To the Xtreme (Xtreme Ops Book 2)

by Em Petrova

He swept his tongue through her mouth immediately, taking, claiming in a way she never knew she wanted or needed until this moment. Wanting Harris so much, and in a hallowed place where a hiker had lost his life, left her confused. But the thoughts flew out her ear as he tugged her closer.

  She kissed him back, touching her tongue to his tentatively and gaining another primal rumble from the man before she locked her arms around his neck and gave herself up to him.

  Need bore down on her, a heavy weight that set her insides on fire and made her clamp her thighs.

  “Jesus Christ, Jenna,” he murmured as he lifted his head, met her eyes for a brief second and claimed her again.

  Pulling her onto tiptoe, he locked her against him, so she felt the hard edge of his erection through his cargo pants. Juices squeezed from her, and she rocked closer, wanting him in a way she’d never wanted anyone in her past.

  Those encounters were so far from this, she couldn’t even claim the same level of desire. It had been simple sex with a person whose company she enjoyed for a while. Did Harris feel the difference too? She could only imagine he’d left a string of conquests in his wake but that didn’t stop her from wanting her turn in line.

  He thrust his tongue into her mouth. She batted it with her own, and they spiraled into a weak-kneed moment of tangled tongues and harsh grunts. Somehow he walked her to the ATV and pressed her against the hood. When he drew back, and his gaze met hers for a split second again, he lifted her and planted her backside on the metal warmed by the engine.

  “Harris,” she whispered.

  “Christ, I shouldn’t want you like this.” He cupped her face in both hands and dropped his forehead to hers.

  She parted her knees, and his body hit hers in all the right spots, cock to pussy through the barrier of their clothes. Maybe spending the night and working in close proximity started all this, but she couldn’t feel sorry for it. She wanted him.

  And his confession of wanting her too rocked her.

  He took the kiss down a notch, gentling it with nips and nibbles and soft passes of his tongue. He was going too slow for her liking. She hooked her ankles around him and pulled him in, still on fire and wanting more of the same heat.

  He tore his mouth free. Staring down at her, he panted for what could only be control. At least she was panting for control.

  “Hell…sweetheart. I’m on the job.”

  “So am I,” she murmured against the scruff of his jaw as she explored by placing small kisses in a line along the angular edge.

  He growled when she reached his ear. Still cupping her face, he jerked her mouth to his. The deep, sucking kiss scorched her. She grabbed onto his shoulders. He dug his thick erection into the V of her legs, making her pant and cry out.

  When he yanked her into him once…twice…she thought she might come from the mere pressure on her clit.

  He pulled back. “Hell. We need to stop, sweetheart.”

  The endearment left another wet trail through her panties as her body reacted to his voice.

  He lowered his forehead to hers again, chest rising and falling as if he’d run the whole way from the cabin. “We have to stop,” he reiterated.

  Her mind, too foggy to think straight anymore, didn’t catch up to what he told her. Reaching between them, she settled her hand over his bulge.

  “Fuck!” He jerked away and stumbled back a step.

  Her senses crash-landed at what she’d just done…at how bold and brazen she’d been. Never in her life had she touched a man so intimately, and she never made the first move.

  Their gazes met. His hazel eyes burned.

  “I’ve done this all wrong,” he said as if to himself.

  “I wanted it,” she started to say as he planted his hands on her hips and instead of pulling her against him again, he helped her off the hood to the ground.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but words didn’t project from his mouth.

  A crack shook the trees.

  “Fuck! Get down!” A swipe of his arm threw her behind him. Without his crutches, he stomped to the door of the ATV, reached behind the seat and came out with his rifle.

  He swung the weapon to his shoulder and whirled. “You’re exposed. Get behind one of those rocks!” he commanded.

  Ignoring his order, she reached for her own weapon. When she turned with her pistol in hand, she caught sight of Harris barreling into the forest after someone.

  Terror ripped through her, but she held tight to her training—to her control—and hurried after him.

