Claiming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 1) (5 page)

“Do I have to stick my head under the water?”

“Yes,” he insisted instinctively, guessing that was the exact thing she didn’t want to do, and sure enough, something flitted through her blue eyes, darkening them. He had her in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t the water itself that scared her, but the act of diving below the surface that had her freaked.

He had her right where he wanted her.

“I’ll do it,” she said decisively.

The upper hand slid away along with a good bit of his composure. What the hell had just happened? Had he just signed on the dotted line to do a striptease in exchange for helping her over her fear of the ocean?

Her lashes dropped for a beat, and when she glanced up, the darkness had been replaced by something altogether crafty. “But you have to go first.”

“What? No way. That wasn’t the deal.”

Emma wouldn’t even look at him, which had double cross written all over it. She wasn’t going to do it and was scouting for an out. And now he was disappointed. Worse, he was disappointed because she’d chickened out of doing something that clearly meant a lot to her. Even the lure of seeing him prance around like a Playgirl centerfold wasn’t enough of a carrot to get her over her fears.

Maybe she didn’t actually trust him, which sat funny in his craw. She
shouldn’t
trust him. He had no business caring either way. But he’d have held up his end of the bargain no matter what, because he’d said he would.

“Come on,” she purred and took a tiny step backward toward the water. “I’ll wade out into the water and you lemme see what you’re hiding under those shorts. I can tell your little guy wants to come out and play. He’s been waving hello since I got here.”

“
Little
guy?” His disappointment melted away to be replaced by indignation. “Sweetheart, you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

“Oh?” She blinked those baby blues, so full of fresh, corruptible innocence that it hooked him right in the heart. “That was a lot of protesting. Sure you don’t have some kind of complex about it?”

Waltzing closer, lashes lowered, she barged into his space without warning, white bikini making the acquaintance of his steel hard shaft with little teasing sways of her hips. Her milky white shoulders called to him, and he ached to put his hands there to haul her up against the planes of his body.

“How about a preview then?” she murmured provocatively, peering up at him. “Just so I have the proper dimensions in mind when I speak of your ‘guy.’”

He inhaled her scent. The sultry perfume she wore melded with the salty tang of the ocean and warm breeze of paradise, and his mouth burned to taste hers from the inside out.

“You’re good,” he croaked. A lock of her honey-blond hair blew across her lips, and lazily he slid a fingertip along her cheekbone, angling downward to hook the strands while memorizing the feel of her. “I’m almost distracted enough to forget that we’re supposed to be dealing with your fear of the ocean. What happened to you that putting your head under the water is worse than playing chicken with a man who’s already told you he’s not good for you?”

She froze, going so completely still that he worried for a second that he’d misjudged the situation. But then her lower lip quaked once, and he opened his mouth to let her off the hook.

“I almost drowned,” she whispered before he could say a word, and the shock of both the content of her answer and the fact that she’d offered one at all nearly knocked his already weak knees out from under him.

He should be running away from Emma faster than a bullet. Women who shared pieces of themselves expected reciprocation. Yearned for it. That was one deal he could never agree to, and therein lay the reason he could never take what she’d so clearly offered.

But he couldn’t physically tear his gaze from hers. Anguish bled from her pores as if he might read it like braille by running his fingertips over her skin. As her gorgeous body lay within touching distance, he might very well learn all of her secrets by simply reaching out. One finger flexed, but he didn’t move for fear of spooking her.

Or maybe he was scared of spooking himself.

“Almost doesn’t count,” he countered fiercely and instantly forgave her near-successful seduction that had doubled as a distraction, exactly as he’d guessed. “The ocean can be treacherous. But it’s an amazing, wondrous place if you dive below the surface with the right guide. Let me show you.”

Bad, bad idea
.

Or the best one he’d ever had in his life. If he was helping her get to a place where she could go snorkeling with her friend—now
that
was an intriguing, totally acceptable solution to his problem. Hell, he would practically be acting in a professional capacity, which would mean he could reel in all the sizzle. She’d be like a… a
student
and that meant hands off. He’d take her to Ilhota Rosa, an undeveloped island off the north side of Duchess Island, so named for the pink sand beach. Tourists had no access to it, so it would be very private.

It was perfect.

She could get to a place where she wasn’t scared of snorkeling and he could make sure nothing happened to her. Win-win.

“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously but thoroughly captivated.

“I’ll go under with you.”

She hesitated long enough that he thought she was going to say no. But she didn’t. “You’d do that?”

“Sure. I’m a certified scuba diver, and I’ve got more than a passing familiarity with CPR. Who better to get your feet wet with than me?”

Her shiny eyes blinked and regained a bit of the
my hero
that she’d lost yesterday when he’d driven her away for her own safety. Something unwound inside in a place that he’d always governed with strict control, and he had a very bad feeling that it didn’t matter what kind of imaginary barriers he put between himself and Emma, he’d still want to sink into her as badly as he did at this moment.

“Right now?” She glanced dubiously at the crashing surf.

No. Not now, definitely not today, maybe not even tomorrow. Only at some undefined point in the future when he could get a measure of control back in place. “When you’re ready. Come find me. If I’m not at the parasailing dock at the resort beach, one of the guys will know how to get in touch with me.”

Before he could find even a smidgen of that control, a smile so full of emotions he didn’t even have names for broke open on her face, and it filled him from the inside out. And then she iced that crazy cake by leaning in and kissing him on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she said simply. “I’ll think about it.”

The ability to speak dried up in his mouth as she walked away for the second time. Like yesterday, he burned with a thousand unfulfilled needs, only one of which rhymed with Dex, and he still didn’t know her last name.

