Taking the plates from him, she dropped the vest to the floor and inserted them like she did it every day. Considering she’d been deployed a couple of months ago, she might have. She stood and slid the vest over her head, bouncing and shrugging her shoulders to settle the weight. After pulling the side bands closed, she stretched her neck from side to side.
“Can you adjust the straps in the back? It needs to be tighter.” She turned and faced the opposite wall.
Stepping behind her, he pulled on the tabs on the back of the vest. This close, he could smell her perfume. Something light and floral. She had a small birthmark on her nape, just under her hairline, shaped like an upside-down heart.
“A little tighter.” She glanced over her shoulder.
He flinched, caught staring at the nape of her neck. “Sure.” He pulled on the tabs, studiously blocking out all the little details he noticed about her until she told him it was tight enough.
“Do you want to shoot in the vest or without it?” he asked.
“Without, if I have the choice,” she said.
“Without it is.”
Addison ripped open the large Velcro tabs with a loudkriiitch, did the same with the inner elastic support band, and slid the vest over her head. It caught the clip in her hair, causing it to tumble around her shoulders in waves.
His palms actually itched to touch it.
Handing him the vest, she gathered her hair in her hands and twisted it, securing it to the top of her head.
He was so fucked. It was karma. Whatever wrongs he’d done in a past life were coming back to torture him now.
Shaking his head, he set the vest on the workbench and grabbed magazine pouches and a combat first aid kit from the rack.
“I’ll do that,” she said. “I like them a certain way.”
“Of course.” He stepped back while she organized her kit and watched the play of arm muscles as she worked. It wasn’t even like he’d never seen her bare arms before. Or legs.
“Do you want a T-shirt to wear while you’re shooting?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks, though.”
Right.Shewas good. Devon adjusted the crotch of his pants, now that she couldn’t see him.Hewas not.
Leaning against the shelving, he finally had the perfect vantage point to check her out at his leisure. The last picture he’d seen of her had been from around five years ago. She didn’t normally blog except when she was deployed. In one of her posts, she said it was one of the few ways she stayed sane, but she’d posted about a girls’ weekend to the Florida Keys. She’d included a few pictures of her in a bikini, and he was guy enough to admit he saved them for his spank bank.
His gaze traveled from her shoulders, dotted with freckles, down her back and waist, over the gentle swell of her hips and ass. She didn’t have a full-on hourglass figure, but she dipped and swayed in all the right places. He knew from her beach pictures she was toned, but not to the point she lost any of her softness. The shoes she wore, putting her a few inches shy of his own six foot one, did awesome things for her ass.
He shifted his gaze up when she picked up the vest and turned.
“Where should I put this?” she asked.
Grabbing a black go bag from the shelf behind him, he said, “Keep it in here for now. I’ll come back later to tag it and put in any equipment you might need.”
She slid the vest into the bag and pushed it back on the workbench toward the wall.
“I’m sorry about this morning,” he said. “I was out of line.”
She braced her hands on the edge of the bench behind her, which thrust out her breasts.
Do not look below her chin.
“Why did you?”
He should have expected her to dig for info instead of gracefully accepting his apology. Dropping his head, he ran a hand around the back of his neck, searching for an answer that wouldn’t give him away as a stalker with a decade-long infatuation.
Stick to the truth. At least some of it. “I was worried. And frustrated. I owe Braedon a lot. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for him sticking his neck out for me. I feel…responsible for you.”
