by Angel Payne
Confused crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Huh?”
“Yin and yang. It fits you two, in a demented way.”
He smiled. The look wasn’t a copy of his cheeky smirks so far. It grew from the middle of his mouth then moved outward in an ocean-like undulation…wrecking strange havoc on her stomach in the process. “Yeah. It probably does.”
His voice was different now, too. A little more serious. A lot more velvety.
Guard up, Hokulani!
“The path to the house starts there,” she ordered, “between the two papaya trees. Look for the bamboo planks. Got it?”
“Had it scoped about five minutes back, sweetheart.” He turned and trudged toward the trees, flexing calves the size of hams. For once, Lani was thankful for his strange cockiness. It made her consider the logistics of her order. Damn. The path was only wide enough for single-file travel, meaning there was no way to police both the men at once.
Or was there?
“Stop.” Her slam on the syllable was sufficient to freeze them both.
Yang swiveled his amber gaze back at her. “Dear Christ, I like the way she says that.”
“Down, T-Bomb,” cautioned Yin.
“Well, don’t you?”
Gray Eyes didn’t say anything—until he looked again to Lani. Though his lips remained motionless, his answer slammed through every inch of her body like a tidal wave of fire. Gods. The man wanted her. To be honest, that part would be easy to handle, if this was just a case of a jerk letting his dick control the guidebook. But the way he took her in, as if he’d never seen a woman before and marveled over everything about her, was something she’d never experienced from a man before. From another person before.
What the hell was he doing this for? He didn’t relent, freezing her in place, binding her—terrifying her.
And elevating her next command to the stratosphere of crazy.
“Give me your pants.”
Golden Eyes slid out another smirk. “I like the way you say that even better.”
Gray Eyes glowered. “What the fuck?”
“You heard me.” Lani jerked her chin, making sure to keep the Bowie directly in his view. “Benson sent you down here ahead of the meeting for a reason. I don’t know what that is yet, and I’m not going to risk finding out when one of you runs ahead to warn the man. Your shorts are my insurance against that. Hand them over.”
Golden Eyes, having already shucked his khakis, finished tearing off his shirt, as well. His new outfit, nothing but his black briefs, left no doubt in her mind that every part of him was mighty as a boulder. He extended both with another crooked grin. “Do I qualify for extra credit?”
Hell. How the man could make her want to scowl and smile in the same reaction, was a mystery she didn’t have time to untangle. She diverted her attention by turning to his friend, who still shifted uneasily on the sand.
“You sure about this?” Gray Eyes finally charged. “You already have his. Do you really need both—”
“Take them off or I’ll cut them off. Your choice.”
The tension continued in his face for another two seconds. When it suddenly disappeared, she wondered why a thread of uneasiness dragged through her nerves now—thickening to straight-up alarm as he drawled, “Your mandate, sweetheart.”
Hell. He justified her anxiety the next moment—in hard, huge, and damn near erect detail. And the man, with that sensual smirk again sliding across his lips, just let her stare as he dropped the shorts, blatantly revealing he was a commando kind of guy.
Chapter Two
You should be gloating. Standing on the beach wearing nothing but a doofus gawk does not qualify as gloating.
The reproach jabbed at Kellan Rush’s brain. Correction: it pounded at him with more ruthless demand than the blood blasting in his cock, stirring confusion into his mental mix.
He’d finally trumped the woman, at least for a second. Normal protocols, Sergeant Rush style, dictated that his next step be a well-earned wallow in glory. So why the hell was he stalling?
Because “normal” didn’t exist in the same world with this woman.
And it was freaking him the hell out.
In the last fifteen minutes, she’d knocked him flat on his back, reduced him to speechlessness, and for the first time in his life, made him wonder if lightning strikes from fate weren’t metaphysical bullshit. One second, he’d been ready to pummel some sense into the buddy who’d decided to give up on life by backstroking through a vodka bottle. The next, he was paralyzed by this beauty with the magic of blue silver in her eyes, the grace of mist in her steps, and a goddess’s strength in every curve of her body.
