by Zoe Dawson
Blue
SEAL Team Alpha
Zoe Dawson
Copyright
Blue
Copyright © 2018 by Karen Alarie
Cover Art © Robin Ludwig Design, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9971967-7-1
Created with Vellum
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Glossary
About the Author
OTHER TITLES BY ZOE DAWSON
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my beta readers and editor for helping with this book. As always, you guys are the best.
To David, my Deeps. Thank you for coming into my life and making it even more wonderful. I love you.
people can’t destroy you, break you or hurt you. Only you have the power to do that to yourself.
* * *
The chaos always comes from within
r. m. Drake
1
Unknown location Wilds of Kirikhanistan Province, Russia
A rocket propelled grenade had caused the explosion and set things in motion that had led Special Operator Ocean “Blue” Beckett here, fighting for his life. It had blown his helmet right off his head, cleaning his clock, leaving his brain more than a little hazy. In the chaos, he’d lost track of his team and his comm was blown all to hell. As the medic, he should have been making sure they all made it home alive. Instead, fucked up intel had left him lost behind enemy lines and a captive with the SEAL they had come to rescue.
Trapped in this crumbling, run-down place, in the bowels of God-knew-where Kirikhanistan, completely naked and shaking from shock and cold, he could see Justin “Speed” Myerson lying in a crumpled heap, wet, from the looks of him, maybe dead. Tortured, Blue was certain.
Alpha Team, Blue’s team had been decimated: Tank wounded, Echo disappearing in the explosion, in a fearless effort to protect them all, that dog so much a part of their team. His eyes welled up. He didn’t know how Scarecrow, Ruckus, Kid, Wicked or Cowboy had fared. As their corpsman, it was his responsibility to know. He hadn’t been able to help them or Elena Sokolov. It tore him up that he didn’t know if she was dead or alive. She was another atrocity to lay at the rebel’s feet, the woman who had saved him, given him shelter and risked her life for him. During his convalescence in her small, neat home, he’d fallen for her. He prayed she was alive confident that his teammates would help her. If she had died…the guilt would have to wait, so he pushed it deep.
He’d failed at saving Speed. Failed at saving his team. Hell, he may have failed at saving himself.
From his dark corner, Blue had seen first-hand what these fucks would do to get what they wanted. He trembled when he looked at Myerson’s body, partly from the cold, partly from fear. There would be no waterboarding. No, the bleak rig of ropes and pulleys hanging from the ceiling over the edge of the inground pool proved this was going to be a whole-body experience.
He felt the weight of that truth with every breath he took. But he was a Navy SEAL. As a surfer, swimmer and survivor of BUD/S–Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, he had an affinity for water. He’d excelled at every water sport he’d ever attempted, and his aquatic past had served him well. In his class, he’d been able to hold his breath the longest. When he closed his eyes, he could almost envision knifing through the liquid with ease, his breathing even and strong.
It was foolish to deny he was afraid, embracing it, allowing himself the uncertainty to dictate his course of action, actually grounded him even more. His BUD/S experience had been something he wouldn’t trade for anything. It had made him stronger, more assured, tough as nails.
BUD/S training was intense. The combat diving was really an exercise in “almost” drowning. The training students received, using swimming and diving techniques as a way to transport them from the launch point to their mission objective, had prepared him for this. Every deployment had tempered him for this. He wasn’t going to give in…ever.
His mission was to get the Golovkins to allow Blue to assess Speed, administer first aid, save him. He was so pissed off that he was unable to get to him, and he was so close, yet too far from him to help. Yeah, the wet, probably dead lump of Speed pissed him off.
Pissed off or not, he was in the middle of a shitstorm. Blue had memorized the rebel leaders’ bios. He knew who he was dealing with, and it galvanized him. He had recognized Boris Golovkin even hiding in the shadows, silent and waiting, one of their high-value targets or HVTs. The other rebel HVT wasn’t a man and she was standing in full light, right in front of him–calm, in control, soft spoken, harder than iron, and the most ruthless Kirikhan rebel second only to Boris. Yes, he had seen what Natasha Golovkin was willing to do to get what she wanted.
Even if he lived, which wasn’t a given, he’d be run to ground and ruined in a thousand unforeseen ways, ad infinitum. Unless his team got him out. He was betting on those relentless bastards, hands down, every goddamn day, hoo-fuck-yah.
Until then, he was about to find out what the husband and wife team was capable of and it was clear he would be in a fight for his life and his honor.
He was an American and these fucks would know who they were dealing with. Honor and resistance was the way a SEAL went out. Every damn time.
* * *
Ties That Bind San Diego, California
“You want to rope me?”
