Wet For Her Warriors (Book 5 of the WILD -- Warriors Intense in Love & Domination -- Boys of Special Forces) (34 page)

Damn it
.

Why hadn’t she
included the possibility of people being in the tunnel when she unleashed the
fire and brimstone on it? Worse, why hadn’t she anticipated hitting this
dilemma about turning them all into human cake batter?

All right, yes,
they all worked for Gunter Benson. And if the floorboards were figuratively flipped,
Gunter wouldn’t waste a second on lighting the fuses for
her
doom. In
many senses, he already had. Promising her as a use-and-dispose “toy” for his
North Korean friend required an infusion of evil she honestly hadn’t imagined
in him. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe
she’d
bought the designer suit
sham in a few ways, too, and now couldn’t see that taking out the man and a few
of his goons would be seen by some as a favor for the world.

She moaned
softly and dropped her head. Her conscience had the worst timing in the world.

“Well, hello
there.”

The greeting, quiet
even against the stillness of the house, knocked her on her butt. “Shit,” she
gasped, scuffling to slam her back against the wall. “
Shit
.”
She
raised her gape at a man who looked like the cover of Asian
GQ
. “Wh-who
are—”

He interrupted
her with a laugh the texture of creamed cocoa. “Gunter was right.” Make that
creamed tea. His voice lilted with an accent right out of Buckingham Palace. “You’re
quite lovely when you’re—how did he phrase it?—full of sass and spit.” He
unbuttoned the coat of his perfectly-fitted ivory suit in order to crouch in
front of her. “And they say midnight snacks aren’t worth the trouble.”

His voice was
London proper but his gaze was raw jungle predator. “Get out of my house,” Lani
spat. In the position he was in, it wouldn’t be easy to get her heel into his
balls, but she’d find a way.

The man released
a string of cultured
tsks
. “Now, now, darling. Perhaps we’ve charged
through the china shop prematurely.” He held out a hand with elegant ease. “My
name is Ayaan Tan. Now your turn.”

“I know who you
are, asshole. And I know why you’re here.” She kicked his hand away. “
Don’t
come near me.”

Tan gave a soft
snort before pulling out a linen handkerchief and wiping his hands. He rose,
stuffed the square into his breast pocket then clapped those hands once. Within
seconds, the kitchen was blasted with light and filled with six Koreans the
size of rhinos. After a flick of Tan’s wrist, the men descended on her. Before
Lani could think of letting out her first scream, Tan replied to her charge, in
his calmest tea hour tone, “I have no intentions of touching you, my little
snack cake. Not yet, at least.”

“When I get my
hands on that woman’s ass again, it’s going to get stripped, spanked, and flogged
into a couple of red, throbbing—”

Kellan cut into
Tait’s tirade with a harsh grunt. When his friend stopped trying to turn the
sand in front of the cottage into glass with his heated pacing, Kell jerked his
head up at the lanai. A groggy-eyed Leo stood on the porch.

“What the hell’s
going on?” the teen moaned. “Sounds like you two are doing a damn
hula
pˋiumauma
out here.”

Kellan lifted a
scowl at the kid. There was no sense in sugarcoating this. “If that means wanting
to throttle your sister, then you just nailed it.”

Leo stopped
rubbing his eyes. “Shit. Where is she?”

Tait stomped up
the stairs and thrust the note at the kid. “Sorry we poached it out of your room
but when we couldn’t find her, we thought she may have gone to check on you.”

Leo studied the
letter with a face that widened in surprise then darkened in dread. Kell
imagined he and Tait’s faces must’ve carried the same expression five minutes
ago, during their own stunned reading.

Mafileokaveka…my
brother Leo…

This isn’t easy
for me to write, but you more than everyone else can understand I’ve given this
a lot of thought. Dangerous men want to get their hands on Hale Anelas, people who
are only going to start on you and me before they try to destroy the whole
country, using our island and our home as their command post. Tait, Kellan, and
their friends from the 5
^th
SFGA are convinced they’ll be able to stop
these monsters, but the thought of more death in the air at the ranch,
especially theirs, is a horror I couldn’t bear. If I destroy what Benson and
his friends want the most, the access tunnel from the beach, the core of their
treasure will be gone, and we’ll be free from their awful plans.

