Fatal Heat: A Navy SEAL Novella (8 page)

Max felt like choking. “Yeah, this thing. This affair.” Words were sticking in his throat like razor blades, each one sharp. “Whatever it is we’re having, it’s exclusive, right?”

Her head cocked and she just stared at him. A little sweat trickled down his bare back.

“Just you and me,” he clarified. “Exclusive.”

“Just you and me,” she repeated, and nodded. “Yes.”

He let out his breath. “So… we’re a thing?”

Paige closed her eyes. “You’re missing a good chunk of vocabulary.”

“Yeah.” He knew. He could barely think, let alone speak. The only thing he knew was that Paige was his, was a part of his life now. He’d seen a glimpse of the sun and he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Okay.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I will forgive your total inability to express yourself adequately and state that we are now ‘going out.’ Do you want me to say we’re ‘going steady’?”

Tension left his body. “Will you go to the prom with me?”

She laughed and took one step forward. He took a step forward. They met and he kissed her. And kissed her. He didn’t consider himself a master kisser, but this felt like something else, like a big fat dividing line. Before and After.

Before was darkness and solitude. After was warmth and light.

Max jumped them. After was also the dog, wriggling with happiness at their feet.

Paige broke away, breathing harf treathind. Her lips were red, swollen, glistening, just as her little cunt had been. The thought nearly unmanned him.

They had a “thing” now. She’d said so. She wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he. So why the urgency? Why this prickling feeling that everything would dissipate like smoke unless he grabbed her now?

She stepped back, watching his eyes. Maybe understanding his compulsion? With a flutter of silk she disappeared into the kitchen, coming back out with a tray. The dog was leaping and dancing at her feet, giving small yips of joy at the smell of food.

“I think at this point we need to put him outside— otherwise we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Oh yeah,” she sighed.

She snapped her fingers and Max wriggled happily. When she opened the door and pointed outside, he collapsed on the threshold, legs splayed, whining as if shown the door to hell itself. Paige snapped her fingers again. He rose trembling to his feet and slinked outside. Amazed that she would do this terrible thing to him. She closed the door in his reproachful face.

Max started barking immediately, loud barks guaranteed to wake any neighbors within a mile. They looked at each other, listening to Max. When they heard the sound of his claws tearing at the wooden door, Paige stepped close.

“Max! Bad dog! No barking!”

She might as well have been talking to the wind. The intensity of the barks increased.

This was ridiculous. He slapped the door. “Max! Stop!”

The noise stopped immediately. There was a faint whine and a yip and then nothing.

“Does one have to go to officer school to be able to do that?” she asked, tilting her head up to him.

Max smiled down at her. “It helps.”

“I don’t want to be commanded.” There was a little pucker of worry between her eyebrows and he smoothed it away.

“I don’t want to command you.” Oh man, no. “Why would I want to do that?”

She shrugged, the light silk sliding off one shoulder. No, he didn’t want to command her, but he did want to do something else.

It filled his head until he could think of nothing else. Max was forgotten, food was forgotten, the only thing filling his head was Paige, naked underneath a thin silk robe. It wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d been wearing chain mail.

She looked down at him, blushed, then looked up. “I thought you were hungry?”

“Mm.” Heat filled his head, his hands itched. The only thing that could make them stop itching was touching her. It took only a second to untie the robe and slip it off her shoulders and then she was in his arms, naked, soft breasts against his chest.

She’d seen precisely what his body wanted. It was visible to all, sticking out from his groin. Men really had nowhere to hide.

But—but she was affected, too. The signs were less visible, but there, if you knew where to look. Dilated pupils, a slight sheen on her face, her left breast trembling with the beat of her heart.

And there, that sweet spot between her legs. He ran his hand down her back, between her buttocks, lower and… yes. Oh yeah. Soft and hot and wet. The female equivalent of a hard-on.

Suddenly, his leg wouldn’t hold him anymore, and not just his leg. His entire spine had melted, gone liquid, flowed into his cock, and then solidified.

Kissing her, he reached out with his foot, hooked a chair, dropped his briefs, sat down, and pulled her down on top of him. Just opened her up, pulled his cock away from his stomach and shoved it into her because if he didn’t, he’d die.

They sat like that, a little sexy tableau, Woman on Man. Paige’s arms were around his back, face buried in his neck, his cock buried to the hilt in her.

“Whoa,” he said and stopped, because what could he say? He hadn’t planned this at all. He thought they’d eat together and maybe he could coax her into another round in bed eventually. Or maybe tomorrow morning if she fell asleep immediately. This—this was unplanned and completely unstoppable. His body had reacted faster than his head.

He looked down past her shoulder. Bright shiny hair, pale golden skin, strong sleek back, the indent of a small waist, buttocks sitting on his thighs.

It was, hands down, the most erotic sight he’d ever seen.

“Are, um, we okay here?” Because maybe she’d actually wanted to eat instead of being jumped.

In answer, she lowered her mouth to his shoulder, took a little nip, then kissed him.

His cock leaped inside her at the tiny bite. He lifted his hips while holding hers and slid in and out, once, testing.

She remained lax against him, eyes closed, a faint smile on her face. She sighed.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Another slide in, pulling out. And again. She lifted her face slightly and took his earlobe in her mouth, and took another little bite.

He lost it.

Holding her tightly, he slammed into her, establishing a hard rhythm, trying and failing to hold back. He couldn’t. It was as if his life depended on getting as deeply into her as he could and staying there as long as he could.

Thank God she was with him, growing wetter by the minute—otherwise they’d catch on fire.