After a night where nothing resembling sleep happened, Dex rolled from bed in a mood more suited to go raid an Iraqi village in search of ISIS generals. It wouldn’t take much to get him primed to shoot a few terrorists in the forehead from two hundred yards away.

Of course, he didn’t do that anymore. For a very good reason. And that put him in a worse mood. If he wanted to deal with the dark stuff inside his brain, he’d go to therapy.

Evan nodded as Dex stomped into the kitchenette where they made coffee, refrigerated beer—for Dex, since Evan was a recovering alcoholic—and sometimes slapped together sandwiches but did little else in the way of domestic niceties. That would be too much like a home, and neither of them had any desire for that.

Except sometimes Dex did. Usually he just worked up a sweat doing something physical and taxing until the yearning for something other than a place to stay went away.

“Meeting this morning, 0900,” Evan commented, his voice even more gravely than usual.

Dex growled. “About what?”

Charlie, their fearless leader, never called meetings that early. But they were running a business on the side and that meant administrative stuff that couldn’t be avoided.

Aqueous Adventures was Charlie’s baby. He’d recruited select members of their former SEAL team to join him, and Dex owed his former commander more than he could ever repay, not the least of which was a spot as part owner of their fledgling company. If Charlie needed to talk to them, they needed to be there.

Except sitting around a table jawing about finances or strategy or who knew what all was so not what Dex wanted to do right now. He’d been looking forward to pounding out his aggression in a five-mile run across the island before they had to ship out to the reef for day job duties.

Evan shrugged and went back to his coffee. He’d said his piece, and he was done.

Throwing his own coffee in a to-go mug, Dex mainlined as much caffeine as he could get down his throat while yanking on cargo shorts and a T-shirt that might be presentable if you squinted, then followed Evan to Charlie’s bungalow across the dirt path.

Charlie lived with Jace in one of the largest bungalows in the tiny village, which doubled as their office space, while Jack and Miles bunked together in the smaller bungalow two down. Mary and Tyna, two maids at the resort, shared the one in between, and they were great girls. They never complained about being in the midst of so much testosterone, nor did they give the off-islanders any grief about their American nationality. Some of the villagers didn’t like outsiders, but when presented with six ex-SEALs in a united front, rarely did anyone grumble to their faces.

Suited Dex fine. He had no interest in “fitting in,” and usually he appreciated the wide berth the natives gave him. Sometimes Tyna and Mary baked cookies and shared them with their neighbors. That was okay, especially when they slipped in extra chocolate chips with a wink at Dex because they knew he worshiped at the altar of chocolate. The ladies didn’t expect anything in return, and that made them awesome neighbors in his mind.

Miles was already sitting at the table in the common area off the kitchenette, engaged in an animated one-sided conversation with Jace, who looked as if he’d pulled an all-nighter with a particularly hot companion. The other man’s jaw was buried in his palm as if it was the only thing holding his head upright, and lines of fatigue crinkled his eyes.

“She that good?” Dex commented unnecessarily as he fell into the next chair.

While Dex stayed far away from guests—with one very painful exception in a white bikini—Jace had no problem fraternizing with the chicks who fawned over him like he was a member of a boy band. Their resident party boy traded on his former SEAL status shamelessly too, which was another thing Dex didn’t understand; military service was a deeply personal experience, and trotting it out in order to score was borderline sacrilegious.

“Totally worth it.” Jace half grinned as he peered at Dex through his fingers and sighed lustily. “Yoga instructor from L.A.”

The guys ribbed Jace about it, promising to make his life hell for the foreseeable future because that’s what friends did, until Charlie cleared his throat.

Time to get down to business. They talked about a few financial hiccups until Dex’s eyes glazed over. But he forced himself to pay attention because this was his business too.

Dex had far more than simple hopes pinned on the success of this venture. He was all in because he
could not
go back to the States. People might like to think they respected veterans, but they all had stars in their eyes about what it took to keep Americans free. Dex got tired of watching people morph into righteous zealots when he was stupid enough to mention that he was a highly decorated sniper. So he’d stopped mentioning it.

And then he stopped telling people much of anything. There were only so many times you could hear that killing people in the name of war wasn’t the answer before you started to question why you’d thought it was. Dex’s life in the Caribbean was exactly what he wanted: anonymous, easy, and guilt-free.

Charlie wrapped it up with, “It’s party time.”

His standard line. That meant the meeting was over and it was time to go to work.

The chorus of groans made Charlie grin. He was a stern taskmaster, but he kept them all on the straight and narrow, which was a role Dex would not relish. He didn’t mind being given orders as long as he respected the guy giving them, and Charlie was one of the few who’d earned that right from Dex.

Miles and Jace jostled Dex as they came up alongside him on the way to the dock where the dive captain waited in ReefCo’s ride to take them out to the reef restoration project along the north side of the island.

“Hey,” Jace said with a chin lift. “You look like you’re in sore need of a night full of hot women and cold brew. Me and Miles are gonna hit the Crow Bar tonight. We could be convinced to make room for a third wheel, especially one as sorry-looking as you.”

The Crow Bar was in Freeport on the main island, Grand Bahama—a forty-five minute boat ride. Far enough away from Duchess Island that it was considered a full-blown “night on the town,” with all that entailed. The cajoling smiles of the duo instantly raised his suspicions. Either they planned to get in a
lot
of trouble and pin it on Dex, or he had a worse case of Emma-itis than he’d thought if it was apparent enough to trip the radar of a couple of blockheads like his friends.