by Dees, Cindy
They’d made it out of hell alive and cheated death. Moreover, they’d found each other again in the midst of the chaos. How many more miracles could one night serve up to them?
* * *
Piper was really getting tired of stumbling into the middle of freaking gun battles. And she was equally tired of being rescued by Mike McCloud. Not that she wasn’t grateful for the rescues, but she wasn’t exactly an amateur. She’d been an undercover field observer for the CIA for a few years now. She’d just never worked in a place like Khartoum.
Most of her jobs to date had involved long hours staring through binoculars at low-value targets and days upon weeks of mind numbing boredom. This place was anything but dull. And not just because Mike McCloud had blasted into her life like an erupting volcano and completely taken her by storm.
He was a problem on several levels. First, she hated the idea of not being able to take care of herself. She’d learned a long time ago that, in life, the only person she could depend on was her. People made promises they couldn’t or wouldn’t keep, hearts got broken, and bad things happened to girls who trusted too much.
Second, her job was to be invisible. She’d been sliding around town giving vaccinations and vitamin shots to children, and no one had paid the slightest attention to her. She was just another goody-two-shoes NGO aid worker.
But Mike saw her with a clarity and completeness that was frightening. Most men didn’t give her the time of day. He’d not only stripped away the layers of her deceit, but he’d instantly recognized and exploited her emotional neediness. No other guy had gotten her remotely near a bed, let alone naked and screaming in one, before she barely knew his name. Mike McCloud’s ability to bust through all her defenses like they were flimsy toys scared her to death.
And now she was alone with him again. After nearly dying. Chock full of adrenaline and with relief surging through her veins. And horny as heck, she reluctantly admitted to herself. Or maybe it was just the company that put her in such a state.
She let her Tavor rifle slide to the floor. Her ammo belt was abnormally light after she’d burned most of the ammunition stored in it. It landed beside her weapon with barely a sound.
Mike moved around quietly in the unlit apartment and it dawned on her he must be using his night vision goggles again. Frustrated at the thick darkness, she listened hard. It sounded as if he was putting some sort of covering over the windows.
A match flared, blindingly bright. The gentle glow of a lamp wick began to flicker. She watched Mike replace a glass globe on the oil lamp and soft light diffused his hidey hole. Yup. Big pieces of plywood covered every window. By lamplight his place looked mysterious. Exotic. Sensual. Of course, the warrior standing in the middle of the space might have a little something to do with that impression.
She watched, enthralled, as he pulled two glasses out of a cabinet and set them on the table. A liquor bottle thunked down beside them. He poured healthy shots of clear liquid in both glasses and handed her one. In honor of the vodka, she muttered in Russian, “Na zdorovye.”
“To your health as well,” he replied. Spoke Russian, did he?
She slammed back the vodka, grimacing as it burned out her esophagus from one end to the other. He held the bottle out and she held out her glass to him for a refill. She waited until he’d poured himself another shot, and they clinked glasses. She tossed back the second dose of liquid fire. The destroyed nerves from the first shot made this one go down considerably less painfully.
He held out the bottle questioningly, and she shook her head. “Are you trying to get me drunk, McCloud?”
His voice low and rough, he answered, “Now why would I do a thing like that?”
Her eyes narrowed. He wasn’t trying to get into her pants again, was he? Not that she would put up much of a fight if he tried.
* * *
He surprised her by asking, “How’d your conversation with Dharwani’s wife go?”
“Informative. Women in this culture see and hear everything.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked casually. “Like what?”
“You know I can’t tell you,” she answered reproachfully.
He sprawled on the couch, the bottle dangling from his fist, and looked so tasty she could hardly stop herself from jumping on him and devouring him. “Aww, c’mon, Piper. You know I’m one of the good guys.”
“I know you’re good in bed. I don’t know the first thing about your moral compass or political affiliations.”
He raised the bottle to her in salute. “Good in bed, huh? You’re not half bad yourself, kid.”
She flopped down beside him. All the running they’d done earlier was starting to catch up with her as exhaustion made her limbs heavy. Or maybe it was just the vodka slamming her. He was so trying to get her drunk. But speaking of information picked up at Dharwani’s, she blurted, “What did Dharwani whisper in your ear after supper that made you look so grim?”
He shrugged and took a pull straight from the bottle. “Sorry. Classified.”
She lifted the bottle out of his hand and took a swig herself. “I’ll tell if you’ll tell.”
“You first.”
“Nope,” she replied. “I’m not nearly drunk enough to do that.”
“Well then, by all means, let’s fix that.” He took a drink and passed the bottle back to her. She tipped it to her mouth, and without warning he reached over and nudged the bottom of the bottle upward, sending a gush of vodka down her throat. She choked and coughed, but swallowed most of the fiery alcohol. In seconds, her head began to spin and a sensation of floating a few inches above the sofa kicked in.
“You are a bad man, Michael McCloud.”
He grinned, flashing her his sexy dimples. Those things should be registered as lethal weapons. “I am bad, aren’t I?” He lifted the bottle out of her hand and took another pull. “But not so bad I’d let a lady drink alone.”
“Gee. That’s downright gentlemanly of you.”
