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She twisted around, her fingers pressing against her back. The sheet slipped. “Lie down.”
He resisted the urge to smack her butt. She was as tough as any drill sergeant he’d met at BUD/S but more than twice as pretty. She had that working in her favor. Levi laughed silently from across the pool, and Gray flashed him the bird, grabbing a glass flask of oil from the cart beside the bed. Cardamom and jasmine oil, per Her Royal Highness’s orders. He poured it into his hand, warming the slick stream.
“I’ll show you.” She twisted on the bed again.
“Down,” he gritted out. Were ropes allowed in commercial massages? A gag seemed like a useful option, as well. Before she could squirm away from him, he spread the oil over her shoulders. She had the palest skin, dotted with freckles but no swimsuit lines. He reminded himself that skin was just skin. It covered bones and muscles. He’d never thought about it before, but damn, she felt special.
The instant connection he felt when he touched her was unexpected. She sucked in a breath as if she maybe felt it, too. At least he’d shut her up for the moment. Yeah. He was a horny bastard, because he immediately started thinking about other ways to make her hold still. Make her come.
He drew his hands down her back in sweeping strokes, working out the visible tension in her neck and shoulders. He was no expert, but her back was a mess of knots. What the hell had she been doing? She was a woman on a tropical island. She was supposed to relax. He rubbed his thumbs in small circles, working out a particularly hard knot.
She whimpered, a breathy bedroom sound he’d bet she didn’t know she was making. Better yet, she’d finally stopped issuing directions. He didn’t dare imagine whether she’d stripped off completely beneath the towel or if she had on just a pair of panties because he was already hard. He’d gone undercover in the worst biker bars in California, fought hard, ridden fast. A massage should have been easy, but he’d never been so hot for a woman before.
She turned her head and muttered something. He didn’t give a damn what it was.
He pressed his finger against her lips. “Not one word.”
“Or...?” Sweet challenge filled her voice and, yeah, he wanted to show her. Instead, he worked his way down the straight line of her spine, headed for her ass.
“I have my ways.” He sounded like a bad villain. He might as well have rolled over and showed his belly, because she ignored his answer and started talking again, directing him from one muscle group to the other so matter-of-factly that she probably didn’t even realize she was doing it. Laney Parker was definitely a woman who was used to being in control. He recognized her need because he felt the same way. But one of them had to give and it sure wasn’t going to be him.
“We need to be clear on one thing.” He leaned forward, so his mouth was level with her ear. “I’m in charge.”
* * *
GRAY HAD MAGIC HANDS. Laney should have gone for sixty or even the full ninety minutes instead of the paltry thirty minutes she’d ponied up for. He was that good.
“You’re tight here.” He pressed a particularly tense spot on her back, and she stopped caring that she was stretched out, bare-ass naked and vulnerable. God, he was good.
“Trigger point.” Not, apparently, that she needed to tell him. The man knew what he was doing.
“Are you a doctor?”
“Trauma surgeon.” Was that sultry whisper her voice? Because, if so, Gray was definitely a miracle worker. She felt herself melting under his touch and, wow, how long had it been since she’d done that?
He found and pressed against another knot. “So I should call you Dr. Parker.”
He moved around to the front of the massage bed. The bed had one of those circle doughnut things that she’d always thought were awkward. She opened her eyes as Gray’s feet moved into view. She’d never had a foot fetish before, but he was barefoot, and his feet were sun-bronzed and strong-looking. Those few inches of bare skin made her want to see more. She’d bet the rest of him was every bit as spectacular.
It was probably bad she found his feet sexy. He was just doing a job.
Really, really well.
He gently pulled her ponytail free before running his hands through her hair, pressing his fingertips against her scalp. Maybe she’d been a cat in a former life, because she’d always loved having her hair played with. For long minutes, Gray rubbed small sensual circles against her scalp. She bit back a moan. Just lie here. Keep still. She probably wasn’t supposed to arch off the table, screaming more, more, more. Although she could. She definitely could.
He moved closer, his thighs brushing against the bed. If she lifted her head, the situation could get awkward fast. Thinking about that made her stiffen up again, but then he cupped the back of her neck, pressing and rotating. And oh, sweet baby Jesus, she could feel the tension melting away. The small tugs on her hair sent a prickle of excitement through her entire body.
“Should I call you Doctor?” he prompted.
“Laney is just fine.” The words rushed out on a sigh.
She stared at his feet again, trying to regain her equilibrium. He’d made her drool, damn it.
“Holding still isn’t so bad?” He followed up the wicked amusement in his voice with another sensual tug on her hair.