Petty Officer Charlotte Coventry stared hard at her rope master, Sam Patel. He had been in her life since she was nineteen. They were currently in one of the instruction rooms in the training center for Ties That Bind, a therapeutic rope bondage practice run by Sam and his associates. “But I thought this session was going to be with a model?” When Charlie was working, she was a highly-trained, enlisted member of the navy, one of their elite divers, part of Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One or MDSU-1 for short and pronounced mudsue. She was stationed at Joint Base Pearl Harbor, Hickam Naval Base in Hickam, Hawaii. But San Diego was her home…before the small plane carrying her family had crashed into the ocean far, far from land. Her family estate was a huge mansion in the California hills, a beautifully decorated and maintained residence that had been empty most of her life.
“It is, my girl. You’re the model.” The model, in this case, was what rope masters or riggers referred to as the person who was being tied. This person was also known as the bottom. Charlie practiced shibari and kinbaku, common names for erotic Japanese bondage using natural fiber ropes. There was a slight difference between them. Shibari was more about communication and healing where kinbaku was more about using ropes for eroticism. She’d participated in both, mostly as a rigger. The art stemmed from ancient samurai rope tying used as a method of restraining prisoners. Samurai followed a strong code with rules and rituals that stated prisoners we
re not only treated with respect, but the prisoner’s social standing was also honored. The higher the prisoner’s rank, the more intricate and beautiful the rope work used to bind them.
“Why?” She had been a bottom before but preferred the dominance of the rigger. The sense of control she gained from tying fulfilled something inside her, that need for control of her life. She wasn’t naïve. She knew it stemmed from the trauma of losing her family and the ordeal of being lost at sea at sixteen with no hope of rescue.
“We both know why, Charlie.”
She looked away, aware he was referring to the session where one of the members of the practice had been describing his near drowning experience and Charlie had been back there…back in her memories, back in the heaving ocean and the horror, shock and heart wrenching loss of everything.
Ever since that day she’d been experiencing a flood of feelings: isolation, despair, an inexplicable fear of the water that she thought she had overcome. It was as if her senses were tingling awake. Had she cut herself off from her feelings so thoroughly, she had been numb for all these years?
She nodded. There was no lying to Sam. He was as intuitive as she was. Charlie had the ability to sense when people were in distress. She’d taken up rope tying because the control had appealed to her. She needed it like a drug and had been practicing with models for years, learning the intricacies of the human anatomy, pressure points and giving them a safe space to work out their stress and personal issues. The sensuality of shibari appealed to her as well. Tying men was a particular fascination for her—all that masculine power held suspended by her hand, her ability, her need to feel the rush of adrenaline. She needed their surrender.
She backed up a step. “I don’t think I’m ready for that, Sam.”
“I think you are and that you need this. Something is happening to you. You feel it, but you’re not allowing it to influence you. Let me tie you, Charlie. I’ve wanted to for a long time. You’re beautiful, sensitive, warm but with a core of steel.”
The sober look on his face kicked off another flurry of uneasiness. She edged toward the door.
“Running away and refusing to face your fears isn’t going to resolve anything. You want to understand your shortcomings when it comes to relationships, don’t you?”
She stopped, her conscience kicking her hard at his words. Running away fixes nothing.
“It’s okay to be scared. Facing fears isn’t an easy task, but I’d say traditional ways of dealing aren’t working for you.”
She shook her head. “I can’t seem to get past this blank wall.”
He nodded. “You’re safe with me, Charlie. You know that.”
She turned to look at him. They had been intimate, but he knew she wasn’t in love with him. It was a mutual arrangement that had sustained her in the times when she’d come off deployment and needed human contact. But giving her heart…was she even capable of that?
Sam was adept in both tsuriawa–rope suspension and mugnawa–selfless tying. But where he excelled was in semenawa, roping that created a feeling of helplessness and endurance, often with the use of pain and discomfort. He’d taught Charlie well and she’d been tying men who were open to these concepts, fulfilling her need for control, for dominance that hounded her like a ravening dog.
Trusting herself had always kept her safe.
“All right, Sam. Tie me,” she whispered, fearful that this experience would be something she wasn’t ready for, worried that she didn’t have the courage to name her fears, let alone face them.
With a craving to feel the ropes against her bare skin, a She was used to the nudity at Ties That Bind. She really never thought anything of baring her body. She walked barefoot to the suspension area.
This was where shibari and kinbaku differed. Kinbaku was meant to be erotic, erogenous zones the target of the knots and pressure points. But with shibari, Sam was going to give her a safe space where she could work out her fears.
She hoped she had the courage.
