Free One Hot SEAL by Anne Marsh Page A

only then realized what she’d just said.
    “People will talk about my being
here,” she warned even as her eyes drifted shut again.
    Ordinarily, he didn’t give a shit
what other people thought about him. He did his job, and he lived his life by
his own rules. If that wasn’t good enough for someone, that someone could take
a long walk off a short pier. For someone who professed to be equally ruleless,
Deelie seemed awfully concerned about what other people would think about their
new relationship. And, if he was honest, his parents would have questions. He’d
never so much as brought Deelie home, and now he’d brought her home . Once they saw that it was serious,
however, he figured they’d get on board. At the very least, they’d keep their
doubts to themselves.
    “Let them,” he said and steered her
down the hallway. He’d debated offering her the guest bedroom, but he was a
selfish bastard. He wanted her curled up in his bed with him. He wanted a
relationship with her, which meant figuring out a way through her all prickly
defenses. Still, his mother had taught him some manners.
    “You want to crash in the guest
bedroom, or do you want to share with me?” Pick
me .
    “You,” she mumbled, and that ten-foot-tall
thing was definitely happening again. As soon as she stepped into his room, she
headed straight for the bed, dropping her bag on the floor, and toed off her
shoes.
    Definitely down for the count. She
hit the bed hard enough to bounce, rolling onto her back. He pulled the covers
back, scooting her beneath.
    She reached for the buttons on her
shorts. “Give me just a minute,” she mumbled.
    Jesus. Did she think she had to put
out because she was in his bed?
    “I want you here, not a sex slave.” Games were one thing, but they clearly
needed to work on their relationship skills.
    “Kinky man,” she muttered, but she
was still smiling when he slipped into bed beside her a few minutes later.

6
     
    Male voices rumbled from the front
porch of Luke’s house. Someone had stopped by. Funny how even after two weeks
as his houseguest (roommate, she reminded herself, because she was trying to
pull her weight and not play the pampered princess) it was very much his place.
She and Vicious had added a new layer of dog hair to Luke’s furniture, but
other than that, she hadn’t put her Deelie
was here stamp on the place.
    She hit the kitchen first because,
if the guests turned out to be either of Luke’s brothers, she needed caffeine
before being social. Not because they weren’t nice but because they were so
painfully polite around her. They looked at her, and she just knew that they
wondered why the hell Luke had picked her to play house with.
    Frankly, she wondered the same
thing at least twice or forty times a day. And then she had to kick herself,
because she’d made a vow years ago to stop tearing herself down. Daddy Dearest
had done that enough; now she lived for herself and for the fucking moment.
    Sometimes literally.
    She could feel the big
I-just-got-laid-and-it-was-awesome grin stretching her face. She couldn’t even
hide it. God, Luke just got better and better in bed, and he’d set the bar
impossibly high to begin with. He was creative, adventurous, and not afraid to
lock the door and drag her off to bed at a moment’s notice. Saying no to him
was the last thing she wanted to do, but she had to start getting more sleep or
she was going to pass out on Ma’s bar during her shift. Yeah. She could imagine
the gossip storm that would cause.
    She swiped the last two inches of
coffee from the pot. Debated starting another pot, but they hadn’t worked out
the grocery share, and while leftovers were one thing, raiding his stuff was
another. It was her mug though, with the Vegas-bound flamingoes cavorting
around the edges. The handle was a big pink beak. Luke’s mugs were boring black
stoneware. The man seemed to have a pathological aversion to color. He needed
pink boxers, yellow socks,