He found a spot at the bar and waved at Bo Anders, a bald-headed weekend biker fanatic who had been a bartender at the Wet and Wild for as long as Zach could remember.
“Hey, Pretty Boy, haven’t seen you around lately.”
“Been busy.”
“That gives the other guys a better chance with the chummies.”
“Yeah, well, they can have ’em.” Chummies was a less-than-flattering name given to SEAL groupies who hung around Coronado, the name based on chumming, a strategy fishermen used to draw fish into an area where they could be easily hooked. It was an effective method for prize fish as well as arrogant men who preferred a free meal to one requiring expended energy and time. Hey, no one ever accused SEALs of being Alan Alda sensitive.
“What’ll it be?”
“Sam Adams, in the bottle.”
Zach slapped a few bills on the bar, then turned, longneck in hand, and leaned his elbows back on the bar. He took a long pull on the cold beer and surveyed the room, noticing right away the gorgeous babe standing a short distance away. She had long, mussed, black hair, a model-thin body encased in a skintight minidress, and a siren-red mouth that conjured all kinds of images. Slanting her silvery eyes his way, she winked. A chummie, for sure.
Britta had been driving him nuts the past three weeks. He was sick of chasing his tail over her. Sick of teaching women how to run and breathe at the same time. Sick of being on inactive duty. Sick of whacking off himself at night. Sick of being a nonplayer in the dating games. Time to get back to his old modus operandi. Time to forget, at least for a few hours, that he was a father in a pig load of trouble with every frickin’ government official from here to Afghanistan. Time to stop hitting on a thousand-year-old girlfriend who didn’t want to be his girlfriend. He had little free time these days, and he was damn sure going to make good use of this gift from Danny.
He smiled at the woman, and she walked over. “Hi,” she said in a Marilyn Monroe breathy fashion.
A good start. He liked breathy.
“Hi,” he said back. “My name’s Zach Floyd.”
“Linda Lowery.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure. Double shot of VO, straight. Over ice. No water.”
Okaaaay.
When Bo handed her the drink, he gave Zach a silent message, as in Whoa boy! This is a hot one. Which soon proved true. She downed the drink in one swallow, then licked her wet, red lips.
Double okaaaay. He put his arm around her shoulder and tucked her into his side, making room for her to squeeze in at the bar.
“Is it true what they say about SEALs and their…uh, stamina?”
“Oh, yeah.” Typical groupie question.
She smiled.
Yep, easy breezy fishing here. He wondered idly if they should cut the crap—uh, small talk—and just take it out to his car for a wham-bam roll in the backseat.
Oddly, that prospect didn’t appeal to him. Before he had a chance to contemplate why, he saw Cage and the gang on the far side of the tavern, waving at him to come over. “Care to join my friends?” he asked Linda.
“Sure.”
He led her by the hand through the crowd, with her hand on his ass…marking her territory, he supposed, but who the hell cared? Soon they arrived at the large round table where Cage, Sly, Geek, JAM, Slick, and Omar were sitting. Slick’s presence was a surprise. He usually didn’t socialize with them, but maybe things had changed since his divorce seemed to be final now. Omar rarely went out, either, being in the same predicament as Zach; he had custody of his seven-year-old daughter.
He introduced Linda to everyone. They all noticed her hand on his ass, if their grins were any indication.
They sat down.
“Man, you’re the only guy I know who wears designer duds to a lowdown bar,” Slick remarked. “And, shiiiiit, are those leather pants?”
“Faux leather,” he replied, used to their teasing.
“I think he looks good,” Linda remarked, rubbing a hand over the sleeve of the silk shirt, then the material at his knee.
“If I wasn’t already Mr. GQ, I’d say you fit the bill,” Sly said to Zach. “I used to model underwear for GQ.”
Linda listened attentively, as if Sly had just told her he invented oral sex.
“I was out to dinner with my dad,” Zach explained.