  The cracking noise hadn’t come from directly over them but somewhere down the trail. The percussion must have alerted the Xtreme Ops team, too, because seconds later the beat of helicopter wings sounded overhead.

  She peered up at the treetops, through the leaves of summer, but couldn’t see the chopper. She lost sight of Harris and continued on until she came into a clearing. She realized the sunlight poured down through an opening in the tree canopy—then saw why.

  The blast had sheered off a tree. And on the ground, underneath it, lay a man in a park ranger uniform.

  Crying out, she ran forward and dropped to her knees at the man’s side. She couldn’t see his face among the branches that covered him. “We need help!” she screamed.

  Harris crowded next to her. She stared at the ranger uniform and recognized the small breast cancer awareness pin on the lapel.

  “Joffrey! Oh my God, Joffrey! It’s Jenna. Can you hear me?”

  The man groaned.

  “Give me his stats. Name, age,” Harris prompted her.

  She stuttered out the details. “H-his name is Dennis Joffrey. He’s…uh…forty. We had a birthday party for him around Valentine’s Day. Oh my God, we have to get this tree off him!”

  “We will.” He spoke rapidly into his phone. From a distance, the chopper noise whined louder and louder as the craft found a place to land.

  The next few minutes blurred together as people arrived on the scene. A woman with blonde hair sticking out from under a black knit cap came running up and took over the rescue as the Xtreme Ops team bearing saws cut away branches until they were able to free Joffrey from the debris.

  Her stomach flipped over as she helplessly looked on. They strapped Joffrey to a board that seemed to appear out of thin air and carried him to the waiting chopper.

  “Fly safe, Cora!” Harris called to the blonde running after the men carrying Joffrey out.

  “I always do,” she shot over her shoulder.

  Quivering, Jenna didn’t realize Captain Sullivan stood at her side until he slid his arm around her shoulders. “Come with me. You need to sit down.”

  He led her to the ATV and she collapsed into the seat. Someone handed her a drink, and she tried to make sense of what just happened, but all she registered was Captain Sullivan telling off Harris for wrecking his cast and ordering him to return to the hospital for a new one.

  Seconds later, Harris hit the seat beside her. Their gazes met. In a heartbeat, everything that passed between them up until this moment bonded them.

  He reached across the seat and gripped her hand.

  Chapter Seven

  Jenna paced the cabin floor, dug her fingers into her curly hair and issued a howl. “I can’t believe you actually believe Joffrey put that treetop down on himself!”

  Harris swiped a hand through the air. “I know he’s your coworker. You do gift exchanges at Christmastime and celebrate birthdays in the ranger station. But Jenna, don’t you see that he was at the scene of the explosion? That makes him a suspect.”

  She dropped her hands to her sides, balled her fists and issued another rasping cry of frustration. “It’s Joffrey!”

  “Yes. And he is going to be questioned as soon as he’s conscious.”

  “He puts on wildlife programs for kids every summer. He’s got a wife and two sons.”

  He didn’t respond.

  She dropped her head. “You’re never going to believe me that he’s harmless.”<
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  He studied her flushed face and the curly mop of her hair that she wildly tore at the minute their argument began. Tenderness washed through him.

  Closing the gap between them, he held her stare. “Jenna,” he said softly, “you see the good in everyone. And that would be a problem…except that you see it in me.”

  A choked noise escaped her. He leaned in.

  The cabin door opened and Pax entered. They jerked apart.

  “I’m here as watch while you go to the hospital, Lip. Your transport’s waiting outside. I’ll be by the door if you need anything, Miss Jenna,” Pax announced before he walked out again.

  Lipton took a step back. His cast had gotten wet and soggy, and his ankle twinged with pain, which he ignored. He turned to Jenna. “Pax’ll be here to guard you while I’m gone. And somebody is going to your house to bring your things back here. I don’t want you coming and going. Okay?”