I’m going to use
the explosives from the barn to do this. You know what this means for the
majority of the ranch as we know it. I’d beg you to forgive me for destroying
our home, but in reality, all I’m blowing up is our ranch. Home is the place in
our hearts that’s always reserved for each other. Whether we rebuild here or
our life’s journey takes us elsewhere, you are always my
kaikaina
, my
beloved brother.

I won’t ask you
to keep this a secret from Tait and Kell. There’s a good chance they’ve taken
it from your room and read it by now, anyways. They have taught me a great deal
about trusting the wisdom in people, no matter how insane that might feel.
Maybe it’s time for the teachers to revisit their own lesson.

I’ll see all
three of you again soon. I promise.

~Lani

When Leo looked
up from the note, his gaze carried a thousand questions and a shit-ton of
shock. “Is she fucking serious?”

Neither he nor
Tait chastened the kid for the language. Five minutes ago, they’d been spouting
much more colorful expressions.

“Our rental car
is gone,” Kellan admitted. “And we can only assume she hasn’t gone for a soda
run to the market.”

Leo fell against
the wall. The note shook in his hands. “I can’t lose her, too, you guys.”

Tait hauled the
boy into a hug. “We’re not going to let that happen, dude.” He followed it up
by swinging a damning stare at Kell. “This wouldn’t be happening if I’d gone
after Stock three hours ago.”

Kellan didn’t
know whether to pick incredulous or enraged as a reaction. What the fuck; why
choose? “Let me get this straight. As your best friend, I
wasn’t
supposed to talk you out of one of the most dumb-ass decisions of your life?”

Tait stomped to
the edge of the lanai and stabbed a finger downward. “If I was out there right
now, instead of her—”

“It’d still be
an idiot’s move made by your pride and ego instead of your reason and good
sense.” He planted his feet and curled his fists. Last time he checked, his
call-sign wasn’t
Scapegoat
. “You want to swing the flogger at her, man?
Be sure to smack your own ass first, you fucking hypocrite.”

“What the hell
does that mean?”

Kell narrowed
his eyes. “It’s a pod called stupid—and the two peas mashed in it are my best
friend and the love of my life.” He tossed an uncomfortable glance at the kid
still propped against the wall. “Sorry, Leo. I pictured telling you under
really different conditions.”

The kid flung
back his normal wise-ass grimace. “Why? ‘Cause you think I didn’t figure it out
already?” He jerked his chin at Tait. “I got your number too, T-Boner. You moon
at Lani worse than he does.”

Tait kicked at
the wall and growled, “Fuck.”

“Shut it,” Leo retorted.
“You both make her happy and that makes
me
happy. But you’re both wasting
time acting my age instead of yours. What the hell are we going to do? Should
we call Franzen again?”

“
No
.”
Kellan’s bellow coordinated note-for-note with Tait’s. Franz would go ballistic
from the news. Literally. Within minutes, he’d have every active-duty police
cruiser on the island barreling at Hale Anelas, destroying the requirement for
subterfuge still needed here.

By instinct, they
followed up the command by locking stares. Kellan instantly read Tait’s
mind—and now his heart, as well—and also recognized how deeply T understood
his.

They had to get
to the ranch as fast as possible.

Best case
scenario: they found the woman before she attempted a technical-as-shit
explosives operation, preventing her from an unintended suicide mission.

Worst case scenario
number one: they came upon the ranch already in flames, without a sighting of
Lani.

Worst case
scenario number two: they didn’t find flames
or
Lani, meaning Stock and
Tan had gotten to her first.

No matter what “prize”
fate held in store, their shared stare confirmed a single, unalterable reality.
If they didn’t work together, they would fail at the single most important
mission of their lives.

