Chapter Seven

 

~ FREYA ~

 

It’s best that we barely spoke yesterday. Really it is. Especially since Mason has no clue just how much that kiss of his affected me the other night.

While he’d journeyed back to the kitchen to eat dinner, apparently unaffected by the kiss that just rocked my world, my heart was still palpitating as I sat down to my computer and tried to put into words what I’d just experienced.

And truth be known, I kind of had to finish myself off right then and there.

If he ever found that out, I’d never hear the end of it. His ego would get so big it would need its own zip code.

So I’d kept quiet yesterday, even when my fingers itched to call and see how his day was going as he tied up loose ends before his move.

He’s leaving on Saturday. Saturday. I still can’t quite wrap my head around that fact.

After twenty-four hours of near silence between us, I decided I was ready to face him again. I don’t want our time together to end awkwardly. And even though I doubt he felt a damn thing the other night, I need to remind myself that all I feel for him is that of friendship.

And to do that, I need to face him.

So I texted him last night and asked him if he wanted a fried chicken picnic along the water on the other side of the Naval Academy. The place is kind of special for us because it’s where he’d envisioned my SEAL shifter team would be located. It’s a part of the Academy that most people don’t even know exists except for the families who live in the housing there. The commissary is there and the barber where Mason gets those too-short haircuts every week to stay in compliance. There’s a bunch of hiking trails, and more deer than imaginable.

It’s probably the last chance I’ll get to have a picnic with him, since tomorrow night is his farewell party. So I need to take advantage.

“You’re not going to make me tie you up again?” he asks immediately as I climb into his SUV.

I feel the hot blush all over my body. “Promise I won’t.”

“Good. But if you get the urge to, I’m not laying a hand on you until after I’ve eaten this time.”

I laugh; Mason always does have a way of making me feel at ease in any situation. If I could find a dateable guy who made me feel that way, I swear I’d never let him go.

My stomach does an odd little lurch as I fasten my seatbelt, remembering that Mason is dateable now. And so am I, for that matter.

But he’s leaving Saturday, so I can’t even begin to go there.

Or can I?

After parking, I unload the basket—yes, I really do have a wicker basket for these occasions—and he carries it as I trot alongside him, always struggling to keep up with his long strides.

I douse myself with bug repellent as I walk. With all the deer ticks around here, I’m mildly paranoid about Lyme disease. In my other free hand, I’ve got a tote bag with the newest scenes I wrote with his help. I know he’d want to see them. He always does. He takes more interest in my book than all three of my past boyfriends combined.

Glancing down at the bare part of his legs, I can’t help noticing the muscles, especially on his calves. After the kiss the other night, it seems to have heightened my appreciation for them in ways I’m not ready to face. My eyes drift upward to his right arm, with his muscles bulging slightly from the weight of the basket loaded with food. I find myself wondering what it would feel like to have that arm wrapped around my side, holding me tight against him as we walk along the path, then turning me so that I can feel him flush against my body. My brain shifts.

 

Zander turned her, letting the hard planes of the muscles of his chest press against her breasts. She inhaled sharply, her taut nipples savoring the pressure of him against her. Her pelvis arched instinctively, feeling the ridge of his cock from behind his…

 

“Freya.”

I give myself a shake. I really need to stop drifting like that. “What?”

“I asked if you want to go to our usual spot.”

“Of course.” Swallowing, I shake the bug repellent and give him a spray as he walks.

He nearly stumbles. “God, I hate it when you chase me around with that stuff.”

“I need to spray you.”

“Bugs never bite me. I’m too thick-skinned.”

“Maybe, but you sure won’t be a good SEAL if you’re fighting the ravages of Lyme disease when you’re on your next mission.” My blood chills at the thought of it. Not the Lyme disease. The mission.

Odd—in all the time I’ve known him, he’s always been sitting behind a desk or standing in front of a bunch of mids for his job. I can’t say I like the idea of him in a war zone where people actually want to kill him.

The canopy of trees opens up to the light of day and the sight of the water greets us. He stops, dropping the basket to the ground only steps from the riverbank, and stands, legs and arms spread wide. “Fine. Spray me. Because I know you won’t shut up about it otherwise.” His voice is firm, but the glint in his eyes tells me that he might—just might—be grateful that I care.

We spread our blanket. “It’s our special place,” he says mockingly.

But he’s right. It is. He’s taken me here more times than I can count back when I was transforming my hero for that agent who said she might be interested in representing me if I turned Zander into a SEAL shifter.

Mason had literally fallen off his chair laughing when I told him what I’d planned to do to Zander. But after he chewed on the idea a while, he took me here.

We’ve been coming back ever since.

“Our shifter team headquarters,” Mason mused, glancing around the peaceful area. “You know, I’m surprised the government hasn’t built up here. It’s prime real estate.”

My smile was small, reminiscing. “I hope they never do.”

I glance away from the water toward the trees, remembering the building I had conjured in my brain and created on my laptop.

