He shrugged. “Randall. After my dad.”
“Was he a SEAL, too?”
“He didn’t stick around after I was born. It was just my mom and me.”
“That sounds like it might have sucked.”
“Only sometimes,” he said softly. “I was a trailer park kid in a farming community. My mom worked her ass off to put food on the table and keep the electric on. We might have had canned peaches instead of fresh, but she did the best she could even if sometimes the canned stuff came from the church pantry and not the grocery store.”
“She sounds special.”
“Uh-huh. I gave her plenty of hell. Fighting came easier than words, and between the kids at school and my cousins, I was always fighting.”
The words came sliding out before she could bite them back. “So how did you become a SEAL?”
“My cousins and I, we ran as a pack, got into trouble as a pack. We rode bikes from an early age, made the highway our racetrack. My oldest cousin got himself in trouble with a neighbor’s daughter. I never did find out exactly what he’d done, but her dad and his decided it was my cousin’s golden opportunity to enlist in the US Navy. It was the only get-out-of-jail-free card they’d give him, and he took it. And where he went, I went.”
“To BUD/S and the SEALs.”
He grinned. “I may have taken it a little further than my cousin.”
* * *
“IT’S YOUR TURN.” She stared up at him expectantly. “Pick a drink. Share your fantasy with me.”
Not in a million years. He shouldn’t have come here, but apparently, self-control and restraint were words that didn’t apply when he was around Laney. Unless the restraint in question was a pair of fur-lined handcuffs. Who knew the gift shop stocked novelty items like that?
He’d grown up on the wrong side of the tracks—hell, he’d driven his bike down the track at eighty miles an hour and played chicken with the oncoming train. Laney had no idea what she was unleashing if she dared him to name his fantasies. Still, her naughty grin was contagious. If she wanted to play, he was game. “A Short Southern Screw?”
“Ugh.” She made a face. “What makes sex Southern versus Northern? Or Eastern or Western?”
Good question, but one he couldn’t answer. Next suggestion. “Ball and Chain?”
“Sounds like a bad wedding joke.” Her smile died, and tracking down her ex-fiancé moved to the top of his to-do list.
“Bikini Line? Cowboy Up? Geisha?”
“You’re into costumes and having sex incognito? Oh. Right. Covert SEAL op. Check, check and check.”
He’d had her already tonight and it seemed as if she was offering seconds. Except that wasn’t how he really thought of her. She wasn’t a count or a notch on his belt, or even a hot woman who’d come on to him. She was just Laney.
His Laney.
And that scared him more than a little. So, yeah, he had fantasies. He’d fantasized about taking her a dozen different ways, each kinkier than the last. Tying her up, spreading her open, licking and sucking and tonguing her until she came. Then he’d do it all over again. Maybe the drink he should be ordering was the Green-Eyed Monster, because when he thought about her douche-bag ex, he wanted to rip the man apart. Mostly because he’d hurt Laney, but also because Gray was jealous. The J word.
He was never jealous, any more than he was monogamous, committed, or any other relationship word. In fact, he and Laney didn’t really have a relationship. They had sex. Hot, rough, mind-blowing sex. He shouldn’t want anything more. But he looked at her and he wasn’t empty or emotionless. He was the opposite. She made him feel too goddamned much, and he’d picked a hell of a time to figure that out, too. Sex with a near-stranger was more his style, a meaningless hookup that meant he didn’t have to worry about pleasing an exclusive lover.
He didn’t want to have fantasy-suite date-night sex or whatever the reality TV shows were calling it these days. He just wanted...Laney. Wanted to hear the soft, whimpering noises she made, lose himself in her smile. Danger. He wasn’t emotionally attached. He couldn’t be.
“Maybe we could skip the fantasy stuff and just...”
“Have normal sex?”
“That, too,” he said, knowing he sounded gruff. But damn, was he really going to use the words making love?
“You have a fantasy about doing it missionary style?” A smile curved her lips. Jesus. He needed to make a strategic retreat.
“What’s wrong with making love face-to-face?” He rolled over, pinning her beneath him. Maybe he needed to be more show and less tell.