Page 16 of Stealthy Seduction (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #5)

Steele forced himself to move, to push open the door and step out into the hallway as if he hadn’t heard every damn word. He walked straight past his brothers-in-arms. Hell, his brothers. The only family he had left in the world.

Family whose words echoed in his head with uncomfortable accuracy.

They were right to be concerned. He was compromised, had been from the moment Izzy looked at him across that poker table and smiled like she’d found something worth winning.

The steady, predictable operative they’d relied on for years was gone, replaced by someone who would burn down the world to keep one woman safe.

The question was whether that made him a liability or an even more dangerous asset.

He supposed they were all about to find out.

* * * * *

“I can’t believe you still made me wear this damn hood even though I know where the base is.” Izzy’s voice was muffled from the depths of the blackout hood.

When Hudson just continued to drive, not bothering to respond to her, she folded her arms over her chest and tapped her foot on the car floor.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Well what?” Was that a smile she heard in his voice? Damn the irritating man.

Even though she couldn’t see him, she whipped toward him. “Why am I wearing the hood?”

“Because we never know who is watching, Izzy.”

A sliver of fear zigzagged down her spine. “Like?”

“CIA, FBI. Not to mention about a thousand cameras that can follow a man who’s supposed to be dead and a woman who has a target on her back through the city.”

She gulped. “Then why don’t you wear a disguise? Anybody can see you.” A thought struck her. “Unless…you’re already in disguise.”

He chuckled, low and deep. A familiar sound that made her picture his ruggedly handsome face…and how it looked when he shook apart inside her.

“You think this isn’t my real face? That I had plastic surgery to alter my appearance?”

“I’m talking to a dead man. Anything seems possible.”

He snorted. “That’s fair. But this is the real me.”

She started to fire another question at him, but at that moment, the car stopped.

She curled her fingers around the seat and held her breath, anticipating what was to come.

“You can take off the hood in a second. There’s a woman walking a dog.”

She tentatively moved a hand upward.

“Okay, all clear.”

She whipped it off, gasping for air as if she were suffocating under the hood, even though that wasn’t the case. She blinked at her surroundings.

The familiar street lined with a few shops—the small grocery, drugstore, coffee shop. The gray brick of her apartment building was steps away.

“What are we doing at my place?” She turned her head to meet Hudson’s gaze.

His eyes were warm. Bright. Maybe too bright to not mean something.

He reached up and gently smoothed a curl that had a mind of its own after being squashed by that hood. “If you’re reporting on the protest, you can’t just show up in the same outfit you wore yesterday, can you?”

Her lips popped open. She hadn’t thought of that.

His eyes took on a gleam. “Though I’m not sure the viewers would notice the difference between your three beige blouses and black pants.”

“You’re so cute.” She balled a fist and took aim at his arm, but he caught it, his warm hand enveloping hers.

He gave her a smoldering look. “You think I’m cute?”

She issued an exasperated sigh even as her insides clenched with desire. When he brought her hand up and skimmed her knuckles with his lips, need knifed straight to her pussy.

He released her. “Wait for me. I’ll come around and get you.”

His words impacted her, a reminder that she was in danger.

That a man had been killed right in front of her.

With her hand firmly clasped in Hudson’s, they entered her building. When he punched the security code into the keypad, she froze.

“How did you know the code?”

“It’s my business to know everything about you.”

A different brand of warmth, this one much higher up, spread through her.

He led her directly to her apartment door as if he’d been here a dozen times. Just when he thought he couldn’t shock her more, he pulled out her key.

“You stole that from my purse!”

He didn’t respond, just opened her door with an edge of caution that set her nerves humming. As he entered, he kept her behind the protective wall of his muscled body.

“Close the door. Stay right there while I check things out.”

She gave him a jerky nod and did as he said, frozen to the floor as Hudson vanished into her space.

A moment later, he returned, his shoulders shifting in that cocky—and insanely hot—way he had of walking.

“I guess I’ll change and pack.”

“Mind if I have a look around?”

“No.” It wasn’t like she had anything to hide. Unless thirty self-help books on her shelves and a collection of candles she used for meditating counted.

She grabbed some clothes and shut herself in the bathroom. Everything was the same.

Was she?

She didn’t feel like it.

Even her reflection told her that she was different. Her eyes too bright. Her bottom lip swollen.

And was that beard burn on her throat?

She tipped her head back to study the pink streaks. No wonder Hudson wore that cocky, self-satisfied look on his face whenever he glanced her way.

