Loe raamatut: «Daring Her Seal»

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

1

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3

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8

9

10

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16

Extract

Copyright

1

“CAN YOU BE married without having sex?”

In all fairness, Levi Brandon needed the answer ASAP. His SEAL team leader paused, however, in the act of piling into the C-23 Sherpa transport aircraft as if Levi had farted in front of the President or something equally crass. The pained look on Gray Jackson’s face was the only high point in Levi’s day since he’d rolled out of bed for a dark o’clock training exercise only to discover that the US postal system and karma had caught up with him.

Gray slapped him on the back, harder than was strictly necessary. “Little personal, don’t you think, Brandon?”

“I’m talking about myself, here,” he said, humping his gear on board. The plane was a no-nonsense set of wings and wheels, perfect for the day’s HALO training exercise.

While Gray mulled over his answer, the rest of SEAL Team Sigma loaded up with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Levi wasn’t the only guy who felt jumping out of a plane at thirty thousand feet wasn’t the best way to pass the time. He preferred keeping his feet on the ground or his fins in the water, thank you very much. On the other hand, at least when he jumped, he felt something. Even fear was marginally better than the emotional desert in which he usually existed.

“Last time I checked, you weren’t married, planning on getting married, or even dating the same woman for consecutive nights. The better question is...can you go without having sex?” Gray dropped onto the bench beside Levi, buckling up as the door slammed shut and the plane started its taxi down the runway.

He’d tried dating when he was younger. Hell. The word younger made him feel like Methuselah, but the feeling wasn’t inaccurate. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, he’d seen plenty and done more. The civilian women he’d dated once upon a time didn’t understand what his job entailed. They’d seen the movies or read the books, but they still popped out perky How was your day?s like the words were Percocet. And too many times he’d been under orders not to discuss what had gone down.

Or he’d had days that were all training or sitting in a foxhole, waiting for the action to start. Nothing to talk about there, so he’d stayed mute and his gal of the moment had gotten upset. And then when shit did go down? What woman wanted to hear about the kill shot he made at long range or the building he’d cleared at the end of an M4? Sure as shooting, she hadn’t been planning to help him pack for combat deployment, and he hadn’t been packing socks and briefs, anyhow.

Sex was much simpler. He gave an orgasm; she got an orgasm. Or three. Everyone walked away happy, and the next time he jumped out of a plane there were no pesky emotional entanglements messing with his free fall.

He certainly had no plans for celibacy. On the other hand, fate had just slapped him with the moral equivalent of a chastity belt. Levi pulled the marriage certificate out of a pocket of his flight suit and waved it in the air. He needed a second opinion, and sure enough, Sam leaned over and snagged the paper. As the team medic, Sam Nale had even fewer personal boundaries than the rest of them, probably because he’d patched them all up on more than one occasion. Funny how once you’d had your fingers in a guy’s bullet holes you felt like you knew him.

“Levi brought reading material.” Sam unfolded the paper, read it over and whistled, the sound all but drowned out by the steady drone of the engines as the pilot took them to altitude. “And trouble. You’re married?”

“Not on purpose,” Levi admitted with a scowl.

Mason Black held out a hand for the certificate. “When did this happen?”

“I’m blaming you.” Levi flipped Mason the bird. His teammate was a big bear of a SEAL, a damned good sniper, and the second member of their unit to find true love when they’d been undercover on Fantasy Island three months ago.

Not that Levi understood how two experienced warriors like Mason and Gray could fall in love while taking down a drug kingpin, but that was apparently what had happened. Levi had been looking forward to giving both of them crap about it for years to come—until he’d checked his mail this morning and discovered he had his own romantic woes to contend with.

“Your girl asked Ashley and I to be the stand-in bride and groom for a beach ceremony. She didn’t tell us we were getting married for real.”

Mason grinned. “Heads up. Every photo shoot with that woman is an adventure.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled, “but can you really imagine me married? To Ashley?”

Ashley Dixon had been a DEA tagalong on their last two missions. As far as he could tell she disliked everything about him—she’d been happy to detail her opinions loudly and at length. Naturally he’d given her plenty of shit while they’d been in their field together, and she’d really hated him calling her Mrs. Brandon after they’d played bride and groom for Mason’s girl.

