Authors: Tawny Weber
She never wanted to be anywhere else.
Realizing she’d plummeted into dangerous thinking, Alexia drew in a little more of his calm, got her thoughts and her breathing under control, then slowly pulled back.
“Thank you,” she said, wrinkling her nose in embarrassment. “I’m sorry to cry all over you. I guess SEALs really are trained to handle any emergency.”
His eyes narrowed, as if he knew she’d tossed his job out to put a wedge between them. He didn’t call her on it, though. Maybe he liked the wedge? Alexia frowned, then rubbed her damp cheeks dry.
“I don’t suppose you have a hairbrush, or something I can use to wash my face,” she asked. “Or, you know, a hairdresser and manicurist stashed in one of those packs.”
“There,” he said, pointing to the bunk on the left. On it were two packs, one smaller, one larger. “Clothes, toiletries, whatnot. Over there is a makeshift bathroom. No bathing facilities, but you can change.”
Alexia followed his gestures, then looked back at him and wet her lips. Get naked, with just a flimsy piece of fabric separating them? Her body trembled at the idea, wanting desperately to beg him to get naked with her. But that wasn’t going to happen, she warned her body. He was off-limits. Totally wrong for her, and she wasn’t stupid enough to make the same mistake twice.
“Thank you,” she murmured, lifting the pack and digging in to find not only a hairbrush and toothbrush, but ponytail holders, thick wool leggings, thermal underwear and a sweater. She wanted to ask who his personal shopper was, but figured the less said to bring attention to the fact that she was about to get naked, the better.
“I’ll get dinner ready while you change,” he told her.
Alexia narrowed her eyes. He didn’t sound as if he cared that she was going to strip down. Not excited, not intrigued. Nothing.
Fine. It wasn’t as though she wanted him to want to see her naked. She’d ended that part between them and for a damn good reason.
When Alexia realized that it was taking all her control not to add
so there
and stick out her tongue, she sighed. Clearly, the ordeal was messing with her way too much.
It might have been residual irritation, or probably nerves that she’d give in to her body’s urgings and call out for him, but Alexia changed in record time. She didn’t want to touch the nasty, five-days-worn clothes once she’d stripped them off, but it wasn’t as if the tent came with maid service. So she bundled them up and, noticing a couple of small plastic bags tied to a rope, stuffed them into one. There. Trash.
She used the canteen water to brush her teeth and wash her face, then spent a luxuriously long time running the brush through her tangled mass of hair.
Once it was pulled into a tidy French braid and she felt clean and warm and real again, she pulled back the curtain and rejoined Blake.
Why, oh why did she have to have values? He looked so deliciously sexy standing there in winter camo fatigues tucked into his boots and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She tried reminding herself that the silver chain she could see along the back of his neck belonged to his dog tags. Making him a soldier boy.
Off-limits, Alexia
, she wanted to yell. But her body didn’t care. All it could see was how great he looked.
“Hungry?” he said, giving her a friendly-yet-distant look over his shoulder.
Clearly, he had no problem forgetting about the two days of constant, mind-blowing sex they’d shared. She sniffed. Either that or they hadn’t blown his mind enough for him to see her as anything but a mission objective.
And that kiss. She forced herself not to sigh and melt at the memory, since she now knew it was probably just his way of reassuring her. Keeping her from getting hysterical. Or, who knew, maybe luck, as she’d first said.
Before she could pout too much, her stomach—the only part of her body not craving Blake’s touch—growled.
“Hungry it is,” he said, grinning and setting two plates, steam rising temptingly, on the table.
Alexia placed the pack on her designated cot and joined him.
“Field rations?” she guessed with a grimace. “My father used to insist we have them for dinner once a month. It was supposed to make us appreciate what soldiers had to deal with while protecting our way of life.”
“Did it?”
“No,” she remembered, wrinkling her nose. “But it did solidify my determination not to serve in the military.”
Blake’s grin warmed her more than all the space heaters combined. That feeling—and starvation—got her through the first few bites. Then the flavor hit her taste buds.
