Navy SEALs Complete Series: 3 Books + 3 Novellas (Tempting Navy SEALs) (36 page)

As she gave the investigators her report, she watched Clint. The customers who had filled the club had been released, leaving Joe and his remaining agents, herself, and Clint. Kell and Ian had slipped out with the crowd to preserve their cover. It wasn’t over. Fuentes was still out there.

“You doing okay?” Clint moved next to her as the investigator took her signed report and moved to Joe.

She still wore Clint’s jacket pulled close around her to ward off the chill she could feel moving through her very bones.

“I’m doing fine.” She inhaled deeply, staring around the club with a sense of disbelief. “Any word on Fuentes?”

“Nothing.” Clint shook his head. “Jayne and her men
apprehended a bastard uncle, Jose, and the nephew Santiago attempting to make their way into the private elevator that leads downstairs. They’re in custody now. Manuelo managed to slip away, but Kell and Ian are looking for him.”

Morganna propped her arms on the table she was sitting at and lowered her head to push her fingers through her hair.

“So what do we do now?” She stared around the club again, hearing the eerie echo of the officers’ voices as they cleared up the final investigative process.

Grant had been placed in a body bag and taken away, while two officers had been sent to his home to notify his wife of his death.

“Now we wait.” Clint sat down in the chair opposite her, stretching his long leather-clad legs in front of him as he watched her quietly. “And watch. He’ll move again soon.”

Morganna pressed her lips together as she clenched her teeth against the curse that wanted to pass her lips. She wanted this over with, now. She wanted Fuentes caught, wanted him off the streets and behind bars. She wanted to curl into Clint’s arms and assure herself that the ice lurking in the back of his gaze would melt, it would thaw, and he would find a way to stay in her life.

Maybe it was just adrenaline overload, she thought, lifting her eyes back to him, staring into the midnight orbs and feeling her chest clench at the cold that shadowed the concern. He cared, she knew he did, but not where it mattered, not where it would keep him with her forever. And she knew it. When this operation was over, Clint would be gone, and it was breaking her heart.

“So what next?” She pulled her eyes from his, hating the clenching pinch of pain in her chest.

“Next, we head downstairs, eat dinner, and—”

“I’m not hungry, Clint.”

“That’s just too bad, darlin’,” he drawled with silky warning. “Because I am, and I’m going to insist that you share a meal with me. Then we’ll have a nice hot shower and go to
bed. Where hopefully I’ll get a chance to fuck the fight out of you so you can sleep peacefully in my arms.”

She stared back at him. A grin edged at his lips, crinkled the corners of his eyes, but the hand that lay on the table was tense, almost curled into a fist.

“Don’t put yourself out.” Morganna rose jerkily to her feet, glaring back at him in ire.

“Morganna.” He followed suit, moving to his feet to block her way. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong? She had watched a friend betray her, watched another’s life destroyed, and it had brought home the glaring fact that the dreamworld she was living in was going to come crashing down around her feet any day.

It was in Clint’s eyes. In the careful deliberation he used when he “handled” her. He wanted her; he craved her physically; she was woman enough to know this. Hell, it was more than that. He loved her. He loved her so much that he would never allow himself to stay with her. The house of cards she had been building in her own heart was crumbling around her.

“Nothing’s wrong.” Nothing except the truth.

Clint wasn’t a man who changed his mind often. The vasectomy she had forced herself not to think about was a nail in the coffin of her dreams.

“Nothing’s wrong.” She shook her head, too worn inside to find the strength to cry. How many times had she cried? Given up? Only to turn back to him at the first opportunity. Because she continued to hope, to pray. To dream that the love she felt for him would thaw that layer of ice she felt in his heart.

“Baby.” His hand cupped her cheek as he stared down at her in bafflement. “It’s been a hell of a night. This business will break your soul if you let it. Don’t let it do that to you, Morganna.”

“Like it’s broken yours?” Her lips twisted painfully. “Where’s your soul, Clint?”

“Don’t, Morganna.” He shook his head, denying the unspoken question. “Look around you. The night has been filled with blood and betrayal. It’s enough to throw a hardened man off balance. It will throw you into chaos if you let it.”

