Page 35 of Brawler
He threw his head back and laughed, a deep, rolling sound that settled low in her belly and spun fire through every nerve. Heat unfurled, wild and greedy, until she felt it everywhere.
Helpless, she laughed, too, and reached up before she could stop herself, cupping his jaw in her hand. His stubble rasped her palm, heat searing through her fingers. The laugh broke on a sharp inhale, his eyes searching hers, startled. But he didn’t pull back. He leaned into her touch, just slightly, as if her hand had stolen more than his breath. It had stolen his defenses.
For one breathless moment, he was hers.
He gave her one last look, then dropped the goggles back into place. Mask down. A warrior once again.
But this time his silhouette wasn’t just lethal. It was familiar. Coveted. Arousing. She knew where she was going, but this thing with him…this was uncharted ground. Mapping him? Yeah, for research. Definitely for research.
8
Gunfire cracked behind Flash,white-hot streaks through the green. Shouts over comms blurred, the team’s rhythm fraying. He should have been there, covering their sixes. That was everything. His head filled with BUD/S, the endless drills, the voices of instructors carved into his skull, and every tiny thread of his bond to the men who went through the same baptism in war-fire as he had. All of it wove around him like spider’s silk, a web of connection tearing at every single cell in his body.
As Flash ran, the jungle shifted around him, and suddenly he was back on the beach. Sand grinding under his boots, the ocean a relentless churn at his left. Then it morphed into log PT, the burn in his shoulders, the pull of muscles tearing past their limit, the demand for more, always more. The determination to never quit. Code woven into his DNA, ghostly images flashing past like phantoms of pain and triumph. Then Hell Week, the cold, the salt sores, the bone-deep fatigue, and his brothers, his goddamn beloved brothers, the ones who had carried him through. The ones he was leaving behind. The ones he would fucking die for.
What if they needed his firepower? What if Brawler’s flank was open, Tex pinned down? Every cell in him screamed toturn back, to fall into formation. The brotherhood was sacred, ingrained, bonded to his DNA just like his will to fight through anything and never give in.
But his boots tore forward instead. Every step driven by something he couldn’t name, a pressure that filled his head, his chest, the very air around him. Heavy. Suffocating. His own harsh breathing roared in his ears, almost a sob tearing loose before he could stop it. His gut cramped with longing so fierce it bordered on agony, the kind of want that could drive a man to maim, kill, sacrifice himself just to ease it.
Salt. Sharp and burning on his tongue, the remembered choke of surf water forced into his throat. Then loam. Thick, cloying, the jungle itself filling his mouth until he felt buried alive beneath all that green. His knees almost buckled.
A glimpse. A shadow. Lechuza.
Her name tore out of him,“Killa!”but it never reached the air. The shout echoed back inside his skull, reverberating in his bones like a ricochet, so loud it drowned his breath. For a heartbeat he didn’t know if he’d spoken it or only thought it.
He’d been looking for her in the sky for so long his neck ached from scanning horizons. His body, his soul cried out for her, the owl who had become his haunting ghost.
Images slammed into him. Her Incan ancestry carved into the planes of her face, fierce and unbending. The defiance in her eyes when she’d stood before them, naked and battered but unbroken, unashamed. The proud line of her collarbone, the curve of her hip, the sun-burnished gold of her skin. The memory of her breasts, bare in the smoke and ruin, seared into him before he could look away. The moment she had reached for the clothing he’d offered, not in weakness, but in a choice to accept his hand, to claim her dignity on her own terms.
He cried out as if her body were already on him, the slick heat of her core pressed against his aching dick, the need to drive intoher so fierce it bordered on pain. But it wasn’t flesh he felt. It was her power, her spirit wrapping around him, entwining until he blurred into her, not fucking her body but pulling her into himself like breath, like fire, like war.
He could almost feel her unraveling in his arms, fierce and mindless, his name ripped from her throat in a scream that carried on the wind.
Heat surged low in his gut, sharp as guilt. Warrior. Woman. Ghost. She was all of it, all at once, and she owned him in ways no battlefield ever had.
The wings on his back seared. The ink burned and lifted, agony ripping a gasp from him as if the tattoos themselves wanted to take flight. For a heartbeat he swore the feathers rose from his skin, alive. When they settled, his breath came ragged, and all he could think was that he’d gotten them for her, Lechuza, etched as a vow to remember her courage and devotion.
Could I forsake my brothers for her? Could I give up everything that makes me Jae “Flash” Shaw, SEAL, heavy hitter, brother, for one impossible woman?
Branches lashed his face, the jungle closing, then breaking open into silence. A clearing stretched around him, pale light bleeding through canopy holes. The firefight dulled to a muffled roar, like he’d plunged underwater.
He stopped, chest heaving, his breath pumping in and out like a bellows.
The figure ahead stilled. Not Lechuza. Not the white wings that haunted him. Crushing disappointment, deep despair, and the humor that always wove through him like an anchor cracked like porcelain, dropping away, turning to dust, carried off by the wind. His shield. God, his shield.
Tears slipped from his eyes, poured down his cheeks. When the figure turned, the ground ripped out from under him.
A man he knew so fucking well. Same square jaw. Same steady eyes. The man who’d been six feet under for two years stood watching him as if he’d been waiting. The man who had nurtured him, made him the kind of man who could only find satisfaction in service. His best friend. The one who had supported him every step of the way in every aspect of his life.
The man who’d had the nerve to die while he was on deployment, robbing him of a goodbye.
Grief surged, worse than he could ever remember. The jungle seemed to catch it, reflect it, amplify it until it battered him like surf. His knees buckled. He fell to them, weapon clattering, clutching his gut as sobs tore out of him, harsh in his throat.
“Dad?” Flash’s lungs burned. “No. This…no.”
Then arms were around him. Tight. Secure. His body knew that bear hug. His father rocked him slowly. “My son. I’ve missed you so much.” The voice was quiet, steady as memory, but too resonant, vibrating in his bones. “You need to be here. You need to see me. I’ve been trying since Venezuela to reach you.”
He blinked in confusion, tears blurring the beloved planes of his face.
