Heated Pursuit (Alpha Security #1)(31)
“Don’t move a muscle.” His soft order brought her feet to an automatic stop. But it wasn’t until his presence warmed the front of her body that she hesitantly met his gaze. She watched in fascination as his blue eyes changed to stormy gray.
Though she was covered, she couldn’t have been more exposed if she stood in front of him naked. His eyes scanned her from the toes of her peekaboo stilettos to the curves of her breasts. By the time he reached her eyes, every inch of her body hummed.
“And here I thought it couldn’t get better than the dress from the club. You love proving me wrong, don’t you?” Rafe’s low voice gave her goose bumps.
Her lips stretched into a tremulous smile. “When this is over, I’m going back to jeans, cotton T-shirts, and tennis shoes. I may even go the crazy extra mile and toss on a hoodie…but there will be no dresses and sure as hell no heels. Or thongs.”
Not that she was wearing one now.
When this Fuentes nightmare ended, she also needed to deliberate a plan on what she’d do with her attraction to the man in front of her. If Alpha really had set up shop right in her backyard, it wasn’t like she could enjoy now and never see him again. Frederick was a small town, and despite the fact their paths hadn’t crossed yet, Rafe wasn’t on assignments year-round. The chances of bumping into him at the one and only gas station or the grocery mart were more than likely. It was a given. Eventually.
She was working on her acting skills for the bail enforcement job, but she wasn’t about to win any awards. And when it came to Rafe—forget about it. His many layers made her head spin and feel like the newest recipient of a Razzie Award.
He was bravery, loyalty, and a kick-ass attitude wrapped up in a six-and-a-half-foot mass of hard muscle. For years he put his life on the line for his country, and even though the ink had long dried on his discharge papers, he was doing it still. Alpha wasn’t a job to him. It was a way of life, as much a part of him as the heart beating in his chest.
Her father had been like that. Trey was like that, too. But what neither had done that Rafe did in the little time they’d known each other was take a chance on her. It both humbled her and fired her up. And it also rumbled the walls of her carefully constructed boundaries.
She pasted a smile to her face as Rafe stepped forward, careful to keep his wide back blocking the camera. He was close, so close that the front of his shirt brushed against her breasts.
“What are you thinking about that’s got your brow furrowed like that?” He gently rubbed a finger over the wrinkle that had formed on her forehead.
Her eyes closed automatically as she savored the gentle touch. “Oh, you know…my to-do list. Groceries. Errands. The fact that the longer it takes us to crack Fuentes, the longer Rachel’s subjected to Freedom and God only knows what other nasty drug the man’s invented.”
The moment he cupped her cheek, Penny didn’t hesitate to move into Rafe’s warmth. Solid and unwavering, his arms surrounded her like a protective shield. With a heavy sigh, she braced her forehead against his chest.
This open, wilted person she became in his embrace unnerved her. She hadn’t invited her, and she sure as hell wasn’t comfortable with her. But that didn’t seem to matter when Rafe’s hand slipped into her hair and gently kneaded the tight muscles at the base of her neck.
Her voice shook as the admission slipped too easily from her lips. “I know we need to keep our guard up, to not rush this, but I keep picturing Rachel in a dark, dank dungeon, scared out of her mind, and the harder I try to change my focus, the worse the images get. How can I not let them affect me?”
“I’m not going to pretend to know what you’re feeling.” Rafe’s breath brushed intimately against her ear, his words weighted with sincerity. “And I can’t say your concerns aren’t warranted, because Fuentes is one sick f*ck. But one thing that helped me back in Delta and with Alpha now is focusing on the end result. Rachel’s already in this situation. It’s done. We can’t change that. But we’re going to do our damned best to get her out of it. In other words, focus on the things you can change, not the things you can’t. Rachel’s lucky to have you in her corner.”
“She’s been in mine long enough. It was never a question of if I’d try to find her, but whether I could actually do it. Thanks to you and the others, we’re close. I never would’ve gotten this far without all of you.”
“The same could be said about you. We’ve been after this bastard for close to a year—three months in San Pedro Sula alone. Before you, we only had suspicions and hearsay about where Fuentes was getting his guinea pigs. And if you hadn’t overheard that conversation between those two drug peddlers, we wouldn’t have known that Fuentes kicked up his timeline, much less known where to score a face to face.”
Her gaze flickered down to his mouth, mere inches away. “So you’re saying the moment I kicked you between the legs is the moment your luck changed?”
“The moment I met you, a lot of things started to change.” A charged silence thickened between them until he stepped back, trailing his fingers down her bare arm until their fingers entwined.
Penny was still looking down at their linked hands when he started leading the way out of their room. Hand holding was a simple, innocent gesture, but that nagging little jump in her stomach told her that there was nothing innocent about the intimate contact.