Page 19 of Atlanta Heat (Tempting SEALs 6)

Her head was pillowed on his chest as he spoke, though a frown edged her brow as he spoke of it.

“Sounds like a big family.” She had no idea what a big family constituted. There were no family reunions in her family, no get-togethers outside the occasional dinner with her parents and godfather.

“One of the biggest. Over three hundred last year.” His hand smoothed down her hair, her back. “Tents and RVs crowd the place for a full week, and the main farmhouse is packed with sleeping bags and overnight mattresses. Grandma March swears every year she’s canceling the next one, but come June, she’s the one making the calls and organizing it. The woman is seventy and runs around the place like a woman half her age. She amazes me.”

“Sounds like an organizational nightmare.” She could respect someone’s ability to pull it together, but knew it had to be a pain. She just had no idea why Macey was telling her about it.

“Every morning for a week we pile outside for a dawn breakfast, cooked over every barbecue grill, gas grill, and fire ring on the place. Scrambled eggs, biscuits, gravy, sausage and bacon are heaped on picnic tables and everyone eats like they’re starving. For lunch the tables are piled with sandwich fixin’s and pulled pork barbecue, and for dinner, good God, fresh catfish, steaks, burgers and hot dogs. It’s like a camp for the insane.” But she could hear his love for it in his voice.

She just couldn’t imagine Macey with a family that size. She couldn’t imagine anyone with a family that size.

“How do you keep everyone straight?” she asked, confused. “Over three hundred people? That sounds more like a convention than any kind of reunion.”

“It resembles one sometimes too,” he chuckled. Through it all his hands stroked over her hair, her arms, her back. They were never still, always touching her.

Was it normal for him, she wondered, to want to cuddle after sex? He must be the only guy in existence who did, because it was the first time she had ever experienced it.

Hesitantly, she let the hand that lay on his chest move, to stroke over the silky hairs that grew there and enjoy the feel of them against her palm.

She hadn’t imagined how much she would love his tough, hard body. The barbed wire tattoo around his left bicep, the scar on his thigh, the packed, lean muscle. Just laying against him turned her on and made her want to ignore the little aches and pains in her body and take another taste of him.

It wasn’t just his body she loved, though, and that’s what frightened her.

“You could go with me, you know.”

Her thoughts slammed to a halt and her head jerked up. Her hand paused in the middle of the hard abdomen she had been stroking, growing ever closer to the erection stretching from between his thighs.

“Excuse me?”

“I said you could go to the family reunion with me.” His eyes narrowed on her. “You’d have fun.”

“I’m not part of the family.”

“You’re mine. That makes you family.”

Emerson felt everything inside her slow to a quick stop as time seemed to take on a heavy, sluggish quality. She stared into his eyes, seeing the determination, possessiveness, and total resolve in his eyes.

“You know better than that, Macey.” She had to force herself to breathe, to push back the need to believe.

“Do I, Em?”

“You should.” She eased from him, wrapping a sheet around her body and moving for the doorway. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Not now. I’m not a starry-eyed teenager that needs a proposal and professions of love to excuse a little sex. You’re off the hook. I won’t cry on the admiral’s shoulder or accuse you of taking advantage of me. So do us both a favor and don’t make more out of it than what it was.”

She needed her clothes, fast. She needed to shower, to wash the scent of his body from hers and get dressed.

“Do you really think I’m going to just walk away from you, Em? For any reason?” Quiet understanding. It was in his voice, in his eyes as he stood up and walked over to her. “Did you think a one-night stand was all I wanted?”

“What else am I supposed to think?” Her heart was racing in her chest, her mouth dry with a sense of panic now. “You’re not exactly known for your monogamous lifestyle, Macey.”

“And you still went to bed with me?” He tilted his head, his gaze gentle as he smoothed his hands over her bare shoulders. “Why did you do that, Emerson?”

“I wanted you.”

“Do you just go to bed with every man you want, Em?”

No. She stared up at him, mesmerized by the softness underlying the steel in his gaze. He was a SEAL; she knew what that meant. Filled with purpose. Determined. Slick. He knew how to get what he wanted and he didn’t stop until he got it.

Emerson licked at her lips with trepidation. She could feel a trap, she just couldn’t figure out where that trap lay.

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