Claiming Her SEAL(2)

Except that's not all it was. Which meant he had to extract himself quickly and without a body count.

"I'm Dex," he said, instead of adios. Moron.

"Oh, short for Dexter?" Playfully, she curled her fingers around his,  drawing closer to whisper in his ear. "Are you secretly a science nerd?"

No, but he was secretly disappointed she'd followed the script even  though it was what he'd expected. Every woman he'd ever introduced  himself to said exactly the same thing. Why should she be any different?

"Nah." He grinned. "It's a nickname. Dex rhymes with my best talent."

He let that sink in, and the desired result-revulsion-did not  materialize. A girl with that much innocence shining from her depths  should be scowling and cursing him, flouncing away with some haughty  comeback about players and cheap lines. Because he was and it was.

Her brows rose a touch and she dragged the tip of her pink tongue across  her bare lips with a little purr. "No kidding. It so happens I was  hoping to meet someone with that particular skill on this trip."

Dex bit back a groan as he envisioned taking her up on the blatant  invitation in her eyes. She had him built up in her head as something he  wasn't, and it killed him, but he had to pull free of their  pseudo-handshake before he yanked her into his embrace and slid a finger  inside her bikini bottom to acquaint himself with her secrets.

"You should go on back to your room now."

He'd protected her from the meathead, but there was no one here to  protect her from Dex. So he'd have to do it, as much as it hurt to  destroy that hero worship in her gaze.

"Well, that's the first time I've responded to a come-on and been shot  down." She quirked a brow. "Unless you intended to follow me?"

"Sweetheart, you don't have a clue what you think you're signing up for," he growled. "I'm not the man for you."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?" she suggested.

"Because your judgment is impaired, clearly."

She didn't so much as blink. "Is that a not-so-subtle reference to what  happened with that guy? Because I didn't invite him to put his paws all  over me. I was just standing there thinking about … " And then her gaze  shifted away, growing distant and shadowed. " … some stuff, and then there  he was."

This extraction process was not going according to standard operating  procedure. Maybe because he'd already compromised himself by noticing  her before the meathead had come on the scene. "I don't do subtle. I'm  flat out saying you think I'm worth your time because I stopped a  jackass from assaulting you. I'm not. I'm a whole different kind of bad,  one you'd best skip."

"Maybe." She cocked her head, and one shiny lock of hair fell over her eye. She left it there. "And maybe I'm bad news too."

Oh, hell no. She was not under the misguided impression that whatever  was troubling her could ever enter into the same realm as the twisted  horrors of what lay just under Dex's skin.

"Maybe … ," she continued. "We'd be good for each other."

If only such a woman existed for him. But that was a fairy tale for  another life. Another man. One whose nickname wasn't Dexter-after the  guy in that TV show about the serial killer.

Because at the end of the day, Dex had eliminated sixty-eight Iraqi  targets while looking through the scope of a .300 Win Mag. And he could  never erase the fact that he was a killer at heart.




Scuba diving took off some of the edge that had been dogging Dex since  yesterday. Some. Not nearly enough. He blamed it on hunger and took off  after what promised to be dinner if he got on it.

Grouper made the best fish tacos, but they sure bled a lot when you shot  them. Not as much as people though. And Dex had definitely shot enough  of both to make a fair comparison.

Dex tugged on his speargun line and hauled in the wriggling, silvery  fish. Trails of crimson followed its path in a watery line that pointed  straight to Dex like a neon sign. Here's food all you sharks! Come on  down and have your pick of tasty humans.

Time to go. The sooner he got out of the water, the fewer predator fish  he'd attract, and after the nasty encounter with a barracuda a couple of  weeks ago, he'd rather not chance drawing attention to the rest of his  dive team. Fresh fish for dinner was worth the risk as long as he played  it cool.         

     



 

He strung the grouper on his line with the other five he'd tagged and  bagged in under twenty minutes. Dex was good at killing, especially with  a gun in his hand, which came in handy when dropped in the middle of a  terrorist hotbed or a coral reef.

