Revealing Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 4) by Kat Cantrell Page A

exploring at will. Sparks burst against his skin in a long trail where she touched him. He ached for her hands to wander south, every fiber of his body shaky with unleashed need.
    Until her fingertips slid into the valley of one of his many shrapnel wounds… and stilled, as if memorizing the shape.
    “Evan,” she murmured against his mouth, effectively halting the kiss. “Is it okay if I touch you?”
    And the mood slid away as he lost all interest in having this conversation.
    “It’s not braille,” he snapped, and she flinched. “I’m fine.”
    “Um, clearly you’re not.” His flesh cooled as her hands drifted away, out of his shirt and into her lap. “Was I not supposed to notice that you’ve been shot? I can’t not feel the wounds.”
    Being shot might have been better. At least then he could have looked the bastard in the face as he shot back. In a flash of bright light, the moment when that IED exploded played over and over in his head. The pain. God, it had ripped through him with lightning force as his flesh burned. His stomach heaved with the memory. Like it always did, and it was too much.
    “I can’t,” he muttered and stumbled to his feet. He had to find cover before he treated Rachel to the very unpleasant sight of a man tossing his cookies.
    For so long he’d settled his nerves, his body, even his mind with as much alcohol as he could absorb into his system. Evan now had nothing to fight off his demons but his own sheer will and some very good guys who looked out for him. Rachel did not deserve to be dropped in the middle of his nightmare.

    When Rachel relived that kiss on the beach, she liked to come up with different scenarios for the ending. Not one of them included her mentioning Evan’s war wounds.
    Idiot . She’d had Evan Silva in her arms, and he was kissing her. Nothing in her imagination had prepared her for what that man’s mouth could do to her. Instead of enjoying her well-earned victory, what did Rachel do? Kiss him back and keep her mouth shut?
    Hell no. She’d ignored his very prudent advice to close her mouth and started babbling about the one thing that had the power to ruin the moment. There was a reason Evan didn’t go shirtless like every other ex-SEAL on this island. None of the guys he’d served with had that peppering of badly healed wounds, and of course she wondered why not.
    Looked like she’d stay in the dark on that one because there was no way in hell she’d bring it up. If he ever actually spoke to her again. They’d returned to the house in heavy silence, and she didn’t dare broach it. He’d yet to break the barrier that had sprung up between them since.
    She missed his voice. The conversation on the island—geez. When the man forgot to clam up, he sure had plenty to say. But he went to work and came home, his dark hair in longish damp strands around his face that made her want to smooth it back, all without acknowledging her presence. He didn’t emerge from his bedroom to eat, so she cooked him dinner and knocked on the door, only to end up eating alone. She wrapped his chicken potpie in plastic and left it in the refrigerator.
    In the morning the food was gone and the plate was in the sink, so he clearly didn’t plan to starve himself. Since she was pretty sure this song and dance was the opposite of what Dex had meant by being what Evan needed, she’d have to figure out a way to fix the mess she’d made.
    In the meantime, she put her energies toward the one thing she did have control over—Jared Anderson. Evan needed his island, as she’d seen firsthand when he spilled his tortured guts about how it was his refuge. And it was a beautiful, unspoiled spot that would forever be associated in her mind with the most amazing kiss of her life.
    There would never be a resort on Ilhota Rosa as long as she had a pulse.
    If Charlie expected her to play dirty, she needed to have a clearer picture of her opponent. So she scheduled a meeting with Anderson