SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (9 page)

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T
hey’d spent the
night in the cabin, and after a Larken special—protein bar and pineapple juice—for breakfast, they headed down to the beach to watch the sunrise.

As pink sky faded to a brighter yellow, they waded into the ocean together, hand in hand. After a long, exhausting, wonderful swim together, Larken discovered that beach sex was extra-sandy and only half as romantic as she expected, but then Vince carried her into the ocean again to wash off, and that tipped the scales back to sweet.

By the time Jackson arrived to pick them up, though, she was ready for a shower. And her bed—with company.

“Are you thinking about the fact we didn’t find any buried treasure?” Vince whispered in her ear.

She rolled her eyes. “We didn’t look for any.”

“Right. You kept distracting me with your breasts.”

“No. There is no treasure.” She stared at Jackson’s back. Could he hear them?

“Next time we can actually look.”

“I’m going to throw you off the boat.”

“I’d like to see you try,” he murmured, laughing at her under his breath.

“I could flip you,” she said hotly.

“I’d have you flat on your back in the bottom of the boat before you knew what hit you.”

Her nipples perked up at the idea of being pinned down. Turnabout was fair play. “Actually, I was thinking about a hot, steamy shower. We could squeeze into my bathroom together, or there’s an outdoor shower behind my cottage. It’s got this great wide bench. I bet if I kneel on it, I’ll be at exactly the right height for you to—”

He cut her off at the same as he shifted in his seat. “You haven’t had enough of the outdoors?”

She gave a not-so-subtle look at his erection and slowly shook her head.

“I’m a lucky bastard, then,” he grinned, sending tingles up and down her spine as he slanted his mouth against hers.

But when they docked, Rik was waiting.

He’d given her twenty-four hours alone with Vince. Now there was work to be done. They showered quickly and separately, then dressed in clean clothes and met the group back at the main house. Vince held her hand most of the way down the path, and it surprised her how much she liked that little bit of contact.

As long as they didn’t go too fast or push each other too far, this might just work out.

Over a working lunch, they briefed Vince on their last two missions and gave him a high-level overview of their security clients—in addition to the occasional high-stakes rescue, Trent and Jackson needed something to keep them busy, and rich people paid a lot of money for handsome, muscled men to install custom security systems. They outsourced the more generic bodyguard duties to larger organizations that specialized in that sort of thing.

Neither man wanted to be seen carrying Jennifer Lawrence’s puppy in and out of New York department stores.

“I can help with that work as well,” Vince said gruffly, rocking back in his chair. “I’m going to be traveling back and forth to the mainland for my family responsibilities, might as well put the travel to good use.”

“Larken, can you give an update on the training facility?” It was mostly a recap, although Jackson and Trent had been gone for most of the two weeks prior to Vince’s arrival, so she caught them up to speed, too. Her plan was to offer their clients a retreat-style self-defense course. Calli was happy to organize meals and lodging. It would mean hiring some housekeeping and wait staff, but money wasn’t an issue, and the amount of coin they’d be charging anyway would keep the project well in the black.

“The range is cleared and I’ve got a good collection of targets. We’ll need an armories built down there for orderly dispensing of weapons, but it’s coming together nicely.”

“Range?” Vince’s chair clattered as he sat straight-up, his gaze glued to Larken’s face.

“Yeah. No point in having this nice big private island if we can’t shoot whenever we want, right?”

He nodded slowly. “Right.”

“What are you thinking?”

“We should make use of that later.”

“Deal.” She laughed. “Maybe I’ll finally reclaim the title of top marksman from you.”

A look she couldn’t decipher twisted his face into a smirk. “You think you could?”

Yeah, she did. While he’d spent the last dozen years jumping out of planes and diving deep under water and a whole bunch of other ridiculous things, she’d been a grunt. A good one, who spent as much time as she could on a range. And while she’d never put her name in for the annual competition again, she’d trained two kids who’d been ended up in the top three, without having gone to sniper school.

He nodded, one brow cocked. “Deal. How about we make it interesting?”

“What were you thinking?”

He pulled the Browning he’d won in the poker game from his shoulder holster and set it on the table. “I’ll put that in.”

“Okay, I’ll get some cash.”

“No cash.” His voice slicked out like liquid silk, rushing over her as his meaning became clear. “Your key.”

“You want another week in Casa White?”

“Nope. I want the cottage permanently.” That look flickered in his eyes again, but it disappeared before she could lock on to its meaning.

“No deal.” She didn’t want to put her haven on the line.

“Have a little faith in yourself, Larken.”

He said it gently, but suddenly she was painfully aware that her teammates were all watching. All hearing Vince point out that she didn’t have faith in herself. Damn him, because it wasn’t true, not really, but it had been, and either way, it was all too close to home. Hot embarrassment flooded her chest, but before she could push away from the table and storm off, Rik’s voice interjected.

“I’m in.”

She snapped her gaze to her boss, who just shrugged. “I like to shoot, too.”

Ha. That was an understatement. Rik could out-shoot both of them, backwards and on cross-country skis. Norwegian freak. But the distraction worked—she never backed down from a challenge. “You want my cottage, boss?”

“You’re going to turn my magnificent house into a glorified bed and breakfast. I wouldn’t mind a little privacy with my wife.”

“Fine.” She yanked her key out of her pocket and tossed it next to the Browning. “I’m in.”

Rik added a clip of money to the pile, then Jackson threw on a pair of Miami Heat tickets.

He shrugged at the scandalized look Mats gave him. “What? That’s not cheaping out. They’re courtside.”

The younger Norwegian rolled his eyes, tossing in a roll of bills. “Fine. I’m in. I want that Browning back.”

That just left Calli, who laughingly bowed out, and Trent, who tossed on another one of his listening pens.