Linda turned to chat with JAM on her other side about a doctor they both knew at the naval base hospital, and Cage leaned in close to him. “No more Britta on your mind, buddy?”
“Gone, gone, gone,” he said. And he meant it, too. For some reason, Britta had stuck in his craw for the last two years, probably because she hadn’t given in to him. Then the last few weeks, after she had given in to him, he’d convinced himself it was something more than lust. Well, he was over her now. And, to be fair, she was over him, too, as evidenced by her telling him more than once in recent days to “Begone!” Usually after some particularly brutal rotation in WEALS, which she was taking personally.
“Who’s watchin’ the kid?” Sly asked.
“My brother, Danny, again. He’s building up brother points.”
“And he doesn’t mind you being gone?” Omar asked, rubbing the shin that Sammy had bruised a few weeks ago.
“Hah! You know what he told me to do tonight? To go boink Britta till her eyeballs rolled.”
A bunch of the guys, overhearing, laughed. They got a kick out of Sammy’s antics. He did, too. Sometimes.
“So, why aintcha takin’ Sammy’s advice, mon coeur? About Britta, I mean?” Cage was staring at him as if he saw something that Zach didn’t realize was apparent.
“Number one, Britta won’t have me. Number two, so the hell what? Number three, out of sight, out of mind. Number four…” Glancing at Linda who was still talking with JAM, he shrugged. “Enough said!”
“Number five, bullshit!” Cage laughed, not buying his story at all.
The waitress showed up then. Not Bawdy Maudy, but an older woman he didn’t recognize. He ordered another Sam Adams, and Linda ordered another Double VO. Yee-haw! No longer talking with JAM, she placed her hand on his thigh, high up, licked those tempting red lips, and began to suck the salt off a stick pretzel she picked up from a basket on the table.
Seven sets of eyes observed intently.
Life is good…or about to get good, he thought.
Until he saw who was entering the tavern.
Looking for fresh meat…uh, men…
The Wet and Wild was an eating and drinking establishment that had an odd showering device just inside its front door. Women who were willing to have their sherts showered went in free.
When an explanation was given to Britta for this odd practice, she exclaimed, “Men! They are e’er the same, drooling over a woman’s udders. Would any right-minded lady e’er suggest wetting down a man’s breeches to ogle his manparts?”
“Men would jump at the chance,” Terri pointed out, and they all agreed.
“I’d have to be half-blitzed before I’d go in here with a wet T-shirt,” Donita said.
“I doan know,” Marie mused. “Depends on who I’m tryin’ ta impress.”
Britta and her friends chose to pay the entry charge.
It was hard to hear each other speak over the loud music and hum of conversation, clinking of glasses, and laughter.
Immediately, they were accosted by men offering them drinks and places to sit at their tables, or requesting that they dance with them. One particularly persistent fellow identified himself as Dill-land Overdorf, a Navy pilot. That was a person who steered those metal objects flying across the skies. He wore a wide-brimmed hat similar to the one Cage wore betimes…a cow hat for boys, she thought it was called, although Dill-land was far from a boyling. He wore carved leather boots with heels and a belt with a large brass buckle. He pressed a glass of mead into her hand and remarked on how good she smelled.
“Fruit or flower?” she asked, sipping at her mead.
“Uh
…flower?”
“Ah, my armpits.” She raised an arm so he could get a whiff of the floral scent.
At first, the guy seemed surprised by her action, but then he grinned, “That would be the one. Hey, I love a gal with a sense of humor.”
Britta gave him another look. He was tall and lean with dark hair and eyes and a most alluring dimple at one side of his mouth. He really was an attractive man. Not as pretty as Zachary, but then no man was.
“Are you Navy, darlin’?” he asked.
“WEALS.”
“Ah.”
“What does that mean?”
“That I’m impressed. You must be one…uh, fit woman.”
“Fit where?”
“Huh? Where you from, darlin’? You have an odd accent.”
“The Norselands.”
“Norway?”
“’Tis what I said. But you are the one with an odd voice. Where are you from?”
“Texas.”