Her lips trembled, but not from tears. She couldn’t cry.

“I’m tired. I just want to sleep. I don’t need sex tonight.”

He stared back at her broodingly. “Maybe I do. Maybe I need to feel you, Morganna, convince myself you’re really safe. That this time, you weren’t hurt. If you continue on in this, one of these days it’s going to be your body in a morgue, your life taken. Is that what you want? All your dreams blown to dust?”

She reached out, her fingers trailing over his hard jaw because she couldn’t help but touch him. Couldn’t help but love him. When this operation was over he would be gone and she knew it. He would walk away, and when he did her heart would follow him, just as it always had.

Each mission she would weep and worry. Each day without him would be an eternity. Each night without him would be bleak and cold. For a while. It was going to rip her heart out, but she would live, she assured herself. Just as she always had.

“Maybe you’re right,” she whispered, her fingers falling from the warmth of his skin. “Let’s go fuck like there’s no tomorrow, Clint.”

She saw the edgy wince at the corner of his eyes. He didn’t like the explicit term when she said it. Too bad. She was tired of making love alone.

“What are we waiting on?”

His eyes narrowed on her, a muscle ticcing in his jaw as she felt the air between them thicken with tension.

“You would drive a saint to drink,” he growled as he gripped her arm and began to lead her across the dance floor.

His fingers were gentle, though, his stride restrained as they headed for the hallway.

“Good thing you’re not a saint,” she quipped. “So you should be just fine.”

“Don’t start on me, Morganna. I swear to God, I thought I’d have a stroke when I saw that bastard leading you to that back door. Do you think I enjoyed that?”

“Yeah, Reno would have been pissed if you let me get shot. I can see your problem there.” She was pushing him. She was pushing herself. Grief was eating a hole in her heart, her soul, and she didn’t know how to contain it. She didn’t know how to deal with the loss she had seen this evening or the evil she had faced.

The look he gave her sizzled with ire.

“Oh, you’re going to make me shiver with that big bad SEAL look you have going there, Clint.” She tossed her head before slanting him a seductive look from the corner of her eye. “Don’t go making me wet before we get to the bed now.”

“Son of a bitch!” He dragged her through the entrance to the private hall before pushing her against the wall, anchoring her there with his taller, harder body as his hands clasped her face, tipping her head back and staring down at her with heated lust. No ice there. It was melting beneath the raging lust, the thin façade of control.

“Are you going to go Dom on me now, Clint?” Her hands pressed against his hard abs, her fingers luxuriating in the feel of the hard muscles beneath hot male flesh. “I might melt if you do.”

The hardened length of his cock pressed against her lower stomach, sending her pulse rocketing with the assurance that at least, in his hunger for her, he couldn’t yet deny her again.

“Stop this, Morganna,” he gritted out, grimacing with painful pleasure as his hips pressed his erection tighter against her. “You’ll destroy yourself if you aren’t careful.”

Her eyelids drifted closed. The feel of his hands framing her face, the pads of his fingers running slowly over her cheeks, filled her with a weakening, heated pleasure.

“I need you,” she whispered bleakly. “All of you, Clint. Just one time, just this time, give me all of you.”

His eyes widened just a fraction, a haunted look entering them as he stared back at her.

“You’re going to destroy us both before it’s over with, Morganna.”

“Just once, Clint.” She turned her head to press a kiss to his palm, her tongue peeking out, licking at the tough, calloused flesh before turning back to him. “Just once. I promise no one will know but the two of us. I won’t let your secret out.”

“Oh, baby.” His sigh was bittersweet, his gaze pensive. Lowering his head, he rested his forehead against hers, their gazes connecting until she could see her reflection in the midnight depths. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Love me.” Her breath hitched with emotion. “I don’t need the words, Clint. You don’t have to lie to me. But just once, give more than just your body. Give me something to remember.”

Her breath caught in her chest, her eyelids fluttering as his hands smoothed from her face to her neck. His fingertips caressed her as his expression slowly changed.

She felt the battle-ready tension leave his body as his fingers slid around the back of her neck and his eyes, they heated, darkened until they were almost black. She had never seen his eyes like that. She had seen him furious, killing cold, worried, and grieving, but she had never seen this. Pure emotion. His expression softening, his lips fuller, as though his own strength of will had kept them restrained over the years.

