Stepbrother UnSEALed (12 page)

I just hear their brute laughter, listen to her muffled sob, and I know exactly what I need to do.

I have to fucking save her!

I let three more seconds go by – all I'll spare to assess the situation.

“Gag her with her fucking panties,” the same gruff voice inside growls. “Take a pic once you've smeared your load across her eyes. The boys in LA'll eat this shit right up. She's got nice skin. Young. She'll fetch a pretty penny for sure.”

My heart thuds as Delia whimpers again. Fuck, fuck.

“I dunno, Bumble, I kinda wanna go easy on this meat. She looks like she's never seen a grown man's dick before. It's fucking hot, but we can't break her 'til we get her back to the van, yeah? We've got more shit in there to really loosen this bitch up.”

“You goddamned pussy,” the older man growls, his boots stomping hard on the tile. “Let me have at her. Step outta the way, I'll show you how it's done.”

The next sound I hear is a belt coming undone. No more.

My boot hits the dirty old door so fucking hard it almost comes off its hinges. Two big, dirty men are inside, mafia or sex traffickers, maybe. Right now, I don't really care about anything except slamming my blade through both their skulls.

My eyes flick to Delia. The assholes are tall, lean, nasty looking men. The fucker must've had his hand on her throat a second ago, and he's got her dark lace panties in the other, staring at me like I'm a fucking ghost.

They move fast, but they've got nothing on a SEAL. The next five seconds are a blur. I don't think about anything except dispatching them, kicking them away from my girl, washing away the tears I saw streaming down her cheeks with their filthy fucking blood.

That's right.
My girl.

I don't even have time to process it. There's too many bones snapping underneath my boots.

They barely have a second to realize I've shattered their ribs with the roundhouse kicks that put them on the floor. I'd love to torture them longer, but snuffing their evil asses out is the best option.

Each asshole gets off half a yelp before I drive the blade right through their skulls, silencing them forever. Everything melts into a three second blur of pain and blood and terror, the same confusion I always see on missions, right as I blow some terrorists' brains out.

It's over just as abrupt too.

The bastards are dead and barely twitching, out cold in the grimy, dark bathroom. Delia makes a sound like she's choking, and I look up, seeing the insane shock in her eyes.

“Fuck, baby, I wish you didn't have to see that.” I drop the knife. It hits the floor with a loud clatter, and I head toward her, wishing I could kill the thugs all over again for screwing up her clothes, darkening her brain forever with this sick, fucked up memory.

Stopping in my tracks before I reach her, I realize my hands are coated in blood. Shit.

I stumble to the sink between us, praying the plumbing isn't shot. There's a brutal hiss behind the wall, and rusty water comes spurting out a moment later. It's a weak trickle, but it'll do, all I need to clean up.

I have to punch the broken mirror hanging off the wall to see my own reflection. My fingers dab the few spare flecks of blood I've got along my neck, and I stare at the dead boys on the floor, long trails of crimson snaking out of their bodies.

Delia steps carefully over the streams of blood. She staggers over to me and throws her hands around my waist, pushing her face into my shoulder from behind, and just holding it there. She's breathing like she just ran a marathon.

“Jesus, Chris. God. You...you saved me.”

When my hands are clean – or as clean-ish as I can get them with the rusty water – I grab her little wrists and press them tight, running my other hand across her cheek. It's smooth and flaming hot.

My dick throbs. Against the odds. Against all reason.

I still want her, even when I'm standing in a shitty broken down bathroom with two sick bastards starting to rot behind us. Hell, maybe I want her
more
because I did what I had to, saved her from a twisted fate.

I can't stop seeing those fucks with their hands on her. It fills me with a deep, primal rage, something that explodes in my head behind a curtain of blinding red. The only man who
ever
ought to have his hands on her is
me.

Only me. Nobody else. Not these evil sonsofbitches trying to force her into god knows what. Not some gawky little pissant in an Oxford shirt talking about his trust fund, or what a man he is for hitting the gym twice a week.

