SEAL Firsts Read online

  This had worried Shannon, and worried her mother even more. Mrs. “I Want Moore” was one of the hottest women T.J. had ever seen, a toned marathon runner in her fifties. He had never before had fantasies about the mother of the bride. Mrs. Moore was twenty-five years his senior, but he knew she could clean his clock. He’d enjoy chasing her around a few places.

  Turning to face Frankie again, he felt a tad sheepish about his lusty thoughts. He wiped his mind clean and decided to concentrate harder on Frankie’s day. His buddy was so crazy in love with Shannon, he needed extra protection to keep him from stepping out in front of traffic, or bumping into caterers, which he’d already managed to do several times today.

  “Come on, Frankie. Lighten up.” T.J. slapped his cheeks to redden them up. “You need to stop looking like a dead man if you’re really gonna do this.”

  “Yup. I’m doing this,” Frankie said to the auditorium full of people, the organ music now swelling up to the rafters. “I’m fuckin’ doing this.”

  T.J. had a hunch he was looking for his courage and had come up short. He glanced down the hallway. Cindy was leaning against the wall right outside the bride’s dressing room, keeping guard, but also giving him the long vacant look he knew only too well. He unabashedly scanned her entire body and let her see he couldn’t wait to get her naked.

  She abruptly turned, blushing.

  Perfect.

  Several minutes later, T.J. thought he might have to prop Frankie up he was so pale. “You okay?”

  “Fuck you,” Frankie whispered a little too loudly. Mrs. Moore in the front pew frowned. Her eyes swept over the row of SEALs, but zeroed back in on T.J.’s face with an admonition he couldn’t mistake. Merely the little tilt of her chin down and the knotted brow told him he was on probation. Didn’t help he’d given Frankie more tequila than he usually drank in a whole month. Frankie was spacing out and losing track of where they were and what they had to do next. T.J. had never seen him so fuckin’ scared. Even in firefights overseas.

  So he’d screwed up, been a bad influence on the groom. So what else is new? With a past of foster care home rejections and “repositioning” he was used to being on probation. It felt normal. Not until he got into BUD/S did he feel like he’d found home. A real home. Guys who finally shared his intensity for life and irreverence for batshit rules that everyone else thought applied to him. The SEAL’s ethos was the only set of rules he wanted to live by. And the beginning pretty much said it all:

  In times of war or uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call. A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.

  …I am that man.

  He didn’t have to be a perfect man, and hell, there were very few on the Teams. He was good enough. He’d never be perfect anyway, and who would want to be? No, he was that guy who wouldn’t give up. That was all it was. Not ringing the bell. No matter what.

  He thought about it while he watched Shannon’s white dress fill the aisle as she began her stately walk along the burgundy carpet to her willing but completely shitfaced groom. Her father was proud, as any father would be, to have such a radiant daughter, pink and soft in all the right places. She possessed the steady gait of a fearless warrior princess, and the purposeful way she advanced, like she was intent on a plan she was going to fully execute, was just like any SEAL. Her eyes nailed Frankie, who didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into.

  That made T.J. smile and check out his shoes. She was the kind of woman who would call the shots, run the household, run Frankie, manage the hell out of his schedule and get her future soccer players up on time and off to everything moms did with a house full of hellions. He saw lots of them in their future for some reason. Kids with snotty noses and hair a bit too long. Band-Aids and skinned knees. All the things he never had as a child.

  But he’d watched those kids play through chain-link fences. Watched their parents cheer. Watched the juice breaks and the encouragement he never got from a single coach or foster mom. He was never noticed. Never special.

  And that was just fine.

  Chapter 2

  Shannon felt the pressure of everyone’s eyes on her back. She tried not to think about her maid of honor, Cindy, who had pummeled her with questions about the mysterious, bad-boy best man she hated, T.J. Talbot.

