Stranded with the SEAL (8 page)

O
livia laid
in the circle of Trevor’s arms, her traitorous body refusing to sleep. What had possessed her to kiss him when he nuzzled her neck?

Lust.

Oh, she lusted after him, all right. She wanted that man as much as he wanted her, but she was torn and feeling utterly responsible for her as-of-yet-unmemorable fiancé.

What if she did remember him, and suddenly regretted all of her actions with Trevor? It seemed the most likely scenario, so keeping Trevor at bay made sense. But fifteen minutes after his breathing became deeper and more rhythmic, she could still feel the pressure of his boner on her bottom, and was still forcing her pelvis to be still when she desperately wanted to press back against him.

She sighed heavily.

What would this night have been like if she’d welcomed his advances? They would have made love, that was for sure. It seemed all that man had to do was look at her and she skipped through fourteen kinds of foreplay in one hot second.

She didn’t want to behave and “do the right thing” where Trevor was concerned, and she wasn’t sure if that made her a petulant child or a grown-up woman who’d been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A chance to experience another man, at a time when that chance should have been far behind her.

Trevor stirred in his sleep, his arm tightening around her middle. She slipped her hand over his. Even his hands showed the strength of his body, each finger heavily muscled and devoid of any fat. He was the epitome of the strong male physique, so she shouldn’t be surprised by her reaction to him. This was nature and sexual attraction at their best.

She sighed dramatically.

She was
never
going to get any sleep.

O
livia had been walking around
on eggshells all day. Trevor was in a foul mood, and to make matters worse, the weather seemed to be deteriorating instead of getting better.

They’d grown accustomed to the snow and freezing rain, but the wind had really picked up speed, making it nearly impossible to be outdoors at all. Of course, that hadn’t stopped Trevor from patrolling the area twice already.

“We could play a game,” she suggested.

“I have things I have to do.”

“Yes, but you can’t get outside to do them, so maybe you should find something to do besides pace the living room and sulk.”

He’d slept like a baby, but she’d lain awake all night, certain she’d made the wrong decision. What was the point of being faithful to a man you couldn’t remember, when you were desperate for the one right in front of you?

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to touch you,” he said.

“That’s not fair.”

“I wasn’t necessarily going for fair.” He walked to the front window, then circled back to the kitchen. “I’m going stir-crazy in here.”

She frowned.

“No offense,” he added. “I didn’t come to Warsaw Mountain to sit around.”

“Tell me about your friend.”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“Your friend. The one you were on your way to visit.”

He plopped down in a chair. “I wasn’t on my way to see a friend.”

“But you said…”

“I lied.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you very well at the time.”

She swallowed. Why did it matter if he was seeing someone? She certainly was. Or so it would seem, anyway. She worked to smooth out the jealous lines she knew were affecting her expression. “A woman?”

His eyes shot to hers. “No. There is no woman.”

She wrenched her eyes away. “Oh.”

“I had this friend, Ralph,” he said. “We were on the Teams together — Navy SEALs — right from BUD/S training, the very beginning.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was murdered two years ago, right on this mountain.”

She gasped. “Do you know who killed him?”

“Yes. I’m just waiting for the weather to break before I make my move.”

The steely look in his eye was beginning to make her uncomfortable. “And then what? Are you going to call the police?”

“Not exactly.” He stood up and walked to the kitchen, peering out the window. “Just out of curiosity, what game did you want to play?”

She wondered what “not exactly” meant but wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. From the look in his eyes, Trevor was going to extract his own kind of justice from Ralph’s killer. “How about checkers?”

“We don’t have any checkers.”

“We could make some.”

He eyed her grumpily.

“I mean, I could make some,” she said. She stood up. “Why don’t I do that.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were playing checkers made with two different pasta shapes and a board drawn on a piece of paper. Two hours later, she was winning, three games to two, and Trevor was actually smiling.

“I’m going to have a drink,” he announced. “Would you like one?” He took the unlabeled bottle down from the mantel. “I have no idea what this is.”

“That sounds perfect.”

He poured them each a glass and sat back down. “Do we have to play more checkers?” he asked.

“I thought you were enjoying yourself.”

“I was enjoying you trying to cheer me up.” He took a swig of his drink. “You’re cute.”

She tentatively sipped the liquor and was pleased with its cinnamon flavor, then let it burn its way down her throat. “It was hell on earth, that’s what it was.”

“Oh, come on. I wasn’t that bad.”

She laughed out loud. “I’d rather be trapped in a bus station in Cheboygan at three in the morning than play checkers with you in a bad mood again.”

“I’m sorry, Livy, for the way I acted last night.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. If you don’t want to be with me, I should respect that and back off, not pressure you.”

She could feel her cheeks getting hot as she remembered the press of his cock against her.

“Anyway, it won’t happen again.”

“I was giving you mixed signals. I was the one who wasn’t being fair.”

