Twelve

They were getting pummeled by rain that was coming down in proverbial sheets with no intention of stopping, white-topped waves that were climbing higher by the minute, and sharp gusts of wind that blew it all together in great geysers of water leaping and spraying all around them.

Clearly this was the wrong time to think about how good Dan felt behind her or how close his arm was to her breast or that the erection hard against her bottom was every bit as impressive as it had felt in her hand. Yet despite the tumult swirling around her, the flush of desire—all right, lust—was hitting her hard. He was turning her on. Big-time.

In the cocoon of his coat and body heat, she was warm and soft and inexplicably relaxed for a castaway at sea in a leaky boat in a monsoon. Well, maybe the storm wasn’t quite that bad, but it was definitely not the time to be thinking about sex. Really raunchy sex. Really hot sex. Sex like what she’d only imagined.

But if the sensations turning her liquid every time her bottom rode up against him were any indication, she’d definitely been missing out in the doggy-style category. She could too easily imagine him bending her forward against the wheel, lifting her hips to him, and sinking that thick column inside her. And the thrusts. She could definitely imagine the thrusts. Every time the boat lurched over a wave and came down hard, she felt the slam of him behind her, sending a reverberation of need through her bones. She was hot and achy and more turned on than she’d ever been in her life. Which given their circumstances was pure crazy sauce.

Maybe she was imagining it all a little too well, because as they rode over the next wave, and the motion carried her hips back, she might have arched her back a little and made a sound that was suspiciously like a moan.

He stiffened behind her, growing so taut the muscles in his chest and arms seemed to turn to steel. Hello, Mr. Six-Pack—or Eight-Pack. Unless she wanted to turn around and count them—which she kind of did—the exact number of rigid bands would remain a mystery. Her back felt even hotter—like sitting in front of a furnace that had just been stoked. Which admittedly she might have just done.

What was she doing? Grinding against a guy she barely knew like a teenager when they were in danger of disappearing under the next wave or sinking in a deflated boat?

Cheeks aflame with mortified heat, she tried to pull away, but he caught her with one of those rock-hard arms and pulled her back in tight. “Don’t. I want you right here.”

His voice so close to her ear sent shivers down her spine. Sure, that was it. It wasn’t the sensual promise in his words. He was feeling it, too. He liked it. He wanted her.

Was that what she wanted? Sex with a stranger? Even if he was a really hot stranger?

Suddenly she realized what this must look like. She was acting like a sex-starved porn star in a really bad movie—Perfect Sex Storm, maybe? She didn’t even know who he was. A half hour ago she thought he could be a serial killer.

No, she’d never thought that. There was something about this guy that she’d trusted from the beginning, and that was making her come up with ridiculous scenarios to try to talk herself out of doing so. Her mind was telling her not to be an idiot again—that she had no reason to trust him—but her gut was telling her something else.

“Listen to your gut,” her father had always said. But how could she do that when that gut had just been so wrong?

Naive. Of all the things Dan had said to her earlier in his no-sugarcoat, cut-right-to-the-heart-of-it lambasting, that had probably been the most stinging.

Because it was true. But it was also because naive seemed to be used too often as a synonym for “stupid.” Which it shouldn’t be. She just didn’t think like that. She didn’t look for treachery behind every corner. She didn’t see bad people; she saw good. Did that sometimes get her in trouble? Yes. But she didn’t want to see the world as the dark place that he obviously did.

Maybe she should have asked Julien a few more questions, and certainly gotten to know him a little better before embarking on an adventure like this, but there hadn’t been any sign that he’d been involved with a terrorist organization like OPF. He’d been acting strangely, and she hadn’t liked Jean Paul, but she hadn’t missed something. He’d deceived her plain and simple.

But hard-eyed cynics like Dan—or her father—had a way of making her feel bad for not assuming the worst of people and treating everyone as if they were a suspect.

She didn’t see how they could live their lives like that. Or didn’t live in her father’s case, when the anger, unhappiness, and ugliness got to be too much, even for a superhero.

She didn’t want that kind of dark in her life. She’d stayed away from men like Dan her whole life. Why now was she forgetting that?

He must have sensed the change in her. “You all right?”

His voice brought her back from the memories. She nodded.

