Undercover SEAL

by Paige Tyler

  Nash shook his head. Well, that explained the strange looks he’d gotten all morning.

  He turned to make his way toward Munoz and the other men when Dalton put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “All joking aside, I did learn one important thing while I was hanging out with Munoz’s guards that you need to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  Dalton motioned with his chin toward where Munoz stood talking with Leon. “That you need to watch out for Leon. The guy has been a head case since Munoz found him in Columbia and brought him back here. In the words of the guys I talked to, Leon is a serial killer who enjoys watching people die. Not only that, but he’s also insanely loyal to Munoz. If he thinks you’re bad for his boss—or that you’re trying to come between them—he’ll gut you in a second.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Nash said and started walking again.

  * * * * *

  The 40mm grenade lofted toward the target—a beat-up taxi cab about 350 meters from the firing line—and impacted the ground near the driver’s side door. The boom of the high-explosive cartridge going off wasn’t that bad from this distance, but the blast blew out every window in the vehicle, and the BB-sized fragments turned the side of the car into swiss cheese.

  Nash lowered the combined assault rifle-grenade launcher, slowly turning to take in the collection of men in front of him. He’d just put five grenades within a foot of their intended target, destroying all of them in the span of about thirty seconds. That seemed to make his audience pay attention, which was something.

  When he and Dalton had gotten to the range earlier, Nash assumed he’d be showing Munoz and his men how to set up and use the high-tech Russian surface-to air missiles the cartel boss had purchased, but it turned out that Roman hadn’t given him the missiles yet. Probably because he didn’t have them yet. That was a good thing as far as Nash was concerned. The longer Roman was able to keep those missiles out of Munoz’s hands, the better.

  So, he’d spent the past hour going over the finer points of using the AK-74. That had turned out to be a waste of time for the most part since Munoz’s men were of the opinion that they already knew how to shoot an automatic weapon. Based on the live fire session they’d just finished though, while the cartel guys were definitely good at squeezing the trigger and sending a lot of metal downrange, they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.

  On the bright side, at least he didn’t have to feel like he was making the world a more dangerous place with these demonstrations since these guys were too stupid to learn anything he was teaching.

  He was just getting into the detailed instructions on how to load the grenade in the muzzle of the launcher and adjust the sights on the right side of the weapon when a loud laugh from Leon interrupted him. Nash ground his jaw. The asshole had made snide comments in Spanish the entire morning, insisting nothing Nash showed them was all that difficult.

  “You want to come up and show us how it’s done, Leon?” Nash asked, holding the weapon out.

  Leon shook his head.

  “What?” Nash demanded. “You aren’t intimidated by a little grenade launcher are you?”

  The dare had the desired effect. Munoz and the rest of his men regarded Leon expectantly, clearly waiting to see if he was going to take that burn lying down. He didn’t. Cursing in Spanish, he strode over to Nash and grabbed the weapon from his hand.

  It quickly became obvious that Leon hadn’t been paying attention to the demonstration. It took him forever to load the grenade into the muzzle and even longer to adjust the sights.

  “Need a little help?” Nash jabbed.

  Leon muttered something in Spanish but otherwise ignored him. Pressing the butt end of the grenade launcher against his shoulder, Leon lined up the weapon and pulled the trigger. The grenade hit the ground and exploded on impact thirty feet from the target. If Leon had been aiming at the same target Nash hit a few moments earlier, which wasn’t a given.

  “Looks like you’re a little short,” Nash said. “I bet you hear that a lot though.”

  Leon rounded on him, dark eyes filled with hatred. “Weapons like this are for cowards!” Tossing the grenade launcher on the ground, Leon reached behind his back and came out with a wicked looking knife. “A real man has the courage to get up close to the person he intends to kill and look him in the eyes as he slides his blade between his ribs and guts him like a fish.”

