Chapter 7
Emma
“Sleep, Emma,” Colin insisted later in the day. “You’re going to need to be rested for tomorrow.”
We’d spent the rest of the day catching up on trivial things, but at some point, I knew Colin and I had to have a serious talk.
Now wasn’t the time, but I’d made him promise that he wouldn’t just disappear before we had a chance to have a discussion like he’d done the last time.
He’d agreed before we’d stopped talking to try to get some sleep.
Colin didn’t seem to have any aversion to spreading out on the ground next to me.
I was still propped against the support beam.
“I’ve had problems sleeping since I’ve been here. That concrete floor is disgusting, and I don’t sleep well sitting up,” I shared.
“I hate to admit that I slept in worse places when I was an active SEAL,” Colin replied. “I was trained to sleep in any environment. I spread the blanket out next to me so you don’t have to rest on the dirty floor. Sleep.”
Colin had offered me a blanket earlier, but it wasn’t exactly cold in this place, so I’d told him I didn’t need it.
I shuddered. “It’s not just the filth that bothers me,” I admitted.
“I saw a rat in here, Colin. It ran right over my leg. I hate rodents. I know that probably sounds ridiculous to you considering our situation, but I don’t want them chewing on my face when I’m sleeping. The thought of it just creeps me out.”
“You’ve been kidnapped, starved, and deprived of food and water. You say that you’re fine after taking a few beatings, but you’re worried about the rodents?” he asked with something that sounded suspiciously like amusement.
“I know it sounds stupid,” I said, disgusted. “But I can’t help it. Rats freak me out.”
“It’s not stupid,” Colin said calmly as he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me down beside him. “But you have to sleep, Emma. Use me. I’ll keep the rats away.”
He settled my head on his broad chest, and I let out a quiet sigh.
The blanket felt like heaven under my body, and I felt even safer when he wrapped a powerful arm around me.
Colin was dressed just like I was in a T-shirt and jeans. We didn’t have a lot of skin-to-skin contact, but feeling his warm, muscular body beside me was still comforting.
It was also a little disconcerting.
Like it or not, my body still reacted the same way it had to Colin years ago.
One touch.
One whiff of his masculine scent, and I wanted to get this man naked.
I was exhausted, but my body instantly responded in a carnal way.
It was ridiculous, but all of the memories of all the times we’d had the best sex of my life flooded into my head.
My response to him couldn’t be real.
I was a different person than I’d been all those years ago.
It had been fourteen years.
It was probably just a muscle memory reaction.
We hadn’t been together in fourteen years, and I couldn’t say that I’d had a carnal instinct toward anyone since I’d been with Colin in Virginia Beach.
Being like this with Colin felt oddly familiar, even though we hadn’t laid this close together for many years.
His body felt just as rock solid as it had years ago.
I rested my hand on his abdomen, which confirmed that he was still as ripped as he’d been in Virginia Beach.
The man might be in his fifties now, but he was still incredibly fit.
“I wish I was still in the shape I was in when we were together,” I blurted out as I snuggled against him. “I’ve put on weight.”
“You’re still just as attractive,” Colin said earnestly. “Why are you worried about being curvier? It suits you.”
“I was post-divorce thin back when we met. Now I struggle with my weight. The older I get the harder it is to maintain a healthy weight. I walk and I swim in the summer, but it’s a struggle. How do you keep in shape?”
“I have pool at home,” he shared. “It’s heated so I can swim in all seasons in San Diego. I also have a gym at home, which makes keeping in shape easier. I hike when I can get out. I never really got out of the habit of exercising after being a SEAL for so many years.”
“I’ve always been a little plump,” I shared with Colin. “The only time I was really thin was right after my divorce. I was diagnosed with PCOS after I was married. It’s really hard for me to lose weight.”
“Polycystic ovary syndrome?” he asked. “Why didn’t you mention that when we were together in Virginia Beach?”
It didn’t really surprise me that Colin knew exactly what PCOS was and what that abbreviation stood for.
The guy had a genius IQ and a photographic memory.
If he read something about a subject just once, he remembered it forever.
“It wasn’t really that important,” I responded. “It wasn’t like I was sick from it. It was just a condition I had.”
“Are you okay now?” he asked with concern in his voice.
My heart warmed as he asked that question.
Just like my heart had warmed when he’d pulled out a bag of peppermints for me earlier that he’d brought from home to cheer me up.
We hadn’t seen each other in years, but he obviously still cared about my personal well-being.
It was little things that Colin did that made me not completely buy into his tough guy attitude.