“You’re allowed to change your mind.”

“Well,” she said, not believing she was going to say this, even as the words formed on her tongue, “I changed it again after you fell asleep. I swear, I was up all night.”

His eyes darkened and she felt the tension between them tighten and pull.

“My turn to pick the entertainment,” he said, standing and walking toward her. For a moment, she thought he was heading toward her and his “entertainment” involved little more than himself, but he kept walking and left the room, returning with the radio. “Do you like to dance?” he asked.

It was a challenge.

Her stomach fluttered with the idea of being so close to him again. All day she’d been thinking about him, about the feel of him against her and the words he’d said about only sex being enough. “Sure I do.” She took a bigger sip of her drink and stood, just as he settled on a station with a slow song playing.

He held out a hand and she put hers in it, letting him lead her into the circle of his arms.

I want to be inside you.

The memory of his earlier words rang in her head. He grazed her skin with his fingers, and goose bumps trailed along her arms. His hand settled on the small of her back, warm and wide and strong.

I want to feel your body tighten around me when I make you come.

She was getting excited already, and she let her head rest on his shoulder. How easily she could turn her head and kiss his skin, feel it beneath her lips and lick it with her tongue.

I want to thrust inside of you so hard I explode.

They were moving to the music, their footsteps easily falling into synch, and she realized she should have expected no less from this man. If there was a man out there somewhere who fit with her better, she couldn’t imagine who he was.

Then I want to hear your breathing settle in my ear and know that I did that to you.

She ran her hands along the top of his back, loving how he moaned softly beneath her ear.

He stroked her back, her arms, down the sides of her breasts. “I can’t keep myself from touching you,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t do it, and I don’t want you to regret anything we do together, but my hands seem to think they belong on your skin, and you feel so damn good.”

She turned her mouth to his neck and kissed him as she’d wanted to do. His skin was salty on her tongue. “It’s like we’re in a bubble,” she said. “Nothing and no one exists outside of this cabin.” She met his eyes, then looked at his lips, so curvy and full. Lips made for loving. “For me, there isn’t any ‘before’ and there isn’t any ‘after.’ So when you say you don’t want me to be sorry, I can’t even imagine what that looks like.”

She touched his chest. “We’re in this crazy situation, and the only thing I want right now is you. Just tell me you wouldn’t lie to me. Tell me you’d never keep a secret from me, and let’s be together. I want to make love to you tonight, Trevor.”

He held her face in his hands and sighed. “There’s just one more thing.”

O
livia stared
at the garment bag on the back of the door as if it were radioactive. Trevor had stood in the doorway for what seemed like hours, the space between them heavy and solid, before finally placing the hanger onto the hook and quietly closing the bedroom door.

This made everything real.

She raised the back of her hand to her lips, choking back a sob. Trevor. She let her eyes close, giving herself up to the grief that washed over her. They’d been living in a fantasy world, one where she had only the clothes on her back and the problems of a newborn babe, a magical place where this man had become the center of her universe, the one and only person she ever wanted to be with, the man who felt like home to the woman who couldn’t remember if she had one.

She turned and walked to the window, hugging herself tightly. Outside, the last rays of sunlight danced on ice-covered branches, the wind making the trees tremble and shake. This should be the night they’d make love, when she would open her body to Trevor as she had already opened her heart. An image of his golden-brown eyes appeared in her mind, and she grimaced as she realized all she had lost.

Trevor. A man strong enough for her to lean on and then some. Most important, she trusted him. There was a man who would never betray her, never let her down. His conscience wouldn’t allow it.

Had someone let her down before? Was there a man in her past who made her so desperate for the security she found with Trevor?

If she turned back now, she wouldn’t be able to have him. To feel his skin, sweaty and hot from wanting her, loving her, his body pressed against her own desperate flesh. Frustration had her clutching her hands into fists.

He didn’t have to tell her about the dress. About any of it. He could have kept his mouth shut and she would have fallen to her knees in front of him. But he had told her, bringing her the dress like the last dollar in the pocket of a pauper, and as she stood in front of the window, cold radiating from its panes, she hated him for his honesty, for that damn sense of honor that required him to set the record straight before she yanked and ripped the clothes from his body.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, lightly banging her head against the wooden window grill. He was in the next room mere steps from where she stood, but it might as well have been a football field from her for all she was able to do about it.

She didn’t know how long she stood there. Long enough for the cross of the grill to sink into her forehead and her anger to slowly drain into the floor. Turning around, she took in the garment bag, needing to see the dress inside. To see if it fit, if the style suited her, if she could possibly be the same woman who had picked it out and smiled and twirled, imagining her life with some ghost of a man long since forgotten. To see if she still wanted to be that woman, or to become someone else.

Crossing the room with harried steps, she ripped down the zipper and frowned.

