Tempted by a SEAL (18 page)

CHAPTER 20

Mack was still shaking an hour later remembering Lydia’s recount of the shooting.

So many things could have gone wrong . . . but they hadn’t. He had to keep reminding himself of that. Lydia was in her own bed. Sleeping. Unhurt.

If he hadn’t needed to get up to get a drink of water so desperately, he’d still be laying there next to her. Not sleeping. Just listening to her breathe.

He’d spent the past hour touching her more for his comfort than for hers. He needed her warmth to remind himself she was alive.

Standing in her kitchen in nothing but his underwear, Mack pressed the water glass to his lips and swallowed a large gulp of tap water.

The irony that he was willingly going to spend the whole night in a woman’s bed, and not even have sex, wasn’t lost on him.

But there was no way he was leaving Lydia. Not tonight. Not until he had to.

Flipping on the cold water, he moved to refill the glass when he heard a key in the lock of the apartment door.

Lydia had a roommate. He’d seen confirmation of that all around the apartment, from the two toothbrushes in the bathroom, to the two laptops charging on the counter.

He wasn’t quite up for meeting new people in just his blue boxer briefs but he didn’t have much choice.

Being in nothing but underwear didn’t bother him. His lack of a weapon did, given what had happened on campus just today.

Training had him already very aware of the location of everything he could use as a weapon within reach. Kitchen knives. Teakettle. Half-empty bottle of some kind of flavored vodka. All would be good enough to act as an improvised weapon if he needed it.

He set the glass on the counter with barely a sound and took one step back, deeper into the shadows of the room, and waited.

The door opened and a girl pushed through. Tall. Blonde. A purse on her shoulder. The key in her hand.

Not a threat.

In fact, though he hadn’t gotten a good look at her face, she was most likely the girl he’d seen in the pictures around the apartment, usually smiling and hugging Lydia.

He let out the breath he’d been holding and decided to make his presence known before she spotted him and he scared the hell out of her.

His ego could only hope that this girl wasn’t used to walking in on Lydia’s partially dressed, overnight male visitors.

“Hey. I’m—”

Her eyes flew wide as she let out a frightened squeal.

Mack held up his empty hands, palms forward, and rushed to finish. “I’m a friend of Lydia’s.”

Friend.
Pfft. More than that, he hoped, but that term was good enough of an explanation for here and now. They’d define what he was to her, and her to him, later on.

In her defense, Lydia’s roommate recovered quickly. She went from startled to surprisingly curious in seconds.

She lifted one brow. “Are you, now? Well, well, well.”

While she was checking him out, he was very aware of his state of undress.

“I’m Mack. And you are?” Under this girl’s scrutiny, he felt the need to prompt her with the usual social niceties.

“Marissa. Lydia’s roommate.” A small smile appeared on her lips. “Hmm.”

Mack raised a brow of his own. “Hmm?”

“Just thinking how she didn’t exaggerate.”

He was afraid to ask about what so he grabbed his glass of water and decided to make an escape while he could. “I’d better get back to her. She went to bed early.”

“Oh, I’m sure she did.” The humor and innuendo was clear in Marissa’s tone.

Mack couldn’t let it go. “She’s been through a lot today, being in that room with the shooter.”

The humor drained from Marissa’s features. “I know. I was there with her.”

Of course. The girl hiding under the table. The one Lydia told to run. He’d forgotten.

Mack nodded his head to acknowledge her ordeal. “I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

“Because of Lydia. She dragged me out of there. If she hadn’t I probably would have stayed right there and . . .” She let the sentence trail off, swallowing hard.

He knew what she hadn’t said but was thinking. If they hadn’t gotten out they could both have been among those in the hospital now, or worse.

“It all worked out so . . . You should probably get some rest too. Good night.” With a nod, he turned to go.

“Hey, um, Mack?”

He turned back. “Yeah?”

“You’re not a jerk, right? Because you kind of disappeared on her before and now you’re back and . . . I just need to know what kind of fallout to expect when you go again.”

“I won’t disappear again.” Mack realized he couldn’t make that promise in his line of work. “At least, I won’t without getting her some kind of word first.”

Marissa tilted her head to the side and eyed him critically—his face this time and not the rest of him. “So what are you? Like some kind of Black Ops?”

He let out a laugh. “Not exactly, no. But uh, it’s probably better—safer—if you don’t tell anyone anything about me. Okay?”

Her eyes widened. “Okay.”

Shaking his head as he walked, he realized he’d just opened a big can of worms, which he’d have to deal with.

He’d worry about that tomorrow. Tonight, all he wanted to do was hold Lydia. He turned for the bedroom and this time Marissa let him go.

Even creeping into the room as silently as he could, he wasn’t quiet enough. Lydia stirred and then sat up.

“Hey. How long did I sleep?”

“Not long.” He set down his water glass on the bedside table and sat on the mattress. Slipping under the covers, he pulled Lydia closer so she was leaning against him instead of the pillow. “Your roommate’s home. I just met her in the kitchen.”

“In your underwear?” she asked.

He laughed. “Yup.”

She twisted to face him. “So, she’s pretty, huh?”

He heard the underlying insecurity in Lydia’s question. He hated hearing that.

