Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

a cop, why would she be so adamant about avoiding them? Crap. He should’ve handed her over when the policeman had shown up. But damn, he’d already tucked her Glock into the back of his own waistband for safekeeping. If it turned out the gun had been used on the DOA or stolen, would a cop buy he’d taken it off an innocent-looking young woman with no memory? Even if he did, some cops didn’t appreciate military folks jumping in and taking charge, even if Nik’s motive was simply to protect himself should she have woken up in a panic.

She had yet to ask about the gun or even look for it. Either she truly had amnesia or she was doing an amazing job of pretending to.

If he’d been active, Nik would’ve analyzed her antsy behavior differently back at the gas station—everyone was a potential hostile where he was used to working, especially bouncy, honeytrap-types like Tigger. One of the many reasons he kept it in his pants when deployed. He was stateside, though, no longer active duty. He’d been pulled off a long stretch of highway, and restless as hell after a particularly crappy final deployment and the utterly ridiculous decision to wait to get laid until he got to the island with his friends. So, yeah, he’d assessed things with an eye toward a different kind of takedown than he should’ve. And now here he was with her and her dog—her dog!—in his hotel room with no sign of them heading on their merry way any time soon.

Rule number one. Don’t listen to your cock, no matter how convincing the suave motherfucker can be. Lesson learned.

Until the next time…

He’d already sent a text to Coop and Leo to let them know he was alive. Nik claimed he needed to take the Jeep in for repairs, buying himself a day, tops. He didn’t dare tell them the truth. Coop would never let him live it down. A Good Samaritan mission which should’ve been over an hour ago wouldn’t be an acceptable excuse to delay plans, no matter how hot the girl or how many guns she had. And Leo… Hell, Nik could already sense his wheels spinning hard in reverse.

Leo: The tornado’s a bad omen. I know it.

Leo: Maybe we shouldn’t go to the island.

Coop: STFU and stop being such a wuss.

Coop: All that Bermuda Triangle stuff is bullshit.

An omen? For fuck’s sake. Nik left it to the brothers to argue over ridiculous superstitions, he had enough crazy on his plate with Tigger and Titan.

He toweled off his body. Neither the cold shower, nor the vivid replay of the evening’s events had done much to help him forget how much Tigger turned him on. But without more intel on who she really was, there would be absolutely no tiger or tail for him tonight. Which meant it would be a freaking long-ass night keeping his hands to himself while making sure she didn’t die. Last thing a Navy SEAL needed was a practically naked dead girl in his hotel room. Shit!

Nik whipped the towel around his waist and pushed open the door. Sure enough, she was folded up on the floor next to her German shepherd, comatose.

When she didn’t respond to his voice, he squeezed her shoulder. Tigger’s eyes shot open as Titan objected in a flurry of spit and razor-sharp teeth. Guttural growls and blasting barks had Nik’s back against the wall as she grappled for the beast, holding him off.

“Just trying to wake you up,” Nik rushed to explain. The bathroom doorjamb dug into his spine as he worked to keep the towel around his waist from falling.

“Well, I’m wide-awake now,” Tigger groused as her eyes focused in on his body. The pathetically small hotel towel covered him about as well as his T-shirt covered her. Which was not at all. Her lips turned up at the shift in his towel caused by the flexing of his abs…and a much less well-behaved body part. If he caught another glimpse of her pale pink ass cheek peeking out from under the white cotton hem of the T-shirt he’d loaned her, said other body part would be able to hold the towel up all on its own.

He cut his gaze sharply to her eyes, hoping to find sanctuary there. But who was he kidding? They were like double shots of whiskey, both in their coppery color and the sharp-edged way he buzzed off them. Her focus swayed and danced as she kept taking him in. It had nothing to do with her head injury and everything to do with her being a flame that would likely burn the shit out of him if he touched it. And after being pressed up against her once, he didn’t want to just touch it. He wanted to roll his body in it. Burn, baby, burn. He ripped his attention to her ear, his front teeth snapping together in a nip. His eyes flared. Was there any place safe to look at on this woman?

“Nik?”

Nik didn’t dare respond. The way her tongue clicked teasingly across his name had him desperate to drop his towel, rip the T-shirt off her, and hear her moaning it in pleasure.

Amused and gravelly, she asked, “What exactly are you needing?”

Apparently, fucking therapy. Because shit, even the cut at her hairline held together with a row of freaking white Steri-Strips had his lip curling over his incisors, his tongue rolling hard and wet against the back of his teeth as he envisaged he was a male lion laving her wounds as he mounted her from behind. Damn, Steele, some twisted shit, even for you.

Titan snapped again, jaws clacking hard with each bark as if reading Nik’s lascivious thoughts. The dog meant business and Nik sobered up quick. Remembering he had a legitimate and chaste reason for waking her, he shouted over the loud echo of barking, “Since you refuse to go to the hospital