Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Protecting Butterfly (Kindle Worlds Novella) (SEALed Fate Book 1)

by LeTeisha Newton

  His heart ached and stuttered in his chest.

  “Let’s go for that drive.”

  He let her slide away from him and rush from the room. He didn’t chase her. Just listened as her soft footfalls advanced up the stairs. He was thirty, the first time he decided to tell a woman he loved her and she ran away. Defeat tasted bitter on his tongue, but he swallowed it. She could run, but she couldn’t hide. He’d chased her across oceans, fought terrorists, brought her home, and kept her safe. He could understand fear, but he wasn’t going to lose her.

  Every minute, every day, in every way he could, he’d show her what they shared was real. How silly he’d been to believe that saving her would be the hardest battle. That keeping her alive and getting her home would be enough. No problem. Heim trained for hard work, and a SEAL didn’t give up. She might of won the battle, but he’d win the war.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Katya

  “Did you just seriously ask me if I wanted to play twenty questions? How old are you, ten?” Katya asked. She shifted against the supple leather seats inside Heim’s car. She’d been surprised at the luxury vehicle he chosen to take them out in. When she’d asked about it, he’d only shrugged and said he’d made pretty good investments.

  Go figure. A trained warrior planning for the future.

  Our future, I hope.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to go down that road. Two days before, Heim told her he loved her, and she still hadn’t figured out how she felt about it. Did she care for him? Of course she did. She couldn’t imagine another man touching her the way he did. But the time frame was still bothering her. Whirlwind romances only ended up in broken hearts and divorce court. She didn’t want to be part of those statistics.

  “Earth to Princess.”

  She blushed, embarrassed she’d lost track of the conversation. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “We aren’t playing any ordinary twenty questions. That would be boring. Besides, grown people can come up with some pretty awesome rules.”

  “So what are your rules, Mr. Adult?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead he pushed harder on the gas pedal and the car shot forward on the highway. As a native of the East Coast, when her father was later stationed at the Washington Naval Yard in D.C. as MCPON, it didn’t change her surroundings much. D.C. afforded her a lot of opportunities as a translator. California was different. On medical leave from her position, she hadn’t seen much of it since getting out the hospital. Heim’s house on base was a place of refuge and protection. The SEALs of his team still resided with them each night to ensure she felt safe.

  Couldn’t deny a girl could get use to all of it.

  The warm sun, the scent of the sea in the air, and miles of beaches all were amazing. The air conditioner pumped out crisp air into the car, battling the heat from outside as they drove steadily northwest up from San Diego. She wasn’t sure where they were going, but wondered what Heim had in mind, and exactly when his twenty questions would come into play.

  A couple of hour later they’d entered L.A. and traveled up above sea level to a large stone building. The top had a wide bronze dome, and she wondered where she was. They seemed to have come up to a back entrance. But she did recognize five familiar faces standing outside.

  “What is the team doing here?” she questioned.

  “You’ll see.”

  They pulled into the drive and Snake opened her door for her as Hawk extended his hand to help her from the car. “As lovely as ever,” he told her.

  “You’re only saying that because you want me to make you more beef stroganoff,” she joked.

  “Guilty, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

  “How you all eat the way you do and don’t gain a pound makes me feel homicidal,” she grumbled.

  “I’m wounded. You’d hurt us?” Snake asked.

  She opened her mouth to answer but Heim cut off her response. “Is the inside clear?”

  “As you asked. Dad had to help out a bit, but we’ve got clearance,” Snake told him.

  “Let's get in there and set up and we’ll radio you in five,” Glitz said.

  Before she could say anything, Hawk, Snake, Glitz, and Welsh left her and Heim standing outside, alone.

  “What is going on?” she asked.

  “Here’s how twenty questions is going to work. You will ask me something you want to know about me, but every time you stop to worry about the time we’ve been together, of this being ridiculous when it comes to love, you’ll take something off.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Did you just mix strip poker and twenty questions?”

  “Maybe. I’m sort of hoping you get really scared at the moment.”

  “I’m not taking my clothes off in public, Heim. I don’t care about the game.”

  “You won’t be. You’ll take them off under the stars as they dance through the sky just for you. You’ll get to know the man who loves you, and may realize that knowing a whole bunch of facts about me won’t really change what we feel.”

  “Heim, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Yeah, it was. Knowing me for two years versus two months is just the wheel turning. Actions, Katya, that’s what matters. Do you agree to the game rules?”

  “No.”

  “No problem.” He stalked passed her toward the back door.

  “Huh?”

  “Those weren’t the rules anyway. Actually, it’s the reverse. You don’t ask me, and try to see things from my side, then my team is about to get a bird’s eye view of the goods.”

  “You’re crazy, Heim. This doesn’t make any sense. Wait.” She raced after him as he headed inside.

  “I’m crazy about you, Katya. Completely, utterly, and totally. I’m willing to show you just how much. If it takes my team seeing my bare ass in one of the most romantic settings in L.A., then so be it.”

  “What is this place?”

