Her Adoring SEAL (Midnight Delta Book 3) (26 page)
Read Her Adoring SEAL (Midnight Delta Book 3) Online
Authors: Caitlyn O'Leary
She writes what she loves to read, and that is romance, whether it’s erotic or paranormal, as long as there is a happily ever after. Her biggest hope is that after readers have read one of her stories, they fall in love with her characters as much as she did. She loves creating new worlds, and has more stories just waiting to be written. Elle believes in happily ever afters, and can guarantee you will always get one with her stories.
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Other Books by Elle Boon
Erotic Ménage
Ravens of War
Selena’s Men
Two For Tamara
Jaklyn’s Saviors
Kira’s Warriors
Akra’s Demons, Coming Soon
Shifters Romance
Mystic Wolves
Accidentally Wolf
His Perfect Wolf
Jett’s Wild Wolf
Paranormal Romance
SmokeJumpers
FireStarter
Berserker’s Rage
A SmokeJumpers Christmas
Mind Bender, Coming Soon
MC Shifters Erotic
Iron Wolves MC
Lyric’s Accidental Mate
Xan’s Feisty, February 9, 2016
Contemporary Romance
Miami Nights
Miami Inferno
Miami Blaze, Coming Summer 2016
Phantom Force
Delta Salvation, Coming March/April
The Surrender Series, Book 4 — Red Hot Heroes Collection
By Lori King
Chapter One
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T
he melodic sound of Blake Shelton’s newest country hit, “Lonely Tonight,” echoed out the lowered window, and drifted on the soft summer breeze. It was muggy in South Texas, and storms were predicted for later in the afternoon, but at the moment, the sky was a clear blue without a cloud in sight. From where Silas White was parked, he could see the crossing guard helping school children cross the one main road through Stone River. Beside him, his partner, Colby Bruce, snored loudly in his seat. It was a normal day, and he was bored out of his mind.
Just once he’d like to have some excitement. It was part of why he’d become a paramedic—that, and there wasn’t much else for a veteran Army medic to do in this part of Texas without more education. When he came back from overseas, he’d had no interest in returning to school just to receive a degree he didn’t really want. All he wanted was to help people and feel necessary in a world that suddenly didn’t need him anymore. He missed the adrenaline rush of being on the front lines, but he damn sure didn’t miss getting shot at. Hell, in some cases, being the medic was the most dangerous job in the military. He was the one who had to rush to the aid of the injured while bullets whizzed past his ears.
A bee chose that moment to land on the top of his ear, and he knocked it away with a curse. If only he could find something to rev him up. A reason to wake up in the morning that didn’t have him chugging back coffee like it was going out of style.
The radio on the dashboard of the ambulance crackled, and Silas surged to life as though he’d been electrocuted. He snatched up the handset before Colby could reach for it and spoke clearly into it. “Bus 14 to base, we’re here. Over.”
“Base to 14, call out to 104 Spitz Street. Just outside the apartment, there appears to be a woman injured. The manager wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he said she was on the ground next to her car, and she wasn’t moving. Over.”
“Got it, Deanna. We’re on our way.” Turning the key in the ignition, Silas eased the large vehicle into the street just as Colby hit the switch for the lights and sirens.
Ahead of them, the school children pointed and waved as they zipped by, and Silas couldn’t help but smile. At least someone was excited to see them. Most days, they just sat around doing nothing until the time clock dinged for them to go home, but sometimes, they got lucky and got to go and see the kids at the school. That was always fun.
“Wonder what we’ve got.” Colby sat up a bit straighter and fixed his sagging badge on his shirt. “Heart attack? Stroke?”
“Heat exhaustion most likely,” Silas said with a laugh.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Colby agreed. “Damned hot even for August.”
They turned the corner, approaching the address from the east side, and the late afternoon sun blinded Silas for a moment, making him squint to see the apartment building they’d been called to. A low-slung building built back in the seventies, it was one of only three apartment complexes left in Stone River, and this was the cheapest of the bunch. A stranger might assume it was a former motel by the way the doors lined one side, each one with a perfectly matched window next to it and two parking stalls in front. These tiny apartments weren’t meant to hold much, but they were always full.
A blue, two-door car that had obviously seen a lot of miles sat parked in front of the door on the end farthest from them, and a bald man stood near the back end of the car waving his arms around to get their attention.
“Hey Bob, what d’you got for us today?” Silas asked after parking the ambulance and jumping out. Colby followed with the med bag, and they both hurried to the female now seated on the ground with her back against the hot metal door of the car.
“She just fell over. Like something struck her, but now, she says she’s fine.” Bob Gunderson owned and managed the tiny apartment building. He was probably one of the nosiest people Silas knew, but at the moment, that might be a good thing.
“Ma’am, can you tell us what happened?” Colby asked.
Silas squatted down next to her, and reached for her, pushing her chin up with his fingers so that he could see her better. When she tipped her head back, he felt like he’d been sucker punched.
“Corporal Bryant?”
“Sergeant White?” Confusion filled her oversized green eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“At the moment, I’m rescuing a damsel in distress,” he said playfully, earning a small smile as a reward.
“I’m not in distress. I’m fine. I just fell,” she said, avoiding his curiosity by turning her head to watch what Colby was doing.
“That was an awfully strange fall, Miss Bryant,” Bob argued. “Looked like you just locked up and then buckled from the middle.”
“Did you hurt yourself when you fell, Sarah? Hit your head?” Silas asked, gripping her chin more firmly, this time to hold her head in place while he used his flashlight to check her pupils.
“No, not at all. I bruised my pride more than my ass. I promise you, I’m fine.” She shook her head and brushed his hands away, her full lips firming into a tight pout.
