Page 15 of Protected By the SEAL
“I know,” he says, and there’s something almost feral in his voice. “We’re far from done.”
His mouth moves lower, over my collarbone, between my breasts, down my stomach. Everywhere his lips touch, my body arches to meet him. When his tongue slides lower, I gasp, gripping the sheets. The world blurs into nothing but the sound of my heartbeat and my moans.
I wake slowly,disoriented. There’s a warm weight at my back, an arm draped possessively over my waist, breath stirring my hair. For a moment, I can’t place where I am. Then I shift slightly and feel the delicious ache between my legs, the tender spots where Kane marked my neck, my breasts, my inner thighs.
Oh God.
Last night wasn’t a dream.
I slept with Kane. My best friend. Multiple times. Against the wall. In the shower. That thing with his tongue made me black out for a second.
My heart races. What did we do?What the hell did we do?
His arm tightens around me as he wakes, pulling me flush against him. I can feel every inch of his naked body pressed against mine, and despite the panic clawing at my throat, my body responds immediately.
“Morning,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
“Hi.” The word comes out strangled.
His body tenses behind me, and his breathing changes. We lie there frozen, neither of us moving, the silence stretching between us like a chasm.
This is it. This is where he pulls away. Where he says it was a mistake. Where fifteen years of friendship implodes because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
“Morgana...” he starts, and my stomach drops.
I turn in his arms because I have to see his face. Have to know if he regrets it. His eyes meet mine, and for a second I see something flicker there. Uncertainty? Concern? Regret? It’s gone before I can identify it, but that moment of hesitation is enough to puncture the moment of bliss and make my chest tight.
But then I catch sight of the clock on the nightstand.
“Shit!” I bolt upright, sheet clutched to my chest. “The wedding. There’s a family brunch in an hour. I need to shower. And do my hair. And figure out how to cover these.” I gesture vaguely at the marks on my neck, trying not to remember how good it felt when he put them there.
“Hey.” He sits up too, reaching for me, then seems to think better of it. His hand hovers between us for a moment before dropping. “It’s okay.”
I scramble out of bed, wrapping the sheet around me like armor. “I should… I need to go back to my room. Get ready.”
“Morgana, wait.”
“No, it’s fine. We have to get ready anyway, right? Big day. Victor and Belinda’s wedding.” I’m babbling now, gathering my dress from the floor, trying not to look at him. If I don’t stop moving and don’t stop talking, he can’t tell me it was a mistake.
I finally look at him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, sheet pooled at his waist, looking like a Greek god who simultaneously made my dreams come true and filled me with a bone-deep terror that I’m about to lose my best friend. There’s something in his expression I can’t read, but I’m too scared to think about it too much.
How do we go back to normal after last night?
The answer is terrifying: if he pulls back again, we don’t.
“The wedding,” I say again. “Let’s...let’s get through the wedding. Then we can...”
He nods slowly. “Okay. I’ll stop by in an hour to pick you up.”
What the hell just happened?
CHAPTER 7
KANE
Morgana’s hand rests in mine, but it might as well be a thousand miles away. She’s been like this all morning. She’s present but not really here, going through the motions while carefully avoiding my eyes. The wedding guests around us whisper and shift in their white chairs, waiting for the ceremony to begin, but all I can focus on is the stiffness in her shoulders, the way she’s angled slightly away from me.
My mind keeps flashing back to last night. The way she pulled me against the wall, desperate and demanding. How she looked spread out on the bed, calling my name. The shower, her pressed against the tiles, both of us past the point of control. It was the most intense night of my life.
