He was beginning to imagine himself a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bull. And if she kept gyrating, it wouldn’t be long before his eight seconds were up.
“Get off me, Bran!” she howled, her sweet breath brushing his lips when she turned her head to look at him. “If you get yourself killed bein’ all heroic and brave, I swear on my granddaddy’s grave I’ll murder you!”
He would have pointed out that what she said didn’t make a bit of sense—How do you murder someone who’s already dead?—but he felt Mason skid to a stop beside him, kicking cool sand onto the backs of his calves.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he heard the big Bostonian grumble.
Fuckin’ hell is right. That’s exactly where this plan of theirs had gone.
“They made it into the fort,” Mason said. “Which means in about two minutes they’ll gain the high ground and we’ll be sitting ducks.”
“Roger that,” Bran agreed as he pushed away from Maddy. He immediately missed her soft, feminine warmth. And his eyes automatically pinged down to the…ahem…not insubstantial derriere that’d been giving him such fits.
So sue him. He was a guy, after all. And for a petite woman, Maddy had an ass that wouldn’t quit, the kind to make all the ’hood girls green with envy. Or as that pop singer Meghan Trainor liked to say, Maddy was bringing booty back.
Amen to that!
“Cut her loose,” Mason said, pulling the matte-black Smith & Wesson Tanto blade from the clip on his waistband and moving toward the park ranger still face-first in the sand.
Bran shook away thoughts of Maddy’s incredible ass and grabbed the K2 tactical folding knife from the sheath he’d strapped around his calf. Before he could put his blade to use, however, Maddy flipped on her side and pushed up to her knees, facing him. Her forehead and cheeks were speckled with blood.
If it was possible for a man to live after having his beating heart ripped out through his chest wall, Bran was doing it.
“You’re hit!” he croaked at the same time she screamed, “He shot you!”
Her chin jerked back when she registered what he’d said. She looked down at herself, trying to locate her injury, then shook her head angrily. “I’m not hit, damnit! You’re the one who’s hit!”
“That’s your blood on her face, numbnuts,” Mason whispered.
“Oh, thank God.” Relief hit Bran so hard he felt dizzy. When he let his head fall back, the stars overhead spun in lazy circles.
“Thank God?” Maddy said. He lowered his chin to find her eyes blazing. “Thank God? Are you crazy? For the love of… Someone cut me loose!”
Before Bran could gather himself, Mason did the honors, skirting around Maddy to slice through her restraints. The minute she was free, her little hands landed on Bran’s face.
The hairs on his arms lifted when her cool fingers smoothed over the skin of his cheeks, his lips, his chin. “Bran.” His name sounded sweet on her tongue. “Oh, my sweet Jesus!” Her Texas twang turned the word my into an adorable-sounding mah.
Before he could suck in a breath, she gripped his thigh on either side of the deep furrow cutting through his flesh. A little pool of his blood was gathering on the sand, mixing with the blood of the man he’d eighty-sixed.
“What do I do?” she cried, her eyes beseeching. “Tell me what—”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” Mason said from beside them, having given the laceration a cursory glance.
“And who are you?” Maddy demanded, turning on the poor guy with a look hot enough to set his face on fire. “Monty Python?”
It hit Bran then. “Man, I really like you,” he blurted.
Maddy turned to him, upside-down mouth hanging open in a little O that was far more tempting than he would have thought possible at a time like this. “I—” She hesitated. “I really like you too, Bran.”
“You got a satphone in that ranger’s station?” Mason asked the young ranger, ignoring them.
Bran was still absorbing the fact that Maddy had admitted to liking him, really liking him—But she doesn’t know the real you, he reminded himself. She doesn’t know what you have inside you or what that means you’re capable of—when her fear-tinged expression turned to desperation.
“The ranger’s station? But the girls!” She searched the exterior curtain wall as if she hoped to see the teenagers there. “We have to go get them!”
“First we hafta get off this beach,” Bran told her, hating the way the pulse was hammering in her throat, hating that she was caught in the middle of a hostage situation. Again. “They could start taking potshots at us any minute, and storming the fort to save those girls will be a lot easier if Mason and I are both alive.”
“Storming the fort will also be easier once we stop your bleeding,” Mason added.
“Right.” Maddy turned back to Bran. “Can you make it? You’re bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”