Bound By Seduction (A Red-Hot SEALs Novella Book 2) (2 page)

The back room was louder than the front had been, mostly from the shouts and curses erupting around the pool tables. Along the side wall a door stood open, a thick cloud of smoke clogging the doorjamb.

Demi scanned the men clustered around the pool tables.

Nope…

She checked out the poker table.

Nothing.

She shook her head at her escort’s enquiring glance, aware that the pool and poker tables had fallen silent. She could almost feel the sexual buzz sweeping the room.

Her guardian muttered something beneath his breath.

“Excuse me?” Demi asked, trying to ignore the heated gazes tracking her every move.

“I said.” He raised his voice and eyebrows. “That getup you’re wearing should be classified as military-grade weaponry.”

That coaxed a laugh from her. Too bad Aiden wasn’t around to get a dose of her artillery.

“Any chance he’s out with the smokers?” He nodded toward the smoke-filmed side door.

“He doesn’t smoke.” Demi sighed. “Maybe he’s in the restroom?”

He studied her face thoughtfully, before turning to address a burly guy exiting the hall that led to the restrooms. “Hey Korfiafis, anyone in the john?”

The guy glanced in their direction, took one look at Demi and stopped in his tracks. He gave her one of those up and down sweeps that the guys in this place had perfected, only his ended with a leer. “Nah, it’s all yours.”

Demi could read the assumption on the guy’s face. He thought they were headed to the bathroom to…to…she felt her face light up like a bonfire.

Her escort swung her around and headed back to the main room, away from all those intense, interested eyes. “He didn’t know you were coming, did he?”

She swallowed hard and sent him a slightly sick smile. “Not exactly.”

“And you couldn’t pick up the phone? Let him know you were coming?”

Make sure he was going to be here?

Although he didn’t ask it, Demi could feel the question hanging between them.

“It’s…complicated.”

Complicated, as in, it would be far too easy to say no over the phone, which wouldn’t give her magical red outfit a chance to do its job.

A shadow crossed his face. He grimaced, and then gave her a one-armed shoulder squeeze. “Well there, Miss Complicated, let me buy you a drink?” When her stride faltered, he gave a wry laugh. “No strings. We’ll just let the boys drool over you for a few minutes longer.”

But rather than choosing a table in the middle of the room, where she’d be on display, he escorted her to a small private table against the back wall.

“Besides,” he said, as he pulled out a chair for her, “could be your lucky bastard’s just running late. This place starts hopping the closer it gets to midnight.”

It wasn’t until she sat down that Demi realized they had a perfect view of the tavern entrance. She’d see Aiden the moment he arrived…if he ever showed up.

After the waitress headed off to collect their drinks, her new friend leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. “So, you got a name?”

Demi squirmed. So far he’d been incredibly good natured about the babysitting detail he’d saddled himself with, but she knew nothing about him. For all she knew, he could be the biggest gossip on base. If she told him her name, how long before everyone on his team knew she’d showed up at the Bottoms Up Tavern looking to score? How long before Aiden found out? Or Kait?

Knowing Kait, she’d decide to play matchmaker.

Demi wasn’t looking for a set-up—but boy, oh boy, were her hormones demanding some pulse pounding sex.

Aiden was perfect hook-up material. Just being in his general vicinity turned her insides to mush and her bones to jelly. Her body tingled and twitched and liquefied in all the right places. The sexual chemistry was off the charts, at least on her side of the equation.

But on his side?

She sighed in disgust. The man barely knew she existed, which was the entire purpose of her man-hunting attire. Everything from the red sweater with its plunging neckline to the stilettos had been handpicked to rattle his libido and catch his attention.

“So no on the name?” her protector asked wryly as the silence dragged on. When the waitress arrived with their drinks, he absently smiled his thanks. Lifting a hip, he pulled out a money clip, peeled off a single bill, and tossed it onto the drinks tray. “Guess I’ll just have to make something up.”

Demi smiled at that, and took a healthy sip of her wine and then another. Within seconds, a warm buzz washed through her, which reminded her she’d skipped dinner, and lunch…and she couldn’t remember breakfast either. Possibly accepting this glass of wine had been a very bad idea.

But then, it looked like coming here had been a very bad idea. What had she been thinking? Well, other than catching Aiden’s attention—finally—and enticing him into some hanky-panky. But that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? She hadn’t thought of anything past catching Aiden’s attention. It hadn’t even occurred to her he might not be here. Without her self-appointed escort as a buffer, she could have been in trouble by now—or if not in trouble, at least extremely uncomfortable.

She sighed and raised her wine glass to her savior. “Thank you.”

He shrugged, looking uncomfortable, which made Demi smile. He really was cute, in a good-guy kind of way. Although he was of a similar height and build as Aiden, the resemblance ended there. Aiden’s hair was black; so were his eyes, probably a carryover from his Arapaho ancestry.

Aiden was good-looking in an exotic, slightly dangerous, bad-boy kind of way. The kind of guy you hid from your mother and father. The tingling, stomach knitting, bone jarring, can’t-catch-your-breath kind of way.

She’d been attracted to Aiden the moment she’d met him, even though she’d been happily married and completely committed to her husband at the time. But just because she loved Donnie with every cell in her body and every synapse in her brain, it didn’t mean she hadn’t noticed and appreciated Aiden’s sexuality.

For a while, after Donnie’s freak death, her attraction to Aiden had vanished beneath a landslide of grief and depression. She hadn’t felt much of anything beyond pain and loss those first couple of years. But six months earlier, her sex drive had jolted awake.

One moment she’d been numb from the neck down, the next her body started reminding her through the most graphic, sweaty, sexual dreams that she was still alive, still young, still in her prime. And the man who unfailingly starred in those nightly porno escapades was Aiden Winchester.