Delia's deserves better, and I'm it. I don't know why the virgin shit put me off for so long. She needs a
man
for her first time, her second time, maybe her first hundred times between the sheets. If I can give her that, then I absolutely fucking will.

I turn around, giving her a little jerk. “You're holding up better than I thought. You ever seen a man die before?”

She shakes her head, giving shallow, stricken looks at the dead men on the floor. “I don't know. Maybe I'm just...numb. I'm scared, Chris. What would've happened if you hadn't come through that door?”

“Nothing you ever need to worry about,” I growl into her ear. “As long as we're in this town, you're not stepping out of my sight. You drank too much and I let you get away. That's my mistake, babe, the only one I'll make on this trip. I don't do repeats. Keep your fingers wrapped around mine and let's get the fuck out of here.”

I lead her to the door, reaching down for my knife at the very end. One more quick rinse and it's clean enough. I also shove my hands into the pockets of the dead men, looking for ID. Predictably, there's nothing.

Good.

We need to get back to the hotel ASAP so I can clean up better.

I don't bother doing shit about the bodies. There are murders in this town every week, and this place is totally abandoned. By the time they stink enough for anybody to notice, my DNA will be untraceable, and if anybody identifies these sorry fucks, they'll never know a thing.

She doesn't say a word while we're outside, me holding her close, hailing the nearest cab. I step out and bang on the hood to make sure it stops. The driver looks irked, but he lets us in without a complaint.

On the ride back to our room, a bitter smile crosses my face. I'm a damned fool for worrying about screwing up her head with sex. Now, I'll be lucky if she doesn't need therapy just to live down this night.

There's only one thing ahead that'll sweep the agony of danger and murder away. Tonight.

No bullshit's getting between us. I don't care what the hell's going through her psyche every time I shove my fingers through her soft dark hair, stroking her while she's curled up against me, trying to forget what just happened.

She can, and she will. I'll make her. I'll erase every filthy mark left by their fingers on her gorgeous body, and then I'll leave her something to remember forever.

Watching me kill those motherfuckers is gonna be a footnote by the end of the week. After I'm done showing her all the things I can do to her, she'll have too much sex on the brain to ever understand the word 'murder' again.

“Eat, babe. You need to. You'll feel like shit tomorrow.” Okay, so it's not as easy as I thought.

When we get back to the hotel, I order the fanciest shit, and room service brings it up on two huge carts. She picks at her lobster bisque and takes tiny bites of bread, setting them down every few seconds like she's about to be sick.

“Was all that just normal to you?” Delia looks up, her eyes wide and bright, rippling. “I mean, is this what it's like to be a SEAL? Killing without hesitation?”

“I don't hesitate when I've got a mission that needs to be done. Every man on a SEAL Team makes a pact with God, the universe, whatever you want to call it when he signs up. It's their job to sort the rights and wrongs. It's ours to serve justice and follow orders.”

I throw a glass of wine down my gullet and then dig into my steak. My eyes flick across her chest, admiring how her tits bounce every time she draws a deep breath.

Killing those bastards hasn't done shit to my appetites – neither of them. It's Delia I'm worried about, and I need her to get something in her belly.

The brain can survive any trauma as long as it's got the bare essentials. It's plastic, one of many things we learn in BUD/s training, and the same truth goes double for civilians.

“This is the first time you've killed outside the force, isn't it?” she says, shaking her head. “Jesus, I'm sorry. This is my fault. I shouldn't have fallen behind you, Chris. If I hadn't stopped to look inside that scummy old theater –“

“The next sounds I hear coming outta your mouth better be chewing, babe.” My fist hits the small black dining table in our room with a bang. “I don't need your apologies. Nobody does. Those freaks I mopped up are the only ones who should be sorry for fucking with our special night, and they're too dead now for remorse. You didn't do a damned thing. I let you wander.”

“No, no.” Her gorgeous brown eyes pinch shut. She scratches at her bread and dunks it in the orange tinted bisque, swirling it like paint. “This is my fault. Everything, Chris. You know I wanted to pump you for information? I wanted to get into a SEAL's world, find out what makes you tick. I wanted to use you like my pet project for my senior thesis, to see a SEAL's psychology when he's not on the clock.”

