Page 26

“Might just enjoy the sun,” Emory called back in a voice strained a half octave too high.

He gestured to where Giselle and Gage were wading at the water’s edge.

Neither of them was much for the river—Giselle because she was still acclimating to the ranks’ foregone privacy and Gage because they’d acclimated and found that their preferences remained the same.

With Emory, on the other hand, the main problem usually was getting him out of the water.

The man was born to wallow and would do so until pruned if unfettered by the cruelties of their demanding schedules.

Which meant it was glaringly obvious, and only getting more so, that he was doing anything other than tearing off his clothes with the rest of them.

Kat felt a chill that had nothing to do with the water temperature as she saw Carrick and Sawyer exchange a glance. Many of the looks that passed between them were incomprehensible, a near telepathy they’d developed after seven years as battle partners.

This look was as transparent as the crystal-clear water they swam in.

They weren’t going to let this slide. Emory was about to be dragged into the river—and if his current discomfort was anything to go by, the two of them were bound to notice that his posture wasn’t the only thing that had noticeably stiffened.

On the one hand, Kat was far from precious.

She knew men got hard all the time for reasons far less drastic than I fucked my battle partner one time and now she’s naked in front of me.

But this wasn’t just a boner—it was an alignment of the stars.

It was practically pointing right at her.

And there might not be a brain cell rattling between Carrick and Sawyer on most days, but they were primed to connect this dot.

She knew what she had to do. It might be the worst thing she had ever done to Emory—worse, even, than putting him on his back in plain sight of the legions.

Kat stood. She turned for the shore. And as if Mira had just blasted one long, shrill note on her whistle, she charged.

If Emory hadn’t been making such a concentrated effort to look anywhere but her, she probably couldn’t have pulled it off.

Wading through water took her speed down to barely more than a crawl, and she had to fight like hell to get her feet stable on the silty riverbank.

But by the time she’d found her footing, she’d closed just enough distance that Emory could only stammer, backpedal, and—in a win sent straight from the angels—trip over his own feet.

“Kat,” he choked as he tried to flail away from her. “The hell do you think you’re doing?”

“ Fixing this, ” she growled, low enough that her voice was lost under the whoops and cheers from the rest of the soldiers frolicking in the river. She was the only one who could. Unlike their comrades, it didn’t matter if she noticed Emory’s condition.

So she grabbed her struggling battle partner and hauled him up over her shoulder, staggering step by step through the silt and pebbles, cutting off every half-hearted attempt he made to wrench himself free and deliberately arranging herself between the rest of the troops and the one thing they absolutely could not notice—aproblem she herself noticed had been…

somewhat exacerbated by the manhandling.

“You owe me,” she said as they reached the water’s edge.

Then, with a mighty heave, she threw himin.

Emory sank like a stone, and for a moment he was terribly still. Kat was a second from flinging herself in after him when he finally pushed himself upright, coughing and hacking. She waded to his side, reaching out hesitantly to steady him. Maybe she’d overdoneit.

Then an arm snaked around her neck, and Kat barely had time to shriek before she was unceremoniously dunked.

She twisted free and resurfaced, howling with laughter as she heaved an enormous splash after Emory.

Ziva was at her side in a flash, leaping on Emory’s back to avenge her—only Emory flopped backward, slamming both of them back under the water.

Kat lunged to rejoin the fray, but two weights dragged valiantly at her biceps as Carrick and Sawyer each grabbed an arm apiece and did their damnedest to fight her bulk.

“Okay, okay, easy!” she shouted, and by some miracle it worked. The two of them stopped, Emory and Ziva resurfaced, laughing amicably as she slid off his back, and the churn of the water settled—though not enough that Emory had anything to worry about.

He was a vision though, like this. Kat found it blisteringly unfair how he somehow looked better drenched and clothed than he might have stripped bare.

There was something about the way the water clung to him, sluicing down his neck to melt into the fabric of his shirt, which stuck to his thick, muscled torso in ways that made her profoundly grateful for the chill.

He mussed at his hair, which was plastered down over his eyes, and Kat found herself resisting the urge to reach out and help him push it back.

She flicked her fingertips at him instead, sending a spray of droplets that earned her a warm sideways glance.

Part of her screamed at how obvious it felt—hosts above, Carrick and Sawyer were right there, and never mind that Ziva was in on the bit and barely bothering to hide it.

But maybe it was no different than it had always been.

The teasing, the jostling, the give-and-take.

They’d been like this for a while, before sex got thrown in the mix.

As long as Emory kept the bottom half of his body beneath the river’s surface, they had nothing to worry about.

Kat had almost convinced herself of that when from behind her, Mira Morgenstern’s unmistakable razor-edged voice called her name.