After they’d parted ways on Fantasy Island he hadn’t thought of her once. Okay. He’d thought of her once. Maybe twice. She was gorgeous, they had a little history together and he wasn’t dead yet although he was fairly certain he would be if he pursued her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who shared her toys, and monogamy didn’t work for him. So how the hell had he ended up married to her?

Mason returned the certificate and Levi jammed it back into his pocket. “Does Ashley know about this?”

He doubted it. “She hasn’t said anything.”

Because if she had known, she’d have found a way to tell him everything he’d done wrong that had led to an actual wedding—with an email, a phone call, or an RPG with a scathing note attached to the warhead. He’d butted heads with her every time he turned around on their past missions.

Well, every time except one. There had been that steamy alleyway kiss when they’d been surprised by a member of the motorcycle club they’d been investigating. He’d pinned Ashley against the wall and kissed her hard, because at the moment the only good excuse he could come up with for their presence in the alley was sex.

She’d kissed him back, too, in the interests of not jeopardizing their cover, but she’d made it clear later and in private that the next time his tongue got anywhere near her mouth she’d cut it off. His kiss had pissed her off that much, he thought with a smirk, and now he was gonna rile her up even more with his hey-babe-we’re-married bomb. That was the only silver lining in this whole situation.

“Trickery’s the only way Levi’s getting our Ashley to say yes.” Sam high-fived Mason. “Ten bucks says she’ll skip the annulment and go straight to the kill you part of marriage. She gets to be a widow—you get to be dead. Problem solved.”

Which was no fun at all. Levi would prefer to aggravate her, get underneath her defiant, snarky surface, if only because she was the one woman who’d never, ever contemplated saying yes to him.

Mason grinned. “I bet you can’t get her to voluntarily say ‘I do.’”

Levi wasn’t Superman. No one could get Ashley to agree to anything she didn’t want to do without wielding some powerful ammo. “Say ‘I do’ to what?”

“You.” A big, obnoxious grin creased the face of the other SEAL.

“Are you doubting my powers of persuasion?”

The skeptical look Mason sported said that was an affirmative.

Gray cursed as if maybe, in some weird parallel universe, a Levi existed who actually wanted to be married to Ashley Dixon. “Ashley could out-stubborn a mule. She’d take a hell of a lot of persuading.”

“Just a matter of leverage.”

“Two minutes, ladies.” Gray stood and motioned for the team to head to the back of the plane. Air tore through the cabin as the National Guardsmen chauffeuring them to the day’s jump lowered the back ramp to reveal nothing but blue sky, empty air and a long drop to the landing zone. Levi slapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder, taking up his position behind the other SEAL as he braced against the plane’s upward pull.

He had never been wild about heights, but jumping out of a plane at thirty thousand feet beat the three-hour commute his brother bitched about, even if he was Navy and frogs weren’t meant to fly. The good thing about HALO jumping, however, was that once he’d gotten his ass out the door, the hard part was done. Gravity took over, and as long he’d packed his chute correctly the happy ending was practically guaranteed.

“Ready?” Gray bellowed the words in Levi’s ear, fighting to make himself heard over the slipstream’s roar. “Don’t make Ashley a widow. She’s gonna want the chance to kill you herself.”

“You betcha.” He touched the knuckles of his free hand to Gray’s. Seconds later, their team leader bellowed the order to jump and Sam flew out of the open bay. Gravity and the engine wake did their thing, sucking Levi out of the plane as he whooped, riding Sam’s ass as they hung in the air for a long moment.

Then they plummeted through the air at terminal velocity, facedown, arms and feet up as strips of road and field swung in crazy circles beneath them. Seventy seconds of flying—or falling—and he pulled the rip cord at four thousand feet above ground level, popping his chute. On a mission rather than a training run, he might wait until as low as a thousand feet to minimize the amount of time hostiles had to spot him. Today, though, he’d maximize his chances of getting to the ground intact. If his chute failed, he’d still have time to deploy the back up. The chute shot out of his back, the canopy catching air and jerking him sharply upward. Bingo.

Sure, Ashley would prefer skipping the divorce and aiming straight for widowhood, but he had no intention of making it easy on her. If she wanted to get rid of him, she’d have to work for it.

2

HIS WIFE WAS fucking gorgeous.

Not that Levi deserved any kind of credit for Ashley’s good looks, but if he had to end up accidentally married to a woman whose dislike for him made ISIS and the President of the United States seem like cozy besties, at least he’d scored a hot bride.