  “Unless the other man takes the knife away and beats the shit out of you.” Nash moved a little away from the row of tables along the firing line. He wanted space to work if Leon decided to mix it up. “It’s a lot harder to look like a tough guy when you’re trying to pull your own blade out of your ass.”

  Leon glared at him, his hand tightening around the hilt of the weapon.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Nash caught a glimpse of Munoz standing off to the side, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the show along with everyone else.

  Nash turned is attention back to Leon just as the man took a swing at him with the blade. Nash had to leap backward to avoid getting his stomach slashed open. He guessed the a-hole really did want to gut him like a fish.

  “I’m going to enjoy hearing you beg for mercy,” Leon said.

  Nash snorted. “From what I hear, you only get off on hurting women. It’s a whole different ball game when you fuck with someone your own size.”

  Letting out an expletive, Leon lowered his head and charged Nash like a bull. The moment he got close, Nash grabbed him by the front of the shirt, slamming his knee into Leon’s gut then hitting the ground in a backward roll, taking his opponent with him.

  Leon sailed over Nash’s head, coming down hard on his back, air exploding from his lungs. Nash jumped to his feet, wanting to be ready in case Leon came at him again. Sure enough, the bastard lunged for him, swinging that big-ass knife and almost slicing open Nash’s throat this time. Nash jerked out of the way just in time then blocked the backhand slash that followed. But the defensive move only earned him a solid punch to the jaw that sent him staggering back and seeing double for a second.

  Nash backed away fast giving himself a moment to recover. He’d underestimated Leon. The guy might not be a trained martial arts fighter, but he was a street brawler, and that made him just as dangerous.

  Leon darted forward, going to Nash’s thigh. Nash deflected the strike then planted his hand on Leon’s chest and shoved hard. Nash followed up with a series of right hooks that sent Leon stumbling back, blood coming from his nose and the gash over his left eye.

  Nash was vaguely aware of the other men shouting and cheering around them. But it wasn’t until he heard Dalton saying he’d cover someone’s two-thousand peso bet that he realized the crowd was wagering on the outcome of the fight.

  At least Dalton was betting on him to win.

  Leon tried to carve Nash with the knife again, mixing in rapid slashes with sharp jabs. The man was damn fast for his size, and while Nash got in a few punches, he spent more time trying to keep the blade away from anything vital. That earned him a few cuts on the forearms, biceps, and ribs.

  “Stop screwing around and do something,” Dalton shouted from the sideline. “I have a hundred-thousand pesos riding on you.”

  Nash ignored his friend as he blocked the knife for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  “I’m going to enjoy telling Bristol all about how I killed you today,” Leon said softly. Maybe so Munoz wouldn’t hear. “I wonder if she’ll cry when she hears you’re dead. If not, she will after I’m done with her.”

  Anger surged through Nash. He didn’t need Leon to spell it out to know what he had in mind for Bristol.

  He really hated this piece of shit.

  Jaw tight, Nash forced himself to wait until Leon charged him yet again. When he did, Nash brought his fist down on the back of Leon’s knife hand, sending the blade skittering across the ground. Before Leon could react, Nash punched him hard in the throat.

  The jackass s
tumbled back choking and coughing. He wasn’t so tough now that he didn’t have his precious knife.

  Nash delivered a kick to Leon’s balls that doubled him over, then followed that with another kick to the inside of the man’s left knee. Leon would have gone down for sure, but Nash grabbed a handful of Leon’s hair, holding him up and punching him over and over in the face, backing him across the range as the men watching quickly moved out of the way. By the time Nash let him go, Leon crumpled to the ground, bleeding and semi-conscious.

  Sunlight glinted off something near his foot and Nash glanced down to see Leon’s knife lying in the dirt. Before he even realized what he was doing, Nash snatched up the knife and moved toward Leon.

  Dalton was at his side in a flash, his hand on Nash’s arm. “It’s over, bro. Fight’s done.”