  That man had done his best to break them up, Shannon thought, and now was working hard to ruin her wedding. He’d exposed Frankie to the seedier side of life. Nothing they experimented with in the bedroom had ever been Frankie’s idea. It was always something T.J. had described to him.

  Fuck T.J.

  Yet, she knew that by marrying Frankie, tradition said she was, in fact, marrying all the SEALs on Team 3.

  To hell with that!

  Thank God she’d never have to sleep with any of the rest of them. Knowing they were so possessive about each other, made her a little bit jealous.

  Frankie was listing to one side. T.J.’s strong arm propped him up, which was the biggest fuckbomb of all time.

  Stop it, Shannon. She’d picked up their language, their mannerisms, as if they’d been wet paint and she was rolling through them naked. She not only thought in swear words, she was starting to say them. They rolled off her tongue as though she’d always talked and thought that way.

  Yeah, and that was T.J.’s fault, too.

  She could see the little Cheshire cat smile he was giving her, not that she would give him the satisfaction of knowing he was even a piece of cat litter stuck on the bottom of her shoe. Frankie was going to be all hers. She’d extricate him from his Brotherhood and give him back to them when she was good and ready. Screw the wives who told her she would always come second when it came to the Brotherhood. They didn’t know their men. She didn’t want a normal plain vanilla relationship with Frankie. He was fuckin’ addicted to her, and that was exactly the way she liked it.

  There you go again. On your wedding day, and before you get to the altar and kiss your betrothed, you’ve sworn—what? Maybe three or four times? And had unclean thoughts?

  Yeah, even ladies in white wedding dresses had dirty thoughts.

  She knew that was normal.

  Come on, Frankie. Stand up straight. She saw the glassy eyes and knew T.J. had caused it. Her Frankie was drunker than he had a right to be. From the unearthly glow in his blue eyes it was probably tequila, which he couldn’t hold well at all.

  Not like she could. Oh yes, there was that song about dropping your clothes for margaritas. That was her. But Frankie was having a hard time standing up, let alone being conscious for the wedding. And it wasn’t because all the blood had rushed to his groin, either. That would have been funny. She’d have been happy about that one.

  She shot a quick fuck-why-did-you-do-that? look at T.J. His smile broadened, and she saw him move his arm when she stood about a foot away from the man she’d chosen for the rest of her life.

  The moment T.J. released his hold on Frankie, the groom fell, almost toppling her as well. Her veil was ripped from her hair, her bodice pulled down—maybe too far down for a second or two. And accompanied by the screams of everyone, especially the two mothers in the front pew of the church. Frankie did a face-plant onto what was luckily plush carpeting.

  She adjusted the detachable beaded bodice to make sure she was decent first, and then had difficulty turning in Frankie’s direction, thanks to her long dress of chiffon and layers of voile. Feeling like her feet were stuck in mud, she turned slowly. T.J. was leaning down to get Frankie, and she caught a hint of his aftershave, nearly brushing her lips across his cheekbone as he stood.

  Three big SEALs helped Frankie up. His face bright red, sweat pouring down his forehead, and his shame preceded what Shannon knew would be a huge bender, perhaps one that would eclipse their wedding night. He’d messed up her wedding. He’d tried so hard not to. He’d told her every day he hoped everything came off the way she wanted. Perfect. Like she was perfect, he’d said. Did he suffer from p
remonitions?

  Fuck perfect.

  So…there was her fifth swear word and unclean thought. She had another one as she grabbed his arm and hoisted him to her side, which made a few people in the audience titter. T.J. was chuckling just loud enough for her to hear that too.

  This is not happening. She knew she would wake up any minute. This must be the nightmare wedding from a bad movie. This wasn’t her wedding day. The day she’d dreamt about her whole life. The one where she’d be the star of the show.

  After the vows were said and the rings exchanged, the two of them walked down the aisle, both relieved to have survived the ceremony without further bloodshed. Frankie led her straight to the bar, which she thought was a great idea.

