Breaking His Code (Away From Keyboard Book 1) Read online

  With my arousal sweet on his tongue, I can’t get enough of him, and I rock my hips closer, though he threatens to split me in two. So lost in the pleasure building again, I don’t even notice when he breaks the kiss, but as his teeth close over my nipple, I arch, and the movement urges his cock just where I need him to be. Keening cries reach my ears, and I don’t recognize them as my own until he kisses me again and the sound fades.

  Our sweat-slicked bodies move with a punishing rhythm, each thrust taking me higher. When I don’t think I can stand another moment, West reaches down and flicks my clit. I fly apart, and a heartbeat later, he joins me.

  WEST

  Lights twinkle all along the Seattle Wheel. Why the city decided to erect a Ferris Wheel on the waterfront I’ll never understand, but the red, white, and blue lights—leftover from the 4th of July, make for a romantic backdrop as I slide my hand down Cam’s back.

  After kayaking on Lake Union, I brought her to the Pinball Museum, where I learned to never bet against her. Down eight games to one, I wagered the rest of the night on a single run of an obscure Lord of the Rings machine.

  “Truth now, angel. You let me win that last game, didn’t you?”

  She glances up at me, her dark brown eyes nearly black as the last purple streaks in the sky fade into the night. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A hint of a smile curves her lips. “That dwarf came out of nowhere to redirect my ball.”

  Pausing at the railing so we can stare out over Elliot Bay, I draw her against me—her back pressed to my chest, my arms around her waist. “When I’m with you, nothing else matters.“

  She turns and tips her face up. Our lips are only inches apart, and the hint of aroused woman tickles my nose. Her brows draw together in confusion, and I ache to smooth the wrinkle away. “West, last night, you were—“

  Her mouth curves into a frown, and I slide my fingers into her hair, pull her closer, and crush my lips to hers. If I go back to last night, I’ll stay there, in the dark and despair of one too many nightmares, one too many bills to pay. My time with Cam is too precious. She tastes of the scotch we ordered with dessert, along with a hint of chocolate. As I deepen the kiss, she yields to my desires—and her own. Short nails scrape over my shoulders, down my back, and when she grinds her hips against me, I can’t help my groan.

  “You won the bet, soldier. What do you want to do now?” She palms the painful bulge in my cargo shorts, glancing around quickly to ensure no one’s watching our rather public foreplay.

  “God, Cam.” I can’t think when she touches me. “Let’s get out of here. …”

  Stretched out on her side, her arms wrapped around one of my pillows, Cam sighs in her sleep. The blindfold and soft cuffs I bought on a hunch hang from the headboard, the memory of her screaming my name, her hands gently bound above her head soothing the monster inside me. How can I sleep knowing I could wake up to find myself on the floor, huddled in my closet, or worse—with a weapon in my hands ready to fight?

  I brush a kiss to her bare shoulder. “I’m falling for you, angel. Might be halfway to loving you.”

  She stirs at my whisper, but settles again without opening her eyes. With the hours she’s been working lately, she needs the sleep, so I grab my pillow and settle on the floor next to the bed. I’ve half a mind to sleep on the couch, but the less comfortable I am, the less likely I am to have nightmares. Survivor’s guilt, my therapist says.

  One quick stretch to flick off the lamp, and darkness blankets the room, broken only by the single shaft of moonlight illuminating my angel.

  Waves of pain race up my legs, my ankle shattering as I fall through the floor to the hard-packed dirt below. I grunt, ignoring the agony. If you can’t hoof it a mile on a broken leg, you’re not cut out to be a SEAL. At least that’s what my CO always said. Something rattles next to me, and I’m instantly on alert, coming to a crouch, only then realizing I’m naked. In my bedroom. Prepared to defend myself against the nightstand.

  “West?” Cam’s sleepy voice penetrates the thick smoke that threatens to choke me. “Where are—?“

  Shaking my head, I clear the last vestiges of the nightmare. Smitty isn’t really dead two feet away, the room isn’t burning around me, and the primary scent in the room isn’t blood, but Cam. My ass hits the floor, and when my head slams into the nightstand, the lamp rattles.