“A country called Tax Us? How odd!”
He gaped at her for a second as if questioning whether she was barmy or not. She probably was, especially since she was actually considering finding herself another man for bedsport, just to see if what she had experienced with Zachary was the usual way things went betwixt men and women.
“How do you feel about orgasms?” she blurted out.
He choked on his mead. Then he smiled, a slow, lazy exercise that drew the dimple out nicely. “Did you say orgasms?”
“Yea, that is what I said. Dost have an ear wax problem?”
“No problem at all, sugar.”
“So, how do you feel about orgasms?”
“Mine or yours?”
She pondered that question. “Both. But I must have multiple ones, or it would not be worth the effort. Would it?”
“Baby, you and I are gonna get along just great. Let’s dance.”
“Oh, nay. I could not do that.”
People were flailing their arms and shaking their hips in a ludicrous manner to loud music that spoke of twisting and shouting.
“I’m not much for fast dancing, either. Oh, here comes a slow one.” Without a pause, the musicians started into a slower melody, with the one singer announcing, “Let’s get it on.”
Dill-land pulled her into his embrace and out onto the dancing arena. He immediately began swaying them back and forth in a shocking manner. Her breasts were pressed into his chest, and she could feel the ridge of his manpart against the joining of her braies. She felt nothing at all. Not the thrill of pleasure that surged through her body at just a look from Zachary. Not the ruching of her nipples at the brush of his shert. Not the wet pooling betwixt her thighs that she associated with foresport from Zachary. And this close dancing was definitely foresport, in her opinion.
She was doomed, Britta realized with a sigh. Zachary had ruined her for other men.
Dill-land was humming in her ear…in an attempt to make her grow lustsome, she supposed. All she wanted to do was laugh. His humming was unmelodic.
Smiling, she looked over Dill-land’s shoulder. Then looked again.
Zachary was sitting at a far table with his comrades-in-arms. And, most important, at his side was a black-haired woman staring at Zachary as if she’d just had multiple orgasms.
The loathsome lout! The randy jackass! The womanizing fornicator!
And he was staring back at Britta with equal dismay, glaring at Dill-land’s back. She saw him start to rise, but Cage and Slick took hold of his arms and shoved him back in his seat. They were talking earnestly to him. The black-haired wench was looking back and forth betwixt her and Zachary with a questioning frown.
Britta did the only thing a right-thinking woman could in the circumstances. She nuzzled her face into Dill-land’s neck and kissed his ear.
Dill-land growled his appreciation. And began to hum some more.
She hoped she didn’t hurl the contents of her still-empty stomach.
The froggie turned a lovely shade of green…uh, red…
Zach heard a loud buzzing in his ears, and he literally saw red. The feeling was not unlike the berserk rage that sometimes overcame SEALs and other special forces operators before a battle.
Luckily, or not so luckily, Cage and Slick had moved Linda’s chair aside, and they stood on both sides of him, forcing him to stay put.
“Doan even think it, cher,” Cage warned.
“Buddy, you’re already in deep shit. Do you wanna land in the brig, end your career, lose your pretty looks?” That last was said by Slick with a grin.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the frickin’ brig, the frickin’ SEALs, or my frickin’ face. That dickhead has his hands on my girl.”
“Your girl?” Linda squealed. “You have a girl?”
“He means that in a collective sense, as in Britta is in WEALS, as in Britta is our girl, to all of us SEALs,” Geek explained…with a straight face, yet.
Zach snorted his opinion of that bullshit, but Linda seemed satisfied with the explanation.
“Calm down, boy.” Cage patted his shoulder. “Looks lak she’s the one got her tongue in his ear and his nuts in hand…so ta speak.”
“Yeah, but Overdorf has his hands on her ass,” Sly pointed out. “And it looks to me like, yep, he’s making Mr. Happy…well, happy, rubbing against her belly like that.”
The roaring in Zach’s head got louder.
