Bastard SEAL: A Bad Boy Forbidden Baby Romance (Contains bonus book Based!) Read online

  Tara

  My backpack felt heavy as hell as I tossed it into the backseat of my car. I groaned as I climbed behind the wheel, feeling exhausted.

  I sat there at the wheel for a minute, staring into the distance. I was in the student parking lot of Purdue University after my first day of my senior year, or at least my second attempt at my senior year.

  I was beyond tired. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I never guessed exactly how difficult. Nobody told you that raising a baby while trying to go to school full time, even with the help of your amazing parents, was pretty impossible.

  But I had to do it. I knew that if I didn’t get my own education and further myself, I’d be doing Mason a disservice. I needed to be able to get a good job to support him. He was all I had, and I was all he had. Being a single mother wasn’t easy, especially a single mother in your early twenties.

  I never imagined this would happen to me. I always saw those reality shows about pregnant teenagers, and I always assumed that they were just really dumb. They weren’t using protection, or maybe they weren’t taking their birth control properly, or something along those lines.

  But there I was, a virgin, and the first time I had sex I got pregnant. We used a condom—I distinctly remember him putting one on—but a few months later I wasn’t feeling good, hadn’t gotten my period, and sure enough I was pregnant.

  I finished as much of that semester as I could, but eventually my parents made me stop going to classes and focus on having my child. They were amazing, my parents. Roger and Celine Bright were supportive, kind, patient, and basically I would be totally lost without them.

  I started the engine and headed home. Fortunately my hometown of Dayton wasn’t too far from campus, and so I could commute to school every day while my mom watched Mason back home. I hated leaving Mason alone with my mom, but she understood and encouraged me to get back to classes to finish my degree.

  One and a half semesters’ worth of credits, that was all I needed, and then I was finished. As I headed home, exhausted from staying up most of the night with Mason, I felt for the first time like I couldn’t do it.

  But of course I was going to. No matter how tired I got, I had to get my degree if I wanted to have a future for Mason.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was pulling into the driveway of my parents’ house. It was two stories with blue shutters and white siding all around it, just like most of the other houses in the neighborhood. I climbed out of the car and grabbed my backpack.

  As I walked into the house, the smell of my mom cooking hit me like a hammer. I breathed deeply, smiling for the first time all day, and headed into the kitchen.

  Mason was sitting in his little bouncy chair, smiling up at my mom as she worked at the stove.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said.

  “Honey, you’re home!” Celine walked over and kissed me on the cheek. “How was it?”

  “It was great,” I said, and went over to Mason. “Hello, big boy. How was Grandmommy today?” I asked, picking him up. He smiled and laughed at me as I bounced him, and suddenly the whole day seemed completely worth it.

  “He was good today,” Mom said. “Even took a nice long nap.”

  “Oooh, took a nap,” I said to Mason. “Sleeping during the day but not at night? Naughty little boy.”

  He just cooed at me and I laughed.

  “Dinner in fifteen,” Mom said.

  “Okay. Thanks.” I took Mason out into the living room and sat down with him in my lap.

  As I looked into his piercing blue eyes, couldn’t help but think about Mason’s father.

  Emory, the total stranger, the ghost. He had swept into my life and overwhelmed all my defenses, and he had given me one of the best nights I’d ever had.

  Lindy hadn’t believe me at first. When I got back to the room the next morning, she was in full-on panic mode and had even called the front desk demanding that they find me. I’d laughed and told her not to worry.

  It wasn’t until I showed her the note that she finally believed me. Tara Bright, life-long virgin, had gone home with a total stranger. She wanted to know every single detail about the guy, and so I told her: mysterious, tall, bright blue eyes, muscular, tattoos, intense, amazing. That description failed to live up to the real Emory, but I figured I’d never see him again.

  And I was absolutely right.

  Emory was like a ghost. When I found out that I was pregnant, it was obvious who the father was. I’d never had sex before and hadn’t had it since him, and so it must have been that very first time. I called up the resort where we had stayed and asked if they had a record of a man named Emory staying there, but they said they didn’t. I couldn’t tell if that was because they didn’t give out that sort of information or if he had given me a fake name, but I assumed the latter considering I probably cried on the phone for ten minutes to that poor woman.

  I tried everything after that, even hired a private detective, but nobody could find a thing about this ghost named Emory, and eventually I gave up.

  I couldn’t spend my life hunting for a man that had completely disappeared. I had to focus on my new life, and that new life was Mason.

  As I bounced Mason and made faces at him, I heard the doorbell ring. “I got it,” Mom called out. I heard her open the door and then some voices, and then Lindy walked into the living room.

  “Hey, girl!” she said, coming over toward me.

  I grinned at her. “Hey yourself.”

  Mom went back to cooking as Lindy sat down on the couch with me.

  “I heard Celine was cooking dinner, so I got my ass over here,” she said.

  “Oh good. I’m sure you were expected.”

  “Please. Celine always expects me.”

  I laughed. “How’s it going?”

  “Good. How was class?”

  “Tiring,” I said honestly. “This little guy decided he didn’t want to sleep well last night. Right, Mason?”

