by Dale Mayer
“Self-control,” he muttered.
“Let’s see if we can lose that,” she whispered and pulled him down and kissed him passionately.
His brain melted as fire surged through his loins, and his muscles urged to take her in his arms and to crush her against him. He didn’t want to hurt her though, yet, when her hand stroked down his body to find him, he knew he was completely lost. “You’re playing with fire there.”
“No,” she said, “we both are. That means we are already in the inferno, and there’s no playing anymore.”
He lowered his head and kissed her deeply, his tongue warring with hers, as their bodies melted and surged against each other. He shifted so he could trail a line of kisses across her cheek and down her neck, while her fingers gently stroked his head, mindful of his injury no doubt, but firmly gripped his neck as she twisted beneath him. But he was heading for those breasts that he was so desperate to explore. Washing them was not the same as being able to cup and to gently enjoy their softness.
Then he kissed them, taking one nipple deep into his mouth and suckled. She twisted, moaning beneath him, and he knew that she would be so responsive to his touch. There was something freeing about that, and he allowed himself to forget about everything but the experience of being here with her in his arms as he teased, caressed, kissed, nipped, and stroked his way from one end of her body to the other, careful of her three wounds. When he came to the cast, he slid a finger past it, just to the inside of her thigh, and whispered, “This thing is not making me happy.”
She chuckled. “Remember that saying about practice makes perfect?”
“Absolutely.” And he nudged his hand upward to the tiny triangle of curls at the base of her thighs, and then he moved down her body and buried his face against them. She gasped, her legs opening wider, and he slid his tongue against the lips, finding the tiny nub hidden in the depths of the folds to suckle. She came off the bed, crying out for him, her hands reaching for his head, pulling him up to her. “Enough of that,” she said.
“Enough or never enough?”
She moaned. “Both.” But she pulled his hips down and almost instinctively his erection buried itself deep inside her. She sighed, lifting her casted leg. “I didn’t think there was enough room,” she said, “but you fit perfectly.”
“The only thing is,” he said, “you can’t wrap your legs around me.” She smiled, and they shifted ever-so-slightly to the side, her leg draped over his hips. She murmured as he grabbed her hips and held her in place, and she said, “I never even thought about it this way.”
“Like I said,” he repeated, “trial and error. And we can keep on trying until we find the best way forward.”
“We have like six weeks until I get this cast off.”
“We have as long as it takes,” he said, and he started to move.
Chapter 16
Making love, not once, not twice, but three times in a few hours, was a new experience for her. Making love with a cast was definitely a new experience, and that it was Axel with her just added to it. By the time she crashed again in the wee hours of the morning, he crashed with her. She woke up suddenly, and it was probably not even an hour later. She realized that the apartment had taken on a little bit of a chill, but then they didn’t have a sheet on them either.
As she shifted on the bed to reach for a sheet, she thought she heard something out in the living room. She froze and reached down a hand and gripped his side and hip hard, pinching deep. He came awake instantly. He sat up, and she held a finger to her lips and pointed to the living room.
She reached over and grabbed the sweater that Tesla had brought her earlier. That’s all that she had, but at least it was long enough that it went down to her hips. Axel jumped into his jeans and a T-shirt and bolted to the edge of the door. He motioned at her to lie back down. She nodded, stretched out, and pulled the sheet up over her. As she did so, a shadow approached the doorway.
She stopped and froze and then slowly pretended to come awake. “Hello?”
“Hello,” came a strange male voice. “I’m really glad to find you here.”
“Oh my God, who are you?” she said, crying out and pulling herself up against the headboard.
“Somebody who has been looking in the hospital for you, so very smart of you to leave. But you just messed up my plans.”
“What plans?” she asked. “Once there was a second power outage, I left of course,” she said. “I got kidnapped the first time.”
He chuckled. “And then he messes up the job,” he said. “He was supposed to deliver you to us, so we could finish setting the scene and leave you holding the bag.”
“Well, that’s what you say, but I was already being looked at as the traitor,” she said bitterly. “Obviously you’re part of that whole submarine mess.” She flicked out a hand and turned on the night light.
He roared as he stepped forward. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he snapped.
She stared up at him. “You look so much like Rodney Grant from the sub,” she said in apparent wonder. “Are you his brother?”
“Cousin, our mothers were sisters. His came to America. Mine stayed in the mother country,” he said. “And he didn’t want to have anything to do with us, so it was really no hardship that we took him out on the sub.”
“You did or that asshole you killed in the hospital?”
“Well, actually Hostettler did it apparently,” he said. “Hostettler always hated him.”
“What a devious web you weave,” she said bitterly, staring at him. She could see Axel behind him and wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but she was determined to get as many answers as she could before somebody else died, and she couldn’t get what she needed. “Why were you doing any of this though? The sub, I mean?”
“That sub is valuable,” he said, surprised. “What’s so hard to understand about that?”
