Last night he’d enjoyed the hardest, fiercest orgasm of his life, and she’d been right there with him. He was fine with that part of the night’s agenda. But then he’d wrapped his arms around her. He’d held on and rubbed her back, and he might have...said things. Needy things along the lines of You were fucking amazing and Thank you and I can’t believe someone like you has time for someone like me. And when she’d drifted off to sleep, he hadn’t let go then, either. He’d held her and breathed her in, burying his face in her hair and pretending he’d never forget the apple scent of her shampoo or the way she curled a delicate foot around his leg. She was supposed to get up and go. And, if she didn’t, he was supposed to pick her up and carry her back to her own bed. He could have done it, too.
But he hadn’t.
He’d fallen asleep, still cuddling her, and now his entire team knew it. He never slept with his lovers. Sleeping was a private thing. It was one thing to strip down to his bare skin, and he’d never had a problem with serving up raw, gritty sex acts. Bluntly put, he had an expiration date. He wasn’t a long-term guy, and sleeping together was the kind of thing a woman did with her keeper man. He’d touched Laney everywhere, put his fingers inside her body. He’d kissed her, caressed her, licked her from head to foot. Those things didn’t bother him. The sleeping thing, however, was unnerving, and he felt out of control. Mission gone sideways, although not FUBAR. Just...uncharted waters. He grabbed a T-shirt while he thought that one over.
She ran her fingers through her hair, braiding it loosely. “You’ve got a thing.”
Busted. He couldn’t tell her the details, and that was just one more reason in the con column for having a relationship with a SEAL. He had to go, and he couldn’t tell her where, why or even for how long.
“You okay walking back to your bungalow alone?” he said instead.
There was a pause as she fished for her sandals with her toes. “I think I can manage,” she answered dryly.
“You can stay here if you prefer.”
“Alone.” Now she sounded put out.
He jammed his feet into his boots, bent over and started lacing. “Those are your only two options.”
She sighed. “We need to work on our mornings after.”
He didn’t think they’d sucked so badly. “I’m not complaining.”
“Because you’re the one leaving to go to work.”
“How did you think it would go?” Genuinely curious, he started grabbing weapons. He had a .40-caliber Glock model 17 with four magazines, a KA-BAR knife, and a Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine gun holstered to his thigh. He’d need to grab more multiple magazines for the machine gun, .40-caliber Teflon-coated hollow-points designed to pierce any body armor, including the SEALs, because he didn’t know how well prepared Marcos would be. She made a choked sound and he looked up. “What?”
“They let you bring all that stuff onto Fantasy Island?”
He snorted. “We didn’t have to worry about the TSA. We rode a commercial airliner into our drop zone and then we bailed out.”
The flight had taken off from Miami International looking like any tropics-bound jetliner, except the passengers had been almost exclusively male. Gray and his team had schlepped carry-ons full of jump gear, and the cargo hold didn’t hold suitcases. They’d popped the door and jumped when they got near Fantasy Island. It wasn’t a bad way to travel as long as you avoided the jet engines and timed the jump right.
“Right. I can see the 3-1-1 liquid rules didn’t apply to you.”
Jumping with sixty-five pounds of cargo, aiming for a quarter-mile stretch of sand? Yeah. TSA’s rules had not applied in that situation. He rolled his shoulders, settling his harness in place. The chitchat thing was strange. Not strange bad, but completely unfamiliar. But he needed to get his head in the game and his ass into the hallway. It was showtime, not express-your-feelings time.
“You’re injured,” she reminded him. “Even you, Mr. Super SEAL, can’t heal that quickly.”
“It’s just a scratch,” he said gruffly.
“And you have a medical degree from the University of WebMD?” She yanked up the hem of his T-shirt. “Hold this.”
Part of him wanted to push her away. He didn’t take orders and he was out of time. But normal folks expressed concern when their loved ones were going away on a business trip. Or in deep shit. Or running the risk of dying. Yeah. He’d stick with the business trip analogy. So he stood there, holding up his shirt, while she reapplied a bandage, her movements quick and efficient as she taped the gauze in place. This mattered to her, so it was the least he could do.