  “Down here.”

  Sheets rustle, followed by a muffled curse, and then she’s looking down at me, her mussed curls tangled around her face. “Are you sleeping on the floor?”

  Thick strands of carpet dig into my knees as I stretch to flip on the light. “Yeah.” The lump in my throat strangles my reply, and I clear my throat. “Just…easier.”

  “Easier?” Her voice lowers, her slight accent thickens. With a groan, she eases herself off the bed and starts limping around for her clothes. “We don’t have to sleep together. I can go home.”

  “No.” My plea sounds rougher than I intend, and she stops with her panties clutched in her hand. “I get nightmares, Cam. All the time. Hell, I haven’t had a woman in my bed overnight for two years. I didn’t want to hurt you.” I can’t look at her, but warm fingers wrap around my wrist and tug me up to the mattress.

  “Look at me,” she says. “I didn’t get a solid night’s sleep for three years after the bombs. Between the pain and the nightmares, I resembled a zombie—all the shuffling, groaning, and inability to form coherent sentences. A few more months, and I probably would have developed a taste for brains.”

  After a pause, she jabs me in the arm with her elbow. “Oh, come on. That was a little funny.” When I meet her worried gaze with a weak grin, she reaches over to cup my cheek. “I know nightmares. The meds help with the arthritis and the nerve pain, but nothing erases the terror of being unable to move while fire eats through your protective gear. Nightmares don’t frighten me.”

  She’d never explained how she’d been hurt—just “blown up trying to diffuse a bomb.” The ghosts of fear play in her eyes, and I wrap my arms around her naked body, relishing in the feel of her soft, warm curves against my chilled skin.

  “I could hurt you. I’ve woken at the foot of the bed, even across the room. When I have a serious attack, I find the sheets and pillows on the floor. What if I kick you?” Barely able to manage a whisper, I grit my teeth to stop myself from shivering.

  “Then you’ll have to drive me home and carry me into my condo, where you’ll wait on me hand and foot for the few hours it takes my meds to kick in.”

  She’s grinning now, but I can’t help flinching, and her smile fades. “West, there are a lot of things I can’t do.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Dancing, running, mountain climbing, snowboarding… But I’m not fragile. I have pain. With all of the titanium, staples, and plastic in my body, I’m almost indestructible. Trust me.”

  I know she’s not a china doll. Not a broken bird who needs protecting. Doesn’t stop me from wanting to try. I nod, then snag my pillow off the floor. Once I’ve turned off the light, I stretch out on my back, as far from Cam as the king bed will allow.

  “Not much better, soldier.” Her hand slides over my abs, and her arm brushes my shaft.

  “Cam, I don’t think—”

  “Maybe you need some incentive.” She hums, halfway between a sigh and a moan as she drapes her luscious body on top of mine. At the first swivel of her hips, I’m lost.

  “Don’t start something…you can’t finish.” Aching to bury myself deep inside her, I cup her breast, drag my thumb over her peaked nipple.

  She feathers kisses along my neck, closes her teeth over my ear lobe, and grinds her hips again. “Oh,” she whispers against my cheek, “I can finish. Indestructible, remember?”

  11

  CAM

  West’s bedroom looks out over a verdant backyard, and we’re on our second cup of coffee in bed when I trail my fingers over the stars and stripes that arc across his ribs. Names unfurl in an almost delicate scr
ipt: Fox, Baxter, Hawk, and Smitty.

  “Your team?”