The assessment officially made him shallow, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that they were legally married. The woman bent over her desk, working a cable behind the computer monitor while she sweet-talked the hardware, would rip him a new one when he shared the news with her. In the meantime, however, he might as well enjoy the show.

Husky phrases drifted to him. Come on, baby. Work with me. Yeah, he might get something out of this little field trip. Taunting Ashley was a helluva lot of fun.

He leaned against the doorframe. “You got computer woes too?”

The DEA’s office sure wasn’t Sexyville. After he’d breached the security at the front desk, he’d followed directions and ridden a beige elevator, taken two equally beige corridors, and then forded a sea of chest-high gray cubicles occupied by suits of both the male and female variety. Heads turned as he passed, because his off-duty jeans, motorcycle boots and black leather jacket weren’t standard office wear. He hadn’t come here to give a fashion show, though, so he kept moving.

After infiltrating third-world countries, locating Ashley’s office was easy. Plus, the scenery was motivational. The way her skirt hugged the curves of her ass fed his Victoria’s Secret fantasy, and her blouse wasn’t half bad, either. The silky material draped over her boobs and he’d bet the fabric was as soft as the skin it only partially concealed. When she delved further into the tangle of cables, she flashed him the shadow of a black bra strap. Hooyah.

“Dixon?” he prompted, when she didn’t look up from the mess of cables she was untangling.

She glanced his way automatically, a polite smile pasted to her face. Naturally her smile disappeared real quick when she realized who’d knocked on her door.

“You.” Her voice held a wealth of disapproval, but that was nothing new. Frankly, he had a hard time imagining welcome, pleasure or anything remotely happy painted on her puss. She didn’t like him, and he never seemed to get things right as far as she was concerned. Too bad, so sad. Wait until she heard what he had to say.

“In the flesh.” He stepped into her office because he didn’t need to attract any more attention from her floor mates. She had ten feet by ten feet to herself, along with three pieces of battered office furniture, a dusty plastic plant and a series of action figures suspended from the ceiling by what looked like fishing line. Stepping closer and blocking her access to the room’s only exit, he offered her a lazy grin. “I didn’t recognize you wearing clothes.”

She’d rocked a very nice string bikini on their undercover mission to Fantasy Island, and...what? He was supposed to pretend he hadn’t noticed? Hello. Parts of him were biologically incapable of not noticing, no matter how much vitriol she shot his way.

And bingo...her polite can-I-help-you? expression morphed into one hundred percent pissed-off female as she straightened up.

“I’m licensed to carry concealed. Don’t make me shoot you.”

Concealing a weapon in her current getup seemed challenging, but Ashley liked her guns and he’d seen her produce firearms from beneath the smallest of bandage dresses out in the field. He had no idea how she did it, but he respected the hell out of it. He also needed her to listen to him for five minutes.

She made a sound delightfully close to a snarl. How nice to know he still could get under her skin. Smiling at her, he said, “I need to talk to you. Take a smoke break.”

Brown eyes narrowed. “It’s with and not to. And smoking kills.”

She put the desk between them. And while he enjoyed the way her ass wiggled in the skirt as she sauntered to her chair in three-inch heels, he still needed to talk to her. With her. She never missed an opportunity to point out that he was wrong, did she?

Of course, he also didn’t care much about getting it right, so he advanced on her, flattening his palms on her desk. Naturally, the surface was all neat and tidy, her office supplies arranged at right angles and the folders stacked precisely. She’d never liked messes. When he deliberately nudged a pencil out of its careful row, she glared.

“We can do this the hard way. I can carry you out over my shoulder.” His dick twitched at that. Hell. This was Dixon.

She didn’t sit down, just folded her arms over her chest and inhaled as though she was trying to find her patience or her balance or something. “Step inside and shut the door.”

Huh. Who knew he’d find that order a turn-on? It was likely only because he hadn’t gotten laid in over a month. Lurking in foxholes wreaked havoc on a man’s social life, and he’d come straight to Quantico once he’d arrived stateside. Ashley might be annoying as hell, but she deserved to know about their marriage, just in case she had any wedding plans of her own. He was in outright Boy Scout territory, making sure she didn’t commit bigamy or mess up her taxes any. Maybe she’d even polish his halo for him. With her tongue.

