SEAL's Baby (Navy SEAL Secret Baby Romance)

SEAL’S
BABY

By
Naomi Niles

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2016 Naomi Niles

Get my
never released free book Boarded for a limited time.

Click
here to get your free book

Chapter One

Dylan

  
I could feel the sting of heat from the explosions going off
around me. Sweat dripped down my forehead into my eyes, but I ignored the
uncomfortable sensation and kept them open and alert. We had broken off into
factions, forced apart by the tirade of gunfire that had been hurled at us.

“Malcolm!” I yelled. The
moment I had his attention, I signaled to him to stay down.

  
My peripheral vision caught sight of Antony crawling through the
sand to take cover behind an obtuse rock sticking out of the beach. The moment
he was covered, he looked at me and signaled that the others were some distance
away.

  
I looked at the distance between Antony and me; I needed to get to
him without being hit. On the heels of that thought came another explosion that
sent waves of sand swirling into little tornados that danced in cacophonous
chaos before settling back into the ground. I scanned the terrain and weighed
my chances of getting to Antony before another explosion went off.

  
Everything was engulfed in stillness, but I knew from experience
that this was simply the calm before the storm. I looked around me and made a
calculated decision. I needed to get to Antony and Malcolm so that we could
reunite with the rest of the unit. They had succeeded in separating us, but
they would not succeed in keeping us parted.

  
I took one more cursory scan and then I jumped out of my hiding
place and zigzagged across the open space. Instantly I heard the roar of gunfire
as it met my hurried run. I didn’t run in a straight line; the worst thing to
do in this situation was to be predictable. I was only a few feet away from
Antony when I jumped towards him and belly crawled into place beside him. The
gunfire continued for seconds afterwards, and then silence descended again.

“Were you hit?” Antony
asked urgently.

“I don’t think so,” I
replied panting hard. “Where’s Malcolm?”

“He’s covered; don’t
worry,” Antony replied. “We need to find the rest of the unit.”

I nodded. “Our best bet
is through the abandoned shed two metres from this spot … it’ll give us some
coverage.”

“It’s risky.”

“I know,” I nodded. “But
it’s less risky that attempting to walk through this minefield.”

  
As I checked my arsenal, Antony nudged me and gestured over to
where Malcolm was hiding. “The kid doesn’t look so good,” he observed. I
glanced over at Malcolm and took in his chalky skin and shaky expression.

“Isn’t he always that
pale?” I joked.

Antony snorted. “It’s his
first mission.”

  
“We survived it,” I said without sympathy. “And he will too. Now
put your helmets on and keep your shields up; we’re going in.”

  
Antony communicated the information to Malcolm and both of them
got to their feet the moment I did. Their bodies were hunched down low, in an
imitation of mine so that we weren’t obvious targets. “Move fast,” I mouthed to
both of them before I launched myself into open space with single-minded
purpose.

  
They were on my heels and we jogged through the shaky sand that
seemed to want us to sink into it. The gunfire started up again when we were
half way there and I launched myself into a defensive position without ever
slowing down.

“Cover yourself,” I
yelled over the noise.

  
Within seconds, we scrambled into the abandoned shed and Antony
closed the door shut behind us. It was larger than I had anticipated. In fact,
it was not a shed at all but a base of some kind, cordoned off into separate
rooms that we couldn’t see.

  
Malcolm came forward but I threw my fist up to stop him. “Hold
your ground,” I said, sensing danger. “This is not what we expected.”

  
I walked around; my boots were covered in sand and they left a
trail of dust behind me. I covered the left side of the room, Antony covered
the right and Malcolm stayed in the middle. “Something’s not right,” I
whispered.

  
Malcolm took a step forward and his boot made a loud, crunching
sound against the floorboards. Instantly a sound came through from the closed
door of the next room.

“There’s someone in
here,” I mouthed to Malcolm and Antony. We converged together in the centre of
the room. “We’re going in.”

  
I moved towards the door slowly and placed my ear up against it. I
couldn’t hear much, but instinct told me that whoever was on the other side of
it was hostile. I looked back over my shoulder and nodded once. Then I slammed
open the door and we were through it in seconds, my eyes open and my body was
ready to respond to whatever we found.

  
Chaos was the only way to describe what we met, and yet, within
the chaos, I knew I needed to be calm and ordered in how I met the situation.
There were four men in the room and the moment they saw us, they acted with
fury. Each had a different weapon, but it didn’t matter to me. I had been
trained to deal with every kind of assault.

  
Two men charged at me; one had a gun in hand and the other had a
knife. I disarmed the man with the knife easily and knocked him out before the
second one had closed in on me. I dodged his aim and tackled him to the floor
before he could fire. He was screaming something but I didn’t care to find out
what. Once he was down, I rose and glanced behind me. Antony and Malcolm had
managed to stop the remaining two men.

“Are we clear?” Antony
asked breathlessly.

  
The room was as plain and empty as the one before. “They were
guarding something,” I said with conviction. “I think what we’re looking for is
in the next room.”

“Or it could be a trap?”
Malcolm said coming forward.

“It could be,” I agreed.
“There’s only one way to find out.”

