Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT Caribbean Nights #9) - Kat Cantrell Page 0,54

plan to do to punish me.”

The game got dangerous very fast as she refused to back down, and it was nearly the sexiest thing she’d ever done. He’d always loved her strength. His chest flooded with a foreign emotion as her will clashed with his. She was such a resilient woman, thrilling, unflinching. Hardheaded. She had no concept of how easily she could twist him around her finger if she wanted to.

Hell, that had pretty much already happened. She’d been calling the shots all along. Parasailing. No sex. Yes sex. He just did his best to keep up. The rewards were worth it.

He went in search of the roses and grabbed the entire bouquet. When he came back, she hadn’t moved, which meant he had a lot of work to do to get her quivering again.

At the edge of the bed, he contemplated her and held up one rose. “Last chance. Rose or you find out what happens if you don’t turn over.”

“Oh, hell, I have to know what you’re going to do with that.”

She rolled over onto her stomach, and the sight of her gorgeous, firm rear revived his erection with a vengeance. She lay still, and all he could think about was sinking into her from behind. Exactly like that. She’d be hot and wet and so ready for him. Except he had a suspicion he’d come too fast and that was not the point of this lesson.

He was so hard he hurt. And he deserved every iota of the pain for devising this particular method of torture. But she deserved to be treated like royalty, and as he’d told her, it pleased him to no end to formulate different ways to make her shatter.

Kneeling on the bed, he dragged the bud of the rose along the arch of her foot. Up and over her heel, along the back of her leg. So beautiful. Every inch of her seemed made for his pleasure, and when he had such a bold, resilient woman vulnerable like this, at his mercy, it unfurled something inside him that he’d kept a tight hold on.

She was his match in every way. A thrill seeker of the highest order, and together they’d hit the peak of everything. That’s why it had hurt so much to have been forced to let her go. He might have to do it again at some point. And God, that would be the final death knell, to have clawed his way back from the brink of hell, determined to restore his slice of heaven, only to have it snatched from his fingers once more.

Maybe that wouldn’t happen. The problem was that he had no idea what was going to happen, and that wasn’t fair to Audra. But she seemed okay with the status quo. He hadn’t given her enough credit. Hadn’t she been the recipient of the world’s first Perfect Woman Award? He’d jokingly bestowed that on her because she’d always accepted him as is. She’d never pushed for more than he could give. He was the one who wanted to give her more, knew she deserved more, but couldn’t be that man she made him want to be.

Hell, he didn’t even have a stable source of income right now. She’d gone from a billionaire to a near penniless ex-SEAL with an inability to sleep in the dark. And yet she’d made that choice willingly. It humbled him that she’d give up so much for him.

Emotions he didn’t dare name rose in his throat, and he choked them back because he couldn’t let himself feel so much for Audra. It would make it impossible for him to do the right thing going forward if he let his emotions loose. So instead, he’d be a generous lover. That he could do.

When the rose hit her thigh, he added a second one, trailing it up the other leg. She flinched and sucked in a breath.

“Relax,” he told her.

“Yeah, as if. I have no idea what you’re going to do next.”

That was the point. He liked surprising her. Surprising himself as he found new ways to pleasure her. And the sight of her laid out on the bed as he dragged both roses across the globe of her buttocks pleased him enormously. As did the moan when he twirled one between her cheeks in the most forbidden of places.

Lust knifed through his gut as she shifted restlessly, and he abandoned one rose because he thought he might go mad if he didn’t