Or she just might kill him. He’d give it even odds at the moment. She leaned toward him, not intimidated in the slightest.

She’d slicked her dark, glossy hair back from her face in a severe style that made her look all cheekbones. With less than two feet between them, he could smell her perfume, which was another first for him. She didn’t wear that stuff in the field, and apparently he’d been missing out. She smelled like warmth and fruit and some kind of flower thing. Damned if he knew what it was, but he liked it. He should get a bottle and spray the boys in the foxhole next time he had to camp out for a week in the jungle.

She made a give-it-up gesture. “Some time this century, Brandon.”

Given their eager audience—he’d counted ten agents and four secretaries plus a maintenance guy messing with a thermostat—he kicked the door shut with his booted foot. Probably not what she’d intended, but she should know by now that she needed to be specific with him.

“How do you want me?” he drawled, keeping his eyes on her. Her lips tightened. She was wearing lipstick in a nice nude shade. No flashy come-do-me red for her in the office. Did the agents she worked with know the calm ice-princess facade was a front? She had a wild child hiding underneath that gorgeous face, and she was a demon in the field. She would have made an excellent SEAL.

“Sit,” she snapped, as if he was some kind of trained poodle. News flash. He only pretended to be civilized. If she didn’t play nice, he didn’t have to, either. He definitely wasn’t planting his ass in a chair while she stood over him in the power position.

Time to take charge.

“If I sit like a good boy, will you park that pretty ass of yours on my lap?”

* * *

ASHLEY’S BRAIN SPLUTTERED to an outraged halt, because who said sexist stuff like that these days? Naturally, Levi used her momentary distraction to circle the desk between them. She hesitated a moment too long, distracted by the sexy SEAL prowling toward her. Dark hair buzzed short with military precision, brown eyes that crinkled at the corner when he laughed, and just the hint of a dimple in his right cheek...damn it. She’d seen him in action and the man was quick. He also fought dirty, and any words that came out of his mouth were just one more weapon. She should have remembered that.

He pulled her toward him until her thighs were plastered against him, his muscular, denim-covered leg thrusting between hers as he danced her backward smoothly. Her back hit the wall, her heart simultaneously taking a nosedive toward her stomach. Darn it. Being close to Levi was too much like riding a roller coaster.

A sexy, dangerous roller coaster with bad manners.

His big body radiated heat and carefully leashed power as he boxed her in, and she didn’t know if she should take a moment to admire the sheer masculine ballsiness of the move—or knee him in the nuts on principle. She hadn’t known he was in town, although it wasn’t as though they shared social plans. They’d worked in the field together. Sometimes they’d killed together. None of which was drop-in-and-have-a-beer material.

His mouth shifted, brushing her ear. “Hello again, Mrs. Brandon.”

How much trouble would she get in if she pulled her gun in the office? Because the thought of plugging Levi’s fine ass with a bullet got more and more appealing by the moment.

“That joke got old about the twentieth time you trotted it out on Fantasy Island after we did the beach thing. Do I look like a missus? Maybe I missed the part where you tattooed property of on my ass.”

She bent her knees, ducked under his arm and pushed him hard against the wall. He let her slam him into the paint job and that pissed her off even more. Life was one big joke to Levi Brandon and she hated it when he played with her.

“It’s not a joke, babe. We’re married.”

“Uh-huh. Tell that one to the judge and back the hell off.” That was another thing about Levi—he could deliver a joke with a perfectly straight face.

“You need to listen to me on this one.” He flipped her around smoothly, face to the wall, wrists pinned over her head. Since the man had to have almost a hundred pounds on her, she was at a definite disadvantage in close quarters.

“Scared?” Sure, it wasn’t nice to taunt him, but around him her inner five-year-old came out to play.

“Not exactly,” he said cheerfully. “But someone’s going to end up in the ER if we keep showing each other our moves. Plus kink’s not my thing. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

“So you’re manhandling me to be nice?” She didn’t bother hiding the disbelief in her voice. Truth was, Levi did what he wanted and he didn’t worry about the consequences. It must be nice. She was also fairly certain he had a much broader acquaintance with kink than she did.

In answer, he kicked her legs wider, which was a challenge given the lack of give in her skirt. Heat hit her hard between her thighs, her panties dampening as she felt him against her back. Chemical reaction. That was all. Sure, it sucked that she got horny around Levi, but he came in a pretty package and looking at him had never been a hardship. It was when she had to listen to him that things went to hell.

