Page 23 of Stealthy Seduction (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #5)

S teele pulled out his usual chair at the table and sank to it, never shifting his gaze from the big monitor on the war room wall.

“What are we looking at?” He aimed his question at Mason, who just studied the monitor for a moment, then shrugged.

Con stood at the head of the room with the same commanding presence he always carried himself with. But nothing on that screen made sense.

They weren’t looking at weapons schematics or satellite imagery. The screen displayed a chart with names.

Not their next targets—their women.

“Are we looking at…” Steele shook his head to clear it, but the chart was still the same, “relationship intelligence?”

Con picked up the laser pointer and indicated to the top line of the graph. “Gentlemen, tonight we’ll be doing things a little different here.”

Sinner grunted as he entered the room last and ended up in the chair with his back to the door. “What is that?” he asked Steele.

He shrugged as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Izzy’s name was fifth on the list.

Chase sat back with a groan. “Let me guess—this was Alyssa’s idea. She’s complained a few times about being stuck on base and now that it’s cold outside, we should be doing some ‘cozy’ things.” He made air quotes around the word.

Con eyed the group. “We have five women under our protection for an indefinite period. They’re away from their normal lives, out of their normal routines. It falls on the team to ensure they feel supported, not imprisoned.”

The top of the chart had words like snack, drink and color. Beside Izzy’s name he read the answers with extreme interest. He knew a lot about her, but he didn’t know these things about her. He didn’t even know he was curious about them.

Dante leaned forward, his fingers resting on the table rather than the keys of his laptop, a sure sign he was intrigued by whatever Con was about to propose.

“What you’re all looking at is a chart containing the name of each woman in residence. And a list of their favorite things.”

Sinner sat back with so much force that his chair creaked. “What’s this have to do with the bachelors?”

“Nothing. But you’re going to sit here and learn a few things.” Con turned to the screen.

“How did you gather this intel?” Steele asked what they were probably all thinking.

“Dante ran surveillance, including a half-dozen kitchen conversations. On the chart, we have favorite snacks, drinks, colors, comfort items and even their preferred type of movies.” He moved the pointer along each category, then pointed at Kennedy’s name.

“Kennedy thinks cilantro tastes like soap. No cilantro martinis for her. Alyssa prefers sea salt on caramel. May likes salty snacks rather than sweet, particularly—”

“Nachos,” Chickie finished for him.

Con nodded.

“So what are we doing with all this, boss man?” Mason spoke with a slight edge of irritation, as if this was wasting his time. Steele could see his point—if Izzy wasn’t on that list, he wouldn’t give a damn either.

“Whatever it is, it’s either the most thoughtful thing any of us have ever done or the creepiest,” Chase said.

“This proves Blackout Charlie can conduct surveillance on anyone, including their houseguests.” Steele groaned.

“That isn’t the point. The plan? We set up the main living area for optimal comfort.” Con clicked to the next slide, which showed a detailed floor plan, wielding the pointer like he was conducting a black op. “Multiple seating options, appropriate lighting, temperature control and a snack station.”

The floor plan looked like something an interior designer might create, complete with all exits marked. Even during family movie night, old habits died hard.

“Sinner’s handling the popcorn situation,” Con continued. “Three different flavors, plus his special butter blend.”

Sinner looked a little lighter at the nod to his culinary skills.

“Mason’s on blanket and pillow duty.”

“Why does that have to be me?”

“Because you can use your undercover skills to go shopping.” Con’s tone brooked no argument, and Mason sat back with a sigh.

“Our master of all things tech, Dante, you’ll be managing the audio-visual setup and backup entertainment options. Chase, you’re coordinating with the ladies on movie selection.”

“What about me?” Steele asked.

“You’re on Izzy duty,” Con replied simply. “Make sure she’s comfortable, has everything she needs and doesn’t feel overwhelmed.”

The casual way Con said it, like it was just another tactical assignment, made Steele’s chest tighten with something warm and unfamiliar.

“I wonder if Alpha team ever did anything like this,” he mused.

“They can take notes from our playbook if they need them.” Con’s answer had everyone cracking a grin. All the Blackout teams might be fighting for the same thing, but they still wanted to be the top of the food chain, higher than the other units.

