by LJ Evans
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. We’re not at war. This is poker. Plus, you outweigh me by a good ton or so. Regardless of how good I am at holding my liquor, you’ll be better. If I drink, you drink.”
Our eyes met, and he took a sip of the amber liquid. I shuffled the deck one-handed, and he watched the cards. When his eyes hit mine again, it was my turn to smirk at his surprise.
“Last chance to back out,” I said, and damn if my voice didn’t get all throaty like I was talking dirty on the phone.
“SEALs don’t quit,” he said gruffly.
“Whittakers either,” I returned and dealt the cards. Except I think he knew it for the lie it was. I’d quit. Once upon a time, Mac had quit, too. Sometimes, it took a knock to our heads to make us realize our mistakes. I was pretty sure walking away from Capitol Hill had saved me, but what I was doing right now…accepting the dare Nash had laid down? I didn’t need a knock to my head to know it was a colossal error.
Nash
SWEET CHILD O’ MINE
“She's got eyes of the bluest skies…
Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place,
Where as a child I'd hide,
And pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by.”
Performed by Guns N’ Roses
Written by Rose / Hudson / Mckagan / Stradlin / Adler
I watched as Dani unknowingly put a tortilla chip in her mouth. She’d eaten as many as she’d won. If she kept eating them, we weren’t going to have anything left to play with, and playing with her was the one thing keeping me on course at the moment.
Since going back to the base, I’d seen the shrink daily, seen the platoon zero times, and been asked to return to the fucking academy until they could figure out what to do with me. The US Navy had invested a lot of time and money into me over the years. They weren’t really ready to let me go, even if I’d fucking punched a team member. They wouldn’t want to let me out, even if the shrink said I had PTSD. Which I didn’t.
Did I have nightmares about that mission? Hell, yeah. Did it work itself into my head and my heart? How could it not? Hearing the AK47 gunfire start at the exact location I’d left my team had almost made me lose my cool. Instead, I’d slithered back from where I’d just taken the kill shot, knowing my team’s only advantage was in the enemy not knowing I was out there.
But none of that. The nightmares. The regret. The self-hate. None of it gave me the shakes or had me freaking the hell out enough that I couldn’t hold my gun steady and take the shots I needed to take. Instead, it gave me even more motivation to do my job right. To make sure I continued what Darren and I had started from the moment we’d been roommates at Annapolis. To do the one and only thing I’d ever wanted to do, much to my family’s chagrin.
What did give me the shakes was Tristan not returning one text or call over the entire week. I could feel Darren’s breath on my back even now, pissed I wasn’t watching over her. Pissed I wasn’t in my car on my way to New York, making damn sure she was okay. Driving to Church Beach had been my first step, but now I couldn’t leave.
When I’d walked in to hear Selena Gomez music blaring, I knew it wasn’t Tristan. Tristan was all country, all the time. Entering the kitchen with Molly in my arms and seeing Dani shaking her butt in her skimpy athletic gear, singing in a throaty voice that was almost as good as the singer’s, it had taken every ounce of me to not drop Molly and put my arms around her.
Challenging her to poker had been stupid. Or rather, accepting her challenge had been stupid. She had an edge in this game by simply being her, distracting me with her looks and her brain. She was like the goddess Athena. Wisdom, beauty, and deadly sins. She made moves that didn’t always make sense to my logic-trained brain. She followed a set of rules I hadn’t yet deciphered, which put me at a disadvantage.
However, the drunker we both got, the more tells I saw in her, and the easier it was to simply react to the tells and the cards without overanalyzing it as some great war campaign. Dani was right; we weren’t at war.
I watched as she rubbed her index finger along the edge of the table, which meant she was bluffing. It was a small movement, just like the one I’d caught earlier when her eyebrow rose for a millisecond at the good hand she’d been dealt. Between that and her eating away at her winnings, we were pretty much even, and pretty much out of chips.
I poured us the last two glasses of whiskey, watching her face as she realized her pile was almost empty.