Our shifter headquarters would be subtle—not one of those behemoth government buildings you see at Fort Meade about twenty miles north of here. No, my shifter headquarters had to be more stealth than that—buried among these tall oaks, shielded from satellite images. I pictured picnic tables along the water, not because my shifters ever used them (shifters don’t do picnics), but to give the impression that the building might be used for recreational purposes only, not the base of a team of our nation’s most elite supernatural force.

This place inspires me every time—makes me want to capture its beauty in words and share it with the world. Even though the idea of a bunch of buildings filled with SEAL shifters is alluring, I kind of like this place just the way it is.

His smile widens as he looks at me. And those lips—I can’t help remembering what it felt like to have them brush against my skin. My core heats at the memory.

“What?” I dare to ask.

He gives his head a dismissive shake. “Nothing. It’s just cute how much you like it here.”

“It’s the setting of my book. Of course, the place would mean something to me.” But it’s more than that, even though I’d never tell him. I enjoy the memories I have of Mason here, sitting on these banks as I tapped in descriptive words into my laptop. There’s not a stone on the ground or a tree standing that I hadn’t taken note of while I revised my book. I have it all memorized, immortalized in a manuscript that is now in the hands of an agent.

Well, maybe not actually in her hands. But at least in her email on an attachment, waiting to be read.

“It’s the setting of one version of your book,” he corrects. “And as f’ed up as the idea of a shifter SEAL is, I did like it better than when you made Zander into a cowboy.”

I cringe, remembering that feeble version, edited in the span of a weekend when an online publisher launched an open call for cowboy romances. And even though Mason and I spent half a day watching John Wayne movies on Netflix, it wasn’t enough research to be able to pull it off.

That was one rejection that was well-deserved.

The water laps against the shore as he devours my fried chicken, like always, unrepentantly sucking every last ounce of meat and skin off the bones.

“When you get done with a chicken, there isn’t even a soul left,” I tell him, handing him a napkin so that he doesn’t soak my manuscript with grease after I hand it to him.

“When you get done with a chicken, it’s nothing short of magical. How am I going to survive on MREs again after this?”

It’s the first time I hear any regret in his voice when he talks about leaving Annapolis, and somehow it makes me feel a little better, just knowing that there’s some part of me that he’ll miss.

Because I’ll miss him. I’ll miss him more than I’ve missed any other man who’s left my life. And now that I know what his lips feel like against my own, I’ll miss him even more.

I take in the subtle curve of his mouth, the pinkish hue, the tiny freckle off to the right that I had never noticed in the two years of knowing him. But after having experienced those lips on me, I can’t help my slight obsession with them now.

I want it again, I decide. I want that crazy rush of hormones that I felt with the warmth of him pressed against me. I want to feel my breath catch in my lungs, almost a gasp as though that intake of oxygen might be my last. And I want it with a willing man. A willing Mason. Not a man kissing me to help me with some bizarre author research project.

If time could reverse itself, if I could have met him two years ago with that glorious sense of hindsight that we all crave, I would have dumped that loser I was dating at the time and snatched up Mason, hoping that the flare of passion with him might last as long as our friendship has.

Wait—did I really just think that?

“Okay, so, lay it on me.”

My eyes widen, still thinking about that kiss. “What?”

“The scenes. I’m here to read the new scenes, right?”

“Oh, right.” I reach into my tote and pull out a small stack of papers. I always feel vulnerable when I hand him my work, because I know for a fact that he’ll tell me if it’s bad. Lord knows he has before.

I watch him stretch out on our picnic blanket, his arm behind his head like a pillow. My scenes block the sun from his face as he holds the pages above his head.

Lips pressing together unconsciously, I stand there quietly, not knowing what else to do. I should have brought my laptop. It’s a good place to write—here in the woods along the water.

“Hey, I like this line,” he says.

I dart over to him, excited. He doesn’t overdo praise like my mom does (not that I’d ever have my mom read my manuscript), so when he says something positive, I know it’s for real. “What line?”

“The line about watching a million sunsets together. It’s a nice image. But—”

Why did I know there would be a but?

“—they can’t have a million sunsets together. No one lives that long.”

“I was being metaphorical.”

“Yeah, I know. But wouldn’t it sound better if it was more realistic? Say they live fifty years together, that would be…” His eyes dart to the right like they always do when he’s calculating. “Around eighteen thousand.”

“Eighteen thousand sunsets sounds lame.”

“So round up. Maybe twenty thousand sunsets.”

I picture the words in my brain, knowing them as well as I do.

 

Genevieve wanted it—the joy of watching twenty thousand sunsets with this man at her side…

 

 “I like it. It almost sounds more poetic. Twenty thousand sunsets.”

Grinning, I take a few steps away from him, finding a large rock along the bank to sit on—not quite large enough to call itself a boulder. The water is murky just inches away from my feet and I’m tempted to pull off my shoes and dip my toes in. I see something scurry along the bottom of the water, a crab perhaps, but the water is too clouded to know for certain.

“Have you ever been crabbing?” I call out over my shoulder.

He drops the pages to his chest and lifts his head slightly to look at me. “Sure. Lots of times. Haven’t you?”

“No. Never,” I reply.

“I’ll take you sometime,” he says flippantly, lifting the pages again to resume reading. And I know he will. He never says anything without meaning it.

