Still Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 10) (25 page)

“So.” I clear my throat. “You either had a message for me or you’re way too into defacing private property.”

Rohan has always been talented with his hands. Somehow, he lifts and turns me so that I straddle him. I’m sure our exhibitionism shouldn’t feel so good, but I run my hands up his shoulders and lock them behind his neck. Because, you know, there aren’t too many other places to put them. His chest. His abs. His heart. Anything else is getting me arrested.

“Marry me,” he says.

“Are we divorced yet?”

He shakes his head. “Not quite, but
Stay Married to Me
didn’t fit on my ass. You didn’t spring for a whole lot of fabric, Hindi.”

No, I can’t hold back my smile. “What’s the point of designing if I can’t make fun things?”

He looks at me and then he smiles. A slow, sexy, rock-my-world grin. “You have all the fun you want, Ms. Alvarez.”

Okay then.

I might pass out from lack of oxygen.

“But I want to share the fun with you,” he continues. “I don’t want you to go. When this show is over, I want us to leave and go home together. I think we belong together, so Hindi Alvarez, I’m asking you to marry me. Again.”

Ro’s taken the first step—or the first 150 to the end of my runway—but these next ones are up to me. And it’s made a little bit easier because the rough, growly way he asks me to marry him makes my panties wet and my heart melt.

“Ro—”

I freeze.

He’s holding a little black velvet bomb of a box out to me. “This is for you.”

I’m pretty sure no one’s watching the models. There are at least a million cameras pointed our way. I can’t really do this, can I? Marry Rohan for real?

I open the box. The first time we got married, we did it in a rush. My wedding ring was a teeny-tiny, slightly green, absolutely perfect seashell that Ro had found on our beach. He’d MacGyvered it onto a twist of champagne wire and then onto my finger. I still have it, hiding in my jewelry box back in the loft. This ring is the Picasso of seashell rings. I loved my homemade ring because Ro had made it for me, and yes, I would totally frame my five-year-old’s art and hang it over the fireplace. I looked at the ring and I felt loved.

An incredible number of teeny-tiny, sparkly diamonds and opals swoop over the band like waves in the ocean. Two pink seashells, just like ours, cup an exotic black pearl.

“It’s yours if you want it,” Ro says quietly. “Along with all the rest of me.”

I think I’m crying. The world gets all blurry and there’s something wet on my cheeks. My brain shuts off and my mouth blurts out the first thing I think of. “I can’t hyphenate. My initials would spell
HAM
.”

He leans in and kisses me, just a quick, sweet brush of his lips that says
I’m here.
“Then I’ll take your name.”

See? This is why I love him.

The final line of models marches out, and I may possibly have taken things a little too far. The techno hip-hop music cuts out and is replaced by a brass band. The band barely fits on the runway, and every single player is wearing a pair of tight, white, bedazzled boxers. They march out in formation, playing their instruments, then turn and shake their asses at the audience, which goes wild.

I feel Ro’s smile against my mouth. Yes, I’m already kissing the man. “You’ve one upped me in the Sharpie department.”

I turn my head to admire my handiwork. Each guy has a letter stamped on his butt in bright pink sequins. MARRY ME RO MACCARTHY. That’s a lot of sequins.

“I love you,” I tell him, because those are the three words that matter. They don’t begin to do justice to all the feelings in my heart, but they still need to be said. Over and over. “I love you.”

“Thank God,” he growls and then he kisses me. It’s a rough, tight, absolutely perfect kiss. Our mouths come together like a key and a lock. I hang onto Ro’s shoulders and I’m pretty sure he’s got a death grip on my butt. Sometimes, tongues and mouths are all the words and welcome that you need. We’re saying
sorry
and
I missed you
and
is this really happening?
And this? This is perfect.

“Show’s over.” I try to wriggle off his lap a long time later. We’re attracting a crowd and I’m pretty sure we can’t actually stay here forever. Plus, there will be champagne and an after party backstage—and I really feel like celebrating.