“Well, who told you it was even happening?”
“Well, I heard about it from my cousin first, and then we contacted several people to see if anybody was interested in being our inside man. Hostettler was the only one in a financial spot. He needed money for a divorce coming up, and his wife was trying to take him to the cleaners. He needed some money she couldn’t get to.”
“So he arranged to help you steal the sub and kill everybody else?”
“Yep,” he said, “and, of course, the idiot in the hospital just got a little too cheeky for his britches. Once he failed, he knew what would happen.”
“So is it just you left now?” she asked.
“Me and my partner,” he said, “but he didn’t want to do this part. He’s out in the vehicle, waiting for me,” he added.
At that point in time she shifted in the bed, trying to distract him when she saw Axel with his phone out. She knew it was important that they get the guy outside as well. “I still don’t understand why you had to kill everybody,” she said. “Wasn’t there another way to do it?”
“Maybe,” he said carelessly. “But it’s not like those few men are an issue.”
“And me?”
“You weren’t intended as the target, but, once we realized you were on that list, somebody pinpointed you as someone they had a grudge with. That just made you an easy target and, being the only female, just doubled that.”
“Females are always the weakest?”
“In a case like this, yes, so you made the perfect target. Plus, you’d also gotten away on us, so it was an even easier answer.”
“So simple,” she said, shaking her head, “and so brutal.”
“Absolutely,” he said. And he slowly pulled out his gun.
She swallowed hard. “Why do you have to kill me now?” she asked. “At least if I’m the patsy, the navy has a reason to look at me,” she said. “If you murder me, they’ll know it wasn’t me.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “we’re putting money into your account now to make it look like you were paid off for this. We’re setting up
emails and leaving incriminating evidence in your apartment,” he said. “Not to mention at your work. They can look all they want. All they’ll see is that you’re guilty and that you had a major role in killing all your coworkers as you tried to steal the sub.”
“My God,” she said, “that’s terrible.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “That’s what we do, and that’s what serves our purpose.”
“You don’t care about how many lives you’ve ruined,” she said bitterly.
“Not particularly,” he said. “We’re talking about millions and millions of dollars each for the sale of that sub,” he said, “enough for all of us to retire.”
“For you guys to retire, yes, but not me,” she said. “All you care about is making sure you get to walk away.”
“Absolutely,” he said with a smile. “Why should I care about you?”
“So that’s it? It’s all about you?”
“Absolutely.” And, at that, he smiled and took several steps closer. She wished to God that Axel would make a move, but she had to trust that he had a plan. She spun her legs out on the far side of the bed and then hopped to her feet. “Interesting outfit,” he said, “and the cast in purple?”
“They gave me a choice,” she said defensively. “Purple seemed like a good color.”
“Right,” he said, with a note of mockery. “You’ll look great as somebody who betrayed them. They won’t even know what to think about you,” he said. “Look at you. You look like the most unlikely traitor in the world.”
“So why would you even choose me?” she cried out in frustration.
“Because it’s so perfect,” he said. “Their psychologists will analyze this for decades to come, and they won’t understand what they did wrong because, to them, you were just not somebody who they suspected of treason.”
“What makes you think you can present a good-enough case that they’ll believe you?”
“Not a problem. When you think about it,” he said, “they don’t want to work at it. They just want to see things closed. As long as they have somebody to present as being the guilty party, they can be absolved of their own sins.”
“There isn’t a whole lot of what you’re saying that I want to hear,” she said, “so, if this is what you’re planning on doing, just shoot me now and be done with it.”
“I can do that,” he said, and he raised his arm to shoot her.
Just as his gun arm came into alignment with her, she dove under the bed, slamming her good leg underneath. But she could hear Axel come down hard on the gunman. Shots were fired, but she heard them hit the wall on the far side, and there was a fight that she could only see from underneath the bed—watching Axel’s bare feet versus the gunman’s heavy boots—but she heard the sound of fists and grunts and blows as they fought consistently; then, all of a sudden, the gun fell to the ground beside her. She snatched it up, dragged herself out from under the bed, and held it on the intruder, from her position on the floor. “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”
The gunman looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. “Like fucking hell,” he said. “I’ll kill this guy first.”
But just then Axel came with a right uppercut, crunching the gunman’s nose underneath his fist. The gunman screamed, but Axel’s left that followed hit the guy’s jaw just as hard. The gunman went to his knees and then, almost in a comic move, Axel slapped the back of his head, and the intruder fell forward to collapse unconscious on the floor. Axel raced to her, helping her off the floor, and he wrapped her up in his arms and held her close. “We have to get the guy outside,” he said. She nodded. Just then his phone rang. He pulled it out and answered, putting it on Speaker so she could hear.
“Hey,” Mason said. “He’s been surrounded, the question of whether he’ll give up or not is still up for grabs.”
