The SEAL's Second Chance: An Alpha Ops Novella Read online

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  She snagged her jacket, knotting it around her waist while he grabbed both the ball and his shirt. “Leave it off,” she said when he thrust his arms into the sleeves.

  He stopped. She would have sworn he was blushing, but he did as she asked, tossing his shirt over one shoulder, holding the ball between his wrist and hip as they walked. They’d barely merged with the wooded darkness under the trees lining the sidewalk when he wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet, walking her backward down the path with her toes a couple of inches off the pavement.

  “Jamie,” she said, torn between nerves and laughter. “Put me down. I’m too big for this.”

  “Kiss me,” he replied.

  At this angle her face was an inch or so above. Kissing down wasn’t new to her; she’d actually dated a couple of rugby players shorter than her, but this felt powerful, like she was claiming Jamie Hawthorn for her own. He tightened his arm around her waist and gave a soft grunt when her mouth met his, like it left him weak. The night felt magical, the freedom to press her body against Jamie’s, let skin slide against skin, feel the muscles shifting in his arms and shoulders. He carried her like she weighed nothing at all, all the way until the path merged with the sidewalk, when he put her down.

  “Where are we going?” he murmured against her mouth.

  She turned around, striving for a calm facade to present to whoever might be watching as they made their way into the neighborhood. “It’s not far,” she said, then cleared her throat, trying to make conversation to ease the tension. “You didn’t get my address from Ian?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  She shot him a look. “Why not?”

  “Creepy,” he said in a singsong voice, making her laugh. “Why? Do you want me to climb in your window and watch you sleep?”

  “Jeepers. No,” she said firmly. “Never.”

  By the time they reached the cracked sidewalk leading to her front porch, she was all over goose bumps. He noticed, crowding close as she fumbled her key out of the zip pocket in her tights and unlocked the door. Heat pumped from him like an old radiator, hot enough to burn, steamy, tantalizing. She leaned into it. He leaned back, and when the lock turned they both stumbled into her living room. With a thud and a window-rattling crash he kicked the door closed behind him, and for a long, luminously charged moment, they stared at each other. Sweat streaked his face, but he showed no signs of being cold.

  A long shudder wracked her. “Come on,” he said, gripping her wrist again and heading for the lone door off the combined living and dining room. They ended up in the hallway. Two doors led to bedrooms. She watched him sum up her office and discard it, then stop and stare at her unmade queen-sized bed, then discard that and head purposefully for door number three.

  She’d bought the house because she’d always loved old Craftsman homes, and the previous owner had renovated both the kitchen and the bath, restoring them to period detail but with modern appliances and functional plumbing. They’d taken out the charming but impractical claw foot tub and replaced it with a big shower tiled on three walls, glass on the fourth. Jamie hummed with approval at the body jets and reached for the control, turning the water to steaming hot.

  Then he crowded her into the glass and kissed her, hungry, intent, purposeful. His skin was hot to the touch. When she bent her knees and licked his throat, she tasted sweat and the desire seemingly seeping from his skin. He was hard against her from his chest to his pelvis, cock and thighs and knees bumping against her while his hands burrowed into her hair, loosening the elastic until she winced and it dropped to the floor at her feet.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered against her cheek. “I had to … your hair … fuck, Charlie.”

  Tangled and tousled, it clung to her cheeks and lips when his hands skimmed forward over her cheekbones, thumbs dragging against her skin until they met at her mouth. She looked into his eyes, opened her lips, and nipped at the fleshy pad of his thumb while she gripped the waistband of his shorts and pulled him forward.

  His gaze went molten. “Do that again,” he said.

  “What? This?” she asked, yanking this time.

  He was staring at her shoulders and upper arms. “You have the most incredible body,” he growled.

  She’d lost some muscle weight since retiring from pro ball, but regular dates with the weight room kept her lean and fit. He only had a couple of inches on her, but he had both the athlete’s and the warrior’s trick of making himself seem bigger than he was, a solid wall of heat and muscle at her front, the glass shower wall at her back. She let go of his waistband and skimmed her thumbs over the thin skin of his torso, feeling the muscles jump in response to her touch. He didn’t lean into her, probably respecting the glass, instead opting to brace his elbows on either side of her head and put his mouth to her ear.

