Indulgence (329 page)

He winked at her. “Whatever you say, boss. I’ll do anything
you like. Anything.”

Armando left the impromptu gathering at Gunny’s Gym as soon
as he noticed he was one of only three SEALs without a female escort. He’d even
gotten some hazing about it, since there were usually at least one and
occasionally two women on his arm most weekends. He knew it was the reason the
younger SEALs liked to hang out with him. He was the luckiest man he knew when
it came to finding female companionship.

But there was only one girl on his radar these days: Mia’s
friend, Gina. Something about the woman made him stare off toward the waves
while he recalled the way her body rose to his touch and fell as he pressed
inside her. He’d loved hearing the little whimpering noises she made as he
pumped her. Their bodies just plain fit together like two pieces of a puzzle,
like what he was giving her with their lovemaking was something they both
needed. He’d never felt that way with anyone before, not even Ginger.

He was on his way back to base to check out some equipment
he’d special ordered when he saw Gina and Sam walking down the sidewalk next to
each other, eating ice cream. They weren’t holding hands, but Armando noticed
Sam’s large thigh brushed against hers from time to time, and, although she
adjusted away from him carefully, she didn’t complain or ask him to stop. Or
look perturbed.

Armando almost hit the car in front of him, which had
stopped suddenly. He’d been so focused on Gina and that big biker dude. His
disappointment, coming on the heels of the warm feelings he’d been experiencing
earlier, left his insides cold.

He whipped around the block and parked so he could watch
them walk on the opposite side of the street. Gina’s red tank top was getting
all kinds of attention from the military personnel who sauntered by her in
groups of three or four. Her frayed blue jeans with the white fuzzy worn
patches on her left butt cheek was a real turn-on. If she’d looked behind her
she would have seen the reactions of the passing men. He watched Sam’s
confident grin as the biker made eye contact with every male who went by.
‘She’s
mine,’
he was saying. No mistaking the fact that he was enjoying the walk
and the challenges.

And Gina seemed oblivious to anything going on around her.
Her forehead was wrinkled as she worked on that ice cream, musing over her
private thoughts. Armando got hard just thinking of what those cool lips could
do to his fat erection. But he also didn’t trust what he’d just seen with his
own eyes.

Careful about the emotions, the lusts. Keep your focus,
stay in control. That’s how you keep yourself safe. Stay alive.
He’d seen
unbridled pride or jealousy kill Teammates before. So he decided, just decided,
he wasn’t jealous.

Armando was a pretty good judge of people. Years walking
around in the back alleys and bombed-out buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan had
given him a sixth sense when it came to sorting out the bad guys from the good
guys. Well, not exactly the truth. He had learned to separate the
really
bad guys from the
maybe
good guys. He didn’t care about the petty
thieves and wife beaters as much as he was tuned to identify the ones who
wanted to die and take a bunch of Americans with them. The ones who could kill
a dog or child with a high-powered rifle just because a US serviceman or woman
happened to stop and pat them on the head.

He thought about the day his Teammate took his shift at the
clinic so Armando could have a prescheduled phone call home. Mia had gotten
into trouble again and his mother was beside herself with worry. After he
talked to both of them, Armando had fallen asleep on his cot. He awoke to
sounds of an explosion and discovered the entire triage tent had been blown to
the heavens, his buddy along with it.

Armando had considered leaving the Teams then. But in the
end he decided he wanted to stay in, even if it was to just tip the scale a bit
and do some payback for those who’d cost his buddy his life. He knew the
following weeks and months of deployment were his atonement for his lapse of
judgment, but he couldn’t afford to dwell there until he got home. In
Afghanistan, he needed his wits about him if he was going to do the good he’d
been sent there to do. He wore his pain silently, buried inside layers of
steel. And he didn’t take another nap for the following four months, not until
he came stateside. He was finding that masking technique useful right now.

His thoughts turned back to Gina and her ex-boyfriend,
standing in the late afternoon sun. He saw something other than a couple in
love. He saw a couple forced together by some circumstance. And the guy was
enjoying it more than the girl.

