! And apparently very dense!

  “You lured me to a hotel when I was clearly not in my right mind, had sex with me, and then left without saying good-bye or even leaving a note or anything! I know what we were doing… I wanted it to happen… But what kind of person does that? What kind of man fucks and forgets?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m not one of them.”

  Devlin grabbed me by the hips and pulled me over to him. He brushed my hair from my forehead and looked tenderly into my eyes.

  “I’m sorry I brought you over to the hotel and I’m damned fucking sorry I left without a word, but you and I did not have sex that evening. You passed out on the bed before anything happened. I might not be the nicest guy in the world but I’m definitely not going to take advantage of an unconscious woman.”

  “But… I…”

  “Cali, if we fucked that night, you’d have known it the next morning.”

  I was numb. I’d been carrying around unwarranted resentment and shame about him and myself. The questions about what I’d done that night, the way everything blurred to black in my memory… The sudden relief from that mental and emotional burden was liberating.

  “I’m sorry I thought the worst of you.”

  “It’s ok… Look… I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. Can we start
over, Cali?”

  “Are you going to take your physical training seriously?” I asked, staring him down.

  “Okay…” he replied.

  “Lets get started.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  DEVLIN

  I’d been a good boy the rest of the afternoon, going through with my treatment, but my mind hadn’t stopped reeling.