“Good. I’m going to need your help. The swell is getting worse. I don’t want to take my eyes off the waves for too long, so you’re going to have to use the compass and keep us headed in the right direction.”

Her father had tried to teach her the basics of navigating with a map and compass, but she’d never really gotten the hang of it—and she certainly had never tried on the ocean. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. If he needed her to do this, she would. “All right.”

“Good girl.”

She’d get annoyed with him later for that little bit of paternalistic sexism. “Dan?”

He paused a moment before responding. “Yep?”

“Is it really bad?”

If she hadn’t been sitting so close to him, she wouldn’t have felt the slight hesitation that answered her question. Yes, it was bad.

“You don’t need to be scared, Annie. I got this, okay?”

Strangely she believed him. If anyone was capable of getting them out of this, she’d put her money on him. “Okay.”

“Just keep us pointed southeast at a hundred and seventy degrees.”

The next twenty minutes were perhaps the most harrowing of her life, which was saying a lot, as not all that long before she’d had a gun pointed at her head. The storm whipped around them like a hurricane. At least it felt like a hurricane when she was in an inflatable that was being held together by duct tape in seven- or eight-foot swirling seas.

It felt even worse when the duct tape came off.

•   •   •

Whether it was too much water or the pressure building underneath, Annie didn’t know, but one minute the tape was holding the seam and the next it was flapping against the side.

“The tape!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dan said.

She turned back to look at him to see if he was as confident as he sounded. There wasn’t a crack or a chip of uncertainty in that granite facade.

God, was he even human? How could anyone be that calm?

“‘Don’t worry about it’?” she repeated incredulously. “It’s deflating!”

Blue eyes held hers. Ice-cool and steady. “There’s nothing we can do about it right now. It’s one air tube. We’ll stay afloat, but you might have to bail. Just keep us on course.” She must not have responded fast enough. He took her chin. “Annie, I need you to trust me, all right?”

She thought about it for a moment and nodded. It was crazy, but she did. The last thing she should be doing was trusting a stranger. Except this one had saved her life. And what other choice did she have? She had to trust him. She didn’t have anyone else.

“That’s my girl.”

My girl. Why didn’t that sound as bad as it should? Before she could process that, he leaned down and put his mouth on hers in a kiss that was so fast and fierce she was too stunned to object or respond. She felt the warmth, the surprising softness of his lips, and the firm pressure in a hard blast of awareness that flooded her senses and instantly engulfed her with heat.

He tasted of wind and rain and the faintest hint of coffee. She felt the tickle of his beard against her skin—it was softer than she realized—and then it was gone, leaving her spinning. Reeling. Dumbfounded.

Wanting more.

But the kiss had served its purpose. Though brief, it had forged a connection between them. They were in this together, and he would keep her safe. He had this.

It had also discombobulated her, which she was pretty sure had been his intention as well. She was too busy thinking about the kiss to be scared. Too busy wondering why he’d done that—and whether he would try to do it again—to panic.

Somehow Annie stayed calm, even when one side of the boat grew so deflated they began to take on water. Even when he told her a few minutes later to start bailing. She didn’t panic. The solid strength of the body next to hers was reassuring. Anchoring. A tether in a storm.

He never lost his cool. Never once showed even the barest flicker of worry or anxiety—even when one side of the boat began to sink visibly in the water. He was focused. In command. Poseidon and the other sea gods could throw their worst at him, and he would keep on fighting back.

He seemed to know exactly what to do. How to maneuver the boat over the vicious swells. When to increase and decrease the throttle. How to ensure that the small boat didn’t flip or take on too much water from the crashing waves. How to keep them heading steady toward their destination even without her holding the map and compass. She was too busy bailing.

His confidence, determination, and skill told her that she was in good hands.

Still, she’d never been so happy to hear the words “there they are” when the series of small islands finally appeared on the horizon. She was even happier after they circled and found a place to land and her feet touched solid ground.

Dan dragged the inflatable up the rocky beach of the biggest island—although the other four “islands” of the archipelago hardly qualified. They were more like big volcanic rocks shooting out of the sea covered in white guano from the thousands of seabirds that nested on their cliff sides. This was the only island of size—probably a half mile by a quarter mile—and the only one with a bay. She didn’t want to think about that for too long. They were safe. What-ifs didn’t matter.

