She quit resisting his grip. "Of course. You're right." Monica turned to the makeshift disc jockey stage on the luggage return belt where Private Santuci prepared to fire up his next tune. "Thanks for a great party, Private. It was good to have a piece of home here."
"Yes, ma'am." He spun a CD on a finger, concert T-shirt with BDU pants declaring his heavy-metal preference. "We're on the road so much these days, why put life on hold? Gotta be 'me' and live my life even in a crisis or I'd never get to be 'me.' Know what I mean?"
Monica stilled under Jack's hand. "Yes, Private. I've been thinking the same sort of thing myself lately. Thanks for the affirmation." She turned to Jack. "All right, Cobra, let's blow this pop stand."
Whoa. That sounded a little like the old Monica who didn't shut him down with defensiveness. She stared back at him, frenetic need scrolled across her green eyes with streaks of hot amber. Just like during sex.
With his defenses already blasted to hell, memories ambushed him—of those eyes flashing while she was under him. Beside him. Less soft and more demanding over him.
He wanted more from her. But at the moment he couldn't remember why he wasn't willing to settle for sex while he waited. "Okay, then. We're outta here."
Jack made tracks for the hall. She started up the stairs ahead of him, controlled military steps with her hint of a sway that always sucker punched his libido.
He followed. Caught up. Beside her. Silently as they passed a security cop patrolling the halls. Colonel Cullen hauled ass past them on his way back to the Ranger party to check on his men, so intent on his destination he barely nodded.
Around the corner, closer to her room, Jack kept pace, prayed like mad his conscience would quit yapping at him until he could bury himself in Monica and find the reliable release they both wanted and, hell yes, needed tonight.
She unlocked her door, stepped inside and turned to wait. Invitation obvious.
Conscience nipped again. "Monica, if I step into your room, we won't be talking. I want you to be absolutely sure—"
Monica jerked him into her quarters and slammed the door. "Quit talking and start acting."
"Yes, ma'am." He flattened her to the flimsy metal panel, squashing his conscience in the process.
Then he couldn't think at all, just feel Monica's mouth open, hot and hungry under his. Her hands clamped him closer, harder against her as if trying to crawl into him when he knew damned well she'd gotten under his skin long ago.
It had always been this way with them, intense. Immediate. Explosive sex with guaranteed blow-your-mind satisfaction beat the hell out of the tougher prospect of talking.
She yanked his zipper down, farther along the full length of his torso until she could unfurl the length of her hand to his throbbing erection. Throbbing? Hell, what an ineffective word to describe his pounding need to have her.
If there just weren't so many clothes between them.
The flight suit offered easy access for her to get to him, but damn it, the uniform impeded him from getting to her. Into her. Where he needed to be now, because he was seconds away from screwing her where they stood.
He might be far gone—hell, he was far gone— but he wanted her still speaking to him afterward. Unlike the last time she'd been this upset.
Jack inched back, sucked in air. "If you don't want to finish right here against the door, say something fast. I've got about one minute's worth of restraint left in me to throw your sleeping bag on the floor for us."
"Here suits me just fine." She slid her hands from him, clasped them over her head in a sensual arch that notched his blood pressure. "Take off my clothes. I want to feel your hands against my skin when the clothes are falling away. I want to be able to watch you as you see me."
No mistaking that. "I like it when you get bossy."
One hand slid from above her head to scratch down the open vee of his flight suit, deeper, a hint too hard. "I am not bossy. Just assertive and damned determined to be in control of my destiny." Her finger trailed lower until she snapped the waistband of his boxers.
He knew there was a reason he should stop to analyze what she'd just said, but she grabbed his wrist and molded his palm to her breast. Her fullness filled his hand, dragging his other hand up for more.
Air thickened in the room. Breathing became optional. Touching, however, became essential.
Her hand roved lower. Her fingers tucked inside his boxers, found, cradled the weight of him in her hand, stroking again and again, her thumb gliding over the head with a familiarity of just what brought him to the edge until he almost came in her hand.
Jack clamped her wrist. Her other hand slipped past and he stopped it, too. Pinned both to her sides against the door.
