To Tempt a SEAL (Sin City SEALs 1)

Chapter One

Dresses like this lead to fantasy sex in a Vegas hotel room.

Lucia stood in front of the hotel room’s full-length mirror and repeated her new mantra, determined to erase the what ifs that had followed her around for the past few weeks. What if she arrived in Vegas and the designer creation no longer fit like a second skin? What if she looked in the hotel room mirror and saw the girl she’d been six month ago? Overweight. Afraid…

She forced herself to look at her reflection in the mirror. She was still more curvy than model-thin, but the red bandage-style cocktail dress would disguise any remaining flaw. Her gaze stopped just short of her face, the one thing no amount of dieting or exercise would hide. Thank God tonight’s party had a Venetian Carnival theme—masks required. Identities secret. Flaws hidden. Anyone she met tonight wouldn’t have to know who she was. Who she used to be.

She placed her mask over her face and looked at herself again.

The dress offered promises of heated glances across a crowded restaurant. And later, strong male hands determined to peel the fabric off her body. One look at this dress and the man of her fantasies would fall to his knees and give her an orgasm that she would remember for the rest of her life.

This would work. This had to work.

Of course, she first had to leave her hotel suite and find Mr. Fantasy. She picked up her clutch and headed for the door, armed with her wallet, a strip of condoms, and the pink Post-it note she’d written the night she’d decided to attend the restaurant opening. Her top four fantasies. If—no, when—she found the right man, she would check off the items on her list one by one.

Navigating the hotel’s mazelike casino floor in her heels proved a challenge, but she made it to Glitterati, Vegas’s newest and hottest Italian restaurant. And then she froze.

It looked as if everyone had jumped at the chance to wear a mask. Waiters moved through the crowd, offering bubbly and bite-size samples from the chef’s menu. Hundreds of beautiful people milled about the space.

She reached up and touched her mask. Tonight, she belonged with them. For the first time in ten years, she could blend in with a crowd.

Her fingers found the place where the hand-painted creation from Venice stopped, revealing her skin. The dimensions needed to be just right to hide the jagged scars on her right cheek that sent men running away from her instead of wondering how she’d look in their bed. Even now, she couldn’t believe what had possessed her foster father to take a knife to her face. But tonight, she would escape that dark past and the fear that no one wanted her. No one desired her.

This was her chance to step outside the box she’d built around her sheltered life. Tonight, all her months of planning, exercising, denying herself her go-to comfort foods—tonight, it would all pay off.

Tonight, someone would race toward her.

Tonight, she would live her life.

She stepped into Glitterati, accepted a glass from a waiter, and headed for the back, where the series of abstract paintings hung on the walls. She’d never met the artist, but she’d been a fan of his work since she started painting.

Vibrant colors streaked across the canvas in a layered chaos. The paintings spoke to the type of life she dreamed about living. The kind of person she wished she could be—bold and daring.

“Don’t tell me you came for the artwork,” a deep, masculine voice said from behind her. She closed her eyes briefly, sucking in a sharp breath at the sound that seemingly had a direct line to the parts of her body craving male attention.

Wow, that was fast. Good job, dress.

“What else would I come for?” she replied without turning to face him.

“I don’t know about you, but my eye’s been on a table filled with chocolate five feet away,” the mystery man said.

Chocolate. She opened her eyes. Melt-in-your-mouth sugary goodness came a close second to orgasms on her list of wants.

“What kind of chocolate?” She kept her gaze fixed on the bold red brushstrokes running through the center of the first painting.

He chuckled. “I didn’t look too closely. Does it matter?”

“The details are always important.” Like if the man behind her filled out his suit with a body that promised to make her dreams for tonight a reality. “Milk chocolate tastes different from dark. Do they have fillings that melt in your mouth or ones that explode with flavor?”

She felt him move closer. His heat merging with hers. Without the mask, she might have caught a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye, enough to know if the man matched the panty-melting voice.

“You like things that explode in your mouth?” he said, the words a low growl in her ear.

“Yes.” This man could read the phone book and leave her breathless and brimming with desire. But she wanted more than words tonight.

So she turned to face him.

And oh, God help h

er, she needed a taste of this man. Her lips refused to form the words “but I’m partial to caramel,” because one look and she was partial to him.

Mr. Panty-Melting Voice had a body that begged to be explored, worshipped, and painted. From his square jaw to the way he filled out his tuxedo, he looked as if he was auditioning to be the next James Bond. Maybe he was. This was Vegas, only a hop, skip, and a jump from Hollywood. And in her humble opinion, his short brown hair and green eyes were a lethal combination.

Move over, Daniel Craig…

“I’ve been watching you stare at those paintings for the last few minutes,” he said, his full lips offering a hint of a smile beneath his plain black mask. “Without even glancing at the chocolate fountain.”

“There’s a fountain?” She heard the note of longing in her voice. Chocolate, carbs—those had topped the list of diet no-no’s for the past six months. But tonight, everything was on the table.

“Yes. You might have noticed if you had moved from this spot. So I have to ask, are you waiting for your date? A boyfriend?”

“No.” Her breath caught on the one word. This man had to be someone—a movie star, a model, the perfect male specimen—he couldn’t be for her.

But the thought of walking away and finding another man to explore her fantasies? Impossible. In her mind, she would hear this stranger’s voice. She’d spend the next forty-eight hours craving the deep sound, wishing she could listen to him murmur sweet nothings in her ear as they acted out her fantasies—or even better, his fantasies. If she walked away from him now, she would spend every minute until sunrise wondering about his top four, though she had a feeling he didn’t carry around a pink Post-it note with his wicked desires spelled out.

“Good,” he said, exuding honest-to-God charisma as he offered his arm. “Would you care to join me for a drink from the fountain?”

She placed her hand on his forearm and felt his muscles through the layers of his tux. Seriously, what did this man do that left him with a body to rival Hollywood’s finest?

Chocolate first, then questions, she decided. If he said “serial killer,” she’d at least have something to drown her sorrows. “So…”