The island was shaped like a crescent. Ahead of her, up a little from the shore, was a flat, grassy, relatively sheltered area that looked as though it might have been used for pasture at one time—if, as she suspected, the strange round stone huts that littered the hillsides had served as shelter for animals. Once they were beyond the small flat area, the grassy hills rose steeply to the top of the cliffs that she’d seen on the other side as they came around.

While she looked around, Dan had secured the boat by tying it to a rusty steel post and putting a few heavy-looking boulders in its hull to prevent it from blowing away if the winds reached the bay. But the storm didn’t feel as powerful here. The natural shelter had taken the edge off its fury.

“Let’s see if we can find someplace dry. If those cleats”—the cleats must be the stone huts—“and this pole mean anything, this place was inhabited once.”

Annie gave him a horrified look. Who would want to live way the heck out here?

He smiled at her expression. “They probably wouldn’t have lived here year-round. Some of the smaller islands in the Hebrides are used to graze sheep in the summer. I suspect this one would have also been used for the birds.”

Annie’s nose wrinkled with distaste. She’d heard of the traditional Lewisian “Gana Hunt” for young gannets. Every year a small group of men traveled to a remote island off the north coast of Lewis to kill thousands of birds for the meat, which was considered a delicacy. It was the method of killing—by blows to the head—that provoked outrage from some groups. She knew it was part of the Lewis history and tradition, but that didn’t mean she didn’t find it distasteful and wish they would find a new one.

Dan was looking at her with amusement, clearly guessing her thoughts.

“What?” she demanded, hearing the “bleeding-heart” even without him saying anything.

He gave her a “back off, angry woman” hand. “I didn’t say anything.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“You aren’t exactly hard to read.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Pot. Kettle.”

He laughed. She was a little scared how much she was growing to like that sound. “Maybe so. But I for one am hoping there were hunters here who were nice enough to leave some kind of shelter behind. You look frozen.”

Secretly she hoped so, too. She hadn’t noticed how cold and wet she was on the boat when she was fighting for her life, but now that she was safe—and no longer had his body next to hers—she couldn’t stop shivering.

They found the cabin a short while later, tucked against the hillside on the other side of the flat area. It wasn’t much to write home about, but she wasn’t going to complain. The cabin—or bothy as Dan said the Scots called it—was a one-room stone building with a turf roof. At about ten by fifteen feet, it had a couple of steel bunks in one corner and a “kitchen” on the opposite side. There was a sink, but with no running water; there was also a big wooden bucket on the ground for hauling water from the sea. She hoped there was a freshwater source nearby as well.

The best news was that there was a stove that served the dual purpose of cooking and heating.

Dan quickly went to work loading the few bricks of peat that had been left underneath into the stove and getting it lit, while she did the best she could knocking the dust from the furniture, blankets, and mattresses. She was glad not to see any cobwebs—spiders weren’t her favorite.

She was just beginning to feel the first warm tingles of heat coming from the stove when she lifted the bottom mattress from the bunk to shake it out and screamed.

•   •   •

The sound of Annie’s scream turned Dean’s blood to ice. Considering how desperate their situation had been a few minutes ago—if this island hadn’t had a place to land the boat, they would have been in real trouble—his reaction was laughable. Dean knew how to control his emotions. He didn’t experience fear or anxiety the way most people did. He buried it. Put it aside. Compartmentalized.

But her scream scared the shit out of him.

He spun around from his position by the stove to see her running toward him. He barely had time to open his arms before she was leaping into them. He could feel the frantic pounding of her heart against his. At least he thought it was hers, but his was freaking slamming against his ribs.

She latched on to him as if she were a terrified kitten who had no intention of letting go. Which was fine, as he had no intention of letting her.

Scanning the area behind her, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No dead bodies or bogeymen lurking in the corner. As she didn’t seem inclined to offer an explanation, he asked, “What is it?”

She turned her face toward his, and his throat caught. Terror still made her voice tremble. “A r-rat! I saw a rat!”

Dean stilled. Jesus fucking Christ, she had to be shitting him? All that for a rat? Relief ate away at his composure. He couldn’t help himself; he started to laugh.

She looked up at him again, no doubt feeling the reverberation in his chest. “Don’t you dare laugh. It was terrifying.”

