Claiming Her SEAL(23)

"Stay away?" Dex's expression mirrored the confusion in his tone. "You've been deliberately avoiding me?"

Emma shut her eyes. For fortification. For sanity. For God knew what  reason because her brain had simply shut down the moment she'd heard his  voice cutting through the darkness. How had she forgotten that was what  he did? He was a light in the midst of so much black, and she wasn't  handling it-him-well.

Raw emotion spilled into her throat, and it was a wonder she could speak at all.         

     



 

Dex was here. In her hotel room. The very last place he should be.

Everything inside ached, like a thousand bees had swarmed down her  windpipe, stinging her internal organs millimeter by millimeter as they  swept through her body. And Dex was the cure to her misery, as much as  she might wish otherwise. Here he was …  within touching distance. And she  couldn't reach out.

"Yeah," she said, "You needed space. I was giving it to you."

To prove she could. Because it was the last thing she'd wanted to do,  and that meant she'd needed space too. She'd been trying to get closer  to him, and then he'd gotten way too close and it was too much.

All she'd wanted was a simple fling that would help her get her life  back on track. To demonstrate that she'd found her mojo again and  regained all the strength that Chris had bled from her. Instead of  liberation, things she'd had no business feeling for James Dexter Riley  had exploded all over her the moment they'd fused bodies. God, what had  she stumbled into here?

She'd spent one whole day of her vacation in bed because she'd been  scared of running into Dex. Scared of what she'd feel if she saw him  again. Scared of what he'd do when he saw her.

Emma could not be falling for him. The last thing she wanted was to wake up dependent on a man for her happiness.

Never in a million years had she thought he'd track her down. What was she going to do?

"Space." His implacable expression didn't change, but the vibe between them went south in a hurry. "Because of the bodies."

"What? No!" Crap, he thought she'd been avoiding him because of his  past. After all the work she'd done to get him to open up and share,  she'd screwed up so bad. "Dex, that's an issue we can deal with-that I  can deal with. Later. But it has nothing to do with whether I wanted to  see you again."

"Sure."

He didn't believe her.

"Dex, I've been thinking, and we're not really right for each other. We  want different things, and I'm not in a good place to be this serious.  I'd rather end things now, instead of later when it will be so much more  complicated to disentangle our lives." Without blinking, she stared him  down. "That's exactly what I said to Chris. Does it make you  homicidal?"

His lips curled up in a smile that seemed to surprise him. "No. Does that mean I pass the test?"

"It means I care about the fact that you've killed a lot of people in  your life, but only because it affects you. Not because I'm scared that  you're like him. I told you, when you're with me, you're not Dexter. I'm  not afraid of you, and I wasn't avoiding you because of that. It was  because of …  something else."

Because she'd lied about being strong enough to take this man inside her and deal with it. She wasn't.

A dozen different things skated through his gaze as he stared at her. "Just out of curiosity, have you eaten?"

She shook her head and then regretted it. Should she have admitted that?  It was practically like saying, Hey Sailor, you rocked my world so  hard, I can't even put food in my mouth.

"Slept?" He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. "Never mind.  Anything I might say about that would come off as a little too much pot  calling the kettle black."

Something pinged between them as his meaning crystalized. He was  admitting he hadn't eaten either. Or slept. Because of her? With a  skeptical eye, she took in the fatigue around his eyes, the tension  rolling off him in waves, which she could sense from here even though he  hadn't moved from his stance near the door.

What did that mean? That last night had tied him up in knots exactly the way it had her?

His gray eyes turned flinty and inscrutable, and she couldn't look away  as he crossed his arms. She had the distinct impression he was holding  himself back as much as she was. But whether he was keeping himself from  bolting toward the door or toward her, she couldn't say.

Worse, she wasn't sure which one she wanted. Wouldn't it better all the way around if he just left?

Please, God. Don't let him leave.

