Claiming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 1) (8 page)

“Sure you want to go sticking your nose into things you can’t begin to understand?” he asked her softly.

His voice had taken on an edge that skated down her spine, unleashing a shiver. It should have frightened her, especially given her track record with men who
seemed
fine but turned out to be monsters on the inside. But she could never be scared of Dex, no matter how many ways he tried to make her think she should be.

No man who went to such lengths to keep a woman safe could ever harm her. If anything, she’d put money on him taking a bullet for her before she’d bet on him hurting her. Even now, when she’d made her interest in taking things to the next level extremely hard to misinterpret, he’d backed off. To
save
her. It was nearly poetic.

“Yes, actually.” She eyed him. The stubborn set of his jaw just piqued her ire all the more. “You think you’ve cornered the market on dealing with crappy stuff that should be in the past but won’t stay there? Well, you haven’t. You’ve never asked why I’m afraid of the water. Aren’t you curious? Or did you just assume it’s a cute little issue that a city girl developed by virtue of not growing up around water?”

His mouth tightened. “That’s your business, not mine.”

She checked the small silent scream of frustration. “That’s so wrong. You’re standing knee-deep in the ocean at midnight because a woman you met a handful of days ago asked you to. You have a right to know things about me. I want to know things about you. That’s how it works.”

“I didn’t offer to go in the water with you so I could grill you about your past. Take a lesson.”

The barb sank in, hitting its intended target better than she’d let him know. She swallowed the hurt.

It was all smoke and mirrors anyway and didn’t deter her from the goal. Dex was holding out for some reason and she’d uncover it if it was the last thing she did. She just wished she could figure out why it mattered so much. To either of them.

“I didn’t say you did! The point is that there’s a give and take between people when they want to get to know each other. Maybe you don’t want it to work that way, but you don’t get that choice. You’re a human being. We all crave connection.”

That elusive vulnerability flared up in his gaze, flitting around like a fragile butterfly just emerging from a cocoon. And then, just as quickly, it was gone. “Maybe I’m a robot. Did you think of that?”

She refused to smile, though he clearly wanted her to so the subject would be effectively changed, no harm, no foul. Except he wasn’t weaseling out of this conversation under any circumstances. “And maybe you use any method you can think of to push people away. Stop it.”

With a strangled sigh, he shook his head. “Fine. Have it your way. Please, Emma. For the love of God. Tell me what happened to make you so afraid of the water.”

Blinking, she stared up at his hard, uncompromising expression and faltered. When Dex had been kissing her—
oh, my God
. All of the loose pieces in her world had suddenly clicked into place. He was the answer to all the questions, no matter what they were.

And then he’d withdrawn. He couldn’t have slammed the door any harder. Prying it open like this didn’t feel anything like what she’d wanted. But what had she wanted? For him to take her hand and smile gently so she’d be encouraged to share the darkest episode of her life with him? For Dex to provide the wisdom and guidance she desperately needed?

Yeah. Actually she had. That was how he did things. He’d jumped into the middle of her plights without asking, knocking back her unwanted suitor and taking charge of her mission to get in the water.

What was so different about this? Simply that she hadn’t given him a problem to solve?

That was easy enough to fix.

“It’s not the water itself, exactly. It’s that I can’t get over what happened last time I was in the ocean. I don’t know how, and it’s killing me,” she admitted honestly. “I feel myself wasting away sometimes. When I’m at home in Boston. Like I’ll never be able to take a deep breath again.”

That had not been what she’d meant to say. How was this virtual stranger supposed to fix
that
? She couldn’t heal herself, and she was the most invested in the outcome.

Something broke open in her chest and a sob bubbled from her throat without her permission. Where had that come from? She’d stopped crying about what had happened with Chris months ago.

“Emma.” Dex’s soft voice drew her gaze and gone was the hard, shuttered man. Concern etched lines around his mouth as he cocked his head. “What happened in the water? You said you nearly drowned. But that’s not the whole story, is it?”