She knelt down fully clothed, the strappy, simple white dress she wore soft and flowing, puddling around her like liquid pearl. Sam knelt behind her and at the moment when she gave her nonverbal consent, he slipped his fingers under the straps of her dress and slipped them off her shoulders, baring her upper body. He wrapped the rope around her upper chest, a little roughly, as it tightened, her breath deepened. With his hand in her hair and on his knees, he moved around her. With his hands warm against her skin, she remembered all the times he’d touched her when they’d been together and all the times she wanted it to mean more. He tied her hands in front of her, knotting the rope until it was snug. He’d rigged a rope around a big square post that was part of the rooms foundation instead of the ceiling. Gently he placed her against one flat side, the post was cold on her skin and she shivered. He wrapped ropes around the post, then around her upper body until she was tied to it. With gentle pressure, he hoisted her until only the ball of her foot was against the floor, then he lifted her other leg, and tied her with bent knee, looping it around her ankle, then secured it to the base above her head. With a winding motion, he tied her standing leg to the post, finishing by wrapping her ankle and securing it as well.
This was her space and in the act of being bound, it was supposed to free her. She shivered, her heart contracting waiting for what she hoped was her needing to reach out and be open, vulnerable with him, her teacher and her lover.
“I know what happened to your family was devastating and terrifying. How alone you must have felt.”
She swallowed, wanting to expand and fly, but she felt grounded, weighted down, held there by trauma that was twelve years old. She met his eyes and she saw compassion and hope there. He wanted her to succeed to make a breakthrough. But he wasn’t the one who could get her there.
She stared at him, suddenly dangerously close to tears. There was nothing inside her. She was lost, and she knew it. How to heal was beyond her. She was desperate to find that key, to take it and unlock what was inside her so she could move to the next stage in her life, but Sam didn’t hold the key.
The ropes were tight, but they were supposed to be, but something was wrong…off. They should be giving her the foundation from which to explore her trauma. Instead there was no safe space, only dead air inside her. Her jaw clenched, and she couldn’t settle enough to gain any kind of peace, let alone enlightenment.
Sam said softly, “Relax, Charlie. This is anything you make it. It can be what you want, what you need. Let it be. Let it go.”
She broke eye contact, his words only adding to the sense of shrinking, of dissolving. There was nothing but dread in the pit of her stomach and it seemed to expand into a dark wall that only made her try harder to beat against it. It was as if her body fought her mind, giving her nothing but anguish, pain everywhere. It engulfed her as if she was drowning, water filling her lungs until she couldn’t breathe. She jerked against the ropes, the fiber digging into her skin, feeling they were like a prison. Tears gathered at her inability to find a path to where she had to go. She was locked out completely.
“Untie me,” she sobbed. “Please, Sam. I can’t.”
He made several pulls and worked quickly as she fell apart with the knots. She slipped to the floor as his arms came around her. “You wanted to, Charlie,” he said huskily. “That’s what counts.”
It didn’t count for anything. What counted were all the things she didn’t do, all the things she’d lost because she had become so closed. Was she barren? “No. It doesn’t make a difference at all.”
His face fell, and she could feel his energy slip away from her. It barely left a mark. She regretted it because she knew whatever association they had, it wasn’t enough. Whatever they had was over.
She had to find the key.
She was still thinking that after many drinks later in Sunset Bar and Grille downtown. Her cell rang again, and she looked down to see it was Sam. Ten times he’d called, but she couldn’t speak to him.
>
“SEALs Under Fire,” the headline broadcast on the blurry television screen. The pretty blonde TV anchor said, “After a devastating ambush just on the border of Kirikhanistan, a Navy spokesperson has confirmed that two Navy SEALs are still missing in action and presumed captured…”
Charlie pulled her eyes away from the screen and tapped the bar for the bartender to pour her another drink. Silently she saluted her brothers in arms and threw it back. She staggered out of the place and hailed a cab.
She had to find the key. Put the pieces back together again and find wholeness. Tying was the key, she was sure of it. Tying was her thing. That’s where she would find her peace, she knew it. She needed a model…a bottom, one who knew trauma, one who needed her as much as she needed that person.
Once the cabbie pulled up to her residence, she staggered inside, her housekeeper clicking her tongue. “Don’t fuss, Diana,” Charlie slurred, but she didn’t protest when the woman helped her to bed.
“The key,” she mumbled as she dropped into sleep.
* * *
Yur’yevo, Russia Kirikhanistan Province
Scarecrow, aka Arlo Porter, and Orion “Wicked” Cross had one mind when it came to treason, betrayal, and knives-still-in-their-backs treachery: ruthless retribution. Scarecrow stared at Vasily Petrov who had been hiding like a snake in the grass all this time. He’d been responsible for American lives. Scarecrow shook with the rage trapped inside him, working at keeping it manageable or he would kill the bastard before they got what they needed from him.