Coming Undone Read online

  “Did you surf much around Mayport when you were growing up?” he asked. The beaches around the base were always teeming with surfers. He’d always wanted to catch a few rides himself, but it was always too close to one mission or another, and his CO’s warnings of, hurt yourself doing something stupid and I’ll make sure you hurt, stayed solidly in his mind.

  Bad enough he rode the motorcycle without a helmet. His Senior Chief was on his back constantly about that one.

  “Some. We mainly went there to check out the guys.” She put her tongue against her cheek and then gave him a wicked smile.

  “I didn’t know jarheads were your type, surfer girl.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, sailor-boy.”

  “I’d much prefer the nickname Frogman.” Damn, he should’ve gone for that extra-long run he’d promised himself. It might’ve exorcized some of this pent-up energy…or kicked things up a thousand times worse.

  Because that bikini Carly was wearing left nothing to the imagination. Seeing her half naked in the moonlight had been amazing, but seeing her full-out, tanned and gorgeous in the sunlight, hair waving around her face, the micro bottoms of the bikini skimming her hips and the curve of her ass, was throwing him far over the edge.

  He thought about cooling off in the ocean, but he didn’t want to leave her side. And she didn’t seem to mind that he was fired up.

  She’s merely relieved you’re not mentioning her mini-breakdown.

  He reached an arm around her waist to pull her close against him. Her skin was warm, the contact intense and within seconds he knew there was no other option but to kiss her.

  He pressed his mouth to hers and her tongue played against his. Her fingers gripped his shoulders, as if she wasn’t sure if she was going to pull back or not.

  He didn’t give her that option. With both arms securely around her back, he continued the kiss until she gave up the fight. Her hands moved up to twist in his hair while his hands caressed her back, playing with the ties of her bikini top.

  What he wouldn’t give to loosen the strings. He could put his mouth to her nipple, like he did last night—tug the hard bud between his teeth and tongue, make her come from just that and the pressure of a hand stroking between her legs.

  The pressure mounted for him—he was impossibly hard, his arousal pressing into her sex through the fabric of their bathing suits. Her hand moved from his shoulder to his back, her nails dragging down lightly over his skin in a way that made his entire body tingle. He rocked against her lightly, the friction nearly enough to send him over the edge.

  She whimpered against his mouth and he let his hand drift away from her breasts and down her hip. Broad daylight was getting just a little too bright and populated for the way they were kissing and he was hoping beyond hope that she’d break away and guide him back toward the house. He wasn’t going to be the one to give in first.

  But when she finally did pull back, it was with a “Hunt, I can’t…”

  She didn’t elaborate any further and he didn’t force the issue.

  “Is there any of that cake left?” he asked, and walked past her into the house before she had a chance to say another word.

  HE’D COME BACK. THAT HAD to be a good sign, had to mean he was going to come to the wedding with her. Although, after her sister’s phone performance, Carly was ready to send Hunt to the festivities by himself and run for cover.

  Of course, it meant she’d have to cop to the fantasy. But what could be safer than spending time with a Navy SEAL, in bed and out?She thought about the way he’d stroked her last night and kissed her just now, hard enough to make her beg, and knew there were far more dangerous things. Was it too late to turn back, despite what she’d told Nicole this morning? She’d emailed Evan late last night and told him about Hunt, because if she was going to lie, she was going all the way. She hadn’t received Evan’s reply yet.

  She sighed and went into the house, and heard Hunt talking to himself.

  Scratch that. He was talking on the phone. Her phone.

  “I have dress whites,” he said, and then listened for a second. “Yes, like on JAG.”

  Oh Lord, he was on the phone with her sister. And doing a fine job of soothing the savage beast with the combo Jedi-SEAL mind-control thing.

  “Yes, it photographs well.” He listened again. “When is it? Well, sure, bachelor parties are cool.”

