SEAL's Honor

by Megan Crane

  Blue let out a hollow laugh. “Believe me, you don’t want that.”

  “I keep trying to tell you that you don’t know what I want.”

  “And I keep trying to tell you that you don’t know who I am. The fact that I see a pudgy kid in pigtails on a pink bike is the only reason I’m here, Everly. That little girl is what’s keeping you safe. Not from them.” He jerked his chin toward the windows, and she knew who he meant. But he didn’t take his eyes off her. And she couldn’t bring herself to look away. “From me.”

  Everly knew it was stupid, that all of this was stupid and self-defeating at best, but she just couldn’t seem to stop herself. He wanted her to run from him—she just knew it—and she wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.

  Instead, she stepped forward, ignoring that dark glittering thing in his gaze and the way every muscle in his body turned to stone right there in front of her. And she kept going, until she was so close that she had to tip her head back to look up at him, the way she’d done in that lobby earlier.

  “Of course I want to be safe from the men who killed Rebecca,” she whispered, trying to make him hear her. See her. Listen to her, the way he had on that porch in a brooding blue Alaskan night. “But not from you, Blue. The last thing I want from you is too much safety.”

  And it didn’t matter what he said then, because she could see the truth stamped all over him. She could see it in the way he held himself, stiff and hard as if the slightest bend would give him away. She could see the wildness in his eyes, and all over his face, and it was almost as if she could scent it in the air between them.

  She knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

  She knew.

  But she would be damned if she begged him. She would be damned if she put herself out there like that, when he refused to admit what was happening between them. No way.

  Not tonight.

  She might not recognize what had become of her life. But she still had her pride.

  “Well?” she asked, challenging him. Daring him. Lifting up her chin like a prizefighter and wordlessly asking him to take a swing.

  And she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t take that dare. When he stepped back, his face shut down into something dark and unreadable.

  She wasn’t surprised, no. But she discovered she was disappointed all the same.

  “You should eat something,” he gritted out, back to playing the father figure she didn’t want. And certainly didn’t need. “And get some sleep while you’re at it.”

  “It’s eight o’clock at night. And news flash, Blue. I’m not a child.”

  “So you keep telling me,” Blue retorted, a swift hit she didn’t see coming. It rocked her, though she fought to hide it. “Anytime you want to prove that, go right ahead. You could start by not throwing down challenges left and right.”

  “Why? Are you afraid?”

  “Careful, Everly.” And for a moment she wasn’t sure she recognized him, so dark and forbidding did he look. “Be really careful. Your mouth is writing checks your body can’t cash.”

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to rage at him. Throw herself at him, maybe, because she knew he wouldn’t drop her. Not even tonight, when he looked as if, given the opportunity, he might consider killing her himself. Of course, she knew he wouldn’t.

  Everly knew that no matter what she said or did, she was safe with this man.

  Whether she wanted that or not.

  But he insisted on calling her a child. And she understood on some level that there was a huge part of him that expected her to react that way. To fling herself against the wall he represented, throw a tantrum, have a fit.

  Anything to touch him, a knowing voice, deep down inside, whispered.

  And nothing Blue had said to her tonight shamed her, but that unpleasant moment of self-awareness did.

  So Everly did what she could. The only thing she could think to do. She drew herself up, trying to appear serene and unbothered—or as close as she could get to it on the outside.

  He didn’t have to know that she was torn up inside.

  Then she turned, very slowly, and walked calmly into her bedroom.

  Where she closed the door, staggered over to her bed, and spent a lot longer than she wanted to admit with her face in her pillows.

  Not screaming or sobbing, though she wanted to do both. Wanted to, but she’d told him she wasn’t a child, so she refused to let herself act like one.

  Instead she relived that kiss again and again, hoping against hope that, at some point, it would affect her as little as Blue claimed it had affected him.

  Because she had to stop obsessing about him. She knew that. She had to let this go no matter what her treacherous heart was telling her—and get back to the far more important business of fearing for her life.

  Thirteen

  Blue woke up like a switch being flipped.

  It was a particular kind of jolting, immediate awareness he recognized from too many missions to count. He went from sound asleep to alert and wide-awake in an instant, shifting into battle mode seamlessly, because some skills never died no matter where he found himself.

  He didn’t move. He stayed where he was, stretched out on the couch in Everly’s living room. Without changing his breathing or shifting his position, he eased open his eyes and began scanning the apartment around him to see if he could pinpoint what had woken him up.

  One breath, long and deep like he was still asleep, in case someone was watching him. Then another.

  He heard it then. A soft clicking noise that didn’t sound like much by itself.

  But Blue recognized the sound for what it was.

  Someone was trying to pick the lock on the front door.

  Before he fully finished the thought, he was moving.

  He hit the floor soundlessly in his bare feet and moved swiftly to Everly’s bedroom door. He could admit he was surprised she hadn’t locked the door behind her when she’d marched away from him earlier, ripping him up in ways he refused to acknowledge—especially right now. But she hadn’t.

