Chapter 16
The ride back blurred in a wash of noise and vibration.
Emily sat wedged against Brawler, Beast sprawled at their feet, the rest of the team slouched around them in silence, weapons across their knees.
No one spoke, but the heat of the hoo-yah still hummed in her chest, wrapping her in warmth she’d never felt before.
For one fragile, impossible moment, she let herself believe it. She belonged.
She leaned closer, her voice a husky whisper. “So…do you and your team have to jet off immediately?”
Brawler tipped his head down, mouth tugging at one corner. “Why? What did you have in mind?”
Her fingers slid up, brushing along the rough line of his jaw. “Some yelling, some mouth action, some riding, some thrusting, and a whole lot of Neanderthal.”
He choked on a laugh, eyes shutting tight for a beat. “How about some fucking sleep in there?”
“I don’t want to waste my time sleeping,” she whispered back, glaring at the damned vest keeping her from the heat of his chest. “Are you saying you’re too tired to get it up?”
His hand cupped her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek. His voice dropped low, rough enough to vibrate in her bones. “Too tired? For you? No fucking way. But I did get wounded protecting you.”
Her lips curved, teasing. She tilted her head, feigning sympathy, her voice dropping into a soft coo. “That’s right. The big, bad SEAL got hurt.” She leaned in, brushing his mouth with hers in the faintest, tantalizing way. “Tell you what. I’ll kiss every single one of your boo-boos.”
Brawler’s growl rumbled against her lips, his forehead resting against hers like a man two seconds away from hauling her into his lap. “Careful, Shortcake. I might hold you to that.”
“Get a goddamned room,” Dagger muttered good-naturedly.
The silence stretched warm and thick around them until Easy’s low voice cut in from across the cabin. “We get it. We’ve been in the same position…so to speak.”
Bondo snorted softly. Shark rumbled a quiet laugh. Even Tex’s mouth twitched, though he kept his eyes on the cabin wall.
She soaked up the acknowledgment, support. Every one of them had known what it was to come back from hell with a woman’s face burned into their chest and the desperate need to hold onto her.
Emily’s throat tightened, the heat in her belly matched by something rawer. She really loved these guys.
Her mind went to Flash, the memory of his collapse, and she couldn’t get it out of her mind that something strange had happened to him.
The helo touched down.
Sunlight seared across the tarmac as the side doors slid open. Emily blinked, squinting against the glare, expecting more crewmen, maybe transport vehicles, maybe the first step toward home.
Instead, men in suits fanned out, blocking the exit.
Her gut clenched. Before she could even ask, they surged forward, forming a wall between her and the SEALs. Hands closed on her arms, firm, inescapable.
“Emily Shade?” one of them asked, voice clipped, as if he didn’t already know.
She barely had time to gasp before they were pulling her away.
The SEALs moved.
Brawler was on his feet in a heartbeat, Beast lunging with a savage snarl that had two of the suits flinching back. Easy’s rifle came off his knee. Shark shouldered forward, teeth bared in determination.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” Brawler’s growl shook the air, his hand locking around Emily’s arm, yanking her back into him.
All of a sudden, Emily was compressed between aggressive male bodies, while there was a shoving, pushing match. She felt like a rope in a tug of war. Her money was on her team.
“Stand down!” Tex barked, sharp enough to slice. The team froze mid-step, muscles strung tight, eyes locked on the suits. Even Beast halted, though his growl still vibrated against Brawler’s boot.
One of the agents flashed a badge so fast it looked like sleight of hand. “She’s coming with us.”
“Not without ID I can read,” Tex snapped, stepping between them, broad frame cutting off the agent’s reach. His rifle swung down, not pointed but not at rest either. “Not without a goddamn explanation.”
“This isn’t your call, mister,” the man shot back.
“Lieutenant,” Easy snarled.
The man nodded. “Lieutenant.”
“It’s Tex. Everything on this tarmac is my call until I hear otherwise,” Tex said, low and lethal, steel threaded with Texas drawl. He shoved the badge back into the man’s chest. “Try laying hands on one of mine again without clear orders, see how that goes.”
“Tex…” another agent started.
Brawler’s chest heaved, fury radiating off him. He leaned in close enough that the nearest agent flinched, and Emily tightened her hands in his vest. “You don’t touch her unless I know exactly where you’re taking her.”
“Orders come from a higher authority than you,” the man said, jaw tight.
Tex’s voice dropped, deadly quiet. “Then you’ll show me those orders. Right now.”