Dear fucking God, her body.
What the hell was wrong with him? As a member of the US Army’s First Special Forces Group, he’d seen physical beauty like hers in every corner of the globe. But this insane draw to her…it wasn’t understandable, let alone controllable. Wasn’t as though he could blame this sexy fuckery on anything substantial, either. He didn’t know her name, let alone anything else about her.
He only knew she’d had the moves to topple him and Tait, two expert of unconventional battle, like they’d simply been pieces of driftwood.
He also knew she’d been ready to put a knife through their balls if they so much as sneezed on her beach.
Most importantly, he knew that behind all her She-Ra posturing, her grip on that knife faltered when referring to some asswipe named Benson. Her fear of the guy had her so spazzed, she’d instantly lumped Tait and him in with the guy and his goons. Kell thanked fate that Tait, even with half a bottle of Grey Goose in his system, was alert enough to throw a look indicating he’d hopped on Kell’s page about revealing their true identities. The mutual gung-ho? They weren’t. Not yet. When a guy’s work suit was often the cloak of subterfuge, he became best friends with anonymity. With whatever shit was about to go down with Benson, they might help her best if they laid low for now.
At the moment, that was easier said than done. With his personal “tiki god” stiffening by the moment simply from her stare, his body was mighty stingy with the secrecy. In this case, that wasn’t a bad thing. Kell reveled in watching her eyes on his cock. And her breasts, so full and perfect, pushing against her bikini’s halter top with the new air pumping into her lungs. He fixated on the strawberry tint of her lips as she parted them, as if her body had gotten the direct download on his fantasy. Damn, he could even picture it. Her bow-shaped mouth sucking on him shyly at first, but soon pulling as much of his erection down her throat as she could. Moaning around him. Devouring him…
“Shit.”
Her gasp was husky—the perfect envelope for a hard-on. Kell cleared his throat and glanced at the pole jutting from his crotch. Fat fucking chance of a stand-down now. After looking back up, he gave her a fast shrug. “I tried to warn you.”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “And don’t you dare think of getting back into those things before I say.” Her glare referred to the tentative step he took back toward his shorts. “Kick the khakis over here, point man. Then get moving.” A trace of mirth seemed to flicker through her crystalline eyes. “Guess you’re uniquely qualified for the position.”
Kellan dared a wink. “Just want to serve to the best of my abilities, ma’am.”
The humor vanished from her gaze. “Your ‘service’ isn’t important to me, Yin-Man. Your silence is. Lock the mouth. Then walk the feet.” She nodded at Tait. “You’re right behind him, Stolichnaya.”
Tait wobbled a finger through the air. “Technically, it was Grey Goose.”
“Technically, I don’t give a damn.” She flicked her Bowie toward the path. “I wasn’t sure what I saw flying through the air a few minutes ago. Now that I realize it was your bottle of hooch, you’ll have the honor of picking it out of my roses once we get to the garden, anyhow.”
“Not a problem, dreamgirl.”
Tait’s vodka-inspired flirt confirmed a suspicion to Kell. His f
riend was as captivated by the goddess as he. No surprise there, given how her long ebony hair had picked up the sunset’s lavender streaks when she first came upon them, but he hoped—fuck, he prayed—that once T sobered up, he’d see that “dreamgirl” was nothing like Luna Lawrence. Nor could she be expected to live up to the memory of the woman who still tortured Tait’s soul.
But as they entered the shadows of the forest path, the irony of the whole situation didn’t escape him. Tait and he had been ordered here by John Franzen, their battalion CO, in order to pull T’s brain out of its mire of grief over Luna, a “special agent” for the FBI team they’d assisted on a case in LA almost a year ago. The battalion’s history with Luna dipped back further than the case, but those two weeks had been the turning point in Tait’s relationship with the woman. Best as Kell could piece together, they’d plunged so deep that they had everything but the rings—right before Luna ended the mission in a coma that eventually killed her.
