Rescue Me by Rachel Gibson

crazy. I think he had PTSD.”
    “Happens to a lot of good guys.” She was nosy enough to want to ask if it had happened to him, but she was tactful enough not to.
    Her fingers slid into the short dark hair at the base of his skull. There was just something about a strong, capable man. Something appealing about knowing that if a girl fell and broke her leg, he could throw her over his shoulder and run twenty miles to a hospital. Or hell, make a splint out of a little mud and sticks. “The Ranger guy said that SEALs are even more arrogant than Marine Recon.”
    “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said next to her ear, scattering those warm tingles down her neck and across her chest. “People confuse arrogance and the truth. When President Obama ordered a counterterrorism unit to take down bin Laden, he sent three SEAL teams because we’re the best.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “That’s not arrogance. It’s the truth.” The music stopped and he pulled back far enough to look down into her face.
    “We should maybe get a drink.”
    A drink would lead to other things and they both knew it. Knew it by the way his green eyes looked into hers and how her body responded. She didn’t know him. She wanted to know him, though. Wanted to know all the bad things that would feel so good. If just for a little while, but she had more sense and a lot to do in the morning. “I’ve got to go.”
    Purple and blue chandelier light sliced across his nose and cheeks. “Where?”
    “Home.” Where she was safe from good-looking strangers with too much charm and testosterone. “I’m leaving early in the morning and I need to spend a few hours with my daddy before I go.”
    She half expected him to angrily point out that he’d barely arrived at the wedding as a favor to her, and now she was leaving. “I’ll walk you out.”
    “T hank you again for coming to my cousin’s wedding,” Sadie said as she and Vince moved down the hall toward the bride’s room inside the Sweetheart Palace. “I feel bad that you got dressed up for so short a time.”
    “I’m not all that dressed up, and I owed you,” he said, his deep voice filling the narrow passage toward the back of the facility.
    Together they entered the bride’s room, and light from the hall spilled through the door and on the rows of salon chairs and empty garment bags. Within the rectangle of hall light, her coat and overnight bag sat in one of the chairs and she moved to it. “You didn’t owe me, Vince.” She picked up her coat and looked at him through the salon mirror. The light cut across her throat and his chest, leaving the rest of the room in variegated shadow.
    He took her coat from her hands. “We square now?”
    It seemed so important to him that she nodded, realized he probably couldn’t see, and said, “Yes. We’re square.”
    He held her coat open behind her, and she threaded one arm and the other into the sleeves. The backs of his fingers brushed her bare arms and shoulders as he helped her with the coat.
    Sadie pulled her hair from the collar and looked back across her shoulder at him. Her mouth just below his, she whispered, “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome.” His breath brushed her lips. “Are you sure you want to go home?”
    No. She wasn’t sure at all. She felt him bend down the second before his mouth covered hers, warm and completely male. So completely male it was like a straight shot burning its way down her chest to the pit of her stomach. The tingles he’d ignited on the dance floor flared, and she opened her mouth. His tongue swept inside, hot and wet and good. Her toes curled in her shoes and she melted back into the solid wall of him. His arms circled her waist and he held her against him. Held her tight even as he pushed her into the lush descent of pleasure. She didn’t know if she would have resisted. Didn’t really get the chance to think about it before he turned up the heat, giving her deep, wet kisses. She