HOT SEAL Rescue (HOT SEAL Team - Book 3) by Lynn Raye Harris Page A

known.”
    “Mark saved you from that life?”
    Had he? Or had he merely encouraged her in the right direction when she needed it most? “I left home at eighteen. I didn’t have a plan, not really. Other kids were going to college, but how the hell was I going to afford that?” She shook her head. “The only way out for me was to leave. I should have joined the military, I see that now, but instead I decided to strip and earn my fortune that way.” She couldn’t help but snort a laugh at the naive teenager she’d been.
    “I was there for a week before things went to hell. One of the clients wanted a bit more than a lap dance. When I said no, he tried to force me into another room. I have no doubt he’d have raped me. But Mark was there, and he stopped the guy. Then he bundled me away and I never went back. Not even to collect my last paycheck.”
    Cody swore. “Good thing he was there.”
    “Yes.” She sighed and closed her eyes. Her skin prickled with heat. She thought about tossing the covers off and then decided it wasn’t a good idea really. Not with Cody here, and not with the electric hum simmering deep inside her veins. She felt like one hot look might set her off.
    “Do you get back home much?” he asked, and everything inside her went still.
    “There’s nothing to go back for. My mother is still an alcoholic, and my father is still an asshole. I talk to my oldest sister—nothing has changed and nothing ever will.”
    Miranda frowned. Why the effing hell was she still talking about this? It only made her seem weak and pitiful—and she would never be either of those things.
    “I get it. I go back for my grandparents. My mom—well, she’s a good person deep down, but she’s selfish and miserable, and she makes everyone around her miserable. It’s more than I want to deal with when I’m taking a break from the realities of the job.”
    “Exactly.”
    She loved that he understood. Mark had often asked why she didn’t go home for a visit, why she didn’t try. He’d believed she needed that connection, but then he’d been an orphan who’d never known his own parents. He and his sister had been raised by an aunt and uncle who apparently weren’t the warmest people on the planet.
    He’d thought her parents were simply flawed people, not toxic destroyers of everything good in life, because that’s what he needed to believe about parents in general.
    “I’m still sorry I interrupted your evening, Cody. And sorry if I took you away from visiting with your grandparents.”
    “Honestly, sunshine? I love them and love seeing them, but getting kidnapped by you and being on the run from Victor Conti—and the CI-fucking-A—is a lot more fun.”
    She wanted to laugh but she managed not to. “You have a warped idea of fun.”
    “Oh, I have plenty of other ideas about what’s fun,” he said, his voice a lovely deep purr that strummed against her nerve endings. “Let me know if you want to hear them.”

11
    S he did want to hear them. Badly. Her body sizzled with heat, her pussy growing wet and achy with need. It had been so long. Too long. She wanted a man, wanted the comfort that kind of closeness could give. She also wanted an orgasm that someone else made happen. She was tired of getting herself off in the loneliness of an empty bed.
    When was the last time she’d slept with a man? It was over a year ago, that much was certain. She and Mark hadn’t been together anymore, not like that. She’d started dating a guy, another agent—the sex had been decent but not memorable. They’d gone their separate ways, and that was the end of that. It was difficult, quite honestly, to find time—or the right sort of person—in the job she was in.
    Too hilarious that she’d been playing a pornography talent agent in order to insert herself into Conti’s operations. If she’d had to be on set for any of that stuff, she’d have probably gone straight to the adult toy store and bought a vibrator