Dylan’s gaze drifted to the two bouncers at the door, who returned his stare with matching menacing scowls. Yeah, there was no way he was getting back in that club tonight. So much for dancing the night away with Rachel.
Hell. He wasn’t even in the mood for sex anymore. He’d jarred his shoulder while trying to break up that fight, and now it was throbbing again. Damn it. He’d consumed a shit-ton of beer and whiskey shots tonight, specifically to reach the point where the pain faded into that numb sort of nothingness, and now all his hard work was down the drain.
Tightening his lips, he glared at Seth, whose gray eyes displayed sheer boredom. Boredom, for fuck’s sake. The guy had just rearranged the faces of not one, not two, but three dudes, his nose was a bloody mess, and he was standing there like it was no biggie.
“You couldn’t let it go, huh?” Dylan cracked.
His roommate shrugged. “Not really.”
Aidan, who hadn’t said a word since they’d been tossed out of the club, looked from one SEAL to the other, then chuckled. “Didn’t I hear something about you guys getting locked up for brawling a while back?”
“You heard right,” Dylan mumbled. “And that last brawl wasn’t my fault either. Apparently I hang out with cavemen who can’t control their tempers.”
Rolling his eyes, Seth reached into his pocket for his wallet and dug out a twenty-dollar bill. “I’ll spring for a cab for you,” he said, handing Dylan the cash. “I’m gonna hang around here until Miranda gets off.”
Dylan barked out an incredulous laugh. “You have to report to the CO in like four hours.”
“Which is why there’s no point in even going to bed. I’ll wait for Miranda to get off, just in case those assholes decide to come back here and cause trouble for her.”
“Suit yourself. You’ll be the one dead-ass tired in the water tomorrow.” Dylan pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through the contacts, but his vision kept going in and out of focus. “Shit, I know I have a cab number in here, but everything’s starting to spin.”
“Forget the cab. I’ll take you home,” Aidan offered.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s not a problem.”
Dylan’s foggy brain registered a thought. “Aw shit, I can’t go home. I don’t want the kids to see me drunk.”
Aidan’s brows shot up. “You’ve got kids at your place? Since when?”
“Miranda and her children are staying with us,” Seth explained. “Their apartment flooded.”
“Ah. I see.”
“And the rugrats are asleep by now,” Seth pointed out.
Dylan stubbornly shook his head. “Don’t care. What if they wake up in the middle of the night and find me puking in the bathroom? I refuse to corrupt children.”
He’d barely finished his sentence when the world started to rotate again. He wobbled on his feet, nausea climbing up his throat.
Aidan shot Seth a perplexed look. “How is he able to speak in full, articulate sentences when he’s this loaded?”
“No fucking idea, man.”
“How about this? Why don’t you crash at my place tonight?” Aidan suggested. “I live three blocks from here, and I can drop you home tomorrow before I head to the base.”
“That sounds good,” he said, blinking rapidly in the hopes that it would help his eyes focus. Then he gave Seth the finger and added, “I’m keeping that twenty, by the way. Reparation for getting in a fight and cock-blocking me. Asshole.”
Next to him, Aidan gave a soft chuckle. “Shit. You SEALs really are on constant testosterone overload, aren’t you? Fucking or fighting—it’s always one or the other, huh?”
Dylan released a breath. “Tell me about it.”
Miranda was dead on her feet by the time two a.m. rolled around. By midnight, the club had emptied to less than half capacity, so her manager Wendy had sent her to the beer cooler to do inventory, leaving Alex to tend bar alone. Miranda’s arms now ached from lifting all those beer cases, she was shivering from being in a freezer for the past two hours, and to top off an already shitty shift, she’d gotten yelled at by Wendy for no good reason. She’d found out later that Wendy’s foul mood was the result of a fistfight that had broken out on the patio, but that didn’t make her feel any better about being wrongfully screamed at.