“If I get up now, the world’s getting an eyeful,” he says dryly. “Maybe you can start designing suits or full body armor.”

I nod toward the assistant hovering a few feet away and she hands me a robe that I drape over Ro’s shoulders. Problem. Solved. “I had a plan.”

He gives me a thoughtful look. “If you’re planning, do I get to be the impulsive one?”

I lean in and kiss him. The nice thing about an open robe is that all sorts of other things are possible too.

“You got it,” I tell him.

“I have you,” he says and sweeps me up into his arms so we make a truly spectacular exit to tumultuous applause.

Desperate to find protection for her family, Lily turns to the only man in Miami who can help her: Xander Volkov. She hasn’t seen the billionaire Russian since their unfortunate shotgun marriage six years ago but he now runs one of the most powerful Mafia families in town. Lily hates everything about the Russian mob, but hating Xander gets harder each day… and when they bet the future of their marriage on the outcome of an adventure yacht race, Xander is determined to win once and for all.

Don’t miss the start of an exciting new bad boy mini-series from
New York Times
bestselling author Anne Marsh

Xander

Someday Lily Petrov will kill me. It is good then that I watch her on the club’s security feed, because I cannot be trusted around her, and not because I want to hurt her back. Hurting her is the last thing I want, particularly when I have so many filthy, wonderful, fucking awesome fantasies from which to choose. I blame the plenteous selection entirely on Lily, of course. Tonight, her four-inch heels star front and center in the dirty scene currently playing in my head. Added fantasy fodder? She is short, curvy, and completely bare between her shoes and the hem of her white cocktail dress. When she moves, I can almost but not quite see the curve of her ass, and while I pretend her bare skin is an invitation to run my hands up the smooth length, I also believe in honesty.

Lily Petrov hates me.

We share a history, and it is not a happy one. She dated my stepbrother, he got her into trouble, I exposed her, and then I worked out a deal with her father to take care of the mess. Initially, that appeared to work out poorly for me because, at the time, her father ran one of Miami’s top Russian mob families while I was a junior member of a competing family. In corporate terms, I still worked the mailroom while Lily’s father was CEO. Even then I was hungry. I made Lily’s problem into an opportunity by ratting her out to her dad and then making my case that I could clean up the mess for him. The mailroom guy does not get many chances to negotiate with the CEO and I ran with it. Reader, I fucking married her because her daddy could give me a leg up in the mob world.

If I were a smarter man, I would head in the opposite direction of Lily, because there is one reason only why she is here at the club despite my promotion to Russian mob boss and billionaire. She wants something. Unfortunately for me, I have not learned how to tell her
no.
Instead of running, I watch her ease into the room like a swimmer not quite sure of the water’s temperature. She looks uneasy and more than slightly uncomfortable, as if she thinks someone might actually try to kick her out of the Billionaire Race’s pre-party.

The Billionaire Race gets tons of press coverage, and that makes my public relations people happy. We have two criteria for entering. You must be a billionaire, and you must own a racing yacht. Score two out of two? Welcome to the race. We are the Young Boys Club rather than the old guard, and nothing makes us happier than rubbing all our lovely money in your face. A penis is not an actual race requirement, but so far our membership is exclusively male. You ladies should feel free to earn your place with us—I am always happy to have a girl around.

Racing is straightforward. I go out, I make my ten-million-dollar yacht sail faster than yours, and I score another trophy and front-page coverage of my smiling, handsome face as I either loft the cup over my head or swill champagne out of it. Usually I have a couple of women hanging on me too, because their hot, bikini-clad selves make our photos go viral. People have dirty imaginations. They prefer to believe I keep an enormous list of filthy, erotic things I’ve done or am about to do to those mostly naked women cavorting with me in the photographs. Possibly in public. I did mention that I am a good-looking bastard,
da
? And this is the racing world where money and power make the boats go round as much as the ocean currents and the wind do.