It took him less than fifteen seconds to find the gun tucked in the small of her back. He slipped it out of her waistband and set it on her desk. “Sexy.”

“Back off and tell me why you’re here.” Had the Marcos brothers managed to shake the charges against them? If they’d been assigned a third mission together, surely the special agent in charge would have notified her.

“You think I need a reason to be here? Maybe I had a couple of weeks of leave coming to me and just missed your lovely face.” He pressed harder against her, tucking his dick against her butt as if he had some kind of right to do so. Clearly, it had been too long since she’d had sex—working undercover with SEAL teams had definitely put a crimp in her social life—because she couldn’t even work up much outrage at his erection. He was huge, he was turned on and apparently her sexual drought had lasted long enough that she was willing to cut him some slack. Sucker her brain crowed at her libido.

“Well, I’m not helping you with that.” She wriggled her butt against his front just to make her point and he hissed.

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it. Dick’s got a mind of its own and it really, really likes your skirt.”

And that was the problem with Levi. The outside package was hot—hello, she’d never met an ugly SEAL—but then he opened his mouth. Too bad she couldn’t duct tape his lips shut and just admire the view.

“Could you be more offensive? Is this your idea of a joke?” Because she didn’t feel like laughing and she was this close to kneeing him in the balls the next chance she got.

“You hear a punch line coming out of my mouth?”

“You want to know how many practical jokes I’ve been the butt of over the years? When you’re the only female on a team, you hear it all.”

He whistled. “You work with some nasty people, Dixon.”

She drove her head back, pulling free of his hold and swinging her elbow toward his cheekbone. If she accidentally introduced his head to her desk on his way down, she didn’t care. He hit the floor with a thud and a laugh, twisting to avoid her office furniture. Great. The agents on the floor below would be banging on the ceiling.

Grabbing her gun, she loaded it with swift efficiency while he rolled lightly to his feet. “A vagina doesn’t make me stupid.”

He gave her a look she couldn’t interpret. “I’ve never thought you were stupid.”

Well. Okay, then.

He grinned at her and kept right on running his mouth. Levi never had known when to quit. “Deadly. Irritating as hell. Adorably geeky when you get your computer on. Those adjectives all work for me, although after you seeing you in your skirt, I’m adding sexy because I believe in calling it like I see it. You should dress up for me more often, babe.” Chuckling with amusement, he added, “I have nothing but respect for your skills. I just give you shit because I give all my guys crap.”

She pretended she didn’t feel a small spurt of warmth at his compliment. After all, she was still debating hurting him.

“I’m just one of the guys now? Go away.” She dropped into her office chair and motioned toward her door with the gun. She’d left the safety on, which was more than he deserved. “That was fun. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

He leaned against the edge of her desk and fished an envelope out of his jacket. “We’re married. Read for yourself.”

She opened it and pulled out a fancy-schmancy certificate with black calligraphy and plenty of gold foil. Once upon a time, the thing had probably been elegant as hell, but now it was full of creases from repeated folding. Hot sauce decorated one corner. Obviously, whatever it was, he highly valued it. Not.

The letter was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brandon and she got a bad, bad feeling in her stomach. “This is dated three weeks ago.”

He shrugged. “I was in a foxhole. The postal service doesn’t deliver out there.”

She read on and froze. “How can we possibly be married?”

“I imagine it was that part where the minister asked us if we ‘did.’ Shoulda lied, babe.”

“That was a fake ceremony.” She set the papers on her desk. Levi had to be joking for some sick, twisted, unfathomable reason. They couldn’t be married. They were the two least compatible people on the planet, not to mention she’d sworn off marriage after watching her parents’ union explode so spectacularly.

And if those weren’t good enough reasons, she had a performance review in four weeks, and a congressional hearing to attend in two. She’d blown the whistle on a team of DEA agents who’d treated their Central American posting as party central under the mistaken assumption that they could do whatever they wanted with impunity, so it definitely wouldn’t look good if it came out that she’d been involved in a fake wedding ceremony in Belize. A ceremony where the real bride and groom were supposed to be a notorious drug kingpin and his girlfriend, but they’d been a no-show because they’d been arrested and carted out to international waters by an undercover SEAL team. She could practically see the headlines now: DEA Agent Is Wedding Proxy for Drug Lord.