  He sucks in a breath, making the flag twitch under my hand. For a long moment the only sound in the room is his ragged breathing as his skin chills under my touch. “The ones I—we—lost. The entire squad.” After a sip of coffee, he sets the mug aside with a vaguely ill grunt and draws his leg up to rest an elbow on his knee. “My last op… Most of what we do—did—is classified. I can’t tell you where we were, what our objective was. Not in any detail.” He looks to me, seeking approval, and when I nod, he continues. “We were on a rescue mission. Two hostages and four hostiles. Or so we thought. We’d gotten bad intel. Walked into a fucking ambush. We’d trained for this, so we cleared the rooms one by one, taking heavy fire. Until the last room. They’d secured the hostages in a bedroom, down a long hall. The hostiles set off a bomb that brought down the building. Knocked me out, and when I came to, I couldn’t feel my arm.” He reaches for my hand, guiding my fingers to a thick scar just above his armpit. “Piece of rebar shattered the collar bone, pinned me to the floor. The hostages were dead, along with three of my men and a seventy-five-year-old woman and her granddaughter who were there as decoys. The last member of my team, Smitty, bled out in front of me.”

  Silence stretches between us, and he’s shaking, trapped in the memory. He doesn’t see me; his eyes are unfocused, watching his friend—his fellow SEAL—die all over again. I wrap my arms around him, but still, he trembles, and a keening moan escapes his pale lips. “West. Come back to me. Please.” I kiss him, run my hands up and down his arms. When he struggles free and meets my gaze, I tangle our legs under the blanket. “Were you in charge?”

  With a heavy sigh, he nods. “Led dozens of missions before that last one, and while we had some failures, no one had died under my watch until that day. The navy asked me if I’d come back, but I couldn’t. Not after failing my squad. Four funerals, four grieving families—not to mention the dead hostages. Put in for my discharge before I’d even left the hospital.”

  The skin of his back is cool under my palm, and I try to weigh what I'm supposed to say against what I’d feel if I were in his place. “Did you break protocol? Ignore a direct order or clear intel?”

  “No.” He meets my gaze, and the raw anguish that churns in the depths of his eyes twists my gut. “In my head, I know I’m not to blame. I’ve replayed that day a thousand times—and I live through it again most nights. The insurgents fed us lies, and someone higher up believed them. I still see Smitty lying in a pool of his own blood, gasping for breath, begging me to tell his mother that he loved her. No amount of therapy can erase that horror. You understand, don’t you?”

  Three times I open my mouth to tell him what happened to me, but I can’t. The pain wells up, and the lump in my throat threatens to choke me. Burnt flesh, smoke, the bitter scent of blood mixed with sand and dust surround me, tinging the beautiful spring day a dark copper—the color of the innards of my ruined bomb suit melting into my skin. He waits for my answer, and as the seconds tick by, my silence adds more bricks to the wall I’ve so carefully erected over the years.

  When I shock myself out of my hesitation, I nod—too quickly—and fiddle with the hem of the t-shirt he lent me. “After the bombs went off… They say your life flashes before you. Mine didn’t. Not until later. I see myself cutting wires, sweat pouring down my temples, and I wonder if I’d just stepped left instead of right… I can only imagine what my CO felt. Hell, he wouldn’t even come to see me in the hospital.” Even now, thinking back to the weeks I spent in that uncomfortable bed, each member of my team rotating in to visit to try to keep my spirits up, Royce’s absence crushes me.

  “Tell me what happened?” He strokes his hand down my bare thigh, over part of my leg I haven’t felt in ten years. I can’t do this. Not now. Instead of talking, I lean in and crush my lips to his, offering him everything I am—or at least everything I’m able to give.

  Cam,

  This module’s running perfectly for me. No unusual memory spikes or errors. Are you sure the problem isn’t somewhere else? I’m going to put in a few hours cabling with the crew, but I can help you out again after 7:00 p.m.

  -Lucas

  “Shit.” I down the remainder of my coffee—grocery store brew that doesn’t hold a candle to the macchiatos West made me this morning while naked—and shudder as I tip over the edge from productive to jittery. Four hours of debugging and I’m no closer to fixing Oversight.

  Take a look at the HVAC module next. I’m diving back into the core framework. Thanks, Lucas. How are Al and the guys doing?

