Bound By Seduction (A Red-Hot SEALs Novella Book 2) (6 page)

Coughing to clear her throat, she sighed. “You know Brett.”

He smiled grimly. “My roommate.”

Oh wow…just…wow. Did she know how to pick her partners in crime, or what? She’d suspected they might know each other…but roommates? How humiliatingly unfortunate. She’d never told Brett who she was looking for, but Aiden was an intelligent guy—he’d probably figured it out.

Her cheeks turned into a blast furnace, emitting so much heat she could feel it burning down her neck. “Look, I don’t know what Brett told you, but—”

“He took you home.” Grimness bonded to accusation, and hardened his voice and face in concert.

She shuffled her feet, grimacing, her face getting hotter and hotter. She could hardly deny the accusation. Her purse had been found in Brett’s truck.

“Well, yeah, and I left my purse in his truck, but—”

“You kissed him.”

Demi stopped to stare. Was it her imagination, or had his body actually swelled by a couple of inches at that last comment? She shook her head, brushing the impression aside. Her imagination was certainly working overtime this morning.

“Yeah, well…” She stumbled into silence. This conversation was clearly headed for embarrassing territory. Time to jump ship—or in this case, elevator—and live to be embarrassed another day. She edged around him to the control panel, but the elevator dinged before she even touched it, and began to slow. “Well, thanks for bringing my purse over, but I really have to go. I have a cab waiting to take me to my car.”

“Cancel it.” His voice was autocratic. “I’ll take you over to pick it up.”

“No offense, but you aren’t taking me anywhere looking like that,” she snapped back, making sure her voice was every bit as dictatorial as his had been. “Everyone will assume I’ve been kidnapped by a serial killer.”

He scowled and looked down. “It’s not that bad.”

Demi rocked back on her heels, rounding her eyes in exaggerated shock. “Have you looked in the mirror recently? I’m surprised you weren’t pulled over on your way over here. You look like someone put you through a meat grinder.”

Okay, maybe he didn’t look
that
bad, but she had no intension of hanging out with him on the half-hour trip over to pick up her car. For some reason her meeting with Brett and her purse full of condoms had chapped his ass big time. She could just feel a lecture coming on. A big brother kind of lecture. The kind she’d heard him give Kait on numerous occasions. And it would be beyond humiliating to endure a lecture on sexual safety from the very guy she’d intended to track down and tempt into sexual shenanigans.

The elevator doors slowly rolled open.

“After I’ve cleaned up, and we’ve had a conversation,” he clarified, irritation still crackling in his eyes. “I’ll run you out to pick up your car.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I have other plans, and we don’t have anything to talk about.” She tried to walk around him, but he blocked her again.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” This time the protest didn’t come from her. It came from Chester, who was standing on the other side of the open elevator door. Chester was her best coffee customer—a tall, stork-like man who lived on the third floor and hit on her daily with all the awkward intensity of an agoraphobic introvert. He blinked at them, rocking nervously back and forth, as though he couldn’t decide whether to charge forward or back up. “Are you okay, Demi?”

Before she had a chance to respond, Aiden hit the close door button. “She’s fine, and this elevator’s full.”

“Now wait a minute,” Chester said, bobbing his head and blinking his eyes in unison, a nervous tick of his that had the unfortunate effect of making him look more stork-like than ever. An impression further enhanced by his long, thin honker of a nose.

She could see the sheen of anxiety in his olive-colored eyes and instinctively sought to reassure him. “I’m fine, Chester,” she said as the doors started to close. “This is Aiden, Kait’s brother.”

“Well, that’s all well and good, but—”

The door shut and started to rise. But before it reached the next floor, Aiden punched the emergency stop button.

“What are you doing?” Demi’s voice rose as sheer frustration flooded her. He’d effectively caged her. Now she’d have to listen to his brewing lecture.
Damn it.

