Fatal Heat: A Navy SEAL Novella Read Free

manhood with their grip. This one looked like he could crush her hand with no effort at all.
    But… her dog had jumped him. And Uncle Mel was his commanding officer.
    “I’m really, really sorry. I’d like to say that I don’t know what got into my dog, but he’s always like this. I seem to spend all my time apologizing for him. I’m Paige. Paige Waring.”
    His hand enveloped hers in a strong, gentle grip. His hand felt like warm steel. He might be wounded, but his grip was like touching a live wire, crackling with electricity. She was so surprised, she kept her hand in his as if the electricity had created some kind of chemical bond.
    “Max.”
    At hearing his name, Max gave a happy bark and jumped both of them. Paige lost her footing in the surf and would have fallen if he hadn’t immediately snaked a big arm around her, pulling her upright and against him in an unshakeable grasp.
    His leg might be mangled and he might be overly thin, but there was no mistaking the strength in the muscles she found herself plastered against.
    It was intensely embarrassing and—whoa—incredibly exciting. The only other man who looked this strong was Uncle Mel, but she’d never been in a full frontal embrace with him.
    She’d never felt a man this strong before.
    Her father, bless his soul, had been thin and stoop-shouldered, and was undoubtedly right this minute leafing through ancient history texts in heaven. And the men she dated were mainly fellow scientists. Nice guys, but nerds mostly.
    Nothing like this. Nothing at all.
    Even though he’d been in the chilly Pacific, he radiated heat and a very male kind of electricity she’d never encountered before but recognized instantly, as if a hundred years of female empowerment and her PhD had been suddenly stripped away, leaving a breathless female reacting to an alpha male.
    He was reacting, too, the merest hint of a stirring against her belly when Max barked and jumped them again.
    Paige moved away, lifting Max’s paws off them. “Down, boy,” she chided. “ Down.” Looking up, she caught a fleeting expression cross his face, his eyes flaring. It was over so quickly she wondered whether she’d imagined the whole thing. But in the meantime, her pulse quickened and her mouth went dry.
    This was ridiculous and very unlike her.
    He was a neighbor—a wounded soldier, formerly under the command of her godfather—and he’d been jumped by her dog. He deserved better than a hormone-stricken woman rendered breathless by beefcake.
    She straightened, tilting her head back to look him straight in the eyes. Dark brown, very intense eyes. And highly intelligent ones, too. That shook her for a moment. She was totally unused to male intelligence as a sxmlgence aubset of muscle.
    Mostly, in her experience, male intelligence was linked to white lab coats. Definitely not huge expanses of tough, naked, tanned skin.
    “I’m really sorry, Lieutenant—”
    “Max,” he said, and her dog woofed.
    Why was he—oh! “Your name is Max, too?”
    “Like your dog.” He dipped his head, her hand still in his. “Maxwell Wright. Max for short.”
    “He’s Maximilian. Max for short.”
    She tugged and he let go of her hand. It felt like she’d been unplugged from some arcane power source. “Lieutenant Wright.” That had been the name Uncle Mel had said.
    Another expression crossed his face. Not of heat and amusement, but of grief. Deep, painful grief. She’d just lost her father. She understood grief, understood it in her bones.
    “Not lieutenant,” he said. “Not anymore.”
    Involuntarily, Paige looked down at his leg. With that leg—much thinner than the other one, crisscrossed with scars—he wouldn’t be an acting naval officer, no. One leg was brown and powerful, thickly muscled—the other pale, the muscles withered.
    And all those other scars. Surgical scars, mostly, white lines with tiny tucks on each side, crisscrossing his chest. One round puckered scar in his shoulder,