Swinging down with one hand, he pulled branches back to cover the opening and descended into the darkness.
The dark shape at the side of the tunnel brought him up cold. There was no mistaking Truman’s motionless length. Miki was holding him against her chest.
Her face was white, her body stiff. When she looked up, her eyes were tense. “Are they gone?”
Max nodded, already searching his vest.
“They were…” Her voice trailed away.
“Pirates. Damned nasty people.”
She didn’t seem to be hurt. Max saw that she was pale, but there was no sign of blood or bruises.
“What happened?”
“Truman heard them. He was guarding me and they saw him. Then that man with the missing teeth found us, even in the fog. He—” She took a deep breath, her face lined with exhaustion as she lost her balance and swayed.
“Take it easy.” Max sank down beside her, bracing her back. “Everything’s going to be fine.” He smiled faintly when he saw the carved sticks on the ground beside her. “Chopsticks?”
“Knitting needles,” she rasped.
“What were you going to do, knit him a pair of Fair Isle socks?”
She took a shaky breath. “I was going to blind him. Hit his throat if I had to.” She shuddered, then tried to pull away from Max.
He wouldn’t let her move, not even an inch. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
Max pulled off his shirt and covered Truman. The dog’s pulse was weak but steady as Max squeezed some of Izzy’s supercondensed gel into Truman’s mouth.
The Lab’s eyes opened and his tail wagged once.
“Take it easy, ace. Enough good work for one day.”
Truman licked Miki’s face and then bumped his head against Max’s shoulder. Weak as he was, he went from one to the other, three times. Then he sneezed and fell asleep.
“He’s amazing,” Miki said softly.
“You’re telling me. Can you handle him for a few minutes more?”
“He’s fine right here.”
Max sat on the floor, pulled off his vest and then stripped back his wet suit. The sooner he applied Izzy’s antivenin, the better.
He heard Miki gasp.
“What happened to you, Max?”
“I ran into a few jellyfish.” A whole damned school of them, Max thought grimly. “Not one of my better days.” He dug out his medical kit, feeling Miki’s eyes on him as he filled a syringe and injected the muscle of his upper arm. After that there was nothing more to do but wait. He needed to make another patrol on the beach and then find Dutch, but exhaustion was finally catching up with him.
He stifled a yawn. “How was Dutch doing?”
“About the same. Sometimes his breathing was worse, but a few minutes later he seemed to calm down.”
Max nodded. The details seemed fairly standard for a lung injury of this sort. He dropped his vest and tugged at his wetsuit. “I need to get a nap. An hour should do it.”
“Only an hour? And what about those welts? They have got to hurt.”
“I’ll survive. The medicine should kick in soon.” Max had weathered far worse than this.
Miki looked away.
She was giving him privacy to change, Max realized. But he didn’t have the slightest bit of self-consciousness as he stripped off the tight black rubber suit and changed into dry clothes from his vest.
“What about the man on the beach?” Miki’s voice was shaky.
Max shrugged.
“I’m tired, Max. And I’m tired of being in the dark.” Her fingers tightened in Truman’s hair. “This is no ordinary dog and you’re no everyday soldier. Don’t you think I’m entitled to know something?”
Max looked at her for a long time. “No.” He rubbed his neck, desperately needing to sleep. “I can’t talk about this. You’re going to have to trust me, Miki.”
Her jaw hardened.
Given the fact that her life appeared to have gone straight to hell in the last twenty-four hours, Max couldn’t blame her.
“Did you call your team…your people?”
He nodded.
“And?”
“And they’ll do what they can.”
Max stretched slightly, wincing as pain lanced through his shoulder. He hadn’t told her a lie. He had equipment for communication with the Foxfire team in the event that they had to deploy on the island.
Right now, that didn’t appear likely.
“What does that mean? Truman needs help. So does Dutch.”
Max gave a little shrug. He reached into the medical kit and took out a topical analgesic for his neck. Reaching over his shoulder was painful, but it had to be done.