She didn’t know him. She’d never been the kind of woman who had casual sex. Because that was a personal choice she’d made, she reminded herself. Lovemaking was about as intimate as it got, and she’d never fantasized about letting a stranger touch her.
Before now, the traitorous voice in her head said, because evidently she was seriously considering taking her sex life in a whole new direction. Gray’s direction. The purpose of coming to Fantasy Island had been to take charge of her life. To be someone different, even if the change was only temporary. She wanted to be fun and flirtatious and, yes, just a little wild. In a few more days, she’d go back to being Laney Parker, MD, but on this island she could be someone else. The kind of woman who made her fantasies a reality.
* * *
HE NEEDED TO step back. Laney was a doctor, a paying guest—and a civilian. She was undoubtedly an upright, tax-paying US citizen, and he had no business running his hands over her skin. In fact, he was fairly certain that, Hippocratic Oath or not, she was the kind of woman who’d kill him if he played games with her.
So sue him. He liked that, too.
Because he wasn’t playing nice, he tugged the sheet lower, exposing the dimples above the sweet curve of her butt. She hadn’t gone completely naked beneath her sheet. She’d kept her panties on, and he immediately wondered what it would take to coax her out of them, because he was a bastard and not nice. And iron-hard at just a glimpse of those white panties and the strip of pale skin above the band. He brushed a knuckle over the topmost edge. She’d be wearing something silky, he decided. Panties that were as simple and elegant as the rest of her.
She lifted her head and he retreated a step. Not because he wanted to—he was a guy, after all, and would be more than happy to have her face pressed against his groin—but because he really wasn’t a creeper, and he didn’t want to spoil her enjoyment of the massage. Still, he was sorry he’d moved when she looked up at him, hair tumbling around her face, eyes slumberous.
She mumbled something incoherent that ended with on the menu?
What. The. Hell. He was a SEAL and a fighter. Bar fight, the government’s fight—as long as it involved fists and a beat down, he was all in. This menu business, however, was unfamiliar territory. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“The menu.” He gave her words back to her as if repetition would somehow miraculously clear up his confusion. Spa menu? Room service menu? He hated being out of his element.
She blushed, and blood surged to his dick. God. He’d have given his left nut to know what she’d been thinking. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Her phone dinged behind him on the counter where he’d tossed it, and she bolted upright. “Time’s up,” she announced, looking relieved.
“That’s my line,” he rasped, but she hopped off the table before he could finish getting the words out. He exhaled and considered his options. He probably shouldn’t swing her to a stop, but the way she was hightailing it away from his cabana was far from flattering.
Exercising remarkable self-control, Gray let her go, all the while mentally running through plans in his head. A quick check of the week’s schedule revealed Laney Parker had another massage scheduled for tomorrow. In fact, the concierge had been busy, because she had appointments scheduled for every day this week. He grinned. He’d bet she was the kind of woman who kept a date.
Levi strolled over and dropped a load of fresh towels on the bed. “Do you suck that badly?”
It was a distinct possibility. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
“She’s coming back for more?” His pal looked understandably skeptical.
He hoped so.
“She mentioned a menu.” Maybe Levi knew something he didn’t.
“She was hungry?” A frown creased the other man’s forehead. No help there. “Or really, really desperate for something alcoholic to drink? Either way, that means you officially stink at being a masseuse.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he muttered. “It meant something. I need to know what before she comes back tomorrow.”
Levi shrugged. “Then we’ll figure it out.”
That was the thing about working as a team. If he needed something, his shooters had his back, the same way he had theirs. Their briefing hadn’t mentioned menus. It had, however, emphasized that Fantasy Island was an exclusive resort that catered to couples’ sexual fantasies. On-demand sexual fantasies between consenting adults. Laney had been blushing up a storm when she’d run from the cabana. What were the odds...?
“You think it’s something sexual?” Levi’s head had apparently gone in the same direction as Gray’s.
“Yeah.” It made sense. “It fits.”
“Or you’re indulging in a bout of wishful thinking.” Levi grinned and punched him in the shoulder.
3 (#ulink_7a2df043-0a1a-5885-a39c-e1060ef2ca78)
GET IN.
Take the target down.
Get out.
By the time Gray had crossed the island and made it to SEAL Team Sigma’s base camp, he was in control again. He’d ditched the spa uniform for his camo and retrieved his weapons from where he’d cached them. Weapons decorated him like ornaments on a Christmas tree. He had a KA-BAR knife at his waist and a Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine gun holstered to his thigh. The Glock resting against the base of his spine was even more welcome.
In his clothes and his own skin, he was starting to feel like his old self again as he worked his way through the thick jungle undergrowth, concealing his trail. Calm. Detached. No emotions. Check, check and check. Those were normal operating conditions. What he felt around Laney had to be simple attraction, compounded by the fact that he hadn’t had sex in months.
