Healing Pleasure (17 page)

“You aren’t going to sleep on me, are you, sugar?”

She’d collapsed on Brit’s chest, her ass high in the air, her heart hammering, and breaths coming in ragged spurts. She’d closed her eyes, too, and knew, if she was given another nanosecond, she’d fall into a deep sleep.

She forced her eyes open, surprised by the growing sizzle in her pussy at the feel of Trey’s touch. “I don’t want to, but I’m not sure my body is going to give me much choice.”

“Your body doesn’t get to make the choices tonight, Lena.” One of Trey’s hands moved to her hip and she felt the other one between her legs. The backs of his fingers grazed her inner thigh as he positioned his cockhead against her drenched opening. “We’ll tell your body what it can and can’t do.”

Without giving a chance to comment, he rammed his cock into her pussy and immediately sent her system climbing right back up the truly blissful mountain.

Awareness brought Brit from sleep in a finger’s snap. He didn’t move a muscle as he listened harder for the sound he thought he’d heard. His extensive training as a SEAL and years of experience in the field brought all his senses online. He saw darkness, which he’d expected, seeing as how he hadn’t yet opened his eyes. He was laying on something soft. His mind catalogued that right along with the warm temperature of the air. He felt a presence beside him, heard the soft sound of breathing. Okay, so the body was alive. That was good. No screaming, he realized next. That was also good. It meant he wasn’t having another episode. More soft sounds drifted to him and he opened his eyes to slits. He battled the smile that wanted to form on his lips as Lena moved through that small line of sight.

The full world of reality came to him as he opened his eyes fully and pushed himself up. He was in his bedroom and that was Trey still sleeping beside him, and the woman he loved was…

“What are you doing?” His voice sounded gruff from his recent sleep, even to his own ears. She startled at the sound of it, her surprised movement helping his mind to push away the thought that had flittered through it just before he’d spoken.

The woman he loved? Oh, hell, no. That was definitely something he didn’t want to ponder this early in the damn morning.

Her gaze flicked to Trey’s sleeping form and she whispered, “Getting dressed.”

Indeed she was. Damn it. Next to him, Trey’s breathing rhythm changed, letting Brit know he wasn’t asleep. Brit studied the shapely moon of her gorgeous ass as she bent over and pulled something from the floor. “I see you found your things.”

She shot him a grin that didn’t hold as much of the dazzle as he’d gotten used to as she straightened. “I guessed you would’ve put it in the closet.”

“Well, good. Now that you know where they are, you can crawl back in bed.” His cock, already semi-hard with a morning woody, sprang to full attention as his attention locked on her pert breasts. His dick sighed in disappointment a nanosecond later when she covered those pert breasts with a bra.

“No can do, cowboy.” She bent at the waist again and came back up with a shirt. “It’s Monday. Horace might let the two of you get away with taking another day off, but my other clients won’t. I have appointments to keep.” Her gaze flicked to the clock on the bedside table. “As a matter of fact, I have one in two hours. It’ll take me nearly that long to get back to the city.”

Trey sat up next to him, raked a hand down his face, and stretched. “When are you coming back?”

Her bottom lip disappeared thoughtfully between her teeth as she bent again. The more she did that, the more Brit had to restrain himself from leaping out of the bed, grabbing her from behind, and sinking his cock in her lovely pussy. She was wet. He could see a thin coating of juices on her feminine lips as her ass pointed to the ceiling. He doubted she realized the stupendous view she was giving them and he damn well didn’t see the need to point it out.

She held a pair of barely there panties between her hands as she straightened again, turned them when she found the tiny tag, and lifted one foot into the leg hole. “I’m not exactly sure.”

Brit exchanged a glance with Trey. Was it just him, or was there really something different about her this morning? Sure, she was carrying on the conversation just fine and, though she wasn’t wasting a second in getting dressed, she wasn’t rushing as if she were about to bolt for the door either. Still, he sensed something in the air, saw something in her eyes when she dared to look at him and Trey, and felt the churning in his gut that told him something was definitely off.

