[When SEALs Come Home 04] - Heated (20 page)

“I’ve been places, done things.”

“Bad memories,” she said on a sigh. Or a yawn. He shouldn’t have woken her up. “Do you want to talk about them?”

“Hell, no.” He’d rather have open-heart surgery without the drugs, and never mind that he’d brought it up. He’d recant, thank you very much.

“Did you go for a ride?”

Riding hadn’t helped any other night. He couldn’t go fast enough to outrun the demons. The only thing that seemed to help was... Mercy. Hell if that didn’t make him hold her tighter and bury his face in her hair like the worst kind of pansy. He doubted she wanted to hear that she was his new solution to the midnight demons, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it himself.

***

“N
o riding. I came back here,” he said, and her heart kicked up a notch. Joey’s arms tightened around her waist, rucking up her shirt and reminding her that she hadn’t worn any panties to bed. He was naked. She was... accessible.

He smelled like fresh air and Joey, two of her favorite scents. The dreams drifted away. She wriggled against him and—
hello
—he also sported a mighty-fine erection with the
eau de outside
. Maybe there was something for being woken up in the middle of the night.

Like he’d read her mind, he bent his head and pressed his face her neck. His dark-o’clock stubble rasped her skin, and she sucked in a breath.

“You’ve been outside. Your face is cold.”

“Think of all the places I could put my face.” He rubbed his face against her throat suggestively. She laughed, but amusement wasn’t the only thing she was feeling. Far from it. He was sweet and silly... and hot.  There was no overlooking Joey’s hotness when he was pressed up against her in bed.

“For example...,” he said and slid his hand south. She squealed at the icy sensation of his fingers petting through her warm folds.

“Oh, my God.”

He stroked a little deeper. “Better?”

How did he manage to freeze her and make her burn at the same time? It had to be a gift. “You want to have sex now?”

Because the idea was sounding better and better to her.

“Please.” His rough groan made her feel sexy, loved. Then he hesitated. “Shit. Condom.”

“I’m on the pill,” she said. “I trust you.”

Three little words that rocked her world, but she meant them. This thing that was happening between them wasn’t just sex, not for her. She hugged the thought to herself because now was not the time to spring emotions on him. Plus she didn’t know what she meant. His thumb found her swollen clit and traced a naughty circle and there went rational thought anyhow.

***

“M
e too.” He trailed his hands down her back, over her butt. Funny how her trust worked in him like some kind of powerful aphrodisiac. She was usually ten kinds of careful, and she always, always followed the rules. Except, for him, she was apparently willing to bend them some. He wondered what else she’d let him do, what she might suggest.

She inhaled, a rough sough of sound, because she was as excited as he was. That was a good thing too. She was beautiful, all feminine curves. He wanted to kiss her everywhere, run his hands over her and lick her, but he also needed to be inside her desperately. Like yesterday.

“Hurry up.” She shifted her legs apart for him, and that finished him. This wasn’t going to be fancy, creative sex, but it felt right. Familiar. This was where he needed to be. Not out on the road alone with his demons but right here with Mercy.

“I’m right here, honey.” He pressed into her slowly.
Jesus.
She was hot and slick, squeezing him tight. “I need you.”

Not this. He needed
her
.

She gave a loud moan of satisfaction, and he loved how she didn’t hold back. She pressed her butt into his front as she took him deep. He buried his face in the side of her neck, breathing her in.

She giggled. “Oh, God. Your nose is still cold.”

The rest of him wasn’t. He took her slow and deep and the best part was the laughter as he rubbed his icy nose over her heated skin. It was okay to laugh together, for the moment to be funny and unchoreographed, just the two of them rushing toward orgasm together. Somehow, somewhere along the way, she’d turned him into a fucking poet or maybe it was all those
Cosmos
she left lying around the bathroom and the bedroom so that the pages practically begged to be read. He pushed slowly in until his balls hit her ass, and she wiggled.

“Move,” she whispered. “Or I’m going to come without you.”

“We can’t have that.”

Not that he would mind. Mercy coming was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. She was disciplined and organized and really, really good at making sure people toed the line and played by the rules. But she also let go and had fun in bed with him, making herself vulnerable in way no one else got to see. She made him feel special.

