by Raina Wilde
"But after that..."
Jack rolled Leah over and kissed her, his lips were tender and his hands entwined in hers.
"Don't worry about anything but right now," he said, and he kissed her again, this time more insistent. Leah felt a familiar twisting in her stomach and she entwined her fingers in Jack's hair pulling him closer. He was right; the rest of the week didn't matter. She had no idea what the future had in store for this budding taboo romance, but if she worried about it now she would be depriving herself of the most intense pleasure she had ever known. Right now, in this moment, there was no such thing as right and wrong. She rolled on top of Jack and pretended to pin him down.
"Now, I'm in control," she said playfully and reached across the bed for the tie.
THE END
Flip the page for Bonus 3, SEALed Hearts!
Adventure novelist Emily Parker finds herself trapped in a dangerous world of terror and intrigue when she discovers that her long time boyfriend is actually a high profile, international drug lord.
In an attempt to escape with her life, Emily devises a plan to deliver concrete evidence to authorities that will take down the drug ring once and for all. And when she discovers that the plots in her books are much less frightening than reality, Emily is lucky to find that the well-muscled and strikingly handsome Ben Portman, alongside his team of Navy SEALs, is there to help her escape from the extensive reach of the drug lord’s mercenaries.
When Emily and Ben find themselves trapped on an isolated cruise ship that is being patrolled by the enemy, can they learn to trust each other enough to work as a team, or will they both end up at the bottom of the Atlantic?
SEALed Hearts
Emily Parker rinsed her toothbrush in the sink of the immaculate restroom. The quaint space was attached to the port side cabin that she had rented aboard an opulent intercontinental cruise liner. On short notice, it had been the only mode of transportation in which she could maintain a small level of anonymity.
The ship swayed with a soothing rhythm as it trudged along beneath the ebony sky. Emily checked the thin silver watch on her wrist. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. She’d had difficulty sleeping in the nighttime over the past months. If anything were to happen, she told herself, it would occur under the cover of darkness.
She was about to chastise herself for the crippling paranoia that had recently become an active part of her personality when the deep rumble of male voices outside her door captured Emily’s attention.
With silent footsteps she slunk across the main cabin to press her ear against the door. Her heart hammered in her chest and she raised her fingertips to her mouth to conceal the sound of her breathing.
“When did you see her?” demanded a brusque male voice that sent chills to Emily’s core.
One of the other passengers was about to blow her cover. Emily quickly evaluated the cabin. She could pack in under two minutes but there was no alternative exit from the cabin. She chewed her lower lip; if the men remained at her door she would be trapped.
“Oh man. They were up on the top deck, in bikinis, yesterday. That lady and the chick staying in the room next to her.” the drunken male laughter sounded vaguely familiar to Emily’s ears but she couldn’t quite place the voice.
“Do you know where on the ship she is staying?” asked the first voice, clearly annoyed with the passenger.
“Well, yeah I know. I mean, I really hit it off with her neighbor, if you know what I mean.” There was a long pause as the drunken man chuckled to himself. “She went back to her room early and we walked her to her door because, you know, it was right next to where we were headed.”
Emily’s brow furrowed in confusion as she listened to the man’s story. Maybe they weren’t talking about her. She’d made a point not to interact too closely with any of the other passengers and she certainly hadn’t been walked to her door by any of them, as this man had so assuredly claimed.
She had almost convinced herself that her worry was irrational, when a third voice spoke. It was the unmistakable, smooth drawl of Casper Lorenz.
“Which cabin?” Two words, Emily thought. It only took two words for Casper to send her into full hyperventilation. Her palms started to sweat as Emily realized that this was the end. The running was over. Casper had found her and tonight he would exact his revenge. A dozen dark scenarios of slow painful death flashed before her eyes. All that stood between Emily and Casper was a thin wooden door and an inebriated tourist.
“It was…” the man’s slur turned into a hiccup, “way up on the ninth deck. Ninety-seven.” Emily could hear Casper conferring quietly with his men as the passenger prattled to himself. “No. Ninety-ninety-seven…” the man let out a loud expletive, “Nine-ninety-seven. Yup, that’s it. Nine-hundred-ninety-seven, on the ninth floor, with a blue door.” He repeated the rhyme as if thoroughly proud of himself.
Emily breathed a tentative sigh of relief. This was the second deck. Her cabin number was 204. The passenger was sending Casper to the opposite end of the ship and even the wrong level.
“Let’s go.” came Casper’s sharp command.
“Sir, should I take care of this?” the first brusque voice asked of his boss. Now that he had spoken again Emily thought that the voice might belong to Val Marquez, Casper’s go-to muscle.
“Don’t bother,” the voices began to fade as footsteps shuffled away from her doorway, “he won’t remember a thing in the morning.”
Thirty seconds later Emily was haphazardly shoving toiletries into her duffel when there was a quiet knock on the door. She froze and stared toward the wooden frame as if it were about to implode at any moment.
With caution, she approached the nearby window and lifted the corner of the curtain to peer out at the visitor.