“What did you do with the chips?” she asked. There wasn’t a slur to her words, but her eyes were a little glossy. They probably matched mine. I was surprised at the amount of alcohol she’d been able to consume.
“You ate them,” I responded with a smirk.
“I did not! Did you? Cheater,” she said. I leaned over the table and picked up a crumb stuck to the shoulder of her tank top. The thin cotton showed her sports bra underneath. The bra that couldn’t hide the way her breasts pebbled at my touch. At a touch that was nothing. A mere grazing of fingers on clothes.
My entire body lit up at her physical response to me, but I locked it down. Sleeping with Mac’s sister wasn’t the way to go. It was a good way to ruin our friendship. Plus, Dani was Tristan’s friend, and Tristan would be almost as unhappy about it as Mac, knowing my less-than-stellar track record with relationships.
I held out the chip on my finger for Dani to see. Her eyes took it in before pushing my hand away. “This is what I get for playing with real chips. They’re too tempting.”
But her eyes were on my mouth when she said it.
“I guess we both win,” I responded, returning her look, eyes trailing down to her full pink lips. They were the perfect kind of lips for kissing. The kind you wanted to nibble on.
“No way is this ending in a tie. There will be a winner,” she said.
“We could use Bo Peep’s goldfish,” I suggested.
Dani shook her head. “No, Tristan took those with her.”
I lifted the glass, tossing back the contents, knowing the sooner it was gone, the sooner I’d get my senses back. The sooner I could stop letting my dick drive my brain. I inhaled just as she said, “Strip poker it is, then.”
And I nearly died coughing.
She smiled the wide smile she and all her siblings had been blessed with from their Italian heritage, but on Dani, it looked like a rainbow. Color. Light. Something you never wanted to forget.
“You okay there, Otter?” she asked, rubbing her finger along the table. She was bluffing. My eyes lingered on the finger before going back to her face.
“Challenge accepted,” I said, knowing she’d back down.
She glanced at her finger on the table and then back to me. “Goddamnit,” she swore as she realized the tell I’d picked up on.
She stood, went to the door, and came back with a pair of flip-flops she put on her feet as she sat down. If she was drunk, she was holding it well; there’d hardly been a sway to her body as she’d done it.
“Your deal, Pretty Boy.”
I laughed. “Pretty Boy?”
She shrugged.
“You cheated. You put on shoes,” I said. “As you were so quick to point out, you’re the better player. I’m the one who should get extra clothes.”
“I have on five items, including the flip-flops. You have on eight unless you’re wearing your boots without socks,” she retorted, chin raised.
I took her in, counting items as I went. Bra. Tank top. Flip-flops. Yoga pants…shit. I swallowed hard. That meant there was nothing under those yoga pants. Just parts of her body I wanted to touch with my mouth and my tongue. Places I was sure I could touch and make her gasp my name in a different way. Pretty Boy. Otter. Whatever the hell she wanted to scream.
Just thinking those thoughts had me sobering up. We needed to stop. We were playing with a fire neither of us could afford. One that would likely end with one or both of us burnt to a crisp.
&
nbsp; I picked up my sunglasses I’d left on the table earlier and put them on.
“Now I have nine,” I said. I wouldn’t let either of us get completely naked. We’d get down to the swimsuit level of nudity, and then I’d call it off. Check and mate.
She smirked and took the cards as I dealt them out.
I lost five hands to her two, because let’s face it, the thought of Dani naked was more of a distraction than almost any man could withstand. I lost my glasses, both boots, and both socks. She lost the flip-flops.
She hadn’t realized her eyebrow tell, and when I folded, she smirked. “I won. Take something off.”
“That doesn’t count. I folded.”
“I won. That means you lost. You have to lose an item of clothing,” she said, as she finished the last glass of whiskey.
“You didn’t set those parameters before we began.”
“This isn’t a mission, Otter. This is strip poker. Everyone knows the rules,” she said as she shuffled the cards. She was back to using two hands instead of the one-handed shuffle she’d done earlier.
