Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) (28 page)

“Easy, easy,” Rawls said in the grimmest voice she’d ever heard, but the kisses he brushed across her mouth and cheeks were soft and soothing. “I got you, sweetheart. Easy, babe.”

That’s when she realized the dampness flowing down her cheeks was tears.

“I’m okay.” The reassurance had a hint of sob to it, but then the entire length of him inside her burned like molten steel.

“Sure you are.” The grimness deepened his voice to a growl. Still, he brushed another kiss across her mouth. “That’s why you screamed.”

“I did?” She didn’t remember that.

“You did.” This time his kiss was less soothing and hungrier, but he broke it off and brushed another of those unbearably chaste ones across her forehead. “Hang in there. It’ll get better. Just don’t move.”

Not moving sounded like a great plan. She settled back, her rigid muscles relaxing. Good lord, she’d been as stiff as a board. Slowly the burning pain eased.

After a moment she sighed and smiled up at him. “You’re right. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much now.”

“Good.” He pulled back to study her face, and whatever he saw there must have reassured him, because he scowled. “You mind telling me why the fuck you did that?”

Lord
. . .
she’d rarely heard him use the f-word before, at least not with her. That didn’t bode well for the coming explanation. She swallowed hard.

“You were stopping and—”

“I wasn’t stoppin’,” he interrupted, his voice a little less grim, but maybe . . . exasperated. “I was slowin’ it down. I was going back to the basics, makin’ sure you were ready for me, makin’ sure I didn’t hurt you.”

Her mouth fell open.

“Oh,” she managed in a small voice.

“Yeah, oh.” He sighed and kissed the tip of her nose. “So, are you ready to let me handle the penis work now?”

That made her laugh.

He caught the laugh with his mouth and then pulled back enough to whisper, “Don’t move. Let me do all the work.”

She wanted to snap a salute and ask if that was an order, but one of his hands had moved to her breast and was slowly pinching and rolling the nipple between his fingers. The friction wasn’t enough to hurt; instead it sent a landslide of tingles coursing through her body. His other hand slid between her legs and began caressing the soft sensitive flesh, restoking her earlier fire. Slowly, lazily, he stroked her nipple, rubbed her clit, and caressed the inside of her mouth with his tongue.

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.

This time she was the one to stroke his cheek. “I have to,” she said again. “If the machine is operational, they’ll need me.” She paused and leaned up to brush a kiss across his lips. “Besides, you’ll be there beside me, right? Keeping me safe.”

He flinched, memories of Sarah’s empty, dying eyes flashing through his mind. “You’d be wise not to count on me for that.”

A frown wrinkled her forehead and her dark eyes sharpened. But she just shrugged. “You’ve saved my life twice so far. I’d say you’re a safe bet.”

“My sister would disagree with that.” The admission was out before he could call it back.

“Why?” Her voice was neutral, but the palm she pressed against his heart was warm and calming.

“Because she died because of me. I couldn’t protect her.”

Maybe she expected something similar, because she didn’t look surprised, nor did she pull back. Her hand remained warm and encouraging against his chest. And her voice was the epitome of casual. “When was this?”

Somehow her lack of reaction made it easier to force the whole sordid story out. “Just before my final year of residency. Sarah was just startin’ medical school, and I knew the gruelin’ hours she was facin’, so I convinced her to join me and a friend, Carl, on his family’s yacht.”

“What happened?” she asked, her voice unbearably gentle, as though she already knew what was coming, or thought she did.

“The boat was surrounded and captured by a flotilla of pirates. Those aboard were held for ransom. Carl and I were left alone.” Except for constant vicious beatings and the mental torture of watching what was happening to their loved ones, while being powerless to stop it. “But they
. . .
used
. . .
Sarah and Bitsy—Carl’s girlfriend—they used them over and over again, by the dozens.” His sister’s white, frozen face and hunched body as he had cradled her in his arms burst so clearly into his mind he could actually smell the blood in her phantom hair. “And I couldn’t stop it.” He could hear the hollowness in his voice.

“Oh Rawls—”

He flinched at the tenderness on her face.

“They released you after the ransom was paid?” The question was matter-of-fact, and he relaxed slightly.

“Hell no, that would have been too honorable for those bastards.” His grimace was more a snarl. “I’m sure they planned to kill us. But Carl’s brother was in the Corps and he had contacts. HQ2 cleared ST4 to take down the ship and rescue survivors. Those malicious bastards never knew what hit them.” For a second, the sound of close-quarters gunfire and screams filled his head.

“Your sister?” Her voice was tentative.

“She died hours before ST4 scaled the yacht.”

“And you’ve blamed yourself ever since.” But rather than understanding, her brisk voice was full of
. . .
exasperation?

What in sweet Jesus’s name
. . .

He frowned and zeroed in on her face. Yep, definitely exasperation, and she wasn’t even trying to hide it. The unbelievability of her reaction banished the ghosts.

“So tell me, Lieutenant Rawlings, how many pirates were holding you hostage?” she asked in that same annoyingly exasperated voice.

“Hell, I don’t know, two dozen, but—”

“Two dozen, well then, of course you should have been able to defend your sister and defeat them all singlehandedly at age—what?” He could almost see her doing some quick estimation. “Twenty-four? Twenty-five?”

“Twenty-four,” he snapped. “You don’t know—”

“What I know is that that’s some mighty fine hubris you’ve got going on there,” she shot back.

What the hell!

He jolted upright and since she was lying on top of him, she did too, until they were sitting there, chest to chest, face to face, and eye to eye.

“Well, isn’t that what you’re telling me?” she asked, not backing down in the slightest. She lifted an eyebrow. “That even as an untrained twenty-four-year-old with no military experience, you could have subdued twenty-four heavily armed pirates? Who are you? Superman?”

“Of course I couldn’t
. . .
” He stumbled to a stop, suddenly seeing the trap she’d set for him.

“Exactly,” she said, the exasperation replaced by tenderness. “You couldn’t do anything. There were twenty-four armed men between your sister and you. Sometimes we have to accept that things are out of our control.”

“Jesus.” He collapsed back down to the bed, taking her with him. “That blitz attack was sneaky as hell.”

But to his surprise, he could actually feel a slight loosening inside himself, the easing of an ancient ache.

“Yeah, well, I knew you wouldn’t listen to reason.” The silence that settled between them was contented, rather than confrontational. “I’m sorry about your sister,” she said after a few seconds.

“Me too.” He forced the words through his tight throat and leaned down to brush his mouth across her forehead. “I’m sorry about Marcy and”—what had their names been?—“Bekka and Julio.”

“Me too.” Her voice sounded hoarse. She cleared it and slanted him a shrewd look. “When are you telling your buddies this entire rescue is based off information provided by a ghost?”

He’d wanted to respond “never,” but yeah, she knew him too well. “Mornin’ will do.”

They needed to know the circumstances surrounding this mission they’d volunteered for. If the revelation caused them to opt out—so be it. He was done lying, or skirting the truth.