Wet For Her Warriors (Book 5 of the WILD -- Warriors Intense in Love & Domination -- Boys of Special Forces) by Angel Payne Page A

voice dip to a murmur. “Does
that mean what I think it does?”
    “Probably.” He
raised his head and gazed out over the ocean. “The mission ended with President
Nichols having to have his hand sewn back on and an explosion in Hollywood that
rocked the Richter scale.”
    Her mouth popped
open. “ Kahaha .”
    “Huh?”
    “Holy shit.”
    “Oh.”
    “That was you guys?”
    “Franzen didn’t
tell you?”
    “He doesn’t like
to talk work when he’s home.” She let out a huff. “He’s mostly out surfing with
Leo and bugging me about why I haven’t found a nice guy to settle down with.”
    He grunted,
sounding eerily like Franz in the doing, though she couldn’t figure if he
issued the expression in approval or discomfort. Confusion hit harder about why
she even cared.
    “So you know the
public details,” he went on. “But the follow-up story is grim.”
    Her heart
squeezed. Her mind returned to the moment on the living room when Bommer
clutched her in tight desperation. No. Not desperation. It had been…grief. “The
blast killed Luna?”
    “Not right away.”
Kellan’s jaw turned the texture of the rocks beneath them. “She was thrown by
the shock wave. It fucked her up enough to put her in a coma for six months.”
    “Oh my God.”
    “She finally
woke up, but only long enough to—”
    “To what?”
    “To say good-bye
to Tait.” The words left his lips as if they’d come straight from his gut. They
were full of deep pain for his friend, which led Lani to curl her hand around
his shoulder. “Fuck. I never got it…until now.”
    “Never got
what?”
    He pulled in a
long breath. “Tait always told me…well, he said that Luna had been his ‘flare.’
You see, we use these sticks—flares—out in the field, if we need to alert exfil
planes to where we’re at or we need light really quick. They burn like a ball that
fell off the sun, but it’s fast and furious, then it’s over.” The corners of
his mouth twinged. “I never faulted the guy for the comparison, though I came
up with a hundred ways to call him out as an idiot for it. But T always
answered by shaking his head, calling me the fool. He’d say borrowed
minutes were some of the best we can have in life, a lesson Luna taught
him. He also said that light is often at its most perfect before the darkness
comes again, and that those moments are worth risking everything for…worth mourning
for.” He shook his head as his face crunched into a beautiful contortion. “At
which point, I usually called him a bigger fool. And at which point, we usually
got into disgusting fights.”
    “I know.” She
infused it with the warmth of comprehension. When she’d first seen them on the
beach, they’d been after each other like bears. Now, she recognized the brawl
for what it was. Rush had been trying to beat some sense into his
friend—literally.
    “Yeah.” A bleak
laugh tumbled from him. “You do, don’t you?” He shook his head. “He’s been an
idiot, but I’ve been one, too. I just didn’t get it. I told him he was a fool
to have sunk so much of himself into something that never could be, even if
Luna had lived. She was on loan to the FBI from the Washington state penal
system. Yeah, the ‘history’ I mentioned even landed her a prison term for a few
years.
    “I thought
they’d have something fleeting at best, and that nothing like that was worth
throwing himself off a goddamn emotional bridge. But T wouldn’t listen. He said
he’d found something real. I was a prick to him about that, too. Told him there
was no fucking way he could’ve found ‘something real’ after being with the
woman for a total of a few hours, that connection didn’t simply happen that way.”
He closed his eyes as if condemning himself for all of that. Clouds slipped
across the moon, turning the night’s silver glow into shadows that matched his
compunction—and made him even more beautiful. Lani’s throat constricted. As he
even spoke the word