  Nash rounded on his friend, ready to rip Dalton a new one. But then he saw the concern on Dalton’s face and knew his buddy was right. He couldn’t kill Leon, no matter how much he wanted to.

  He glanced Munoz’s way and found the man regarding him with a thoughtful expression. What the hell was going on in the cartel boss’s head?

  “You cool?” Dalton asked.

  Nash nodded. “I’m good.”

  “Great.” Dalton smacked him on the shoulder hard enough for it to sting. “Then you won’t mind if I go collect my winnings.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BRISTOL WAS SURPRISED when she walked into the kitchen and found Nick digging around in the big freezer. She thought he’d be out all day doing some kind of weapons demonstration. They must have finished early. For some reason, that fact made her ridiculously happy. Something she hadn’t been in a long time. And she owed it all to an illegal arms dealer, a man for all accounts and purposes she should be terrified of.

  But Nick was different than the usual run-of-the-mill criminal who frequented the villa. He’d demonstrated that on the beach yesterday.

  “Need any help finding whatever you’re looking for in there?” she asked.

  He turned, ice cubes piled high in the towel he held. His arms and shoulders were smeared with what could only be blood. More seeped from the cut on his temple, running down the side of his face.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  Heart suddenly hammering like crazy, she closed the distance between them at a run even though she didn’t have a clue what to do for the wound. Should she call for help or try doing first-aid herself?

  Nick set the towel down on the counter then gently put a big hand on each of her shoulders with a sexy smile that made her pulse race for an entirely different reason. She gave her self a mental shake. He was bleeding. How could she be thinking about how good looking he was at a moment like this?

  Maybe because he was so damn attractive that a little blood just made him look hotter?

  “Calm down,” he said. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  She took in the myriad cuts covering his forearms and biceps then the bruise starting to form along his jaw. “It looks pretty bad to me.”

  “Not really. I’ve cut myself worse shaving. After I clean up, you’ll barely notice it.”

  Bristol seriously doubted that. Reaching out, she ran a finger lightly over one of the closed-up cuts on his arm. It wasn’t very deep, but it was straight and surgical, like someone had sliced him with a razor blade.

  Or a knife.

  She only knew one person who carried a knife.

  “Leon did this, didn’t he?” she demanded.

  Anger welled up inside her, followed quickly by fear. Leon had attacked Nick because word had gotten back to him about the kiss they’d shared on the beach. The realization that she was this worried about a man she’d just met and had only kissed once was as scary as his injuries.

  Nick shook his head. “Nah. I went jogging this morning around the compound and got attacked by some kind of strange creature. I’m pretty sure it was a Chupacabra.”

  “Uh-huh.” How could he be so cavalier about something so serious? “Forget about that for now. Isabella keeps some first-aid supplies in the bathroom the serving staff uses. You can tell me what happened while I fix you up.”

  Nick didn’t say anything as she took his hand and led him out the side door of the kitchen and down a short hallway to the part of the house where Isabella and the rest of the serving staff lived.

  By the time they got to the bathroom, Bristol’s pulse was back to something resembling normal. Nick leaned back against the counter as she opened the door of the linen closet and its shelves upon shelves of first-aid supplies. Isabella said they were there for when the landscapers cut themselves, but Bristol wasn’t naive. The boxes of bandages, rubber gloves, antiseptic and antibiotic ointments, trauma kits, and minor surgical equipment wasn’t merely for the groundskeepers. They were for her father’s guards. The men who worked for him had a habit of getting severely wounded in his employment.

  Bristol wasn’t as good with this kind of stuff as Isabella, but she’d taken a first-aid classes in college. Even if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t let anyone else take care of Nick. He’d gotten hurt because of her. The least she could do was tend to his wounds.

  “Take off your shirt,” Bristol said over her shoulder as she grabbed a bottle of antiseptic wash along with gauze, bandages, and tape. “This is supposed to be non-irritating. But it’s probably still going to sting.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nick said.

  She turned to dump the armload of stuff onto the bathroom vanity counter and found Nick still leaning back against the counter without his shirt.

