Page 100 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

Not yet.

Wyatt’s car was ahead, snow piled on the windshield, the interior dark. She stopped walking and Hudson stopped beside her. His expression held nothing back and asked for nothing in return.

“Hudson. I don’t want to go home yet.”

“My room’s upstairs,” he said. Then, softer: “You don’t have to.”

She turned to face him. “My choice.”

His gaze held hers. “I know.”

40

Hudson was good under pressure.

This was entirely different. Sarah walked beside him without rushing. Her thumb moved across his knuckles, and the contact traveled through him like a current finding bare wire.

He stopped outside his hotel room door. The key card took him two attempts because his hands had forgotten how to perform basic motor functions. At last the lock clicked green. He pushed the door open and stepped back to let Sarah go in first.

The room was lamp-lit and warm, with white sheets and pale walls. Snow drifted against the window in fat flakes, the glass dark beyond them.

Hudson closed the door and took off his jacket.

Sarah shrugged out of her coat and draped it over a chair. She walked a few paces toward the window, then turned to face him, the snow falling silently behind her. “You’re staring.”

He shook his head, a small laugh escaping him, hands useless at his sides. “Can you blame me?”

She smiled as she held his gaze and reached down.

The sound of her boot zipper was loud in the privacy of his room. She drew it down, stepped out of the boot, then reached for the other, her eyes never leaving his.

Hudson didn’t move. He couldn’t have said what was happening to his pulse. Something well beyond its operational parameters.

She walked toward him, then turned her back to him, the zipper of the navy dress running from her nape to the small of her back.

His fingers located the zipper at the top of her spine, and he drew it down slowly, the teeth parting in a soft metallic rasp that sounded louder than it had any right to in the stillness.

Skin appeared beneath the fabric—the smooth ridge of her spine, the warm expanse of her back opening to him inch by inch. For several seconds he blanked. No clever thought. No comparison. Just the overwhelming certainty that she trusted him.

She shivered as he pushed the dress off her shoulders. Sarah stepped forward, out of his reach. The dress pooled at her feet, leaving her in navy lace, the color deep as twilight against her skin. Lamplight traced the graceful line of her spine.

She was really here.

She reached up and removed one silver hoop. Then the other. She set them on the nightstand.

The earrings she’d put on for him.

Fuck.

Sarah turned.

She looked at him, her gaze steady, barefoot in the lamplight. Purple and yellow spread beneath her ribs, fading toward her hip—the marks left by the seat belt still visible across her chest. Hudson’s jaw locked.

Her expression softened, but she didn’t cover herself. For a second, looking at her hurt. This wasn’t memory.

Sarah. Present tense. Choosing him.

She closed the space between them and stopped, near enough that the narrow space between them held the warmth of her body, even though they weren’t touching yet.