The Stealth Commandos Trilogy

by Suzanne Forster

  “Go?” he said, lowering his voice. “Just when things were getting hot?” He released the towel.

  Letting it fall to the floor, and then he brought her clenched hand to his thigh. She tried to draw back, but he tightened his grip, intending to force her into a direct confrontation with the evidence of how thoroughly she’d aroused him. He wanted her to know he was naked and hard. He wanted her to know the games were over.

  “No, please,” she pleaded.

  “See what you do to me,” he said, his voice as hard and pained as his body. “See how hot things are.” He wanted her to look at him, to face the reality of her crazy scheme. When she wouldn’t, he brought her hand to the wedge of dark hair. “You’ve tortured me enough for one lifetime. It’s time I returned the favor.”

  Color spiked in her pale cheeks, two vibrant slashes of scarlet staining her porcelain skin. Johnny’s hand tightened on her wrist as she stared up at him. Her eyes flashed with frustration, lire rising out of the mists. But it wasn’t the defiance shimmering in her gaze that struck him; it wasn’t even the excitement. It was guilt and contrition. Beneath the frustration she was searching his face with the sweet agony of a penitent.

  “Johnny, please,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I wasn’t trying to—” Her voice broke.

  Tears glittered in her eyes as she unfurled her fingers and touched him, cool silk against the molten core of his desire.

  The softness of her hands sent him into a rage of need. He gripped her by the arms and brought her to his mouth, hissing out his pent-up fury, whispering of her betrayal, shuddering with naked longing as their lips touched. He wanted her. Sweet God, how he wanted her. And how he hated her for making him want anything.

  The force of his own needs hit him. His breath rushed, mingling with hers. The quick, hungry touch of their lips, the little sounds she made, were exquisite. But some vital part of him made him hold back.

  He couldn’t allow himself the wild satisfaction of pulling her beneath him and driving into her.

  She swallowed a sob, bringing him the most perverse kind of pleasure imaginable. She tasted like heaven, like everything he’d ever wanted and been denied. Yearning swept him, the awful, uncontrollable yearnings of childhood. As she pressed against his naked body, he pulled her into his arms, kissing her hungrily, unaware until that very moment that he was a starving man, a dying man. . . .

  “Johnny?” she whispered, searching his features.

  He was barely aware that they’d stopped kissing, that she was looking at him with the same kind of hope, the same frightened innocence, of the girl who’d betrayed him.

  “What are we doing, Johnny?” She touched his mouth with shaking fingers. “What’s happening between us? Is this love? Or sex?”

  Love? Sex? The question seemed vital to her, but he didn’t know what she was talking about. He needed her, he had to be inside her. His groin throbbed painfully with that need. But another feeling burned into his awareness as she continued to hold him back, caressing his mouth.

  “What do you want it to be?” he asked.

  She couldn’t speak, but her eyes told him what she wanted. Her sweet sinner’s eyes. She wanted love and forgiveness, absolution for her guilt, no matter what it cost him to give it. That was what was driving her, he realized. Not some selfless need to help his tribe, or to ease Johnny Starhawk’s suffering. She didn’t give a damn about the hell she was putting him through, the anguish. She wanted redemption, and he was the only one who could give it to her.

  He caught her by the wrist, holding her seductive fingers away from his mouth. What was happening between them? Was he playing into her hands again? Literally, this time? As he stared at her imploring gray eyes, he realized her vulnerability was the most powerful manipulation he’d ever encountered. She’d destroyed him today with her whimpers of need and her fluttering fingers. She’d turned him inside out. Worse, she’d had him on the run since the day she’d arrived. She’d haunted his office, broken into a men’s bathroom, and lied her way into his apartment. She’d been calling all the shots, running the show. But no more. That was all about to change.

  “What’s happening between us isn’t sex,” he said. “And it sure as hell isn’t love. It’s a felony called breaking and entering. And you just committed it.”

  “A felony?” she said, trying to cling to him as he released her and pushed her out of his way.

