Page 4 of Ex-SEAL Bad Boy

He chuckles under his breath. Has he done this before?

He then flips it around, the polished wood handle of the knife with grooves cut into the circumference now faces me.

He climbs onto the bed, leaning forward.

Oh God! The butt of the handle makes gentle contact with the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh, causing me to jump.

A long, drawn-out gasp follows as he slowly moves the weapon higher.

My climax hits me like a flash as the cold metallic butt of the handle brushes against my clit ....

I shoot up in bed, taking a moment to get my bearings. The moonlight is streaming in through my bedroom window.

My breathing is coming in gasps, and my heart is beating a mile a minute.

It was all a dream. Just a dream.

Or a nightmare.

Shit, my near-death experience at the beach must have shaken me up more than I thought.

I prop my pillow up against the headboard and slump back.

I must really be some kind of twisted fuck if that’s what my imagination can conjure up. So much the worse that I was actually enjoying it.

Who knows what he really does in the privacy of his own bedroom? For all I know, he might be a perfect gentleman. Not that I’d ever know.

For some reason, a fragment of my freshman World History class flashes through my mind. To quote British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Ethan is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” It’s almost as if he deliberately tries to be obscure. Maybe he built a dome around himself to protect himfrom his family, and it also prevents anyone from really getting to know him.

Liam knows him ... perhaps better than anyone. And maybe that’s what scares me about the two of them being such good friends. If my brother can understand a guy like that, what does that say about him? He had never given me any reason to distrust him, but what was that saying? How can you touch pitch and not become defiled?

I’m probably just overthinking it, I reason. I tend to get like this when things start to pile up. Between my job search, recent lack of sleep, and now nearly drowning only to be rescued by a man I’ve always detested. My stress levels were really getting up there.

I could really use a vacation.

Back at college, my classmates used to give me a hard time whenever I brought that up. They were like, “You live on the beach, why do you need a vacation?”

First world problems indeed.

Looking over at my clock, I realize that it was only 2 a.m. I have an early shift in the morning, so I need to get some sleep, I think, fluffing my pillow and turning over.

Maybe this time Ethan will be courteous enough to not intrude on my dreams.

3

ETHAN

“Why do I have such weird dreams?” I ask, staring into the mirror.

They tell you when you sign up to serve that combat changes you. Some guys I’d served with had it bad. PTSD, nightmares, the whole nine yards. Thank God I’ve never experienced that despite some of the fucked-up missions I had been on.

One time we were tasked with taking out a senior terrorist leader. We broke into his house in the dead of night and carried out our mission. The only problem was his wife and little boy were there and watched the whole thing go down. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

My dreams are just weird.

Last night is a perfect example.

I’m hanging out on a beach in Yemen with this hot girl, which is strange enough in itself because there are no beaches in Yemen that anyone would want to hang out on, and there are no hot girls. At least I’ve never peaked under any Burkas to find out.

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