Of course, he could be wrong, but he usually wasn’t.

His cell phone rang. It was Fredo.

“You sure ditched out quickly. Up for some poker?”

“Later. I’m over at the base checking out my material order.”
Armando had a small cottage industry making specialized vests, ones with hidden
pockets and straps, for other Team guys who wanted to customize their gear.
Everyone liked to carry their ammo clips and other enhancements in different
places other than what their normal uniform allowed. And no two were alike.

“Stop on by about eight, okay?” Fredo replied. “I think
we’re gonna teach Sanouk some poker.”

Armando chuckled as he watched Gina and Sam stop by Sam’s
huge black Harley. “If I’m not mistaken, that boy will be fleecing all of you
tonight. He’s dumb like a fox.”

“A real testament to ol’ Gunny, I’d say.”

“Roger that, Fredo.”

Sam started up his bike and half the street turned to watch
the source of the rumbling noise. Gina stepped back and deposited the rest of
her cone in the garbage can nearby, and waved to the leather-clad giant, yet
the man didn’t leave. Sam revved his bike several times as if waiting for
something.

There was no goodbye kiss.

“Wow. That sounded familiar,” Fredo said.

“Okay, I’m on the strand and bought an ice cream. That
satisfy your curiosity?” He felt a little bad about the sharpness of his tone.
He could hear Fredo bristle over the phone.

“I’m not checking on you, Armani. I feel your need for
privacy. Doesn’t happen to have anything to do with a certain girl, now does
it?”

“Nope. It’s just ice cream.”

“You’re full of shit,” Fredo said and hung up.

Armando slipped the phone in his pocket and shrugged off
Fredo’s remark. The Mexican SEAL was also good at reading all of Armando’s
moods. Sharing life-threatening events tended to do that to a guy.

He watched her linger next to the biker as she stuffed her
hands into her cutoffs. He knew he shouldn’t be interested in an explanation
from her. She’d lied to him about the ex. What else had she lied to him about?
Was it all an act? It would be better to just walk away and forget about her,
about her lies, but he couldn’t for some reason. Well, he could. He knew he
could. He’d been trained to do the unthinkable. But he didn’t
want
to.
And this was the good old U.S. of A., where things were supposedly “normal” and
“safe.”

And then Armando started thinking again about what those
succulent lips of hers could do.

As Sam’s rumble faded, Armando watched her walk aimlessly
down the concrete, then cross the street and move towards the beach not more
than four cars ahead of his parked car. As she sandwiched through a narrow gap
between vehicles, he saw her lift her suntanned arms in the air, holding her
stomach in, revealing her bare midriff and just a taste of her muscled abs
underneath the skimpy red top. He knew what she looked like with her jeans
unbuttoned, knew what kind of panties she wore, and what it felt like to slide
his fingers carefully into the juncture between her legs and touch her there. He
also knew what her face tried to hide, that she needed his fingers inside her,
she needed to be loved hard but cherished. That she liked it intense.

And he was just the man to satisfy her. Intensity in women
was always a danger signal. Armando liked uncomplicated fun. He loved women who
were sure of themselves and had good energy. Gina was all those things and
more. Something dark lurked just under the surface of her skin. He thought he
just might have nicked it a bit that night in the pickup truck. He’d never had
sex in front of a highway full of cars before, even if they had been behind a
small grove of trees. This relationship, especially now with Sam’s appearance
this evening, was getting very complicated.

Sounds of the surf pounded in his ears as he followed her to
the edge of the beach. He tried to will her to turn around and see him, but she
was in heavy concentration. He wanted to be discovered. But she never turned,
just kept walking toward the water’s edge. A few feet safely short of the waves
she stopped and removed her sandals, then sat down.

She was like a beacon for him and he couldn’t help but
follow her. Was this stalking? Would she be afraid if she suddenly saw him?
Would she even want to see him after what he’d done to Sam?

Walk away. You have no business getting involved with
her. You never question your inner guardian. Why start doing so now?