  He’d stopped to tell someone in the last row he wasn’t even drunk, which was such an obvious lie. It was a classless further slight to her not-so-perfect wedding. Like maybe God was responsible for all this.

  It could be her fault, scaring the shit out of him and making him need to get so drunk he passed out. It would be a cold day in hell before she’d admit it publicly, though. She knew Frankie was scared to death to displease her. In her heart of hearts, she knew she was fully responsible. But no one would ever know.

  No one. Ever.

  What she loved about Frankie was his soft heart and how easy-going he was. That, and the fact that she would be the center of his universe, regardless of what her girlfriends warned her about the Brotherhood. He would be a kind and devoted husband and some day father. She could count on him to be there for her. She loved exciting and surprising him. He would support her in everything she wanted to do without question.

  T.J. came up behind her. She could smell him before he put his palm on her shoulder, matching the other palm on Frankie’s shoulder while they stood waiting to get poison into their systems quick. The bartender had dropped the first glass he’d filled with ice for her Tom Collins, so the jitters were spreading. But not to T.J. He was rock-solid, steady and undistracted, and she hated every muscle and sinew of his body. Every drop of his blood. Every cell. She hated all of him for being so calm and light-hearted about her disaster of a wedding.

  Not that he’d ever know. She did her best to give him a triumphant, smile. Then she took Frankie’s double scotch and downed it before he could get his hands on it. With the liquor on her lips and a glow spreading down her chest, she didn’t care how they looked at her. She was a bride on a mission. Her day. Her time, and they better fucking play her game or she’d take them both on.

  T.J. gave her an appreciative return glance. Frankie was still trying to figure out what had happened as he told the confused bartender to give him the scotch he didn’t get the first time.

  “Okay. I’m good. Good now. Time to face my audience,” she said and wafted off as if she was wearing a dress of white potato chips. She’d deal with Frankie after he found the courage to look at her. Until then, she didn’t want to be anywhere near him or his fuckin’ devil of a best friend.

  Okay, so that was number six.

  T.J. was enraptured. The bride was storming across the wooden floor of the fellowship hall, bloody entrails of his heart guts, if there was such a thing, caught in the hem of her dress. No woman had ever made him feel that way before. He was completely powerless to focus on anything else until she was out of sight.

  “Glad that’s fuckin’ over,” Frankie said with a croak, and then coughed.

  That brought T.J. to life, but he found it hard to talk.

  “I’m never going through that again. Something happens to her, someone else wants to have a big wedding, the answer is no, and if that means I stay a bachelor my whole life, so be it,” Frankie said.

  “You’re not a fuckin’ bachelor. Too late for that, man. You’d be a widower. Not a bachelor.”

  “Whatever the fuck they call it.”

  “You know, Frankie, I wonder if you realize what you’ve just done?”

  “I don’t catch your drift.”

  “You’ve committed yourself to one woman. You really sure this is a good thing?”

  Now, why are you even talking about that? Oh yeah, to cover up the fact that the bride is the object of your fantasies. Right now that fantasy involves a number of very unholy images. And you’re standing next to the only man on the planet who has any right to have such fantasies. This is the guy you’d lay your life down for without a second thought…Oh, thank God, there is Miss Fresh Face walking through the door and aiming for me, just in time.

  “Hi, T.J. I thought I’d find you hanging around the bar,” Cindy said.

  God, she was a welcome sight. She was the drink of water that wouldn’t save his life, but would definitely make the next few minutes possible. He was almost ready to ask her if she would suck his dick and be quick about it.

  “Cindy, you’re lookin’ mighty fine,” Frankie said, eyeing her. “I was getting a lecture from my best man, asking if I knew what kind of shit I was getting myself into, and you walk back into the room, and now we can talk about something really important.”

  Cindy giggled. She stood on tiptoes and gave Frankie a lip-lock. “And don’t you forget it. I’d have spent my life with you, Frankie, and you wouldn’t have had to walk down any aisle or dress up like a penguin.” She whispered soft things to Frankie, and T.J. could see he liked it.