“You’re not exactly sure?” Trey repeated slowly. “Why not?”

She shot him a teasing smile. “Because I’m not a walking datebook, lemon drop.” A skirt rose to cover her hips and those cock-torturing lace thongs she’d put on beneath and Brit felt himself start to pout. “I have other appointments this week, but I don’t remember what days I’ve scheduled them.”

“You’ll call when you get to your datebook, then?” Brit purposely put a questioning inflection in his tone, though he really wanted to make it an order. “That way I’ll know when you can pencil me in for another session.” That was an inspired idea, he decided. He was, after all, supposed to be one of her clients. He didn’t care for the uncertainty that passed through her eyes when she looked at him.

“How did you sleep last night?”

“Better than I have in months.” It was true. It might have been the wee hours of the morning before any of them had fallen asleep, but he felt completely rested, fully energized, and ready for a repeat of last night.

Her smile turned warm and pleased. “You’re making excellent progress. And, yes, I’ll call when I can schedule us another session.” Fully dressed now but for her shoes, she climbed onto the foot of the bed on her knees and crawled between them. She touched them both, a delicate hand to one side of their faces. “Thank you, both of you, for last night. It was amazing.” She leaned into Brit first, brushed a kiss to his lips, and then did the same to Trey’s. “Now I’m off. I’ll swing by the kitchen and say good-bye to May on my way out. Please tell Horace I’ll see him soon. I’m sure he’s out on the ranch by now.”

And with that, she gathered up the rest of her things, slipped her feet into a pair of heels, and swayed her sexy ass straight out the door, closing it behind her.

Brit didn’t know how long he sat there staring at that closed door before Trey broke the silence.

“What do you make of that?”

“She’s lying.” He couldn’t quite peg which part of what she’d said had been a lie, but his gut told him not everything had been the truth.

“Thought she fibbed, not lied.”

Brit shot him a withering look. “Really, man? It’s the same damn thing.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t give you hell about it.” Trey swung his legs over his side of the bed and got to his feet. “What are we going to do, just let her go?”

“For now.” Brit looked back at the door as he leaned against the headboard and laced his fingers behind his head. “We’ll give her a bit of space, see how long it takes her to get in touch, and go from there.”

Trey pulled on his jeans and sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his boots. “She refused to talk payment with Horace yesterday, told him she wouldn’t take his money seeing as how the relationship between the two of you hasn’t exactly been the normal counselor-client kind of thing.”

Brit lifted a brow at Trey’s back. “She tell you that or Horace?”

“Horace, while you were up here hiding her things.”

Brit mulled over that for a long moment. “I’m not too sure what to make of that.”

“I’ll tell you what I made of it.” Trey snagged his shirt off the floor and turned to face him as he pulled it over his head. “Taking money for sleeping with you would’ve made her feel like a prostitute.”

Brit scratched his chin as he considered that. “Makes sense, I guess.” His gut twisted as another possibility occurred to him. “She could be planning on dropping me.”

“And you’d be worried she might drop you as a client or a lover?” Trey’s movements turned slightly jerky as he tucked his shirt in his jeans and button and zipped his fly. “We broke some serious rules with that woman last night. We like for the subs we go for to have some spunk and defiance. Hell, it makes the whole game-play more fun. What we did last night was let her have her way far too much. That isn’t like us and you damn well know it.”

Brit cocked his head and studied the man who had been his best friend for nearly half his life. “You’re wanting me to be the one to say it, aren’t you? You want me to spell out the reason so you don’t have to.”

“Fuck, I’ll say it then. I’m already Stetson over cowboy boots in love with that woman. Don’t ask me fucking how after a damn weekend with her, but she’s the one I want, and I’m damn sure not going to let her get away.”

“Even if I tell you I’m not looking to settle down with her?”

Trey’s glare turned hard and a dart of suspicion shot through his eyes. “Yeah, even if.”