  Lindy laughed. “May I?”

  I handed Mason over to her and she bounced him. “I can’t believe how big he is now. What is he, five months?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sleeps through the night most nights, but of course not last night.”

  She laughed. “Well I’m proud of you for getting back out there.”

  I smiled at her. “Thanks, Lindy.”

  Lindy had been amazing. She finished her degree and got a job working as an administrative assistant in Purdue’s alumni division, which meant she was still living nearby. She came over all the time and spent a lot of time with Mason, and we joked that she was basically like his second mother.

  I’d decided to make that a little more official when I made her Mason’s godmother.

  “How were your classes?” she asked.

  “Good. It felt weird being back there,” I said honestly. “I remember being an actual college student before this little guy.”

  Lindy grinned. “Yeah. Feels weird being graduated. I still sometimes think I’m going out to a kegger over the weekend.”

  “You’re saying you don’t?”

  “Only sometimes.”

  Just then, Mason started to make a face. I knew what that meant, and I quickly took him from Lindy. “He’s about to cry,” I said, “and he needs a change.”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “That’s all you, mommy.”

  I flipped her off, smiling, and took Mason upstairs to his changing spot just as he began to cry.

  I quickly carried him into the nursery. I laid him down on his back, humming slightly to him, and changed his diaper.

  This was my life now: diaper changes and breastfeeding and walks through the nearby park.

  And as I changed his diaper, I realized that I was happy. Having Mason seemed so daunting and terrifying at first, but my parents and Lindy had been so supportive, so helpful.

  I wouldn’t give up Mason for anything. I loved him more than I could say, and he’d changed my life for the better.

  The only
thing missing was his father. Even though I had given up on finding that ghost, I still sometimes thought back to that night fondly. I wished I could find Emory and at least tell him that he had a son.

  But that was never going to happen. Mason might never know his father, and I was going to have to be okay with that.

  It just meant I was going to love Mason enough for two people.

  2

  Emory

  Sunlight streamed in from the big windows overlooking my sparse bedroom. I woke up with it shining right in my face, making the hangover headache tingling in my skull that much worse.

  I grunted, sitting up and putting a hand on my head. To my right, the girl from the night before stirred but didn’t wake.

  I glanced at her. Thin, blond, and tan; pretty fucking standard for California. I remembered she’d been a pretty good fuck, even though she was vapid as fucking shit.

  I slipped out of bed, trying not to wake her up. I didn’t feel like listening to her voice so fucking early in the morning. I went into the bathroom, shut the door behind me, and took a nice long piss.

  Being a Navy SEAL meant I didn’t get to spend much time at home. Most of my life was spent abroad doing my country’s work. My ass was Uncle Sam’s, and I wouldn’t have had it any other fucking way.

  But that meant my apartment wasn’t exactly decorated. I had the necessities, like a bed, a couch, and a TV, but there wasn’t much else. I didn’t need much, since I barely even stayed there for more than a few days at a time.

  But now that I was getting some R&R, I almost didn’t know what the fuck to do with myself. I had a whole month off from work, a little gift from the upper brass for my quality work out in Pakistan over the last sixteen months.

  I looked in the mirror and splashed some water on my face. Emory Rush, cold-blooded killer, terrorist hunter, and captain of SEAL Team Eight. I specialized in hunting down and eliminating terrorists in the Pakistani tribal regions, and for the last fourteen months me and my team had been embedded in the northern part of Pakistan, right outside of Waziristan, hunting a particularly deadly group called The Network.

  The mission had been a rousing fucking success. The Network had been one step ahead of my team and me for years, always escaping us just before we could take all those terrorist fucks out. But in Pakistan, we finally got the drop on them, killing a few important, key members and dealing a huge blow to their organization.

  But it had cost us a lot. I could still hear the death and the bullets screaming around me as we stormed their compound. I lost two comrades and squad mates that day, and those men would never be forgotten.

  Now I had some time off, and all I wanted to do was get back out there. The Network was hurt, but they weren’t destroyed. I wanted nothing more than to avenge my brothers, to tear apart the bastards that had killed them. I wanted to get back into battle.

  I heard the girl in the other room stirring, and I smirked to myself. I figured so long as I was stuck back in the States, I might as well try to enjoy myself.

  And there was no better way to have a good time than drinking too much whisky and fucking every willing slut I could find.

  I pushed open the bathroom door and leaned up against the frame. The girl stirred and sat up, her hair spilling down around her shoulders, her nice tits bare above the sheets.

  “Morning,” she said.

  “Morning,” I grunted in return.

  She half smiled at me. “Looks like a very good morning.”

  I glanced down at myself and realized my cock was half hard. “Guess so.”

  She crawled forward slightly, smiling at me. “Interested in another round?” she asked. “This time I can swallow your dick. You can do whatever you want to me.”

  I looked at the girl, and for a second I was almost tempted.

  But that wasn’t my fucking style. One night was all these girls ever got. I didn’t want to encourage them to try to stick around any longer, because I wasn’t interested in a relationship.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  She did that fake pouty face. “Are you sure?”

  “Fucking sure,” I said. “Get dressed. I’m calling you a cab.”

