A SEAL's Pleasure Read Online Free Page B

with his chin toward her hand.
    â€œYou seem to know your way around the stick.”
    Tessa made a show of sliding her fingers up the cue, skimming suggestively around the tip before sliding them right back down. Gabriel, being a man, watched the move and smiled. She just wished that smile wasn’t so wickedly appealing. As much in defense against it as to replace the needy images flashing through her mind at the sight of him, she tapped the cue against her free hand a couple of times, then tilted the tip toward him in a mocking salute.
    â€œAnytime you want me to take aim at your balls, you just give a whistle,” she said, putting a little extrahusky suggestion in her tone. “You do know how to whistle, don’t you?”
    Gabriel’s smile was pure appreciation, either for the movie quote or for her not-so-subtle threat. Knowing him, probably both.
    â€œAngel, you want to play, I’m your man.” He moved around the table so fast Tessa didn’t have time to steel herself against the intense need that hit her when he reached her side. That was her excuse and she was sticking to it, dammit.
    â€œI’ll bet we’d have a fascinating game between us,” he told her in that midnight voice of his. His fingers curled loosely over hers on the cue, guiding her hand back down toward the shaft. A zing of desire shot through Tessa’s body, her knees shaking as heat, needy and intense, curled in her belly. Had she ever gone wet and weak with just a touch?
    Only once, she admitted to herself as she tried to clear her head. Only once—the last time he’d touched her.
    She stared at Romeo. His pitch-black eyes were bottomless. Not cold—just the opposite, in fact. They were so hot that Tessa was terrified she’d burn before she lost herself in those depths.
    Since terror wasn’t a feeling she was familiar with—or planned to experience long enough to get used to—she tilted her chin in challenge.
    â€œFascinating?” She put every bit of disinterest in her tone she could muster, keeping her expression amused. “Maybe. But it takes two to play, and I’m really not interested.”
    Arching a brow, she slid her hand out from under his and left him gripping the stick alone.
    There.
    She knew that comment would slay a lesser man. Send him falling to the floor with his hands over his assets—metaphorically speaking.
    Gabriel wasn’t a lesser man, but the refusal should still take care of him, she decided as she sashayed from the room.
    A quick glance in the mirrored wall as she left gave her the perfect—and unobserved—look at his smile. Tessa tried not to groan.
    Because that wicked grin said she’d been way too optimistic.
    * * *
    G ABRIEL GAVE THE pool cue in his hand a light shake, absently checking the balance as he watched Tessa stride out, her hips swaying with enough temptation to send her skirt swirling around legs that had helped sell a million fitness videos.
    The tiny purple dress was the same color as a breathtaking sunset he’d watched from a beach in Costa Rica a while back. Her long black hair tumbled in waves over her back and, despite the heels—damn, those had to be at least five inches—she was still as tiny as one of the Little People his Cherokee grandfather used to weave into stories around the campfire.
    Shaking the memory away, Gabriel’s easy smile faded into a frown. What was it was about Tessa Monroe that made him think of his past? Stupid, since he’d never met anyone like her before. Crazy, because the only place he had in his life for women was the present moment. And useless, since nobody knew better than Gabriel how important it was to defuse explosives before they blew up in his face. And there was nothing with more potential to detonate than the past.
    And nothing more explosive than a sexy woman with an attitude.
    â€œYo, Romeo.”
    Gabriel blinked away his unusually deep