  He was inside and at her bed in two steps, then went down on the mattress beside her, hauling her into his arms with his hand tight over her mouth before she had time to react.

  There was no time to think about how warm she was, sleepy and sweet. There was no time to catalog every last way her lush body fit with his, or what she was— or wasn’t—wearing. There was no time to act like the horny teenager Blue hadn’t been in years, not until her, when there was someone at the front door.

  Everly woke up fast and scared, if the wild pulse in her neck was any guide. And she did his heart good by instantly trying to fight him off, as if she hadn’t noticed that he was bigger and stronger and already pinning her to the bed.

  Because that was what he’d taught her. It was never over unless you were dead. And if you weren’t dead? You fought.

  She was brave and determined, and it hurt like hell when she kicked him in the shin. He couldn’t have been prouder.

  “It’s me,” he said against her ear, ignoring the way his body responded to getting that close to her, no matter the pain in his shin. “Nod if you understand, but stay quiet.”

  He felt her shudder. When she nodded a moment later, he eased his hand from her mouth.

  And then they were staring at each other in the dark. In her bed. Something that only the direst circumstance—like the one happening right this second—could get him to ignore.

  He felt like a saint. An aggrieved, pissed-off saint of lost opportunities, victim to an irritating hero complex. As far as he could tell, it had resulted in nothing so far but a whole lot of battle scars and a misplaced sense of honor that, bonus, matched his current level of sexual frustration.

  And it wasn’t the time or place to think about any of that nonsense.

  “Someone’s at the d
oor,” he told her in a low voice, barely a whisper. “They’re picking the lock as we speak. I want you to barricade yourself in here. If anyone tries to get through your door who’s not me? I want you out that window again. Get dressed, put on some shoes, and take a different route to the police station in case they have someone watching the street. Got it?”

  Everly didn’t speak. She didn’t point out what he assumed she must know—that if someone else was coming through her door, it would be over Blue’s dead body. She just nodded once. With certainty.

  Because he might have stood there in the other room and shot off his mouth about what a child she was, but he knew better. That had been a self-serving diatribe at best, to divert attention away from how much he wanted to get his hands on her. Everly was more courageous than she should ever have had to be.

  And he hated himself for lying about that. For making it seem as if he didn’t know it.

  But there was no time for his crap.

  Blue knew he was a dick, full of mixed messages and deserving of every last accusation she’d thrown at him, but he couldn’t help himself. He leaned over and pressed a hard, swift kiss to Everly’s mouth anyway, because she’d called him a liar and she’d been right.

  And if he died out there, he didn’t care if she knew it.

  Everly made a small sound in the back of her throat that Blue thought he’d carry with him forever, and he’d never wanted anything more, in all his life, than to stay right where he was.

  But his time was up.

  He forced himself to roll away from her, then up and onto his feet. And he didn’t look back.

  Blue heard her scrambling out of her bed behind him as he headed back into the living room, keeping his ears pricked for the sound of her locking that door the way he’d told her to do. When he heard it a few seconds later, he went over to his bag and grabbed his gun, then moved quietly and quickly across the living room floor to the kitchen. Thanks to the apartment’s open floor plan, he could wait in the shadows and position himself behind whoever came in as soon as the intruder crossed the foyer.

  He heard the front doorknob rattle. He controlled his breathing and got his heart rate down, plastering himself to the wall.

  He heard a louder noise and knew the dead bolt had been breached.

  And he waited.

  For a moment or two, nothing happened. Blue knew that whoever was at the door was doing the same thing he was. Waiting. Listening. Trying to figure out if anyone inside had heard them pick that lock.

  Everything was quiet.

  That they didn’t come thundering in told Blue a few things about their operation. The choice of stealth over force was interesting, given what he’d seen of the goon squad so far. But he filed it away to think about later, once the current threat was neutralized.

  He heard the door swing open. He watched the light from the hall outside sweep over the floor, then disappear.

  It was go time.

  Blue tossed aside everything careening around inside him. The taste of Everly’s mouth beneath his. The look on her face when she’d tried to confront him about it. The way her green eyes had flashed when she’d called him a liar. And how soft and sleepy she’d been when he’d climbed into that bed beside her.

  He had to let it all go.

  Along with everything that could go wrong in the next few minutes, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. He would not put her at risk. He would not let her down.

  But he had to shove that aside, too.

  His adrenaline kicked in hard. But Blue waited for the next beat, and that cool, deep calm that washed over him as sure as night followed day. It focused his attention. It made him who he was.

  A lethal weapon, courtesy of the United States Navy.

  Aimed straight at whoever was foolish enough to bust into this apartment tonight.

  He heard the faint brush of a foot against the wood floor in the foyer. It was tempting to jump out and handle the situation there and then, before this animal got any closer to Everly, but he held back. There was no point rushing in until he had all the information.

  Until he knew how many asswipes had come to this little party, for example.