Harder, faster… they were rocking in the chair now and a dim part of his brain hoped they wouldn’t topple over, because there was no way he could stop.

Paige moved her head again and kissed him, her mouth as soft as her cunt, and it set him off. Rocket man.

He held her hard against him while a hot wire sparked down his back and exploded through his cock, and he came in hot, fierce spurts that went on forever.

Just as his spasms were dying down, she exhaled sharply in his ear—raising goose bumps all over his body—and clenched tightly around him, as if her cunt were trying to hold on to him.

Oh man, he wasn’t going anywhere—he was staying right here, feeling her entire body shaking with her climax.

When it was over, he was holding her tightly, panting. Maybe holding her too tightly. Was he hurting her? He slowly relaxed his grip, shifting to make her more comfortable.

They were wet where they were joined and every move made a small noise. He rubbed a hand over her satiny back, exhausted, as content as he’d ever been in his life.

“Uh oh.” Paige wriggled on him a little. He swelled inside her, as if he hadn’t just had the most explosive orgasm in his life. “Are we ever going to eat? Or are we just going to sit here until they find our dead bodies?”

It was a thought. At some point in June his XO would arrive. Wouldn’t find him, would check with Paige, and there they’d be. Two corpses, still together, covered in cobwebs.

He sighed. “We’ll eat. Sometime next week. Maybe.”

Chapter Five

April 5

My gosh, good sex is better than Prozac as a mood lifter
, Paige thought five days later as she walked back to her apartment after taking Maximilian for an afternoon walk. He was unusually frisky, leaping and barking and making her laugh. The kids on the beach made her laugh. The cool little wavelets frothing over her feet made her laugh.

It was Friday, Maxwell was on his way home from a doctor’s appointment, and they’d spend the evening and the night together as they had every evening and every night for the past four days. And the weekend—she shivered. Two full days with him. Forty-eight hours. Non-stop.

Oh yeah. Sex with Max was better than any mood-lifting drug known to mankind.

Even the dark cloud of worry about Silvia was manageable. She hadn’t heard from Silvia since last Monday, B.M. Before Max. When she still had the capacity to fret and worry. It seemed to have left her body, together with all her sexual inhibitions. And all that empty space? Filled by her new lover.

Maybe Silvia had pulled a Paige? Maybe she’d found herself a super lover and had disappeared for a week somewhere?

After all, she was in Argentina, a country full of Latin lovers. Of course, there was no Latin lover on earth who could compete with Max, but still. Paige imagined having a laughing girl-fest with Silvia over a glass of wine at that swanky place on De Mott Street.
I was worried about you
, she’d say, and Silvia would smirk, her dark eyes dancing with amusement.

“OK. Got it. Not to worry,” Paige said out loud to the imaginary Silvia, bending to ruffle the fur behind her dog’s ears. “I should take a leaf from your book, big boy, and be a little less anxious. Though I’d try not to have that goofy expression on my face.”

He was panting and yipping, tongue lolling out of his mouth, in dog heaven. A long walk with his mistress and at the end of it food. What else was needed to be happy?

“Indeed,” Paige said, not even annoyed with herself that she was talking out loud to her dog. “What else is needed? Besides fantabulous sex?”

Max yipped in agreement, and she laughed as she opened the door and almost tripped over Max, who was scrambling to get inside, barking wildly because it was food time. Thank God the only neighbor was Max, who had a real soft spot for her Max.

Though, come to think of it, it appeared that human Max was also
her
Max. Now wasn’t that delicious?

She shook her head as she reached under the sink, doggy Max’s enthusiasm reaching frantic proportions. They’d definitely started
something
, but it was too early to say just what. It was enough that, so far, whatever it was, it was pretty wonderful.

Max was bouncing off the walls. Though doggy Max was like a marine when human Max was around, obeying instantly, he reverted to the slacker teenager he really was in the presence of his mistress.

Paige had one obedience trick in her arsenal. “Only
good dogs
get food.” She usually said that in tones that would have been used by an old-time school marm. Sometimes it actually worked, depending on how hungry Max was.

The jumping stopped but the barking didn’t, so she sighed and filled his food and water bowls.

Max had said he wouldn’t be back before six, which gave her time to get some work done in her study, have a really nice, long, leisurely bath, and start cooking. Heat washed over her as she wondered whether they’d end up eating the food at midnight, as they often did.

After amazing sex.

Oh, God. She sat down abruptly, her legs giving out.

For a moment there, she’d had a sensory memory of being held tightly by him as he moved in her, hovering in a blaze of heat on the knife’s edge of an orgasm…

She gave a shiver and simply sat for a moment, because her legs wouldn’t hold her, flushed red with the memory of this past week.

Max watched her, head cocked, probably wondering what his insane mistress was up to.

Reliving the most intense sexual experiences of her life, that’s what. But she couldn’t tell him that. He was only eight months old.

Get a grip on yourself
. It was so hard to reconcile what she knew of herself with the messages her body was sending her.

Paige was cool and cerebral. A little detached. Always had been. She’d never been ruled by her hormones like her roommate in college had been. Moira had had a real good time in college. Real good. But she’d dropped out because Study of Gross Male Anatomy hadn’t been on the curriculum and nothing else had interested her half as much.

Paige had been a straight-A student all the way.

She’d always liked sex, it was one of life’s greatest pleasures. Somewhere above
Spaghetti all’Amatriciana
but definitely below that amazing massage she’d had at the Broken Tree Spa overlooking the Pacific. And it had always been a pleasure she could do without when there was no one suitable around.