He decided to ignore his better self, the prudent self that
kept him out of danger and saved his life on many occasions overseas. Wasn’t
this just as important? Wasn’t he crossing through a doorway of no return if he
continued to follow her?

He sighed and decided that, yes, he could handle whatever it
was he was going to find out. Right now, he needed an answer.

Armando stopped behind her seated form, then walked around
her, standing to the side, but within sight. She started at first and began to
get up, so Armando immediately sat down next to her.

“Saw you cross the street, and, yes, I followed you here.
Something I never do. Why am I doing this, Gina?” He faced the water’s edge but
could feel her eyes on him. Then he turned and saw the worry in her face, the
crease at the top of her lovely brown brows, the way her lips formed an O.
Several strands of curly hair blew across her neck and chin. He wanted to
smooth them back, but squeezed his fingers into the warm sand instead.

“How long have you been here?”

Of course she wanted to know how much he had seen. He wasn’t
going to pussyfoot around if he could help it. Armando forced himself to focus
away from her face and squinted at the ocean’s bright late afternoon sunlight.
When he turned back to her, he nodded, saying, “I saw him.”

Her eyes got wider for a second as she quickly looked down
at her knees. Her swallow was strained.

He wasn’t going to ask her. He wanted her to tell him
without asking.

“Things with Sam are complicated,” she began. It was a good
start, but not a strong one.

What’s complicated about an ex? Or is he her ex?

“Didn’t take you for one of those,” he chose to say instead.

“One of those?”

“Women who keep going back to a guy after he’s been
violent.”

Her back straightened. He’d hit a nerve. That was a good
thing.

“I’m not one of
those
women, thank you very much.”

Armando rubbed the back of his neck. She was lying to him
again. Did the woman know the difference? “Do you even know the truth, Gina?
Why can’t I get a straight answer out of you? You got a thing against being
honest?”

Gina stood. “Screw you.”

Armando stood as well. “You already did, Gina. We fucked
like bunnies in the back seat of my friend’s beater, remember?”

She turned away and started to march off towards the road.
Armando wanted to grab her arm and stop her, but he knew that wasn’t the right
thing to do. Her arms swung at her sides, her steps deliberate, ridiculously
beautiful the way the flesh on her ass jiggled with each stomp. He placed his
hands on his hips and decided that if she was walking out of his life, he’d
better enjoy the view.

To his surprise she whipped around and came at him. She
started yelling before she was within earshot, so all he heard was, “talk to me
that way. You are a fuckin’ bastard of the first order.”

“Oh, the first order. As opposed to the second or third?” he
quipped.

She scowled at him, huffing her displeasure. Along with her
anger, she was a swirling tornado of other emotions, too, and he reveled in
seeing her struggle to get a handle on her situation. Armando was grateful he’d
been trained not to react. Let her work it out. He knew she would. He loved
watching her fury.

“Who in the devil do you think you are?”

He smiled down at his feet. He was getting a serious
hard-on. Dang it. This would make things more difficult. All he wanted to do
was take her down and love the livin’ crap out of her. He raised his gaze to
her beautiful face, with her mahogany hair flying all around in the ocean
breeze, her fingers bunching into fists and then extending. All scrunched up,
her lips were so damn kissable, he licked his and uttered a line he knew he
would pay for later, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m the one who made you come so
many times you could hardly walk afterwards, sweetheart, and you wanted more.
At least, that’s what—”

She slapped him. Well good for her. Yup, he clearly deserved
that. He’d gone over the line a bit with that comment. But damn, even her slap
was sexy. He wished she’d do it again. He wished she’d let him hold her until
she stopped squirming, but that was out of the question. Didn’t mean he didn’t
imagine what that would feel like, though. He was drawn to her high-octane
energy.

Careful, you dog. You’re gonna get into trouble.

“You have no right to talk to me like that,” she shouted.
“What we did was a mistake!”

Armando looked around the beach area to see if they had
attracted attention. It was nearly deserted.