Redeeming Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 9) (20 page)

“Meanwhile,” Charlie interrupted with a sardonic twist of his lips. “Audra and I are without even a drop for our parched throats.”

Crossing his arms, Jace nodded at Miles. “You heard the man. Chop-chop.”

Miles shot Jace the finger and then glanced at Audra. “Sorry. My mama would slap me for being so rude in front of a lady. I haven’t had the pleasure yet. I’m Miles Lynch, by the way.”

In a show of ignoring the multitudes of paying customers who thronged the bar, he stuck out his hand and Audra shook it.

“Dr. Audra Reed.” Which was probably completely unnecessary to announce, but social conventions dictated that you said your name when someone told you theirs.

“You keeping the Saint in line?” He jerked his head at Charlie, who just shook his head in bemusement.

“Actually, I’m afraid I’ve been working on corrupting him,” she countered with a smile as both Miles and Jace applauded enthusiastically.

“Thank God someone can.” Jace rolled his eyes. “I get tired of always coming up short.”

“Stop being such a jackass all the time then.” Charlie suggested amiably as Stella lifted the pass-through on her way to investigate the complete stoppage of alcohol flow behind the bar.

Jace and Miles slunk off back to work, and Stella poured two glasses of wine for Charlie and Audra, chatted a bit about the weather, tourist season, and a pending regulation she’d heard about that might affect all Bahamian business owners. It was a sobering reminder that Charlie was one, just like Stella.

Audra had been pretending that she and Charlie were nothing more than a couple out on the town. Stella’s reminder that Aqueous Adventures still had big problems, which Audra was on point to resolve, threw a splash of cold water on the works.

She needed to talk to Jared about cancelling the injunction. But she could wait until he got home from Singapore, couldn’t she? Odds of that being a good long-distance conversation were slim. She almost had herself convinced Jared’s travel schedule was the issue and not her lack of confidence.

Finally alone, Audra glanced at Charlie and opted to go with the subject the least likely to prick holes in the balloon of their evening. “I like your friends.”

He nodded. “They’re my family. Life would be very different without them.”

All at once, she yearned to be a part of something so defined, to be counted as one of the people he depended on. This last week had shown her that Charlie wasn’t going anywhere. They were together, like he’d promised. His guys were pretty solid on the concept of his sainthood, likely because he had a habit of trying to do the right thing. They wouldn’t have given him that nickname otherwise.

What if everything she’d ever wanted was right here in her grasp, and she was holding back in anticipation of Charlie leaving her again when that might never happen?

Looked like she’d finally figured out what she wanted from this relationship—
everything
. But the path to getting it seemed so murky. She and Charlie desperately needed some clarity, and she had to figure out how to get it.

C
harlie woke from a nightmare-free night’s sleep with Audra’s hair tangled around his fingers and the rest of the woman tangled around his body. That was a nice way to greet the morning indeed, especially given that they had the whole day off and no plans to do anything more strenuous than steam up the shower with some well-placed body parts.

He could do this a lot more often. Like maybe on a more permanent basis. But given how she’d reacted to the discussion of marriage, he wasn’t so sure Audra was willing to jump into
that
. He didn’t blame her for being gun-shy given their history. But oddly, the more time he spent with her, the more he could envision the possibility of trying long-term. Sheer will went a long way toward keeping his cool when weird things started firing off in his body.

But whether he got his own roadblocks to this relationship straightened out or not, that didn’t automatically turn Audra into someone who liked the idea of commitment. She had never been needy, which honestly had always been her most attractive quality. Who the hell was he to be thinking about long-term anyway, especially with a woman who had turned independence into an art form?

Of course, if she was pregnant, the discussion would be very short.
Pick a date to get married and where you want to live.
Selfishly, he’d prefer not to have to force the issue and for her to think the idea was wonderful. But today was not the day to hash all of that out.

Audra stretched her lithe little body, and her butt brushed up against his groin with exactly the right pressure to get his attention.

“Looking for me?” he growled and spooned up against her back to nudge her with his instant erection. She smelled like woman and sex, and it put a slow burn in his midsection that he intended to nurture into a hot flame.

Instead of wiggling into place so he could push inside her slowly and firmly like he’d had in mind, she rolled away, springing up out of the bed with way too much energy.

“Get up,” she instructed, clearly not interested in the irony of how “up” he already was or she would have stayed in bed to take care of his needs. Not one of which was to be out of bed at nine o’clock in the morning.

“I would rather you
not
get up,” he grumbled. “Why are you way over there? And putting clothes on?”

Her gorgeous rear disappeared behind a bikini bottom, and she turned, unashamedly half-naked and unconcerned about displaying her bare breasts that had abrasions on them from Charlie’s whiskers. “Because we have places to be.”

He shoved his hands behind his head in order to get comfortable as he watched the show. Her breasts were a work of art that should be admired with all due respect.

But then she ruined everything by covering her erect nipples with the triangles of a swim top and tied the strings. Shame. Now he was going to have to move in order to get her naked again.

“I’m an expert at untying that,” he informed her. Obviously she required an education on how a “day off” worked.

“I’m counting on it,” she informed him back with a saucy swing of her hips. “I’m taking you to Ilhota Rosa. This is my day off, and I want to have fun. Dolphins, salt water, and your magic fingers are all on my list. Unless there’s something else you want to add?”

Okay. So maybe she did have a grasp on the concept.

“An entire box of condoms,” he quipped and didn’t miss it when she flinched.