He might act unemotional, but he definitely had a heart. He might not wear it on his sleeve, but it was there.
“I’m fine. I’ve been on birth control for years to control the symptoms, but that definitely doesn’t help me lose weight.”
“You exercise,” he pointed out. “You’re healthy, and you look beautiful, Emma. You don’t need to be thin like you were in Virginia Beach.”
Ha! That was easy for him to say. He was still just as fit as he was when he was fourteen years younger.
I, on the other hand, was plump compared to the time when we were sleeping together in Virginia Beach.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be that thin again. I was such a mess that I barely ate,” I said with a sigh. “I like food too much to give it up. I just try to eat healthy most of the time.”
“Hey, at least you don’t have a limp and a mangled leg,” he said in a self-deprecating tone.
“Don’t say that,” I said, unamused. “You got that injury serving our country.”
I still hated the fact that I hadn’t been there for him when it happened.
It had happened so close to the time that we’d been together in Virginia Beach.
Grump or not, he’d needed someone, and no one had really been there for him except members of his SEAL team.
While we were catching up earlier, Colin had mentioned that he’d been a foster child, so he hadn’t even had family beside him throughout that horrible ordeal.
“Does that make my limp more noble?” he asked soberly.
“Stop that,” I insisted. “I hate it when you talk about that injury like it was nothing. It turned your life upside down and it caused you a lot of pain.”
“It happened years ago, Emma,” he said soothingly. “It just feels new to you because you just found out about it. I’ve learned to live with it and the limitations it puts on my body.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. I just hate the pain you must have gone through. Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“It’s all classified,” he said stoically.
“But I can say it was a screwed-up mission from the start. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong. I was monitoring the operations from nearby when I got word the place was rigged with IEDs. My guys were running into a trap. Our communications system died, so there was no other way to warn them except for me hauling ass to their location before they all got blown up. I had no choice but to run through the area that was rigged to head them off. Luckily, no one hit one of those landmines except me. I waved my guys back. I thought I was home free myself, but my luck ran out on those last few steps out of that trap. Actually, I was lucky. They told me later that my foot hit just the right way to keep me from losing my life and not just the normal use of my leg. Most of my body escaped injury except for my leg. That’s not what usually happens when a bomb is pressure sensitive. ”
Dear God! The man had actually run through landmines to save his team.
“You knew you could die doing what you did,” I said shakily.
“I did,” he confirmed. “But it was better to lose one guy than a whole damn team. I was their commander. I sent them into that shitshow. It was my job to get them out alive if I could.”
I understood his sense of responsibility and moral obligation, but…
“That was completely insane,” I told him. “You weren’t afraid you were going to die?”
“I didn’t have time to think much about that,” he explained. “The whole scene was chaotic. I just did what I had to do.”
What kind of bravery did it take to just run into a dangerous situation like that without thinking about it?
But I knew it didn’t simply take incredible bravery to do what Colin did.
It took…heart.
He’d cared about the guys under his command, and he’d put the lives of those men before his own.
“You’re an amazing man, Colin Marshall,” I said honestly.
“I was just doing my job, Emma. I knew what I signed up for when I became a SEAL.”
It was risky as hell, but he’d still signed up knowing how dangerous it could be for him.
My admiration for Colin had reached new heights.
Yeah, I’d suspected he was military, but I’d never known his life was probably in danger on a daily basis.
I realized just how much I hadn’t known about him back in Virginia Beach.
We’d known each other’s bodies, but there were so many things we hadn’t shared.
“Sleep, Emma,” Colin said as he ran a comforting hand over my hair. “We can talk more once I get you to safety. That’s my main concern right now. The hike out of here isn’t going to be easy, and you’ve been through a lot over the last three days.”
I let out an exasperated breath.
Probably no one on Earth had been through more than Colin, yet he was still worried about my safety.
His concern for hostages had probably been ingrained in him throughout his time as a SEAL.
Strangely, I hadn’t had a moment of fear since the moment I’d heard his voice.
Yeah, I was apprehensive about escaping, but being with Colin had pushed most of the dark thoughts right out of my head.
It was probably his calmness and his confidence.
He was treating this situation like something he’d done many times, which he probably had.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him. “I’ve done long hikes in the woods before. I’ve lived in Michigan most of my life.”
“You didn’t do those hikes half-starved and sleep deprived,” he pointed out. “You’re physically depleted, Emma.”
I let out a yawn before I said, “Okay, I’m sleeping.”
Surprisingly, comfortable with being held tightly by Colin, I was doing just that a few moments later.