  He sprang from the table, picked up the towel, and tied it around his hips as he strode across the room. An intercom unit was built into the opposite wall, and he jabbed a sequence of buttons. “Security,” he said. “I’ve got an intruder in my apartment. Come up and get her, would you?”

  He turned to look at Honor’s ashen features, wishing to God he could bring her the same kind of turmoil she brought him. Just once. “If she gives you any trouble,” he told the security guard, “call the police.”

  Five

  HONOR SAT ON THE unmade bed of her hotel room, absently leafing through the pages of the morning newspaper, aware of the television cable news station droning in the background. She wanted distractions that morning, anything that would take up time and fill the silence until the bellman came to pick up her bags.

  The heaviness that came with resignation had settled in on her since her encounter with Johnny the day before. A nagging sense of defeat still dragged at her breathing, and yet she was relieved to be going home. No one could say she hadn’t given it her best shot. She’d done everything but physically kidnap Johnny to get him back to Arizona.

  The shaman was wrong, she realized. She wasn’t the one destined to bring Johnny back. Their past had been so much in the way, she hadn’t even been able to make him see how important it was that he return to the reservation. That was what saddened her the most now. Her own sense of guilt was insignificant compared to what the White Mountain tribe would suffer if it didn’t have adequate legal counsel.

  She closed the paper at the same time that a news flash came on the television. Glancing up at the screen, she saw an Indian boy being taken into custody by two sheriffs deputies.

  “Problems on an Arizona Indian reservation,” the commentator said. “A sixteen-year-old Apache boy is alleged to have dynamited the leaching operations at the Bartholomew uranium mines in the mountains near Coyote Gulch, Arizona. A spokesman for the Apache tribe claims toxic seepage from the mine’s holding pools is polluting their pastureland water and contaminating their livestock. But the district attorney says he will show no leniency in this controversial case. The boy will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

  Honor rushed to the TV and turned up the volume. She was shocked to see her own father appear on the screen standing next to the district attorney. Hale Bartholomew had grown thinner and craggier in the decade since she’d seen him, but with his steel-gray hair and piercing blue eyes, he looked no less intimidating.

  Conflict rose inside Honor. She still loved her father and probably always would, no matter what he’d done. In some strange way she’d felt responsible for his happiness after Hale, Jr., and her mother died. She had longed to make up for the terrible loss he suffered, and perhaps she had hoped he would come to love her the way he had his son. Undoubtedly that was one of the reasons she’d let him talk her into testifying. Even now she didn’t question that her father believed he was doing the right thing by having Johnny sent away. He’d thought he was “protecting” her. She wondered if he was any more capable today than he had been then of understanding that his need to play God and to manipulate other people’s lives was cruel and self-serving.

  “Outlaw behavior cannot be tolerated,” Hale was saying. “If we don’t make an example of the boy, we’re encouraging other young renegades to take the law into their own hands.”

  Young renegades. He’d used that same phrase eighteen years ago. After the trial she’d overheard him congratulating the prosecutor, telling him his victory had sent a valuable message to any other “young reneg
ades” who thought they were exempt from the American system of justice. That was when Honor first began to realize she’d made a terrible mistake.

  She hit the TV’s Off button and plunged the screen into blackness. The hotel room with its unmade bed, closed curtains, and soiled water glasses looked dingy and sordid as she surveyed it. Despair welled. She walked to the bed, intending to throw the newspaper in the trash, but a front-page article caught her eye as she picked up the paper. She scanned the piece hurriedly, realizing it was the same story she’d just heard on television, only it elaborated on the tribe’s futile legal struggles and quoted a tribal spokesperson, who described the boy’s act as a “cry of despair and frustration against an unresponsive system.”

  “Ma’am?”

  Honor started, nearly dropping the paper. A bellman hovered in the doorway of her room.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

  She nodded, but as he began to load her baggage onto his cart, she realized she couldn’t leave Washington, D.C., not just yet. “Take the bags down and put them in storage for me, would you, please?” she asked, fishing some bills out of her purse and dropping them on the bed when she saw that his hands were full. “And thank you!”

