Page 33 of Defended By the SEAL
Out the window, he could see intense whitecaps racing across the surface of the sea, and he braced himself beforethe nose abruptly pointed downward, the hull slapping the water’s surface with a smack.
Would he need to clean up after Deke before they took off in the bird? He wondered if Victoria had ever had sex in a chopper. The image of what she would look like there flashed in his mind, her body naked and draped across his lap, her red hair spilling over her shoulder in long curly waves as her thighs spread open to take him deep inside her.
“Boog,” she was saying, and it took him a moment to realize she was talking to him.
“Yeah.”
“Where the hell are you right now?” she asked.
His eyes shifted to take in the back of the first mate, then moved pointedly back to Victoria. “At the controls in the chopper.” He pointed at her meaningfully.
She looked away, but not before he noted the quick flush of her cheeks and the way her eyes seemed to pour into his. “We’re almost there. You should suit up.”
Jesus, she was hot when she was in command. Ferrying him around rough ocean waters and bossing him around while they dropped a dozen feet and hit a trough. He bounced halfway down the galley steps. He should tell her to wear that rain gear the next time they hooked up. Then he could bend her over the controls and…
Deke was bent at the waist, his knuckles white as he held onto the railing on the wall, but there was no vomit on the floor beneath him. Booker thanked his lucky stars for that much.
“Time to suit up,” Booger said, reaching for Deke’s pack and chucking it to him before taking his own wet suit out of his pack. They had no intention of swimming in the frigid water. The suit was a just-in-case measure to buy them a few minutes if things went south in the chopper.
They dressed quickly and made their way to the deck, Booger making a mental note to contact Victoria before he left Maine. Friendships required time and attention to flourish, after all.
The Coast Guard chopper was fastened to the small ship with strong, thick metal cables. Booger climbed inside as the icebreaker surged forward, plowing through the monstrous waves that threatened to engulf them. He shook the pilot’s hand. “Thanks for doing this.”
The pilot nodded once. “You’re just lucky I don’t have a keen appreciation for the value of my own life.” He handed them each a headset that would block some of the helicopter’s noise and allow them to communicate with each other.
No sooner did Deke put his on, than he swore mightily and put his head between his knees.
“You throw up in my chopper,” warned the pilot, “I’ll dump your ass in the sea.” He retrieved an iPad from his bag and loaded an app, entering the coordinates of Charlotte’s grandmother’s house Booger had given him before mounting the device in a holder.
The ship’s first mate pounded on the window and made a circle in the air with his hand, the pilot acknowledging his signal with a thumbs up. “Hang onto your house, Dorothy,” he said, and started up the engine, the hum of the rotors growing to a steady thrum.
Booger was hyper-aware of the swell of the sea and the rhythm of the crests and troughs. They needed to get clear of the boat without impacting anything on it, least of all the cockpit with Victoria inside. The pilot timed his take-off to coincide with the top of a crest, the ship falling beneath them as the chopperlifted into the air.
See you soon, Captain.
Booger found he was looking forward to that reunion far more than he would have expected. Not because Victoria was beautiful. She’d always been beautiful. But because something about the pull between them seemed to have become supercharged, a fierce awareness of her body he hadn’t felt before. And that merited further exploring.
A lot of meticulous, time consuming, oh-so-pleasurable exploring.
Thoughts of Victoria evaporated in an instant as a gust of wind pulled the chopper hard left before pushing it straight down. It felt as if Neptune himself had risen from the waves to yank them into the sea, and he cursed with an intensity borne of sudden anxiety.
They lurched upward, and Booger had the thought that they might be inside a child’s snow globe, being shaken for the god’s sheer enjoyment like a plaything under glass. The pilot seemed to fight the controls, the effect of the wind on the fuselage growing stronger with each passing second.
Booger looked at the iPad. They were less than two miles from the island where Cowboy waited for help, and it occurred to him only the act of helping another would have gotten any of them into the air under these conditions. Suddenly, the chopper was lifted and banked hard right, as if he’d directed the complex maneuver deliberately.
“These wind gusts can suck my dick,” growled the pilot, wrestling the invisible, shifting currents for control of the machine. The snow was disorienting Booger, the flakes falling at such a fast clip he struggled to see theforest for the trees.
He closed his eyes tightly.
Just a little farther. They were nearly there.
An eternity passed before the land mass came into view on Foreflight, relief dousing Booger like water on an inferno. But then the chopper dipped and bobbed, reminding him they weren’t on the ground just yet.
They passed the lighthouse a hundred yards to their left, the white of the snow-covered ground rushing up to meet them as they dropped several feet to the ground with a bone-rattling jolt.
“Thank you, Jesus,” said Booger, unstrapping and thanking the pilot before taking off his headset and getting out. Deke was one step ahead of him, bent over in the snow and emptying the contents of his stomach onto the ground.
Booger swallowed the tempting jab on the tip of his tongue, opting instead to give his friend some privacy. Dropping his duffel onto the snow covered ground, he retrieved his hat and gloves and put them on with a resigned shake of his head. God only knew what they were in for on this little island, but they were definitely off to a rocky start.