  My laptop beeps as another error pops up on screen, politely informing me that the surveillance cameras will shut down in thirty seconds to conserve system resources. “Come on, baby. Talk to me. Tell me what’s got you so tied up in knots.”

  Half an hour later, a single line of code catches my eye—one I didn’t write. Like a treasure map, that line leads to another, and another, and soon I’ve found half a dozen modules with errors in them. Small, insignificant errors that add up to something much bigger.

  Hey Lucas,

  You worked on the clean-up module in the main framework, right? There’s something funky going on there. Tag me when you get this.

  -Cam

  After a quick break to order pizza, I check in on VetNet. The PTSD board is hopping, but few messages wait for me anywhere else. I have two missed messages from HuskyFan, so once I send my latest module to the compiler, I open up a private chat.

  FlashPoint: Hey. How’s it going? Are you on baby watch yet? I never asked how far along your wife was.

  The little dots at the bottom of the window spin as I crack my neck.

  HuskyFan: She’s got another eight weeks. My mother-in-law hates me for working all these extra hours, but in a little over a week, I’ll be done with this side job, and I’ll be able to afford our insurance. I took the boy to the Science Museum this morning, and he begged me to call in sick tomorrow. Broke my heart, but at least I got to spend a few hours with him before I headed off to my side job.

  FlashPoint: That’s great, HF! Are things going okay at work? Both jobs?

  Again, the dots dance, but this time he stops typing then starts three times again before his message pops up.

  HuskyFan: Yes.

  I frown at all that time messaging for a single word answer. Then again, it’s hard to share with virtual strangers, and sometimes, we need to some encouragement to open up.

  Before I can reply, Oversight throws up an error. “You little bitch,” I mutter as I switch over to the compiler to try to find the problem. The computer dings at me, but other than a cursory glance at the flashing message window, I don’t look up for another fifteen minutes. Once I’ve eliminated the fault and sent the code through again, I find three messages waiting for me, each more concerned than the last.

  FlashPoint: Sorry. Work is killing me right now. You were nervous about taking that side job. Did it turn out to be a good thing?

  Another few minutes pass while I verify that my code changes didn’t cause anything else to break.

  HuskyFan: Not something I can really talk about, but the people I’m working for are assholes, and they don’t care that I have to work all night. I still don’t want to be here, but I don’t have much choice. How was your date?

  My cheeks heat, and as I shift in my recliner, all of the little aches and pains from a night—and morning—filled with ecstasy make themselves known.

  FlashPoint: We’re going to Portland in a few weeks for a long weekend.

  HuskyFan: Sounds fun. I took my wife there before we got married.

  On paper, he’s right. Three days with my boyfriend in one of my favorite cities should make me happy. So why am I vaguely nauseous? Leaning my head back against the chair, I remember West’s hands on me, the soft restraints he brought out the previous night, the overwhelming climax I had while blindfolded and unable to move my arms. Maybe this will be fun. Or at least…may
be I won’t screw things up.

  HuskyFan: You still there?

  I’m somewhere. Like back in West’s bedroom.

  FlashPoint: No. I just… This is getting serious.

  Another few minutes pass as HuskyFan types, and I alternate between worry I’ve said too much and relief that I can admit my fears to someone—even if it is an anonymous someone on the internet. Lucas doesn’t even know the extent of my issues, though he’s tried to find out more than once.

  HuskyFan: You like this guy, right? Isn’t serious a good thing?

  The pizza delivery guy shows up, and I’m grateful for the time to think of a reply that doesn’t make me sound like a commitment-phobic asshole. Though I’m not sure I succeed.

  FlashPoint: I haven’t had a long-term relationship in…well…ever? My record is three weeks. Any longer than that, and the guys want you to meet their parents and share secrets. I don’t do well with those parts.

  HuskyFan is either typing a book, or he doesn’t know what to say. I’m about to tell him to ignore me when his message pops up on the screen.

  HuskyFan: We all have secrets. Even your dude. You said he gets you. Why not just ask him to be patient with you? Or do something really crazy and let him in. What’s the worst that could happen?