Standing patiently outside her cabin was a man that Emily recognized as a solitary passenger whose path she had crossed numerous times during the past week. She had only noticed him for two reasons. The first was that he appeared to be the only other guest aboard the cruise ship who was traveling alone and, like Emily, clearly determined not to be bothered. The other reason had to do with the fact that he was, quite possibly, the most attractive man that Emily had ever seen in person.
She recalled seeing him at the pool on the top deck all chiseled muscles, tanned skin and rugged masculinity. Her eyes narrowed as she wondered what he was doing knocking on her door at this time of night. He appeared to be in complete control of himself, leaning forward to knock once more upon her door. Clearly, he had not been the fool who had spoken to Casper only moments before.
She dropped the floral curtain and moved to unlock the door. She had only eased it open a few inches when the man had brushed past her, spun around and shut the door behind him.
“What are you doing checking the curtains?” he lectured. “Fabric has too much motion for you to risk touching it.” He ran a rough hand over his face as he paced the floor of her cabin. Emily stood rooted to the floor unsure of what was happening. “If you had done that while they were out there you could have gotten us both killed.”
It suddenly occurred to her that the sober man standing in front of her was the same man who had been slurring his words less than a minute before. Now, his deep voice was recognizable from the few times that he had offered polite greetings as they had passed aboard the ship.
“Who are you?” she snapped, “What were you doing out there? What are you doing in my cabin?”
He held his hands up to slow her down.
“We really don’t have time for this. Tell me what those guys want from you and I might be able to get you off this ship before they kill us both.” He was canvassing the room as he spoke, checking drawers and looking underneath the bed that stood in the middle of the room.
“Are you kidding me? For all I know this is some kind of trick and you work for Casper. Get out! I don’t need your help, just go away.” She approached the man and attempted to push him toward the doorway. With her hands
firmly planted on his chest, Emily put the full force of her five-foot-six frame behind the effort only to realize that the man had not budged an inch. She doubted that she had even caused his body to sway.
Emily craned her neck to look up into the steely gray eyes that were evaluating her with what, unfortunately, appeared to be amusement.
With a sigh she removed her hands and, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, tapped one foot as she waited for an explanation.
With a groan of annoyance the dark haired man began to pace back and forth across the cabin. He was taller, and much more broad, than Emily had realized from her distant evaluations.
“I woke up to a noise outside of my cabin. It’s only five rooms down from here.” He clarified. “When I went to investigate, I saw a speed boat, with all of its lights turned off, dock with the ship. Nine men boarded, three remained on the getaway boat. They have an arsenal of weapons and one of the men, Lorenz, is an international fugitive. So, I figured these are some bad guys. I pretended to be drunk, thinking that maybe I could get some answers, when they showed me your photo and asked where to find you. I lied, and off they went.” He turned toward her and began to walk a slow circle around Emily as if examining every detail about her. “I asked myself, what would men like this want with the quiet woman staying in 204? I figure, it couldn’t be anything good and maybe I need to check it out. Also, I’m fairly certain the cruise line doesn’t want armed thugs messing with their passengers so we should probably try to draw them away from the ship. If we move fast enough, I can take down the three on the boat and we can get away on that.” He summed up the situation with an eerie nonchalance that gave the impression that this was a normal day for him.
“Who are you and how do you know about Casper Lorenz?” she narrowed her eyes with suspicion.
“Ben Portman.” He sighed and proffered a hand, which Emily shook hesitantly. “The truth is, I’m a Navy SEAL. I was assigned to this ship to do recon about possible drug trafficking suspected from the staff on this ship. Until tonight, I had seen nothing suspicious. Now, with an international drug lord and his fugitive cronies boarding the ship under cover of darkness, I have the proof that I need to start planning a mission with my team.”
Emily stared in shock at the man standing in front of her. He was literally the answer to her prayers. If a group of Navy SEALs were planning a sting against Casper, she needn’t worry about her powerful ex-boyfriend any longer.
“You are going to send Casper to jail?” she asked hopefully.
To her dismay Ben laughed.
“Casper Lorenz is slippery. All sorts of teams have been trying to get something on him for years, and so far no one has any concrete proof. His residence is a veritable fortress and he keeps his hands clean of any direct dealing.” He shook his head. “No, the most that we can hope to do is attempt to collect proof against him. Hopefully, my team will be the first to actually get something but we’ve only just started with some basic reconnaissance.”
Emily’s heart sank. She knew what needed to be done. She could not leave the ship. The thought terrified her.
“Come on.” Ben Portman gestured toward the door. “We need to get out of here before they realize that I sent them to a cleaning supply closet.” He grabbed her duffel and attempted to guide her to the door.
“Stop!” Emily could not think with him taking charge all the time. “I can’t leave the ship.” She said with determination.
“You have to.” He argued. “Those guys are going to kill you, for whatever reason. You realize that don’t you? They are going to try to kill me too, if I don’t get out of here. I’m alone on this ship. My team is hours away at Lorenz’s house, where he is supposed to be.”