  Bristol tried not to stare…and failed. It wasn’t her fault. In her experience, men simply didn’t have bodies like Nick’s. Every muscle of his abs, obliques, pecs, and shoulders was defined and sculpted like a work of art. If he wasn’t bleeding she would have taken the opportunity to ogle him for a while.

  Bristol’s hands shook a little as she opened the box of gauze and squirted a healthy amount of the antiseptic wash on one of the pads. She took a deep breath before, forcing herself to focus.

  That proved difficult with Nick looking so damn perfect. She found it hard to know where to look—at his smiling face that was so handsome it was hard to even breathe when she did, or at his chest that made her want to run her hands all over it just to see if those muscles felt as good as she suspected.

  It was the blood on his arms that finally brought her back to reality. Nick might be amazing, mouth watering, and mesmerizing, but he was hurt, and that tore out her heart.

  She started on his left forearm, gently wiping away the dried blood crusted over the nearly parallel slices running from wrist to elbow. There were others higher up on the outside of the biceps and a few across the left side of his ribcage, but she ignored those for now. One perfect part at a time, she told herself.

  “What happened?” she asked, flinching a little when fresh blood started to flow from the wounds. Part of her wanted to stop, worried she was making it worse, but she knew they had to be cleaned.

  “Leon was being an asshole during the weapons demonstration,” Nick said, apparently not affected at all by what she was doing. It wasn’t that he was being stoic. It was more like he simply didn’t seem to notice the pain she had to be inflicting. “Maybe he heard about us kissing on the beach. Regardless, he kept pushing me, trying to provoke a reaction and looking for a fight. I got tired of his crap and finally decided to accommodate him.”

  She finished with his forearm, adding a thick antibiotic gel to help stop the fresh bleeding and wrapping a bandage around the entire area. Then she moved to his left bicep. The cuts there weren’t as deep, but she found herself spending more time on them simply because she enjoyed touching him.

  “I’m assuming Leon had a knife?” she asked even though it was obvious.

  “Yeah.” Nick snorted. “It might just be me but I think he’s compensating for something.”

  “Did you have a knife, too?”

  Nick shook his head. �
�Nah. I wanted Leon to feel like he had a chance.”

  She frowned at him. “Are you ever serious about anything?”

  Nick grabbed the hand she’d been cleaning him with and tugged her so close her tank-top covered breasts were touching his muscled chest. “There is one thing I’m very serious about,” he whispered in a warm whisper, the low rumble of his voice making goosebumps rise up all over her body. “Maybe we should put the first-aid on hold for now so we can talk about it.”

  The goosebumps immediately turned into tingles as his mouth came perilously close to hers. She desperately wanted to kiss him again, but she knew if she went down that path she wouldn’t get back to cleaning him up until who knew when.

  She reluctantly took a step back, carefully disengaging her hand from his and going back to cleaning a swallow cut across the top of his bicep.

  “You should take Leon seriously,” she admonished. “He could have killed you.”

  Nick didn’t say anything for a time. “Maybe. Or I could have killed him. I was prepared to for what he did to you and your mother.”

  Bristol met Nick’s gaze, wondering if he was finally being serious. The intensity in his dark eyes told her that he was. He would have killed Leon…for her. She wasn’t quite sure how to take that.

  They both fell silent as she cleaned the rest of the cuts on his arms, then did the same to the ones on his ribs before finally moving up to his face. The act of carefully moving her fingers over his warm skin was almost hypnotizing. That was when she noticed they were breathing in time together. What they were doing was as transcendent for him as it was for her.

  By the time she finished wiping the blood from his scruff and applying antibiotic cream to the crease above his left brow to keep it from bleeding, Bristol she knew in her heart there was something insanely special going on between them. Yesterday, she’d hoped he might be able to help her out of the horrible situation she was in. Now, all she could think about was where this thing with Nick would go next.