She shook her head, helpless to break free of their locked gazes. Somehow he’d heard the wish of her heart to have an empathetic audience for her explanation, and the story poured out of its own accord.

“Chris. He was my fiancé. I… Rachel didn’t like him from the first. Creeped her out she said. Then he started checking my phone. Covertly, of course, but it’s not hard to put two and two together when my e-mail app is open. Followed me to and from work a few times, or at least that was how many times I caught him.”

Fear of her fiancé hadn’t developed yet. That would come later. Too late. She’d tried to chalk up his obsession with her activities to the fact that he cared about her. He was interested in her and what she was up to, which came part and parcel with a devotion she’d never experienced before. Chris had flowers delivered, bought her jewelry and clothes. Declared romantic things like, “You’re mine forever.”

She wasn’t experienced enough with stalker mentality to know that it wasn’t a romantic statement, not the way Chris meant it. No, she’d gotten caught up in the promise of a stable life with someone who doted on her—the opposite of what she’d had growing up.

“I started to feel smothered,” she recalled. “He was going too far, but we’d already agreed to get married. I felt obligated to stick it out for a little while longer. Then he spun this pretty picture of how great it would be to live together. He moved in, and that’s when it got really bad. He tried to cut me off from Rachel and would only let me go to work if he drove me.”

She hadn’t talked about this in a long time. And never with a man. Only Rachel and Dr. Morris, the therapist Emma had seen twice a week until she fooled both of them into believing she’d gotten better.

In a lot of ways, she had. She’d vowed to be free of the past, free of the belief that a man could fix her life. But the final step—putting her head under the water—eluded her.

Still did. Even at this moment, the ocean surrounded her and she hadn’t frozen, thanks to Dex, but the thought of continuing out into the depths had her hyperventilating. Shallow, quick breaths rattled her ribcage, and pinpoints of light erupted behind her eyelids.

“Shh.” Dex’s hands came up and covered her shoulders, drawing her closer to his heat and good heart, both of which she desperately craved.

She snuggled into his chest as he held her, and the quaking stopped. Instantly. This man was like a security blanket that she could not get enough of. How did he make her feel so safe without saying a word?

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me the rest,” he murmured, and the words rumbled under her cheek.

“Oh, but I do.” She drew back enough to glimpse his face, which was rather breathtaking in the moonlight. A smattering of stars provided a backdrop that, combined with Dex, could well be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “It’s important that you understand. Rachel had been begging me to get out, to break up with him. Finally, I did it. It was horrible. He didn’t take it well.”

A fierceness stole over his expression. “I’m not going to like how this story ends, am I?”

She started to say no, but then realized the story didn’t have an ending. Not yet. That was the whole point of this. To come up with a different future for herself than the one Chris had tried to dictate for her. He hadn’t succeeded in killing her, but he’d very effectively ended her life as she’d known it.

It was time for a rebirth.

“I had to call the police to get Chris out of the apartment.” She shuddered as she relived barricading herself in the bathroom with her phone and a can of Raid, the only thing that passed for a weapon in her house—or rather the only thing she could have conceivably used on another human. “Three days later, he called me. Said he wanted to talk. It was the calmest he’d ever sounded. Said he wanted to apologize, nothing more, and I believed him. What he meant was, he wanted to drive off a bridge to punish me for breaking up with him. When the car went under the water, I was still strapped into the passenger seat.”

Dex’s grip tightened around her, pushing all the air out of her lungs, but she didn’t care. His skin smelled of pine and salt and man. It was a heady combination when coupled with the hard planes of his body. His scent swirled through her, signaling safety, shelter. Nothing could touch her while she had the powerful force field of Dex surrounding her.

“Tell me where to find him,” he demanded hoarsely as his hands wound gently through her hair, cupping her head to cradle it closer to his skin. “Now.”

A smile stretched her mouth in spite of what would be the probable outcome of that meeting. “The morgue. He didn’t escape the car. They pulled his body out later. I watched, though I had to fight the psychiatrist the hospital appointed. I had to make sure he was dead.”