All she wanted to do was go home and take a hot bath before collapsing in bed, but that wasn’t exactly an option. Her twins could sleep through a tornado, but she didn’t want to risk waking Seth or Dylan by rummaging around their bathroom and making noise.
“’Night, Miranda,” one of the bouncers called as she left the club through the front doors.
“’Night, Nico.”
She rounded the building and made her way to the tiny lot in the rear alley. There were only four parking spaces back there—one was Wendy’s, the other three were for employees but on a first-come, first-served basis. Miranda had lucked out and snagged a space tonight, which meant she didn’t have to walk to the next block where she normally parked.
“Boo.”
The raspy voice came out of nowhere and made her jump two feet in the air. Heart pounding, she spotted Seth sitting on the trunk of her sedan, smoking a cigarette.
“Jesus, Seth! You scared me to death.” Her heartbeat steadied, then accelerated once more when she noticed the dried blood caked on his nostrils. “Oh brother. Why am I not surprised?”
He tossed his cigarette butt on the pavement and snuffed it out with the toe of his black boot. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re the one who started that fistfight my manager was bitching about.” She unlocked her car and marched over to the driver’s side. “Ever the troublemaker, aren’t you?”
His taunting laugh floated toward her. “Why are you so convinced I started the fight?”
She stared at him. “Didn’t you?”
After a beat, he broke out in a rueful grin. “Yeah, I did. But you should know that I was defending your honor.”
Now she was the one laughing. “Oh really?”
“Really.”
Miranda watched as he scraped a hand over his scruffy goatee. Well, if you could even call it that. She actually had no idea how to classify Seth’s facial hair. Kind of a beard, kind of a mustache, mostly a whole lot of scruff that made him appear lethal as hell.
“Remember that meathead who was hitting on you earlier?” he prompted.
She nodded.
“I overheard him saying some very unpleasant things about you. One thing led to another and…” Seth shrugged.
She couldn’t help but smile. “I can’t decide if that was sweet of you, or incredibly stupid. I’m leaning toward stupid. And whatever that guy said? I’m sure I‘ve been called worse.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make a fuck of a difference to me. If someone disrespects you, I’ll damn well step in and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
His husky declaration brought a rush of warmth to her chest, which only ticked her off. Jeez. She didn’t need Seth Masterson fighting any battles on her behalf. She was perfectly capable of fighting her own battles.
“Anyway, I’ll see you at home,” he said. “I stuck around to make sure that guy didn’t come back to bother you.”
Her heart skipped a beat as he leaned in to open the car door for her. His spicy scent surrounded her, made her feel light-headed. Damn pheromones.
He waited while she got into the driver’s seat, told her to “drive safe”, and then shut the door for her.
Miranda let out a sigh of relief the second he was gone. His presence was so darn unsettling, and her stupid body responded to him, no matter how many times she ordered it not to. Even Trent hadn’t evoked such a powerful rush of awareness, and she had no idea how to suppress the constant waves of lust swelling inside her.
It took twenty minutes to get to Seth’s house in Coronado. His Jeep was idling by the curb behind the babysitter’s car, and he flashed his headlights when he saw her, gesturing for h
er to pull into the driveway. Right, he was better off parking behind her since he would be leaving first.
Come to think of it, hadn’t he said he needed to report to the base at five? It was nearly three, for Pete’s sake.
“Are you pulling an all-nighter or something?” she asked when they met up on the front stoop.
“Pretty much. There’s no point in going to sleep now.” He unlocked the front door and went in first, which she noticed he did every time they entered a room together. And his sharp-eyed gaze always swept back and forth, as if he was assessing his surroundings for potential danger.
The living room lights were on. Miranda found her regular sitter, Kim, lying on the couch reading a thick biology textbook. The pretty Japanese girl pushed her wire-rim glasses up the bridge of her nose when she spotted Miranda.
“Hey,” Kim said, quickly shutting her book and getting to her feet. “The kids are sleeping soundly. I just checked on them ten minutes ago.”