The aftermath was an epic mess, validating Kellan’s own life rule about women in all its practical perfection. Fun? Yes. Sex? Definitely yes. But when a guy had a job that prevented him from owning even a dog, leaping over the relationship cliff was asking for disaster—the same kind of shit show that had taken over Tait’s soul and psyche, and now threatened to decimate his military career.
The guy had paid his dues on the psychotherapist’s couch for months before brass finally cleared him for active duty again—but on his first mission back in, T proved he’d lost his edge, unable to shove his emotions into proper boxes. As a result, he miscalculated a shot so bad that they almost lost an ally soldier to a blue-on-blue shot—a friendly fire bullet from Kellan’s rifle—and the real criminal had gone free. Less than three hours later, Franzen ordered the two of them to take mandated R&R in his family’s place, located a quarter mile down the beach from here.
Banishment in paradise. It sounded like a brooding emo fan fiction website, but with a few choice expletives thrown in, the words perfectly matched the title Kell slapped on the assignment when they got here a day and a half ago. Yet despite his bitter bitch party, he hoped their CO was nailing it right with the call. Before Luna, Tait had been more than his sniper team partner. They’d been best friends. Bunkmates. Drinking buddies. Able to communicate complete paragraphs by using only three words. Before Luna, they’d been—
Yin and Yang.
Crazy. Ironic, even. The title might’ve been something Luna herself concocted, and was invoked by a woman who bore more than a subtle resemblance to the woman. But damn it, this Bowie-bearing goddess was more than that. A more that demanded to be seen for its own beauty and unique fire, not just a beautiful substitution for a ghost. He’d take Tait to the mat to pound it into the guy’s brain if necessary.
Astonishment almost halted him in the middle of the bamboo-planked walkway. Was he, the most happily unattached guy on the team, admitting to putting a woman on his priority list?
He snorted and kept walking. She wasn’t on the top of the damn thing, for fuck’s sake. And it didn’t mean he was turning heel on Tait or the goal they’d been sent here to accomplish. If Tait didn’t leave this rock in two weeks with his head tighter than a newly-calibrated rifle, Kell was officially under consideration for having his own ass yanked off missions for a while, if not permanently. Franz had made that much clear, apparently following some mysterious commanding officer wisdom—or insanity. As if it mattered. Tait’s mental fitness was the priority here, and he wasn’t about to muck up the op.
But for one second, it felt good to simply forget all that pressure. For right here and now, it felt incredible to let his dick fly in the wind for something other than a mission or a mate.
It was crazy. So what if it could only be temporary? Maybe a little temporary insanity would give him a better window into helping Tait. Besides, if “crazy” kept him in the vicinity of this goddess a while longer, then crazy looked just fucking perfect.
Chapter Three
An acidic laugh tumbled off Tait’s lips. He didn’t think his brain would argue much with his feuding feelings, considering that he stood in the middle of a garden in the dark, in nothing but his briefs, doing battle with the thorns of a nasty-ass rose bush in order to retrieve the vodka bottle Kellan had thrown here.
His head spun as he bent over, fishing for the elusive Grey Goose. His ears rang. How much of that shit had he downed before Kell found him and hurled the bottle away? More than he remembered, obviously. Sufficient to put him in a stupor that had him comparing the damn clouds in the sky to Luna’s hair, but not enough to render him numb to her memory. Not half enough.
That was before Heaven had dropped her twin on the beach in front of him.
Okay, officially, she’d dropped him first. One second, Kellan had stormed across the beach and all but torn him a new asshole for indulging in the bender; the next, they were both tripped, flipped, and stunned, flat on their backs in the sand. When he’d pried his eyes open and received a horizon filled with that ebony hair and those incredible eyes, his senses had screamed with the first logical conclusion. Hallucination. There. Handled. Clean and simple.
