SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (27 page)

Ivy lifted her chin. Please let HOT still be here. Please let them be patrolling the waters and let them come investigating.

“I’m not. They’re supposed to meet their contact at midnight one nautical mile to the east. If we move closer now, we could spook them. We have to stay here.”

Ruiz moved toward her, and she cringed before she could stop herself. But all he did was uncuff her from the support and then cuff her wrists together in front of her body.

“We’re going below,” he told the man at the helm. “Notify me when there’s something to report.”

Ruiz grabbed her by the arm and shoved her down the stairs. Her feet caught in the wrap she’d tied around her waist so many hours ago and she fell to the bottom. Ruiz was on her in seconds, dragging her up and throwing her down again on the nearest cushioned surface.

It was only when he jerked the wrap from her body that she began to understand his purpose. Horror clawed its way into her throat. He was her uncle.
Her uncle!

“Don’t look so surprised,” he told her as he shrugged out of his shirt. “You’re a beautiful girl… and I’m a man who appreciates beauty…”

‡

D
ane lowered the
binoculars, his body as tense as a cat getting ready to pounce. They’d found the intruder’s boat precisely where Mendez had said they would. Knight Rider powered in as close as he dared. They were running with lights out, but they weren’t blind. This is what SEALs did. What HOT did. Dane loved the thrill of it, even if he was far too invested in this particular aspect of the op to enjoy it as much as he usually did.

“Looks like six armed men in the stern. One at the helm. No sign of Ivy.”

“She could be stowed away down below,” Iceman said.

“Can you pinpoint where her phone is transmitting from?” Matt asked Billy.

Kid tapped on his laptop. “Hard to pin down with one hundred percent accuracy, but I’d say it’s coming from beneath the waterline.”

Dane’s insides churned. “So either she’s down there, or someone with her phone is.”

“Yep, that’s the way I see it,” Big Mac said. He turned to Brandy and Double Dee, the sniper and spotter. “Think you guys can pop those assholes quick and clean?”

Brandy snorted. “You’re fucking kidding, right?”

Big Mac grinned. “Just yanking your chain, dude.”

“Let’s get closer,” Matt said. “We have no idea how many are below, so we need to be able to storm the boat as quickly as we can.”

Chase throttled the boat into gear, and they glided softly through the water. The engines were quiet, a special prototype courtesy of DARPA. Dane would like to get his hands on something like that for his SEALs. It crossed his mind that if he stayed with HOT, that might just be a possibility.

They moved as close as they could without alerting the other craft—and then Brandy and Double Dee went to work. The bodies dropped before the report rang out on the night air. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

The men didn’t have a chance to realize what was happening before they fell. Chase knocked the throttle into high gear, and they made for the yacht. When they came alongside, he’d already powered down enough to allow Dane and the guys to jump from one boat to the other.

Dane landed on the deck amidst bodies and tore for the cabin. But when he ripped the door open, gun up and ready to fire, a man stood in the center of the floor, his arm around Ivy’s neck and a gun against her temple.

Relief didn’t even have a chance to make its way through his system before rage arrived. Ivy was clothed only in a turquoise bikini. The top was perilously close to revealing her breasts, the cups shifted sideways and slipping as she held on to the arm of the man holding her and tried not to choke.

There were red marks on her abdomen, an angry slash from her belly to the top of her bikini bottoms. Finger marks. Dane saw red.

“Drop the gun or I’ll kill her,” the man said.

“And then you’ll kill me. No.”

The dude blinked. “You want me to shoot her?”

“No, but neither do you. She’s your leverage. Drop her and I’m dropping you.”

Ivy’s green eyes were huge in her face, but he knew she understood what he was doing. He couldn’t afford to feel fear right now. Couldn’t afford tenderness or mercy. If he let those things out, if he let the very real fear he had for her safety show, it would mean the end of her life. And possibly his.

He gripped his MK45 tighter and kept it trained on the man’s head. He could take the shot. He could drop the guy here and now—but the boat rocked hard in the water from the wake of the assault boat. If he was off by even a hair, he risked hitting Ivy.

And there would be no coming back from that.

“I’m a rich man. I could make it worth your while—worth your team’s while—to let me leave here.”

Dane pretended to consider it. “How much we talking?”

“One million.”

“You said that so quickly I’m sure you can do better. Five million.”

He’d figured out by now that this man was a Ruiz. He didn’t know which one, but it didn’t much matter. He was a dead man regardless of which scumbag Ruiz brother he was.

“Five million then. Call your team off and let me leave in the boat. Once I’m safe in port, I’ll let her go and you’ll get your money.”

Dane didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know at least one of his HOT teammates was behind him, listening to everything this man said.

“What do you think? Sound fair?”

It was Ryan “Flash” Gordon’s voice that filtered down to him. “Naw, not quite. There are nine of us—ten if you count Ivy. I think we need a million each.”

“There you go,” Dane said, surprised at how cool he managed to sound. “Ten mil. You get to walk away. But Ivy stays here and one of us goes with you. To make sure you make that transfer, of course.”

Ruiz looked about as happy as an alligator in a purse factory. He was growing frustrated with the runaround, and his grip on Ivy had loosened. Not by much, but enough that she was no longer struggling to breathe.

The look in her eyes was pure fury as she stared at Dane over Ruiz’s arm. He didn’t know what that meant, but he was in the zone and unable to worry about it.