  She grabbed the phone. “Nicole…”

  “He doesn’t sound military. Daddy still thinks his family’s in oil. I don’t know why he’s with you, but try not to let him dump you before the wedding,” Nicole sniffed haughtily before hanging up on her this time.

  “She seems interesting in a high-strung kind of way.” Hunt sat on her counter and put his feet up on the back of one of her chairs.

  “You have no idea.”

  “I’m invited to the bachelor party,” he said. “Doesn’t sound like it’s going to be much fun.”

  “None of this is going to be any fun.” But it wouldn’t be much worse if she didn’t bring him.

  She wished her stomach hadn’t flittered nervously when she’d seen him this morning. She wished he hadn’t occupied every last one of her dreams, wished he hadn’t seen her near-breakdown at the beach and wished, for the final time, that she’d never sent that stupid fax. She hated being boxed in like this.

  What were her choices? It was either take Hunt with her, or deal with the fallout. And with Evan and her parents’ matchmaking and her sister’s whining…She didn’t have the time or the energy to focus on all of that. She needed back in the water.

  She needed Hunt because he was going to make things easier. And so, the decision was made, at least on her end. “So you’ll go to the wedding with me? And the party and the rehearsal dinner, too?”

  He gave a casual shrug. “I’ve got a few conditions.”

  Yeah, he was going to make it really easy. “I can imagine what those might be.”

  “You know one of them already.” He caught his tongue in his cheek and gave her a long, leisurely once-over. “But I’m not going to push that. You want more of the fantasy, you’ll tell me the rest of it. I know you will, sooner than later.”

  She wondered how he got that ego through the door. “So let me get this straight. You’re not going to try anything, but somehow you think I’ll try and seduce you?”

  “Yep.”

  No way was he going to win that bet, but it got her off the hook. Momentarily, anyway, because he seemed to have another condition.

  She headed to the sink, her throat suddenly dry, and filled a large glass with water. She took a sip before she spoke again. “What’s the second thing you want?”

  “I want you to teach me how to surf.”

  The glass slipped out of her hand, shattering into a million pieces against the ceramic-tile floor, and she wished she could join it there.

  There was no picking up the pieces.

  8

  HUNT WAS NEXT TO HER IN a second, moving her away from the mess. “You’re not wearing shoes. I’ve got it,” he said gently, because the look in her eyes was somewhere between faraway and beyond reaching, and he did not like that look.

  She sat quietly in a chair, watching him sweep up the broken glass with a broom that she’d pointed him to. “I’m just tired. That always makes me clumsy,” she said weakly. “Not eating this morning didn’t help.”“Probably not,” he agreed. He emptied the glass pieces into her garbage and then took her wrist in his hand and put a thumb on her pulse.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted. And she did appear better, more focused. There was some color in her cheeks. “Am I going to live, Doctor Huntington?”

  “Funny girl. Just sit there. I’ll make you breakfast,” he said. He found the makings for scrambled eggs and toast in her fridge. While he prepared the food, he turned to the stove to give her a little extra time to pull herself together. Because his suspicions had been confirmed, although he wished, for her sake, the
y hadn’t been.

  Carly Winters was scared to go in the water.

  At least she was still trying. The fact that she went down by the water meant something, meant she still had that fire. She might be afraid, but she wasn’t letting it rule her completely. She had to get back on the horse, or she’d never forgive herself.

  He set the eggs and toast in front of her even as she insisted he didn’t need to go to any more trouble for her. But she didn’t hesitate to start eating, and after she’d finished most of what was on her plate, he knew it was time to push it a little further. He’d only known her a very short while, but the sense of strength he’d gotten from her wasn’t in his imagination. She could handle it.

  “So, do we have a deal?” he asked.

  “A deal?”

  “I’ll be your date for the wedding and for all the other parties over the next couple of weeks, and you can teach me how to surf.”

  “And you really want nothing else in return?” she asked.

  His mind flashed back to last night, to the way her moans echoed in his ear if he thought hard enough. He could still smell the coconut, the beach and her. He wanted nothing more than to grab Carly and put her across his lap, strip her down and lick every last inch of her.

