Hot Pursuit by Suzanne Brockmann Read Free Book Online

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Red and lacy, with panties to match, it left very little to the imagination.
    No doubt about it, her husband did love lingerie, and she’d put it on this evening for the occasion—this, their first night away from Ashton. Of course, with all the parties Robin was attending after the movie premiere, Alyssa hadn’t been scheduled to show it to Sam until well after 0300.
    He stopped her now in the privacy of the empty hallway and tugged gently at the lapel of her jacket. “C’mon. Lemme see if you’re gonna need a tetanus booster. If Swastika Boy scratched you bad enough—”
    “I’m fine,” she said again, but she knew only one surefire way to alleviate his concern. She opened her jacket.
    “Fine,” he repeated, his voice even huskier as he let his gaze turn hot, as he smiled at her, “is an understatement.”
    “We’re working,” she reminded him. She needed to find a bathroom with some privacy where she could get cleaned up and change her shirt, and yet… She didn’t feel compelled to refasten her jacket, particularly when he ran one finger lightly along the edge of the bra in question. “We need to check in with Ric.”
    “Uh-huh,” he said, although it was clear he wasn’t listening.
    “Roger.” She used his given name. Sam was just a Navy SEAL nickname that had stuck. “Focus.”
    “I find,” he murmured, as he moved in even closer, wrapping his arm around her waist, “that I’m intensely focused.”
    Oh, yes he most certainly was. And, God, how was it, after all these years, that this man still had the power to make her heart beat harder and her mouth go dry?
    He knew it, too—she could see that as well, gleaming in his eyes as he leaned down and kissed her—a silent promise that their baby-free night was going to be a memorable one. But then he pulled her in even more tightly, in an embrace that wasn’t entirely about keeping her up all night.
    And it was only then, as he held her like that, that he whispered, “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me down there.”
    “I’m sorry.” Alyssa knew from experience how hard it was to do what Sam had done—to run away from, instead of toward, the action. She knew that the adrenaline that had coursed through his system was probably still making his hands shake—it was actually far easier to be the one under direct attack than to have to watch it happen to someone you loved.
    “It’s stupid,” he admitted as he pulled back to rest his forehead against hers. “But it’s even harder now that Ash is in the picture. I’m not the only one who loses if—”
    “It goes both ways,” she reminded him.
    “I know,” he said, but he didn’t sound completely convinced.
    A door opened behind them, and she pulled out of his arms and buttoned her jacket.
    “There you are,” Robin said. “Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine,” Alyssa told him—it was her refrain for the evening. “His weapon wasn’t loaded, it was no big deal.”
    “Yeah,” Sam said with a laugh, as he followed her into the office where Ric and Jones were keeping Robin safe, “right. No big deal.”
    But she knew he didn’t mean that, either.

C HAPTER
T HREE
    S am was out of practice.
    Or, rather, he’d had a little too
much
practice, over the past ten months, in the time-honored art of the quickie.
    But tonight Ash wasn’t here to interrupt, as Sam tugged the last little bit of red satin and lace down his impossibly beautiful wife’s long legs, as he kissed her and licked her and took his sweet time, as she dug her fingers into his hair and breathed his name in her musical voice, as he kissed her and kissed her and
kissed
her.
    “Please,” she was saying, “please,” so he slid inside of her but he needed to take a minute—a momentary time out—to put himself back into the game, to remember the way they used to do this, but she was moving beneath him and he’d never been