  She nodded

  His heart ached from the weight of the words they’d exchanged. He wanted to take her to bed and hold her…touch her…kiss her…and make things right with her.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said.

  He had good intentions. He started to turn away from her. But next thing he knew, he had her beautiful face in his hands and was kissing her—hard and with all the passion from their encounter in the forest.

  Fiery need blasted through his system, and he snaked an arm around her back, hitching her up against him. Her curves excited the hell out of him, and he grew hard in a blink.

  She clutched at his shirt front, sweeping her lips over his. Her eager passion excited him more.

  He plundered her.

  She issued little rasps that had him gliding his hand downward to knead her round buttocks. Much more of this and he wouldn’t stop. He’d lock the cabin door and take her the way he wanted and damn the consequences.

  “Your…transport,” she gasped between deep passes of his tongue.

  “Fuck my transport.”

  She laughed against his lips, the throaty noise as much of a wakeup call to the fact he needed to leave as it served as a spark to his libido.

  He drew away, inch by inch.

  She followed him.

  Fucking hell.

  Diving back in to the kiss, he dragged her up against him. She wriggled, and he almost came unglued. He stopped mid-reach for his belt, his body driving him to get naked and get inside this woman before she realized he was a bastard who’d only hurt her in the end.

  “You have to go,” she whispered.

  He nodded gruffly. Somehow he managed to step away from her and walk out the door while everything in him screamed for him to return and make her his.

  The minute he dropped into the passenger seat, Cora shot him a look. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Lipton grated out. His heart still hammered and his stiff cock made sitting difficult.

  As a member of the Xtreme Ops team and Penn’s wife, Cora was far too astute for Lipton’s liking. She was also a woman, which gave her a radar for things that were off.

  Which it was—he’d lost his damn mind when it came to Jenna.

  “How’d you get stuck with the job of hauling my ass to the hospital?” he asked Cora.

  “I volunteered.”

  He shot her a look. “Didn’t have any place to fly?”

  “Not at the moment. Besides, I needed some down time. This seemed easy. Just don’t pull anything like jumping out of the moving vehicle and I won’t have to shoot you in the other foot, Lip.”

  He chuckled. “Any word on the park ranger?”

  “Alive. That’s all I know. He’s pretty busted up.” She turned her head to look at him and her blonde ponytail swayed. “How’s your park ranger?”

  He started. Sitting up straighter in his seat, he said, “She’s not my park ranger.”

  “No, but she’s been around you the past few days, right?”

  With a reluctant nod, he tried to relax. Cora wasn’t accusing him of fucking with Jenna.

  No, I’m doing that all on my own.

  He might have enough control to track a kidnapper through a Middle Eastern country in order to recover a political figurehead or spend hours disarming a bomb in hundred-degree heat, but he couldn’t keep his hands off Jenna.

  Somehow, some way, he needed to get a grip and keep his hands off her when he returned to the cabin. But if things continued as they were, he’d take her to bed and damn the consequences.

  Cora threw him a long, appraising look. She had a way of looking into a person, and he knew hiding anything from the woman was futile.

  “Go on and say it’s a bad idea. I’ve already thought it a thousand times,” he muttered.

  She laughed. “I’m the last person to tell you it’s a bad idea to fool around on the job. I wouldn’t have Penn if he’d followed those rules.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?” She hit the main road leading out of the national park. The green grass lining the roads against the landscape of snow-capped mountains gave an otherworldly surrealism to the drive. If Alaska couldn’t make up its mind if it was summer or winter, how could he decide if he was a special operative or a fuck-up?

  “Jenna’s not like you.”

  “I don’t follow,” Cora said.

  “She’s…vegetarian.”

  Cora lifted one blonde brow. “That’s all you got, Lip? I thought you’d have something better than that.”

  He spread his hands. “You’ve seen her. She’s all about keeping peace and hiking and wearing green.”

  She laughed long and hard at him. He shook his head at her amusement and asked himself why he tried to explain at all. Finally, Cora’s laughter subsided.