The tiniest white beads and miniature iridescent sequins shined back at her. Olivia brought a tentative hand up to touch the fabric, impressed with its detail and workmanship. Whoever she was, she must have money, because a dress like this surely didn’t come cheap.

Pushing the plastic open and down, she revealed the gown in its entirety, releasing a breath as she dropped her shoulders.

It was exquisite, unlike anything she’d seen before. She removed her sweater and pulled the hem of her T-shirt over her head. This dress was a relic from another time and place when she knew who she was and what she wanted. It seemed impossible that it would fit, as if the woman she’d become over these last few days with Trevor could have changed her very shape and form.

As she slid her jeans down over her panties, she was struck by her hopes of making love to Trevor and how incredibly different this day had turned out. Twisting to see herself in the dresser mirror, she took in her bare lace brassiere and low-hanging bikini. This outfit was for him. All of this for Trevor. She stared at her own glassy expression, then her eyes closed and her hand dipped over her mound, cupping herself there, imagining her fingers belonged to the man outside that door.

All of this was for you.

A wave of dizziness had her inhaling quickly. The dress. She had to put on the dress and this awful spell would be broken. If the truth in her heart could only be proven, she would be free like the wrong woman trying on Cinderella’s slipper. Olivia gently lifted the straps from the hanger and dressed without looking at herself again. When she managed to maneuver the skinny zipper all the way up her back, she opened her eyes and her mouth dropped open.

Not only did the dress fit her perfectly, she looked incredible. The fabric seemed to hug her breasts, displaying them to graceful advantage, as the cut of the entire bodice seemed to drape her in femininity. Reaching down, she picked up the swirling skirt, the perfect balance of traditional fullness and refined lines.

This was her wedding dress. There could be no doubt about it. Her very real dress that she’d picked out for her very real wedding to a very real man she must love.

She whipped around, staring accusingly out that same frosty window, anger rushing in where emptiness had been. She wanted to kick out the panes, smash the wood grill with her bare hands, tear this cute little cabin to shreds. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t right, anything she was feeling. This night was supposed to belong to her and Trevor, but instead that had been ripped from her hands and this fucking dress left in its place.

There was a knock at the door. “Olivia?”

She was breathing heavily and awareness prickled down her spine. What would she give if she could rewind the clock, tell him she didn’t want to see whatever it was he wanted to show her? She could have slipped her hands beneath his clothing, touching him intimately until he gave her everything she knew would make them both happy.

“Yes?”

He was quiet so long she wondered if he heard her. She reached up and touched the wooden door. He was hurting, too. He wanted her, too. Shared her feelings.

She closed her eyes and sighed. Heaven help her, she still wanted to make love to him.

Her eyes opened wide. Could she do that? Just make love to Trevor as if nothing else mattered, even the man she was engaged to marry? She was bound to him by a promise she couldn’t remember making.

That man is a stranger to me.

How could you betray someone you didn’t even know?

Her heart began to race as the possibilities crystalized. “This is crazy,” she whispered. It was one thing to make love to Trevor when she had no knowledge of her life, but she was standing here staring at herself in her wedding dress, knowing she was promised to another man as she considered loving this one anyway.

A warm flush spread up her chest to her neck and cheeks.

Trevor’s voice was tight and gravelly. “I should have given you the dress when I found it. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

She opened the door, watching as his chin lifted and his eyes raked over every inch of her body, finally colliding with her own. She could feel the pain in his stare, the heat, and knew what the sight of her was doing to him. Looking at him was doing the exact same thing to her.

The knowledge made her bold. “I know why you didn’t tell me.” She took a deep breath. This was right. No matter what happened later, outside these walls and away from here, making love to this man could only ever be right. “Because the electricity between us is enough to light up every house on this mountainside, and you didn’t want to let that go any more than I do.”

His eyes seemed to sparkle at the mention of the lust that was in full bloom. He shook his head slightly. “It was wrong.”

Their time together was slipping away, reality encroaching on her dreams. If she didn’t do something quickly, Trevor Hawkins would be nothing but a memory, and everything that had been lost to her would rise up to cover her head like water.

But he was an honorable man, and what she wanted from him was anything but honorable. Steeling herself against his rejection, she stepped toward him, lightly resting her fingers on his shoulder. “I still want to make love to you, Trevor.”

He stared at her, suspended, his eyes locked with hers and dilating.

“If you’ll have me,” she whispered. The first inkling of fear settled into her stomach. Oh God, he was going to turn her down. She could feel it. She slipped her hand down his arm. “Please,” she begged.

A look of raw hunger overtook his features, and he kissed her. She welcomed his arms as he wrapped them around her possessively. She needed to feel her skin against his, her naked chest desperate to rub against his pecs and chest hair.

“Get me out of this dress,” she said against his mouth.

He pulled back just enough to meet her stare with a harsh look of his own. “No,” he growled. “Leave the dress on.”