That’s the nice thing about my friendship with Mason these past two years. We’d always make plans and actually do them. It’s different when I’ve been in relationships because I’d never known if it would survive the week… the month… the year. There were always those things that we’d say we’d do, that we never did before the whole thing imploded.

That’s the way it might have been with Mason if I’d slept with him that first night we met. And Lord, I was tempted, believe me.

A smile touches my lips as I recall our first meeting at O’Toole’s two years ago. He’d been a feast for my eyes—every bit as handsome as that picture he’d posted online. He’d flirted with me unrepentantly, pulling out every line he could to get me to stop interviewing him for my book and start drooling on his every word like all the other women in O’Toole’s that night.

But I was dating someone then—Rob—no, Todd—that was it. He was such a waste of three—maybe four months of my dating life. So forgettable.

Mason, on the other hand, was not.

“What the hell is this?” Mason’s voice slices through my reverie, bringing me back to the present.

“What?”

He reads, “‘She slid her palms against the supple leather seats of his Lamborghini.’”

I bite my lip, knowing the shit is about to hit the fan. “Um, they’re having sex in his car,” I reply innocently.

“Well, no kidding they’re in his car. But a Lamborghini? What SEAL owns a Lamborghini living on a government paycheck?”

“I kind of had to make him a billionaire.”

“A billionaire?” The two words fall from his lips like concrete blocks.

“That’s what’s selling these days.” I toss him a meek shrug.

He moves over to me, carrying my pages in his tight grasp. “There are no SEAL billionaires.”

I bristle, his words sounding more like an accusation. “Well, billionaires sell books these days. Besides, this is fiction, Mason. There aren’t any SEAL shifters, either. But you didn’t mind brainstorming how we could work that angle in.”

“For the record, you liquored me up on Scotch to get that job done.” He sets down my pages on the shoreline and sits, barely able to squeeze onto the large rock beside me, so close that his body heats every part of me—and some parts more than others.

The rock shifts under our weight.

“And it turned out great. I still might get an agent out of it.” If I ever hear back from her, I add in my mind, choosing not to express those words aloud. I can feel the weight of the six months that have passed since I resubmitted my manuscript to her. My eyes fix on his lips, as though I need a distraction, and so close to me, I’m mesmerized by them, remembering the feel of them on my mouth… my neck… my navel.

“A SEAL doesn’t need to be a billionaire to attract someone.”

No, I think, my eyes still lured by mouth. He definitely does not.

Swallowing, I force myself to look out toward the water, watching a kayaker slicing through the river about seventy feet from us. “I know that. You know that. But I just needed a little something to get agents’ attention. I doubt I would have heard back from this latest one if I didn’t write about a billionaire SEAL.”

“You could have run it by me first.”

Ah. So that’s where this is coming from. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to bug you about it. It was right after we finished the shifter edits and I thought your head might explode if I asked you for help with it. And I knew you’d hate the idea.”

“You were right about that. How’d he get his first billion by the ripe old age of twenty-eight, huh?”

“It’s his family’s money. I figured that would be more believable.”

Reaching for a stick floating in the water, his lips press together. I feel badly till a slight grin teases at one side of his mouth.

“And he broke away from what the family wanted him to do to be a SEAL,” he finishes for me, knowing my creative mind so well it’s as though he can read it.

“Yeah. Is it horrible?”

He dips the stick into the water and flicks it to his left, splattering me.

“Hey,” I warn him. If I’d wanted to get wet, I’d have worn my bathing suit.

He flicks more water upward, the splash landing on my shirt.

“It’s not horrible,” he finally says, answering my prior question. “And it got you noticed by an agent. A Lamborghini,” he snorts. “For God’s sake, let me at least change the make of the car. A Special Ops guy might spring for a Corvette Z06. But no more than that. And mention they’ve got the top down, because there’s no back seat, if you know what I mean.” He flicks the stick again, this time making the water reach my face.

My eyes narrow as I wipe my mouth, tasting the brackish water. “Oh, you asked for it,” I say, pushing him as hard as I can till he topples off the rock and into the water. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it, and my eyes widen at the sight of him, soaked from the waist down.

“You are toast,” he growls, reaching for me.

I bolt off the rock and race onto solid land, knowing he’s already right behind me. He grabs me from my middle and I’m laughing so hard, even as he swoops me into his arms. Struggling, I give in to his strength, deciding begging is my only option.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I shout amid my peals of laughter.

“This is for every SEAL who never wanted to be a shifter or a BDSM-loving billionaire who spends six damn pages on foreplay,” he bellows, tossing me into the water.

I press my eyes shut as the water strikes my face. There goes my makeup. And my hair. And I swear I feel a crab pinch my foot for a moment as I stand up on the murky ground. My t-shirt clings to me and I blush when I see my nipples are hard. I tug at the shirt, putting some air between my skin and the cotton.

I’m going to kill him.

“You are cruel.” I launch myself at him, my hands clinging to his shoulders trying to pull him into the water. But he doesn’t budge. He’s ready for me this time.

“Not a chance,” he says.