Sinner surveyed the room with his usual stoic expression, taking in the profiles on the screens and the earnest faces of his teammates. “I’m staying away from you guys. Don’t want to catch what you all got.”

“What’s that?” Steele asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.

“Feelings.”

The word hung in the air like an accusation.

Steele looked around the table at his teammates—Dante and Chase had their heads together, discussing the plans for the women they loved, then Chickie announced that he would scroll through romantic comedy movie recommendations.

Dante suggested board games and books, which they all agreed would be a hit with the ladies.

Mason actually took notes on what stores to hit up for matching pillows and blanket options. And Con, their unflappable leader and the man who’d fallen first, wore an expression of intensity on par with what he brought to mission planning.

Sinner wasn’t wrong. They all had it bad.

The realization should have been terrifying. For years, their strength had come from their ability to compartmentalize, to separate emotion from duty, to function as a unit without the risk factors that came with civilian attachments.

But looking at this room—at grown men planning a movie night like it was a special ops mission, at the genuine care behind every ridiculous detail—Steele couldn’t bring himself to see it as a weakness.

Maybe this was evolution. Maybe this was what it looked like when a team of warriors finally found something worth fighting for beyond duty and country.

His thoughts drifted to Izzy, probably upstairs right now working on her book, channeling her trauma and fear into something that had meaning.

The woman who’d survived captivity and built herself back up from nothing, who could beat a table full of Navy SEALs at poker and make him laugh even when the world was falling apart around them.

The woman he wanted to come home to.

The phrase hit him with startling clarity. Come home to. Not just someone to sleep with or spend time with when he wasn’t deployed. Someone to build a life with. Someone whose happiness mattered as much as his own survival.

Someone worth planning movie nights for.

“You know what?” He stood up from the table. “Sinner’s right. I’ve got it bad.”

His teammates looked at him with varying degrees of amusement and understanding.

“But I don’t care,” he continued. “If having feelings means I get to see Izzy smile when she realizes we know she likes extra butter on her popcorn, or that we picked a movie she’s been wanting to watch, or that someone actually cares enough to notice what makes her comfortable, then I’ll take the feelings. ”

He headed for the door, then paused to look back at the room full of elite operators who were, at least for tonight, teddy bears.

He chuckled. “This is going to be the best damn movie night in the history of covert operations.”

As he left the war room behind, Steele found himself thinking about the future in a way he never had before.

Not just the next mission or the next deployment, but years ahead.

Christmases and birthdays and lazy Sunday mornings.

Coming home from dangerous places to someone who understood the cost of what he did and loved him anyway.

Maybe Sinner was right about the feelings being contagious. But if this was what infection looked like—a team of hardened warriors learning to care for the people who mattered to them—then Steele figured they could do a lot worse.

* * * * *

Izzy’s fingers flew over the keys of the laptop that Hudson brought her. Each word she wrote felt like part of a new kind of therapy, one she hadn’t yet discovered on her healing journey.

Oh, she’d written plenty over the years—journaled her thoughts, kept a diary of her self-care, even written letters to the editors of several newspapers with her own accounting as a hostage in a foreign land.

None of that felt as… freeing …as this piece on Cipher. Maybe laying out the pieces of the story in such a factual way was finally putting things into perspective.

A quiet knock on the door had her pausing with her fingers over the keys, and it took her a beat to pull her mind out of the world she was creating and return to reality.

She twisted to face the door when she called out, “Come in!”

Her heart picked up a beat in anticipation as she waited to see her lover’s head pop around the frame. Instead, a swish of blonde hair announced a different visitor.

Kennedy peeked in. “Is it okay to come in? I’m not interrupting your genius?”

Izzy laughed. “I don’t know about genius, but come in.”

Kennedy stepped in and glanced around. “Wow. You haven’t decorated yet, I see.”

Her brow shot up. “Decorated?”

“One of the first things I did was add some cozy touches to Dante’s room.” She wrinkled her nose. “The whole military-issue chic vibe wasn’t doing it for me.”

Izzy laughed again. “Well, he does have high thread-count sheets. I just…”

Kennedy came to lean against the desk. “You’re not sure you belong here.”