He studied Britta for a long moment. She’d cut her hair. Dammit! But it was nice. Kind of wavy blonde down to her shoulders, framing her face. Feminine. She wore regular straight-legged blue jeans, silvery high-heeled sandals—Lordy, Lordy! Britta in high heels!—and a floaty type of blue and silver long-sleeved blouse that appeared transparent in spots. Pink lipstick glistened on her mouth, and mascara lengthened her eyelashes. What bothered him most was that Britta no longer stuck out with her waist-long braids and scrubbed maiden skin. She was changing.
“She should be careful with Dylan Overdorf,” Linda broke into his thoughts. “He’s got hands like an octopus, and he doesn’t take no for an answer. I heard he keeps a record of all the women he’s slept with, and a rating beside each name. He even makes notations of kinky stuff he convinces his partners to do.”
That did it. Zach stood, knocking back Cage and Slick’s hands. “Back off,” he warned the two of them. Then he headed for the dance floor.
Britta saw him coming. He noticed her body go stiff and her eyes widen with surprise. I’ll give you a surprise, all right. With your butt pointing north, right over my knee.
“Britta,” he said, forcibly lifting her hand off Overdorf’s shoulder and hauling her out of his arms.
“Unhand me, knave.”
Surprised at first, Overdorf let her go, then tried to pull her back. “Whoa, who the hell are you?”
“Your worst enemy. Let go of Britta.”
Overdorf glanced at Britta and cocked an eyebrow. “Darlin’?”
“Darlin’? Listen, cowboy, fun’s over. Time for Cinderella to go home.”
“And you would be Prince Charming, right? I don’t think so. I know who you are. One of those Navy SEALs who thinks his shit don’t stink.”
People were stopping their dancing and staring at them. All his buddies were behind him, urging him to come back. Somewhere in his testosterone-broiled brain he knew he was making a fool of himself.
The band launched into a new song. Toby Keith’s “How Do You Like Me Now?” For a blip of an insane second, he thought about asking Britta how she liked him now.
“Come on, cupcake, let’s get out of here. Start on one of those orgasms.” Overdorf was addressing Britta, whose face had the good sense to turn pink.
Zach saw red again. His eyes cut to Britta, telling her silently that she’d betrayed him. She was only supposed to have orgasms with him. At least, that’s what his male pride told him, and a little part of his heart that felt wounded.
“What is the cause of your ill humor, lout?” Britta inquired sweetly.
“You,” he snarled.
“Me? You jest. I just got here.”
He inhaled and exhaled to tamp his temper down. “Come with me, Britta. Please.”
“Why should she, froggie?” Overdorf sneered. SEALs were sometimes referred to as frogmen, an appellation from World War II days.
“Because she’s my fiancée.” He hoped God didn’t strike him dead for the lie.
“Oh. Well. Why didn’t you say so?” Overdorf gave Britta an accusing look, as if she’d led him on, which she probably had. How could she discuss orgasms with anyone but me? Before anyone had a chance for second thoughts, he put a hand around her waist and practically frog-walked her to their table. An apt thing for a frogman to do, he joked with himself, a sure sign of his mental state.
He stopped just before they got to the table, where seven people, including Linda, were watching him expectantly, wondering what he would do next. Hell, he wondered what he would do next.
Turning her to face him, he pulled her close, leaned forward, and gave her what he intended to be a kiss of conciliation, to make up for his rude behavior. Instead, he aligned their bodies from knees to chests, easy to do when Britta matched his height in her high heels which, incidentally, gave him all kinds of ideas, most dealing with bare skin. It quickly morphed into an intimate kiss of wild, hungry, public-be-damned exaltation. He was like an oversexed hound dog marking his territory.
He heard clapping before and behind him and hoots of encouragement. Britta stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
He had.
When they finally sat down at the table, there were six sets of laughing eyes gawking at them and a not-so-laughing pair from Linda.
Britta nodded to each of them in turn, knowing most of them already, except Linda, whom she shot a glower. Then she asked him, “What is a fee-aunt-say?”