Page 1 of Honk if You Love Real Men (Tempting SEALs 1)

Chapter One

The man had abs that could stop traffic. No need for safety cones or warning flags.

The blazing sun had bronzed him like an Aztec god. Against the fluorescent orange of an unzipped safety vest, his brown skin gleamed with sweat. Dirt rimmed the corrugated muscles. They flexed in rippling perfection as his arms swung high, freezing against a diamond flash of sunshine before he brought the pickax down to slam it into the crumbling edge of the pavement. A cloud of red dust rose, caking his jeans. They hung heavily off his lean hips, the downward drag producing a gap at the waistband between his hipbones and flatiron stomach.

The carved shoulders and the hard jaw were admirable, but it was the gap in his jeans that had tormented Estrella Ianesque’s imagination since the road construction had begun. She’d fantasized a hundred times about the pulse and fullness and hot satin skin promised to her if only she could slide her fingers into that tempting gap.

She rubbed at the bus window with her sleeve, moving around the smudges to get a better view. At twenty-six, she was too old for panting against the glass, but young enough to squirm with a tingling blood rush of desire for a road construction worker.

And daring enough—perhaps—to make plans to act on that desire.

The question was how? To him, she was only another staring face in a vehicle window.

Brenda Ventano nudged Estrella’s arm. She was a big-haired redhead who rode the city bus to her job as a waitress at a little coffee shop on Alvarado Boulevard. “I haven’t seen a better chest since Brad Pitt stripped to his skivvies in Thelma and Louise.”

“Yes, but he was a callow boy.” Estrella’s tongue curled around a puff of warm breath. Maybe she wasn’t too old to pant. She pressed a fingertip to the window, wishing she could melt glass and reach across Highway 201 to stroke the worker’s body, making one long leisurely trip from lip to navel before her fingers spread to take hold of his surging penis. “That—that’s a man.”

“A mighty fine man.”

Estrella’s head tilted against the window. “I wonder who he is. What’s his story? I think he’s so . . .” She couldn’t finish. There was no one word to describe him.

“Sexy? You and every woman on this bus with a pulse.”

“Uh-huh.”

After a minute, Brenda nudged again. “Want me to find out?”

“You can find out?”

“I have connections.”

“What?” The word popped out in soprano. Estrella’s heart drummed.

In the distance, the truck-mounted stoplight switched to green, and one of the crew flagged on the halted traffic. The bus lumbered forward, edging past the barrier of orange-and-white-striped barrels. Estrella’s eyes followed the sun god, appreciating the fine-tuned mesh of strength and thoroughbred grace as he swung the ax up and down, up and down, a mesmerizing rhythm that got her thinking of what it would be like to have that driving force between her thighs.

“My neighbor’s husband worked with a city crew until he hurt his back,” Brenda said. “He might know, or at least know who to ask. If you want, I’ll try.”

The bus picked up speed. Estrella looked forward with a fevered face. “What good would a name do?”

“It’d be a start.”

“A man like that probably has women flinging their bras at him from passing convertibles.”

“You backing out?”

“He’s only a fantasy.” One she’d love to make true.

Brenda pushed the hairpins deeper into her pouf. “Right. He’s not a match for the likes of you anyway. You’re going better places, muchacha.”

Estrella shrugged, temporarily dismissing her rock-solid goals. “I don’t want to actually go anywhere with him.” Her gaze slipped sideways, dreaming out the window to avoid the reality of the smelly bus and her drudge job, a necessary means to an end.

“Except to bed?” Brenda’s knowing laugh sputtered like a tailpipe.

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