Close Quarters (Her SEAL Protector #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

lamp closest to the couch and vaulted over the top like an Olympic hurdler. She rushed to his side and gazed down at him with concern. "Is it your knee?"
    He gritted his teeth. "My thigh."
    "It's the way you're favoring that bum knee of yours. You're putting a lot of stress on your legs."
    "It's not a bum knee," he growled unkindly.
    She shot him a look but said nothing. Instead, she walked to her suitcase, unzipped the pouch on the front and retrieved a small tube of lotion. With the tube in one hand, she grasped the sheet and yanked it down to uncover him completely. The pain in his leg was momentarily forgotten as she crawled onto the bed and perched between his ankles. In his dreams, she had never looked more alluring than this moment.
    Her hand moved toward his shorts but she didn’t touch him. "May I push these out of the way?"
    "That depends on what you have in mind," he said, his voice huskier and his heart beating faster as all sorts of sexy possibilities raced through his mind.
    She rolled her eyes. "I’m pretty sure what I have in mind isn't what you're thinking about right now."
    "Can you blame me?" He was a hot-blooded man who hadn't been with a woman in months, and now the only woman who had ever starred in his fevered fantasies was slowly pushing the fabric of his shorts out of the way to bare his thigh.
    "This will probably be uncomfortable at first," she warned and worked a dollop of lotion between her palms to warm it. "Last year, I got tripped up in some rope on a dock in Haiti and tumbled right off the edge and into the water. I got my leg all twisted up in the rope and damn near drowned before I managed to hack my way free with a diving knife I happened to have on me. I didn't even realize I'd slammed my knee and thigh into the dock until a fisherman who had seen me go under helped drag me to safety."
    He winced with sympathy. "It's the adrenaline."
    "Well, when the adrenaline rush faded, I thought I was going to die. Getting to the closest hospital was the most excruciating drive of my life." She shook her head and started to massage his cramping thigh. "The roads were terrible, and my leg was bouncing all over the place. It was pointless. The docs couldn't even x-ray me."
    Trying not to think about how good her small hands felt gliding over his skin, he made an educated guess. "No electricity?"
    She nodded. "It was a nightmare. They examined me as best they could and loaded me up with painkillers. One of the guys from my boat crew found a pilot who was willing to fly me to Port-au-Prince. By the time the boat finally made it to the capitol to join me, I was able to hobble onboard with crutches, but my thighs, hips, and shoulders were killing me by the end of every day. All that rocking, you know? It's a bitch when you're struggling to stay upright by balancing on two sticks and one good leg."
    "Why didn't you just fly home?"
    "Do you know what it costs to outfit a boat for shipwreck hunting? Or how much time it takes to put together a solid crew?" She gently increased the pressure of her hands as they worked his knotted muscles. "After all the time that went into putting together that trip, I wasn't going to let a bad sprain and a bruise sideline me. We sailed on to Samana Bay. By the time we reached the Dominican Republic, I was so freaking thankful I had hired a cook who used to work as a massage therapist at one of the swanky hotels on Montego Bay. Every night, he'd toss me down onto the dining table and work out all the kinks for me before bed. He was worth every penny."
    Leland's jaw clenched as she gushed over the masseuse. A flash of jealousy burned through him at the mere thought of some guy rubbing his hands all over Jamie's body. "It sounds like he worked on more than some sore hip muscles."
    She pinched his thigh hard enough to make him hiss and took her magical hands away from his aching leg. "If you're going to be a jerk about it—"
    "No," he said quickly and snatched at her hand,