He pulled back, pushed forward.

“Mmmm,” she groaned. “That works for me.”

He ran a hand down her spine, gripping her hips lightly. He was crushing her into the sheets, but she didn’t seem to mind. Their hands tangled together, her butt rising up to meet his hips as he stroked into her. This was perfect. Better, more exhilarating than any headlong rush down the highway. It was a different way of losing himself and better, because with each stroke he was more and more sure he knew exactly where he was. In Mercy.
With
Mercy. Fuck him, but he was in love with her too.

***

M
ercy had no idea what time it was when her pager went off. Five minutes, five hours, but she had no clue. He’d reduced her to boneless happiness.

“I’ve got to take that,” she mumbled. Sheriff Tegan wouldn’t have paged her unless it was important.

“Okay,” Joey said and unwrapped his arms from around her. Instead of going back to sleep or getting up himself, he sprawled on her bed, watching her move around the room and grab her clothes. She loved the way he didn’t complain, just accepted her job and its realities. She shimmied into a clean pair of panties and her bra while she read the page.

“Bad accident? Rock slide? Nuclear apocalypse? It can’t be a fire or my phone would be going crazy.”

“Accident. A hit-and-run, but it must have happened hours ago. I’ll find out more when I get there. I’m sorry to run out on you.” The accident had to be a bad one if she was getting called in, but leaving Joey now sucked.

“We could fix the leaving thing. Move in with me, and then at least you’re coming back to me.” He lounged back against her headboard, sheet at his waist, as if he hadn’t just dropped a bombshell on her.

“You’re joking.” She opened her closet door and grabbed her uniform pants. She had no idea why he was bringing this up now, but it wasn’t funny.

“No. I’m not.” He eyed her levelly. “Why not?”

Right. She had a wee-hours-of-the-morning call to go into work, and he wanted to discuss the future of their relationship. Well, she had news for him. They’d talked about having sex. Then they’d had it. She’d made it perfectly clear that sex was as far as she went with him, so if he didn’t like it, that was too bad. Plus she had a hard time believing a man like Joey could be serious anyhow.

“We’re having sex,” she said, jamming a leg into her pants.

“True.” He sat up and leaned forward. “Hot sex. But that’s not all.”

“No?” She took her frustration out on her belt, then grabbed a shirt.

“No.” He sounded certain, which made one of them. “We’re not
just
having sex.”

“I—”
had no idea what to say.
Why were the stupid buttons so hard to do up? It was nice to hear that she wasn’t just a booty call. And she did think they were something more. They were friends, and she didn’t have so many of those that she didn’t value Joey’s friendship.

“We’re dating. We have a relationship. I care about you.” He looked at her, and she was pretty certain he saw right through her. “And you care about me.”

“This can’t be a long-term thing.” He was crazy.

“Don’t give me that morals clause crap again.”

Okay. Fine. She marched to the gun safe and retrieved her service weapon.

“Because,” he said, sounding irritated. “I’m not a convicted felon. I drive too fast. I get too many speeding tickets. Those aren’t irredeemable character flaws.”

“Tell that to Tegan,” she said.

He shot to his feet, and she tried to ignore the fact that she had six feet of naked hot guy standing in her bedroom. “Do you want to live your life worrying about what other people think? You’re afraid to take a chance on loving me because maybe you’d get hurt. Because maybe it would end up like high school sweetie did and that would suck.”

“Are you done?” She shut the gun safe and holstered her weapon. A hair tie, her shoes, and her keys, and she was out of here.

“I think I love you,” he said quietly. “We could get married. We could do this thing together.”

The bottom fell out of her stomach and a few other places as well. Like, say, her heart.
No
. He wasn’t right. This thing they had was chemistry, and neither of them had been playing for keeps.

“I thought we were having fun.”
Lame
.

“Because marriage sucks?”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she turned and left. She had a job to do, and that had to come first, didn’t it? Because without the job, who was she and what had she done with her life?