Sure, part of him was wondering when he’d see her again and if he could coax her into bed, but the rest of him was back on the job. Fantasy Island—which had to be the most ridiculous name he’d ever heard—was five miles long and two miles wide. Approximately four square miles of that space was jungle. The resort’s owners had opted to keep things in their natural state, so it was acres and acres of dense, rugged terrain. The good news was that he doubted any of the resort’s guests would penetrate farther than four or five feet inside the mess.
Before he’d made the SEALs team, he’d had no idea so many different types of palm trees could be crammed into one small island. Mother Nature hadn’t stinted. She’d parked slender fan palms next to spiny palms that stretched fifty, sixty feet up toward the sky. The island also came with a shitload of coconut palms loaded with ripe nuts waiting to brain anyone dumb enough to make camp at the base. What wasn’t palm was Hispaniolan mahogany and muskwood, and there were vines tangled up around positively everything. The place was “lush, pristine jungle” according to the resort’s marketing brochure, but a tropical pain in the ass from where he stood.
A lizard darted up a trunk as Gray moved deeper. The place was green, sure, but it was also chock-full of tree snakes, the odd boa and a seemingly endless supply of toads and frogs. It was damned hard to hear himself think. Their team had set up a base camp on the other side of the island. It was their space, a place where they could be themselves and relax. In addition to four camouflaged tents, someone had strung up a couple of hammocks, and there were stacks of supplies, weapons and radios. More than an outdoor rec room, it was also their fallback position, the strip of beach below the camp their designated emergency extraction point.
As he stepped into camp, he was met by the two shooters he had patrolling the perimeter. Sam and Remy were the newbies on the team, so he’d passed on sending them in undercover. He needed to know how they handled a mission first, before he put them on the front lines.
Sam flashed him a two-fingered salute. Slim and brawny with close-cropped brown hair, he still looked like the Alabama country boy he’d been before he joined the Teams. He was damned good at blowing stuff up, however, and swam faster than any SEAL Gray had ever seen. He also doubled as their unit medic. “Tell me you brought us a cold one.”
“Gray’s buying as soon as we’re Stateside.” Levi stepped out of the jungle behind him. Gray’s Senior Chief was the first of the infiltrators to arrive, and although his eyes moved from palm to palm as if he expected an army of hostiles to pop out and open fire, the guy sported a big-ass grin on his face. Gray had seen the same grin when they’d been pinned down in Iraq, taking heavy fire. “Waterfront acreage. Very nice choice.”
As Levi dropped down onto the hammock Sam had strung up between two palms, looking as relaxed as any weekend warrior in his living room, Mason slipped out of the jungle. Mason was Mr. Silent. The big guy flashed a face full of attitude and was the kind of guy you expected to administer a beat-down in an alley. At thirty-four, he was also the oldest operative on the team and the best damned sniper Gray had ever worked with. He was no cowboy, but he’d made it clear he planned on dying in his boots. You didn’t piss him off without having a really good reason. Hell. You didn’t piss off anyone on the team. Gray almost felt bad for Diego Marcos.
Remy followed. The Cajun seemed right at home on the island, passing as the general maintenance and go-to guy. He’d be the man in the hot seat when it came to bringing Marcos in because he’d be the first to face the guy.
Ashley was the last to arrive. She’d infiltrated Fantasy Island as a guest and, in keeping with her cover, she entered their bay in a resort kayak, just another guest out for a recreational paddle. Never mind that she’d driven the kayak through the lagoon waters at a brutal pace, taking the craft through the rocks just for shits and giggles. She looked sexy as sin in her skullhead-print bikini and a pair of hot pink shorts that earned plenty of teasing from the guys.
Levi winked at her. “Now that’s a get-up you won’t catch a SEAL in.”
She flipped him off and dropped down onto a stack of duffel bags. “My boobs are better than yours. You’d look damned silly in a bikini.”
“Now there’s truth, sugar.” Levi laughed, unoffended.
Gray let the teasing wash over him as he broke down his gun. He didn’t need to look at it—any SEAL could break down and rebuild his weapons in the dark—but he didn’t want to watch Levi and Ashley flirting it up, either. He could go back to the resort and find Laney, but he didn’t have Levi’s smooth charm or way with words.
No. He was empty. Lonely. Itching for the next fight, the next mission. As he watched Levi and Ashley bickering amiably, giving each other a hard time, part of him wanted that. Sure, they drove each other crazy, but they did it together. Lonely wasn’t on their agenda. All he had to offer Laney was a few nights of sex, however, and that was a different kind of crazy.