Tomorrow’s race is the hottest ticket since the America’s Cup or those round-the-world races where you sail your yacht through some of the most dangerous water in the world. Since we are not actually trying to kill anyone (I have people who handle that if I ask—it comes with the mob-boss job title), we race around the Caribbean. Tomorrow’s race is a grueling, nine-hour haul from Miami to the Bahamas through some truly challenging water. While the trophy is shiny and I like the idea of scoring the million-dollar pot for the charity of my choice, the real action comes in the side bets because every man racing tomorrow is a billionaire and this is one of the ways we do business.

Tonight’s party is therefore a multipurpose event. Mostly, I am negotiating to get what I want. When you are a billionaire, other people are either chump change or they want a piece of you. Lily has never wanted anything to do with me. When I discovered my stepbrother had been fucking her
and
had taken her to a club where he had owed money, I recognized that I had an in with the Petrovs. I am a good businessman—I knew Ivan Petrov would reward the man who could get his pretty little princess out of trouble. I set my stepbrother and Lily up, and then I fixed the problem for Ivan. I married her, and then I took the fall for the assault in the club. I paid Ivan’s price.

My wife knows nothing about set-ups, prices, or falls. She married me and then she proceeded to ignore me for the next six years. I did not merit so much as a card or roses on our anniversary. Still, her father gifted me with a few choices pieces of Miami real estate as a wedding present. His properties were the launch point for my billions—before our wedding, I’d had the ideas but not the capital. Afterward, the sky was the fucking limit, even if my alliance with Ivan Petrov remained a secret one. I am his hidden weapon, his concealed carry, and his last line of personal defense. The other mob families do not know about our ties, and we both prefer it that way.

There is one more thing that Ivan Petrov himself does not know. I wanted more than just his property—I wanted Lily. At sixteen, she was too young for me. Now, she is older. So am I, but that means I can protect her better. I am richer and more powerful. She will be safe on my watch.

Still, watching on camera as Lily works her way across the dance floor, I wonder if I should have come for her sooner. Maybe twenty-one was not too young, or even twenty. Eighteen. She is fucking gorgeous, a feminine version of a Venus flytrap sucking down boy mosquitos as if they were candy. Tits, ass, and legs—Lily’s petite package is gorgeous, but that is not the best part. She looks up at the security camera, although I suspect she is unaware of its presence. For a Russian mob princess, Lily is strangely innocent—or maybe the rest of us are just too fucking deviant. She has cut her hair since our spectacularly ill-fated wedding day, the honey-blond length now falling in long layers around her face instead of the straight, slick ponytail I have spent the past six years dreaming of fisting. Full pink lips flash a reserved greeting at someone in the crowd, her brown eyes frowning slightly. She usually avoids the Russian mob families; it is possible she cannot put names to all the faces. Her own face is heart-shaped and her nose has the tiniest tip at the end as if her whole face wants to smile. Lily Petrov is one of the happy people. She is short and curvy, and the minute she steps into the sun, her skin turns the color of gold.

Honestly? Her pretty veneer is simply one more weapon in a well-loaded arsenal. She can think circles around most of tonight’s party guests. It is one more reason for me to stay here in security’s command central, watching her on the live feed rather than engaging her. Of course, I am also an adrenaline junkie who thinks taking a fifty-foot yacht through the edge of a hurricane is the best way to spend a Friday night, so I am unlikely to leave her alone.

I keep an eye on her for the next few minutes while I plan my move. She is really not supposed to be here. This is my club, my territory, my house. Did I mention that I am now the head of the Miami branch of the Bratva? Just think of us as the American cousins of the most powerful Russian Mafia family in Moscow. And while I recently took us mostly legitimate, you do not want to piss us off. I make sure Lily keeps on walking past the smaller players currently manning the drug pipeline that fuel the Miami club scene. She does not need their brand of trouble. Those stupid bastards had better keep their drugs in their pockets and their dicks in their pants because delivering a beatdown would put my developing plans for the night on ice.