"You've been holed up in here all day?" He jerked his chin. "What would you have done if you weren't giving me space?"

Crawled inside him and stayed there forever. Curled up next to him on  the beach and slept. Spent every waking hour touching him. That was the  problem-she wanted him too much. "You can't ask me that."

"Why not?" he challenged. "You're the one who brought it up."         

     



 

That was so not the point. "You can't ask me for the same reason I was giving you space in the first place."

He didn't move, but the hotel room grew ten sizes smaller as he swept  her with a once-over that could not be misinterpreted. "Because last  night blew your preconceptions about what's happening between us into  little tiny bits, and you have no idea how to put the pieces back  together?"

Her lungs hitched so hard she struggled to drag in her next breath.  She'd rocked his world too. How unexpected. "Something like that."

"Maybe the problem is too much space." The distance between them  vanished and he loomed over her, so gorgeous and hard and impossible to  fathom. "We should fix that."

He smelled like ocean and man, the same scent that clung to his shirt.  It wrapped around her anew like an opiate, weakening her and bringing  with it images of his flesh on hers in the moonlight. What would be the  harm in flinging her body backward on the bed in equal parts abandon and  invitation?

The harm would be later when she was drowning in her real life again. He  was supposed to be the cure to her floundering, not a whole brand new  reason to feel all off-kilter.

"Dex." She'd meant it as a warning but when her voice came out all breathy and full of promise like that? Yeah. Not so much.

His gaze darkened. "Emma."

"What are you doing here?" she burst out. "This is not …  I mean, last night was fine and all, but-"

"Fine?" One knee hit the mattress, caving it in as he leaned forward.  "Well, I'm just insulted now. I'll have to try again and see if we can't  improve my rating."

Wide-eyed, she watched him crawl toward her, and it was a bit predatory.  Thrilling. The man had wicked intent painted all over his expression,  and God, she wanted him to touch her, to drive her to the brink of the  wide abyss and fling her off with his hard body under hers-

Desperately, she cast about for a way to stop his advance because if he  got his hands on her, she'd be lost again. "Dex, this is a hotel room.  There's no water here. Isn't that part of the deal?"

"I suppose it is." Without warning, he hauled her up in his arms and  carried her to the bathroom as if she weighed no more than a sack of  flour.

"What are you doing?"

Dumb question, and the answer made itself quite obvious when he nudged  open the door of the shower with one knee, pierced her with his flinty  eyes, and grinned with so much carnal heat that her bones melted.

"Water. As ordered."

Dex set her down on the cool tile and in seconds had the shower going and his shirt off her body.

She fought the urge to run because there was nothing magic about water.  Dex was devastating, no matter what, but never for the reasons he  thought. No, she was deathly afraid he'd cut a path right through her  heart, which had barely knit back together from the damage it had  sustained last night.

"Dex."

She swallowed whatever else she'd been about to say as he stripped off  his own shirt, threw it over his shoulder, and went to work on his  shorts, the muscles in his arms bunching and sliding, and oh, my God,  then he was naked and magnificent.

His hot, heavy-lidded gaze locked onto hers. "I like it when you call me James. By the way."

She liked it too. That was part of the problem. She could handle Dex,  but James? That man had thoroughly unhinged her. Was still doing it all  over again.

And that was precisely what she'd been trying to avoid all day.

"Last night," she croaked. "I was trying to prove something. That I was  strong enough for whatever you could throw at me. I'm …  not so sure I did  that."

"Emma." He tipped up her head and laid a sweet, never ending kiss on her  lips, murmuring her name against them. His stubble grazed her skin with  rough, delicious intent, and her insides went liquid.

He lifted his head a fraction, and both hands came up around her jaw to  cup it as he looked at her. "You proved that and more. I wouldn't be  here otherwise. I thought we were through, that we were a onetime thing,  happy to go our separate ways, but I couldn't. Because you are amazing  and strong and last night was not about a vacation fling."