“Stop.” She sounded irritated and worried at the same time. “Let me do that for you.”
“I don’t need—”
“Lie down and shut up, Max.” She slid free of Truman and knelt beside Max, smoothing cream gently over his neck and shoulder. Every motion made him jumpy. Her breath skimmed his cheek and Max told himself the sharp, hot tension was strictly because he wasn’t used to people taking care of him.
But that was a definite lie. He was far too aware of Miki’s skin and scent and warmth. He caught the faint smell of her sweat and the heat of her body where she knelt behind him. Max knew that if he pulled off his gloves and touched her now, skin to bare skin, her emotions would flood into him, raw and unconstrained.
And some deep part of him demanded that contact. On some level things had already gone too far to turn back.
“That’s good enough.” His voice was curt. It was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open, but he managed to lean down and scratch Truman’s head gently, then remove his harness. He poured some water from his canteen into the dog’s mouth, but in his exhaustion, the canteen nearly slipped from his fingers.
“Idiot.” Miki grabbed his gloved hand, her fingers locking around his while she replaced the cap. “You’re dead on your feet.”
No kidding, Max thought grimly.
“Go to sleep.” She ran a hand through her hair, then squared her shoulders as if she had come to some kind of decision. She glanced at his watch. “If you want me to wake you up, I’ll need your watch.”
Max tried to undo his watch, but his fingers were stiff. In the end, he simply held out his arm and watched her remove the heavy strap. She slid it onto her hand, pulled the strap tight, and put one hand on his chest.
“Go to sleep,” she ordered again. Trying not to smile and failing. “I’ll wake you in an hour.”
That one small smile with her light and casual touch still packed the force of a punch. Max had to work to concentrate on what she was saying, instead of how she felt and smelled and how much he wanted to feel her body pressed against his.
Simply the effect of working thirty-six hours without a break? Or was it something more insidious?
“I trust you. Heaven knows why.” She shook her head and then pushed him back down onto the ground and rolling his vest into a pillow.
She looked at him intently. “I saw some photos in your trunk. They were thermal images.”
Her words were tinny. Max could barely hear her. “So?”
She looked defensive. Max wanted to tell her not to bother, that he understood. He was slipping into sleep, his body finally starting to relax, and he wanted to tell her that he liked the way she smelled, liked the way her hair spiked around her cheeks.
Sexy, he thought.
Strong and yet vulnerable.
“Just photos,” he repeated. “Nothing important.”
But that was a lie. The thermal images were crucial to his search.
“They looked important to me,” she said thoughtfully. “Whoever took them had to climb some rugged cliffs, according to what I saw. They went to a lot of trouble. I think they were looking for something up there.”
“Talk later.” Max yawned, curling onto his side, trying to find a comfortable position despite the pain burning through
his shoulder and neck. “Have to sleep now…”
She started to say something more, but stopped, shaking her head. “You’re right. This can wait. I’ll be quiet so I don’t wake you.”
“No need. I can sleep through anything,” Max muttered. “Part of the job.” He stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Only one hour, remember? I set the alarm in my watch. I’ll hear it anyway.”
“Are you always this bossy?”
Max smiled, half asleep. “Not always. Not when I’m in bed with a beautiful woman and I’m busy getting her naked. Not when I’ve got my mouth exactly where I want it. I figure you know where that is.” He hadn’t meant for that last part to slip out, but by the time he realized what he’d said he was already slipping down into sleep.
He didn’t hear her quiet laugh. He didn’t feel her bend close and smooth the blanket across his chest. But in some strange and very unfamiliar way, while he slept, he felt the odd sensation of being safe and well guarded.
HE DREAMED OF TURQUOISE water, bordered by white sand beaches. He drifted in bloodred dawns that burned up out of the South China Sea. In those dreaming waters he swam effortlessly, surrounded by ever changing schools of flashing fish. Gold faded into bright blue and green shimmered into neon red.
