Second Chance SEAL(174)

My day had started with intense and fast violence. As much as I wanted that memory to go away, it wasn’t going anywhere. I had never seen something like that before, didn’t really even think it was possible, but there it was. Emory had done those things, those horrifying, intense things. There had been so much blood covering the floor of the kitchen.

I didn’t know a person’s body had so much blood inside it.

And suddenly, I thought of Mason. My heart skipped a beat as I sat up. The baby monitor on the table was switched off, and a stab of fear jolted me up.

“Mason?” I called, standing.

Where was Emory? In the few blissful seconds when I was still between sleeping and waking and thinking about his body, it hadn’t occurred to me that he wasn’t on the couch anymore.

I spotted my pants nearby and grabbed them, slipped them on, and then hurried to the bedroom. My mind was full of the worst kinds of thoughts. The terrorists could have attacked again, maybe snuck inside and took Mason away. Or maybe Emory had taken Mason and run off, leaving me here alone. Maybe Emory wasn’t who he said he was.

Terror jolted me forward. I threw open the bedroom door.

“Mason!”

Emory looked up at me. He was sitting on the bed holding a bottle, Mason in his arms.

“Looking for someone?” he asked.

“Uh, hey.”

I blinked. Emory was holding Mason, and he was feeding him.

“I hope this is okay,” he said. “Kid started crying, so I thought he was probably hungry.”

“You didn’t wake me up?”

“We have a long night ahead of us. Thought you needed the sleep.”

I stared at Emory as the fear slowly subsided. I felt a little silly for being so afraid and quick to assume the worst.

In fact, I was a little more than surprised to see him feeding Mason. Emory was not a father, and he didn’t seem to have a single nurturing instinct. The fact that he’d found a bottle and fed Mason was amazing.

I walked over to him, holding my arms out. “Here. I can take him.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got him.”

“You don’t have to do that, Emory.”

He shrugged. “He’s my kid. Might as well.”

“You don’t owe me or him anything.”

“Maybe,” he grunted, “though I did get you into this.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

He stared at me, his eyes hard. “I could have. We don’t get close to people often, and for good reason. Shit like this tends to happen to people when we get near them.”

I stared at him, surprised by his intensity. “You couldn’t have known this would happen to a one-night stand.”

“It happened, and that’s all that matters.”

I gently took Mason and the bottle from him. Mason stirred but continued placidly drinking from his bottle. “Did you get any rest?”

“Not really,” he said, standing. “We have to leave soon.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“We’re driving straight to Indianapolis tonight. We’ll stay at the safe house tonight.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Be ready in fifteen.” He turned and left the room.

I watched the door for a minute, shaking my head. He went from wanting to feed Mason to suddenly being all about business.

Sleeping with him had been a mistake, and we both knew it. Sure, it had felt good, but things were complicated enough as it was. We didn’t need to add that sort of tension into the mix, not when we could easily avoid it.

I just needed to keep my hands off him, which was hard when all I wanted to do was to reach down his pants and feel his thick, hard cock. I wanted to feel the way I did with him pressing himself deep inside me, his hands all over my body, his dirty words in my ears.

But I couldn’t let myself forget why we were running to begin with. There were men after us, men who wanted to kill us. They were all too real.

I rocked Mason and finished feeding him not too long later. Most of my things were still down in the car, so all I needed to do was gather up Mason and his stuff. Then we’d be ready to go.

Emory came back into the room wordlessly not long later and helped me finish packing. Once that was done, we stood together in the living room. He looked at me with a frown on his face.

“Listen,” he said. “Things might get pretty dangerous from here. I don’t really know where this is going.”

“I trust you,” I said. “You may be a cocky asshole, but you saved us.”

He nodded. “Call your parents. Say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?”

“I don’t know how long we need to be in hiding.”

I bit my lip, nervous. “Okay.”

He dug an old flip phone out of his pocket. “This is a burner. When you’re done, we’ll get rid of it.”