Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(93)

That lovely, winding tension seized her again. At some point, she wasn’t even sure when, the burning pain disappeared, or maybe it simply became unimportant. Her hips began to move in conjunction with the tug of his mouth on her bottom lip.

He moved back from her mouth to search her eyes. “Okay?”

The question was guttural, but at least he managed to speak. She’d apparently lost access to her lungs and could only manage a dazed nod.

His smile held pure satisfaction.

Still watching her face, he pulled back slightly. She groaned in protest and clamped her arms and legs around him.

“No movin’,” he reminded her, but the words were thick and teasing. Carefully, he pressed forward again.

There was no way she could follow his directive. Not when every cell in her body was demanding that she match her rhythm to his. So she arched into his next thrust, and then his next and his next, until they were moving in concert.

Somehow the sight of his bunched shoulders, corded neck, and the way his unfocused eyes were still locked on her face as he hammered urgently into her, ratcheted her pleasure to the next level.

The tension twined tighter and tighter and tighter until it simply burst.

Until they both burst.

And floated down to earth with legs and arms still wrapped around each other.




Rawls returned to awareness slowly, utterly content, his spent body stretched across a soft, damp pillow. When the pillow moved, he froze. Instantly his memory and hearing returned.

Faith . . . ah hell—he had to be crushing her.

Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled, keeping her tucked against his body so that when they stopped moving, she limply draped him from thigh to chest. Sheer perfection.

As his body and mind recuperated, an insane need to touch her nagged at him, to keep touching her, to cement this intimacy between them—which was rather redundant considering they were pressed together, naked torso to naked torso, as intimately as two people could possibly get . . . well, almost.

They’d been a hell of a lot more intimately connected a few minutes earlier. He smiled at the memory, the satisfaction so thick inside him it had weight and substance.

It had been a long time since she’d had a man in her. He had no clue why that knowledge filled him with such intense satisfaction. He simply accepted that it did. Hell, the thought of another man touching her made him want to throw the bastard down a flight of stairs—after breaking his legs and arms so he could never touch her again.

He sighed and stroked a hand down her back, more content than he could ever remember feeling. In the past, he’d never cared how many lovers a woman had taken before him—or how many more she’d take after he parted ways with her. This possessiveness was new. Unexpected.

Her skin was cooling beneath his palm as her sweat dried. Grabbing a handful of blanket, he dragged it over her thin frame.

While he’d been vaguely aware of her thinness earlier, the urgency of his hunger had obscured just how frail she actually was. Jesus, her spine was far too prominent, every bump and hollow identifiable by touch. And then there were her shoulder blades and collarbone—they were so pronounced they looked capable of piercing her skin at any moment. The woman needed to eat—a lot.

He was making it a priority to pack some pounds on her.

As he continued stroking her, worry built, tension rose, and something very much like dread unfurled in his mind and clotted in his chest. How the hell could anyone think she was capable of making it out of that damn rescue mission alive?

It wasn’t until she lifted her head from his chest that he realized she was awake too.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, propping her chin on her hands and staring at him steadily.

She’d probably picked up on the tension invading his muscles. He lifted a hand and threaded his fingers through her hair, gently untangling the thick dark strands.

“You have the most beautiful hair,” he said, running his fingers through the glossy strands again before pulling his hand free and stroking a finger across the network of freckles on her cheek. Sometime soon he was going to kiss his way along every freckle on her body. “And freckles,” he added. He lifted his head to press a kiss to first her right and then left eye. “And eyes. You don’t have a clue how beautiful you are.”

Without reacting, she watched him solemnly. “What’s wrong?”

His chest tightened as he stared back at her. She didn’t believe him. Well, he’d just have to make it priority number two to convince her. But he needed time to do that. A lifetime of it. Starting now.

“Please don’t go on the rescue mission.” The plea broke from him and then just hung there.

“I have to. Surely you see that? I wasn’t exaggerating about what the technology can do, Rawls.” She seemed to hesitate and finally sighed. “If anything, I downplayed it. There’s no way to defend against what someone can do while under the influence of that machine. You, Cosky, Mac, Zane, Wolf and his team—you’d all be massacred.”

His stomach tightened and he shied away from that possibility. “It’s likely your team hasn’t gotten far enough along in the re-creation.”

She shook her head, and her silky hair slid through his fingers to tickle his chest. “It could prove to be a fatal mistake if we banked on that.”

“Faith—” His throat tightened, cutting the rest of the protest off.