Lindsay McKenna - Never Surrender

Groaning, Gabe pulled her away, feeling himself going hard. This wasn’t the time or place for this kind of obvious affectionate display. Not in the middle of a civilian airport, of all things. “Let’s get your duffel bag down at Baggage?” he suggested, helping her pull the ruck off the deck and slinging it over his shoulder. Gabe saw the gleam in her eyes, knowing how happy and relieved Bay was to see him.

“Okay, let’s rock it out, Frogman.” She flashed him a wickedly playful look, her arm curving around his waist.

He grinned and slid his arm around her shoulders, holding her close, and he teased, “Is that my new pet nickname you’ve given me?” All SEALs were frogmen. Gabe loved it when she was playful. He didn’t see that side of Bay very often because of the deadly business they were in.

“It is when you’ve clearly got teenage hormones out of control down below.” She gave a significant but quick look down toward his crotch. Luckily, cammies were bulky and hid everything about a person’s body. No one could actually see he had an erection. But she knew his body intimately. No doubt, she could feel it when he’d kissed her earlier.

Her smile widened as she saw his cheeks grow a dusky red. “Why, you’re blushing, Gabe. First time I’ve ever seen you do that. What a bad boy you are. Good thing your team isn’t here. They’d railroad you into the ground on this one.” She laughed heartily. SEALs took no prisoners when they teased one another. It was a merciless blood sport.

“Woman, you need to be tamed down a little,” he growled, taking the escalator with her at his side.

“Mmm, I’m more than ready, Frogman. I like swimming with the sharks.”

She was testy, flippant and God he loved her. Those lips of hers could crack rocks open, they were so lush and hot. They sure as hell cracked him wide open down to his soul in the best of ways. “Well, we’ll do a little swimming all right,” he challenged her, a warning glint in his eyes. “We’ll see who comes up for air first.” SEALs could easily hold their breath under water for three minutes or longer.

As he tipped her head back, giving her a swift kiss, Bay’s husky laughter filled his heart. Still, those purple shadows beneath her eyes bothered him. She had to be exhausted. Tonight, he’d be gentle and tender with her, hugging her, loving her, welcoming her home. And then, he’d hold her in his arms throughout the night. There was nothing better than that in his world.

He became somber as they made their way into the baggage area on the first floor of the airport. “Have you gotten your orders yet?”

“Yes.” Bay shrugged and frowned. “I’m being assigned to an Army Special Forces team out of Camp Bravo.”

“Shit.”

“I tried to change it, Gabe. I even put in a personal call to General Maya Stevenson who runs Operation Shadow Warriors at the Pentagon. I told her I’d really like to continue working with the SEAL team at Bravo.” She noticed how his green eyes were filled with worry. For her. His mouth was thinned, telling her he was holding back his emotions. They halted at the carousel, waiting for her duffel bag to be spit out by the system.

“Why couldn’t she change them? Is it politics?”

“Not this time around. The SF team just lost their 18 Delta medic. He was badly injured in a firefight outside the village a week ago. You know every SF team needs two medics, and they’re down to one. I’ll fill in for a while.” Bay looked up at him, feeling his powerful sense of protection surrounding her. He was definitely fighting his anger and frustration over her assignment. She lowered her voice, and it was filled with regret. “I’m sorry, Gabe. I really am. I tried...”

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her temple. “It’s all right. You’ll be okay with them.” He didn’t believe it himself, but he wasn’t going to make her worry over something she couldn’t control. SF was black ops, but not on the same level as SEALs. Their priorities and objectives were very different.

Bay could tell Gabe was lying through his teeth to her, saw it in his eyes. No SEAL in his right mind would ever think someone was okay in any other black ops team except theirs. Even though Gabe was a SEAL and they were experts at hiding how they felt, he couldn’t hide his emotional reactions from her. Maybe their love opened doors between them that gave them deep, private access to one another. Bay was intuitive enough to feel his controlled anger and worry.

But Gabe wasn’t angry at her. He was angry at the system. In his eyes, no one was better than Navy SEALs when it came to a gunfight. They always took the fight to the enemy, no holds barred.

“Well,” he growled, “I’ll contact the chief who’s with that SEAL team at Bravo, then. I’ll make sure they know you’re my fiancée, and they will have your back.” He looked down at her, his eyes hard. “They will help you, Bay. If you need anything, I want you to go to that chief of the SEAL platoon. I’ll find out his name and call him myself. We won’t leave you hanging out to dry if it comes down to a gunfight.”

She smiled patiently, letting him blow off excess steam. She’d worked with SF teams before. If she truly believed Gabe, she’d have asked General Stevenson to retract the orders. Her experience in Iraq and Afghanistan with SF made her confident to work with them again. Bay wasn’t going to try and argue the point with Gabe. It would be a useless waste of time and energy. Besides, they didn’t have much time together, anyway, and she didn’t want to spend it on a no-win discussion.

Bay had only six months to go before her enlistment was completed with Operation Shadow Warriors. Her time in the military would come to an end. She’d been one of the forty women volunteers for the seven-year top secret Pentagon project to see if women could handle combat. They each spent half a year with a black ops group, the reports on them being funneled back into the Pentagon and to General Stevenson. It was the general’s contention women could handle combat, and so far, the stats were proving her right. Bay was proud to take part in this top secret experiment.

“Six months. It will be okay, Gabe.” Bay squeezed his hand to reassure him. He didn’t look reassured at all, his eyes blazing with discontent. She could feel him thinking, feel him trying to find a way to fix this. To get her out of the assignment. But it couldn’t be fixed as much as he wanted.

The duffel bag fell out onto the carousel. Gabe released her and went over and hefted it across his broad shoulder. The thing weighed nearly ninety pounds, and he handled it as if it were nothing. He walked over, cupped her elbow and said, “The SUV is parked out front. Let’s blow this joint.”

On the way to his condo on Coronado, Bay asked, “Did you just come out of the field?”

He snorted. “Don’t I look like it? Hell, I must smell pretty bad, huh?” And then he chuckled. “Yeah, we were doing nav course training up in the rocks, cactus and that damn manzanita that tears holes out of your skin the size of craters up in east San Diego County.”

“Did you win the navigation course contest?”

Gabe turned and met her sparkling eyes. “It always pays to be a winner, baby.”

“You did.” She reached over and slid her hand across his dusty shoulder. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I was paired with Hammer for the contest. Chief Hampton told me if the two of us won the course competition, he’d grant me my seven-day leave request to be with you.” His lips drew away from his teeth. “And I sure as hell wasn’t going to lose that one. Hammer hauled ass with me, and we made it through the course in record time.”

Pride for him, for his being a warrior, rose in her chest. Gabe was a supremely confident man. Nothing rocked his world except her, she had discovered. He was a vaunted sniper and had killed too many Taliban to count. He’d had four rotations into Iraq and Afghanistan. Out on a patrol he was steady and reliable.