Read Hot SEAL for Free Online Page A

you’re staying in this hotel?”
    “I’m TDY, Ivy. I don’t live in DC. Yeah, I’m staying here. Now open up.”
    She clung to the door like it was a lifeline. “Well thanks for checking in, but I’m fine. Now go away.”
    He pushed his foot in the door when she would have shut it. “Mendez said someone threatened you.”
    Ivy stopped trying to push the door closed. “Why would he tell you that?”
    “Because we’re on the same team. He told everyone.”
    “Jesus, you military types and your need for disclosure.” She’d known Colonel Mendez, as the HOT commander, would need to be informed of her new location. She hadn’t known he’d be told everything—or that he’d share it with the whole damn team. “This is irrelevant to the current mission.”
    “No threat is irrelevant to the mission, baby.”
    “Don’t call me baby.”
    She thought he might have growled. “You used to love when I called you baby.”
    “Used to. Past tense.”
    “For fuck’s sake, Ivy, let me in.”
    “Get your foot out of the door and I will.”
    His eyes narrowed. “If you don’t, I’ll break the fucking thing down. Got it?”
    She was tempted to shut the door and leave it that way. She had no doubt Dane would follow through on his threat—and then the police would come and haul him away for damaging hotel property. Probably wouldn’t look so good on his military reports, come to think of it.
    Not that she cared. She totally did not care.
    Still, she slid the chain off the latch and opened the door.  

CHAPTER SEVEN

    Dane was even more imposing in full view than the slice of him she’d had earlier. God, had she really lain beneath that powerful body and felt it moving inside hers? Had she worshipped his body with her hands and mouth and thought she’d found nirvana?
    She turned away and moved back to the couch in the living area of the suite. Damn, she should have gone to a regular hotel instead of the kind of temporary living suites that government workers and business travelers frequented for long stints away from home. But she’d gone where she was most familiar, so the fact the place was probably chock-full of military on TDY assignments or government contractors going to classes on the base really shouldn’t surprise her.
    Dane came inside and locked the door behind him. Then he stood there and shoved his hands into his pockets. He still looked angry as she sat down and leaned back to watch him. She was doing her damnedest to act unaffected, but she could feel her pulse thrumming like a hummingbird’s wings in her throat.
    “So why did you want to come in? Didn’t have enough fun on memory lane earlier?”
    Dane tugged a chair from the table and turned it around, sitting down backward, his legs straddling the back, his arms lying casually over the top.
    “We were married for six months, Ivy. Together for almost a year. I care that someone threatened you.”
    Ivy blinked. Tears wanted to spring up behind her eyes, but she wasn’t going to let them. That would be too much. There was too much water under the bridge for her to get emotional now.
    “I don’t need you to care.”
    And it was true. She’d been through a lot over the past four and a half years, and Dane hadn’t been there for any of it. She’d been threatened. Shot at. Held hostage once. Where was he then?
    “You don’t get to decide that.”
    Ivy turned her head and stared at nothing. Then she rubbed a hand over her eyes. Damn, she was tired. “We haven’t spoken in over four years. I find your presence here very disconcerting.”
    He sighed. “You aren’t alone in that, Ivy. But we’re here… together… working on the same mission. I can’t act like I’m not concerned.”
    She really wanted to throw something. “You didn’t have a problem being unconcerned for four years. I don’t see why that needs to change now.”
    He shot to his feet and paced over to the window and then back again. He reminded her of a caged animal,