  Newspaper firmly in hand, she rushed past him and out the door.

  Johnny was slipping on his double-breasted suit jacket to go out to lunch when his office door burst open.

  “Don’t even think about telling me to leave,” said Honor, entering the room and shutting the door behind her. “And don’t try calling security. I’m in no mood to be bullied this morning, Mr. Starhawk.”

  She remained by the door, a newspaper clutched in her hand. She was obviously frightened, but just as obviously determined to tough it out, whatever “it” was. Her eyes glittered with a determination he’d never seen before, and the effect was oddly exhilarating. Her blond hair was tied back, defying him to try to free it. Go ahead, her huge gray eyes seemed to be saying, pull a weapon on me. I’ll show you just how savage I can be.

  Good, he thought, his pulse quickening. She’s good. If the anger vibrating in her voice was any indication, there would be no more tearful apologies, skulking around elevators, or sneaking into condos. She’d been pushed to the wall, and she was fighting back.

  “Your scalp is safe,” he said nonchalantly. “All my knives are out being sharpened.”

  She blinked. “I’m surprised you don’t keep a spare hatchet or two.”

  He let out laughter, a husky, appreciative sound. So Honor Bartholomew had a dark side. God, he loved it. Normally he wouldn’t have done anything to encourage her, but the glint in her eyes was too provocative to ignore. He let his gaze flicker disrespectfully over her pink mouth and linger at the neckline of her blouse. Her breasts shivered softly, deliciously, with each breath she took. What color were her nipples? he wondered, unable to check the irreverent thought. Pale pink, like her lips? Were they aroused? Was she aroused at the mere sight of him, the way he was at the sight of her?

  “I’m not here for that,” she informed him hotly.

  “It doesn’t matter what you’re here for,” he said, wishing he could make her understand what she did to him, what happened when she got within ten feet of him. “Just seeing you is enough, Honor. That’s all it takes to get me going. I’m like one of those pacing animals at the zoo, agitated by the spectators, crazy to get at them.”

  “Why do you make it sound as if I’m purposely taunting you?”

  “Aren’t you? You make me want what I can’t have, and that’s the definition of savage, remember?”

  She looked startled, but her surprise quickly changed to something else. Anger? A deep flush of sensual awareness crept up her throat. “That’s not true. You could have had anything you wanted, Johnny. You wouldn’t let yourself.”

  He was silent a moment, catching his breath. She was so honest it hurt. He could have had her, it was true. He could have her now, on the desk, on the floor, wherever they landed when he pulled her into his arms. She might resist, but that wouldn’t last past the first kiss, and they both knew it.

  “You’re right,” he said softly. “Nobody’s stopping me. Nobody but me.”

  There was a catch of wounded pride in her voice when she finally spoke. “You’ve made it clear you don’t want anything to do with me.”

  “Oh, please, woman, don’t get coy on me! Not after all that painful honesty. I want to do everything there is with you. I’d like to violate you within an inch of your sweet life. Right now. Right here! But where you’re concerned, I am that animal in a cage. And when that cage door comes open, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  She wet her lips nervously, and he told himself that he’d done all he could. He’d warned her what could happen, what he knew would happen if they ever made love. There was too much rage mixed up in his desire for her.

  She held up the newspaper, almost defiantly. “Despite what you may think, I didn’t come here to talk about sex and animals. I’d like you to take a look at this.”

  “What is it?”

  Without a word she approached his desk and practically threw the paper at him.

  “My goodness, have we forgotten our manners?”

  “Read it,” she snapped. “Please.”

  He glanced at the headline and sighed heavily, dropping the paper to his desk. “The White Mountain thing again?”

  “Read it!” she insisted. “Look what’s happened.”

  “Honor, I don’t care what’s happened. It’s not my fight.”

