Page 57 of Her Tempting Protector

“I’m going to give this to Shada when she wakes up. This will be her treat for breakfast.” Then she leaned forward and broke off a corner of the cake. “Okay, Mama needs a little taste before bedtime.”

Cullen was grateful for the fact that he was wearing a looser pair of pants. God, the woman looked like she was in the throes of ecstasy.

Down, boy.

They yawned at the same time.

“I’m too tired to say jinx,” she yawned again. “Can you tell me what was said on the call?”

“There’s rioting in the streets going on. The highway going into the city is closed off.”

She gasped.

“But the good news is that they’ve brought in another SEAL team. This is going to work out.”

“It is?”

“It is,” he promised her. “Kane and Raiden are working on a plan while we rest. They’ll have something for us by the time we wake up.”

“But—”

“Sometimes there’s nothing you can do for a patient but wait and see, right?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “Those are the times I hate the most.”

“You and me both. But I trust my teammates implicitly. You and I both need rest so we can pull off whatever they have planned for us. Okay?”

She stared at him, her eyes searching his face for something. He didn’t know what, but she must have found it, because she said, “Okay, Cullen. You’re right. We need to sleep.”

He pulled back the Dora blanket and showed her the plaid blanket that was folded for padding underneath.

“Settle in,” he invited. “You’re going to have to make do with the empty duffel bag as our pillow.”

“We are,” she corrected. She was lying down and looking up at him when she said it. “Seriously, Cullen, just get in here. I’m cold, and we’re sharing the darn pillow.” With those last words, her eyes drifted shut.

He really needed to make sure he didn’t swear as much around her. He got under the blanket and snorted. Dora the Explorer. Couldn’t the kid have parted with Spiderman?

Carys’ body twitched, and he knew that she was on her way to a deep sleep. She rolled her head and some of her hair drifted onto her face. She whimpered and swiped at it. As he had done when she was awake, he brushed it back, marveling at the softness of her skin. She sighed and visibly relaxed. She melted against him, and Cullen thought he was going to have trouble going to sleep, but he forced himself to close his eyes and unwind. The last thing he was aware of was Carys cuddling closer, and a feeling of bone-deep satisfaction.

* * *

Cullen came awake, but his wrist wasn’t vibrating so it wasn’t his alarm. He listened intently and heard the soft sounds of Carys’ breath as she snuggled closer to his chest. It had been an hour, maybe two, when he felt her arms slip around him, and it had settled them both. Now he listened even harder, then he heard what had woken him up. It was Adam.

Cullen reluctantly extricated himself from Carys’ arms. He looked down at his watch. It wasn’t quite midnight, but close enough for the little tyke’s midnight feeding. He wanted to get to him before he went into a full roar and woke the women. The little kid struck him as someone with a fierce enough nature already to wake the whole damn desert to get what he wanted. Cullen grinned as he crept out of the back of the truck.

When he opened the front seat door, Adam was opening his mouth and sucking in air for a loud wail. Cullen was ready. He had gotten some strips of sterile gauze while he had been at the clinic, and while Carys had been eating, he had tied one of them around a tongue depressor and made it into a makeshift little pacifier that he’d wetted with water. He dunked that sucker into Adam’s little mouth before he could make another cry.

“Hold on, Bubba, Uncle Cullen’s going to get you your food. Then he’s going to get that stinky old diaper changed.”

He prayed that the baby wasn’t going to end up being inconsolable. His teammate Zed had told him some horror stories about Lulu as a newborn when he and Marcia couldn’t find anything wrong with her, and she’d just cry and cry, and the only thing that would make it nominally better was if they walked her up and down the halls.

As quick as he could, he used the cigarette lighter to heat some water to mix the formula. Adam was pushing at the little pacifier, which was not going to get the job done much longer. After he mixed the formula, Cullen grabbed the baby and a clean diaper, then exited the truck with the bottle.

“Let’s go take a stroll,” he whispered.

He cooled a couple of drops of formula onto his finger and let the kid suck on his finger as he walked swiftly into the night. At his first screams, they were well away from the women. The bottle still needed a couple more minutes to cool.

“Do you need a serenade?” Cullen tried singing and rocking, but it didn’t work. But it kind of soothed Cullen, so he continued until the formula cooled, then finally he plopped the nipple into the crying baby’s mouth. Finally, there was blessed silence.