Page 30 of Midnight Secrets

She wasn’t sleeping with the SEAL. She was alone at night. Though Kearns did wonder what the SEAL was thinking not fucking a babe like her. Shit, the SEAL was following her around like some goddamned puppy, why not bone her?

Whatever.

The SEAL wasn’t boning her so she was always alone at night with no one watching. So Kearns developed a routine, two, three times a week. He had a Tyvek oversuit in his car, special boots that left no prints, latex gloves, a mask and night vision gear. He knew the outside of the house like his own hand. There was a walkway that went past her bedroom. The Tyvek suit would leave no cloth samples, not even a thread and there was no possibility of DNA should he get caught on a bush. The mask covered his face. And the NV gave him a view he wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

The big problem was not jerking off in the bushes.Thatwould leave DNA. It was really hard, about as hard as his dick when he watched her coming out of the shower toweling her hair dry.

The NV gave everything a greenish glow so he couldn’t see the color of her muff but it was light-colored, like her nipples. Mmm.

So Kearns spent a couple of nights a week looking into her house at night then going back to his miserable cheap motel room to jerk off. And he sent reports on her behavior—a whole lot of nothing, which was what his employer wanted to hear.

Kearns got it loud and clear that the more Isabel Delvaux stayed away from the world, the better it was. Kearns also got it that his reports were making someone happy.

So the last Delvaux was supposed to stay sick and sad and under the radar. Not stir up any waves. Fine.

The only thing she stirred up was his dick.

It was a disaster that he’d been made. Kearns realized he’d strayed a little from the walkway to get a better look. Who could blame him? She was a wet dream. And a Delvaux. They were like Kennedys, only better-looking.

He was absolutely certain he’d left nothing behind, but that big guy next door had come running to the bitch’s door when she screamed. He was barefoot but amazingly fast. And he came out again fast, but by that time, Kearns’s Tyvek suit was off and he was in sweats and a hoodie, opening his car door. He drove by the house slowly and the big guy was checking the ground with a flashlight. A Maglite that lit everything up.

A sheen of sweat blossomed all over Kearns. The SEAL was looking very closely. Kearns had been careful. Hadn’t he? A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his face because—who the fuck remembered? He’d been enjoying the bitch’s little show that had seemed designed for him. He’d been avidly soaking up every single goddamn detail because she was going to feature large that night in his bed.

Man, he’d never had a piece that fine. Long legs, long pale neck. A mouth made to go down on a guy. On him. Oh yeah, he could imagine it so easily. All that dark honey hair swirling around his hands as he held her in place, pumping in and out of that mouth.

That moment—when he could almost feel her lips around his dick—that was the exact moment her flashlight picked him out. He was jerked harshly out of the fantasy that had been so real he had major wood. His hand had been reaching for his groin when the white light had blinded him. He’d snatched the NV goggles off his face but it was too late. He’d lost his sight, temporarily.

Good thing he knew his way around the yard so well his feet carried him out of there without having to think.

But he didn’t remember much between the moment he’d been blinded and when he stumbled out onto the street, tearing off his ski mask and unzipping the suit. He fell into his SUV and pulled out too fast and then, heart still beating, decided to go around the block and see what was happening.

That was when he saw the SEAL searching the ground and for the first time it occurred to him that he could be busted. That’s when his heart started trip-hammering because he knew the guy he worked for wasn’t warm and fuzzy. Wasn’t the forgiving type.

He didn’t dare make another turn of the block so he drove back to the motel from hell, sweating and swearing, slamming the steering wheel in frustration. And still hard, goddamn it.

Reason kicked in. This Isabel babe was unstable. And a Delvaux. Rich high-born assholes, all of them. Never done an honest day’s job in their lives. Not like him.

And Isabel? A flake. She could’ve done anything she wanted but what did she want to do? Fucking cook. Like his mom. She didn’t do her cooking in a diner that smelled of rancid grease and old socks with the toilets smelling of sex and shit, sure, but cooking was cooking.

She’d survived the Massacre but turned loony. So who was going to believe that she saw someone outside her window? The SEAL would look and look, but wouldn’t find anything, no footprints, no stray threads caught in the bushes, nothing disturbed. That banshee scream was a hysterical woman who saw monsters under the bed.

As a matter of fact, Kearns was so sure he hadn’t been seen by anyone but a hysterical woman, he wasn’t going to report this. No, sir. Why should he? His reports had been coming in regularly, a guy who was doing his duty, watching her movements. She did absolutely nothing suspicious or even interesting.

So right now he’d be crazy to report the truth.I get tired of watching her do fuckall so I watch her at night when she gets naked, then go to the crap motel to jerk off. And tonight I might have gotten caught. By her neighbor. Who’s a fucking navy SEAL.

Nope. Not going to happen.

He’d report that Isabel Delvaux, now Isabel Lawton, was continuing her boring routine. Going for walks and cooking. Cooking and going for walks.

Nothing to see here, folks, just move right along.

5

Joe hadn’t kissed a woman in—shit. Two years? Three? The last one had been—he blanked. Oh yeah, the lawyer from hell. It had been a one-night stand because she’d scared the shit out of him with her aggression. He’d crept out the next morning with his balls crawling up into his groin out of fear.

He’d been in the freaking Sandbox so long, operating out of remote FOBs with no women but the poor souls covered head to toe in blankets, he’d almost forgotten women existed. Sex was with his fist and that got real old, real fast. So he concentrated on staying alive and he almost didn’t manage it. And man, after being blown up, whoa. That was when sex disappeared from his life.

The only women he’d seen with any regularity were the nurses who wiped his butt and the surgeon. He’d seen her exactly twice. Everyone said she was a miracle worker and his bones could attest to that. But she was fifty with a bun of gray hair and was not dream material.

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