  Water spattered steadily against the tile. Steam billowed over the top of the glass wall, condensing on her hair, Jamie’s shoulders, but still she could hear every caught breath, every soft, stifled grunt he made as she explored the edges of him, where his muscles came together then curved apart, hard collarbones giving way to the softer column of his throat, then his hard, square jaw, then the softness of his lips, already kissed into plush heat. She looked into his eyes, then slid her forefingers into his mouth to stroke his tongue.

  Nothing stifled his groan this time. He bit down gently, trapping her fingers, then licked the soft flesh, holding her with his gaze like he had her on a hook. Tugging her fingers free, she trailed them down his chin, down, down, to snag in his elastic waistband and pull his basketball shorts and boxers over his straining cock and send them to the floor.

  “Hold on a second,” she said suddenly.

  He caught her wrist. “Where are you going?”

  His eyes were all pupil, his body as male as a body could get, hard planes and erect cock lifting toward his abdomen. She felt an answering throb inside her, a deeply primitive female response, the testosterone and command seeping into the air like the steam from the shower. “We need condoms,” she said, then added, “I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded jerkily, then let her go. Bent over her nightstand, she peered over her shoulder and found him watching her from the bathroom door, arms by his sides, hands loosely curled. He was poised, she thought, poised to catch her. A strip of condoms in hand, she walked back to the bathroom and slapped them into his palm. Her back to him, she toed out of her sneakers, tugged her sports bra over her head, and felt his hands work into her running tights and strip them down her legs.

  Some odd part of her brain wondered if candlelight and roses and a sexy slip wouldn’t be more appropriate, but her body overrode her brain. They weren’t about romance. They were about the physical fight on the court finally reaching its inevitable conclusion. He gripped her hips and used shoulders and torso to jostle her into the shower. The heat made it hard to breathe, or so she thought, until he dialed back the temperature to something more bearable and she still couldn’t draw a full breath.

  Then he backed her into the tiled wall, slapped the condom into the recessed niche, and kissed her. Water streamed from the showerhead above them on her right over the side of his face, faintly salty until the sweat rinsed away, leaving on the slick, heated glide of his lips and tongue as he licked into her mouth.

  “What is it with you and the walls?” she gasped when his mouth trailed over her cheekbone to her ear.

  He smoothed her hair back from her face. “You’re not getting away this time,” he growled, then bit down none too gently on her earlobe. The pain sparked along her nerves, transmuting into pleasure when his hand cupped her breast, pinching her nipple between thumb and forefinger. Her brain, cross-wired by a lifetime of playing through pain, connected it all to the gut-deep delight and triggered a throb deep inside her. She gasped, shuddered, and arched into him, a writhing move he responded to by shoving his hips into hers, pinning her to the wall.


  The sound she made, utterly involuntary, must have been close to a yelp, because he pulled back to look at her. “Too much?”

  She licked her lips as much to feel their swollen kissed texture as to taste him. His gaze, drawn to the movement like a predator to prey, darkened helplessly, sending another powerful jolt through her. She slid down the wall, parting her knees as she did, and took his cock in her mouth.

  “Oh, fuck,” he groaned.

  She wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft and lapped at the soft head, the taste of precome diluted by the water coursing in rivulets down his abdominal wall and into his pubic hair. Smoothly stroking his length, she glanced up at him, saw unabashed desire in his hot gaze. He reached down and stroked her wet hair, then opened his palm beside her jaw. Blocking the spray from her face.

  “Thanks,” she said, a smile curving her lips. Breathing was already hard enough without water spraying her nose and mouth.

  “Anything to help,” he returned, the tone intense under the humorous words.