“I haven’t played a lot of strip poker,” I told her.
Her mouth dropped. “Wait, like, not a lot or never?”
I shrugged.
“Oh my God, you’re a virgin.”
I snorted. “Not hardly.”
She laughed, the sound running through my veins stronger than the whiskey. “Not like that, Pretty Boy. A strip-poker virgin. I should have put on another ten items. Virgins always have beginner’s luck.”
She winked at me, and it went straight to my balls. Jesus. If I won, she’d be naked, and I knew for a fucking fact, a naked Dani would be my undoing. I’d never be able to resist her. Mac would kill me. Tristan would hate me even more.
I won the next hand, and she lost her tank top. She was down to two things, and my palms went sweaty in a way they never did on a mission as I took in the tall, dark-haired beauty in front of me. She was like no one I’d ever been with before, and I’d had my fair share of women. Like many of my teammates, we had a hard time settling down.
Many SEALs didn’t tie the knot until they retired, because they didn’t want to put someone they loved through exactly what Tristan had gone through—was going through. I was never going to retire, so there was never going to be a forever after for me. If I’d had any doubts, my limited ability to hold on to a relationship with Angie and Tristan’s sad face had erased them.
I lost the next round. Too many thoughts and not enough concentration. My belt fell to the ground. When I lost the next round also, I pulled my T-shirt over my head, and her eyes lingered on my scar and then traveled down my chest as if she was memorizing every tattoo.
“We should stop,” I said as my head cleared more, leaving the alcohol behind us. I glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight. We’d been playing for hours.
“Bawk. Bawk. Bawk,” she said as she dealt out the cards again. “Thought you said SEALs never quit.”
The dare in her voice, the push on my button that was raw from having my buddies, my brothers, walk away, made me pick up the cards she handed me.
I took two, and she took one. She dealt the flop. And even if we’d had something to ante with, neither of us would have. She dealt the turn, and there was an expression on her face I wasn’t used to. Something she was debating inside.
The river card came, and I had a pair of queens. Not anything to get overly excited about, but when I turned them over, she sighed dramatically.
“Well, damn,” she said.
Her eyes came up to my face as her arms went behind her back, and I knew I should stop her. I should be a gentleman and just let her keep the rest of her clothes on, but I couldn’t. I was mesmerized by the motion as she slowly undid the clasp and let the bra fall off to reveal perky breasts I’d been dreaming of seeing since the first time Mac introduced us.
God, did I want to reach out and squeeze them. Kiss them. Suck on them. Shit, I was harder than I’d been in ages. Seeing her, feeling my balls get heavy, made me realize this was more than a mistake. It was the nightmare the shrink had asked me about. One that had my body shaking inside. I couldn’t walk away, and yet, I couldn’t stay, and nothing would come of this but bitterness.
Dani leaned in and whispered, “See something you like, Otter?”
I licked my lips and groaned.
“Dani.”
She stood, coming around the table without a single wobble, but I knew she wouldn’t be approaching me if she hadn’t been drinking. We’d always had a barrier between us that neither of us had crossed. But now, I couldn’t stop staring at her. All of her. Her eyes, her body, her soul. And I hated myself and the gods and Mac for being her brother.
She sat in my lap, straddling me, the tips of her breasts brushing across my bare chest as she did so. I didn’t stop her.
“Kiss me,” she said. Another dare. Her eyes held mine. The challenge laid out.
I bit back another groan. Trying not to touch her. Trying not to feel her hard nipples against my own. My fingers clenched into fists on either side of her on the table. Not moving. I could sit in the same position for hours―days―if I needed to.
“No,” I said, holding her gaze.
“No?” she breathed out. The shock on her face made my lips quirk, releasing some of the tension in my body.
“Has any guy ever said no to you, Athena?”
“Yes,” she said quietly before her chin raised and her eyes flared back to life. “You want to.” And to prove her words, she moved her center just a hair against my rock-hard penis that was threatening to jump through my cammies.