But something was wrong with the sea around him. Nets of black tangled around him, turning the water cold.
The dream was a message, Max thought dimly, a warning he couldn’t unravel. He felt weightless, trapped inside huge bubbles, chasing a shadow that stayed always out of reach.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MIKI SAT IN THE DARKNESS, listening to Max’s slow, steady breathing. A glance at his shoulder convinced her his pain was worse than he would admit. His resources and his reserve were greater than any man she had met, but even he couldn’t hide his exhaustion any longer. And how could he hope to recover with only one hour of sleep?
Because he was different.
She closed her eyes, going through the details of all she had seen inside his trunk, the papers, tools and weapons that showed a hard-eyed professional at work.
The truth was, she had enjoyed rummaging, enjoyed the chance to touch Max’s clothes and pick up the faint scent of man and soap and sweat. When she was done with her search, she was convinced there was something strange about one of the photographs she had seen pushed beneath his clothes. Something about the heat signatures seemed off somehow.
But Miki was no expert in thermal photography. She could be wrong about her assessment. Meanwhile, the fatigue on Max’s face convinced her to table any discussion until he awoke.
With Truman beside her, she sat staring at Max’s watch. He had saved her life on the beach, a silent and lethal protector appearing out of the fog. She didn’t want to consider what might have happened otherwise.
Above her head, thunder rumbled. In a crazy way, Miki felt a sense of belonging here, even though she was thousands of miles from home in the company of near strangers. As she scratched Truman’s head, she listened to Max sleep, shocked by how responsible she felt for this man, his dog and for the pilot who had saved her life in the crash. The small stuffy room felt like the true world, while everything else shrank to pale irrelevance. Miki had read enough to know the effect had to do with stress and captivity, a mixture guaranteed to play havoc with normal outlook. Logic warned her this was a dangerous illusion and her emotional bonds would evaporate as soon as she left the island. Without this life and death situation to keep them together, she and Max would forget each other.
The thought left a lingering sadness.
MAX WOKE ABRUPTLY, peering into darkness.
He didn’t move, one hand wrapped around the automatic he kept under his head when he slept. Instantly awake, he listened to the small sounds in the darkness, letting the sense of movement take on location and meaning.
Rats, most likely. Nothing big.
It had been an hour since he fell asleep, he was certain of that. He had always had the ability to set a mental clock, even when he was exhausted. “Miki?” he whispered.
There was no answer.
Something moved nearby, and a cold nose nudged his face. Laughing, Max smoothed Truman’s fur. “That’s one question settled. Glad to have you back, ace. Nice job out there on the beach. We’ll have to do some damage control later, and Izzy will want to track our nasty friends, too.” As Max sat up, the dog caught the edge of his shirt. “Where’s Miki gone?”
Truman tugged hard to the right, and Max heard the drum of thunder marking the storm that Izzy had predicted. But another sound echoed off the stone walls, and the muffled hiss pulled him to his feet, gun in hand.
He followed the noise through the darkness toward a line of restless light. Beyond the light a shadow separated from the darkness, tossed against the bunker’s stone walls.
Max didn’t move, his senses sharp and focused. There was a freshness to the air that was new, and he heard a steady rustling over his head.
Rain. Falling hard.
In the dim light, he saw Miki standing beneath a current of water channeled down from the ceiling. Her hands raised, stripped down to her underwear, she was singing softly and very off key.
Taking a shower.
It was the most erotic thing Max had ever seen.
His throat tightened as he drank in the sight of her. With his eyes dark-adapted, he had no trouble picking up the pale outline of her skin, slim and strong beneath the coursing water. All she wore was a set of damp lace underwear that might as well have been invisible.
Max felt his pulse spike unnaturally, and the perception wasn’t idle. He was trained to read his basic body functions, and what he was feeling now went beyond normal male reaction into something hard and gut wrenching.
Something that felt dangerously personal.