Why the fuck
couldn’t he remember how to breathe?

Tait slammed his
eyes shut for a moment, consciously calling up the relaxation techniques that
were normally as natural as breathing to him, especially during a
high-intensity op.
Slow your heart rate. Calmness flows in; tension pours
out. Center your gravity and your thoughts.

Fuck relaxation.

He drove a fist
into the ranch’s kitchen wall, just in case the universe needed to be clear on
his viewpoint. Three feet away, Kellan and Leo crouched near the box of
TNT
,
still unopened, in the middle of the floor. A foot away from that, in the
middle of the scuff marks on the floor that could have only been made by
battle-grade boots, was Lani’s cell phone, purposefully crushed by one of those
boots.

“Fuck.” Leo visibly
trembled once more. “Wh-what the hell happened?”

Tait let Kellan
attempt an answer to that. “You remember the asshat we told you about? Gunter
Benson’s silent business partner?”

“Cameron Stock?”

“Yeah.” Kell
used the excuse of getting in a nod in order to scramble his composure. “It
looks like he might have been waiting here for her, and—”

“Now he’s got
her.”

The teen uttered
it with finality, having clearly expected this possibility. Tait’s gut turned
over. He personally knew what it was like to have half a world of pain shoved
down your throat before hitting sixteen but fate was force-feeding Leo the
other half. He twisted his fist against the wall to keep from going to the kid
and pulling him into a hug. He had no doubt Leo would be fine at holding
together the waterworks; he just didn’t trust his own shit right now.

“Yeah.” Kell
attended the dirty work of making the confession. “He’s probably got her.”

“And we have no
idea where they’ve gone.”

“No. We don’t.”

Kell practically
retched the words. Tait could empathize. Despite the chaos in his gut, he
reached to clap his friend on the shoulder. Might as well fuck every mission
protocol they could, right? But he wasn’t going to stand on “suggested procedure”
when those three words, more than any whisper the man had given Lani in the
bedroom, told him exactly how deeply Kellan had fallen for the woman—and how
thoroughly his heart was breaking now.

Leo snapped his
head up. “Hey,” he grated. “Do you guys hear—”

Kell cut him off
by slashing across his throat with one finger. He motioned Tait to kill the
lights with the other. Not needed. Tait was already at the switch, plunging
them into darkness as the sounds got closer. Boot stomps, at least six pairs.
Male grunts. And a woman’s terrified whimpers.

Lani
.

Leo jolted to
his feet, a battle grimace already plastered on his face. Thankfully, not all Tait’s
training had deserted him. With barely a sound, he subdued the kid and
flattened him to the wall. If Stock, Benson, Tan and their men were headed back
here, the only advantage they’d have on the crowd was the element of surprise.

The party seemed
to be coming closer. Tait regulated his breaths and noticed Kell doing the
same. They exchanged a grim look. If the shit went down in here, they’d end up
having to Bruce Lee their way through these assholes. It’d be bloody, messy,
and dirty.

It sounded like
the posse was nearly on top of them now.
But where were they
? Kell
narrowed his gaze in perplexity. Tait threw back the look, until Leo caught
their attention with a wave. The kid stabbed a finger at the floorboards. Tait
dropped his jaw as comprehension hit.

The bad guys
weren’t on top of them. They were below.

In wordless
tandem with Kell, he dropped to the floor. With his ear locked to the boards,
he could tell Lani had been gagged or duct-taped. The anger beneath her whines
filled him with both pride and terror. The heat of the first and the chill of
the second made his jaw clench and his nerves race, but he forced his body to
comply with the focus of his mind. On the Indonesian op, he’d made a huge
mistake because of misplaced emotions and an innocent had bled. The penance for
his sin this time would be Lani’s life.

He concentrated on
the men’s voices. Their exact words were fuzzy because of the boards but he discerned
Stock’s gruff baritone as well as Tan’s tearoom lilt. There was a third voice
in the conversation, too. It wasn’t Benson’s arrogant tone, though something
about it rang familiar in his gut.