  “Griffith Observatory. We’ve got it clear for us today with the star show on play for us.”

  “You closed down an observatory for a date?”

  “Well, your father helped.”

  “My father!”

  “Times wasting, Katya. You’re backpedaling, so I suppose I need to get rid of something.”

  He stopped in the middle of the quiet hall, her pants breaking the silence around them. He used one foot to toe off his shoe on the other foot.

  “Heim, this insane.”

  “Hmm,” was his only reply. The next shoe came off.

  “Heim!”

  “Yeah, Princess?” There went a sock.

  “Stop this right now. This is crazy. We don’t need all this. Let’s just find a nice place to have dinner and go home.”

  “Sure, thing.” Another sock. He had lost his damn mind.

  “Xavier!”

  “Say that again,” he told her.

  “What? Your name?”

  “Yeah. Normally call me Heim.”

  Heim, for her, represented the warrior, protection. That one night in Dubai when she found a kindred soul to her own. A man who handled what she tossed at him and gave more back. Maybe she’d been putting distance between them ever since then. When she believed that she couldn’t have him.

  “Want to know why I left the room that night?” she asked.

  “I’d wondered, but I thought you would tell me when you were ready.”

  “I wanted to run away, but realized I’d taken your key. That I’d looked in your wallet to find out more about you. That I left behind this.” She fingered the golden star necklace from her father.

  “I never take it off. Never wanted to. And I had, with you. I was afraid, even then, that what we had was too intense. It was a one night stand, right? I shouldn’t have felt my heart pounding every time you touched me. It was crazy, wild, and felt so right.”

  Tears pooled in her eyes, but when he moved to come toward her, she held up a hand to stop him. “I wanted to stay away, to break the conn
ection. But I couldn’t. I was on my way back up to you, to crawl into bed and blindly see where things went when they snatched me from the elevator, just one floor below your suite.”

  She stopped. She didn't’ tell him how she’d tried to scream for him. That she’d fought, even then, to get back to his side before they knocked her out. Hearing that would only upset him. She knew that. Instead she gave him an olive branch. That tentative step out into the darkness toward his light.

  “I’ll play your game, Xavier.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Katya

  She followed behind as Heim padded barefoot into a darkened room. At the entrance she stopped, unable to pass into the darkness. Her lungs deflated and she struggled to suck in a full breath. Raspy and wet, a wheeze swelled inside of her as she stared in the abyss. I’m fine. Heim is in there. The guys are in the building somewhere. I’m okay. She tried to calm herself, but her terror mounted. She balled her fists tight, her nails cutting into her palms. The sharp pain swung the world back into focus. The darkness wasn’t as pitch as she thought. Heim had turned around, coming back toward her, but waited now.

  “Come on, Princess. You’ve got this.”

  She sucked in a deep breath and forced herself to step forward. One step. Her calf locked and twisted. The muscle bunched and tempted her to step back into the safety of the light. She ignored it. Instead she took another step and brought herself completely into the room. Heim took her in his arms.

  “The first step is the hardest,” he whispered in her ear before he stepped back. “Come one, Princess, you got this.”

  “You know we’re here for you.”

  Welsh. She knew his colorful brogue anywhere. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized there was more light than she originally believed. Above her head, dots of white light danced against a dark background. She recognized Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper. She even picked up on The Seven Sisters constellation. And posted on either side of the two exits were the rest of the team. Welsh operated the controls for the show, while Snake and Glitz were on either side of the door she’d come through and Hawk and Cry Baby were across from them.

  “You would come here, too?” she asked.

  “Anywhere you need us,” Snake told her. “Anywhere in the world. By land, sea, or air.”

  “Sit down, Princess, and don’t ask a single question. I’d like to totally prove that Heim is shriveled up in the penis department. God has to balance his good looks some way,” Welsh called out.

  Heim’s response was a middle finger thrust proudly in the air.

  “Oh, that’s how big it is? Poor sod.”

  Katya snorted, unable to contain her mirth.

  “You want to help me out a bit?” Heim asked her.

  “I don’t kiss and tell, pretty boy,” she answered. She doubled over with laughter as she fell into a chair. This. She wanted this. The companionship, the easy way they talked to each other, and a partner she could laugh with. How many men did she know who would make a complete ass of themselves for the woman they loved, just to prove their point? A point that didn’t benefit themselves? She sighed. None. She hadn’t met a single man she’d ever known tried to do something similar for her.

  “Ready to play, Princess?” Heim asked her.

  “Yeah. I think I am. What’s your middle name?” she asked.

  “That’s what you want to know? You’ve got twenty questions to mess his whole world up and she wants to know something she can get off his driver’s license. It’s Eugene, by the way. I officially say that answer doesn’t count. You may try again,” Snake said.

  “Shut up, Snake. It’s her show,” Heim cautioned.

  “Yeah? And I’m just helping my girl out. Someone has to wrangle you, and I so need it to be here, ya dig?”

  “I hate you,” Heim told him. Snake just blew him a kiss.

  “I guess that’s a no go question. How about what’s your greatest fear?”

