style="font-size:15px;"> Gray cursed as if maybe, in some weird parallel universe, a Levi existed who actually wanted to be married to Ashley Dixon. “Ashley could out-stubborn a mule. She’d take a hell of a lot of persuading.”
“Just a matter of leverage.”
“Two minutes, ladies.” Gray stood and motioned for the team to head to the back of the plane. Air tore through the cabin as the National Guardsmen chauffeuring them to the day’s jump lowered the back ramp to reveal nothing but blue sky, empty air and a long drop to the landing zone. Levi slapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder, taking up his position behind the other SEAL as he braced against the plane’s upward pull.
He had never been wild about heights, but jumping out of a plane at thirty thousand feet beat the three-hour commute his brother bitched about, even if he was Navy and frogs weren’t meant to fly. The good thing about HALO jumping, however, was that once he’d gotten his ass out the door, the hard part was done. Gravity took over, and as long he’d packed his chute correctly the happy ending was practically guaranteed.
“Ready?” Gray bellowed the words in Levi’s ear, fighting to make himself heard over the slipstream’s roar. “Don’t make Ashley a widow. She’s gonna want the chance to kill you herself.”
“You betcha.” He touched the knuckles of his free hand to Gray’s. Seconds later, their team leader bellowed the order to jump and Sam flew out of the open bay. Gravity and the engine wake did their thing, sucking Levi out of the plane as he whooped, riding Sam’s ass as they hung in the air for a long moment.
Then they plummeted through the air at terminal velocity, facedown, arms and feet up as strips of road and field swung in crazy circles beneath them. Seventy seconds of flying—or falling—and he pulled the rip cord at four thousand feet above ground level, popping his chute. On a mission rather than a training run, he might wait until as low as a thousand feet to minimize the amount of time hostiles had to spot him. Today, though, he’d maximize his chances of getting to the ground intact. If his chute failed, he’d still have time to deploy the back up. The chute shot out of his back, the canopy catching air and jerking him sharply upward. Bingo.
Sure, Ashley would prefer skipping the divorce and aiming straight for widowhood, but he had no intention of making it easy on her. If she wanted to get rid of him, she’d have to work for it.
HIS WIFE WAS fucking gorgeous.
Not that Levi deserved any kind of credit for Ashley’s good looks, but if he had to end up accidentally married to a woman whose dislike for him made ISIS and the President of the United States seem like cozy besties, at least he’d scored a hot bride.
The assessment officially made him shallow, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that they were legally married. The woman bent over her desk, working a cable behind the computer monitor while she sweet-talked the hardware, would rip him a new one when he shared the news with her. In the meantime, however, he might as well enjoy the show.
Husky phrases drifted to him. Come on, baby. Work with me. Yeah, he might get something out of this little field trip. Taunting Ashley was a helluva lot of fun.
He leaned against the doorframe. “You got computer woes too?”
The DEA’s office sure wasn’t Sexyville. After he’d breached the security at the front desk, he’d followed directions and ridden a beige elevator, taken two equally beige corridors, and then forded a sea of chest-high gray cubicles occupied by suits of both the male and female variety. Heads turned as he passed, because his off-duty jeans, motorcycle boots and black leather jacket weren’t standard office wear. He hadn’t come here to give a fashion show, though, so he kept moving.
After infiltrating third-world countries, locating Ashley’s office was easy. Plus, the scenery was motivational. The way her skirt hugged the curves of her ass fed his Victoria’s Secret fantasy, and her blouse wasn’t half bad, either. The silky material draped over her boobs and he’d bet the fabric was as soft as the skin it only partially concealed. When she delved further into the tangle of cables, she flashed him the shadow of a black bra strap. Hooyah.
“Dixon?” he prompted, when she didn’t look up from the mess of cables she was untangling.
She glanced his way automatically, a polite smile pasted to her face. Naturally her smile disappeared real quick when she realized who’d knocked on her door.
“You.” Her voice held a wealth of disapproval, but that was nothing new. Frankly, he had a hard time imagining welcome, pleasure or anything remotely happy painted on her puss. She didn’t like him, and he never seemed to get things right as far as she was concerned. Too bad, so sad. Wait until she heard what he had to say.
“In the flesh.” He stepped into her office because he didn’t need to attract any more attention from her floor mates. She had ten feet by ten feet to herself, along with three pieces of battered office furniture, a dusty plastic plant and a series of action figures suspended from the ceiling by what looked like fishing line. Stepping closer and blocking her access to the room’s only exit, he offered her a lazy grin. “I didn’t recognize you wearing clothes.”
She’d rocked a very nice string bikini on their undercover mission to Fantasy Island, and...what? He was supposed to pretend he hadn’t noticed? Hello. Parts of him were biologically incapable of not noticing, no matter how much vitriol she shot his way.
And bingo...her polite can-I-help-you? expression morphed into one hundred percent pissed-off female as she straightened up.
“I’m licensed to carry concealed. Don’t make me shoot you.”
Concealing a weapon in her current getup seemed challenging, but Ashley liked her guns and he’d seen her produce firearms from beneath the smallest of bandage dresses out in the field. He had no idea how she did it, but he respected the hell out of it. He also needed her to listen to him for five minutes.
She made a sound delightfully close to a snarl. How nice to know he still could get under her skin. Smiling at her, he said, “I need to talk to you. Take a smoke break.”
Brown eyes narrowed. “It’s with and not to. And smoking kills.”
She put the desk between them. And while he enjoyed the way her ass wiggled in the skirt as she sauntered to her chair in three-inch heels, he still needed to talk to her. With her. She never missed an opportunity to point out that he was wrong, did she?
Of course, he also didn’t care much about getting it right, so he advanced on her, flattening his palms on her desk. Naturally, the surface was all neat and tidy, her office supplies arranged at right angles and the folders stacked precisely. She’d never liked messes. When he deliberately nudged a pencil out of its careful row, she glared.
“We can do this the hard way. I can carry you out over my shoulder.” His dick twitched at that. Hell. This was Dixon.
She didn’t sit down, just folded her arms over her chest and inhaled as though she was trying to find her patience or her balance or something. “Step inside and shut the door.”
Huh. Who knew he’d find that order a turn-on? It was likely only because he hadn’t gotten laid in over a month. Lurking in foxholes wreaked havoc on a man’s social life, and he’d come straight to Quantico once he’d arrived stateside. Ashley might be annoying