  His hand so close to her face helped and didn’t help, because the breathing part wasn’t getting any easier. It was too much anticipation, too much promise, too much Jamie, every fantasy she’d ever had jostling for space in her brain, so she closed her eyes and rubbed her tongue against the underside of his cock until the swift tightening of his muscles told her she’d found the sensitive bundle of nerves there.

  She experimented until his groans evened out and settled into a steady, faint rumble, keeping her rhythm even and slow, stroking and cupping his balls until they tightened under her palm, then sliding up to explore the crease between thigh and hip, the sharp jut of bone, the muscle bulging above it. Long minutes passed, her skin so hypersensitive that every droplet of water pelting her, trickling down her breasts and belly to stream between her thighs felt like individual fingers stroking her, teasing her. When she moved her hand in time with her mouth, Jamie’s fingers abruptly tightened around the back of her skull and urged her to her feet.

  “Incredible,” he growled, his cock nudging at her hip, her belly. One hand dropped to arrow down her belly, parting the folds between her legs. Fingertips skimmed up to circle her clit, making her hips buck, then back down where he pressed a finger inside her.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  She could feel how slick she was as he added a second finger, stroking the sensitive opening with a deft touch. “That’s always turned me on.”

  He looked at her, aroused and amused and arrogant as hell with her hips lifting into his hand. “You’re a dream come true, you know that?”

  She patted around in the niche, knocking her can of shaving cream to the floor, until she found the condoms. “I want you inside me.”

  He chucked the torn packet to the floor beside the shaving cream and rolled the condom down his shaft, then bent his knees, his hands gliding along her thigh to her hip, lifting her leg to open her. She wrapped her arms under his and gripped his shoulders, going up on tiptoe until the off-target nudges of his cock made it clear the angle was off.

  “Lift me,” she said, but he understood angles, trajectories, and was already doing it, one strong arm under her bottom as he widened his stance. She wrapped both legs around his hips and tilted her pelvis.

  A long, soft, hitching groan echoed in the shower. A few seconds later she realized it was her making that sound, the stretching pressure of his cock gliding deep on the very first stroke forcing air through her vocal cords.

  “Okay?” he asked, his voice almost inaudible under the pattering drops.

  The stretch burned, then softened into a deep, sweet ache. Her nails, though short and blunt, were embedded in his shoulders; she relaxed her hands a little, watched the white divots darken as blood flowed back into them, then through the surface of the skin. Without thinking about it, she bent and licked the tiny droplet. In response, his cock throbbed inside her, drawing an answering contraction from her sheath.

  “More,” she said, then added, “now.” Single-syllable commands seemed to be the only ones left in her vocabulary.

  A sharp, huffing laugh brushed his chest wall against her breasts. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, low and hot, and pulled out. The gliding stroke back in tapped her tailbone against the shower wall, and felt so, so good, like a deep massage, pain subsiding into pleasure with each movement, until the pain was gone and only a deep stretching languor remained.

  His feet slipped on the tile, startling her. He cursed, adjusted his stance, and drove forward again, this time smacking her tailbone hard against the wall. She threw her head back and cried out, and it was game on, a decade’s worth of desire suddenly, fiercely peaking. Her orgasm tore through her, then out of her on short, sharp cries. He thrust through the contractions, then stiffened and growled and spilled deep inside her.

  “You okay to stand?” he said when he pulled out.

  She gave a snorting little laugh. “You’re good, Hawthorn,” she said. “Very, very good. But not forty-minutes-of-playing-time good.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted, then he patted her hip. “You’re so kind to my ego, Stannard.”

  “Just keeping it real,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  The aftermath was quiet, shared soap and turns under the rain head to rinse, then he fiddled with the controls until the water pulsed from the body jets and gathered her close, turning his back, then hers, to the little geysers.

  “Are you staying?” she asked when they were toweling off.

  “Is that an option?” he returned, his wet hair laying forward as it never would when dry.

  “Yes,” she said, too tired, too satiated, too afraid of the future to hold that ground. She’d longed for not just sex with Jamie but the softer moments, the dating moments, watching movies, making meals. Cuddling. For the next twenty-six days, she wanted to fall asleep with Jamie’s bare skin next to hers.