  But he was damned if he was going to be the one to make the next move. It was her fantasy, and she had to want it, to. And she did want it. It was like a big game of chicken now, and he’d hold steady and wait to see her next move.

  “I told you, the fantasy’s up to you. I’ve never had to force a woman to do something she doesn’t want to do.” He brushed some hair from her face, touched her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. Warm from the sun, her skin was sun-kissed in that irresistible, natural surfer girl way. So tempting. “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely a whisper, and he swore she’d leaned in toward him, imperceptibly, and he braced himself for a kiss, a touch from her, anything.

  A rolling boom of thunder shook the windows as the sky opened to break their moment. She pulled back, sighed, and he took his hand away.

  “Well then,” she said, “we’ve got some work to do.”

  “Yes, we do.” He hadn’t moved. In fact, he’d stayed as close as possible without actually touching her, and he did want to touch her.

  Damn, she was pretty. He’d bet his next paycheck that she had another tattoo somewhere on her body. They were addictive, and most people couldn’t stop with one.

  Carly didn’t seem as if she’d let anything stop her, ever, but he understood fear well. On the job, it was an emotion he let work for him, rather than against him. Fear meant he was still alive when adrenaline was pounding so fast he could barely breathe. And thinking was out of the question because he had to move, or fire, or get the hell out of Dodge. Fear could be paralyzing, but he hadn’t let it win yet.

  “Not that kind of work,” she said. “We’ve got to get to know each other. You told my parents we’d been dating for six months.”

  “Dating sucks and men are pigs,” a female voice called out. Hunt turned to see who had uttered such revealing words. Carly giggled.

  The owner of the men are pigs comment was wearing a simple sundress, her dark hair in a ponytail. She was really cute and curvy. And she was carrying a box of donuts, so he figured she couldn’t be all bad.

  “Oh, shoot,” the woman said, coming to a dead halt when she spied the two of them. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you had company, or I would’ve kept my mouth shut,” she said. “I’m Carly’s friend Samantha. But you can call me Sam. Everyone does.”

  “I’m Hunt,” he said, and he let her earlier comments go.

  “I brought breakfast.” Sam held out the donuts.

  “I already ate, but Hunt didn’t,” Carly said. She hadn’t moved from her chair, and an eye kept watch on the storm outside. The tops of the palm trees swaying was visible through the sliding glass doors.

  “It’s a fast-moving storm. It’ll break soon,” Hunt told them, and Carly looked at him with a small smile.

  “Are you all right?” Samantha asked Carly.

  “I’m a bit wound up. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” She glanced at him quickly, as though she’d admitted more than she’d wanted to in front of him.

  That makes two of us who tossed and turned last night.

  “He’s the one who got the fax?” asked Sam, and Carly nodded and blushed.

  Hunt put two and two together and figured this must be the one who was trying to liven up her sex life. From the sounds of it, that hadn’t worked out too well.

  “Carly told me you are in the Navy,” Sam was saying. “Do you live here? I mean, are you stationed around here?”

  “No. My team’s out of Virginia. I’m here to catch up with my brother,” he explained. “I’m supposed to go out with him tonight. Why don’t you both come along?”

  “Sam and I are staying in tonight, since she’s got work in the morning,” Carly said.

  “But going out with you and your brother sounds much more fun,” Sam contradicted. “And after dealing with one hundred sixteen year olds five days straight, I could use a night out.”

  “Parole officer?”

  “High school teacher.”

  “Same thing, where I came from,” he said, and he was sure there were more than a few boys in her class with a crush on the teacher. “Do you need a ride?”

  “I’m not sure if we can make it,” Carly said quickly. Too quickly. As if she was backing out of the deal as fast as she could.

  “I’d really like to see you tonight, Carly,” he said.

  “We’ll meet you,” Sam offered, and he grinned at the way she ignored the look of death Carly sent her.