Please, God, just let him get her free. After that, he didn’t care what happened.

Suddenly, Ivy rocketed into motion. Dane hadn’t seen it coming, but she somehow managed to drop and spin, jerking herself loose from Ruiz’s grip as she did so. It happened so fast that her captor lost his grip on his pistol, which clattered to the floor. It went off with a boom, and Dane screamed at Ivy.

But Ivy wasn’t stopping. She sprang up off her feet, the heel of one hand aimed at Ruiz’s face, the other holding her wrist for leverage. She rammed her palm into his nose—and he fell over backward, blood spewing from his face as he hit the floor with a thud.

Dane was at Ivy’s side in one step, grabbing her and shoving her behind him as he aimed the pistol at Ruiz’s head. But Ruiz wasn’t moving.

“Did I kill him?”

Dane dropped and put his fingers against Ruiz’s pulse. It throbbed beneath his fingers, but the man was out cold.

“He’s alive.”

“Fuck.”

“Everything under control down there?” Flash peeked into the cabin.

Dane turned and nodded. “Yeah. Give us a sec.”

He patted Ruiz down until he found the key to the handcuffs Ivy wore. Dane stood and unlocked them, then took the metal bracelets and wrapped them around Ruiz’s wrists. Tight.

When he turned again, Ivy was standing there rubbing her wrists. She’d straightened her bikini top, but blood spattered the fabric and her smooth skin.

Ruiz’s blood. Dane sucked in a breath and felt the beginnings of a tremor roll through him. He could have lost her. Forever.

She looked up at him then, her eyes uncertain in her pretty face. He didn’t know what was going on behind those eyes, but he couldn’t stop himself from dragging her against his body and burying his face in her hair.

“Ivy… Shit, that was stupid.”

‡

I
vy stiffened in
Dane’s arms. He was warm and big, and she felt safe tucked up against him—but then he had to go and say something like that. She pushed herself away from his big body and glared up at him.

He was dressed for combat, his face painted and his hair hidden beneath a black balaclava. He was also bristling with weaponry. His black assault suit had pockets and loops, and there was more equipment on him than she could count.

He was, in short, scary-looking.

But she wasn’t afraid of him. She was pissed.

“Damn you,” she growled. “I just took that asshole down, and you want to critique my decision-making skills? I got tired of waiting for you to shoot his ass.”

Dane’s blue eyes shone from his darkened face. “Shoot him? We’re on a rolling boat and he had a gun to your head. How the fuck was I supposed to shoot him when you were in danger?”

“It’s your job, mister. I expect it’s not the first time you’ve shot a target while standing on a bobbing deck.”

She could see his Adam’s apple move. “No… but it’s the first time some piece of shit had a gun to the head of someone I care about.”

Care about
. Her heart thumped. He cared… well, hell, she knew that, didn’t she? But did he still love her? Could he ever love her again? She wanted desperately to know, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

She reached up and put her hand to his cheek. Then she smiled. Adrenaline tumbled through her system, and she hadn’t quite gotten it under control yet. Hell, she might fall apart at any minute. But for the moment, this was what she wanted to do.

“It’s okay, Dane. I’m fine.” Her smile faded. “Did… did you find Ace?”

“He’s in the hospital. He’s going to make it.”

Ivy’s bottom lip quivered. Now that was just the news she needed to make her lose it. A tear rolled down her cheek, and then another. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”

“Yeah.”

Two of the guys came down the stairs to collect Ruiz. They looked every bit as big and bad as Dane did, and she thanked God for them as well. They’d been here, and they’d come for her when they had a mission that was far more important than a single life.

“What about the sub? Did you find it?”

“That’s the next stop,” Dane said. “They’re surfacing somewhere near Pineapple Key in about twenty-five minutes. We’ll be waiting.”

“Then we should probably go and get them.”

He let his gaze drop over her body. “You’re cold.”

Goose bumps started to prickle on her skin like ants heading for a party. “A little.”

He slung his arm around her and guided her up the stairs. The bodies of Ruiz’s men slumped in the stern. She didn’t much care. She stepped past them all and went over to the side where the commando boat was moored. Dane handed her up, and then someone on the other side helped her over.

Dane was beside her quickly, and he grabbed a blanket from somewhere and wrapped it around her. She took it gratefully, not only because she was cold, but because she felt exposed in this stupid bikini. Not that the men were staring at her, because they weren’t. They very deliberately were not, she thought.

“Hey,” Chase, aka Fiddler, said, and she looked up. “You okay?”

“Perfectly fine.”

One of the others grinned. Iceman. “You did a number on that man’s face. Nice work.”

“You saw that?”

“Not exactly, but it couldn’t have been Viking. He was too busy trying not to shit his pants because the dude had you in a choke hold.”

A couple of the other guys snorted.

“Hey, let some asshole take your girl hostage and see how you feel,” Dane retorted.

Iceman’s expression sobered. “Already been there, man. I feel you, believe me.”

Ivy was still reeling about being called Dane’s girl when the boat started to slide through the water. She watched Ruiz’s yacht recede in the distance.

“The Coast Guard will retrieve it,” Dane said at her side, and she glanced up at him. His presence made her heart skip even when she didn’t want it to. There was so much she wanted to say to him—but not here on the deck of an assault boat filled with military commandos.