“Put a bullet in his head for all I care,” she cried through the phone. “How many times do I have to be attacked before somebody believes me?” Through the phone they heard a shot. “Oh my God, did somebody shoot him?”
“No,” Mason said heavily. “I suspect he took his own life. But nobody’s approaching the vehicle just yet.”
“Well, the one up here’s alive,” she said. “You can get your answers from him.”
“There’ll be a team at your door within minutes. This is your warning.”
She looked at Axel and walked gingerly without her crutches to her clothes and got dressed as quickly as she could manage. She grabbed her crutches and headed to the front door. “You don’t open that door,” he said, “until you ID who’s on the outside.”
“Right.” Just then a pounding came on the door. She asked, “Who’s there?”
But it was Baylor. “Open the door, Ally,” he said. “Let me in.” She quickly opened the door and said, “Careful,” as she tried to back up with the crutches. He led four other men into her apartment. She said, “They’re in the bedroom.” She followed the gang back and hobbled over to Axel’s side. He pulled her close, and she watched the men check out the one on the ground. “Is he alive?”
Baylor nodded. “Yes, and we want to keep him that way,” he said. “This is the only one we have left out of the gang.”
“I know,” she said, “and dammit, they killed everybody just to sell that stupid sub.”
“We’ve seen men killed for a lot less,” Baylor said quietly. “In this case we’re just grateful to have one alive.” He looked over at Axel. “How are you doing, man?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Now that it’s all over …”
She snuggled in close. “Is it really over now?”
He nodded and held her close. “It is. So now you can get back to the business of living.”
They waited and watched while the guy was picked up and carried out. Baylor smiled at them and said, “Now you can get back to what you were doing.”
“Sleeping,” she retorted.
Baylor chuckled and said, “Sounds like a waste to me.” And, with that, he was gone.
Axel held her close and said, “In a way it was a waste but maybe not,” he said, “because we made good use of our time earlier.”
“And we’re still tired,” she said.
“So I suggest we go back to bed,” he said, “and grab a little bit more sleep.”
“I can’t sleep after all this excitement,” she said.
He smiled down at her. “What do you have in mind?”
She winked at him. “I don’t know. Maybe a little more of what we had before,” she said, sliding her arms around his neck. “This time we won’t have to worry about interruptions.”
“Isn’t that the truth.” And he leaned over and kissed her gently. “Now we have time for us.”
Kissing him back, she agreed. “All the time in the world.”
Epilogue
Baylor walked outside the apartment, knowing full well that those two had crossed some kind of invisible line into a relationship. Outside he met Mason and motioned to the one gunman they had. “He’s unconscious, but he’s okay. It looks like Axel broke his nose and maybe shattered his jaw.”
“Axel’s got a hell of a set of hooks. He used to be a boxer in his day and a dirty-ass street fighter.”
“Well, I can relate to the street fighting,” Baylor said.
Mason looked up at the apartment. “Are they coming down?”
“Nope, I don’t think so,” he said. “I suspect they’ll go back to bed and not to sleep.”
Mason grinned. “Good for them,” he said. Then he chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Baylor asked, looking at him, completely puzzled.
“Nothing, just the magic again. It seems to still be working.”
“You and your bloody matchmaking,” he said. “Good thing you haven’t started in on me yet.”
“Oh, your turn will come,” he said.
“I’m okay to not have a relationship,” he said. “This kind of life isn’t for most women.”
“No, and yet the f
unny thing is, several of us have found partners, and it’s worked out really well,” Mason said with a smile.
“Yeah, but you’ve got Tesla. That’s different.”
“And what about Ally?” he asked, motioning to the apartment.
“She’s different too.”
“Well, I can name another twenty women,” Mason said, “who are just as good and the good kind of different.”
“Yep, but that’s the thing,” Baylor said. “All the good women in the world are gone.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mason said, chuckling.
“Nope,” he said. “Not happening.”
Mason looked at him with a smile and said, “You know what? I’ve never intentionally set out to do this,” he said, “but, in this case, challenge accepted.”
This concludes Book 25 of SEALs of Honor: Axel.
Read about Baylor: SEALs of Honor, Book 26
SEALs of Honor: Baylor (Book #26)
When a yacht crashes into a tanker out in the ocean, it seems to be an unfortunate accident. Yet a gunman is spotted on the yacht just before the crash. What adds to the problem is that the yacht is owned by a US governor out on a holiday with his wife and daughter—and that no bodies were found at the crash site.
Gizella wakes up from the pirate attack on the yacht to find her father injured and her mother in equally bad shape. They are prisoners with no escape in sight. What was supposed to be a trip of joy and hope has ended in devastation. Even worse, an argument is brewing between her kidnappers, with her as the prize.
Baylor manages to whisk her away in the middle of the night, but she’s not out of danger yet. And, if he can’t find the kidnappers, maybe never …