  
I saw the panic flit across Malcolm’s face and I recognized the
feeling all too well. I had experienced the same mindless fear on my first
mission too. I knew that in time, with training and experience, that would
pass. “Stay behind me,” I said before I kicked the second door open.

  
Dust created a translucent curtain before us for a moment before
finally settling. We were not met with hostile enemies or gunfire. All was
quiet, and so I slowly entered the room and scanned the area. There was a chair
in the centre of the space and in it sat a man whose hands and legs were tied.
A brown sack had been placed over his head so that his face was hidden from us.

  
I felt a wave of triumph overtake me as I moved towards the man to
pull off the bag from his head. He blinked his eyes open and looked at me with
a smile. “Hi, Dylan,” he said with a congratulatory note in his tone.

“Hi Vic,” I replied
before I turned to Malcolm. “What now?”

Malcolm hesitated for a
second. “You’re the bullfrog in this mission.”

“And I’m asking you,” I
insisted.

“E and E? Malcolm said, and
then he continued with confidence. “Escape and Evade.”

“That’s right,” I nodded
as Antony started to untie Vic from his binds.

  
At that moment, the door opened and in walked the captain with his
discerning eye and commanding presence. He was six feet tall, two inches
shorter than I was, and yet somehow he still seemed taller and bigger than
me.
 

“Well done, boys,” he
said as he nodded to them. “This Body Snatch mission is a success. The training
drill is complete.”

  
Instantly I felt the veil of suspense fall and I was once again in
a safe environment surrounded by my friends. We walked out to the cheers of the
rest of the unit and I nodded at Malcolm, who was standing beside me. “Good job,
kid; you did good.”

“I didn’t do much,”
Malcolm replied.

“You didn’t get killed or
hurt,” I reminded him. “That’s saying something.”

  
Malcolm looked at me as though he was trying to figure out if I
was joking or not. “It was a training drill,” he said slowly. “I wasn’t in any
danger of being killed.”

  
“You have no idea how many SEALs before you have been hurt in
training drills. Trust me, they may not be life threatening, but they’re
certainly not safe.” I looked around at the rest of the unit. Everyone had
streaks of dirt and sweat that had left patterns on their faces.

  
“Good job, boys,” I said, raising my voice so that everyone would
be able to hear me. “This was the fifth training drill in a row that was
completed successfully. I think that calls for a little down time. Let’s hit
the bar tonight!”

  
My words were met with a roar of cheers as we moved back into the
main encampment to wash ourselves off and change back into civilian clothing. My
body started cramping the moment it was free of clothes and all I wanted was to
stand underneath a burning hot shower and feel the knots in my back loosen. Hot
showers were an almost mythical privilege to me at this point considering the
camp never had anything but cold water.

  
I stood in the shower for longer than necessary, dreaming of the
weekend that awaited me. I longed for those two days, for the comfort of a strong
drink and the feel of a woman’s body. That was the only therapy I needed and it
gave me enough fuel to last the week. I had just finished dressing when Malcolm
emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. The kid was in
his early twenties, but in terms of training and experience he might as well
have been sixteen.

“Hey,” he said when he
caught sight of me. “I thought I was the only one still around.”

“I like my showers long.”

“Me too,” Malcolm nodded.
“Well, not really. I just needed to … reflect.”

“On training?”

“On everything, I
suppose,” he replied as he sat down opposite me. “This is much harder than I
expected, and then some.”

“They train the very best
here,” I replied. “That reputation doesn’t go with lenient training methods.”

  
“No, I get it,” Malcolm said. “It’s just that it doesn’t matter
how much you prepare mentally for this kind of thing, it’s always so much worse
when you’re actually in it.”

“I felt the same way my
first time,” I admitted.

“But you continued
anyway?”

“Yes I continued,” I
nodded.

“Why?”

I shrugged. “It was the
decision I had made; it was the life I chose and I was going to stick with it
no matter what.”

“How old were you when
you joined?” Malcolm asked.

“Eighteen,” I replied.

“Eighteen,” Malcolm
repeated with some shock.

  
I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was trying to
figure me out. I smiled internally; I had been trying to do just that for the
last ten years and I hadn’t gotten very far. This kid certainly wasn’t going to
get much further.

“Do you like it?” Malcolm
asked with some hesitation.

“Do I like what?” I
asked, pretending as though I couldn’t understand his question.

“Do you like this life?”
Malcolm asked. “Do you like the life of a Navy SEAL?”

  
“You know what I like?” I asked as I rose. “I like bars and I like
alcohol and I like women. In fact, I really, really like women. So why don’t we
go get ourselves a little bit of both and start this weekend off right?”

  
Malcolm seemed a little taken back but he nodded belatedly and
started to get dressed. I turned back to grab my own things but my mind was
still preoccupied with Malcolm’s last question. Did I like this life? Was I
really happy? The truth was that I had enjoyed it at one point, but something
had changed in the last few years.

  
I was struggling to find the same sense of exhilaration that I had
experienced early on in my career. Now I just waited for the weekend to come
around so that I could forget for just a few moments where I was and what I was
doing. Malcolm’s question forced me to think of an answer and the only answer
that rang true was that I was bored and unhappy.