“Izzy?” he called through the door.

“Uh…yes?”

“Can I get your suitcase for you?”

She tugged open the vanity drawer and began pulling out her travel toiletries. “Top shelf of my closet,” she called back.

“Gotcha.”

She filled a travel bag with the things she needed and then hastily changed out of the clothes Alyssa had kindly loaned her.

“You have books hidden everywhere.” Hudson’s voice projected through the door again.

“I like to read.”

“Who’s the woman in this photo on your dresser?”

He was near her dresser? She prayed he didn’t peek inside her top drawer and find BOB, her Battery-Operated Boyfriend.

“That’s my sister Angelina.” She yanked up her black trousers and buttoned them with all haste.

“I see the resemblance. But you’re prettier.”

She paused, hands stilling on the buttons of her beige blouse. Her sister was always considered the beautiful sister. Any boyfriend Izzy had flocked to Angelina, even though her sister wanted nothing to do with the boys she liked.

When Hudson let out a grunt, she rushed through dressing and ripped open the door to see him standing at her open closet, staring at her clothes.

“I don’t remember giving you permission to go through my closet!”

He swung toward her, a grin stretching his face. When he waved at her wardrobe, she saw what he was seeing. The beige tops. The black pants and skirts.

“So?” She settled a hand on her hip.

The quirk of his lips turned into a grin.

“I like your panty drawer better.” In two strides, he reached her dresser and eased open the drawer.

When he hooked a pair of zebra-print panties on his index finger, she didn’t know if she wanted to tackle him to the bed or sink into the floor in embarrassment.

“Stop that! Put those back.”

She saw he had set her small suitcase on the bench at the foot of her bed. “Maybe I own a lot of beige tops. It happens to be one of my best colors for TV. It’s part of the job description to look the part.”

The zebra panties arced past her head and landed in the open suitcase. She gave Hudson a glare that only had him chuckling.

Luckily, he moved away from her underwear drawer—BOB tucked away in the bottom—and came to perch on the edge of the bed, watching her pack.

After only a few minutes, she zipped the suitcase and lowered it to the floor.

“That’s all you need?” He arched a brow.

“Yes. Why?”

“You pack the same way I do.” He shook his head as if in disbelief. “You just might be the perfect woman.”

Reeling at his statement, she blinked. “Why do you say that?”

“You could pack in a moment’s notice and fly to another country.”

Her insides quivered. She didn’t need to hear that because there was no hope for going on any trips with Hudson Steele.

No hope for a them .

Their gazes locked. Her heart gave a hard pulse.

Suddenly, he shot off the bed and grabbed her. In three steps, he had her backed against the wall, his lips hovering a whisper away from hers.

“Hudson—”

His mouth crashed down on hers, swallowing whatever protest she was about to make.

The kiss was nothing like any of the others that came before it—this was pure, hungry, raw need that seemed to consume all the air in the room. His hands framed her face, fingers threading through her hair as he angled her head to deepen the contact.

Izzy’s knees went weak. Every nerve ending in her body came alive as he kissed her like he was trying to memorize the taste of her, like he was afraid she might disappear if he let go.

She could feel the controlled desperation in the way his body pressed against hers, pinning her to the wall with delicious pressure.

Her hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer even as her rational mind screamed warnings about letting herself believe in impossibilities.

But God, the man could kiss. He turned her insides completely upside down, made her forget every reason why this was complicated and dangerous and bound to end badly.

When he finally lifted his head, they were both breathing hard. His forehead rested against hers, his silvery-gray eyes dark with the kind of intensity that made her stomach flip.

“Izzy—”

Her phone buzzed on the bed where she’d left it, the tone sharp and insistent in the heated silence.

Hudson’s jaw tightened as he reached for the device before she could move. He scanned the screen, and she watched his expression shift from frustrated desire to the mask of a SEAL.

“Your producer.” He handed her the phone. “Says you need to meet the film crew.”

She glanced at the message, her heart sinking as reality crashed back in.

The investigation.

The dangerous game they were all playing by putting her on display.

“We better get to the rally,” she said softly.

Hudson’s hand came up to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing across her lips with devastating gentleness. “This isn’t over, Izzy. Not by a long shot.”

The promise in his voice made her shiver, even as she tried to ignore the voice in her head telling her that it had to be over. That there was no other way this could end.

But looking into his eyes, feeling the heat still radiating between them, she almost believed him.