"Not yet." His mouth found the crook of her neck where it met her shoulder. "You're always in such a rush and I'm not ready to finish yet."
"Then we'll start again."
Start again. With Monica. His mind pushed thoughts through the red haze of lust almost blinding him. Almost.
Damn it, but the brain was an annoying-as-hell organ battling for control with another organ that seriously wanted jurisdiction over this moment.
He looked down at her, so vulnerable in his grasp in spite of her bossy ways and take-no-shit attitude. Passion took a nosedive.
A man kicked ass for women. Protected them. Honored them. And he'd been lying to her by omission about Tina, as well as about the stoning incident.
Monica chose just that second to capitalize on his weakening grip and slid her hands free, brought them down, into his gaping flight suit and into his boxers again, gripping his ass and guiding him. Her nails bit an arousing urgency into his skin.
Three more seconds and he would be inside her.
Her teeth grazed his bottom lip.
Two.
The press of her body jammed the e-mail pager against his hip with an uncomfortable reminder of all the lies between them.
One.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
He manacled her wrists again and tore himself away from her, the toughest thing he'd done since his first spin recovery in pilot training. "I can't do this."
Chapter 12
Mission accomplished. Belly to the ground, Blake crawled back toward his sandpit outside the terrorist compound.
Gunshots echoed across the stretch of desert with more night maneuvers and training for al-Khayr's operatives. And the perfect distraction when he'd slipped in and out to check on Sydney. An even better cover to obliterate any sound from the faint Predator drone unmanned spy craft gathering additional intel and monitoring to ensure the hostages weren't moved.
She was alive.
Finally he let his brain wrap itself around that fact. The knowledge filled him like Sydney's scent
still clinging to him, overriding the dank must of the sand under him.
He should be relieved. Grateful. But he couldn't feel anything more than the scrape of the desert floor against his skin and the dense haze of something too violent even to call anger.
His hands clawed at the ground, propelling him forward. He'd known the bastards would rape her. Knowing it, and facing the tangible reality were two different beasts.
Blake inched across the last patch of ground. He landed in the hollowed trench still empty of his partner who'd been monitoring guard patterns for him, feeding possible threat info through the small boom mike headset.
He stowed the briefcase-size UWB sensor—ultra wideband motion detector—that could track the movement of people through walls in 3-D. The cutting-edge technology should have kept him from risking going all the way inside to see Sydney.
Except nothing could have kept him away from her.
He forced himself to lie flat, breathe, hold back the urge to slip into the compound again. He could do it, too. Easily. See her one more time before his shift ended when he and Carlos would swap out with another pair before sunrise to snag some sleep.
But he shouldn't risk it. Less than forty-eight more hours. Hang tough.
Some other poor bastard had lost a sister, girlfriend, wife to the stoning today, but not him, and he forced himself to remember to be grateful for that much and not think about those goddamned bastards brutalizing Sydney.
Pricks of light popped from the training field. Shouted orders in Arabic echoed, muted to unintelligible by the wind and distance.
He forced breaths in and out. He would uplink and give his report back to the command post in a minute. First, he needed to let his body switch gears and taper off the adrenaline buzz from stealthing into the compound. A few seconds more and his hands would stop twitching.
And what would he say when the time came? If he told command post about her being pregnant, they would know he'd gone in against orders. Not that he gave a shit about much of anything right now except getting Sydney out of here. But the information had no bearing on the rescue attempt.
She wouldn't want him to tell. He knew that. So he would keep his mouth shut and not broadcast it over the radio waves. He wished he could prepare her sister, but there would be too many listening ears over the frequency.
God, things had been easier when they hadn't known everything about each other. When he and Sydney were still in those early days of discovering...
Sydney snuggled close to him, soft, warm. Her contented sigh purred up her throat and vibrated against his bare chest.
Even hoo-ya or words like "great sex" didn't sum up their first night together. Never before had a morning after felt so... mellow.
He stroked his knuckles along her back and up again. "Tell me about Red Branch, Texas.''
