Page 49 of Boomer (SEAL Team Tier 1, #7)
Boomer looked up at her. “I’ve never done this before,” he said simply. His eyes slid down their joined bodies. “Did I—I lost control. Did I hurt you?”
That undid her more than anything else. She sputtered, part laugh, part unraveled. “So good. You hurt me so very good.”
He stared at her, and for one electric moment, their eyes held.
She went dizzy inside that pulsating green, as if her soul had meshed with his, no barriers, no breath between them. It felt like some lost, incomplete part of her had just crossed space and time to find the hollow inside him and fill it like it had always belonged.
The connection hit like lightning, overpowering, undeniable, real .
In that staggering rush of knowing, she realized the truth.
She couldn’t live without him.
Boomer’s voice came low, ragged, like it was torn straight from his chest.
“You were made for me.” His eyes went glassy, heat flooding them with an intensity that made her chest go still.
“I don’t think I can breathe without you anymore.
” His pupils were blown wide, voice frayed and thick.
“There are things inside me…I can’t—” He shook his head, jaw clenched like he was fighting back something too big to name.
“I don’t know how to let it go. Just…hold on to me.
Until I get there. Until I can work the problem. ”
She didn’t even realize she was crying until the tears slipped down her cheeks, quiet and unstoppable.
“Just try to get me to let go,” she whispered.
“You came into my life and gave me the key to unlock all my doors.” She stepped in closer, pressed her palm to his chest, right over his heart. “So I’m not giving it back. Ever. ”
His face contorted, something breaking open behind his eyes and then he buried his face in her shoulder, arms locking around her like he couldn’t bear the space between heartbeats.
“The key was always yours,” he whispered, voice cracked and fierce. “I just gave it back to you.”
The water pounded around them, the fog closed in, and everything outside the shower, outside this, faded into something that didn’t matter.
Taylor wrapped her arms around his neck, her body slick against his, water cascading over them in rivulets.
Their mouths met again, harder this time, wet and open, a clash of breath and hunger and everything unspoken.
He pressed her back against the tile, one hand braced above her head.
She gasped into his mouth, his cock still deep and full.
They didn’t move at first. Just stayed there.
Joined. Breathing into each other’s mouths, foreheads pressed, the world suspended.
He released her, pulled out, and she grasped his shoulders from the intense friction. “Boomer…”
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, voice hoarse. “I’ve always got you.”
Her fingers tangled in his hair, his mouth found the curve of her neck, her shoulder, her collarbone.
For a long moment, the only sound was water.
And breathing.
And the fragile, powerful rhythm of two people holding on in the wake of something they never expected to find.
Boomer sat in the briefing, needing this reprieve, knowing he was in no shape to operate.
Every time he looked at Taylor, dressed in her gear, Glock at her hip, lashed down with a tie around one of those sleek, toned thighs, he felt her legs around him, and thank God he was too spent for a hard-on, but his freaking dick twitched. The fucker.
When he’d gotten back to his room, still wearing nothing but a towel, Breakneck had smirked, then taken one look at his face and whatever torture he’d planned died. He stared at Boomer for a moment, looking affected by whatever he was projecting.
“Next time, you might want to take a pair of shorts to the shower. Ambushes are unexpected, but you look like you’ve been ravaged and lived to tell the tale.
” He took a breath and pulled open the door.
“You deserve to be happy, Boomie. Fuck, if anyone does, you do.” Then he’d closed the door behind him.
In the wake of that kid’s comment, Boomer’s legs had given out from under him.
He sat down hard on the bunk, his heart turning over in his chest. How had he never seen the way his brother respected him…
looked at him like there was always something to learn, and had just read him like a sniper target and had refused to pull the trigger.
Except that kid had just shot him through the heart.
He wasn’t the only teammate watching him.
Iceman was deeply satisfied. Hazard and GQ nodding.
Skull was smirking and giving him fist bumps with his eyes, Kodiak looked smug as hell, and Preacher’s eyes were filled with an understanding of what he’d just been gifted with, like he knew Boomer had just been baptized in fire.
