“I know you care about me too,” she insisted. “If you’d give me time to show you how—”
“Fuck!” He swung around. His haunted expression cut off her words. “I told you this would happen. I said good sex can—”
“I loved you before we had sex, you big idiot.” Her heart hammered so hard her ribs ached. “Why do you think I kept insisting you be the one to take my virginity?”
“No.” He shook his head. “You just think it’s love because you’re innocent and inexperienced and—”
“Don’t.” She pointed at him. It was a good thing she excelled at self-control, or her right fist might have found a home in his left eye socket. “Don’t belittle me or what I feel just because I was a virgin until twelve hours ago. I love you, Mason. It’s not puppy love or lust masquerading as love. It’s love. And if you don’t love me back because…” She shook her head and left the sentence unfinished before adding, “Well, that’s one thing. But don’t for one minute think I’m going to—”
“What I feel or don’t feel for you doesn’t have anything to do with you, Alex.” His chin was tipped down, and his voice was so low she had to strain to hear him.
Her brain turned over his words and then ground to a halt. “How can what you feel for me have nothing to do with me? That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”
“It does when you realize there’s something wrong with me,” he said stiffly.
She eyed his naked form. All that tough skin and dark hair. Those thick muscles. The mesmerizing blue of his eyes that suddenly reminded her of icicles. He’d donned his mask, and it was impossible to read what was in his head.
“I don’t see a thing wrong with you,” she told him quietly, her anger morphing into compassion.
“That’s ’cause you don’t know me.” He looked around like he was fighting to find the right words. “I’ll never be the kinda man who can take his kids to Disney. When I’m in a crowd, I check everyone’s hands for weapons and watch their eyes for ill intent. When I’m standing in line for coffee, I turn sideways so I can see who’s coming through the door. I can’t even take a leisurely sail without some shady motherfuckers coming along and trying to kill me.”
His expression turned pleading. “Dontcha see? I’m not normal. Maybe I never was, but if I was, then the navy sucked it out of me. Sarah saw it happen. Saw me change from someone who coulda had a regular life into someone who…” He swallowed. “I can’t be what you want me to be. What you need me to be.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but before she could get out a word, a loud bang echoed up through the floorboards. It was followed by the sound of Meat barking his fool head off.
“What the fuck?” Mason’s brow wrinkled.
He immediately swiped his swim trunks off the floor, reminding Alex of how she’d tugged them off him and tossed them over her shoulder two hours earlier.
Pressing a hand to the tape surrounding his bandage—some of it had come loose during the Fantastic Elevator position—he stomped over to the dresser and picked up his walkie-talkie. His face immediately blanched of color.
“What is it?” A sick feeling landed in the bottom of Alex’s stomach.
“Dunno,” he gritted between his teeth. “It’s dead. Fucking piece of nonmilitary-grade shit.”
He bent to grab his Colt. But before he could lay a hand on it, the door opened a fraction and a short black tube appeared in the breach.
For a full two seconds, Alex’s brain tried to reason out what the object could be and who could be out there wielding it. Then, her misfiring synapses sparked.
Gun!
She screamed at the same time Mason said something under his breath that wasn’t fit for inexperienced ears.
Chapter 26
12:32 a.m.
Alex loving him got filed directly under Least of My Worries when an AR-15 nosed through Mason’s bedroom door.
It wasn’t conscious thought. It was more instinct that had him grabbing the barrel of the weapon and yanking the man attached to it into the room. With his free hand, he slapped his palm against the butt of the rifle, effectively twisting it out of his assailant’s grip and breaking the ass clown’s finger against the trigger guard in the process.
The snap of the bone was obscenely loud as it reverberated above the sound of Meat’s growls and snarls downstairs. But it wasn’t as obscene as the high-pitched squeal the man made when he cradled his mangled hand to his chest. His face was covered by a black balaclava, but the whites of his eyes were stark with pain.
That’s gonna feel like a hand job from an angel compared to this!
Mason spun the rifle, fit the stock against his shoulder, and took aim. But before he could squeeze off a shot, his bedroom door flew open so fast and hard the doorknob buried itself in the drywall.
“Drop it!” a heavily accented voice screamed from the darkness.
Mason squinted. He could barely make out the silhouette of another man dressed head to toe in black. But he had no problem seeing the hole that stared at him from the end of another assault rifle. It was a deeper shadow among the shadows. A thing he’d learned to recognize early in his career because it ate all light.
How the fuck did these motherfuckers make it ashore?
There was only one way. One or more of Mason’s friends, his brothers in every way but blood, had to be dead. And if they’d managed to call in a Mayday, he’d missed it because his fucking walkie-talkie had gone tits up.
The rank taste of remorse mixed with the sour flavor of rage on his tongue. Every cell in his body wanted to rant and rave and leave nothing but carnage in its wake. But good sense prevailed.
Good sense and the need to figure out what he was dealing with so he could save Alex and the others.
Speaking of… What the hell happened to Uncle John? His room was across the hall. Surely, if he’d been in there, he would’ve come out to see what the commotion was about. And what about Chrissy? She’d been on the trundle bed last Mason knew.
Too many unknowns.
Instead of doing as he was told and dropping the AR-15 to the floor, Mason allowed his mouth to curve into a mockery of a smile. “Dunno who you motherfuckers are. But let me tell you who I’m not. That’s some run-of-the-mill chickenshit whose eyes go all pie plate at the sight of a loaded weapon pointed my way.” Venom dripped from his tongue. It matched the poison pumping out of his heart.
He wasn’t one for words, but he found he couldn’t stop talking. “You can sure as fuck put one in me,” he told the man in the hall. “But not before I decorate the wall with fifty shades of your friend’s gray matter. So, if I were you, I’d put that rifle on the floor, nice and slow, and then kick it my way. I’ll give you to the count of ten before I pull the trigger. Fair warning, though, I’m starting at six.”