Page 69 of Secret Mission

“This feels serious,” I whisper.

“It is, my sweet.”

Oh, heavens. I love the pet names he uses. All of them. They hit me somewhere I’ve never been hit before.

It feels good. Like light shining in dark corners inside of me.

“It’s very serious,” he murmurs, sinking me even further.

Pulse flying, I look up at the former SEAL above me and realize it’s too late. The deal is sealed.

I thought about pushing him away, about keeping my space, about being real. We are who we are.

He’s some kind of rescue guy.

I’m an archeologist who lives for months at a time on historic digs.

Plus! My life is a mess, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.

I could spend the rest of my life running from my father. I mean, my not-father—the man who has controlled my entire life and now wants to use my research for something bad.

Those depressing thoughts grow into storm clouds, filling the hospital room.

But the heart wants what it wants.

So sappy.

Caution thrown to the wind, I grin and shake my head.

Is this my life? Surely not.

But my words have a smile laced within. “You’re not letting me go, are you?”

The look he gives me is straight up,HELL NO.

Distance be damned. Complications, go to hell.

When his calloused hands slide beneath my stretched out, tattered T-shirt, my muscles quiver. My heart sings, and I feel the first real flutterings of butterflies tattooed with the word love on their wings.

Filled with fragile hope, I dare ask, “When you called me yours, did you really mean that?”

“All of it.” His mouth is hot against my collarbone, the exact opposite of the cool, conditioned air blowing down on us.

This is a terrible time for a conversation, but now my cartwheeling mind will not shut off. “Why are you so sure?”

His large wrist hooks under my thigh, hitching my leg out to the side so he can settle between my spread legs.

The way he looks in my eyes makes me brace.

Incoming!

Can my heart take whatever he’s about to say?

“I feel it in places that I didn’t know I could feel things.”

I can only breathe for a few seconds.

His words echo over and over. Those butterflies spiral and spiral until there’s a whirlwind of them. Filling every space inside of me.

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