He got on the radio for their coded transmission while the rest of the team continued ribbing Ashley. But when Gray signed off, the team suddenly fell silent, looking at him expectantly.
“We’re getting yanked,” Levi joked. “Or, better yet, instead of camping out here in the jungle, we’ve got a week’s shore leave and a reservation at the resort. I’ve seen the food they’re serving.”
Levi’s sweet tooth was notorious. The man always packed Snickers bars in his bugout bag.
“We’ve got movement on our target. He’s under way.”
Marcos spent the majority of his time holed up in a jungle compound in the Belizean mountains. The place was a fortress. A well-placed sniper might also have stood a chance of getting off a shot, or the team could have mined the road in and detonated a lifetime supply of C4 underneath Marcos’s Humvee, except the man was cautious and rarely moved out in the open. Learning that he intended to come here had been a piece of intel that had taken Ashley’s team eighteen months to acquire.
Levi cursed. “Define movement.”
Gray knew how his comrade felt. “Marcos will be here in eight days instead of ten. His advance team hits the ground in four. We need to take them down fast, as soon as they arrive. And since we’re looking to capture Marcos, not kill, we’re going to report back as his guys and make sure he feels safe to land.”
“A challenge.” Mason didn’t sound as if he minded. Instead, he had a thoughtful look on his face as he pondered the logistics of a quick, nonlethal takedown on an island that was too small for roads or runways. There were nods of understanding from around the circle. The FBI had a long list of questions for Marcos, and a dead man didn’t do any talking. If the mission went according to plan, however, they’d take down Marcos and then have a week to interrogate him before any of his associates realized he’d been compromised.
“Is the advance party inbound by air or water?” Levi asked.
Gray didn’t hesitate. “Two helos, both of which are scheduled to be met by the resort’s jeeps. We’ll put SEALs into the driver’s seats. Marcos will be told his advance team is securing the resort. We need to minimize the risk to the island’s civilians. Thoughts?”
Ashley picked up the ball and ran with it. Gray was fairly certain there wasn’t anything the woman didn’t know. “It’s low season and the resort is running at about thirty percent of capacity. There are twenty bungalows. Six are occupied, but three of us are singletons. Eight guests are currently in house.”
Good. Fantasy Island would be clear before Marcos made his grand appearance. If Monday’s arrivals vacated in a week, that meant Laney Parker would be okay and not in the line of fire. She hadn’t signed up for this particular battle, and he wouldn’t pitchfork her into the middle of it.
As the meeting wrapped, Gray did a last inventory of his team. They were ready, but that had never been in doubt. Despite the teasing and good-natured bickering, every man there would lay down his life for the team. They were organized, well trained and efficient as hell. Marcos wouldn’t know what had hit him.
When Ashley stepped past him, however, he snagged her wrist. “I’ve got a question.”
“Anytime.” She dropped onto the pile of duffel bags next to him. “Ask away.”
“You ever heard of a cocktail menu? A special one?” He took a shot in the dark, because Laney’s tone had held a certain something. He needed to know what she’d really meant.
Ashley laughed. “So you’ve heard about the infamous drinks menu?”
“Give me details.” The way she was smiling, he was in trouble. He definitely didn’t know enough.
“Well, the next time you boys decide to go undercover at a resort, you might want to pick one that doesn’t specialize in kinky sex.”
“I’ll give my boss a heads-up,” he said dryly. “I hadn’t planned on having kinky sex on this mission.”
Absolutely not. Hell, even plain old vanilla sex was pretty much off-limits. While there weren’t hard-and-fast rules about personal activities while undercover, bedding a civilian who could blow his cover was definitely pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable. He couldn’t and wouldn’t jeopardize the mission.
Or Laney’s life.
“Maybe you should rethink your position.” She elbowed him, eyes twinkling at the pun. “Because apparently the resort staff can be more than a little adventurous, as can the guests. The names of the drinks are code for various fantasies you might want to act out. It’s all secret and hush-hush, a way for guests to discreetly communicate their desires to each other.”
Fantasies about sex. That sounded pretty damn erotic, but he’d seen how other people’s kinks played out when he’d worked undercover as a biker. M-Breed’s members had engaged in frequent sex, often public, and never nice. On the pool table, up against the wall, in a bathroom stall. Take your pick, do whatever the hell you wanted to do. Gray had managed to avoid the gang’s groupies, because no way he wanted a woman who was into him only for the drugs or position she thought accompanied sleeping with him. His fantasies were different.
He frowned. “How did she know about the menu?”
Ashley raised a brow. “Which she on this island propositioned you? And did you turn her down flat or take her up on it and she shocked your delicate sensibilities?”
