For just a moment, he felt the warmth of her breath at the base of his neck, the softness of her breasts against his chest. Once again, there was movement behind his fly, and he decided it’d probably take a nuclear bomb to keep his body from reacting to her nearness.
“Sorry.” She quickly pushed away, and he immediately missed her sweet feminine heat. She used one finger to shove her glasses higher on the bridge of her nose, and that’s when he saw her hand was shaking.
She wasn’t as cucumber-cool as she’d have him believe. Knowing that made him want to pull her back into his arms and promise her everything would be all right.
The problem with that scenario—beyond the obvious, which was that once he had her in his arms, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to let her go—was he never made a promise he couldn’t keep.
On a scale of one to oh-my-fucking-god, the amount of trouble they were in sat right around shit-on-a-stick. The only thing that kept them from going all the way up the scale to oh-my-fucking-god was that he and Wolf had been trained by the best of the best and had spent the better part of their adult lives in places where angels feared to tread, doing what only devils dared to do.
“What do you think they want?” Alex’s eyes implored him to explain how the hell she’d found herself in a situation where madmen were gunning for her.Again.
“To kill us,” Wolf answered for him.
“How can you be sure?” Chrissy asked, keeping both hands on the wheel and one eye on the sea. Despite the shit storm headed their way, she was doing a damn good job of captaining the catamaran. She could navigate the wind and currents better than any of them.
“Because you don’t show up to dinner without an appetite,” Wolf declared.
Chrissy glared, annoyed by his cryptic answer.
Wolf capitulated. “A speedboat way out here? Three guys with weapons more suited to sorties than sailin’? They got ill intentions. No doubt about it.” He turned to Mason, his black eyes narrowed. “What now?”
“Take down the sails. We’re gonna need Chrissy to be able to navigate the catamaran more easily.”
“Roger that.” Wolf turned back to Chrissy, his voice low and steady. “This is goin’ to be a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with an opponent faster than we are. But I’m hopin’ your know-how can make up for some of that disadvantage. You up for this?”
Chrissy’s eyes were each the size of Boston Common, but she swallowed and jerked her chin doggedly.
“Attagirl.” Wolf praised her again, squeezing her shoulder, and then refocused on Mason. “Once they get within firin’ range…”
Mason finished Wolf’s thought. “We blast some rays of sunshine through their frickin’ skulls.”
He could’ve couched his words for the ladies’ sakes. Sometimes SEALs were all about finesse. But other times they were the bluntest instrument in Uncle Sam’s arsenal, and when things went pear-shaped, he tended toward the latter.
“Right.” Wolf ran a loving finger over the barrel of his Colt and said something to the weapon in his native language. As a proud member of the Cherokee Nation, he harkened back to his ancestors anytime battle loomed large.
“What about me?” Alex’s face was the picture of somber courage.
“What about you?” Mason wrinkled his brow.
“You two will be dodging bullets. Chrissy will be engaged in a high-speed, high-seas boat chase. What should I do?”
“You stay up here in the pilothouse.” He didn’t addwhere it’s safe, because nowhere on the boat was safe from three goons who were locked, stocked, and ready to rock. But the pilothouse was as close to safe as it would get.
“Like hell I will.” There was steel in her voice. “Give me that.” She motioned toward the pistol in his hand. “Show me how to use it and we can even the odds.”
The mere suggestion made a cold fingernail of horror scrape up his spine. “The fuck we can. You’re crazy on a cracker if you think you can help in a gunfight when you’ve never even fired a gun.”
There was an old military axiom that saidNo plan survives first contact with the enemy. In laymen’s terms, that meant once the bullets started flying, all bets were off. The last thing he needed to worry about on top of that uncomfortable truth wasAlexthrowing herself into the mix.
“And you’re crazy on a cracker if you think I’ll sit here and do nothing.” Her glare challenged him to naysay her again.
Another time, he might have seen the humor in the situation. After all, it was like a teacup poodle asking to be thrown into the middle of a heavyweight fight. As it stood, he had no time to appreciate her desire to engage in ill-conceived feats of derring-do.
The clock was ticking. By his count, they had less than fifteen minutes before first contact.
“Take Meat belowdecks while Wolf and I lower the sails,” he told her.
“Fine. Good.” She nodded. “Then what?”
