Page 7 of Atlanta Heat (Tempting SEALs 6)

Macey paused at the door, turned and lifted his brow.

“Oh, yeah, Emerson, I’m really enjoying this. Instead of being on the streets searching down terrorists, or covering my buddies’ backs, I’m here. With you.” His gaze flicked over her body. “Where I get to sit with my thumbs up my ass, deflecting your little daggers, and praying this case breaks before the March family reunion weekend in a few weeks.”

She blinked back at him in surprise. “You have family?”

“I wasn’t exactly hatched.”

“Neither are coyotes, but that doesn’t make them domesticated,” she shot back sweetly. “Does your family live close?”

“Close enough.”

“Just close enough?” She turned and leaned against the wall, watching as he watched her.

“Why do you want to know, Em?”

He was the only one who called her Em. It sounded good, much better, and much more feminine than Emerson. But then, her father had wanted a son, not a daughter. They hadn’t been prepared with little girl names when she had been born.

“Maybe I just want to know about you.” She leaned her head against the wall, somehow enjoying how he towered over her, the way he watched her with that baffled male confusion.

“No, you don’t, you want to make me crazy.” His voice roughened as his gaze flicked down her body again. “That’s what you’re good at. Be careful, it might backfire on you this time. You’re damned good at making me crazy, and that should tell you something about this little deal heating up between us. You’re not going to walk all over me like you do the admiral or the men you work with.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I resent that remark, you know.” But she had to admit she did have that habit. “Maybe I just want to find someone who can outthink me. Can you outthink me, Macey?”

“On any low country night that you want to bring on, sweetheart.”

That voice: dark, husky, male. It did something to her. It soothed the anger and the fear and it made the hunger hotter, brighter, the need for his touch almost desperate.

His head lowered as Emerson felt the familiar slow burn, the rising mind-numbing need that began to fill her. It was more than arousal, more than hunger, and it went deeper than lust. She knew lust. She had felt it often enough before Macey. No, whatever it was her body decided it wanted from this man, it was unlike anything she had ever wanted from a man before.

“Maybe it would backfire?” She stared at his lips, mesmerized, feeling her lungs struggle for oxygen as adrenaline began to pump hard and heavy through her body. She had to curl her fingers against her side to keep from touching him, had to fight to keep from tasting his lips.

“Do you want to find out?” His lips curled into a smirk.

That smirk capped it.

“No, Macey, I want you to tease me over it,” she informed him flippantly before turning away.

She would have walked away if he hadn’t grabbed her. Again. If his fingers hadn’t curled around her wrist and the next thing she knew her breasts were cushioned against his chest and his eyes were glittering down at her.

That look haunted her dreams. That gleam of lust and awareness that there was something between them that he couldn’t fight any more than she could.

The instant his lips touched hers, it was over. She was trying to climb into his body, crawl under his skin as his lips moved to take hers.

God, this was one of the things she had loved about his first kiss. Forget an initiation or discovery. He knew what he wanted, sensed what she wanted, and gave it immediately. His lips settled over hers, his teeth nipping her lips until they parted, and his tongue rushed inside to claim territory that already belonged to him.

One large hand cupped the back of her head, and his arm tightened around her back, arching her to him. The height and breadth of his body, the powerful lean muscles, the confidence in his hold washed over her, filling her with an awareness of feminine weakness.

But fear struck her, hard and fast.

She jerked out of his hold, catching the look of surprise on his face as she stumbled away. She couldn’t think. Instinct and reaction surged inside her. Her veins were pounding with the rush of blood that fueled the arousal.

What she just experienced was even more intense than the first kiss. More fiery, harder to control.

As she stared back at him, fighting to make her tongue work, to forget the feel of his against it. He smiled down at her with something akin to tenderness. Surprising, wicked tenderness.

“Gets hot, doesn’t it, Em?” he crooned, moving toward her, his head lowered, his eyes dark.

Before she could consider evading him, his hands curved around her upper arms, his hold light, her response to his touch almost violent. His head lowered to her neck, his lips pressing against the throbbing vein pulsing just beneath the skin. The heated caress had her breath catching, her eyelids fluttering with sensual weakness.

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