Page 21 of Operation Rescue
“Fine,” he said abruptly. “But I’ll take Ethan’s room. You take the guest room.” He heard Erin’s breath catch, and spun around. “You have a problem with me sleeping in my son’s room?”
“I…no. No, of course not.” Her cheeks were pink again. They always betrayed when she was upset.
Of course, they also betrayed other things. He’d never forget the time he’d discovered that that slight pinkening of her cheeks could mean something else, too. That time in the middle of the grocery store when he’d noticed and asked, wondering what on earth could have embarrassed her in the condiments aisle.
I was thinking about how much I’d like to pour some of that honey on you and lick it off…
He’d about lost it right there. Because unlike him she never, ever said things like that, especially out in public. He’d wanted to press her up against the shelves and kiss her until she moaned like she did in bed. Only the fact that they’d probably break those shelves had stopped him.
But he’d tossed three squeeze bottles of honey into the cart.
And that night she’d followed through in one of the hottest, most mind-blowing nights of his life. Of course the cleanup after had been a chore, but they’d done it together, laughing about how neither of them would ever look at a bottle of honey the same way again.
And they both suspected that was the night Ethan had been conceived. Had even joked when they found out that if it was a girl, they were going to have to name her Honey.
Ironic that that night with the honey had fifteen years later brought them to this.
Chapter 11
Erin heard the movement inside Ethan’s room and sleepily had the door open before she remembered who was inside. And all sleep vanished, despite the early morning hour.
Blaine straightened up from where he’d been checking the drawers in Ethan’s dresser. Normally, she probably would have been irritated by the prying, but if digging through Ethan’s stuff would help find him, she was all for it.
But then Blaine spun around and her mind went blank. She’d managed not to stare at his backside—well, for long anyway—in those nicely fitting jeans, but she only realized when he straightened up and turned to face her that he was shirtless. And the view of that broad chest and shoulders, those ribbed abs, set her pulse racing as they always had. And the fact that his jeans were half-unzipped only kicked up the pace.
Her mouth went a little dry as she tried to suck in air, and she spared a brain cell to be thankful she wasn’t drooling instead. But then her gaze sharpened, and she focused on the scar on his right side, where a piece of shrapnel had hit him across the ribs. Oddly, it had done the least damage although it had left the biggest scar. There were others, true, some just as jagged, but the scary ones were the tidier ones from all the surgeries to deal with the rest of the injuries he’d suffered, which had been internal. She’d stolen a look at his hospital chart one afternoon, and the list of them had sent her reeling into the small bathroom to throw up before she’d gotten halfway through it.
That he was here, now, as steady and strong as he looked—and as beautiful—was nothing short of a miracle to her. The doctors had told them he would be hurting for a long while. They hadn’t lied, but the only way she knew that was because she knew him. Someone who didn’t would never have noticed the slight tightness of his jaw or the way he bit the inside of his lip when a movement hurt him.
But she had.
He had never complained. “I survived to come home to you and Ethan,” he’d told her anytime she brought it up.
She and their son had been the lodestar of his life. The reason he did what he did, to assure them a safe country to live in, and why when badly injured he fought to survive. To come home to them.
And she’d thrown it away.
Of course, that was easy to say now, two and a half years after she’d filed the papers to end it. Now that enough time had passed that she felt an ache inside at the loss of what they’d had. Now that her fears, her horror at what had happened to him had ebbed.
Ebbed enough that you call on him to do it again?
She couldn’t deny that there was possible risk here. She was hoping beyond hope that the possibility of a gang-related connection was merely that, a slim possibility. But if it was not…
For the first time she thought she understood the “mission first” mindset of the military. And so she stamped on her instinctive sensual, erotic response to him being half-dressed.
“Come here,” he said. And she had to stamp on it again.
“Why?” she asked warily.
For a moment he just stared at her, brow furrowed. Then she saw realization dawn. “Jeez, Erin, do you think I’m going to jump you? Now? Especially here in Ethan’s room?”
If I get the front door closed before I jump you it’ll be a miracle.
His words from long ago careened into her mind. She didn’t know why that was the occasion that kept coming back to her. Maybe because it had been one of the hottest, sexiest nights of her entire life.
“I just need to know what else he took with him,” he said when she didn’t—couldn’t—speak.
“Oh.”