“You don’t want to talk,” he reminded her, something dark and dangerous and…sexy in his voice. “So we’ll just have to find another way to communicate.”

She took a cautious step back, eyeing him warily. “Look, it’s none of your business what I do, where I go, or what I have in my purse.”

“I’m making it my business,” he said, stalking toward her with determined steps.

In no time she found her back flush against the wall of the elevator while chills raged up and down her spine and butterflies exploded in her belly. Her eyes widened as he leaned over her, bracing his left palm against the wall next to her shoulder.

“Look,” she sputtered, bracing her palm against his chest as his right hand rose to cup her chin. “There’s obviously been some kind of a misunderstanding here.”

“No misunderstanding,” he murmured, his lips hovering a hair’s breadth from her mouth. “You have a purse full of condoms and no one to use them on. I’m offering my services.”

Wha…wha…what?

Had he just said what she thought he’d said? Or were her ears playing tricks on her?

Her head swam as his scent—a hot earthy musk with the slightest metallic undercurrent—flooded her lungs and fogged her brain. Hell’s bells, he smelled so good…like hot, vital male. But he felt even better, his chest hard and hot against her hand. The steady thump of his heart against her palm acted like a shot of pure adrenaline, spiking her own heartbeat and breathing.

He brushed his lips over hers once, as though he was conducting some kind of test—which she must have passed, because he settled his mouth over hers.

Hell’s b—he was kissing her!

She wouldn’t have believed it, except his tongue had snuck inside her mouth and was doing all sorts of wicked things inside there…wicked, delicious things—like stroking her tongue and the inside of her cheeks and sucking every bit of oxygen from her brain.

Her mind went woozy, and her muscles limp. She leaned forward, pressing her body full length against his. He dropped the arm he’d braced against the wall, and wrapping it around her waist, dragged her even closer, until they were pressed shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh.

It quickly became evident that he hadn’t been joking about making use of those condoms. In fact, from the feel of his mouth on hers, and his penis pressing against her belly, he was quite enthusiastic about the offer.

She’d spent months dreaming about him, but the reality burned every one of those erotic dreams from her mind. His body was hot and hard against her, rigid muscles sheathed in fire…fire that burned through her skin and sparked an answering flame within her. Her arms lifted, circling his thick neck. She pressed in closer and closer, her mouth moving urgently beneath his. And then, suddenly, he hissed and jerked back.

Off balance, her muscles weak and shaking, she almost dropped to her knees. Would have, if not for the arm he still had wrapped around her waist. He waited until her legs started working again before dropping his arm and stepping back. A broad hand rose to his mouth. Her lethargic gaze followed it.

Her foggy brain clicked into focus after discovering his lip was more swollen than ever and a fresh trickle of blood dribbled down the corner of his mouth. She winced, watching him swipe a hand over the oozing trickle. She’d completely forgotten about his injuries, hadn’t even felt the swelling against her mouth. Lord, as painful as that split lip looked, it was amazing he’d kissed her at all.

Slowly her gaze drifted up to his eyes. They weren’t glittering anymore. Rather they were hard with an angry disgusted sheen. Luckily, none of this new, negative energy seemed to be directed at her.

“I need to clean up,” he said, his grim gaze flickering between her lips and eyes.

“Okay. “She licked her bottom lip nervously beneath his frowning gaze and a sweet, slightly metallic taste spread through her mouth. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m bleeding all over you.” A frown settled over his face.

Bleeding all over…

She licked her lips again, and then his answer registered. She froze. Good God—that’s what that sweet, metallic taste was. His blood.

Ewwwwww.

She made a face and hastily scrubbed at her mouth.

“I hope you don’t have AIDS or something,” she said, more to be a smartass than because she was actually concerned about the possibility.

Kait had said that the SEAL program required constant medical and physical exams of their warriors. And Aiden seemed like a pretty careful guy, the kind of guy who’d make sure to protect himself. Besides, she couldn’t lay all the blame on him. She’d seen his split, bleeding lip. Common sense dictated that his blood would transfer to her during a kiss—information, evidently, her hormone-saturated brain had sought to suppress.