He glanced at
Kell, wondering if his friend recognized the speaker. The guy’s hunched brows told
him he wrestled with the same bafflement.

Without a sound,
he rolled to Leo. Into the kid’s ear, he whispered, “Tell me there’s at least
one loose board in this floor.”

Paydirt. Leo was
able to indicate a board nearby. Two of its rusty nails were gone. If they
could loosen the other two, they’d be able to lift the board out and have a
visual into the cavern below. The goal gained more urgency during the minutes
it took for Kellan to slither into the kitchen, grab a butter knife as a
makeshift screwdriver, and return. During that gap, Lani’s whimpers fell into
silence;
not
a great development. On top of that, the strange nag in
Tait’s senses worsened. Why did his senses react so strongly to the third voice
in the cave? Who did that familiar timbre belong to?

Luck was their
lady one more time. Kell started working in earnest at the rusty nails, not
having to worry about any wayward sounds from his efforts due to an argument
that flared between Stock and Tan.

“Has anyone
checked the entrance lately?” Stock’s initial bark seemed directed at his men.
“What the fuck am I paying you cum stains for? Everyone afraid they’ll get their
pretty boots all dirty?”

“Don’t stress,
Cam.” The reply came from
that
voice. Tait strained to listen harder but
when mystery man finished, he’d paced at least ten feet down the tunnel. “I’m
on it.”

“Thanks, man.”
Stock still sounded more stressed than grateful. He trundled back toward the area
where Tan seemed to be positioned. “Okay, where the hell were we? Oh, yeah. You
were going to tell me why you’re being so goddamn intractable.”

Tan erupted in a
fierce snarl to preface his comeback. “Big and impressive words, Cameron, but
they don’t accomplish a bloody thing.” He unfurled a dark growl. “I am awash in
disappointment by the turn of all these events, and by you in particular this
evening. Less than twenty-four hours ago, you met me here and supported my
approach. Now, you don’t have half the water for it.”

“There’s nothing
wrong with my goddamn ‘water,’ you Korean kook. Glare in the mirror if you’re
calling anyone’s nerve into question. This crazy cluster—”

“Would not even
be a ‘cluster’ had you and Gunter done your jobs. Tonight, the man has become a
feast for the sharks as his payment for the mess. But you’ve been valuable to
me in the past, and I’d like to benefit from your special gifts in the future,
as well.”

“Then take the
benefit of my advice now, goddamnit. This bitch’s stubborn streak is longer
than her hair. You can beat her and fuck her six ways until Sunday, but all
that’ll get you is a couple of wasted hours. She’s not going to sign until you
let me use my contacts at the base to grab that guppy brother of hers. Once you
bring him back here, cut off a few of his fingers and threaten to do the same
to his balls. I guarantee she’ll sign anything you want, including her own
suicide note. How’s that for my
boiling
water, buddy?”

Kellan finally
popped the nails from the board. On his nod, Tait helped him lift the wood out,
securing them a window that measured about three feet long by six inches
wide—just in time for them to witness what Stock’s threat did to Lani’s face.

And to flood
Tait’s soul with the lust to kill the man for it.

They could only
see her eyes and nose due to the duct tape wrapped around her head and across
her mouth, but that was enough to know that their girl was past terrified. She
shivered from head to toe despite being sandwiched between two burly guards who
held her by the elbows, probably the same assholes who’d stripped her to
nothing but her black bra and panties. Her wrists were bound together in an
expert bondage shackle, and her ankles were encased in leather cuffs with O
rings. It didn’t take a big leap of imagination for Tait to construe why.

Fuck, fuck, fuck
.

In an instant,
all the threats he’d promised for her ass were wiped from his mind. For all her
fire and fanfare, Lani possessed one of the most pure and open souls he knew.
She had no concept about the wickedness that thrived in the world, in the form
of vermin like Stock. It tore at Tait’s spirit to watch her get a hideous dose
of that lesson now, demonstrated in her horror-filled eyes and flaring, frantic
nostrils. One glance at Kell confirmed he sailed in the same boat of dread.