Silas exchanged a look with Colby who shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to put away the supplies he’d just removed from the med bag. Something felt off about the way Sarah was responding, and he wasn’t buying her no injuries claim. If she’d really just slipped and fallen, why didn’t she get back up and brush herself off? Why sit in the hot sun against an equally hot car?
“All right. Well, I can’t throw you over my shoulder and haul you to the hospital, but I can offer to help you up and back inside.” Silas stood and held his hand out to her.
As expected, she stared at it in horror and shook her head. “I’m fine right here, thanks. You boys can go on about your business.”
Planting his hands on his hips, he laughed. “So to avoid telling me what’s really wrong, you’re going to sit in the gravel with the sun burning you up to a crisp?”
She rolled her eyes and wrinkled her nose. “I’m telling you, I’m fine—”
“Prove it.” He waited with his hands on his hips as she considered his challenge. There was fire in her eyes; the woman he knew from years ago could never resist a dare. For just a moment, he thought she was going to launch herself to her feet and punch him in the jaw for being an asshole, but then her eyes dropped and she shook her head sadly.
“I can’t.” Her words were soft, so he dropped back down beside her, conscious of the way she kept her gaze lowered and the responding twitch of his cock in his pants. Damn, he loved a feisty woman when she submitted.
“Tell me what’s going on, Sarah.”
He saw her grit her teeth and glance toward Colby and Bob before she hissed, “My back spasmed, and locked up. I just need to sit still for a bit until the muscle relaxer kicks in.”
“Muscle relaxer? When did you take it?”
“A few minutes ago when Bob brought me a bottle of water. I swear I’ll be fine.”
He nodded in understanding. “Does this happen a lot? Random back spasms?”
“Too often for my taste,” she admitted. Her phone beeped and she dug it out of her purse, wincing when she twisted her upper body.
“You know it’s possible you hurt yourself when you fell and didn’t realize it because of the spasm.” He was determined to get her to at least let him check her over. Even if she refused to go to the hospital, it was clear she wasn’t fine.
“Unlikely,” she said dismissively, glaring at her phone and then tossing it back into the depths of her purse.
Colby cleared his throat and turned to Bob, distracting him with a question about the choice of paint color on the apartment building, and giving Silas a moment of privacy with Sarah.
“Sergeant White, I realize you want to help, but—”
“Silas.” He shifted around to sit next to her, his shoulder pressing against hers, and his back against the scorching hot car. “Damn woman, no wonder your back hurts. You’re gonna have third degree burns from sitting here against this metal.”
“It wasn’t like I picked this spot for the view.” she said with a laugh.
“Why won’t you let me help you, Sarah?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t need help.”
“We all need help sometimes.”
“Not today,” She insisted through clenched teeth. “Look, Sergeant, I know—”
“Damn it, is it so hard for you to call me Silas? I’m not in the Army anymore, Corporal Bryant. You don’t have to address me by my rank.”
She flushed and wrinkled her cute nose up again. “Old habits die hard, I guess. I know you want to help, but I’m perfectly fine. In a few minutes, the meds will kick in and I will be able to get up and go inside. I’ll take a cool shower to ease the sting of the sun, and then lay down for a nap. Okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed, crossing his ankles and resting his head against the car behind him.
They sat there for a minute in complete silence before she huffed and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“For your meds to kick in. Once they do, I’ll help you inside and check you over for injuries. If you’re uninjured, I’ll say goodbye and go on about my merry way.” He gave her a wide grin when her mouth dropped open.
Her frustration was obvious, but there was no way she was going to convince him to leave her sitting here alone. Corporal Sarah Bryant had been one of the best soldiers he’d had the honor of working with. She was loyal, disciplined, kindhearted, and she made a damn fine soldier. He hadn’t spent much time one-on-one with her, because every time he looked her way, his cock twitched in his pants. That kind of reaction didn’t usually go over well with the females in his unit. More often than not, it was a direct turn-off. He’d seen too many guys test their luck against the battle-hardened ladies and regret it, so he’d kept himself at a polite distance.
His unit had been sent back home long before hers was scheduled to return, so he had no idea how the rest of her deployment went, but the first half was very rocky. They’d survived hell on Earth and ended up in the same tiny town in Texas. There was no way that was a random coincidence.
“How long have you been back?” he asked.
“Two years.”
He felt his eyes widen in surprise. “I thought you guys were going to be there a year?”
“The unit didn’t return until the summer of 2013, but I got to MEDEVAC back in January that year.”
His heart rate doubled. “What happened?”
“You know, I’m feeling better now. I think I can probably get up and go inside.” Just like that, she shut down his question, forcing him to refocus his attention on her injured status. His gut told him that her back pain and her early return home from deployment were related, but if she wasn’t ready to explain, he’d let it lie.
“Great. Let me help you so that you don’t slip on this gravel. No need getting an injury if you don’t have one.” He jumped to his feet and reached for her hand, pleased when she let him take it. The skin of her palm was rose-petal-soft against his, and when she slowly stood, the scent of raspberries swirled in the air around her.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun at the base of her neck and her comment about old habits ran through his brain. She was right. It was impossible to give up military life completely. The fact that she’d obviously had her time cut short probably made it even harder.
The first step she took was tentative, but once she was assured that her body would hold her up, she smiled. Her beauty was blinding. She was a stunning woman, and she took his breath away. In an attempt to recover from his sudden fumble, he bent and retrieved her purse, handing it to her.
“Thanks.” She accepted the large bag, and moved carefully across the gravel. To his disappointment, she leaned on the car rather than him, but he was glad to see her moving on her own.
It took a moment for her to find her keys, but once the door clicked open, they were hit in the face with a wave of blissfully icy air from inside the air-conditioned apartment. The same berry scent filled every nook and cranny of the cozy space. Silas breathed it deeply into his lungs, committing it to memory.