That baptism had burned more than it had purified. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud. There are things inside me...I can’t. But it was too late to take it back. It had slipped out raw, like a pressure valve blowing under too much weight.
She’d held him like she’d heard every unsaid thing behind the words. Like she knew what he hadn’t been able to give voice to and wasn’t going to let go until he could.
The problem was, he didn’t know how to work the problem. He’d tried. Hell, he’d tried a thousand times. Thought maybe the pain would burn out, maybe the guilt would settle, maybe one day he’d stop dreaming about Mike’s laugh right before that last mission.
But it always came back.
Now, with Taylor beside him, with Ansel in the picture, with something like a future clawing its way toward him, that pain wasn’t fading.
It was louder .
His gut clenched, that same damn knot twisting tight. He couldn’t go on like this, not without figuring it out. But how the hell did you face a ghost you still couldn’t talk to?
Not here. Not yet.
But someday soon, he was going to have to look it in the eye. He’d have to tell Taylor, and he wanted to be whole when he did it. Before it took something from him he’d never get back.
Taylor...God…she hadn’t flinched. She hadn’t blinked. He knew in his gut that she wouldn’t. Her loyalty to him, her commitment to him, was laced in three goddamned beautiful words.
He felt her gaze on him. Met her eyes.
It was as if she could feel his turmoil, reading him like she always did, silent and exacting. Her eyes swept over him, and what he saw in hers leveled him.
Adoration. Support. That deep, aching need to soothe him…not because he was broken, but because she loved him.
It broke open something in him, something that had ached for so long it had become part of his architecture. Now it just felt incomprehensible that she had fallen in love with him.
But he took it. Every ounce she gave him.
He wrapped his fist around that love like it was a lifeline and swore, w hen he was free of this pain, this goddamn torturing pain, he would tell her.
He vowed it with the same will that had made him a SEAL. That never fucking quit, never-out-of-the-fight kind of grit they carved into their souls from BUD/S, from combat, from brotherhood, from being both shield and tip of the spear.
She set her hand over her heart, watching him quietly, awareness in those Nordic depths of how his love burned behind his eyes, contained for now, but aching at the seams, ready to pour out the second he found the breath to give it voice.
He wanted to kiss her, fuck her again, hard and slow and raw, until her essence soaked into his skin, clung to his sex, threaded through his bloodstream, and carved itself into the walls of his heart.
Anna stepped forward, her expression carved from steel. “Our resources on this mission reflect the massive undertaking of this operation,” she began, her tone flat, clipped, professional.
He looked away before he drowned in it. All of them went rock still, the focus snapping into place. Boomer upped his concentration, but held onto Taylor with just as much fervor, just softer now.
“We are interdicting twelve ships, people, with the expectation of it taking several days. We will be working around the clock to execute this plan: disable, dismantle, confiscate, and extract intelligence.” She turned and clicked, and a list appeared on the center wide-screen.
“Our targets are: F/V Santa Merida – fentanyl tablet compression lab onboard, M/V Tarnów Sky – floating chemical refinery disguised as industrial cleaner ship, F/V Vila Nova Dawn – arms transport for cartel security forces, F/V Neves Fortuna – converted tuna boat, low signature, carrying cartel lieutenants, M/V Duarte Veloz – speed-fitted former coastal patrol boat turned transport, M/V Laurel Blight – rusted cargo freighter, carrying tainted pill batches for test markets, M/V Anastazija – Montenegrin-flagged trawler, mobile money-laundering base, M/Y Gaspard’s Fortune – luxury yacht converted into floating safehouse, M/V Marseille Dawn – small merchant ship, retrofitted engine room lab, and S/V Severina’s Ghost – abandoned ghost ship, now used for trafficking women, girls and boys.
” She shifted, frowning. “M/V Black Warden , an armed escort ship, working as a floating guard dog to the rest will be our first target.” Anna lifted her head and locked eyes with them.
“Our last target will be their flagship…F/V Málaga’s Reach – tagged and shadowed.
” Anna turned to Taylor. “It’s your show now, Detective. ”
Boomer leaned slightly toward Breakneck and muttered, “Hell of a shopping list.”