A
lthough fire season wouldn’t kick off for another three months or so, there was plenty of prep work to be done in the off-season. Joey took his frustrations out on a tangle of equipment piled up in their tool cache. As work went, sorting wasn’t exciting, but it needed to be done. He’d worked a few fire camps before joining Donovan Brothers, and opening up the caches there had been part Christmas morning and part
oh shit
. It was amazing how many guys thought nothing of chucking their Pulaskis and all their other gear into random piles when their lives would depend on the same stuff in six months.

He didn’t have Mercy’s obsession with order, but sorting the tools into matching piles was satisfying. Like went with like and broken got added to a different pile, to fix or toss out. Of course, if Mercy were there, she’d have their shit not only organized but alphabetized, ordered by size, and labeled. Fixing tools was easy. Fixing people? Yeah. Not his thing.

Tires crunched on the gravel outside. Maybe he wasn’t the only sorry, can’t-sleep bastard putting in hours at the crack of dawn. When Rio Donovan strode inside the hangar, the man looked like he hadn’t slept at all. In addition to the rumpled, standing-on-end hair, tension lines stood out on either side of his mouth. He scanned the hangar and then laid in a line for Joey, who was the only other jumper present. Most of the guys were too smart to roll out of bed at dark o’clock without the promise of fire and a three-thousand-foot free fall.

Maybe he’d missed a memo, though, because he heard more cars entering the parking lot. Or maybe there was an out-of-season fire. It happened sometimes, and concern painted Rio’s face.  He wore a flannel shirt open over a battered T-shirt and a pair of cargo pants. His shitkickers were half-laced, like he’d rolled out of bed, shoved his feet in, and hit the road.

Rio stopped beside Joey. “Don’t say anything to me, but listen up.”

Oookay. Rocking back on his heels, he gave the guy his full attention. “I’m listening.”

Rio gave him a hard look. “Trouble’s headed this way, looking for you and for explanations about last night.”

Two things struck him. One, Rio knew where Joey had spent the night. And two, there was no fire other than the one Rio apparently intended to light under his ass. Shit. While he would have been perfectly happy for all of Strong to know that he and Mercy were together, he didn’t want to risk her job or stress her out. He’d promised her she could call the shots when they were out and about in public, and he kept his promises.

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“Damn it.” Rio dropped down beside him. “I told you to slow down. Mercy told you to slow down. So why’d you do it?”

Because Mercy was his everything. It sounded stupid, like a bad country song, even in his head, and he had no idea why she’d agreed to give him a chance as her lover, but he wasn’t going to waste it. He didn’t have much to offer, but he’d give her what he could and hold on with both hands.

He set the adze he was holding down. The edge was dull and needed to be sharpened. “This has nothing to do with the jump team.”

Rio ran a hand over his head and exhaled roughly. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to infer that his boss was pissed.

“It does,” the other man countered.

“How?” Because honestly, he was sick and tired of everyone treating him like he was some sort of criminal. He was entitled to a personal life, and Rio didn’t need to know the details.

“Jesus.” Rio glared at him. “How can you ask that? Do you even know what happened last night? Or were you riding so fast that it was all a blur?”

Whoa. “Why don’t you tell me what you think happened last night?” he asked carefully. He respected Rio and he’d enjoyed working with the man, but he wasn’t letting anyone dictate how his relationship with Mercy played out. That was between the two of them.

Rio paused, like he was trying to marshal his thoughts into some semblance of order. That was smart, because right now Joey was fighting the urge to haul off and hit his friend. “You don’t know?”

“I was there,” he snapped, “but apparently you feel you get to weigh in too.”

“You hit someone with your bike, Joey. That’s what I heard. And then you fucking rode away. How the hell is that
not
my business? There’s some fifty-year-old guy in the hospital with internal injuries and God knows what else, and you’re here in my hangar, going through our gear like nothing happened.”

“I hit someone?” He had no idea what was happening here. Somehow their conversation had taken a hard right turn, and he had no idea where they were headed except that, deep in his gut, he knew their destination was nowhere he wanted to go. Like some bad movie, time slowed down, except he couldn’t reach out and change the channel or turn the shit off. He hadn’t hit anyone. Hell, he hadn’t even gotten on his bike last night. Thought about it, yeah, but then he’d sat there like an idiot and smelled the damn roses before climbing back into bed with Mercy.