Page 14 of Wrong Number Right Grumpy Navy SEAL

“I’m going to need you to not do that if you want us to arrive alive.”

I smile and lift my hand because there are so many things I need to do with Cole, and he needs to be perfectly healthy and in one piece.

Cole checks in at the first hotel we see and we rush up to our room. “Now where were we?”

CHAPTER 7

COLE

Her mouth is on mine before I finish the sentence.

She tastes like beer and adrenaline and the laugh she let loose when we buckled Gerald into the truck. Her fingers twist in my hair, and I groan into her mouth, walking her backward until she hits the wall.

“Hi,” she says against my lips.

“Hey.”

“That was one hell of an exit.” She pulls back an inch. Her eyes are bright, and there’s still a smudge of powdered sugar on her collar from the fair. “My brother’s face.”

“Your brother can deal.” I press my forehead against hers. “Right now, there’s just you.”

She yanks my shirt up. I pull it over my head, and her hands land on my chest, fingers tracing the ridges of muscle like she’s memorizing terrain. Her thumbs drag along my stomach, and I inhale sharply.

“You’ve been walking around that apartment like this for three days.” Her voice drops. “Do you know what that’s been like for me?”

“Tell me.”

“Torture.” She runs a fingernail along the waistband of my jeans, and my cock strains against the denim. “Absolute torture. I’ve had dreams, Cole.”

“Yeah?” My hands find the hem of her shirt—my shirt, the one I handed her in Jared’s living room—and I pull it over her head. She’s bare underneath. The freckle below her left collarbone. The flush spreading down her chest. My hands are shaking again, same as on the couch, and I don’t care.

“Vivid ones,” she says, and the way she’s looking at me when she says it almost ends me.

I reach for her. She catches my wrists and holds them, looking me dead in the eye with the same directness that’s been breaking down my walls since Hatchet Jack’s.

“I want you to know something first.” Her thumbs press into my wrists. “This isn’t rebound. This isn’t me being reckless because my life blew up.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because I need you to hear it.” Her grip tightens. “I have never felt like this. Not with Jason. Not with anyone. You make me laugh and you show up and you buckle in a stuffed bear in your truck and I’m standing here shaking because I want you so badly I can’t think straight.”

I pull my wrists free and cup her face with both hands, kiss her so deeply her whole body trembles. She grabs my belt and yanks it open, gets my jeans unbuttoned, and shoves everything down. My cock springs free, and I groan against her mouth as her hand wraps around me.

“Bed,” she says.

“Not yet.”

I drop to my knees.

She laughs—surprised, breathless. “Cole.”

“Told you at the fair.” I unbutton her jeans, pulling them down with her underwear, and she kicks them off. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make you smile.”

“I don’t think smiling is what you’re about to—”

I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh, and the sentence dies. Her fingers twist into my hair, and her head falls back against the wall.

I take my time. Kissing the crease where her thigh meets her hip. Dragging my mouth across slowly enough that her hips chase me. She makes a sound that’s half my name, half profanity.