  “Not seeing something.”

  “What?”

  “Before I became a SEAL or team leader, I was a sniper. My mission was one sectioned into one bullet at a time. A spotter at my side to keep me steady,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at Snake, who nodded his head in acknowledgement.

  “You’ve been together a long time,” she commented.

  “Longer, if the gods are willing,” Snake agreed.

  “Yeah. They depend on my eyes. To see what’s coming. To direct them and get them home. And when it mattered, really mattered, I missed it.”

  “They are all here, though.”

  Heim swallowed and bowed his head. His words rushed out of him, more confession than answer.

  “Not them, you, Princess. I woke up the next morning and the best thing that ever happened to me was gone. Just vanished into thin air, you know? Worst thing? I figured you’d snuck out and it was over. I saw the signs. The necklace, my key card missing. The bellhop even told me you got back in the elevator, I wasn’t sure still. Then the concierge told me he’d seen you leave with a man, and that one sentence, despite all the evidence, was enough for me to believe. I didn’t see it, Princess, when it was right in front of me, and you suffered the consequences. That’s my worst fear.”

  As he stood before her, body tense, fists clenched and silent, she couldn’t look away. What he said rang in her ears. He missed it. He missed it, and he blamed himself. She could see it as surely as if he wrote it in the air between them. He felt responsible for her capture.

  “So you made them take me?” she asked.

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “Helped them plan how they got me out of there, or the other captives?”

  “No, Princess. I wouldn’t ever do anything like that.”

  She stood up and approached him. “Then it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know me, or had no clue about how I would react to things. This is what I mean about time, and how that helps in a relationsh—”

  In the middle of her talking, he stripped his shirt off.

  “Oh come on, Heim.”

  “You backpedaled.”

  “I was being honest.”

  “You were at first, then you started to use it to illustrate why we can’t be in love. Remember the rules, Princess.”

  He winked at her and she wanted to throttle him. “Not cute,” she said.

  “Oh, I’d at least give him a seven for the gorgeous man boobies he has. Those are at least a full C-cup, right?” Snake asked.

  “Can it, Snake, or I’m going to shove it for you,” she told him.

  Snake chuckled. “Fine, see if I help you out anymore.”

  “Ask another question, Katya,” Heim said.

  “This is getting ridiculous.”

  He stripped his pants off before she could take a breath.

  “Take it off! I’ll try to make it rain. Hold on, I know I got cash somewhere. Wait, do you take cards?” Welsh asked.

  “Enough! Where do you see us five years from now?” she asked. She couldn’t believe he was now standing in boxers and an undershirt; that was it. Two more steps back, and he wouldn’t have anything else on.

  “Hopefully married, but I’d give you the time you needed to come around,” Heim answered.

  “You’re delusional,” she quipped. Dammit, the shirt came off. That only left the boxers next. Shit, this was not happening.

  “A hundred bucks that he’s itsy bitsy spider, Snake,” Welsh bet.

  “You’re on.”

  “This is getting out of hand, Heim. Look, I get what you’re doing, and it’s cute. I do care for you, so much. I just think we need to take our time, to think about if this is where we really want to be.”

  “Yeah, wrong answer,” Heim returned. He thumbed his boxers.

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “For you? Anything.”

  And then he stripped them off, without pausing.

  “You owe me a hundred bucks, Welsh,” Snake said.

  “No fair. You were i
n basic with him. Of course you knew.”

  “And you should have remembered that before you bet me.”

  “Not my fault he’s hung like a fucking horse. No one would believe that shit.”

  “Out. Get. Out. Right. Now”

  Katya forced the words through her teeth, amazed her molar didn’t crack under the pressure.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Heim

  Okay, he’d concede that maybe taking off all his damn cloths in front of his SEAL team, while false stars twinkled above his head all to impress a girl, may not have been the best move. Something that seemed pretty romantic and self-sacrificing felt a bit silly now. Still, he wouldn’t back down. He wanted to show her that he was willing to do anything for her, and he believed he had.

  “Is this all a joke to you, is that it?” she asked. She wept as she tossed his clothes at him.

  “What?” He caught his garments without looking at them.

  “This whole thing, it’s about you. All about you.”

  “How could it be about me and I’m the one standing here naked, Princess?”

  “Because you wanted to force me to your rules! Why couldn’t you just have given us time, space to mold? I’ve just come home a few weeks ago from one of the most horrible experiences in my life, and I knew I could count on you. I know that you would keep me safe. But, let’s be honest, we didn’t have any time to really build on the connection we shared. I never denied what we felt couldn’t be real, I just asked for the time to make sure. How hard would that have been for you?”

  Why couldn’t he have? How hard would that have been? She spoke in the past tense and his chest thundered. “I thought you were just afraid to love me, Princess.”

  “No, Heim. I was afraid I loved you too fast, that I fell for the hero, but didn’t really know if I could be the one he wanted. If this whole thing wasn’t colored by extenuating circumstances that brought us closer. I needed to know it wasn’t because you saved me that I loved you, but I loved you because you were the man that would always save me.”