“Then it’s over, Emma.” He said her name like a prayer and it washed through her, wiping away the filth of talking about the past. “You have to stop associating the ocean with death. You lived. That’s what water is—a building block of life. You came out of the water shiny and new and free. The ocean is a place where you battled evil and won.”

Oh, God
. Her fisted hands loosened and she spread them across Dex’s back, yearning to increase contact with him as she absorbed his words. “I never thought about it like that.”

“The ocean, it’s an amazing place. Full of strange creatures you can’t see on land.” His voice remained calm and even, but it took on a hint of wonder that spoke of his love of the ocean as clearly as if he’d said exactly that. “The laws of nature are fierce and absolute under the surface, far more so than any other place. There’s a pecking order. You’re prey or predator. There’s a swift justice. You were meant to live, so you did.”

“I… want to see it that way. I want to get over feeling like I’m drowning the moment the water touches me.”

“You can. With me. I’ll show you,” he promised. “You just have to trust me.”

“I do,” she said. “I thought I’d never trust a man again, but you’re so different than—”

He froze, going so still she feared for a moment she’d said the wrong thing. Then he drew back, cutting off all physical contact with painful abruptness, and his mask of indifference fell into place. She was losing him again to whatever darkness lived inside him that he seemed to think she couldn’t handle.

“Trust me in the water, Emma. Only in the water. I’m a guide to the other side of your fear of drowning. That’s all.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Hands on hips, she smiled to take the sting out of it. “If I want to think you’re an amazing, kind person, you can’t stop me.”

He shook his head, his beautiful, talented lips stretching into a frown that looked all wrong on him. “You’re confusing the act of stopping a jerkweed from manhandling you with some kind of heroic deed. I’m not that guy.”

“You’re so silly. That’s the definition of a hero.”

Did he really not see himself that way? It was so clear to her that he was a good man. Why was she having such a hard time convincing
him
of it?

And that was the crux of this. He wanted her. His touch dripped with desire and yet he held himself back from turning their interaction into a highly charged fling—one she’d been angling for since day one. But because he was such a good man, he wanted to protect her from being hurt, even without knowing whether she needed protection or not. It was what he did, without question, without hesitation.

It was as maddening as it was endearing.

“We’ll agree to disagree,” he said flatly. “What you call heroic is common decency. That’s all.”

“But common decency is rare,” she argued. “Or we wouldn’t need heroes.”

He crossed his arms over his washboard abs, hiding them. But she still knew they were there, just like she knew other things about him that she couldn’t see.

“You can push this all you want, but it’s not going to change anything. I’m not good for you.”

This called for new tactics. Desperately. Because she wanted his mouth on hers again, wanted to taste his sun-bronzed body, wanted to experience life in all its glory, and Dex was the key.

“Maybe I need a little bad after what happened.” She waded through the surf, closing the gap between them slowly so she didn’t spook him into backing off. “Maybe I’m jaded and irreparably damaged inside from a horrible relationship, and all I want is a man who will take me up against a wall and screw my brains out, a man who knows enough to shut up and kiss me instead of worrying about hurting me.”

She risked placing her palms on his pectoral muscles, which were quickly becoming one of her favorite things about him. So hard, so tight, and so protective of what lay beneath—his huge heart.

His eyes darkened as fast as his jaw went tight. But he didn’t move out of her reach.

“That’s a crock and you know it, Emma. On the inside, you’re hopeful. Bright and optimistic, or you wouldn’t be here. You’re in the ocean trying to heal yourself. That’s the opposite of jaded. And you deserve to be handled like a fragile piece of glass, not devalued in a course encounter with a jackass who won’t call you in the morning.”

Emma’s chest filled so fast her head spun. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

His bitter laugh cleared the dizziness in a hurry. “Yeah? You’re a fan of guys who flat out tell you they’re going to sex you up and then disappear? You need a new definition of romance.”

“Okay.” She cocked her head and zeroed in on his flinty gaze, refusing to let him look away. He wasn’t that guy, and she’d never believe he was. “Then show me what’s romantic to you.”