They’d kept using protection despite that one misstep; not enough time had passed to figure out if it mattered. Or rather, whether or not she was pregnant. Clearly, the broken condom
mattered
, or she wouldn’t have visibly blanched when he brought up getting married.

Every other woman on the planet would appreciate a man who stepped up to his responsibilities, who did the right thing every time without fail. And marrying the mother of his baby counted as the right thing. Always.

Even if he’d never considered the idea of marriage before. To anyone. Marriage had little to recommend it, and it was permanent. What if he fell apart again, like he had in that horrible little hospital where they’d treated the team after Abu Al-Khaseeb? Audra would be stuck with him.

Yeah, considering marriage or any iteration of long-term was a really bad idea at this point when they couldn’t have a conversation without detonating a crap-ton of ordinance that took off several layers of skin. If she wasn’t flinching over a touchy subject, he was.

Sex, he liked. Sex, he could do. Sex wiped out everything else but the two of them, which was the way it should be. The rest of this? Not in his realm of expertise. All he knew was that he wanted Audra naked twenty-four seven and the problems to go away.

Sighing, he climbed from Audra’s bed since the mood had broken into a million pieces anyway. She’d rented a boat to take them to Ilhota Rosa, but unlike the first time they’d made this trek two years ago, they didn’t need a driver since he had more than enough familiarity with the area to act as their guide. Evan had built a dock at the island, which he headed toward.

After Audra filed her report, the Wildlife Foundation had secured the help of the Bahamas National Trust to designate the area as a national park, but it was too far away from Abaco, the nearest large island, for many tourists to make the trek. That’s what made snorkeling excursions from Duchess Island so special—no other excursion company could travel to the reef in a day trip.

The sun shone, and the breeze lifted Audra’s hair, making her smile, which reminded him that this day could still be about simple pleasures. And more complex ones, because he’d double-checked to be sure she’d packed essentials—a blanket and condoms. She had food in her bag too, which was also a nice touch.

At the rickety dock, he tied up the rental and helped Audra onto the splintered boards. The platform rocked under their feet, but the splendor of Ilhota Rosa captured every bit of his attention as the pink sand warred with both the foliage and Audra’s red hair. It was a nice kind of chaos, one he’d always appreciated because it wasn’t his mess to sort out.

At least it hadn’t been. Now it was. Just breathing in the tropical air here got his juices flowing. The coral reef off the coast ribboned through the water, just visible from his vantage point. It was so close to the island it was considered a part of it, which was what made it such a great locale for snorkeling. Tourists loved it. There wasn’t another spot like it in the entire Caribbean—he’d looked. Without it, the heart of his company had been ripped from its mooring, and the hemorrhaging had gotten bad enough to be serious.

Aqueous Adventure was dying, and he’d been waiting around for… what? Rachel to fight his battles for him?

He needed to take action, and being here at the battleground solidified his next steps. A cute dolphin habitat program wasn’t going to cut it. But he had an idea what would—he needed to cut the head of the snake off at the throat.

“Nice addition,” Audra commented with a nod at the dock as she gripped his hand tighter. “I’m shocked it’s still standing.”

“I’ll pass your compliments on to my builder,” he said with a grin. “We didn’t bother to upgrade since we didn’t know what was happening to the island.”

Still didn’t.

Audra stiffened, sending up a nonverbal red flag that they’d fallen into yet another pothole on the road to wherever the hell they were going. And the worst part was that he didn’t even know what he’d tripped over. Her part in the war going on with Anderson, which she’d yet to own up to? He could hardly call her on being closemouthed about something when he was just as bad.

Well, he knew one way to get her good and relaxed. And get his mind focused on the one thing that made sense between them. Sex was always a good answer to their problems.

He slipped the bag from her shoulder and let it thunk to the sand and rummaged around until he found the blanket, spread it out, and got to work on Audra’s wardrobe. Her eyes flashed with sweet heat as he grabbed the string around her neck and pulled. The triangles fell away to reveal her peaked nipples.

“Fast work,” she said and squeaked as he yanked her into his arms to bring his mouth down on hers.

Yeah. Because he was tired of slow.

Her tongue was already halfway out to meet his in a clash of sensation. Her hard nipples ground into his chest, and he needed his shirt gone. Grasping the hem, he pulled it over his head, barely separating from her mouth long enough to get the thing off. The shush of the surf enlivened him, seeped into his blood, energizing every pore of his body as he put his hands on her gorgeous breasts, thumbing her nipples until she moaned against his tongue.

Her hands skimmed over his bare torso, enflaming his skin in a nonsensical trail that curved in and around itself until she set up camp on his abs, feeling every nook and cranny like it was braille and she’d found her favorite line.

Then she dipped south, and he groaned as her hot hand snaked into his shorts, cupping his flesh. Not to be outdone, he slid his own palm under the waistband of her bikini bottom and followed the curve of her bottom until he hit the glory of damp heat between her thighs.

She sucked in a breath, and her knees buckled as he fingered her, almost throwing him off-balance, but he caught her easily. With no wall to brace her against, he had to improvise. Twisting, he dropped to the blanket and pulled her down on top of him because he wanted his hands free. She had her own ideas about how things were going to go and untied the string of his board shorts, then slid them off. Buck naked on the blanket worked for him, especially with a mischievous topless redhead eyeing his erection like she’d located the end of the rainbow and the treasure there far surpassed her wildest dreams.

“You lie still,” she commanded him. “I haven’t had you at my mercy like this in a long time, and I’m taking full advantage.”

He should stop her. But she trailed her hair down his torso as she kissed her way in a straight line to his groin, then licked the hard length jutting skyward until his hips lifted off the blanket in reaction.