Wild on You Read Online Free Page B

sass.”
    Watching his long fingers stroking her fur made Addie tingle in places that had no business tingling. Then she realized he’d been looking at her when he made that assessment, not the kitten.
    She averted her gaze to the road. “That’s why I do what I do. I don’t see them as just animals but as God’s creatures, like we are.”
    “Seeing them as that is one thing.” He ran his finger down the bridge of Freedom’s nose, and she curled up even tighter. “Protecting them, great. Doing crazy stunts that put your life in danger, a little over the edge.”
    She tamped down the anger at his assertion. “What kinds of things did you do in the SEALs? Sneak into enemy territory? Rescue hostages?”
    “Along with detonating bombs, blowing off doors with explosives, all kinds of fun stuff. But that was for my country.”
    “To save lives, accomplish something.” She nodded toward Freedom. “Same thing I do, except the lives I save are furry.”
    He was giving her his full attention now. “Is that what drives you? To accomplish?”
    “My father was a five-star general. My mother was the force behind her charities’ most successful events. I have a lot to live up to.”
    “You know, the guys who signed up for the SEALs training program out of a need to prove themselves to someone else were usually the first to ring the bell. To drop out.”
    “What about the guys who needed to prove themselves to themselves?”
    “In the end, they failed, too. It has to come from somewhere deeper.” He tilted his head. “So which is it for you? Are you trying to live up to your parents’ achievements? Or prove your worth to yourself?”
    It felt as though he were jabbing her soul with a stick. “I want to contribute something to the world. So you find detonating bombs … fun?”
    “A couple weeks ago, I was BASE jumping from an altitude of over twenty thousand feet off Trango Towers in Pakistan.
That
was just for fun.”
    “What’s BASE jumping?”
    “BASE stands for ‘building, antenna, span, and earth.’ It’s an offshoot of skydiving, where you jump off stationary objects. Last month I leaped off a mountain in Norway. Danger, excitement, accomplishment. I need the adrenaline rush.”
    “Why?”
    The question seemed to take him off guard. Then he shrugged. “What can I say? I’m an adrenaline junkie.”
    “You used the word
need
, not
want
. Yet you seem like more than a shallow guy who lives for visceral thrills.”
    He seemed to consider his response, then glanced away. “Things got tough after my mother died when I was six.” His jaw tensed. “I numbed myself. For a kid, it’s easier to do that than deal. But you forget how to feel at all. Swinging from a rope out the second-floor barn opening or playing chicken with tractors was, ironically, a safe way for me to feel … something. The year after I graduated, I was that shallow guy. I traveled all over the country, skydiving, BASE jumping, mountain climbing. But you can almost die for no good reason only so many times before it starts to seem stupid.”
    “I thought it sounded stupid right from the get-go. So you decided to join the SEALs so you could almost die for good reasons.”
    He chuckled. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
    “Why aren’t you in the SEALs anymore?”
    “Long story. Your father was happy to tell me that you were gay, by the way.”
    Hm, way to avoid that subject
. Then what he’d said hit her. “My father was
happy
about it?”
    He gave her that hotter’n-sin smile. “I think he keyed in to the fact that we’re both the kind of people who are willing to go to extremes for our causes. Said it was a good thing you were gay, because we’d feed off each other.” He rubbed his fingers across his mouth, leveling his gaze on hers. “Which he was right about.”
    Something about that movement struck her as familiar. In fact,
he
looked familiar. She’d seen his handsome face, wide, strong jawline, and sinful