Ben placed a gentle hand on Emily’s upper arm in another attempt to guide her out of the cabin.
“Stop.” She whispered this time. As softly as she had said it, she knew he had heard when his body stilled. The impact of her whisper was much more effective than the shout. “I have evidence.”
“What?”
“I have the evidence that you need. All of it.” Emily repeated.
“What do you mean? How could you have…?” Ben cocked his head and looked at her as if he was seeing her with new eyes. “What is your name?”
Emily chewed on her lip, knowing that if Ben thought that she had anything to do with Casper’s criminal activities she would be in deep trouble.
“Emily Parker.” She watched as his gray eyes narrowed and then widened in disbelief.
“Lorenz’s girlfriend?”
“Ex-girlfriend. I didn’t know he was a criminal.” Emily clarified and Ben swore dramatically.
He ran his hand over his face and started pacing the room again. He never seemed to stand still, she thought. Suddenly, he started going through her duffel, pulling her toiletries and undergarments into a haphazard pile on the bed.
“It isn’t in there. That’s why I can’t leave the ship. I’ve hidden everything for safekeeping. I thought if Casper came for me and couldn’t find the disks that he might keep me alive, but now I realize that it just made everything more complicated.”
Ben shook his head again in disbelief. Despite the dangerous turn of events he was smiling, which made Emily a bit nervous.
“What do you mean by disks? I need you to be very clear about the type of evidence you have before I decide if it is worth staying on this ship.”
“It’s everything.” She began, but hurried on after seeing that he wouldn’t accept that answer. “A few months ago one of Casper’s employees started joking, in front of me, about all the terrible things they’ve done and all the money that they made selling drugs. He thought, with me being Casper’s girlfriend, that I must have known. I hadn’t. Casper was furious that I had found out that way. Suddenly, the man who’d told me was gone. I used to see him every day and then one day he just disappeared.” Emily found herself pacing the small room now. The motion seemed to calm her nerves as she told her story.
“I knew at that point,” she continued, “when all of the other employees gave me a wide berth, that Casper had the man executed. Casper told me that I was never to leave his home without permission, ever again. That was when I realized that there was no chance of me getting out of there alive unless I had evidence to bargain with.
“I waited a month for my chance. You say his home is a fortress, and that’s true, but I had access to everything from the inside. Now that everyone was avoiding me, I had plenty of opportunity to collect anything that I needed.”
Ben perched on the edge of the bed as he listened to her story. Emily knew that if he believed her she might be able to get him to help her achieve her goal.
“What do you have?” he asked.
“Everything.” She repeated. “Video surveillance of everyone inside the complex and also from two of his remote delivery sites. He kept tapes of everyone involved so that no one could turn against him. I took all sorts of secret photographs that show the layout and security of the complex, guard counts and rotation times.”
Emily could see that Ben was practically salivating at her information. It was everything his team needed to complete a successful mission. She knew, however, that the last bit of information was the most important.
She took a steadying breath before she continued.
“On the day that I finally decided to make a run for it, Casper and his men were away on business. I booked a cabin on this ship under the name of an old friend, Bethany Stark. I thought that I would be safe if I stayed away from regular transportation. I never thought that Casper would be able to find me.
“I knew that I needed something really important in case I wasn’t able to reach the American authorities. If I couldn’t get home there was potential that I would have to bargain for my life. I decided to keep the evidence separate from my cabin so that any chance of Casper recovering it depended solely on my being alive.” She paused. “The morning that I left I stole three primary hard drives from th
e computers inside of Casper’s main office. Two of them contain all of the coded information about their dealings, including names and quantities. The third hard drive contains the program that deciphers the code.”
When she stopped talking she and the military operative stared at each other in silence for what felt like an eternity.
Finally, Ben swore under his breath.
“Where is the evidence hidden?” he asked.
She knew that he was trying to formulate a plan but with her life on the line she wasn’t certain that she wanted someone else calling the shots. Especially not a Navy SEAL determined to complete the mission of a lifetime. She had made it this far alone and she would not risk the chance that he might take the evidence and leave her at the mercy of Casper Lorenz.
Emily shook her head.
“I’ll retrieve it on my own.” She explained. “If you want to stick around, that’s fine, but I’m calling the shots.”
“You have no tactical experience.” He argued, standing up from his seated position. “I’m the professional and if you want to get off this ship alive you are going to have to trust me.”
“Not going to happen.” Emily moved to stand toe-to-toe with the SEAL. “I recently found out that my boyfriend of two years is a world-renowned drug lord and you think I’m going to trust my entire future to some macho beef stick that I just met ten minutes ago?”
“Did you just call me a ‘beef stick’?” Ben cocked a half grin that revealed his amusement at her terminology. He looked down at her upturned face. Emily watched his pupils contract as he raised a hand to her cheek. “I think you are confusing your types of hunger, sweetheart.”
Emily knew she was blushing. The intimate tone made her pulse jump in a way she couldn’t explain, and refused to examine. She suddenly realized how close they were standing; their bodies aligned in such a way that his enormous body overshadowed her slender form.
