Free Caught by Surprise by Deborah Smith Page A

didn’t exactly push me, Brig. Forget it.”
    He sighed. “You sure do bounce good.”
    “An admiral told me the same thing once. I fell out of a tree trying to retrieve his wife’s pet ferret.”
    Brig propped her against the side of the bed and crouched by her legs, straightening them out slowly. “Does anything hurt yet?”
    “Nope.”
    “Move your toes.” He cupped the toes of her bare foot in his hand. She wrapped her big toe and second toe around his forefinger and gripped hard. “Strewth! Let go, you monkey!”
    Smiling, she pulled her foot away. “My brothers taught me to pinch with my toes.”
    “Remind me to thank the blokes,” he told her wryly. Brig bent his head and placed a smacking kiss on her toes.
    Millie eyed him askance. “My feet are sandy.”
    He shrugged. “A little sand never hurt anybody.” Then he dropped her foot, made a great show of wiping his mouth, and groaned, “Where’s the John? I think I have to throw up.”
    She laughed a little and shoved him with her foot.
    “Want to wrestle, do you?” he asked, relief written in his expression. “If you hadn’t just walloped the floor, I’d show you a thing or two.”
    “Excuses, excuses,” she challenged, grinning. Millie leaned forward and shook her fist at him. “I grew up wrestling with two mean brothers, and …” Her teasing bravado faded and she sat back gingerly.
    “Melisande?” Brig got on his knees and grasped her shoulders. Her green eyes were dark with discomfort.
    “Must have pulled a muscle in my back.”
    “Damned fightin’ woman,” he grumbled anxiously. “Don’t know when to sit still.”
    “Be quiet, hound.”
    He got up, rigged the boxspring and mattress back into place using the slats that hadn’t broken, then squatted beside her and put his hands under her arms. “Up you go, love. Squawk if it hurts.”
    “I definitely will.”
    But he was so careful and so strong that he raised her to a sitting position on the bed’s edge without jarring her back at all. He knelt in front of her, his hands sliding down to her waist. Millie raised her arms tentatively and stretched.
    “It’s just a twinge,” she said truthfully. “It’ll loosen up in a minute, and we can go back to the roof.”
    “I have my doubts. Lay on your stomach and let old Doc McKay’s magic fingers do some massagin’.”
    Millie studied him shrewdly. He apparently had no intentions other than to rub her aching back. “Okay.”
    His hands were deliciously strong on her sides as hehelped her turn and arrange herself face down on the rumpled bed. She felt very vulnerable.
    Brig sat down beside her and stifled the thick, inarticulate sound of pleasure that rose in his throat. She looked so tempting with her blond hair tossled on a white pillow etched in pink eyelet and her head turned to one side so that he could see her flushed face. He wondered if her complexion would look that way after sex, then reminded himself sternly that she was hurt.
    “Excuse me, love,” he said, and with no more than that warning he pulled the back of her T-shirt up to her neck. “Excuse me, love,” he said again, and deftly unhooked her bra.
    Millie gasped lightly. “Your apologies are suspicious.”
    His accent deepened. “Ah, but me heart’s good.”
    He flattened his hands beneath her shoulder blades and stroked down to the top of her blue-jean shorts, enjoying the smoothness of her skin. With one forefinger he traced a tiny dark mole in the small of her back. “Beauty mark,” he noted softly. “Beautiful back.” Brig, pressed his fingers into the area just above her shorts and rubbed small circles.
    Millie shifted languidly, wishing that he didn’t make it so easy to forget caution. His touch untied her muscles and drew sensations from low in her body.
    “Do you know what’s best for this kind of muscle strain?” he asked.
    “Ice pack,” she murmured, and found that her lips had trouble forming words. What was the man doing?