Page 10 of Rescued By the SEAL

“It actually isn’t because of my pen name. My pen name came from the tattoo.” She sucks in a couple of breaths as if she’s steadying herself for what’s about to come next. “I actually got the tattoo on my eighteenth birthday before I came to try and find you, thinking that our lives would finally start together because I was old enough at last. L.R. is Landon Ross. Lola Rose came when I was a little bit older and I needed a new name, plus an excuse for the initials tattooed on me.”

Oh, wow. Now I’m the one who can’t speak. I don’t know what to say and it’s making my head spin. “You got a tattoo for me? You came to find me? Oh, God, and my parents had already left the house so you couldn’t find me. I was already in the Navy.”

“You were in the Navy?” She sounds shocked to the core. “Wow, I never thought you would be a military man. But I suppose you do look like a muscle man who has been in the Navy or something. I just… I’m shocked. I don’t know what to say.”

“Yes, I was in the Navy. I needed to make a life for myself and it felt like the best way to do it. It gave me focus.”

“Wow, that’s just wonderful, isn’t it?” She cocks her head to one side and touches her tattoo. “L.R. was a Navy SEAL.”

Oh, my God, my heart is pounding. It’s thumping like crazy. Knowing that we missed this opportunity, that we missed our chance again, is killer. It’s actually painful to imagine that we could have been together. She was so convinced that even after leaving my life for what seemed like forever, we would get back together. She even permanently inked herself with my initials and kept them. Changing her identity around them has me in turmoil.

Heather and I had more than one chance to be together and we lost it.Ilost it. I never even considered the idea that Heather would come back for me. It didn’t cross my mind. I was so focused on trying to make a career for myself then, trying to distance myself from my parents, that I forgot about the love of my life. I guess I never thought I would get a chance.

“Oh, wow, Heather, that’s amazing.” There’s a thick lump of emotion in my throat. “The tattoo, I mean. It’s beautiful and very meaningful. I’m just sorry that things didn’t work out the way that we wanted them to.”

Our eyes lock, and I can feel an intense surge of emotion flowing between us. I can’t decipher what it means yet and I don’t want to make any assumptions. I have to remind myself that we’ve had fourteen years apart so I don’t know her like I used to. But it feels like Heather is on the same page as me right now. We’re both thinking about what could have been. I used to spend a lot of time wondering what that would look like, but it was all hypothetical. But now with her standing in front of me, it’smore real than it has ever been before. We still have a sizzling chemistry, I can feel it burning between us right now. I’m pretty sure that if we were allowed to be, we would have had the best relationship ever.

But now, instead of being in a relationship, we’re looking at one another from a very strange position. One I never thought I would find myself in. She’s under my protection because ofmyfather, and we’re both in our thirties now instead of teenagers. Where the hell can we go from here?

9

HEATHER

Being in a house with Landon after all this time is insane. I don’t know what to think about any of it. This has been one hell of a day and I’m honestly a little confused. I appreciate what Landon is trying to do by putting on a movie for us to watch so we don’t feel like we have to fill every moment of silence with chatter, because we’re still a little awkward around one another. But instead of making it easier for me, it’s making me tired. I can’t follow the plot with so many thoughts racing through my head, and my eyes are heavy. I can’t keep them open however hard I try. This could be exhaustion or Landon’s comfy couch.

The heat of his body beside me makes me lean toward him automatically. I know that I shouldn’t because it’s overstepping a mark. We aren’t teenage boyfriend and girlfriend anymore. We’re in our thirties and strangers. We don’t know one another like we used to anymore, so I can’t just rest my head on his shoulder like I would have done in the past.

But honestly, being here with Landon right now is mixing the past and the present in ways that are confusing to me, and themore that my eyes slide closed, the more intense this feeling becomes. I can almost feel his arm circling me and pulling me closer to him, protecting me in every single way. This sensation takes me back to my seventeenth birthday when we were last together, before I was ripped away from his life, when he was giving me my bracelet.

I wonder if Landon noticed that I still wear the bracelet, just around my ankle now because I sometimes find it painful to look at it. Sometimes, I love it because it takes me back to that beautiful night, and other times, it reminds me that I lost the only man I ever loved. He’s back now, back in my life and by my side in a very shocking turn of events. But fate has brought him back into my life in the weirdest way possible, and I don’t know if that’s a sign or just a weird coincidence.