He tried to sober. Not very successfully. “I’m sure.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”

He feigned innocence. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“‘You are such a girl.’ Tell me you aren’t thinking that right now!” He couldn’t do that. “It would have scared anyone. It had teeth! And a tail. It must have been this big.” She pulled away from him long enough to show him about a foot. But he still had his arm slung around her waist and had no intention of letting her go.

He peered over behind the bed and didn’t see anything. “I’m sure. But I don’t see anything.”

Tentatively she broached a look. He could feel her relax. “It’s gone. But you need to find it.”

“I don’t know. That sounds a little sexist to me. Why do I have to do the hunting? Because I’m a man? Does that mean you’re doing the cooking?”

If looks could kill, he’d be roadkill. “That isn’t funny.”

He grinned. It was fucking hilarious.

“I don’t want you to kill it. Just put it outside. But fine. I’ll do it myself.”

She pulled away and took a few steps back toward the bed. But a gray blur shot past her feet like a torpedo, and with another ear-piercing scream, she was right back in his arms.

He savored the sensations for a minute before breaking the news. “Annie?” She looked up and he felt something in his chest thump. Damn, she was pretty. Especially in this position. Glued to his chest and tilting her head up to his. Looking at him as if she needed him—as if he were the only man in the world. He could get used to it—maybe a little too easily. “I hate to tell you, but your Remy is a Mickey. And he was about three inches long.”

“What difference does it make? It was terrifying.” She scowled at him, probably to encourage him to not start laughing again. “And how do you know Disney movies?” Something seemed to occur to her. She pulled away in horror. “Oh my God. You’re married with kids. I’m sorry. What a fool you must think—”

He didn’t let her finish and pulled her back in his arms. “I’m not married. No kids. But I have friends who do. I never would have kissed you if I was married.”

Most SEALs were married by his age, but the men picked for Team Nine had been chosen specifically because they weren’t married and didn’t have connections—or close ones at least. It made it easier for them to operate without anyone around to ask questions. It also made it easier for them to disappear on highly covert, clandestine deployments. There wasn’t anyone to look for them.

But it wasn’t foolproof. One of his fallen comrades’ estranged sister sure as hell was stirring up trouble with her articles on the “Lost Platoon of SEAL Team Nine.” Brittany Blake—the reporter—had been Brandon’s sister.

Annie appeared marginally relieved. But the kiss comment had obviously thrown her. “Why did you . . . ?”

Her voice fell off. She didn’t need to finish the question. If the heat in his eyes wasn’t an explanation, the way his body was reacting to her closeness sure as hell was.

It was way too easy to remember how good she’d felt riding up against him in the boat. How her body had melted into his. How she’d arched her back to press harder against him. How she’d driven him so wild he forgot himself and kissed her.

But nothing more could happen. Annie wasn’t fool-around material. Smart, confident women like her always wanted more. He’d wager she’d never had a one-night stand in her life. He’d had more than he’d like to remember, but the deal had always been understood. Sex, but don’t look for anything more. The only happy ending would be of the orgasmic type. Even before he had to go dark and play dead, he hadn’t wanted anything more.

Machines, Annie had called them. The idea of the heartless, unthinking killer following orders pissed him off, but in some respects she was right. SEALs were a different breed. Most of his fellow SEALs might have married by his age, but they were also likely to be divorced by the time they were forty. SEALs didn’t make good husbands—or boyfriends for that matter. He’d tried before Team Nine, but inevitably—go figure—women wanted to know where he went, what he was doing, and when he would be back. Being gone for months at a time with little communication didn’t make for long relationships. Short hookups he did fine. But that was all he had to offer.

Now, with what was on the line, he didn’t even have that. Until he could find out what had happened out there, he had to be dead.

He had to let her go. But damn, she felt good. Just one more minute . . .

Too late.

Apparently he wasn’t the only one remembering the boat. Her hands had been braced against his shoulders, but slowly she rose on her toes to loop them around his neck and leaned into him. She pressed that soft pink tastes-like-cherries mouth on his, and all the pent-up lust that had been building up on the boat came back in a violent rush.

The rest, as they say, was history. His big head checked his honorable intentions at the door, leaving the little head to do the thinking.

Which never ended well.