"Not much to tell.'' She tucked her head under his chin, her tousled, toffee-colored hair tickling his nose. "It's just a wonderful sleepy tiny town. Nothing you 'd be interested in.''
"You came from there. I'm interested."
She tipped her face to smile up at him. "You're too sweet.''
"I'm trying, lady, I'm trying."
She stretched to skim a gentle kiss over his mouth before nestling back against his side. "Like I said, sleepy town, small.''
"Family? Parents?"
"Mom and Dad met in the auto parts factory where they both worked. Settled down. Had some kids. Got divorced.''
"That must have been tough.''
"At first maybe, but everything worked out okay. Being in a little town made things easier on my dad, I think, with all the close-knit feel, and my big sister is a whiz at keeping things organized.''
He couldn't miss her positive spin on life, admired that, needed it in a world that was showing him the dark side of humanity far too often lately. "You stayed with your dad?"
"Yeah, my mom moved overseas, so legally she couldn't take us.''
"But she wanted to.''
"Of course.''
He waited for her to volunteer more, but apparently he'd landed in bed with the one woman who wasn't into post-sex chitchat. "You mentioned a sister. Any more? What about brothers?"
After such a solitary childhood, he vowed to pack his house with kids and noise, a haven after he quit active field ops.
Or sooner maybe.
"I have the older sister I mentioned, my best friend actually.'' She paused. "And another younger half sister, too.''
"You're lucky to have siblings."
"Living the American Dream.''
God, he liked her upbeat attitude. Sure she'd come from a broken home, but focused on the positive. Her small town. Her father. Her best friend sister. With everything he learned about this woman, he became all the more certain he wanted to keep her and her light in his world.
Her soft thigh tucked between his and already he was plotting how he could convince her to move in—her with him or him with her. He didn't care where as long as they shared a bed and a breakfast table.
Morning rays through the blinds played on her pale skin. His hand rested on her side, his thumb tracing a small strawberry birthmark on the right side of her flat stomach.
She squirmed, laughed lightly. "That tickles.''
Another discovery about his new lover, a passionate woman who liked to take things slow. Who enjoyed long, gentle lovemaking.
And so many more things about her left to uncover. His hand smoothed around to cup her bottom as he rolled, her onto her back...
An explosion shook the ground.
From his head or in the compound?
Blake blinked. Tensed. Cleared his mind.
A bloom of smoke puffed from the terrorist training field. Nothing to worry about now.
And later? The bastards weren't going down easy. But they were going down, even if they hadn't dared touch what was his. Even if they hadn't done the unthinkable to the gentlest human being he'd even known.
A woman with a strawberry birthmark right over the small, undeniable bulge of her belly.
A soft whistle cut the night. Carlos. His partner whistled once more to announce his return a second before he crawled into the trench. "Everything okay?"
"They're all three alive." He repeated the essentials to Carlos. "And they're ambulatory."
Carlos settled beside him. "You went in, further, to see her, didn't you?" He held up a hand. "Wait. Shit. Don't answer that."
His partner knew him too well. More of that wordless communication from working ops for years filtered back and forth. He couldn't tell Carlos the worst, but the man would no doubt feel the fallout radiating off him. Only Sydney understood him as well.
Gunfire sputtered, sparked the sky. Carlos thumped him on the back. "Are you okay with all this?"
"Don't worry. I can do my job. I'm not gonna get you killed."
"I know that. I'm more worried about you getting yourself killed."
Blake forced himself to be light. "Won't happen, dude. Not now that I know she's okay. I've got everything to live for, right?"
He couldn't let himself think about what had happened to her or he'd turn into some berserker opening fire on everyone in the compound he could find and damn the consequences.
Patience. Steady. Like through the caves in Afghanistan. Hold the nerves together. Because he sure as hell did have a reason to live.
Blake reached for the cammo case with the comm equipment. "Let's get the update called in and our shift over."
Once he had Sydney safe, he needed more than revenge. He would have vengeance. And no one knew better than him how to make it happen.
Monica angled closer to rock-hard Jack and knew she had seconds left to make something happen before her husband turned honorable. After chasing her for months, what a helluva time for him to decide he wanted to take the high road.
