She felt something pounding against her cheek, and it took her a moment to realize it was his heart.
He’d been scared for her. Scared enough to lose his perpetual cool.
She didn’t have time to ponder that as the sound of a motorcycle broke the spell. She looked over John’s shoulder long enough to see the man in the hooded sweatshirt speeding away. She also saw the gun on the ground against the wheel of the car, where John must have kicked it after breaking her attacker’s arm to release it—that was the crunch she’d heard.
John relaxed his embrace and then held her away from him again to meet her gaze. “You’re sure you’re okay? He got off that shot before I could reach him.” She thought he might have shuddered. “When you cried out, I thought he hit you.”
She shook her head again, but this time found her voice. “It just startled me.”
He nodded and helped her to her feet. She straightened her clothes and brushed the pebbles off her scraped knees and palms, trying not to wince, suspecting those scrapes were going to hurt later.
She should have guessed from the way he was watching her and the increasing darkness that was coming over his expression that the storm—the real storm—was about to break. Seeing her umbrella and purse on the ground, she put off the inevitable for a moment and bent down to pick them up.
But the rain plastering her clothes and her hair to her body suddenly seemed unimportant. The silence was ominous.
Why was she feeling defensive? She hadn’t done anything wrong. “Not that I’m not grateful for your timely arrival, John. But what are you doing here?”
His eyes narrowed. The concern of a few moments ago was evaporating quickly. “I should be asking you the same thing. You were supposed to go home and forget all about this.” He took a step toward her, which, if she didn’t know him better, she might have considered threatening. “It could be dangerous, remember? Like you could get yourself fucking killed?”
The last two words were practically shouted, and her eyes widened both at his tone and the rage on his face. No, not concerned anymore. That was for sure. Now he was in 100 percent pissed-off-deadly-operator mode.
She had always wondered how someone so laid-back and good-humored could have ended up becoming a SEAL in one of the most elite Special Forces in the world, but suddenly it had become a lot clearer.
She’d never seen him so riled up; it was a little unnerving.
Without her realizing it, he’d pushed her back against the car. “What the fuck were you thinking, Brittany?”
Two fucks in two sentences. Definitely not good.
Her heart was fluttering a little fast, but she forced an even tone to her voice. “I was thinking that since you weren’t going to tell me anything, I would have to find out what happened on my own. But that guy who attacked me didn’t have anything to do with you or my stories.”
Oops. He didn’t seem to like that. His face turned really tight and angry. The hang-loose surfer looked like a mean, black-hearted, pillaging Viking.
“Are you out of your sweet, ever-loving mind? I don’t know what the hell you’ve been smoking lately, sweetheart”—Sweetheart? She’d never heard an endearmentfrom him before—“but why else do you think he was trying to kill you? This is Norway; they don’t do violent crime here.”
“He was trying to take my bag.”
John was leaning in so close now, she could practically feel the anger reverberating from his tensed muscles. There was rather an impressive lot of them to tense, and her skin prickled in an all-over flush. Unfortunately, it wasn’t with fear. It was with something else. Something that was making her blood race, her breath quicken, and really stupid parts of her body tingle.
How could she be turned on at a time like this?
“That guy wasn’t a purse snatch. He was a professional. Didn’t you see him?”
“Not really.” She just had a vague impression. Tall, strong, shadowed features. A smell of... aftershave? Soap? She couldn’t put her finger on it. But he’d been clean-shaven. Otherwise, with the rain, darkness, and hoods, the two men would have been eerily similar.
She frowned. But that didn’t mean he was a professional. John was just trying to scare her. Which he didn’t need to do. She was scared enough.
“Well, I did,” John said. “And that guy was trained. He sensed my approach and blocked my blow too easily. I was lucky to get the gun away from him.” Brittany hadn’t seen any of it; she’d had her face pressed against the pavement. “He would have snapped your neck with one twist if I’d been a second later. Do you have any idea how lucky you are that I got here when I did? If the guy you picked up in the bar tonight had taken any longer to persuade you to go home, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
This was a conversation? It seemed rather one-sided to her.
She’d never heard him raise his voice to anyone like this before. And from the way his hands were clenchingand reclenching at his sides, she got the definite sense that he was trying to decide whether to shake her or ravish her senseless.
Emphasis on the senseless.
She shuddered, the unwelcome tingling turning to full-fledged clenching. With the length of his powerful body leaning against hers like this, it was too easy to remember how it had felt to have him inside her. Sinking into her with those long, deep thrusts that had possessed her entire body.
She wasn’t going to do this. She didn’t know whether it was what had just happened, what he was saying, or the desire that was crashing over her, but she suddenly felt overwhelmed, upset, and maybe a little vulnerable.
