I’m sure he has. “I’m Danni, and now my name sounds so boring and forgettable.”
“I suspect there’s nothing forgettable about you.” Richard gives me a friendly once-over.
“Careful.” Cole’s expression tightens.
“Roger that.” Richard holds his hands in the air and backs up. “I’ll show you the equipment.”
“So…” I follow them toward a storage room. “I assume we’ll be scuba diving in that huge-ass pool?”
“Yes.” Cole reaches back and grabs my hand.
“I don’t know how.”
“I’ll teach you.”
In the storage room, Richard leads us through a maze of shelving stacked with fins and tanks and other things I can’t name.
“Where did you learn how to dive?” I ask Cole.
Richard stops and casts a confused look over his shoulder.
“What?” I glance between them.
They exchange a tense moment of eye contact before Richard cracks.
“Shit, man.” He grimaces. “I assumed she knew.”
“Assumed I knew what?” I release Cole’s hand and step in front of him with a fist on my hip and anger heating my face.
“My background in…” He gestures at the surrounding scuba equipment and studies my expression. “You’re pissed.”
“How can you tell?” I grind my teeth.
“Richard.” Cole slides a hand over my shoulder. “Tell Danni how we met.”
The bald man folds his arms across his chest. “BUD/S training.”
“I’ve heard that term before.” I furrow my brow. “It’s a military thing.”
“Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training.” Richard huffs a pained laugh. “Seven months of hell.”
“You were Navy SEALs together?” I take in the scuba gear with new eyes.
“No, actually.” Richard leans against a metal shelf. “I got my ass handed to me in the third phase of training. Crashed and burned. So here I am, running a dive shop.”
“And you?” I squint at Cole. “You passed the training?”
Richard bursts into laughter. “He blew through it with his eyes closed. Hell, he could’ve taught it.”
“You and your damn mouth.” Cole glares at the other man. “This is why you didn’t meet her five years ago.”
I turn to Richard, since he seems to be a well of helpful information. “So Cole was a SEAL and—”
“No, sweetheart.” He rests a hand beneath his chin, studying Cole. “He was assigned to a team, but someone plucked him from the force and poof! He disappeared. I don’t know anything beyond that. It was above my pay-grade.”
“I see.” I shift back to Cole, unable to keep the suspicion from leaking into my voice. “Why didn’t you tell me about the SEAL thing? That isn’t classified information.”
“Because I was never a SEAL.” He brushes a thumb along my jaw. “But I brought you here to share a piece of my training with you. Do you want to learn?”
He doesn’t offer an apology or any further explanation. He just looks at me with dimpled affection, as if sharing this experience with me means so much more to him than bragging about his SEAL training.
“Yeah.” I release a breath and just like that, I let go of my anger. “Lead the way.”
Richard hauls out the good stuff from a locker in the corner of the storage room, explaining that even his best equipment doesn’t compare to the gear Cole used in training and on the job. He stacks everything on a long table, naming them off. Masks, BCD vests, air cylinders…
I hover beside Cole as Richard brings out more gear. The shit on the table piles chest-high, and I pick through it, a little overwhelmed. I hope Cole doesn’t expect me to learn all this tonight.
Drifting closer to my side, he ghosts his fingers across the front of my thigh. My gaze darts to Richard, who stands on the opposite side of the table, rambling on about his miserable time during BUD/S.
“All these years and you’re still fucking whining.” Cole grins at Richard, and his touch grows bolder, skirting to the edge of my bikini between my leg and groin. “I’ll tell you the same thing now that I told you then. You need to get laid.”
“Some of us aren’t as lucky as you, motherfucker.” Richard grunts, cutting his eyes to me.
With equipment stacked on the table, I’m certain he can’t see below my waist from his position. But he has a direct view of my eyes, which are currently trying to roll back in my head as Cole’s fingers slip beneath the crotch of my bikini.
I steal a peek at Cole, watching his eyes close when he finds me wet. He presses inside me, and his mouth parts with a sigh on his lips.