I did want to. I wanted to bite that pink lip and punish her for punishing me. Torture her with kisses and fingers until she begged rather than dared.
“I do. But kissing you wouldn’t stop at kissing.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s kind of the point here.” She waved a finger between my naked chest and hers.
“I can’t,” I told her, my voice thick with desire and regret. “Because I can’t offer you more than a night. An amazing, sweaty, gods screaming, hot night—but still only one night. And Mac would kick my ass.”
“My brother has nothing to do with this and would never find out. I’m a grown woman. I know what I want, and it definitely isn’t more than one night.”
She kept laying down the challenges, and I knew if I accepted this one, I’d end up being exactly what they called me: Nash the Ass. Nasty. Nasty Ass Shitty Human.
“He’s one of the only friends I have left,” I said so deeply and so quietly I wasn’t sure they were words, but she heard them.
Her eyes softened, and she looked away for a moment. Her features were strong and beautiful. A profile that would have inspired Michelangelo. A profile that had inspired Tristan to start painting her. I’d stared at the half-done portrait a thousand times whenever I’d gone in the studio. I’d told Tristan the truth. She was missing something essential about Dani in the painting.
When Dani’s eyes swung back to mine, there was sadness in them. I couldn’t stand the sadness. I didn’t want her feeling sad for me. I didn’t deserve it. I hadn’t earned it in any way.
As she brought her hand up to my face, it shook. I realized that coming around the table, sitting on me, daring me to kiss her, had been brave and courageous. She’d taken a risk, and I was rejecting it. I was already an ass.
“You―”
I cut her off with my lips against hers. The sweet scent of her wafted over me, tickling memories of the lemon geraniums back home in Georgia. Sweet and citrusy, making me long for sweet tea and honey. It took her a moment to realize I was kissing her, and then she was pushing back, full lips pressing against my own, still daring me. Daring me to continue.
And I did. Because how could I stop? I grabbed that bottom lip with my teeth, and she responded by touching her tongue to my lips, and I let her in. Tongues weaving together as if they wer
e dancing like lavender blowing in the wind.
My hands found her smooth back, pushing her against me, crushing her nipples against my muscles. She wasn’t soft like Angie had been. She was her own wall of muscles, the tight cords blending with my own.
My thumbs swirled at her side, and she arched into me. The kiss, the touch, launching memories of home that I hadn’t had in a decade. That I hadn’t had in so long it was as if the place had been forgotten in someone else’s dream. Kissing her made me feel like I’d somehow returned there like Dorothy tapping her heels together three times. I was standing in the fields, a wild bouquet I’d gathered in my hands, running toward the house. Wind and sunshine and scents blinding me.
My hand moved from her waist to the front of her yoga pants, and as I slid my palm down her front, she moaned a delightful little moan. A moan that was truly my undoing because I knew I couldn’t get away without hearing that multiple times. I was addicted with one touch and one sound.
In sniper training, you’re taught to use all of your senses, to open them wide and find those sixth senses that half the world doesn’t believe in. It makes you see and smell and hear things that the normal, average person doesn’t. Those senses were on overload with Athena in my lap. Alcohol gone. Only me and my raw desire for her. My raw desire to slam our bodies together until nothing was left.
I slid my hands to her ass, picked her up, and strode the five steps it took me to get to the basement door. I flung it open and took the steps down at a pace that wasn’t safe for either of us, but I was suddenly in a hurry to be down on a bed where I could wrap my entire body around hers.
I’d barely reached the bottom when she was tugging at the button on my cammies, and I let her. I let her undo them. I let her out of my arms, and she pushed my pants and briefs down my legs where I stepped out of them. She tossed them into the room somewhere before sliding out of her last remaining item.
When she stood back up, I groaned because she was just like those ancient Roman statues: curves in all the right places, breasts full but not overwhelming, skin made out of stone with muscles threading through every part of her. She worked out. A lot. I knew what it took to get muscles like those.