  Until Shannon showed up. Of course, Shannon would blame T.J. If she’d look at him, that is. She was shooting daggers at Cindy. Frankie removed his palm from Cindy’s ass and was, once again, red in the face.

  This was not turning out to be one of Frankie’s better days.

  Chapter 3

  It was days before T.J. could get Frankie away to enjoy a beer at the Scupper.

  “You ever think about settling down?”

  T.J. returned a glare he knew Frankie would feel deep in his gut. “Don’t ever ask me that fuckin’ question again, Frankie.” He watched some lovelies who strutted in with unbelievably tight cutoff jeans and knotted tee shirts that showed a good portion of smooth, flat abdomen—just his favorite kind of eye candy. All the girls who wanted to make it with a SEAL did this on Friday and Saturday nights. One of them snagged T.J.’s appreciative smile and gave him a wink.

  Perfect.

  Frankie watched where T.J. had focused and shook his head. “I don’t know where you get all the energy, Talbot. Keeping stories straight, promising to call them and then—”

  “What stories? Why the hell would you tell them stories? It goes like this, Frankie, ‘Hon, you wanna screw?’ Doesn’t involve a lot of talking, Frankie. And then if they want to talk too much, you kiss them until they shut up.”

  Frankie giggled like he always did when T.J. revealed some of his philosophy on women and the other finer things in life. “I always let them talk.” Frankie shrugged his shoulders. “I’m interested in what they have to say. Don’t you want to know them a little bit first, T.J.?”

  “Well, that tells me you’re not a very good kisser.”

  “Fuck you, T.J. How do you know how I kiss? Shannon thinks I kiss real good. She loves it.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I’m not shitting you, man. We get it on, T.J. You should try it. Staying monogamous. Sexy as hell knowing someone is waiting for me at home, and I get to fondle her all night long. And she’ll still want to be there in the morning.”

  “Not for me.”

  “But I love her, T.J. You’d do it too if you married someone like my Shannon.”

  T.J. shook his head and raised a finger. “No. Never like Shannon. I’d have to work too hard.”

  “That’s what you do when you love somebody, T.J. Shannon and I have a perfect love. I’ve never wanted to be so devoted to anyone, well, except for you, of course—”

  “Shut the fuck up. Trying to make me jealous? I don’t go for guys, Frankie.”

  “Yeah, but I love you, man. I wish you could have what Shannon and I have.”

  “You mean you do whatever she wants and have no will
of your own.”

  “No, see, that’s what you got wrong. I want to please her. She gets so excited sometimes, like a little girl. I feel so lucky every time I look at her. This beautiful, smart, sexy woman is mine and mine alone. I tell you, T.J., you’re missing something. One night stands are boring, man. This is where it’s at.”

  “Good for you, asshole.” T.J. raised his beer, “To love, then.”

  “And family,” Frankie added.

  T.J. nearly spit out his beer “Family? You’re not seriously gonna make me drink to family, are you? You remember who you’re talking to?”

  “Not your family, T.J. My family. I’m going to have a baby. Shannon and I made a baby together.”

  T.J. wanted to slap him. His insides turned to molten lead. He bit down so hard, grinding his molars he almost bit his own tongue. Procreation was a dirty word. He was halfway convinced he’d go get himself fixed so he never had to deal with that situation. His biggest fear was getting a girl pregnant, perhaps creating another fatherless soul, or having to marry someone you really didn’t want to just to do the right thing.

  And now Frankie was willingly walking into that buzz saw.

  “I can’t believe it. You ready to be a father, Frankie?”

  “Hell yeah. And you know what? You’re about to be a godfather.”

  “Not me.”

  “Yes, Shannon and I talked about it, and you’re going to be the baby’s godfather. We want you to do us this honor.”

  “You sure Shannon okayed this?” T.J. wanted to say no, but he knew it would hurt Frankie perhaps more than anything else he could do or say.