Page 43 of Heart of Danger
But to his surprise, her lips turned up a little as her eyes closed. “Safe,” she murmured. Her hand curled trustingly around his, then she turned her head and went out like a light.
It looked more like sleep than unconsciousness. Thank God.
Mac pulled up the covers, smoothing them over her shoulder with his free hand. He wanted to sit down at her bedside. He stretched with his foot for the chair because, well, he didn’t want to let go of her hand.
Sitting, he wrapped her hand in both of his and watched her face, trying to figure out the enigma that was Catherine Young.
She looked so very fragile, lying there. She was pale, nostrils pinched with stress, frowning even in sleep. The rest of her was fragile, too—slender, delicate-boned.
Catherine Young seemed so heartbreakingly delicate, almost frail. Like she’d break if you touched her too roughly, though he’d treated her roughly and she hadn’t broken, not at all.
Whatever her motives, it took balls the size of refrigerators to set off on a quest to find him with just a few clues from a madman.
The idea that the madman might be the Colonel was shunted aside. It hurt to think about it.
Whoever sent her on that chase had given her crumbs to go on and by God, she’d done it. She’d tracked him down when no one else had. She hadn’t crumbled under interrogation, either. She’d stuck to her story and had been meek but not intimidated.
And watching her help Bridget give birth. Man. She’d been gentle, reassuring, utterly competent. He shuddered to think that he might have had to do that. Mac knew all about stopping bleeding, broken bones, bullet holes. But helping a child be born took a whole set of skills he didn’t have, never would have, either. Though she said she wasn’t a practicing physician, Catherine had stepped right up to the plate and delivered a healthy baby into the world.
Intotheirworld. Their first new citizen, delivered by the latest addition to their world.
Because Catherine was now one of them, there was no hiding it, no running away from it. It was a simple fact.
His people had come to him one by one, sometimes in twos and threes. They recognized him and they recognized each other and they now had recognized Catherine.
So what the fuck was he supposed to do with her?
He watched her, holding her hand in his. She’d turned in bed and now her face was in profile, only her head and hand outside the covers. She was so fucking beautiful. He’d tried so hard not to notice, but his body laughed at him and reacted the way a healthy male body reacted to an unusually beautiful woman.
Usually, that wasn’t a problem, he had himself under control. He could control his heart rate, his reflexes, his thoughts, his dick. They’d been taught that in BUD/S but he’d already known how. You didn’t survive his childhood without massive self control.
And he’d learned early on that it was useless getting a hard on for beautiful women. He’d been born ugly, grew up ugly, and the massive firestorm at Arka that had melted part of his face and the fucker with the knife had just made things a little worse. He rarely looked beautiful women in the eyes because it could come across as aggression. He’d learned long ago to tuck his dick between his legs when he desired one because it just wasn’t going to happen.
He’d been aroused in the interrogation room, but had been able to dial his dick right back down because she’d been so scared. Mac was scary-looking and if you were his enemy duck and hide, but the thought of intimidating a woman into sex made him physically ill. And besides, Nick and Jon had been watching, so the hard-on just had to go.
And it went.
It was harder to rein himself in now. By some magical alchemy, Catherine Young was inside his perimeter in every way there was. She’d been accepted by his ragtag town and he accepted that her safety was now his responsibility. He didn’t like it, but there it was. She was in.
She wasn’t awake to see him look at her with heat in his eyes, so he could, well, fantasize.
Mac shifted in his chair, his hard-on like some heavy uncomfortablethinghanging onto the front of his body. He hadn’t had a woman in a while. While a SEAL it hadn’t been much of a problem. Ugly as he was, there were plenty of women who got off on nailing a SEAL. It gave them bragging rights if nothing else.
He still remembered the SEAL groupie in Coronado who’d asked if she could make a plaster cast of his dick. But first she wanted him to depilate.
She already had twelve trophies, lined up on a bookshelf.
Jesus.
In Ghost Ops, everyone’s dicks were lashed down, including Jon’s, who used to go through women like good ole boys went through free beer.
Ghost Ops was all about being invisible, untraceable, hidden. They became non-people with no credit history, no leases or mortgages or utility bills or cellphones linked to ordinary providers, no car registrations, no driver’s licenses—nothing. That went with no sex life because you had to tell a womansomething. Women were curious and if they liked the sex, they were likely to want to stick around and inevitably they’d find out that Joe Smith didn’t really exist.
So Ghost Ops was a no sex zone, not to mention the fact that since the day they were established, the six man team had been almost constantly on ops. And their downtime wasn’t at home because they didn’t have homes any more but quarters on some scrubland a hundred miles from the nearest town or road crossing, a place they’d dubbed Fort Dump, a place no woman would put up with on pain of death, let alone for sex.
And after the Arka disaster—well, being on the run for your life and hiding out didn’t really bring out the warm and sexy.
So Mac sat, watching Catherine’s face, holding her hand, vainly trying to will away the blue steeler in his pants and trying to remember the last time he had sex.