She was doing it to him again, twisting him up in tiny knots, messing up his world. Max was pretty sure he felt sweat covering his face. What was it about the woman that dug under his skin and played havoc with his control?
Hell if he knew. How could he know, when it had never happened to him before?
She was humming a little tune, running her hands through her hair as the water beat down on her shoulders. Max didn’t recognize the song, but it was making her swing her hips from side to side, rocking in time to some remembered hit from the past.
His throat went bone dry. All he could think about was having her, deep and hard, right against the stone wall.
He watched her body sway and sensed the drum of her pulse, though he was fifteen feet away. He still couldn’t place the song, but that didn’t surprise him. He’d spent most of his boyhood in foster homes, where there had been no time or opportunity for privacy or relaxation. Music was just sound you caught from someone else’s open windows.
As an adult, none of that had changed. All his energy had gone into his work and his constantly upgraded training. Max had never regretted the sacrifices he had made since joining the Navy. The way he looked at it, he’d been given far more than he’d lost. But right now, he couldn’t get Miki’s voice and her husky little tune out of his mind, which made him obsess about the words.
Something about dark summer nights. About feelings that were too fast, too hot. All of it was unfamiliar to Max, one more example of how different their futures would be and how disparate their pasts.
But thinking about his past reminded him of all the reasons why he shouldn’t be here. What he was feeling was too intense, breaking every rule of his Foxfire training. In spite of that, his feet kept moving through the shadows, driven by a tortured need he couldn’t explain. There was no permanency, no future for them, but whatever happened here would be enough. Her body was a landscape of secrets and dreams, and Max meant to find his way along every inch of her before they finished. The certainty of that knowledge drummed in his blood, tightened every muscle.
Something bound them. He couldn’t deny that knowledge any longer. He didn’t believe in fate and he wasn’t sure he believed in reli
gion, but he did believe in the sight of Miki and the husky tone of her voice as her body teased him in the darkness, offering him things he couldn’t name, things he hadn’t realized he’d been missing.
As a boy he hadn’t known how to dream. As a man, there had never been time to try. But now, looking at her, he knew what it felt like to dream. To want.
To mate. Max wasn’t sure where that thought came from; all he knew was that it was true. His logical mind was losing ground to his primitive side, the part of him that hunted silently and without mercy. As he felt himself moving deeper into that primal world, the pale trappings of civilization fell away and instinct took control.
He couldn’t tear his eyes from Miki’s body.
She fed his need until he hungered to claim her, to mark her as his own just as she had marked him with her bravery and laughter. Some part of him wanted to shove her against the wall without a thought for her wishes, taking his own release without preliminaries.
He knew how she’d feel, slick and warm against him.
His hands tightened and his blood took on a heavy, pulsing beat that mirrored the drum of the rain. Though they hadn’t touched yet, Max knew the cool curves of her skin and the unexpected strength of her hands. With all his senses stirred, he caught layers of a dozen hormones scattered warm and rich across her skin.
The force was so strong, so unexpected that he took a deep breath, fighting a need to dominate and overwhelm her. The pounding in his blood warned him there was danger here, danger from his mind and from his strength, but nothing mattered beyond physical completion, her body opening to his, driven to him by shared hunger. As a man it was his right to command and he would start now.
Now.
He stopped walking. His hands closed into fists.
This wasn’t him. He didn’t ever lose his edge of control. His planning and organization had been legendary from the first day he joined the SEALs. But that control seemed to be crumbling, destroyed by the simple magic of a woman’s off-key voice and the shimmer of her slender body beneath a restless veil of water.
Was he crazy or was she?
Pain dug at Max’s neck. She still hadn’t seen him, her eyes closed against the water, the sound of her voice and the thunder overhead masking his quiet approach. Distantly, he noted the growing hammer of his pulse and wondered if this was the prelude to another nosebleed. There was no mistaking that something happened when he was around her. He didn’t believe in coincidence, and his instincts still whispered that Cruz was involved, though there was no reason to distrust Miki now that Izzy had identified her.
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