His smile widened. “You bring out the best in me.”
She shook her head at his line of bull. He was a charming devil, all right. Emphasis on devil.
Mike surprised her by saying, “Dharwani told me the Palestinian I’ve been looking for is being called The Scientist by locals. He was spotted in Khartoum some weeks ago but appears to have left town. Dharwani suggested that I follow the money trail to find him.”
He’d been tracking a Palestinian, huh? The Scientist? The Terrorist, more like. But hey. Mike had finally trusted her enough to tell her something about his mission here. ’Bout damned time. A cozy feeling that had nothing to do with the vodka’s heat spread through her.
She reciprocated in kind. “The Americans I’ve been tracking call themselves PHP. They were seen in a hotel in downtown Khartoum recently, but Fatima—which is to say, Dharwani—doesn’t know who they’re here to meet.”
“Maybe you should follow the money trail on them, too,” Mike suggested.
She shrugged. “Not really my area of expertise.”
“Tell your employer to track it down.”
“Not their forte, either.”
He frowned. “Your targets are Americans, huh? Not many of them have business in this part of the world.”
“Hence my interest in why a pair of bubbas from Idaho would come to Khartoum.”
Mike looked startled. “Bubbas from Idaho? Wow. That is weird. And you’ve got no idea why they’re here?”
She shook her head. She did, in fact, have a few ideas, but none she cared to share with anyone.
“What were they up to back in Idaho?” Mike asked.
“Putting out poorly punctuated pamphlets about returning America to the values that made it a great country, starting with getting rid of all modern technology,” she replied. “And with a healthy dose of racism and xenophobia thrown in.”
“Luddites, huh?”
She shrugged. “The original 19th century Luddites in England smashed textile machinery that replaced hu
man artisans. To date, the PHP haven’t shown any inclination to resort to violence. Until this little junket to Sudan. Hence, my interest in what they’re doing here.”
“What does PHP stand for?”
“Patrick Henry Patriots.”
“Huh. He was a bit of a radical in his day.”
“Although he was stridently opposed to federal government, he never actually advocated terrorism.”
“What about the whole, “Give me liberty or give me death” speech?”
She leaned forward eagerly. “Did you know that quote was only attributed to him in a biography decades after he’d died? There’s no evidence that he ever actually said those words. In fact, he was less of a radical than elementary school history books give him credit for.”
Mike replied thoughtfully, “A bunch of bubbas in Idaho probably wouldn’t make that distinction.”
“Nope. Not hardly,” she responded sourly.
Mike took another pull on the vodka. “What’s your assessment of these PHP guys?”
She shrugged. “Hard to tell. They have a fenced and heavily guarded compound that no outsiders are allowed inside. They don’t make trouble in the local area. Live almost entirely off the grid. Self-sufficient bunch. Mostly male, ranging from their 20’s to 50’s. A few wives and girlfriends as committed to the cause as the men. I’d have called them a farm-variety separatist group until this trip to Sudan. Now, I don’t know what to think of them.”
Mike’s only contribution was to grunt, “huh,” around a swig of vodka. Then, “K-town doesn’t sound their style. Not many white-bread American rednecks hanging around these parts.”
“I know. Right?”
“If Dharwani’s heard about them, they must be poking around the criminal underbelly of this town. They looking to buy black-market military hardware?” Mike suggested.
She frowned. “Doesn’t fit their profile. They strike me as the types to make a grand political statement as opposed to a simple terrorist attack.”
“I dunno. A man-portable missile through the front door of the U.S. Capitol Building would be a hell of a political statement.”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. But her gut told her that wasn’t what the PHP guys were up to. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. They’d shown themselves to be long-term planners, already. They were certainly capable of plotting and executing a terrorist attack that they perceived as a grand political statement. But why Sudan? Why Khartoum? She’d been asking herself those questions obsessively ever since she got here and still had no answers.
Frustrated, she turned her attention to Mike’s problem. “What’s your target doing here?”
He made a face. “Above my pay grade. I was just told to look out for a Palestinian who might be working the local marketplace.”
“Is he buying or selling?”
“That’s what I’m supposed to find out.”
“The Scientist, huh? What kind of scientist?”
“No clue.”
It was an ominous moniker, though. Reminiscent of old-school biological or chemical warfare scares. They sat in silence for a minute, letting their brain cells marinate in vodka. Eventually Mike asked, “What are you going to do next?”
“After tonight, I can’t very well hang around town by myself. Everyone knows I’m a girl now. I’m pretty much dead in the water for observing here. You?”
He nodded in commiseration. “Same. I’m blown. I’ll break the news to my boss tomorrow.”
Heavy silence fell between them. Morose, she stared at nothing and pondered how done her career was when she got back to the States. She’d already been on damned shaky ground by insisting on being the one to follow the PHP guys over here. If she not only blew her cover but also completely failed to find out what they were up to, that was it for her.
Mike broke the somber mood abruptly, declaring, “To hell with work. Let’s go off the clock for a while. Whaddiya say?”
“Meaning what?” she asked cautiously.
“Meaning, how do you feel about taking a nice, long bath? Water on the roof should still be warm.”