She poked into the open food box he’d set between them until she found salt. It took two packets before she could get through the other half of her meal. She glanced at Blake, who was spooning up his as if it was covered in chocolate.
“You don’t actually like this—” she was hesitant to call it food “—stuff, do you?”
He shrugged, still scooping up the tan goo. “It’s not that bad. Growing up, I was mostly hungry, so I tend to focus more on filling my belly than the taste threshold.”
She wanted to ask why he’d been hungry. What his upbringing had been like. Was that a part of why he’d joined the military? For three square meals—or the equivalent? She wrinkled her nose at the mushy stuff on her plate. Did he have siblings? A family? Were they still hungry or had they found their way?
A million questions raced through her mind, but she couldn’t ask any of them. She felt it was private, that she had no right to poke or prod. She’d been fine with the right to lick her way down his body and to do a naked dance on his face, but ask personal questions? Totally taboo.
Which was ridiculous. So was the fact that while she’d claimed to want communication with him in the past, she’d never wondered any of those things. She’d only focused on the parts of his life that she thought impacted her. And then, when she’d found out just how strong that impact was, she’d slammed the door shut.
She poked her spoon into the stew again, trying to control the urge to cry. Again. God, she was a mess.
“If you eat all your dinner, I have chocolate for dessert,” Blake said in a singsong voice.
Her eyes flew to his face.
“Chocolate?”
“Yep. Chocolate bars, chocolate powder, chocolate syrup.”
“Noooo,” she breathed in a reverent moan.
“Yep.”
She looked around the tent, wondering where he’d hidden it. She hadn’t seen any in the box of gross dinner choices. Then, because chocolate made everything more appetizing, she dived into the stew, eating it fast enough that she didn’t have to taste it.
“There,” she said three minutes later, holding out her cleaned plate. “Chocolate time.”
“You’re done already?” Surprise clear in his blue eyes, Blake laughed. But he took her plate, put it in a bag, then pulled a small knapsack from beneath one of the bunks.
“It’s all yours.”
Her fingers trembled, not a new thing for her this week. But this time it was excitement shivering through them as she undid the buckles.
“Yum,” she moaned again when she saw the stash inside. At least two-dozen chocolate bars, three cans of familiar brown syrup and a large pouch with two sections, one with brown powder and the other with white. Chocolate milk to go, just add water?
Her fingers had already wrapped around a candy bar when she realized this was a lot of soothing sweetness. Enough to last awhile. A long while.
She bit her lip.
“Should I be rationing it?” she asked Blake quietly.
He paused in the act of emptying another pouch onto his plate and met her eyes. His gaze shifted to the radio, then scanned the monitors before meeting hers again.
“Just enough so that you don’t make yourself sick,” he said.
Alexia still hesitated.
“We’re waiting until we get word that the compound is secured and the team has neutralized everyone inside,” he told her, his voice so quiet and matter-of-fact that it took her a second to realize he was filling her in on the mission objective. “As soon as they give the all-clear, someone will contact us with pickup coordinates. How long that takes simply depends on the level of resistance the team meets back there.”
“The guy was crazy,” she said, carefully pulling a single candy bar from the knapsack, then deliberately closing the flap. “He talked about starting a war, about the loyalty of his troops. There were too many there for me to count.”
“Numbers don’t matter. Strategy is what counts. And SEALs rock the strategy.”
“I’ve heard that rumor,” she said with a smile. “Is this your usual job? Hostage hand-holding?”
His lips twitched. He crossed the tent and stopped in front of her.
“What are you doing?”
Alexia held her breath as excitement swirled in her belly. Personal prejudices being what they were, she’d never been turned on by a guy in uniform, or in camo or even wearing dog tags and low-riding jeans. Soldiers were totally not her thing.
Except Blake.
She was horribly afraid that if she wasn’t careful, he’d become her
every
thing.
He reached out and took her hand in his. His fingers entwined with hers, then he gave them a gentle shake.
“Holding hands.”
