Sexy SEAL Box Set: A SEAL's Seduction / A SEAL's Surrender / A SEAL's Salvation / A SEAL's Kiss. Tawny Weber
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at the memory, since she now knew it was probably just his way of reassuring her. Keeping her from getting hysterical. Or, who knew, maybe luck, as she’d first said.
Before she could pout too much, her stomach—the only part of her body not craving Blake’s touch—growled.
“Hungry it is,” he said, grinning and setting two plates, steam rising temptingly, on the table.
Alexia placed the pack on her designated cot and joined him.
“Field rations?” she guessed with a grimace. “My father used to insist we have them for dinner once a month. It was supposed to make us appreciate what soldiers had to deal with while protecting our way of life.”
“Did it?”
“No,” she remembered, wrinkling her nose. “But it did solidify my determination not to serve in the military.”
Blake’s grin warmed her more than all the space heaters combined. That feeling—and starvation—got her through the first few bites. Then the flavor hit her taste buds.
She poked into the open food box he’d set between them until she found salt. It took two packets before she could get through the other half of her meal. She glanced at Blake, who was spooning up his as if it was covered in chocolate.
“You don’t actually like this—” she was hesitant to call it food “—stuff, do you?”
He shrugged, still scooping up the tan goo. “It’s not that bad. Growing up, I was mostly hungry, so I tend to focus more on filling my belly than the taste threshold.”
She wanted to ask why he’d been hungry. What his upbringing had been like. Was that a part of why he’d joined the military? For three square meals—or the equivalent? She wrinkled her nose at the mushy stuff on her plate. Did he have siblings? A family? Were they still hungry or had they found their way?
A million questions raced through her mind, but she couldn’t ask any of them. She felt it was private, that she had no right to poke or prod. She’d been fine with the right to lick her way down his body and to do a naked dance on his face, but ask personal questions? Totally taboo.
Which was ridiculous. So was the fact that while she’d claimed to want communication with him in the past, she’d never wondered any of those things. She’d only focused on the parts of his life that she thought impacted her. And then, when she’d found out just how strong that impact was, she’d slammed the door shut.
She poked her spoon into the stew again, trying to control the urge to cry. Again. God, she was a mess.
“If you eat all your dinner, I have chocolate for dessert,” Blake said in a singsong voice.
Her eyes flew to his face.
“Chocolate?”
“Yep. Chocolate bars, chocolate powder, chocolate syrup.”
“Noooo,” she breathed in a reverent moan.
“Yep.”
She looked around the tent, wondering where he’d hidden it. She hadn’t seen any in the box of gross dinner choices. Then, because chocolate made everything more appetizing, she dived into the stew, eating it fast enough that she didn’t have to taste it.
“There,” she said three minutes later, holding out her cleaned plate. “Chocolate time.”
“You’re done already?” Surprise clear in his blue eyes, Blake laughed. But he took her plate, put it in a bag, then pulled a small knapsack from beneath one of the bunks.
“It’s all yours.”
Her fingers trembled, not a new thing for her this week. But this time it was excitement shivering through them as she undid the buckles.
“Yum,” she moaned again when she saw the stash inside. At least two-dozen chocolate bars, three cans of familiar brown syrup and a large pouch with two sections, one with brown powder and the other with white. Chocolate milk to go, just add water?
Her fingers had already wrapped around a candy bar when she realized this was a lot of soothing sweetness. Enough to last awhile. A long while.
She bit her lip.
“Should I be rationing it?” she asked Blake quietly.
He paused in the act of emptying another pouch onto his plate and met her eyes. His gaze shifted to the radio, then scanned the monitors before meeting hers again.
“Just enough so that you don’t make yourself sick,” he said.
Alexia still hesitated.
“We’re waiting until we get word that the compound is secured and the team has neutralized everyone inside,” he told her, his voice so quiet and matter-of-fact that it took her a second to realize he was filling her in on the mission objective. “As soon as they give the all-clear, someone will contact us with pickup coordinates. How long that takes simply depends on the level of resistance the team meets back there.”
“The guy was crazy,” she said, carefully pulling a single candy bar from the knapsack, then deliberately closing the flap. “He talked about starting a war, about the loyalty of his troops. There were too many there for me to count.”
“Numbers don’t matter. Strategy is what counts. And SEALs rock the strategy.”
“I’ve heard that rumor,” she said with a smile. “Is this your usual job? Hostage hand-holding?”
His lips twitched. He crossed the tent and stopped in front of her.
“What are you doing?”
Alexia held her breath as excitement swirled in her belly. Personal prejudices being what they were, she’d never been turned on by a guy in uniform, or in camo or even wearing dog tags and low-riding jeans. Soldiers were totally not her thing.
Except Blake.
She was horribly afraid that if she wasn’t careful, he’d become her everything.
He reached out and took her hand in his. His fingers entwined with hers, then he gave them a gentle shake.
“Holding hands.”
* * *
BLAKE LOVED THE WAY she laughed. The sound of it, rich and husky. The way it made her dark eyes dance with delight. The look of her face, all lit up and happy.
He loved the feel of her fingers, slender and warm in his. Relief so intense it made him want to drop to his knees poured through him. She was here. He’d got her out alive, safe and sound.
He couldn’t claim he’d never been worried on a mission. Since Phil’s death, worry was a second skin, always looming, never comfortable. But scared? He’d never understood real fear until he’d opened that file and realized Alexia was his target. He’d used the fear, iced it down and applied it to fuel his moves, to make sure he was hypervigilant. To get Alexia to safety.
They weren’t quite there yet. But at the sight of her smile, watching her come back to life as the terror started to fade, he was filled with so many emotions he’d never felt before. It made him wish for things he’d never thought of. Made him care, way too much. Cade had accused him of mooning over Alexia. Blake realized now he’d just been waiting.
And if he’d had the words, if he had a clue what to say, he’d have made some big emotional declaration.
His gut clenched, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
He owed his life to those warning signals, so he automatically stopped, mentally gauging the danger.
Alexia, he realized.
She wasn’t a threat to his physical safety.
She was a threat to his way of life.
If he let these emotions grow, he’d give in to anything she asked. Like leaving the military.