“Ohmigod,” she groaned. Even the idea of a bath was enough to make her orgasmic. It was even sexier to think of doing it in Mike’s bathtub. Sheesh, she had it bad for him. She tried reminding herself that he was a casual fling and nothing more. But something in her gut didn’t seem to want to listen to her.
Mike grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes on the bath.”
While the big tub filled, she stripped out of her clothes behind the questionable privacy of strings of beads straight out of the late 1960’s that had replaced the bathroom door. Mike was undoubtedly enjoying the show, but she was too focused on her first real, immersed-in-water bath in a month to care.
The water was only lukewarm, but she totally didn’t care about that either as she sank to her neck in blessed wetness. She just sat for a while in bliss, reveling in slowly turning into a prune. Eventually, she dunked her hair and commenced giving it a good scrub. Her nails felt great against her scalp. But then other fingers joined in, big, blunt fingertips that massaged her head and neck deliciously. She groaned and let her head fall back into Mike’s hands.
“I’ve died and gone to Heaven,” she sighed.
His hands moved from her neck to her shoulders and then dipped into the water to massage her upper arms.
“Lean forward,” he murmured.
Her entire back got the full treatment from his strong, probing fingers, which found and worked out every last kink in her muscles. Jelly. She’d turned into a gelatinous mass of gooey goodness in his hands.
“Scoot forward,” he muttered in her ear.
A little confused and a lot mellow, she didn’t have enough energy to ask why but merely did as he asked. A great mass of water displaced upward as he stepped into the tub behind her and sat down. Powerful legs stretched out on either side of hers and all of a sudden, a muscular body pressed against her back from neck to tailbone informatively.
“You don’t fight fair,” she groaned as his hands slid around her waist to cup her soap-slippery breasts.
“Never said I did.”
She mumbled something incoherent that didn’t even begin to resemble a word as he nibbled his way across her shoulder and kissed her neck.
By the time they’d pushed each other over the edge into oblivion, there was more water on the floor than in the tub, and a sharp chill bit into her wet skin as the ceiling fan blew across it.
Mike heaved himself upright and stepped out of the tub before bending down to scoop her up in his arms and carry her, wet and cold, to his bed. He laid her down on the cotton sheets and came back with a towel to dry her. Then he surprised her by blowing out the lamps and opening his bedroom window. A sultry breeze wafted across her body, warming and soothing her at the same time.
He stretched out beside her and she summoned the energy to roll against him, draping her leg and arm across his big heater of a body. She warmed quickly and made a sound of contentment as she nestled under his arm, her head on his shoulder.
The last words she heard before she passed out were, “Sleep, Piper. I’ve got you.”
Six
Mike stared at the dark ceiling, listening to the distant sporadic sounds of gunfire. What the hell was he doing? He never had meaningful sex with women. He’d learned long ago that, if he didn’t kick the groupies to the curb immediately after the conclusion of sexual concourse, they interpreted being allowed to stay as practically a proposal of marriage. All the guys like him knew that groupies became stalkers at the drop of a hat.
He’d also learned a long time ago never to use the women he worked with as his dating pool. And, given that his work for the last decade had pretty much not included any women at all, it hadn’t been hard to abide by his long-standing rule.
Frankly, it felt strange to find a woman in his work environment. He came from a family full of boys. He’d hung out with the guys on the football team in high
school. In college, he’d hung with his frat brothers. Then, into the military, and straight into the Special Forces. Come to think of it, he’d never spent much time around women. Ever. Maybe that was why he was finding it impossible to actually sleep with one sprawled across him, now.
And this particular woman…he couldn’t seem to keep his damned hands off her. She was mesmerizing. So beautiful and sexy; all those miles of sleek legs and soft curves. Not to mention, she could match him shot for shot with a handgun and a sniper rig, and then throw back shots of vodka like a pro, for God’s sake. How was he supposed to resist that?
She’d blown his cover completely to hell, and he couldn’t seem to generate even a smidgin of irritation at her for it. No question, he had it bad for Piper Roth. He was going to have to leave Khartoum because of her, and his only regret was that he wasn’t going to see her again. Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. He deeply regretted the idea of not having hot gnarly sex with her, again.
She shifted against him, settling closer to his side, her head on his shoulder and her silky hair spread out over his chest. And it was strangely comfortable. Who’d have guessed he could enjoy spending the night actually sleeping with a female? Bizarre.
In the midst of his newly discovered contentment, something dark wormed its way into his brain. He frowned up at the shadowed ceiling, struggling to put a name to it. Fear. That was it. He was afraid of the way this woman made him feel.
Him. A hardened warrior, veteran of war zones from one corner of the globe to the other. He was terrified of a woman. First thing in the morning, he was sending her on her way, and he was never looking back. Navy Intel would assign him to some other post on a far-flung continent, and he would get on with his regularly scheduled—female free—life.
A plan in place, he closed his eyes and willed sleep to come.
Yeah, that wasn’t working.
He swore for a while in his head. Fine. He would just lie here and enjoy the novel sensation of cuddling with a woman, then. Tomorrow. She was out of here, tomorrow.