Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(36)

He adjusted her limp body and slid his hand in her pocket, exhaling in relief as his fingers touched something small and oblong.

Thank you, Jesus. The pill was in reach if she needed it.

“Shhh, shhh. I got you, baby. I got you,” he crooned in a rough voice, his heart pounding as hard and fast as it had the last time he’d sprinted five full klicks to catch the evac chopper. “You’re okay. I got you.”

She stirred against him, a cross between a whimper and a groan breaking from her.

“Shhhh.” His arms tightening, he dropped a gentle kiss on top of her soft, silky head. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Her strangled breathing eased. Her arms stole around his waist and clung, and with something close to a sigh, she nestled closer, tucking her head beneath his chin.

He checked her pulse again. This time the beat was slower and more regular beneath his fingers.

Relaxing slightly, he tightened his grip on her and tried like hell to concentrate on the fear still emanating from her, rather than the sweetest, softest ass this side of the Dixie line. Christ almighty, her butt fit his lap like it had been handcrafted for him alone, sculpted to match him perfectly. Each rock of his arms rubbed those softly curved cheeks against his crotch. Jesus H. Christ, he was the biggest ass alive to get all hot and bothered right now. This was the last thing she needed.

He fought to keep his movements gentle and soothing, to ignore the tension ballooning in the lower quadrant of his body and the prickles and chills that erupted as her humid breath bathed the bare skin of his neck.

With another of those soft, shaky sighs, she eased back in his arms and stared at him. “What . . . what happened?”

Her face was so close he could see the pinpricks of silver shining in the gunmetal blue of her eyes.

“Just rest, darlin’.” He stopped rocking her long enough to check her pulse again and breathed a sigh of relief to find it slow and steady. Much more of that friction and she was bound to notice that he was getting all lumpy down there—which was not the reaction she needed at the moment.

But sexual urgency wasn’t the only tension rising. Pachico could pop in any moment. He needed to be gone before that happened—get as far away from her as possible—yet he couldn’t leave just yet. She was still shaky and traumatized. She needed the company, not to mention the cuddling.

“But what happened to me?” While a breathless rasp still roughened her voice, the unfocused haze was rapidly fading from her eyes.

He didn’t want to lie to her, but hell, she wouldn’t believe the truth.

“Did I have a seizure?” she asked, staring at him with huge fragile eyes.

“I’m not sure,” he hedged. It could have been a seizure. A possession-induced convulsion . . . He doubted that knowledge would provide any comfort.

He could clearly see the fear in her eyes, the uncertainty, and his chest tightened, guilt hitting hard. This was his fault. He’d brought that thing back. She’d been attacked because of him, and every second he sat there left her vulnerable to another attack.

He needed to leave . . . hell, he had to leave—now.

Reluctantly, he opened his arms, letting them drop to his side, silently urging her to vacate his lap.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t read minds. Instead of scrambling off and putting some distance between them as he’d hoped, she frowned and studied his face.

“That wasn’t my heart. I know what tachycardia feels like,” she said slowly, her eyes still clinging to his face. “And that wasn’t tachycardia. That was different.” Her eyes lost focus again, like she was remembering. A shudder traveled through her and fear glossed her eyes. “What if it happens again?”

The small, fragile undercurrent in her voice constricted his throat. Before he even realized he’d moved, he framed her worried face with his hands and pressed a comforting kiss to her forehead.

“Nothin’s gonna happen,” he said in his most soothing voice. He pressed another satin-soft kiss to her right cheek and then her left.

“But what if it does?” she asked, a slight flush climbing her cheeks. The fear drained from her eyes, and her gaze dropped, focusing on his mouth.

He wanted to promise her that nothing would happen to her, assure her he’d keep her safe. But that promise wasn’t his to make. He had no control over what Pachico did, other than making sure the bastard wasn’t close enough to attack her again.

And damn it, he needed to get moving. Sitting here cuddling was just asking for trouble and not just from his obnoxious troll of a ghost. He liked the warm, soft weight of her ass snuggling his cock too damn much.

One last kiss and he’d evict her from his lap and get the hell out of dodge. He’d intended for this final kiss to be in line with the first three. Gentle, calming, a comfort. But sweet Jesus, that luscious bottom lip of hers, with its sassy dip in the middle, had been tempting him since that moment on the bed, so it wasn’t exactly surprising that his good intentions got all scrambled up. Rather than dropping a harmless, asexual caress on her upturned lips, his mouth closed over that sexy bottom lip and suckled. Hardly soothing, definitely not comforting, and a little too rough to be considered gentle.

Even so, he could have salvaged that moment of insanity, if she hadn’t responded—if she hadn’t pulled her lips free so she could press them against his mouth. Hell, he could even have withstood the feathery caress of her lips, if she’d left her tongue out of it—out of him.