Tan paced back
into their line of vision. His face looked gaunt, thinned by anger and waning
patience. “Tell me, then. How long will it take to activate these ‘contacts’ of
yours at the base?”

Stock stepped
forward, too. “A couple of hours at most.” His hands were clasped like a priest
about to hear confession or a waiter attending a wine order. Either way, the
pose added to the weirdness of the evil being conspired below. Tait scowled at
Kellan, who nodded his agreement. They’d wisely kept Leo back against the wall
and planned on keeping things that way until they determined what their plan
would be from here.

 “I see,” Tan
returned. His own hands rested in the pockets of his ivory suit, which remained
pristine despite the grungy surroundings. Maybe the man
had
signed a
pact with the devil. “And in those two hours, you don’t think that her two
soldier friends will have gotten half a clue about what’s going on? You believe
the two idiots will just invite your mates in for a beer before they snatch up
Leo for the road?”

Stock rocked
from foot to foot, clearly conceding the point to Tan. As he did, Tait looked
again to Kellan. His buddy’s face reflected the dark concern creeping through
his own veins. The slur didn’t matter. They’d been called worse than idiots
before, and being underestimated was actually a favor. But they also could have
used the extra two hours that Stock’s plan would have afforded. Now they’d be
lucky to get two minutes.

If Tan’s will
prevailed, it would be even less. The man left their angle of vision for a long
moment. When he walked back into view, he carried a bullwhip at least five feet
long. In serene silence, he let the leather unfurl. With even more grace, he
brought the handle back, and let the leather fly with a fluid coordination of
his elbow and wrist. The popper
smacked
the air directly over Lani’s
head, causing even her two henchmen to flinch. Lani’s eyes widened. A violent quiver
claimed her whole body.

Tait swallowed
hard as nausea seared his stomach once more. Had he been witnessing a Dom in the
Bastille dungeon back at home he would have labeled Tan’s expertise a thing of
beauty, but in the cavern below, the monster provided proof of how easily
Dominance could be perverted into abuse. Once more, Tan drew back the whip.
When the leather dropped this time, it took a sharp nick at Lani’s waist. Her
scream pushed at the duct tape and she started breathing harder.

“As you can
tell, Miss Kail, I’m a bit of an enthusiast when it comes to beautifully-made
long tails…and the ways I can paint a woman’s skin with them.” Tan glided his
fingers down the braided leather as he strolled over to personally inspect his
handiwork. He ran a thumb across the bloom of blood he’d induced then sucked
the stuff off with a sigh of pleasure. As Lani sagged like she was going to be
sick, the man added, “But I am also a fair man, darling. Sign the papers now, turning
over all of Hale Anelas to Benstock as a free-and-clear gift from your generous
heart, and this single stroke will be the only kiss you get from my kangaroo
hide. It would sadden me to give up the pleasure of playing with you tonight,
but I’ve been assured my hunger will be sated with other willing ladies on the
island. As they say, the choice rests in your hands.”

It was torment
to watch Lani’s reaction but Tait forced himself to the task, hoping she could feel
his gaze, his support, and his longing to tear up these boards then leap on Tan
with his knife at the ready. The misery on her face tore him apart. The tears pouring
from her closed eyes were like silver prayers before a death she’d clearly
resigned herself to. Why would she think otherwise? Tan intended on killing
her, no matter what. He’d simply let her decide whether he whipped and raped
her first. She’d escape the torment of the assault by accepting the agony of
signing over her home.

“Damn it,
dreamgirl.” His whisper came from the depths of his soul. “Don’t give up!”

Thank every one
of her gods, she somehow found that fortitude. He and Kellan watched, grins
growing, as she suddenly straightened her spine and jerked from the hold of the
guard to her right. In the seconds it took the guy to realize what she’d done,
she rammed her bound hands up into Tan’s nose. The two grunts she issued with
it were delivered with the emphasis unique to only one insult.