The SEAL's Second Chance: An Alpha Ops Novella by Anne Calhoun Read Free Book Online Page B

roots. Classic Craftsman homes occupied lots all over the East Side, but Charlie’s was recently renovated. Fresh paint, new windows. He wondered if she’d added home renovation to her skill set, chosen the colors, opened up the living space, stripped and sanded the hardwood floors. It wouldn’t have surprised him. When Charlie made up her mind to do something, it happened.
    If she didn’t make up her mind that they were happening, it wouldn’t matter how deeply, madly, truly he wanted her. They wouldn’t happen.
    Her breath hitched, then shuddered back out again. She slept like a mummy, her arms crossed over her chest, her loosely curled fists jammed up under her chin. The sheet was caught under her arm, revealing only the upper curve of her firm breast, but that was enough. Her musculature was so erotic, sensitive skin over toned curves, the dip and swell of shoulder, collarbone so tempting to touch, but he didn’t want to wake her. So he left bare millimeters between his fingertips and her shoulder, then the strong line of her jaw, the delicate hairs on the secret curve of her ear when Pitbull’s “Time of Our Lives” blared into the pearly morning light.
    He jerked his hand away. Charlie’s eyes popped open, wide, startled, staring up at him blankly.
    “It’s Jamie,” he said.
    Her eyebrows pulled down. “Did you forget your own name over night? I know who you are,” she said, her voice husky with sleep.
    Jamie snorted, then looked at the clock. 6:27 a.m. “Why six twenty-seven? Why not six twenty-five or six thirty?”
    She rolled over, pulling the sheet up as far as it would go before reaching overhead and stretching. Laid out from tiptoes to fingertips she was longer than the bed. It was kind of crazy hot.
    “Six thirty is too late. Six twenty-five is too early. If I can get two more minutes of sleep, I’m going to get it,” she said, then reached out and swiped Pitbull into silence.
    “I take it this is a precisely calibrated morning routine?” he asked, amused.
    “It is. Run, shower, slam down a protein bar on the way to school.” She sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. In the filmy light her spine was a series of delicate knobs bracketed by the ridges of muscles he associated with SEALs and bodybuilders.
    He steeled himself for a brush-off, figuring she wouldn’t want to run together early in the morning when someone might see them. Instead, she scrubbed at her scalp with her fingertips, loosening her hair even more, then looked over her shoulder at him. “I can make an exception,” she said, softly, as close to hesitant as he’d ever seen her.
    He reached out and set two fingers at the tops of her shoulder blades, then trailed them down the valley on either side of her spine to the twin divots at the base. “You sure?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    He reached around her waist and hauled her back into bed, wasting no time getting her under him. School started at 8:05 come hell or high water, and she couldn’t be late. He splayed his hand on the side of her face and kissed her sleep-swollen mouth, nudging her lips open with his, touching his tongue tentatively to hers, waiting for her response to morning breath before he went any further.
    Her response was to open her mouth and lick into his, all teeth and tongue and demand. His cock, half-erect, hardened in two beats of his heart, and he rubbed against the taut curve of her hip as he dragged his hand down her face to her throat. She moaned, a sound he felt under his palm as he heard it, and wrapped one arm around his waist and the other around his shoulder, shifting and squirming to position him.
    “Shh,” he whispered against her mouth, then kissed his way along her jaw to her ear as he skimmed the backs of his fingers down her sternum, taking the sheet with him as he went. He left it at the tops of her thighs, then reversed direction and cupped her sex. The soft folds parted easily for his fingers, and he dipped into the