“Do you know how I hunger for you, Morganna?” he whispered. “The nights I’ve lain on the cold ground, warmed by the thought of you?”

He lowered his head, his lips pressing at the corner of hers as her breathing increased, seductive pleasure suffusing his expression, her soul.

“I dreamed of you,” she whispered, uncaring where they stood or who might see them. “I dreamed of your touch, Clint. Your voice, like it is now.” She shuddered in his grip as
his lips moved over her jaw, his teeth raking against the sensitive flesh.

“No more dreams, baby,” he soothed the desperate ache building in her chest. “Just tonight. We’ll both have what we need. Just tonight. . . .”

Just tonight. Would she survive when the night was over? Would the memory be enough?

One hand moved, his thumb running over her lips, parting them, preparing them as his eyes gleamed with a barely banked midnight blue flame that burned to the very depths of his gaze. The haunted shadows were gone, the chilly control abolished. There was only the man, his heart, his soul reaching out to her, touching her.

She would survive on this memory for the rest of her life, she decided. This one night, forever.

“Come on.” He moved back slowly, his hand running down her arm to catch her fingers in his. “Downstairs.”

There was a difference in him now. Something at once more dominant, and yet gentler. Warmer. As though the shields he used to hold everyone at bay had suddenly been wiped away.

As they stepped into the elevator and the doors slid shut soundlessly behind them, Morganna could feel the difference in Clint. Physically, he was more tense, his body controlled, harder. But the aura of sexuality wrapping around them was deeper, more intense. The hint of emotion she had always felt within him seemed to swamp her now, as though a bond she had never known existed between them was suddenly coming into play.

The elevator doors slid open as his hand pressed at the small of her back, pushing her into the entrance of the suite.

“I’ve lost my soul in you,” he whispered as he drew her to a stop, staying behind her, his fingers moving to caress her stomach as he pulled her closer.

The hard length of his erection pressed into her lower back as she felt her knees weakening.

“I lost mine in you years ago.” The knot of emotion clogging her throat made it hard to breathe. His voice was like rough velvet, caressing over her senses, sinking into her heart.

She felt the regret in the small hesitation of his breath behind her and fought back her tears. No regrets. She wouldn’t regret this, no matter where her life went afterward.

“I want this outfit off you.” He brushed her hair aside with his cheek, his lips moving to her ear. “Do you know how crazy it’s made me tonight, Morganna? All I could think about was stripping it off your body. It’s all any man in that damned club could think about.”

She fought to drag in air as his hands moved up, cupping her swollen breasts before his fingers worked at the small clasps that anchored the strips of cloth running between them.

She needed to touch him, somehow. Someway. Her hands moved back, flattening against his thighs as she resisted the urge to bury her nails in the leather covering him.

“There, baby,” he crooned before catching her earlobe in his teeth and tugging at it sensually as he peeled the top from her breasts.

“Damn, I knew you were wearing those. I love those pretty pierced nipples.” His fingers caught at the small rings, tugging at them slowly, hardening her nipples further.

Pleasure mounted in her womb, convulsing it with hard spasms as she felt the tugging motion echo through her nerve endings.

“You bought them,” she gasped, her eyes opening as she lowered her gaze to watch his fingers play with the violently sensitive tips.

Clint paused, stilling behind her as his hands cupped the undersides of her breasts, lifting them as he stared over her shoulder.

“You had the earrings altered,” he growled, his thumbs rasping over the hard points and the small ball closures that held the rings closed. “I bought them for you, for your birthday.”

Two years before. The last present he had sent to her through her brother, Reno. The implications of the rings were left silent. The fact that she belonged to him, heart and soul, wasn’t in doubt. The fact that she wore his rings was no more than an outward sign of it.

Morganna bit her lip as he moved, his hands sliding from her breasts to her hips as he turned her. She stared up at him, her eyelids fluttering weakly as his hands lifted to smooth the top over her shoulders and down her arms. It fell to the floor, forgotten as velvet-soft midnight eyes watched her intently and calloused hands began to caress her.