“Cheap-ass bastard.” Jackson muttered, which made Mats howl in outrage. “Shut. Up. Courtside tickets are a big fucking deal.”

Rik held up his hand and everyone quieted down. “All right, Larken. What are we shooting?”

“M-16, three position, at three hundred and six hundred yards. and a 9 mm pistol of your choice, slow-fire and rapid-fire, at twenty-five and fifty meters.” The familiar rules spilled out of her with ease. “We’ll skip the closer distances because we’re not wusses, right?”

“That favors the snipers among us,” Jackson grumbled good-naturedly.

“Oh, that’s right, you SEALs prefer to let other people do the hard work for you, right?”

Vince snorted. “Hiding in a tree or on a roof is hard work, now?”

She grinned at him. “Gotta be very, very quiet.”

“How the hell do you manage that?” he asked with a slow, lazy wink.

The trash talk wicked away the spike of tension. She excused herself to grab the rifles from the weapons room, a smile on her face. They all headed out as a group for the range area, and when Vince looped his fingers through hers, she held on tight.

Once they had the range set up for three hundred yards, she repeated the rules for the ten rounds of competition. They’d shoot from standing, kneeling and prone at both distances with the rifles, then do two rounds with the pistols at twenty-five and fifty meters.

She’d have an advantage, with the Norwegians, for the rifle rounds. It would be in the pistol rounds that the former SEALs—and Trent, the wily bugger—might close the gap.

So it wasn’t a surprise that Rik was in the lead by the end of the first set and Jackson was scraping the bottom of the list. What was a surprise was Vince was hot on her heels in third place, edging out Mats.

Also a surprise was how that didn’t concern her in the least.

He helped her move the targets back to six hundred yards, and as they jogged back to the line where a green flag was flying, she couldn’t help but poke him a bit. “You might just win the cottage after all, you know. Rik’s not unbeatable with the pistol.”

“Getting my hopes up just to dash them hard, White?”

“I remember you being quite good with the pistol.”

“And I remember you killing the six hundred yard rifle shot.”

She grinned. Yeah, she was pretty good. “Anything is possible.”

He grabbed the red flag and stuck it in the air, making the range a live-fire site again. She couldn’t help but ogle the long stretch of his muscles, and he caught her looking as he glanced down. “Is that right?”

“Of course.”

He stepped close, right into her space, blocking her from the rest of the team. “You gonna figure out soon that I want you to come along with the cottage when I win it?”

Her mouth dropped open, and he gently pressed her chin up with his fingertips.

“Time to shoot, cariño.”

She sputtered at his back as he sauntered away. That was low, the dirty rat. And she couldn’t even stay mad at him, because
that ass
was distracting her. So she followed it, and by the time she retrieved her rifle from Trent, her heartbeat had settled down to just slightly fluttery.

Stop being such a complete girl
. Besides, two could tease.

They shot in reverse order, with Jackson going first, and Rik coming last, putting Vince to shoot right before her. As soon as Mats finished his prone shots, Larken stood up and looked up at the sky with an exaggerated sigh. “Man, it’s hot out here.”

Vince whipped his head around, his eyes narrowing as she wiggled her hips and peeled off her shirt. Beside her, Trent muttered something about tits not belonging on the range, and she thought about kicking him, but then Mats did exactly what she wanted him to do—let out a long, low wolf-whistle at the sight of her red bikini top.

There was zero sexual attraction between her and the young Norwegian, but he wasn’t dead and she wasn’t above using him for her purposes. Vince’s face darkened as she waved at him. “Your turn!”

He swallowed what she assumed was a long string of Spanish curses, and picked up his rifle.

His standing score wasn’t good, but he pulled it together and managed a marksman level score for both kneeling and prone.

“Put your shirt on,” he muttered, his gaze burning her skin as she slid past him to take her position.

“Welcome to the Caribbean,” she said, smiling sweetly.

“That was unsportsmanlike!”

“Awww, poor kitten. Kind of like you telling me you want me in the cottage with you?”

“I wasn’t playing!”

“Okay.” She grinned. “Now excuse me, I have a range to own.”

And she did own that round. Even Rik couldn’t beat her. But that was where her luck ran out. She hung in the top three, but by the end of the twenty-five meter pistol shoot, Rik and Vince—who’d shot nearly perfectly—were tied for the lead.

Her haven was slipping through her fingers.

But maybe you don’t need it anymore
. She’d been on the island almost exclusively since she’d been hired by Rik, only leaving with the team for their missions. And even then, she was the sniper. Solitude was her way of life, hiding up high or far away. Watching and listening, taking out threats. Keeping everything at bay.

Not Vince. She couldn’t keep him at bay. Didn’t even want to try.

Jackson and Trent put up the green flag, and moved the targets out to fifty meters. She paced back and forth, trying to do the math on what she’d need to shoot to win.

Better than she’d ever shot in her life. And Vince and Rik would both need to miss.

It wasn’t going to happen.

“This was a stupid idea,” she griped as Vince walked over, scuffing the pale, sandy dirt. “And don’t tell me again that I need to have faith in myself.”

“No.” He bumped her shoulder with his arm. “You just need to shoot better.”

“Shoot perfect, you mean.”

“Yeah. So do that.”

She just snorted, and he didn’t say anything else. They watched Trent, Jackson and Mats all take their shots, then it was her turn.

She hadn’t really been in the zone all afternoon, but now as she settled onto her spot, knees relaxed, arms loose, she felt that calm slip over her. She could see the target, could feel the muscles that she’d need all twitch in readiness.

Her slow-fire cluster was good. She knew it in her bones. But her rapid-fire cluster was actually perfect. She didn’t need to see the target paper.

She stepped back, nodding to Rik that it was his turn. She didn’t look over at Vince. She didn’t need to. She could feel his smile.