“Did they give you any trouble?” Miranda asked.
“Not at all. They were great, as usual.”
“I’m glad. Come on, let me walk you out.”
After saying good-bye to Kim and locking up, Miranda drifted into the kitchen, where Seth was preparing coffee. He didn’t offer her a cup, an understandable breach of etiquette seeing as how it was three in the morning and only one of them needed to stay awake.
Miranda poured herself a glass of water before inching toward the doorway. “I should turn in.”
“Wait.”
His gravelly voice stopped her. Biting her bottom lip, she met his gaze, which flickered with something she couldn’t decipher. “What is it?”
“I want you.”
She briefly closed her eyes and counted to three. “Seriously, Seth, do we have to do this again? I know you want me. You’ve made that ridiculously clear since the—”
“Just let me finish,” he interrupted, sounding so frustrated she stopped talking midsentence.
Wrinkling her forehead, she leaned against the doorframe and waited for him to continue.
“I want you, and it’s making me act crazy, all right?” he mumbled. “I’ve never been rejected before, Miranda.”
An unwitting smile tickled her lips. No, she didn’t imagine rejection played a large part in his life. The guy was a supersoldier, built like a Greek god, with the face of a bad-boy movie star. Women probably lined up around the block for a shot with Seth Masterson.
“I understand why you don’t want to get involved.” He met her eyes head-on, his mouth set in a weary line. “And I’m sure I only make it worse with all my flirting and badgering and my attempts to bend you to my will. But I promise you, Miranda, if we do this, there won’t be anything complicated about it.”
Despite the frantic voice in her head begging her not to open this door, her curiosity won out. “What exactly are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I’ll take you any way I can get you. I’ll take you on your terms, not mine.”
A laugh popped out. “Yeah, right. It’s always on your terms, Seth. That’s just the way you operate.”
“Not this time.” Conviction resonated from his deep voice and gleamed in his sexy gray eyes. “I relinquish control, baby. If we act on this attraction, you’ll be the one running the show. When you want it, where you want it, how you want it. The control is yours.”
Shock grabbed hold of her and sent her eyebrows soaring. She knew how difficult this must be for him—heck, there was no mistaking the reluctant crease in his forehead or the way he was white-knuckling that coffee mug. Oh no, he was not the kind of man who handed over the reins.
Her lips twitched with unrestrained amusement. “I’ll have total control?”
“Within reason,” he conceded. “In terms of the when and where, definitely. But the how?” His voice lowered to a smoky pitch vibrating with wicked promise. “I can guarantee that following my lead in the bedroom isn’t something you’ll find complaint with.”
Her sex constricted as a stream of dirty images deluged her brain. God. This man was pure temptation. How on earth was she ever going to resist him? When he looked at her with that burning-hot gaze and licked his bottom lip like he wanted to eat her up, she couldn’t think of a single reason not to sleep with him.
“The flood,” she blurted out.
Seth blinked. “What?”
“My apartment is a mess, you know, from the flood. I’m working two jobs, and we’ve got the summer recital coming up at the end of July, so I need to start thinking about solos and song selection and costumes. My life is a big ball of stress right now,” she confessed, though the reminder was more for her sake than his.
“All the more reason to welcome some no-strings, stress-busting sex into your life,” he pointed out with a grin.
“No strings,” she echoed.
“Not a single one.”
She swallowed. “And it’s on my terms?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I…don’t know.”
She didn’t miss the flash of disappointment in his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to change her answer—or her mind. She wasn’t the kind of woman who jumped into a situation without giving it slow and careful consideration. Once upon a time she would have thrown caution to the wind and dived headfirst into an affair with this man. These days, she didn’t have the luxury of spontaneity. She had her kids, her job, her livelihood to consider.
“I need to think about it,” she said quietly. “I won’t agree to anything until I’ve had a chance to think.”
After a beat, Seth released a ragged breath. “Take all the time you need.”