The difference, of course, was that he didn't wake up in a cold sweat,  shivering through the remnants of vivid and horrific nightmares about  the fish he'd killed.

Emma of the white bikini hadn't a clue what he'd saved her from. Shame  that he'd had to send her back to her hotel room crestfallen, but with  her virtue intact, which was the important thing.

Dex left his fishing spot and kicked about a hundred yards to where his  buddies were just finishing up work for the day. They'd transplanted a  good number of coral to the reef they were restoring off the coast of  Abaco Island on the west side of the Caribbean, where the coral  depletion was the worst due to careless tourists and tropical storms-the  two greatest scourges of the place Dex now called home.

Tourists should either stick to the sand or use the brain God gave them  to figure out that soda cans tossed off the back of their fishing boats  didn't magically disintegrate.

A few curious crabs had ventured close enough to watch the goings-on,  but none of the fish they'd scared away had returned yet. Tomorrow  they'd move down the line of the reef a few feet and start all over  again. As day jobs went, the scenery wasn't bad, but Dex couldn't call  reef restoration a passion. More like a necessary evil until Aqueous  Adventures, the Caribbean excursion company he'd started with some of  his former SEAL team members, took off.

Dex pointed to the surface and waited until all five of the dark figures  started kicking toward the surface, fins and tanks flashing in the  crystal clear water, before he followed them. Since he had the live  bait, it was only fair that he be last in line …  and first in line to  tangle with whatever might be interested in a free lunch.

Wouldn't be the first time Dex had watched his teammates' backs, and it sure as hell wouldn't be the last.

All six of them broke the surface and waited for the dive boat captain  to wave them onboard. Charlie clambered up the ladder first, as always;  Charlie led, everyone else followed. Had been that way since Iraq.  Charlie spit the tank valve from his mouth and cleared the ladder for  the next guy. Evan, Jace, Miles and Jack emerged from the water. And  then Dex.

Mask-off. Finally, blessed relief from the tight band. Dex's tank hit  the deck and, last but not least, he flipped off his fins and collapsed  against the last empty seat.

"How many more times do we have to do that?" Jace groaned and scrubbed  at his too-pretty face. Jace liked women, beer and fast boats,  preferably together, and reef restoration wasn't high on his list. It  wasn't high on any of their lists.

"What's a matter?" Charlie elbowed his roommate in the ribs. "You afraid of a few little fish?"

Jace glowered at Charlie but took the elbowing good-naturedly. "The only thing I'm afraid of is your mama."

Dex grinned because Jace was like a big goofy puppy half the time, not because his comeback had any particular humor.

Rolling his eyes, Charlie eased his fins off methodically and  purposefully, the way he did everything. "If you're tired of making  money, go be a beach bum. See how many bikini bunnies you score when you  tell them you're unemployed."

"Like that matters," Jace scoffed and smoothed a flat hand down his jaw. "When you look like this."

That had everyone rolling their eyes.

"What matters is that we're in this together," Miles interjected  quietly, ever the peacemaker. "We work for ReefCo and do some good for  the ocean. In exchange, they pay us well. We sock money away until we  can run Aqueous full time. Same plan we've had since day one."

"ReefCo." Jack spat over the bow into the water. "ReefCo does nothing  good for the ocean. Everything Jared Anderson does is for his own good."

Evan nodded-they all shared the sentiment regarding ReefCo's billionaire  owner-but he didn't contribute actual words. It took an act of congress  to get the guy to speak. Evan and Dex had done three tours together,  more than any of the other guys. They'd crawled under more barbed wire  together, slung more mud on each other, and dressed more of each other's  battlefield wounds with chewing gum and sand than anyone else. Dex  loved Evan more than any human on this earth in a way that only another  brother-in-arms could fully understand. But the man had serious PTSD,  and it wasn't getting better.