  “I’ll be at Magee’s all night,” he said on his way out, taking a donut from Sam’s box. By the time he reached the front door, the patter of rain on the roof had stopped and the sky opened up, blue as anything.

  DAY TWO, AND Hunt had managed to leave Carly with his self-restraint barely intact. Sooner or later, the lid would blow off, but for now, it was definitely time for that run.

  He rode a few miles to the public beach, parked, and stripped down to his shorts. Because there was nothing like running on the beach, especially when his CO wasn’t barking up his ass, threatening to cut off vital body parts.No, a nice, long, lazy run was much better, bare feet pounding the wet sand, calf muscles stretching taut and aching with every step. For the first half, Hunt allowed his mind to clear and stay on autopilot. Vaguely aware of the ocean on his right, and the tourists baking in the last of the sun to his left, it was just hot enough, but there was the promise of a cooler evening. Maybe even some rain, which kept him moving.

  Six miles up the beach and Carly entered his mind. And she refused to leave, too, even when he purposefully checked out other bikini-clad women trolling the beach and the boardwalk.

  No one looked like Carly in that tiny, blue-and-white striped bikini with the flimsy string ties on each hip. He could easily see himself untying them with his teeth, pictured her smiling down at him, her hands in his hair…

  Hope the water’s cold.

  He hit it at full speed, dove under the first rolling wave he saw and stayed under as long as he could. When he surfaced, he swam past the breakers until he came to smoother waters. The current helped push him along toward the beach that surrounded Carly’s place.

  How had he gotten so wrapped up in her so quickly? Ty was right about the women he usually picked, but Carly was different. He didn’t want to just help her. He just wanted more.

  Meanwhile, she’d handed him a real challenge. And a SEAL was always up for a challenge.

  THE THING ABOUT BEST friends was that you couldn’t lie to them. Carly could try, certainly, but it wouldn’t do any good. Sam’s radar was honed on years of late-night talks and perfected from teaching kids who’d forgotten more about lying than Carly ever knew.

  Still…“We were not about to have sex on the kitchen table,” Carly pro
tested. We probably would’ve started out in the chair.

  Sam eyed her. “Just finished, then?”

  “I think you’ve been reading too much Candy Valentine.”

  “Or, if my last night is any indication, not enough. At least now I know why I had to leave a message the first time I called. You’ve got an amazing excuse.”

  “Hunt didn’t spend the night. We were taking a walk on the beach.” Carly felt the blood rush straight to her breasts at the thought of the way he’d handled them last night. She brought her knees up to her chest, balancing her heels on the edge of the wooden kitchen chair. “Are you feeling better today?”

  She and Sam had already spent over an hour on the phone, pre-dawn. During one of Carly’s toss-and-turn, maybe-some-cake-will-help-me-sleep moments, she’d seen the blinking message light and had immediately called her friend. As she’d suspected, Sam was awake and in need of comfort. At the time, Carly had put off telling her much about Hunt, mainly because she was too mixed up to even begin to sort out what had happened.

  “I’ll live.” She pulled out a chair and sat next to Carly, “I know I’m better off without him. And a man like Hunt could make me a believer again.”

  “Um, well…”

  “I’m teasing. I know he’s taken.”

  “He’s not taken. He’s helping me out of a jam.” It was her turn to explain to her friend the previous night’s events, and Sam’s jaw dropped.

  “He met your parents?”

  “Can you imagine what the next two weeks are going to be like, Sam?” Carly buried her face in her knees.

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “You like him.”

  “Yeah, who wouldn’t? But he’s into you.”

  “He’s into me, all right. And he’s on to me too,” she mumbled.

  “Are you going to bring him to the wedding?”

  “I don’t think I have a choice, if I want to keep my family off my back.”

  “Imagine, all this happened because of one innocent fax,” Sam mused.

  “A not-so-innocent fax, and it’s all your fault,” Carly reminded her.