Taylor rose, her eyes showing why the arctic lived in those blue depths.
“Our assets include two Black Hawk helicopters, provided by the US Naval Special Warfare support via Lajes Field, Azores. We have the Nightstalkers flying them. Our naval and maritime assets consist of four RHIBs, one Portuguese Navy NRP Viana do Castelo , offshore patrol vessel assigned to MAOC. On standby will be one Navy Cyclone Class PC, the USS Falchion , as needed for international waters pursuit.” Taylor’s gaze sharpened.
“The Lisbon House will be our Tactical Operations Center, and the TOC will be manned by Officer Graham with CIA and US and Portuguese Naval support, real-time coordination, command and control via joint ops room for all operator assets.” Her voice lowered.
“If our intel identifies ground-based targets, we’ll fit them into the operation.
Rapid strike. No margin for error.” She paused, letting it settle.
As Taylor finished, a beat of silence fell over the room, heavy, loaded. “Any questions?” she asked.
Bash exhaled softly. “Twelve ships. Can’t wait to see how the Americans measure ‘moderate workload.’”
One of the junior SBS operators shifted in his chair, arms crossed tight over his tac vest. “If we have to work on the fly for ground assets, and breaching is our ingress, how are we going to coordinate that with two breachers? They can’t be everywhere.”
Silence.
Every SEAL at the table stilled, Skull’s smirk faded, Breakneck’s boot stopped mid-bounce, and Iceman’s jaw ticked with command energy.
Bash turned his head. Slowly. “Are you daft?” he said. Calm. Flat. But final. “Just give the BoomMonster the blueprints and he’ll bloody do it… on the fly . Hell, he’ll talk any one of us through it.”
Boomer blinked once. He couldn’t believe his ears. Looked up. Met Bash’s eyes.
They held a flicker of annoyance, sure, classic Bash. Irritation, even. But under it all was something Boomer hadn’t expected. Respect. Heavy. Clear. Unmistakable, and it rocked Boomer harder than he wanted to admit.
Bash seemed to realize what he’d just done. His mouth opened like he wanted to walk it back, but the damage was irreversible. His pride took a hit. His soul had already defected.
“I mean…bloody hell, the man reads structure like he wrote the damn book on it,” Bash added gruffly. He cleared his throat, visibly uncomfortable now. “Tactile genius, really. Don’t ask me how. It’s unnerving.”
Boomer raised an eyebrow. Didn’t smile. Didn’t gloat. He deliberately thickened his drawl. “Tactile genius. Shoot , son… I’ll add that to my CV.”
Breakneck choked on his protein bar.
Kodiak muttered, “Boomer’s LinkedIn’s about to be un-fucking-real.”
Hazard nodded once. “We’ll endorse him for ‘structural supremacy.’”
Skull smirked and the entire room braced. “Everyone’s thinking it. Hübscher Sprengmeister. ”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed just slightly, lips curving. “I stand by my observation,” she murmured dryly, her eyes dancing when she glanced at him.
GQ laughed. “Oh yeah...our resident fucking Tier 1 demo god.”
Breakneck didn’t miss a beat. “ Handsome demo god. Get it right, G.”
The room cracked, tension bleeding into a ripple of grins and shoulder bumps, the kind of release only brothers and bullets could forge.
But Boomer didn’t break eye contact with Bash.
That public support landed hard, right in the center of his chest. Even Bash thinks I’m enough.
Fuck. That hit him like a blow to the solar plexus, fast, and devastating.
He wasn’t able to brace for it because he hadn’t seen it coming, and now it was sitting there in his lungs like he couldn’t quite draw breath around it.
In that moment of that accidental British betrayal, he’d been seen , and the weight of it untangled some of those knots inside him.
“Boomer?” Iceman’s voice cut in.
“Sure, boss. I have breach charges prepped for every scenario. We’ll get them distributed.”
“Bloody hell,” Bash said under his breath. “Of course he does.”
Taylor had the final word. “We own the water tonight. Let’s act like it.”