Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(71)

There was a distance to him that she hadn’t felt in a while. Not since the kitchen when she’d come to her senses to find herself sitting on his lap. She flushed slightly as images and sensation rolled through her, delineating all the other things they’d done while she’d been sitting on his lap.

“Your heartbeat feels strong. But you’re flushed,” he said, some of the reserve giving way to concern. “Maybe you should lie down. Rest for a while. Accordin’ to Jude, their base has a full medical facility. They’ll be able to check your heart out and refill your prescriptions.”

“Okay,” Faith said, watching the detachment solidify on his face again.

A sharp sting of loss rose. It was so strange—she’d only known the man for a week, and until yesterday, she hadn’t spent any time alone with him. There was nothing between them except a fragile friendship. There was no reason to feel like she’d lost something special.

Yet, she did.

“Although, I don’t think I need any medical attention. I feel pretty phenomenal considering I died less than an hour ago.” She held his gaze, willing him to recognize the apology. Which was beyond cowardly. He deserved the words. “I’m sorry. I should have believed you.”

He rocked back on his heels, intently studying her. And then his face softened. Heat flared, burned blue in his eyes.

“I promised myself somethin’ if you came back to me,” he said, his tone a cross between haunted and determined. His focus dropped to her mouth and his blue eyes started to glitter.

“What?” she asked, although from his intense concentration on her mouth, she could guess. A flush scorched her cheeks. “Reserved” certainly didn’t describe him now.

“This.” Rough hands rose to cup her hot cheeks and he lowered his head.

His lips were tender against hers. Gentle. Like she was breakable. Or fragile—to be handled with care.

She didn’t want gentle. She didn’t want temperate. She wanted that fiery rush of sensation he’d given her before. She wanted to feel him. Every aspect of him from tenderness to lust, and every shade of hunger between.

Her surroundings fading away, she offered a soft moan and opened her mouth, inviting him inside.

“Finally, it’s about f*cking time. I don’t get what you see in the broad, but Jesus, just get her into a dark corner and out of those clothes already.”

The disgusting comment crashed into Faith’s head, disrupting the tantalizing, sensuous haze.

“Excuse me!” She jerked her mouth from Rawls’s and planted her palms against his chest, shoving him back. Twin volcanoes of embarrassment and fury spewed inside her.

Although the voice hadn’t sounded quite right, the * who’d ruined the mood had to be Mac. Nobody else was so loud and mouthy and grossly unpleasant.

“Faith . . .” There was the oddest look on Rawls’s face. Shock, only a hundredfold stronger.

“Look, I don’t care if he is your commander. I don’t have to put up with that kind of crap from anyone. Not even him,” Faith snapped, shooting to her feet.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mac asked from across the hub. He sounded baffled. “I didn’t say, or do, a damn thing to you.”

Okay, maybe she’d jumped the gun a bit there. The two voices weren’t the same at all.

“Faith.” Rawls snagged her hand and drew her to his side, motioning Jude toward them with his other hand. “Sweetheart. That’s not Mac.”

“I know that now,” she told him impatiently. “But that doesn’t make the * who said it any less an *.”

Rawls choked on a shout of laughter and gave her a hard, quick hug. “That you got right, darlin’.”

“What the hell are you two yammering about?” Mac growled, stomping toward them, Jude hard on his heels.

Rawls released Faith and nudged her to the right until a thin man, his forehead sheathed in a bloody bandage, came into view. She froze, her mouth dropping open in startled shock. She could see the cavern wall, and Zane and Beth, through his translucent frame.

“Would you look at that?” An ugly smile spread across his transparent face and sank into vicious, muddy brown eyes. “We got a new member in our exclusive club.”

The cavern went eerily silent. A hollow pit opened up in her belly. Her legs went weak and shaky. And then an electrical buzzing took over her brain.

Her gaze dropped to the big black knife sticking out of his chest, and her legs shook harder.

The ghost laughed, his bald head gleaming wetly beneath the reflection of multiple flashlights.

“Boo!” It lunged at her and laughed harder as she shrieked and cringed back.

A howling, spinning storm spun through her mind. Slowly an image took shape. A memory.

A wood-grained kitchen . . . a man bound to a kitchen chair, his bald head gleaming beneath the dim lights . . . shouting . . . raging . . . blood pooling on the floor.

“Looks like you remember me,” Rawls’s ghost said with a smirk.

Of course she remembered him. She’d watched him die. That wasn’t something a person forgot.

“What the hell’s wrong with her?” she vaguely heard Mac ask.

Maybe she was simply dreaming, because she could swear she heard concern in his voice.