But the dream doesn’t stop where reality halted on that special night. It doesn’t end with just a kiss. He leans me back on the grass and starts to peel my clothing off. To be honest, we aren’t teens anymore in my mind. I’m the adult woman who knows her body much better now, and he’s the strong, muscular man who can just scoop me up in his arms and do what he wants to me. He’s an ex-military man, a man’s man, and it feels great to be claimed by him like this. We’re who we are now as his lips run all over my body and he touches me in a very special way, sending pleasure all the way through my body.

“Oh, Landon,” I murmur as I arch my back and roll my hips against him. “Landon, oh, my God. Landon, give me more.”

Teenage hormones told me that he would be good in bed, but seeing him now and considering how he rescued me without even thinking about the danger to his own life makes it that much better. I don’t feel like I’ve had this intense spark with anyone else, this intense chemistry, which is why things haven’tworked out before. I’ve never felt the power of an extreme orgasm, but I justknowthat Landon would be able to make me feel that, which is why my body is on fire right now.

“Heather?” At first, it starts as Landon calling out my name in the throes of pleasure too, but it soon becomes deeper and more insistent. There’s an urgency to his words that’s oh, so real. “Heather, Heather… is everything okay, Heather?”

I prize my eyes apart. I don’t know if I want to, really, but I do. The light filters in through my vision, making my eyes even blurrier than they were before. I’m dizzy, but with desire, so when I see Landon’s handsome face, it doesn’t feel like reality. I might as well still be locked in my wonderful dream where he’s sending my body to heaven.

“Landon,” I whisper as I run my fingers over his cheeks. He feels so real and raw, as do the soft couch cushions underneath me. Unlike everything before, this is definitely happening in real life, and that’s a little nerve-racking, but sexy as hell too.

“Heather, is everything okay?” He sounds so adorably concerned, my heart sings for him. “You sound like you’re in pain. I know that you’re sleeping and everything, and I don’t mean to wake you up, but I was worried about you.”

I silence him by grabbing him harder and pulling him toward me for a kiss. This definitely isn’t the wisest move in the world, but I don’t care. I fucking want to kiss Landon in a way that teenage me would have been too scared to do, and I can’t stop myself from acting on that. I need him right now, and the need is so intense and overwhelming that I never want this to end.

And my God, what a kiss. What a powerful, wonderful kiss. My head spins under the intensity of it all. His lips are delicious, histongue sexy and wonderful as it explores my mouth, his hands in exactly the right position on my hips. Fireworks are exploding all the way through my body in a powerful, uncontrollable way. Every fiber inside me, every cell is erupting, all for Landon. Right now, he’s my whole world and I love it. Wow, this is even better than in my dream. I can’t let go of him. He’s phenomenal, the hottest guy I’ve ever had anywhere near me. I feel like the luckiest woman alive…

“Is this okay?” he asks for my permission as his hand runs down my body, over my breast and toward my thigh. Landon Ross asking for my consent isn’t a surprise. He’s always been sweet and considerate like that, but his words heat me up even more. I feel like I’m engulfed in an intense desire-filled fire and I’m completely overwhelmed by it all. “Can I touch you?”

“Oh, Landon, touch me wherever you want to,” I moan desperately. I’m still half in my dream, half in reality, and it really is something else. “I want you, I need you. I want us to do everything that we didn’t get a chance to when we were younger.”

My words enflame him too, and we strip one another in a hurried, eager fashion. My desperate fingers practically rip all the material off him because I can’t stand another moment going by without seeing all of him. Right now, in the lustful heat of this morning, it feels like fate has brought me and Landon back together for this very moment. To be together like this.

“Wow.” I can’t help but breathe out my surprise at the sheer sight of him. He’s incredible, phenomenal, stunning. He was always good-looking, obviously, which is why I fell for him, but now he’s grown into the sort of man seen in Hollywood, on magazines, not the sort of guy I should be here with. “Fucking hell, Landon, look at you. You’re gorgeous.”

“Me?” He lets out a little chuckle. “My goodness, look at you. You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

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