  She gave me a shocked look. “Are you kidding me?”

  I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and slipped them over my body. “Not at all. You have ten minutes.” I grabbed a white T-shirt and left her in my room.

  “Asshole!” she called after me.

  I grinned to myself. The girl had no clue what she was messing with. I couldn’t risk getting some idiot girl attached to me, not when the work I did was so important.

  I put some coffee on and called the local taxi. I used them so much that I didn’t even have to give them my address anymore. They were used to my normal morning pickup routine, or at least when I was in town anyway.

  I rarely remembered the girls I slept with. I couldn’t even remember this one’s name. Cindy maybe? It didn’t matter, though.

  But one stuck in my mind and kept coming back to me all during those hard nights in Pakistan. Just before we went for our final deployment, the upper brass gave my team a week’s vacation in this fancy-ass hotel, which we spent basically drinking our faces off and fucking whatever we could find.

  And on my last night there, I saw her. Long brunette hair, bright green eyes, and a body that made my cock hard the second I caught sight of her. She seemed shy and innocent, or at least until I got her in bed.

  That pussy was incredible. The way she moved, the way she said my name, everything about her drove me fucking wild. We fucked until I was drenched in sweat and came deep inside that beautiful cunt. And then later on, I couldn’t help but get another taste.

  I never got her last name. It wasn’t like I was going to look her up or anything like that, but for some reason I couldn’t shake her at all. Tara was one of those girls who came around once in a lifetime, and at least I’d gotten a taste of her before I was shipped out to hell.

  I sipped my coffee and the time slipped by. Soon enough, I heard the taxi pull up outside and honk once. I went over to the bedroom door and pushed it open.

  “Your ride is here,” I said. The girl was sitting at the end of my bed, looking at her phone, fully dressed.

  “Okay, dickhead.” She stood up and walked straight out my door, not sparing me a second glance.

  “Have a good one, sweetheart,” I called out my window as she climbed into the cab. She flipped me off and then slammed the door shut.

  I grinned to myself and watched her pull away. I was about to head back inside and make some fucking food when I caught sight of a strange envelope tucked under the welcome mat.

  My apartment was half a bungalow, and I was lucky enough to have my own entrance. It was set back from the street and surrounded with plants, shit I was pretty sure my landlord took care of, since I clearly wasn’t doing it.

  I went out my door and down the steps. I bent over and grabbed the envelope.

  On the front was written Captain Emory Rush.

  I frowned. Who knew about my job in this area? As far as I knew, nobody knew I was a SEAL. If anyone asked, I told them that I was a traveling salesman, and that was that.

  But this had clearly been hand delivered. Whoever put it there knew who I really was and where I lived.

  I had a bad feeling as I climbed back up to my apartment. I sat down at the table and tore the envelope open.

  There was one glossy photograph inside, black and white, a bit grainy, but I instantly recognized the person.

  It was Tara, the girl from the resort in India. She was sitting on a picnic blanket with three other people, two older and another about her age. And she was holding an infant.

  My heart skipped a fucking beat. The baby looked young, maybe seven months at most. I screwed up my face and tried to remember if she’d said she had a kid, or if one of her friends was pregnant, or something like that, but we didn’t talk about ourselves much that night.

  I flipped the photograph over
.

  “Fuck,” I said out loud.

  Written in Urdu, the language Pakistani people spoke, the language The Network spoke, was a simple message.

  Emory, we know who you are and who this baby is. Do you?

  I dropped the photograph on the table and stepped away, my mind moving a thousand miles a second.

  The implication was obvious. I thought it the second I saw the girl holding that baby. Sixteen months ago, sixteen months after we slept together.

  But how the fuck could The Network know about her? I was only with her that one night, and for such a short time.

  “Fucking fuck,” I said again. They must have had spies inside that resort. They knew who I was and who my team was; they must have been watching us. They probably followed every person I was with that night, watching and waiting for something they could use against my team and me.

  Fuck, this was bad. Worse than bad. But I couldn’t panic, not yet. I took a deep breath, calling on my SEAL training to remain calm in the face of danger. I didn’t know anything for sure yet.

  All I had was this photograph. Clearly The Network was watching this girl; that wasn’t the issue. No, the real issue was whether the kid was actually mine or not.

  But that shouldn’t matter. The girl’s life was in danger because of me. I couldn’t just hang her out to dry because I wasn’t sure if that baby was mine or not.

  No, I wasn’t going to let The Network have this girl. Fuck them for coming onto my turf, fucking with my people. They could come after me all they wanted, and frankly I welcomed that shit, but they weren’t messing with some innocent fucking girl just because they were too cowardly to come at me directly.

  I clenched my jaw and resigned myself. I was going to find this girl, and I was going to protect her, at least until I figured out what this was all about.

  3

  Tara

  The day was bright and comfortable as I pushed Mason in his stroller along the paved, black path.

  I loved taking Mason out for a walk in the park near my house. There was nothing better than spending some time with him out in the sunlight, getting some fresh air and some exercise. Mason seemed to like it too and rarely ever got fussy when we were out for a walk. In fact, it was the calmest I ever saw him.