  “Then I’m staying,” he said, and left it at that.

  She crawled into bed and flopped on her side. Jamie sprawled facedown next to her and spent a good thirty seconds writhing around in the sheets like a dog rolling in the grass.

  “What are you doing, you fool?” she asked.

  “These sheets. Jesus. You sleep on Navy sheets for a decade and then try these.”

  “Eight hundred thread count Egyptian cotton,” she said. “Enjoy.”

  He settled down and tucked the sheet around her ribs, then closed his eyes.

  “Was it worth it?”

  The words were out before she could stop them, smacking of the pleading reassurance her mother wanted from a man. Wasn’t I good enough? Just tell me what you want, baby, and I’ll make it happen.

  “Was what worth what?” he asked, his face already slackening into sleep.

  It didn’t matter, of course. She could have been the best he’d ever had, and he’d still leave in a couple of weeks, go back to San Diego and the life of a modern warrior. She didn’t even hope to be the best he’d ever had, just wanted to know that she hadn’t embarrassed herself. “Nothing,” she said, and curled up on her side. “Good night.”

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, Jamie watched Charlie sleep, and hoped it wasn’t too creepy.

  He’d fallen asleep in her bed, so maybe it was okay to absorb the way the early morning light, gray and watery with the rain that was in the air, lay across her face and hair. She was lying on her side, facing him, as he studied her face, looking for signs of the girl he’d fallen for all those years ago. Charlie, as usual, didn’t give him what he expected; she didn’t look younger when she slept, or more innocent, but then again, she’d never looked innocent. When your dad was in the wind and your mother was routinely arrested for petty theft, innocence wasn’t something you could afford to retain. And look at her now. A pro basketball star, a degree, money in the bank, and a mission in life. Watching her with the students the day before made him both proud and scared.

  Proud, because she was going to make a difference in
those girls’ lives. She ran her team like he ran missions, all out committed to the people in her care, and the girls obviously worshipped her.

  Scared, because his fantasy of swooping back into Lancaster and whisking Charlie Stannard off to San Diego’s sunny beaches wasn’t going to happen.

  Even her house spoke to her putting down roots. Classic Craftsman homes occupied lots all over the East Side, but Charlie’s was recently renovated. Fresh paint, new windows. He wondered if she’d added home renovation to her skill set, chosen the colors, opened up the living space, stripped and sanded the hardwood floors. It wouldn’t have surprised him. When Charlie made up her mind to do something, it happened.

  If she didn’t make up her mind that they were happening, it wouldn’t matter how deeply, madly, truly he wanted her. They wouldn’t happen.

  Her breath hitched, then shuddered back out again. She slept like a mummy, her arms crossed over her chest, her loosely curled fists jammed up under her chin. The sheet was caught under her arm, revealing only the upper curve of her firm breast, but that was enough. Her musculature was so erotic, sensitive skin over toned curves, the dip and swell of shoulder, collarbone so tempting to touch, but he didn’t want to wake her. So he left bare millimeters between his fingertips and her shoulder, then the strong line of her jaw, the delicate hairs on the secret curve of her ear when Pitbull’s “Time of Our Lives” blared into the pearly morning light.

  He jerked his hand away. Charlie’s eyes popped open, wide, startled, staring up at him blankly.

  “It’s Jamie,” he said.

  Her eyebrows pulled down. “Did you forget your own name over night? I know who you are,” she said, her voice husky with sleep.

  Jamie snorted, then looked at the clock. 6:27 a.m. “Why six twenty-seven? Why not six twenty-five or six thirty?”

  She rolled over, pulling the sheet up as far as it would go before reaching overhead and stretching. Laid out from tiptoes to fingertips she was longer than the bed. It was kind of crazy hot.

  “Six thirty is too late. Six twenty-five is too early. If I can get two more minutes of sleep, I’m going to get it,” she said, then reached out and swiped Pitbull into silence.