Brit snorted and crawled out of bed. “Well, hell. It’s about damn time you did something without worrying about me.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Brit drawled as he turned to face his friend, “that you’re finally realizing after all these damn years that you can cut it without me. I ain’t stupid, Trey. I know what’s been eating at you since that damn op. Everybody else on this blasted ranch has been so worried about me they ain’t bothered to take a good look at you. You’ve been beating yourself up for following my order. I fucking told you to hold Bravo’s coordinates. I didn’t get cocky thinking Alpha could take that group of tangos and not blow the mission. We could’ve done it. The whole goatfuck was that kid that none of us saw until it was too late. Even then, if I’d given the order to silence that boy, we wouldn’t be hashing out all this shit now.”

“No, we’d be hashing out different shit because your conscience would be eating you to death just like it was doing over Snake and Cheez-It’s deaths before Lena came to the ranch.”

“Probably.” Brit slowly nodded. “The point is you did what you were trained to do same as me. You didn’t fail me or whatever fucking insane shit’s been going through your whacked head since we got back. I might’ve bought you a couple loaves of bread and talked Horace and Hank into taking you in, too, but you don’t owe me shit, Trey. I did it because we were brothers, same as we’ve been since. You’re a SEAL because you’ve got what it takes. Not because I bought or talked your way into the damn teams. Whether or not I go back is irrelevant to your place with Team Five. You’re still gonna be Lieutenant Junior Grade Trey Berke, with or without me in the Navy.”

Trey stared at him for a long moment, his eyes and expression hard, his shoulders rising and falling in heavy, rapid breaths. “Did you ever stop to think maybe it’s been eating away at me because we were brothers, just like you said? Being a SEAL is a part of you, just as much as it is me.”

“I’m going back.” His statement calmed the heated atmosphere that had started to blanket the room. “I likely won’t be with Team Five much longer, but I’ll still be a SEAL.”

Trey’s brows etched together. “You thinking of requesting a transfer?”

“Naw.” Brit rubbed the back of his neck, stalling before he put voice to the decision he’d come to. Once he said the words, he’d feel like he’d written them in stone. He knew himself well enough to realize that. “I’m leaving enlisted, making the leap to officer.”

Trey raked a hand over his head and puffed out a hard breath. “You’ll still be in the field awhile before they shove you behind a desk. You sure you want to go that route, man?”

Brit shot a pointed glance at his leg. “The knee feels better and better every day, but it ain’t ever gonna be like it was before. You know as well as I do I shaved years off my career in the field the second I fucked it up. I figure I’ll go through officer’s school and training, maybe focus on Dive Supervisor or, hell, Sniper would be cool as shit.”

Trey slowly nodded. “You’d be good at either one.”

“I’ll tell you something I ain’t good at.” Brit moved to the closet, pulled out a pair of cargo shorts, and slid them on. “Letting you have a fantastic woman like Lena to yourself.”

Trey barked a laugh. “I knew that would never happen.”

“Damn right it won’t. I ain’t wore a cowboy hat in a while even if the woman’s taken to calling me cowboy now and then.”

“Better than lemon drop,” Trey muttered.

Brit snorted. “Point is, that shit you spouted out earlier about Stetsons and boots fits me, too. I’m crazy about her. We’ll give her a little time, but there ain’t no way in hell we’re gonna let her get away.”

* * * *

The margarita the Spanish waitress served Lena looked big enough to offer a smashing hangover to a person that rarely drank. She thanked the waitress, pulled the enormous glass closer, and leaned over tip take a sip rather than lifting the big thing to her mouth. She eased back, felt the liquid slide down her chin, and reached for her napkin. That’s when she saw the way her father and Barbara were looking at her.

She felt her eyes widen as she wiped the drizzle away. “Sorry. Did I slurp? It’s so big. I was afraid, if I picked it up, I would spill it.”

Barbara smiled and her margarita closer. “That’s why I use a straw.”