Page 8 of Protecting Kelli (SEAL of Protection: Alliance #6)

“Uh-huh. The worst part about that was, it was one of our own, one of our SEAL brothers who did it. Because the asshole was jealous. Jealous . It’s ridiculous.

If he wanted to be team leader, all he had to do was talk to the commander and he could’ve made it happen eventually.

Instead, when stranding them in the ocean didn’t work, he kidnapped Remi and tried to bury her alive, in some misguided belief that Kevlar would be so emotionally distraught he wouldn’t be able to function, leaving this guy to take over the team. ”

The absolute fury behind what his teammate had done was easy to hear in Flash’s tone.

“Thank God for Blink being in the right place at the right time,” he finished.

“He’s the one who was a POW in Iran, right?” Kelli asked. She was fascinated by the backgrounds of Flash’s friends.

“Yup. He met Josie there. I wish all SEALs were like Blink and the rest of my friends. Unfortunately, they’re not. Maggie’s ex was also in the Navy, and that asshole had her locked in a box, then he actually arranged for our team to drop that box from a helicopter in Ukraine.”

Kelli gaped at him. “That sounds horrible!”

“It was. But MacGyver met Artem, Borysko, and Yana as a result of that mission, and now they’re thriving, living in the States with him and Addison.”

Once again, Kelli was officially intimidated. The men and women in Flash’s inner circle sounded like superheroes. They had their shit together, and when the worst happened, they were level-headed and brave. Afterward, they were somehow able to get past their traumas and have normal lives.

She screamed when she saw spiders in her apartment.

She freaked out when she saw someone run a red light because of what could have happened if another car had gone through the intersection at the same time.

And she couldn’t muster up the courage to take off her freaking cover-up in front of the Three A’s and the near-strangers they were shacking up with.

“What are you thinking?” Flash asked.

“I’m thinking I don’t ever want to meet your friends.”

Complete silence met her impulsive words, and when Kelli looked over at Flash, she saw his lips were pressed together and his brow was furrowed.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” she hurriedly said.

“How did you mean it then?” Flash asked, his green eyes seeming to bore into her.

“Just that…I’m twenty-eight years old, can’t control my urge to eat the Christmas Tree Cakes I’ve got stashed in my freezer, I have no career, no idea of what I might want to do, and if I was left in the ocean, or thrown in a cell in a far-off country, or sold into sex slavery, I’d fall on the ground in a heap and not be able to get up again. ”

“Christmas Tree Cakes are the bomb, and who cares that you haven’t found your passion yet?

I have no doubt you will. And trust me, if you asked Wren, or Josie, or Remi how they were feeling when they were in the middle of the shit that happened to them, they’d tell you that they were completely freaked out. ”

Kelli doubted that. “Uh-huh.” She stared at her feet, which she could barely feel; the blood flow had been cut off from her legs because of the way she was sitting with her ass deep in the hole of the tube.

“Look at me,” Flash ordered.

Without hesitation, Kelli did as he asked.

“I have no doubt that if the shit hit the fan, you’d handle yourself with grace, bravery, and courage.

You’re resilient, just like them. We haven’t known each other long, but I have a feeling your practicality would be your biggest asset in situations like they were in.

You wouldn’t panic. You’d stay calm and think through all your options. ”

It was sweet that he thought that, but Kelli wasn’t so sure .

“Right. Tell me this—if your cousin was faced with a hundred-foot waterfall appearing in front of her tube right this second, what would she do?”

Kelli couldn’t help but laugh. “Scream her head off.”

“Right. And what would you do?”

“Bail out of this tube and swim like hell for the riverbank.”

“Exactly.”

Kelli blinked. He had a point. She was practical, levelheaded. At least compared to her cousin and the Three A’s. She was patient and had a tendency to think through all her options before making a decision. It drove her mom crazy sometimes that she couldn’t make decisions quickly at all.

“You might have a point,” she conceded.

“Of course I do,” Flash said with that sexy grin of his.

“Anyone tell you that you’re a little bit cocky?” she teased.

“All the time,” he agreed.

Kelli rolled her eyes at him, but she felt a little better.

Besides, it wasn’t as if she would ever actually meet his friends.

They were like two ships passing in the night.

They were having a good time together right now, simply because they were both so different from the people they were traveling with.