A tense beat stretched, the rotor wash whipping across them, hot with dust and jet fuel. Finally, the agent produced the paperwork, credentials clipped and formal, the kind of authority even Tex couldn’t ignore.
Tex scanned it, face hard as granite. At last, he gave a curt nod. “They’ve got clearance.”
Emily’s pulse spiked as Brawler snarled, “The hell they do.” But Tex’s arm slammed across his chest, shoving him back a step.
“Enough, Beckett,” Tex ordered, voice like a hammer.
Brawler froze, every line of his body vibrating with fury, but the command rooted him in place.
The look he gave Emily…God, the look. Fury, anguish, and something rawer that made her throat close.
“Christian…” she whispered. She’d had plans, and none of them involved what had to be the CIA if she had to guess.
One of the agents held out his hands. “The documents?” he asked. Tex opened his pack and pulled out Emily’s life work, handing it over. Then the agents hustled her across the tarmac, cutting off her view.
She stumbled, breath ragged, her wrists aching in their grip. The warmth of belonging, the fierce joy of survival, the weight of Brawler’s kiss, were all snatched away in an instant, replaced with cold dread.
The suits hustled her toward the waiting jet, all clipped movements and silent arrogance, as if she were nothing but evidence to bag and tag.
Something in her snapped.
“Wait just a goddamned minute.” Emily’s voice detonated, sharp enough to cut through rotor wash. “I’m an American citizen, not some criminal. I saved your precious missiles, I saved your Marines , I saved the SEALs, and this is how you thank me? Kidnapping?”
One of the agents muttered, “Miss Shade, please…”
“Don’t you Miss Shade me,” she spat, heels digging in. “You lay another hand on me, and I’ll make you regret every single day you spent at Quantico. Do you have any idea what I’ve survived in that jungle? You don’t get to manhandle me like baggage. Get your damn hands off me!”
Beneath the fury, hotter and more dangerous than all the rest, desire gone feral.
She’d been counting down the minutes until she could drag Brawler into a hotel room, strip him down, and show him how much everything that had happened between them meant to her.
She wanted to exchange information, phone numbers, addresses.
She didn’t want to leave this way and be out of touch.
She wanted his weight, his mouth, his heat. She wanted to feel him break for her. Instead, these bastards were hauling her away, stealing the one thing she’d let herself ache for. Rage clawed up her throat. How dare they take that from her?
From the helo, the SEALs erupted.
“Give ’em hell, Shortcake!” Easy roared.
“Pixie power!” Dagger bellowed, laughter half-wild.
Shark’s rumble carried over the rotors. “No one puts our Shortcake in the corner.”
Even Bondo leaned forward, baring his teeth. “This isn’t over.”
Beast lunged at the doorway, a wall of snarling fury, barely checked by Brawler’s iron grip on his harness.
Brawler, damn, Brawler was nuclear. Fury ripped through every line of his body, his hand flexing like he meant to tear through all of them. Only Tex’s arm across his chest kept him from storming down the tarmac and saving her from government bureaucracy. But that would end his career.
“Bondo’s right,” Tex barked, but his eyes burned hotter than his voice. “This isn’t over.”
Emily twisted, locked on Brawler, her throat tight with rage and raw need. “Christian! I’ll be all right! Lock that Neanderthal down.”
His roar carried across the distance, rough and savage. “We have your back, Emily.”
The agents corralled her toward the plane, and she held up her hands. “All right.” Cooperation would be better than antagonizing these guys. They were really just the messengers.
The jet loomed like an open grave. Emily stumbled, voice ragged with fury and heartbreak. “I’m going,” she groused. Then the jet swallowed her whole, leaving only the echo of her outrage on the tarmac and Brawler’s eyes, storm-dark and murderous, locked on the space she’d been torn from.
The cabin was sterile, cold leather and steel, the air humming with recycled chill.
No one spoke to her. Not the agents who bracketed her on either side, not the man across from her with the tablet in his lap.
When she asked where they were going, silence.
When she demanded news of Flash, of Brawler, of the team, silence.
She wrapped her arms around herself, knees tight, trying to hold the pieces of herself together. The last thing she’d seen was Brawler’s face, fury and anguish locked behind the restraint Tex forced on him. That image seared into her, replaying until her chest ached.
Hours later, they landed in DC. She was taken to a hotel room where she was given thirty minutes to shower and freshen up. Decent of them , she thought sarcastically.