  There was almost no light in the apartment with the front door shut, but Blue’s eyes had long since adjusted. He stayed where he was as the intruder eased farther in. Then waited to see if there was anyone else with the one bulky figure who crept into the open living room. Concealed in the shadows of the kitchen, Blue didn’t move when the man threw a look this way, then that. He even held his breath on the off chance the guy was sharper than he looked.

  Blue could tell the second the asswipe’s eyes adjusted to the dark, because he picked up his pace. And he didn’t even glance toward Rebecca’s room, which seemed like a pretty good indication that he’d been in the apartment before. He knew Rebecca’s room was empty because he’d helped make it that way.

  He headed straight for Everly’s door. No hesitation.

  And still Blue waited.

  The intruder was the man who had been in Everly’s office lobby earlier this evening. Blue could tell by the set of his shoulders, the way he walked, and the fact that he was still wearing the same suit that didn’t quite fit him. As if it was an old one that the guy had pulled out for the express purpose of stalking a woman he’d expected to find scared, alone, and defenseless.

  Everly was none of those things. Not anymore.

  And she currently had one of the finest military weapons ever forged at her disposal, aimed and ready to play.

  Blue eased himself out of the shadows, leaving his gun behind on the kitchen counter, tucked behind the toaster oven, because he didn’t want a firefight in close quarters. Not when a stray bullet could punch through the thin walls and hit Everly. He moved across the living room floor in the intruder’s wake, making no sound, focused entirely on this piece of garbage who thought he could break in and come after Everly like this.

  In the middle of the night. With a gun in his meaty fist.

  Hell no.

  “You shouldn’t have come alone, douchebag,” Blue said into the stillness of the apartment around them.

  He launched himself into the air as he spoke, landing a killer kick on the man’s right forearm even as the asswipe whirled around. And tried to raise his gun the way Blue knew he would.

  The intruder yelped at the kick, or maybe the way his weapon spun out of his hand, but he didn’t go down. Instead, he threw himself at Blue.

  He was a big guy. A gorilla of a man, huge and snarling. But Blue didn’t have to study his face in the dark to get a handle on who this guy was. He could tell by the way the guy fought—or tried to fight. Big guys like this were used to bullying anyone smaller than them. Reveled in it, probably. Blue figured he might have boxed recreationally, then loomed around playing a bouncer outside clubs and the like, hoping his size and brawn would do the fighting for him. Blue pegged him as a gym rat with lofty aspirations.

  But he was about to discover that going to the gym was not the same thing as training in martial arts and combat.

  Blue set out to teach him that lesson, as brutally as possible.

  He took a punch to the gut and let the goon throw him. He heard the other man’s wheeze of triumph, and hoped he savored it. But it did what Blue wanted it to do. It made his opponent sloppy.

  The intruder rushed Blue the way big men with no fighting prowess liked to do, because they thought their bulk could get it done. It often could.

  But Blue wasn’t a drunk outside a club or a much smaller female.

  He rolled up from the floor in a single swift movement, then executed a combination of strikes with pinpoint accuracy. Groin, throat, back of the head.

  The bigger man went down with a thud Blue thought might have rocked the building to its foundations.

  Blue found the man’s piece on the floo
r and kicked it into the farthest corner, then turned to finish the job.

  But the gorilla was scrambling across the floor on his hands and knees. He was heading for the door, panting in a loud, anguished way that told Blue how much damage he’d done. He hauled himself onto his feet in the foyer, then threw himself toward the door.

  Blue followed him, but the other man was crashing through the door and staggering out into the hall.

  And he could have chased the douchebag into the stairwell and further expressed his feelings about stalkers and low-rent thugs all over the other man’s battered, ugly face, but he didn’t. For one thing, Everly’s neighbors were opening their doors and squinting into the hallway.

  And for another, Everly was still in the apartment and like hell was Blue leaving her alone to see if thug two, three, or four showed up.

  “Go back to sleep,” Blue barked out, using his best military voice to silence everyone in the hallway. “The problem is solved.”

  And he waited there, grim and steel-eyed, until one by one, the neighbors each shut and then loudly relocked their doors.

  Blue stepped back inside Everly’s apartment and did the same, though he thought it was a wasted effort at this point. If the lock could be picked once—or twice, if he counted the night Rebecca had been killed, or taken, or whatever had happened to her—it could certainly happen again. But he couldn’t worry about that now.

  He pulled the table in the foyer over and planted it in front of the door. It wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted to get in, he knew. What it would do was give him a few extra minutes of reaction time. Because he was fairly certain that when these people came back, they would come in force, and they wouldn’t make the same mistake this first guy had.

  They knew Blue was here now. He had to assume they’d come prepared. But he also figured it would take them some time to mobilize, since Blue had been here a week and today was the first time they’d made a move.

  He grabbed his gun from the kitchen and the intruder’s from where he’d kicked it, stashing both safely in his bag. Then he crossed to Everly’s room and knocked twice on the door. “It’s me.”