Clearly, her libido hadn’t placed much importance on being infected by tainted blood. Equally clear, her libido needed to be taken out and shot. She’d packed the condoms for a reason; she’d been determined to protect herself, and not just from an unplanned pregnancy.

“I’m clean.” He bent to snatch up the t-shirt and purse, which had fallen to the elevator floor at some point during their heated kiss and stepped back, turning to the control panel. He punched the run button this time and the elevator lurched back to life. After hitting the button for the fifth floor, he turned back to her. “What about you?”

“Me?” Taken aback, she simply stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. She’d been married right out of high school, and faithful to her husband both before and after his death.

“You have a purse full of condoms, and from the number of texts hitting my phone this morning, there was a bar full of men last night volunteering to model those condoms for you.” There was a grim, tense note in his voice. Ignoring the elevator’s chime, he tilted his head and studied her face intently. “How often do you troll bars like that?”

Trolling…number of texts?

“Texts?” she repeated faintly. “Your buddies were texting you about
me
?”

He shrugged. “More about Tag. It’s been a while since he’s seen any action.” His voice tightened. “How often are you hitting the bars, Demi?

She swallowed. What the hell? If anything did happen between them, he’d find out how inexperienced she was. While she and Donnie had shared an active love life, by no stretch of the imagination had it been an adventurous one.

“Last night was the first,” she admitted.

His seemed to relax at that, but it was so infinitesimal she wasn’t sure whether she’d actually seen it, or whether it had been her imagination. The door slid open, and he stepped out, holding it open for her to follow.

“Do your buddies know who I am?” she asked, squirming at the thought of all his friends knowing her name. Although why it should matter was beyond her. It wasn’t like she was going to run into any of them again anytime soon.

“No.” He shot her the strangest look. “What’s with this red outfit you wore last night?”

She stopped in her tracks, which just happened to be in front of her condo door.

“You heard about that?” she asked, absently pulling her spare set of keys from her pocket.

“That outfit was the topic of most of the texts,” he said absently. Apparently she was taking too long to open the door, because he passed the purse to her and took the keys from her hand, cast one quick look over them and inserted the correct one in the lock. “You’re gonna have to wear it for me sometime.” He shot her another of those glittering, hungry looks. “Sometime soon.”

Well, how about that? Her brain science experiment on male arousal had proved remarkably effective. He hadn’t even seen the slutty red outfit; apparently just hearing about it had been enough to lower his inhibitions and propel him to seek her out.

As he ushered her through her condo door and closed it behind them, it suddenly occurred to her that she was all alone in her condo with an almost naked Aiden, and that he clearly expected things to get very physical between them very fast.

Those damn butterflies took flight in her belly again. Her scalp started to tingle and her palms sweat—only none of these symptoms carried the earlier heat of arousal. They carried the tension of nerves instead.

How ridiculous was that? She’d gone out of her way to attract his attention last night, only to return home depressed and disappointed that nothing had come from her efforts. And now that he was actually here, in her condo, and perfectly willing to engage in the kind of sexual shenanigans she’d been craving for the past year, she was getting cold feet?

Where the hell was her libido when she needed it?

Chapter Four

She smelled like roses.

Aiden filled his lungs with her scent as he followed her through the condo’s front door. He’d noticed the distinct floral aroma in the elevator, but hadn’t realized that the scent was coming from her, at least not until he’d moved in for the kiss. Not that his dick had cared where the floral smell was coming from. The moment he stepped into the elevator and got that first whiff of roses, his cock had sat up and whined—as usual. To his confusion, a couple years back the damn thing had latched onto that particular scent like Pavlov’s dog had latched onto the bell. He sure as hell hadn’t understood or appreciated the peculiar reaction at the time.