When they went home tomorrow, that would be that.

They’d go back to their lives and not have a reason to talk to each other again.

They heard some squeals from the girls ahead of them once more, and looking forward, Kelli saw the water they were about to enter was no longer flat and tranquil, but choppy .

“Looks like we’re getting to the more exciting part of the trip the employees told us about,” Flash commented.

Kelli nodded, but since her anxiety was suddenly spiking, and all she could think about was falling off this stupid tube and drowning, she couldn’t speak.

One moment they were lazily floating down the river, and the next they were bouncing along in the whitecaps. It was no wonder the girls had been squealing. Kelli felt a girly squeal rising in her throat too.

“This is awesome!” Flash exclaimed.

He was slightly behind her now, but Kelli couldn’t look at him. She was concentrating too hard on holding onto her tube and not dying.

She had no idea how long they were in the rapids, but when Flash suddenly swore in a tone she hadn’t heard from him before, she whipped her head to the right, looking over her shoulder to see what was the matter.

She saw Flash’s tube heading straight for a huge rock in the middle of the rapids and before she could blink, heard a huge popping noise.

Right in front of her face, Flash disappeared beneath the rolling waters of the river.

“Flash!” she cried.

But he was already underwater. And there was nothing she could do, not with how fast she was floating down the river.

Still, Kelli frantically searched the waters around her for Flash.

She didn’t see him anywhere. Panic threatened to overwhelm her, but she did her best to stay calm.

Her first instinct was to bail out of her own tube, but that would be dumb.

She hadn’t lied, she could swim, but in water like this she’d be completely out of her element .

“Flash!” she yelled again, hoping against hope he’d somehow be able to answer.

Long minutes went by, minutes during which Kelli didn’t know if Flash was dead or alive. He could be still under the waves, trapped against a rock by the current, with no way to break free from the water’s grasp.

Just as the rapids began to peter out, she saw something ahead of her.

Squinting, Kelli strained her eyes, trying to spot whatever?—

There! She saw it again.

Flash! He was now ahead of her.

The relief that whipped through her body made her weak. Without his tube, he’d obviously moved much faster through the water. She saw him moving toward the bank of the river, and Kelli frantically used her arms to try to steer herself closer to his location.

Her muscles were screaming within seconds, but she somehow managed to get her tube to the left side of the river.

She thought she’d float right by Flash, until he saw her.

He’d crawled out of the water and was coughing hard, but he immediately waded back in and grabbed her tube right before she would’ve gone sailing past.

With her frantic movements, Kelli felt like a fish flopping around on the ground, but she managed to get herself out of the tube as soon as the water was shallow enough for her to stand.

“Oh my God, Flash, are you all right? What happened?” she asked, holding onto his arm as he walked them, and her tube, back to shore.

It hadn’t escaped her notice that for a man who’d been hacking up a lung a minute earlier, and who’d had what would’ve been a life-or- death experience for her, he was walking just fine and no longer coughing. He was even smiling now.

“Damn tube popped,” he said.

“I know that ,” she said a little impatiently. “But after? What happened?”

“The rapids turned me upside down for a bit, but I got my feet in front of me and rode the current downstream. And here I am.”

Kelli’s gaze moved up and down his body. He had some scrapes on his torso, a kind of nasty-looking gouge in his bicep, his hair was hanging in his eyes…but he was still smiling.

“Let me guess, you thought that was fun,” Kelli said.

Flash shrugged. “Kinda.”

“I thought you were stuck underwater,” she admitted in a small, shaky voice.

“Aw, I’m okay,” Flash said. Then he surprised the hell out of her by pulling her into his arms. Kelli gripped him hard, so relieved he was all right, she felt weak in the knees.

After several moments, she took a deep breath and pulled back, but she didn’t drop her arms from around Flash’s waist. For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel self-conscious about being around someone in her bathing suit.

Not only being around him, but being in his embrace. Flash felt far too comfortable.

“What now?” she asked with a small frown.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we only have one tube. And we’re who knows how far from the pick-up point.”

Flash shrugged. “No biggie. I can swim.”

“No, you can’t!” Kelli exclaimed .

“Yeah, Kelli, I can. It’s not a big deal.”

