Making His Move by Rhyannon Byrd

run on Coronado and wore his shorts, but she’d never asked him about it. When she lifted her gaze back to his face, her silent question in those beautiful eyes, he heard himself say, “I blew my knee out my junior year of college, playing football.”
    She winced. “I’m so sorry.”
    “Don’t be,” he told her, sitting on the side of the bed and turning to face her. “It led to a better career than sports could have been for me. I needed something that kept me in line and gave me structure, so I went to work for another cousin of mine who’s a former Navy Seal. He started his own private security firm when he got out of the military, and was willing to take me on and train me. In all honesty, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.”
    With a tender look of concern, she asked, “Didn’t you miss football?”
    Leaning over her body, he braced himself on his free hand near her hip, and grinned. “Not as much as I would have missed meeting a certain little sexy-as-hell scientist who works at the Blackwood Research Institute if I’d never gone to work there.”
    She laughed softly, the husky sound melting down his spine and settling with a thick heat in his balls. He shook his head at himself as he grabbed the sheet and started lowering it down her mouthwatering body, determined to convince her to let him tend to her with the cold cloth...before using everything he had to prove to her just how amazing they were together.
     
    An hour later, Chris turned his head toward Sophie, where she was lying beside him with a drowsy expression on her pleasure-flushed face, and asked, “You sleepy?”
    “Mmm...Maybe a little.”
    “Then take a few minutes to grab a catnap,” he murmured, rolling to his side and pulling her soft, naked body into his arms, holding her close. “You’re going to need the energy.”
    She smiled against his chest, and Chris closed his eyes, thinking he was one lucky son of a bitch to have found her.
    And one who was determined to do whatever it took to keep her.

Chapter Six

     
     
    “W hat are you doing?” Sophie asked sleepily, hearing the gorgeous man lying beside her, all but wrapped around her, fumbling with the phone receiver as he tried to get it back in the cradle on his bedside table. It was early Friday morning, and they would have to get ready for work soon. Especially since she needed to run by her apartment for a fresh set of clothes. But she planned on getting her fill of him first. Not that she could ever get enough. She was as insatiable as he was — and, God, had he been insatiable.
    He’d taken her four...no, five times during the night, each searing encounter even more intimate than the last. Her lips started to curve with a smile at the memories, until she realized this might very well be the end.
    With her cheek pressed against his muscular chest, she could feel as well as hear the deep rumble of his voice as he said, “I just called the institute to let them know that we’re both sick today.”
    “We are?” she asked, surprised when she heard herself give a soft, happy laugh.
    He gently fisted her hair and tugged her head back so that he could see her face, the sinful grin on his lips melting her down. “You bet your beautiful ass we are.”
    “Mmm...Okay,” she conceded with a smile, stretching carefully as he loosened his grip on her hair, her body hurting in all kinds of bizarre places after the marathon of sex that had lasted through the wee hours of the morning, once they’d awakened from that first short doze. Slipping on a pair of shorts, he’d taken Max out for a bit, then ordered a couple of pizzas for dinner and grabbed them two cold bottles of beer, before dragging her back to his bed, where they’d picnicked on the tangled sheets.
    They’d talked about anything and everything while they’d eaten. She’d shared the hilarious story of how she’d met Nat on a disastrous double date, and he’d told her about his nephew, Jase, who