I swallow a big bite of my steak and grin. She really thinks I'm clueless, doesn't she? It would be cute, if it wasn't so pathetic.

“I know all about your senior project. You're a bad tease, Delia. I played along to get into your panties. I don't give a shit what you write, as long as it's not classified. Nobody walking around without a trident patch on their skin knows shit. It's all fantasy to them, all pop culture, and I'm okay with you serving up exactly what they want to hear.”

She sighs. “I wanted to do something more. Get to the truth of all this, I mean. It's not just the project...I want to know you. I meant that the first time I ever told you, and I still do.”

I reach across the table and clasp her hand. “You will. Don't let the shit that happened in the theater take anything away. That's up to us. Now, you done playing confessional, or are you gonna drag your bread through that soup 'til it's cold?”

She shoots me a grudging smile and finally lifts it to her lips. I watch her chew, trying to keep my cock from splitting the seams in my trousers.

Fuck, those lips are kissable, biteable, and everything in between. I've tasted her before, but never as deeply as I want, and tonight's day one of gorging myself on everything quintessentially Delia.

Good girl.
I need to keep her eating, so I decide to distract her with something more pleasant.

“Once you get writing, I hope you realize it's not all about death and destruction being a SEAL.”

She quirks her eyebrows, wondering what I'm getting at. “Oh. Yeah, I'm sure you guys boast about your women all the time...”

I laugh. “Not a lot of memorable fucks against the other shit guys get into on their off hours. This one mission, a new recruit snuck contraband rum on the last day of our training exercise in the Aleutians. He was so trashed by the next morning he tried to put the moves on a walrus.”

She laughs. She needs it, and so do I. Her happiness is sexy, a medicine we both need to bleach the dead men from our skulls.

I go into detail, telling her about how the idiot got down with the beasts, and almost got a tusk through his face before we pulled him away.

Somewhere in between the giggling, she's pushing steak and glazed asparagus into her mouth. Perfect.

I don't let her have more than half a glass of wine with her food. Letting too much booze into her veins could set her off all over again, even though it's starting to feel like a halfway normal evening. I work her with jokes and stories, trying to focus on her sweet face instead of the cleavage spilling out her top.

“Chris – stop! You're going to make me choke.” She kicks her legs underneath the table, brushing her bare foot against my leg. Lust starts seething in my hot veins.

I tell her about a soccer game we played with these kids in Afghanistan, and how we let them beat us, rewarding them handsomely in all the chocolate rations Uncle Sam gave us that month.

It's the least we could do after half of them lost their dads, executed by the Taliban fucks who rolled through their town before the military sent in my team for cleanup. I keep that last part to myself.

Even if it weren't classified, she doesn't need more melancholy shit tonight. She needs laughter, passion, my mouth all over her body.

I keep talking. She can't stop smiling, pecking at her food. I don't let her stop – not 'til she's happy and satisfied every damned way I know how to make a woman. Maybe even a few I haven't tried yet.

I reach underneath the table, grab her foot, and hold it in my lap. My hand works her arch, admiring its beauty. It's impossible not to think about the way her toes are curling soon, wrapped around my ass while I drive my hips hard between her legs.

Fuck.

“I never realized SEALs kicked back so much,” she says, her laughter fading as she notices my hand massaging up her ankle. “I'm not going to lie – I thought you were just an arrogant jackass when we first met.”

“Still am,” I tell her with a shrug. “Yeah, we're America's finest, but we've gotta have our fun. I also know exactly what I want in life, and I don't have time for anybody or anything who gets in my way.”

Her smile softens. I think she understands, even if I'm ruining the five minute head trip where she saw another side to me than badass killer.

I don't care about giving her a glimpse. But I'm not doing illusions either. I'm still Chris Cleveland, and there's nothing more I want right now than to finally fuck this girl, burn everything wicked and wild out of our systems for good.

I polish off the last of my wine and stand up, heading over to her. “You still want that brownie sundae? It's huge, even for me, and I'll need your help if I put the order in.”