Dirty Dare: The Rescue (Sexy Suspense) (Part 1, spin-off to the Dirty and Dare Me series) Read Online Free

he’d heard enough of the doctor’s reports to understand his current condition. His broken bones were mending. The swelling in his eyes had gone down and the bruises on his face, chest, legs and feet were now all a nice, mustard yellow, indicating that his skin would soon be free of any evidence of what he’d endured.
    The biggest hurdle—the bleeding in his gut that had resulted in a removed spleen—had not only been fixed with surgery, but the doctor had seen no evidence that he wasn’t recovering well ahead of expectations.
    To prove how good he was doing, if only to himself, Sean ripped out the needle that had been filling his system with hydration. If he needed water and nutrients, he’d take them in the old-fashioned way.
    The smacks, yelps and grunts that drifted in from the patio shifted back to conversation. He tilted his head to listen, unnerved by the way the voices drifted in and out as if someone was fucking with his internal volume control.
    “I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone,” Marisela said, her accent more pronounced the longer they sparred.
    At first, her accent had confused him. The Spanish lilt in her voice had been stripped down and trampled on some dirty South Florida street. Hot, sultry Miami? Maybe Tampa. Nothing farther north than Orlando or south of Key West, that was for sure.
    Brynn, on the other hand, sounded so much like Jayda. Every time she spoke while he was half-conscious, his drug-induced dreams had been haunted by the woman he’d loved and lost. But with each waking moment, Sean realized that Jayda and Brynn had next to nothing in common. Yes, they were both whip-smart and emotionally icy, but Brynn was infinitely more sophisticated, reserved, and yet, surprisingly caring. She’d given him his sponge baths and changed his bandages with the efficiency of a seventy-year-old trauma nurse, but she never missed a spot. And though he wasn’t sure if he’d been awake or indulging in fantasies when he’d noticed, she seemed to tend to his old scars as much as the new.
    She had the capacity to be soft, where Jayda had not. But despite this lingering vulnerability, Brynn Blake had earned unwavering respect from tough-as-nails Marisela.
    That alone told him all he needed to know. The beautiful Ms. Blake wasn’t going to be easy to manipulate.
    Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.
    “We covered our tracks,” Brynn reassured, grunting as she kicked high, aiming for Marisela’s head. “No one will look for us here.”
    Marisela caught Brynn’s foot and shoved her backward so that her bottom hit the mat with a painful-sounding plop.
    “No one but the head of a secret government agency,” Marisela countered, instantly reaching out her hand to help Brynn to her feet. “You don’t even know what Dante Burke wants. With him or with you.”
    “His orders were clear. Rescue Sean and keep him here until further notice. Easy enough orders to follow. Now, show me what you did there. How’d you anticipate my kick?”
    As the women dissected the particulars of their fighting styles, Sean indulged in a moment’s worth of guilt for his misguided rescuer. Under other circumstances, Dante’s orders might have been easy to follow. But Brynn was ignoring one important factor. Sean had no intention of staying put.
    But to facilitate an escape, first he had to figure out where the hell he was. His side of the room was dark, but sunlight shimmered around the edges of his bed. When he inhaled, briny air seeped into his tight lungs. If he stopped panting long enough, he could hear the distant cry of seabirds and waves rushing against what sounded like a sandy shore.
    He definitely wasn’t in Birmingham anymore. Wherever he was now, it was nowhere near the chilly English coast.
    He shifted in the bed, keenly aware of the plush mattress pillowing his bare skin. His bandages scratched against what he suspected were cotton sheets with thread counts in the thousands.
    “He’s awake,”