  “There’s a sixteen-year-old boy involved,” she said, overriding his resistance. “He’s blown up my father’s leaching plant, and they’re going to crucify him, Johnny. He’ll be a scapegoat.”

  Johnny glanced down at the paper involuntarily. Anger rose inside him as he skimmed the first two paragraphs of the article. Old anger. Brand-new hot anger. She was resurrecting his past and shoving it in his face! “You do know how to set a trap, don’t you?” he said, glaring up at her.

  “It happened, Johnny. I didn’t make it happen. I’m just telling you about it. Can’t you do something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like defend the boy! Keep him out of jail or something equally damaging. Surely you don’t want him to suffer the way you did.”

  “He won’t.” A nerve sparked in his jaw, jabbing at him like a hot wire. His anger sharpened and darkened with the need to hurt her back. “If I suffered, it was because of you.”

  She flinched, then caught herself. “Apparently you intend to punish me forever for a mistake in judgment that I made at fourteen.” She threw up her hands in despair. “If I can’t make you see how self-defeating that is, then at least understand that you’re the one who’s making the mistake now, a terrible mistake. You’re not hurting me by refusing to help the tribe, you’re hurting them.”

  “I owe them nothing.”

  “That isn’t true. You owe them something simply because you have Apache blood running in your veins. You lived on that reservation. You know the truth. They’re an oppressed people, struggling to defend their land against exploitation, just as they always have. Except now they’re trying to do it legally, and they’re at a terrible disadvantage. You have the skills to help them. Dammit, Johnny—”

  She broke off in frustration, her gray eyes sparkling as she fought tears.

  He stared at her, feeling his stomach muscles knot up but refusing to let the pain she evoked control him this time. “They have access to attorneys,” he said.

  “Right, and my father has money and influence. Hale Bartholomew doesn’t need justice on his side. He can buy it! You should know that better than anyone.” She pointed toward herself emphatically. “I’m not trying to excuse anything I’ve done, but surely you know that I didn’t testify against you because it was something I wanted to do. My father put pressure on me. He misled me and misconstrued things—”

  “Your father’s a bastard,” Johnny said, cutting her off coldly. “You
don’t have to convince me of that. But he wasn’t my friend, Honor. You were. My only friend.”

  She shook her head and sighed out a sound full of regret, full of heartache and despair. “This could be your chance,” she said at last, all the hope draining out of her voice. “If any of that hatred in your heart is directed at my father, then you’re being handed an opportunity to avenge yourself. If you won’t do it to help the tribe, then do it to stop Hale Bartholomew.”

  Johnny began to button the gray silk suit jacket, his fingers rigid. “I was just going to lunch.”

  Her mouth formed tight white lines at the corners, and she stepped back from his desk. “Apparently I’ve kept you. Another unforgivable sin.” She turned and walked to the door, fumbling with the knob as she tried to let herself out of his office. “Enjoy your meal,” she said, and left.

  Johnny released his coat, letting it drop open. His gaze fell away from the closed door, but he remained where he stood, unmoving, until the hollow sensation in his chest made him draw in a breath. She wouldn’t be back, he realized. He’d finally driven her off. Whatever he’d expected to feel at this moment, it wasn’t this terrible emptiness. He had no sense of victory, not even of relief, except in the fact that an emotional train wreck had narrowly been avoided.

  He wanted to tell himself that it was better this way, but the cliché stuck in his throat. It would have been better if they’d never met. Or if she’d never befriended him . . . but he didn’t want to think about that now. The anger was gone, and for the moment, he felt nothing. He was one of nature’s voids, waiting to be filled.

  Staring at the door, remembering her fear and defiance, he recognized a stirring of something that was wholly unfamiliar to him where she was concerned. Finally, reluctantly, he gave it a name—admiration. She had guts and tenacity. She was either a stronger woman than he’d given her credit for or a very foolish one. If their roles had been reversed, he would have given up long ago. But then he knew what a nasty S.O.B. Johnny Starhawk could be. She only thought she knew.