“No,” she repeated, shaking her head. “There are who knows what animals in that river. Snakes, crocodiles, leaches, piranha, parasites…yucky things!”

Flash chuckled. “I don’t think there are any piranha in there.”

“Whatever,” Kelli said with a shake of her head. “You can’t swim to the pick-up point!”

“We could share the tube,” Flash suggested. “Those were the only rapids, at least according to the briefing we got before we put in. We should be fine to float the rest of the way.”

“We aren’t going to fit on that tube together,” she told him with a frown.

“Why not?”

“Um, Flash…look at me,” Kelli said, taking a step backward, out of his arms.

The way he licked his lips as his gaze ran up and down her body made Kelli shiver. In a good way. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a man look at her the way Flash was in that moment. As if he were starving and she was a hamburger he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into.

“I’m looking at you,” he said quietly.

“I just…Flash! Concentrate,” Kelli said, a little breathlessly.

His gaze finally came back to her own. “I know you think you’re too big or some such bullshit, but I’m telling you right now, Kelli Colbert, you are nothing of the kind. You’re tiny.”

She couldn’t help it. She snorted.

“You are,” Flash insisted. “And don’t think I missed how uncomfortable you were, sitting in that tube. You’re just too short to be able to fit in that huge thing correctly. And that’s not a dig, just a fact. I can get in, and you can sit across my lap.”

Kelli was shaking her head before he’d even finished speaking.

“Why not?”

“Flash…I…you…” Kelli stumbled over her words, not able to get the image of her sitting in Flash’s lap out of her mind. Her butt would be right over his…

Involuntarily, her gaze went to his crotch. Even in the swim shorts, she could tell he was well endowed. Shrinkage didn’t seem to be an issue for this man.

When Flash chuckled, her gaze whipped back up to his face. She knew she was blushing, could feel the heat in her cheeks.

“Our other choice is to walk, and I’m thinking since neither of us are wearing shoes, that’s out. Or I could hold onto the tube behind you, and float with you that way.”

But Kelli shook her head again. She couldn’t stand the thought of him being immersed in the water.

It was stupid. He was used to the water and was obviously a great swimmer.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about snakes or seeing the scrapes on his body from where he was already hurt by rocks under the water.

“Fine,” she said, before she chickened out and changed her mind.

Flash stepped back into her personal space and wrapped one arm around her waist, putting his other hand under her chin, lifting it so she had no choice but to look at him.

“This is going to be fine. Stop thinking so much. If you think it’s any kind of hardship for me to hold you in my lap as we float down the river, you’re absolutely, one hundred percent wrong.”

“I might squish you,” she whispered.

Flash snorted. “As if. You don’t weight any more than my pack does when I’m on a mission.”

Kelli rolled her eyes. “I seriously doubt your pack weighs as much as I do.”

“Come on, let’s do this. We don’t want to piss the others off by making them wait for us. We’ll never hear the end of it if we do.”

That was very true. Kelli could just imagine the haranguing she’d get from Charlotte if she and the Three A’s had to stand around and wait for them.

Flash hadn’t moved. He stayed right where he was, with his arm around her and his hand under her chin, waiting for her to be ready.

Taking a deep breath, Kelli said, “Okay. Let’s do this. I’m about done with this fun float down the river anyway.”

“That’a girl,” Flash said quietly. Then he shocked the shit out of Kelli by leaning forward and kissing her forehead, before letting go and turning to the tube he’d hauled out of the water.

As he leaned over, Kelli couldn’t stop herself from staring at his ass. It was almost as nice as his abs. Almost.

Turning, Flash caught her looking at his butt, but he simply smiled and turned back to what he was doing.

Kelli thought she should be embarrassed, but she wasn’t. Fuck it. This situation had gotten completely out of control. She had no doubt she’d look ridiculous sitting on top of Flash as they floated down the river. Charlotte would make fun of her when they were alone for sure.

But whatever. Being made fun of wasn’t anything new for Kelli, and she’d much rather deal with Charlotte’s snide comments for the rest of her life than allow Flash to get hurt or get some tropical disease from being in the water for too long.

It didn’t matter if the possibility of that actually happening was extremely low, she wasn’t going to chance it.

Especially since he now had open wounds.

Mentally shrugging, Kelli followed Flash into the water.