* * *
B
LAKE
LOVED
THE
WAY
she laughed. The sound of it, rich and husky. The way it made her dark eyes dance with delight. The look of her face, all lit up and happy.
He loved the feel of her fingers, slender and warm in his. Relief so intense it made him want to drop to his knees poured through him. She was here. He’d got her out alive, safe and sound.
He couldn’t claim he’d never been worried on a mission. Since Phil’s death, worry was a second skin, always looming, never comfortable. But scared? He’d never understood real fear until he’d opened that file and realized Alexia was his target. He’d used the fear, iced it down and applied it to fuel his moves, to make sure he was hypervigilant. To get Alexia to safety.
They weren’t quite there yet. But at the sight of her smile, watching her come back to life as the terror started to fade, he was filled with so many emotions he’d never felt before. It made him wish for things he’d never thought of. Made him care, way too much. Cade had accused him of mooning over Alexia. Blake realized now he’d just been waiting.
And if he’d had the words, if he had a clue what to say, he’d have made some big emotional declaration.
His gut clenched, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
He owed his life to those warning signals, so he automatically stopped, mentally gauging the danger.
Alexia, he realized.
She wasn’t a threat to his physical safety.
She was a threat to his way of life.
If he let these emotions grow, he’d give in to anything she asked. Like leaving the military. Giving up his career. Growing out his hair. Hell, he was pretty sure he’d even get one of those dogs women carried in their purses if she asked.
Slowly, trying not to make a show of it and get her upset again, he released her hand.
He’d rather have the fear back.
Or at least that nice safe distance time and her anger had provided. Because now that she was here, right here in front of him again? With all these crazy thoughts and emotions going on? She was a bigger danger than the wannabe terrorist and his cadre of idiots back there.
“I guess hand-holding really is a part of your job description,” she said, her laugh a little stiff. He wondered if she’d been hit with emotional overload, too. He doubted it. She’d already faced the threat of her life’s destruction. Flicking him off again probably didn’t even register.
Good. He just had to keep it that way. Make sure his position as a SEAL, his connection with her father, stayed clear in her mind.
That’d keep her hands off him.
And hopefully he had enough training and self-discipline to keep his own off her.
Before he could dismiss the hand-holding as a nothing gesture, or figure out a way to bring her dad into the conversation, the radio light flashed, a low buzz indicating a message was coming in.
Saved by an unexpected communiqué. Not wanting to alarm Alexia, he kept his smile in place.
“Well, hand-holding and answering the phone. Or radio, in this case,” he said, walking over to see what was there.
His expression didn’t change as he read the intel.
The compound belonged to one Hector Lukoski. The son of a known terrorist with Syrian ties, Lukoski was trying to make a name for himself apart from his father. Well trained in defensive measures, he had an underground hideout. The team had confirmed that there was only one way in or out, and had it covered. But short of blowing his lair up around him, they were forced to lay siege and wait. No action would be taken until new orders were issued, at least twelve hours from now.
He tapped a few keys to signal that the message was received.
Alexia wasn’t going to like the news.
Nor, he remembered, was he supposed to tell her.
The message was in code, so she wouldn’t have to know. Wouldn’t have to worry. His brain raced, pulling together a plan. He’d make her some hot chocolate, dim the lights and talk her into going to sleep.
It wasn’t a very elaborate plan, but sometimes simple was best.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Just a weather report,” he said, tapping the screen. “It looks like it’s going to snow.”
“Ha-ha.” Giving him a narrow look, she got stiffly to her feet and, after taking a second to bend in half and touch her toes, she crossed to the bank of radios and monitors and peered at the message.
“A weather report? Seriously?”
“SOP is to check in every two hours. A weather report is a simple message to use. If it was somehow intercepted, it says nothing. And it’s always good to know the weather.”
He couldn’t tell if she was buying it or not. That was the trouble with Alexia. Half the time, she was an open book, easy to read and ready to share. The other half made him feel like an untrained schoolboy trying to talk to his first girl. Clueless and inept.
“Well, at least the navy has a handle on the weather,” she finally said.