“I didn’t notice. I was too busy thinking about getting back here to you to do this.” Leaning low, he pressed a kiss to her mouth.

Climbing on top of him, Lydia straddled his hips. He watched as she hiked up the bottom of the oversized T-shirt she wore and saw she had nothing underneath.

His pulse quickened as Lydia reached between them, sliding her hand beneath the elastic of his briefs. His body reacted.

She freed him from his underwear. Wasting no time, she braced both hands on his shoulders and slid down over his length.

He didn’t ask if she was all right. He knew she wasn’t all right, but she would be.

He didn’t ask if she was sure she wanted to do this, now, after all that had happened today. He knew she needed this, as much as he did.

All of those questions would have been moot because he knew the answers already. He’d been here before. Narrowly escaping death. Coming back from the edge and feeling the need to cling to life.
 

She moved over him, every stroke affirming she was here. She was alive. She was his.

Maybe not quite
his
yet, but he’d work on affirming that tomorrow.

CHAPTER 21

Morning dawned brightly in spite of the dark tragedy of the day before.

Mack’s soft breathing next to her had memories of another kind pouring into Lydia’s consciousness.

She knew he’d spent half the night holding her, watching her. She’d awoken a couple of times to find him wide awake.

If she could somehow manage to get out of bed without disturbing him, he could sleep a little longer.

Flipping back the corner of the covers, Lydia moved slowly, swinging first one leg and then the other over the edge of the mattress.

She eased her weight off the bed and stood, freezing as she glanced back at him to see if she’d made it out without disturbing him. He stirred a bit, rolled over, and then went back to breathing deep and steady.

Figuring she’d made it through the hard part, Lydia tiptoed in her stocking feet across the dim room.
 

The early morning light filtered through the curtains. Amazingly enough, she’d slept fairly well—when she’d finally gotten to sleep. She’d had to initiate the physical encounter with Mack last night, but once she’d started it, he didn’t hesitate to keep going—twice.

Warming from the inside out from the memories, she turned the doorknob slowly and then eased the bedroom door open. She slipped through the narrow opening and closed the door softly behind her.

Once out in the living room, she allowed herself to move more quickly across the room, still trying to walk quietly so he wouldn’t wake.

In the kitchen, she turned on the light and reached for the coffee pot. Likely the smell of coffee was going to wake Mack but she felt the need for the hot rich brew.

She’d been so quiet and so careful, she was surprised when Marissa’s door opened.

Lydia pressed a finger to her lips to signal to her roommate to remain quiet.

Marissa walked silently across the room but the moment she reached the kitchen and Lydia, her eyes widened.

“Oh my God! He’s so freaking hot.”

“Shh.” Lydia laughed as she tried to shush her friend. “He’s sleeping.”

“He should be. He must be tired after what I heard last night.” Marissa’s devilish expression had Lydia laughing even as her cheeks burned with embarrassment.

She cringed that her roommate had heard what had turned out to be pretty boisterous, in spite of her efforts to remain quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be. And in exchange you have to fix me up with one of his single friends.”

Lydia didn’t know any of Mack’s friends. Did he even have them? The man seemed like such a loner, she wasn’t sure.

While spooning coffee grinds into the filter, Lydia let out a huff. “We’re definitely not up to that stage in our—whatever this thing is with him.”

“Well you need to get there.” Marissa crossed her arms over her chest as she issued the command.

“I’ll do my best.” Lydia hit the brew button and cocked one brow high. “So, did you stay at the hospital all that time last night?”

Marissa nodded, wrapping her arms closer around herself. “Yeah. There was still a crowd when I left.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t stay with you.”

Her friend waved off her concern. “Don’t worry about it. Half of my English class was there with me. I was fine.”

“Any news on the injured?”

Marissa nodded. “They’d upgraded the janitor’s condition from critical to stable. And they released a couple of the students with lesser injuries.”

“That’s good news, I guess.”

“Yeah. It is.” Marissa drew in a breath as her eyes met Lydia’s. “They released the ID of the shooter. He was a student.”

Lydia felt sick to her stomach that a fellow student could do such a thing. “Do they have a motive?”

The guy had been killed in a shootout with the two police officers who’d arrived first on the scene, so they might never know what made him do it.

“Not yet. But the news reports said they seized his computer and cell phone. The FBI is going through it all now, along with his social media accounts and travel history. They’re trying to determine if it’s terrorist related.”

“The FBI. Wow.”

Lydia stared blindly at the dripping coffee filling the carafe, not really seeing it as she tried to absorb the enormity of the situation.

“Good morning.”

Lydia had been so distracted by her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed Mack was in the room until she heard his voice.
 

“Well, good morning.” Marissa’s flirty greeting put Lydia on edge.

Her friend couldn’t help it. Flirting came as second nature to the willowy blonde, but that didn’t mean it was any easier for Lydia to swallow when it was directed at the man she’d spent the night with.

At least he was dressed. Barefooted, but wearing jeans and a T-shirt, it was far better than the underwear he’d been wearing when he’d met Marissa last night.

Lydia grit her teeth thinking of that. She loved Marissa but that green-eyed monster called jealousy was strong.