“Thank you.” She paused. “Good night, Seth.”
With that, she left him in the kitchen and hurried down the hall, heart pounding, sex throbbing, hormones yelling at her for having the audacity to demand time to think.
Sighing, Miranda entered the guest room and resigned herself to the fact that, like Seth, she probably wouldn’t get a wink of sleep tonight.
“Yeah, so this is probably a major faux pas, but…dude, how much does naval intelligence pay you?” Dylan called in the direction of the hallway Aidan had disappeared into a few moments ago.
As he waited for the other man to return, he gawked at the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and wondered if O’Connor and the others were aware that Aidan was living it up in the land of luxury over here.
Located in downtown’s Marina District, Aidan’s east-facing condo offered an unparalleled view of the San Diego skyline—that alone was confirmation of how pricey the place must be. The living room was furnished with two black leather couches, a rectangular glass coffee table, and an entertainment system that made Dylan drool. Even in his drunken state, he was able to fully appreciate Aidan’s digs and knew the rent must cost the guy a fortune.
“This is actually my dad’s place,” Aidan explained as he strode into the room wearing nothing but a pair of loose black pants. “His architecture firm opened an East Coast branch last year and he decided to move out there, but he didn’t want to sell this place, so I’m subletting it.” Aidan grinned. “At a discount.”
Dylan shook his head in awe, admiring the electric fireplace and the French doors leading to the outdoor terrace. “Lucky you.”
“For real,” Aidan agreed with a chuckle. “Hey, did you still want that Advil?”
“That’d be great.”
“There should be some in the kitchen. I’ll grab you some water too.”
Aidan brushed past him and headed for the kitchen, which was separated from the living area by a low wall with a “window” that allowed Dylan to watch the dark-haired man move around. His gaze lingered on Aidan’s chest—broad, sculpted with muscle and dusted with dark hair. Dude was in great fucking shape.
He tried to remember if he’d ever seen Aidan shirtless before. He must have—swimming at Matt and Cash’s place, on the beach…yeah, he had to have seen Aidan’s bare chest before.
/> So why did his mouth suddenly go dry at the sight of the guy’s washboard abs?
Dylan tore his eyes away. Clearly he’d had way too much to drink tonight.
“You sure you don’t want the stronger kind? I’ve got extra strength and the kind for migraines too,” Aidan said as he reappeared in the room.
“Naah, I’m good. The pills and a few glasses of water will do the trick. It’s what I always do to avoid a hangover after a night of boozing.”
When Aidan slapped a pair of ibuprofens in his hand, the guy’s fingers lightly brushed over his palm.
His groin tightened, cock jerking against the fly of his cargo pants.
Oh fuck. Not now. And not this man.
He gulped down the pills and chugged the water, all the while feeling the other man’s dark eyes studying him.
“What?” Dylan said in aggravation.
“You need to fuck, don’t you?”
He nearly dropped the drinking glass. “What?”
Aidan grinned, and a pair of dimples appeared. “I cock-blocked you tonight, man. Dragged you out of that alcove before you could finish up with the cute blonde from the dance floor, and I can only imagine how bad your balls are aching right now.”
Dylan relaxed. Right, the blonde. At the memory of Rachel—well, Rachel’s magical mouth—his dick jerked again. Well, at least the little soldier wasn’t discriminatory. Blondes, brunettes, girls, guys…didn’t take much to keep him happy. Some might even call him fickle.
“You win some, you lose some,” he answered with a shrug. But Aidan was right. He was definitely in fucking mode. Muscles tight, body primed for sex.
Another silence fell.
They exchanged a quick look, and Dylan could have sworn Aidan’s brown eyes flickered with heat.
Don’t even think about it.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I dragged you into the fight. I just wasn’t sure how far Masterson would go.”
“No, I’m glad you got me.” Dylan sighed. “Seth can be a total moron sometimes.”
“How long is his girl staying at your place?”
“A few days, I think. Maybe longer.”