While her handy dandy vibrator—which she was having to change the batteries on far too often—was alleviating the worst of the cravings, it couldn’t compete with an actual man beside her in bed. There was just something super sexy about a hard, hot male body pressing her into the mattress. Something about the way men smelled and felt during and after sex that added to the replete satisfaction. She was tired of a proxy. She wanted the real deal beside her, on top of her, inside her.

She wanted Aiden.

But Aiden wasn’t here.

Thoughtfully, she watched the front entrance open and several more men enter the tavern. Most of the guys in the tavern were hot in two specific ways—their lean, muscled frames and the economical way they had of moving. They carried themselves with the ease and grace of men at the peak of health and fitness. That alone was quite sexy.

If she let go of this obsession she’d acquired for Aiden, then any of the men in this place should satisfy her cravings, right? Take this patient, good-looking stranger across the table from her…if she stopped comparing him to Aiden, maybe he’d start tickling her hormones.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Demi blurted out, breaking the easy silence that had fallen between them.

His beer bottle paused in midair. Slowly, he set it back down again. “I thought names were off the table?”

Pursing her lips, she shrugged.

His blue gaze sharpened and dropped to her mouth and the crimson coating of sex-on-a-stick she applied to her lips just before heading into the tavern.

“I’d call you Pink, but I hear that’s already taken,” he said, his gaze finally breaking from her mouth to settle on her spiky pink hair. “Isn’t red supposed to clash with pink?”

She laughed. The spiky pink hairdo had been her first rebellion against the depression and grief swallowing her whole.

“With the sweater and mini-skirt, I doubt anyone’s even noticed the hair,” she said wryly.

“And the shoes,” he offered, lifting his beer bottle in a toast. “Nobody missed those shoes.”

“Well.” Demi fluttered her eyelashes at him. “They aren’t called fuck-me-stilettos for nothing.”

He choked on a swallow of beer and coughed hard a couple of times.

“How about we trade names,” he finally managed, a cough still roughing his voice.

“All right,” Demi said, leaning her elbows on the table and chin in her hand, which gave him the best view possible down her chest.

To her surprise, after one quick trip down the rabbit hole of her cleavage, he wrestled his gaze back to her face and kept it there.

“On the count of three?” He lifted his eyebrows.

Demi nodded, giving him an honest smile. She didn’t have a clue why, but somehow his resistance to her heavy-handed flirting was oddly reassuring. Too bad he wasn’t inspiring any palm-sweating or belly-fluttering, or any of the other signs her libido broadcast when it took an interest in someone.

“One. Two—” He started the countdown. “Brett Taggart.”

“Demelda Rhoades.”

Which wasn’t a lie. Demelda
was
her given name, even though she never used it and Rhoades
had been
her maiden name.

“But everyone calls me Melda.”

Which was the lie. Nobody called her Melda.
Thank God
.

“Demelda sounds like a fussy librarian,” she added with a grimace.

He gave her one of those laser-eyed, up and down body scans. “Trust me, nobody’s going to mistake you for a fussy librarian.”

Oddly enough, rather than dropping to her cleavage, his gaze drifted to her hair as he made the pronouncement.

Demi took another sip of wine, relaxing as a wave of warmth rolled through her. It didn’t have the tingling in all the right places of sexual heat; more like the thick internal glow of an alcoholic haze, which was such a shame, because she really wanted to be attracted to this guy.

Hoping the alcohol might awaken her libido, she drained her wine glass.

He studied her face, a sharp intensity in his eyes before frowning.

Why? Could he tell the single glass of wine was giving her a generous buzz thanks to her lack of dinner, lunch and breakfast? Was he the kind of man whose code of honor forbade him from taking a woman home if he thought she was incapacitated?

Donnie had been that kind of man.

A shaft of grief and longing struck. Her fingers tightened around the wine glass until they turned white. After a couple of deep breaths she cast the pain aside. Tonight was about launching a new life, taking those first baby steps to stave off the loneliness—she couldn’t allow memories of happier times to derail her.

“You okay?” His voice was very quiet, his blue eyes gentle and understanding.

Oh yeah, this guy—Brett, wasn’t it?—this Brett was excellent at reading people. He’d instinctively picked up on her pain. He’d probably be great in bed, too, knowing what a woman wanted before she knew it herself. He really was the perfect test subject. Now if she could just rustle up a kernel of sexual interest in him. Maybe she just needed some physical stimulation to awaken her libido.

She ignored the little voice in the back of her head reminding her that she’d never gotten physical with Aiden, yet the sexual charge was off the charts.

“Would you like to take me home?” she blurted the question out with absolutely no finesse and cringed at the gaucheness. Not that her escort seemed to mind the boldness.

“Every guy in this joint wants to take you home,” he said, after an awkward pause.

Score one for brain science. Her red camouflage had worked like a charm. She just wished the knowledge wasn’t quite so anticlimactic.

She worked to infuse some enthusiasm into her voice. “Great! So how about we blow this joint?”

A frown knit his brow and he cocked his head slightly. “You sure that’s what you want?”

There was something in his eyes she couldn’t quite place, and he hadn’t exactly jumped at her offer. Of course, he knew she’d been looking for someone else. Maybe he didn’t like being second best.

“You’re not like leftovers, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.

He smiled slightly and shook his head. “Not an issue. Trust me, in bed you won’t be thinking about anyone but me.” It wasn’t empty arrogance, either, more like pure confidence. But then a shadow slipped through his eyes. “You just seem…conflicted. You sure this is what you want?”

Conflicted…

Well, that sounded better than uninterested.

“I’m sure,” she assured him stoutly, although sudden doubt had chilled her arms and legs.