Soak (A Navy SEAL Mormon Taboo Romance) Read Online Free PDF

large Provo temple. Her mother was a devoted servant of the
church, but many people in the community had found their own ways of blaming
Sister Lilly for being entangled with a “sinner.” This kind of thing didn’t fly
with Gwen, who was technically still on extended leave of absence from BYU.
She’d arrived there six years ago (in Chloe’s family car, in fact), but had
never quite completed her Pre-law coursework. She maintained that she didn’t “jive”
with the school’s mission, and had done exactly what Chloe had in lieu of
making a larger life decision: bounced right back to Provo. Picked up the old
habits, and a few more household responsibilities.
    “It doesn’t matter anyways,” Chloe’s friend sighed. She
waved her milkshake straw around like it was a cigarette. “ Sister Lilly wants me to get married ASAP. And when you’ve got a nice LDS husband, anything
goes in the bedroom.”
    “Now I know that’s not doctrine.”
    Gwen shrugged. Her wild red hair was beginning to escape its
already insecure moorings. Chloe thought she looked like a Pre-Raphaelite woman
in a painting. Everything about her best friend she found thrilling, precisely
because she was so different from everyone else in their town.
    “Umm. Chloe?”
    “What? PS—can I have the last sip of your strawberry thing?”
    Wordlessly, Gwen handed the plastic cup over. Chloe tracked
her friend’s slack-jawed gaze, straight to her own front-yard. A spring sun
beat down on the day, and it was mild verging on warm—but there was Ryder
Strong, mowing the lawn shirtless. Like one of those Hollywood types.
    “Your father’s not gonna like that,” Gwen purred, though it
was clear from her tone that Elder Johannes couldn’t be further from her mind.
Gwen was notoriously boy-crazy, and had always loved to brag about what she
considered the “creative,” ways she’d found around the
no-sex-till-you’re-married part of doctrine. It was only in her friend’s
company, in fact, that Chloe felt keenly aware of lust. As a prospect, as a
shameless feeling and—alas—as a sin.
    “You’re drooling, lady,” Chloe snapped. She tried to keep
her eyes on the frothy contents of the shake, but her glance kept slipping.
Ryder was rounding a corner with the push-mower, and his torso twisted with the
maneuver. Once again, it was uncomfortably easy to be drawn in to the fluid
movements of his body. She sucked at the straw.
    “Takes one to know one,” Gwen replied, in the whiny tone
they both invoked when they were making fun of Celeste and Marie. “What’s his
deal, anyway? Is he part of the church, or what?”
    What was Ryder Strong’s deal? Chloe certainly didn’t feel
equipped to answer. It had been three weeks and change since the strange military
man had crossed her family’s threshold, and she still couldn’t say that she
knew more about him than most of his government ID forms did. Since that first
awkward evening, they’d been avoiding each other. Each time Ryder saw fit to
make some smug, anti-Mormon “joke,” she rolled her eyes—and each time she
opened her mouth, she imagined she could feel him sighing from across the room.
It was a tense game of chess they were playing, made doubly uncomfortable by
the fact that she’d never thought of herself as boring and prudish before.
Though it wasn’t like she had anything to prove to Mr. Secular Shirtless, over
there. Flashing off his muscles and those ugly symbol tattoos.
    “He bugs you that much, huh?” Gwen was intuitive as ever,
and Chloe could only nod. She gathered her cardigan tighter around her skinny
frame; more out of revulsion than the cold.
    “He’s just very arrogant. And it’s very clear in the house
that he only really respects my brother.”
    “He’s rude to your parents?”
    “Not rude, exactly. But he’s made his feelings about the
Church pretty obvious. And I know what he must think of me and Mama.”
    “Oh, pish posh. Who’s he to judge? Just a big