Page 63 of Rescue Me (Tempting SEALs 6.10)

“Doing a lot of face rubbing and shaking his head. He’s struggling.”

“So we wait a little longer. Keep talking, okay? Just talk.”

“About what? What do you want to hear?”

“What color panties are you wearing?”

She let out her breath on a disbelieving huff. “You are really too much, you know that?”

“Red?” he guessed, a smile in his voice.

Which made her smile, too. Which is exactly what he’d wanted her to do, she realized. “You wish.”

“Okay, fine. Spoil my fantasy. Tell me about your family then. Tell me about your childhood. Hell, tell me about your grocery list. Just talk to me.”

FIVE

SETH’S HEAD HURT LIKE a bitch. Elena was probably right. Concussion. Slight, but there. Enough to make him nauseated if he moved too fast. Enough to make him light-headed if he moved at all. Enough that he knew he had to stay awake because if he let down his guard and slept, he might be out for the duration.

In front of him, Elena’s body warmed him like a mini furnace. In more ways than one. No problems in that area. And it was adrenaline. Plus basic, carnal instinct. A lush, curvy bottom pressed with decided familiarity into his crotch. A pair of soft hands pressed against his belly. He’d like to meet the man who wouldn’t have a knee-jerk reaction to that kind of stimulus. His head might hurt, but he wasn’t dead.

Dead was exactly what these cretins wanted. For Elena, too. That just wasn’t going to happen. Concussion or not.

He’d wait. And he’d find an opening. He just hoped to hell he didn’t pass out before the time came.

He tuned back in to Elena. Drifted on the sound of her voice as she told him about her three brothers. All still in Arizona. All professionals. Seemed she came from a family of overachievers. That was all good.

“That why you work your ass off all the time? Not because you want to be … top dog in the DA’s office but because you want to keep up with … your brothers?”

“A little of both, I guess. My father is very old school. He thinks a woman belongs in the home, raising babies and fetching slippers for the man of the house. This is my way of showing him times have changed and I’ve changed with them.”

“I’m sure he’s proud of you.”

She drew a deep breath. “Very quietly, but yeah. I think he is.

“What about you?” she asked after a moment. “Brothers? Sisters?”

“Yeah,” he said. “One of each. My sis is a teacher … like the old man. Lives in L.A. Married. Two kids. One on the way.”

“And your brother?”

He wondered how much to tell her. Finally decided to spill it all. “My brother is the reason I’m a cop. He’d say I’m the reason he’s a screw-up.”

She didn’t say anything. Just waited, evidently sensing this wasn’t easy for him.

“Brian always had a bug up his ass, you know? If there was trouble to be had, made or gotten into, he was in the thick of it. I don’t know … don’t know why he felt the need.”

“Why would he say that you’re the reason?”

Seth moved even closer to her warmth. “Because I was Mr. Boy Scout. Honor role. Athlete. I guess he felt he couldn’t measure up to big brother … so he took the low road.”

“And you feel bad about that,” she said intuitively.

“Yeah. I do. Could never connect with him, you know?”

“What’s he doing now?”

“Don’t know. He left home when he was seventeen. That was, hell, over ten years ago. Hasn’t been in contact with any of the family since.”

---