  “Could you be trying to say she’s different from the other women you’ve been attracted to?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think what she stands for in life goes against what you stand for.”

  “Exactly.” He knew Cora would get it.

  “Have you made a move on her? Has anything happened…physically?”

  He leaned forward, dropping his face into his hands. His ankle throbbed like hell, his balls had yet to calm down fully and now he was getting called out to answer a question he didn’t want to.

  “Not yet.” He raked his fingers over his short hair and pushed upright again. “A kiss or two.”

  “Attraction can be a hard thing to ignore. There’s a reason your body is telling you to go for Jenna.”

  “I can ignore my body. I’m stronger than that.”

  “I believe that about you. But don’t you think you deserve a little fun too?”

  “I can’t believe you’re telling me to hit that.”

  “Well, not so crassly, but why not? You like each other. I can see she’s attracted to you just by the way her eyes follow you.”

  His chest shouldn’t burn so much at the thought. To change the subject, he asked about the team and if they’d learned anything new about the bomb site. Cora, as easygoing as always, rolled with the change in topic and filled him in on all she knew.

  While he lay in a hospital bed having a new cast applied, he found himself thinking of Jenna’s plant hanging from a corded contraption in the kitchen window. He also thought of her eyes going wide as he leaned in for a taste of her mouth.

  So when they asked if he wanted another black cast, he didn’t think when he told them green. When he sat up and looked at his leg, he swallowed a groan at what he’d done.

  The minute he climbed into the SUV and Cora took a look at the new cast, she knew.

  “Nice cast,” she remarked.

  “Don’t say a word.”

  She bit off a smile and drove. They didn’t speak the entire way to the cabin. She dropped him off out front with a wave and a, “Good luck.”

  Outside the door, he relieved Pax of his post, telling the man he could go with Cora. They bumped knuckles and Pax loped to the SUV. For a minute, he wondered if Cora would tell Pax anyt
hing Lipton said, but then he knew that would never happen. She took his words into her confidence and nobody would be the wiser about his situation.

  He turned to the cabin door and opened it. As soon as he entered, he saw Jenna standing by the fireplace. Their gazes met, and damn if his heartrate didn’t pick up where they’d left off.

  She stood there with her curls mussed and a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her lips appeared bitten and pink. But the look in her eyes ripped apart the last of his resistance.

  She turned to him as he crossed the cabin. He dropped his crutches to reach for her.

  She parted the edges of the blanket as he grabbed her. The blanket shrouded them both as he dipped his mouth to hers.

  Her sweetness filtered into his head, and he needed more. He kissed her hard. She whimpered and kissed him with a wildness that shook him to the core. He splayed his fingers over her hip with the tips extended toward her pussy. Her answering moan told him all he needed to know about what came next.

  Panting, he lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “I’m taking you to bed, Jenna.”

  She stared up at him.

  “You gonna argue with me?” he challenged.

  “No.”

  What he wouldn’t give to be steady on two feet and to carry her off to bed the way he wanted to. But seconds later, they hit her mattress, mouths fused once more. The feel of her soft body crushed beneath him had him harder than he’d ever been in his life.

  He tore his mouth free and locked his gaze on her for an endless, ongoing heartbeat.

  “I want you, Harris.” Her whisper flitted over his lips. She dug her fingers into his nape and brought him to her.

  Turning back wasn’t an option.

  Jenna arched under the blazing feel of Harris’s lips moving down her throat. The man was making her burn up, passing soft, skittering kisses over her neck and down to her cleavage before moving up to plunge his tongue between her lips.

  As he glided his callused hand under her top and slid it over her heated flesh to cup her bare breast, need slashed through her like a hot knife. Short panting breaths burst from her when he molded his hand to fit her breast. Watching her reaction, he swished his fingertip over the crested peak, and a shudder steamrollered her. Her pussy clamped down on the need to be filled up, and juices leaked out to soak her inner thighs.