But when his vision cleared and she was still there, especially after Kell started talking to her, he’d known he was in true trouble. This creature, with her exotic beauty and take-no-shit spirit, was real. The comprehension had been the Universe’s biggest embrace and coldcock in one. The dilemma that followed was no easier to wade through. Did he drag her into his arms, thanking fate for reminding him that the strength he’d adored in Luna still lived on so incredibly in the world? Or did he grab his shorts and run like hell before he dirtied her life with the taint of his? He had to stop the carnage somewhere, right? He’d just turned twenty-seven. Maybe seventeen years was long enough to maintain the ridiculous fantasy that his life would make a difference to someone, that his love wasn’t the courier of their ruin.
Or their death.
More laughter peppered the air. This time it sure as hell wasn’t his. There was a distinct hitch at the end of the bursts, Kellan’s brand of “adorable yet awkward.” The guy had perfected that laugh a long time ago, and Tait had watched him use it to snag women from Tacoma to Tangier.
Was the player trying to use it on…her? Now? Standing there on the path with his schlong flapping in the breeze between them?
Tait growled as he found the bottle and snatched it from the bush. He ran into a shitload of thorns along the way, creating a few bloody tracks along his arm, which went unnoticed beneath his immediate case of what the fuck.
Common sense jabbed its way past the booze and his ire. The woman, whoever she was, obviously had a brain beneath that sleek hair. She was smart enough to see through a fuckpuppy like Kell. If not, Slash-Man would learn what she was all about real quick. A woman like that would demand the best of a man. She was bold and strong and unique, Waterford crystal meant for filling with champagne. In Kellan’s world, relationships were plastic party cups.
The guy would wrap his head around that disparity any minute now. Just in case he didn’t, Tait hustled back, bearing the Grey Goose with a gamely grin. “I’ve beat aside the rose bush dragon and retrieved your treasure, my lady.”
When he extended the bottle, his damsel tucked in her chin while arching both brows, a move full of serious sass. It was also the first that didn’t remind him in some tiny way of Luna. That came as a welcome relief to his tormented senses—only his cock didn’t read the memo. The woman was a torch on him, her bronze curves and fiery spirit igniting parts of his body that had been doused since last June. A lot of those sparks were familiar friends, but a bunch of new flames snuck in, too, burning in strange and scary ways. The fire licked up his staff and nipped at its tip in a blaze that was thoroughly unique to this island goddess.
Who the hell was she? Where had she come from? And why did she look like she hadn’t given herself permission to smile in months?
“I’m no more your lady than his sweetheart. Got
it?” For a moment, she seemed years younger, indulging a teenager’s eye roll. “What the hell? Did Benson let you all watch ‘Shakespeare Your Way Into Her Panties’ online? Tell him he wasted his money.”
He glanced at Kellan. The tension in his friend’s shoulders surely mirrored his own. That name was back again. Benson. The dickface—yeah, by now he felt safe going there—had caused one too many shadows across the woman’s face to make their ruse acceptable anymore. Time to separate themselves, especially in her perception, from the bastard’s posse. He gave Kell a quick nod to communicate as much. Kell didn’t need any more encouragement. He stepped over, took the bottle from her, and curled a hand around her elbow. “So about this Benson—”
“Perfect.” She interrupted him as the glare of headlights swung through the night, showing that they stood in an expansive garden of flowers and fruit trees that led to a sprawling two-story home with lots of windows and a wraparound lanai. “I’ll just tell him myself.”
Fortunately, she remembered to return their shorts as she turned up the walkway at a determined march. After setting the vodka on a work table, Kellan slammed back into his in less than fifteen seconds. It took Tait that long just to figure out where the leg holes were. He fell over trying to get his second leg in, officially verifying he’d had too much to drink. Or maybe not enough. Sanction for that came from the bottle itself, now at his eye level, shockingly not empty after its end-over-end flight into the roses. “Fuck it.” He wiped off the opening and chugged another shot.