by Cindy Gerard
“We shouldn’t,” she murmured after a searching look. A long moment passed before she covered his hand with hers. “But, yeah. I want to do this. Crazy, huh?”
He smiled, thanking fate or kismet or whatever cosmic explosion had placed him here, with her, at this exact moment in time. “Crazy good.”
Holding her gaze, he shifted his weight until he was propped up on an elbow leaning over her, pressing her onto her back. “You say the word and we red-light things, okay?”
She cupped his head and drew him close, so close her breath feathered against his lips. “No red. Only green.”
It was a good thing because he was already gone the moment she buried her hands in his hair and urged him near. He covered her mouth with his, knowing he probably should be gentle, more reverent. But he’d fantasized about this woman for years—and gentle wasn’t even a remote possibility.
His kiss was about pure, hedonistic pleasure.
He lost himself in it. Lost himself in her—the pillow softness of her breasts pressed against his chest. In the slim, supple curve of her hip and thigh molded against him. In the exotic taste of her lips that opened tentatively at first, then wide as he coaxed her to let him in, let him taste, let him take what he’d dreamed about for years.
And damn if reality didn’t exceed the dream.
He plunged his tongue inside her mouth, wanting it all. Wanting it now. He sipped and licked and saturated his senses with not only her taste, but her uninhibited responses. She moaned deeply, chased his tongue with hers and sucked it back into her mouth, then held him close with a desperate whimper and a possessive hand in his hair when he would have pulled away to change the angle of their kiss.
His heart went haywire. He levered himself over her, scooped her closer against him, and let his hand roam over her hip, the gentle concave of her belly, then finally filled his palm with the lush weight of her breast. She shuddered and moved against his hand, arching into his palm as he kneaded and shaped her until skin-on-skin contact became the mandate.
He slid his hand up under both shirts, shoved her bra aside, and finally encountered hot, silky flesh. Her nipple pebbled between his thumb and finger, and he was stone hard and straining against his fly when she arched into his hand and made a sexy, needy sound deep in her throat.
He totally lost it then. He wrenched his mouth away from hers, trailed a string of hot, biting kisses down her jaw, then found her bare breast and feasted.
She gasped, moaning throaty and low and long when he sucked her nipple into his mouth. He loved it. Loved it when she writhed against him and whimpered in protest when he pulled back so he could see her.
Perfection. Her breast was full and firm, the nipple dusty brown and delicate, glistening wet and quivering. Beckoning him back. Begging him to dip his head to take her in his mouth again. Because she wanted him to. Because she was wild for him to do exactly what he was doing.
Making her wet. Making her hot. Making her want him the way he’d imagined her wanting him.
She gasped again when he swirled the tip of his tongue over her diamond-hard nipple. And when she cried out and planted her palms against his shoulders and abruptly shoved, he had just enough brain cells still functioning that it registered she was crying out in pain, not pleasure.
He pushed himself up on his elbows, suddenly full of concern. “What? What’s wrong?”
Her eyes were pinched shut, her face contorted in pain. “Po . . . potato.”
He scowled in confusion. “What? Is that some sort of safe word?”
Her laugh was part pain, part frustration. “No. The potato. It rolled under my back.”
He pushed up on an elbow and felt around beneath her shoulders, found the potato and tossed it away. Then he rolled over her again and grinned down at her, ready to pick up where they’d left off.
Only she wasn’t smiling.
She was clearly having serious second thoughts about what had just happened, what had been about to happen, and what was now most likely not going to happen.
Playtime was over.
He got it. He didn’t like it, but he got it. Things had gone from zero to mach 1 and back to zero again in the space of a few pounding heartbeats.
Muffling a groan of disappointment, he got himself back under control. Once he could manage it without groping her, he did the gentlemanly thing and rearranged her clothes until she was covered up like a nun.
She shot him a grateful but embarrassed look.
He smiled and squeezed her hip. “I think you could safely say you were saved by the spud.”
Her face flamed red and she covered her eyes with a forearm.
“Hey,” he said gently. “Don’t. Please don’t kill this stellar buzz I’ve got goin’ and say that shouldn’t have happened.”
“I can’t believe I let myself get so—” She lifted her hand, let her words trail off.
“Caught up in a moment?” he suggested and pressed a soft kiss to her brow. “It happens, okay? We’re adults. We’ll deal with it. And for the record, I don’t kiss and tell. But if ever I was tempted, that kiss would be the one to do it.
“And look on the bright side: For a little while there, you forgot all about dark holes and running for your life, didn’t you?”
He got the smile he wanted, along with a little eye roll that he’d also expected. That was okay.
And he was more than okay, because he trusted his gut, and his gut was telling him that this was far from over. She might think things had to ended with a mind-bending kiss and a little touchy-feely, but being a betting man, he was going all in on this hand. This hand was coming up aces plus one knockout-gorgeous lady, and he’d bet on a hand like that ’til the cows came home.
All in good time, he told himself.
“I’m going to go do a little recon. See if it’s safe to move out. You sit tight.” He decided to leave her the rifle since she already knew how to shoot it, and it would be much more accurate for her.
“Remember what I taught you?” he asked, placing it in her hand.
She nodded, her face pale.
“Don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill.”
Another determined nod.
He gave her foot an encouraging squeeze, pulled the Glock out of the back of his waistband, then scrambled out of the cave. “Be right back.”
• • •
Several time zones away, Ryang found himself gripping the phone tighter as his man in Peru explained once again that the woman continued to elude them.
“What do you mean, you lost her?”
They had retired from the dining room to the living area, Ryang to indulge in a brandy and Jin to read to their daughter. He thought again of how much he adored them both, delighted in indulging them. He’d do anything to insure their future and spare them the poverty and abuse he had endured as the child of a whore, who had been whored out himself to men with twisted sexual appetites.
Keeping his voice low, he cupped the phone closer to his mouth and delivered his edict. “One woman. One man. One purpose. I do not wish to hear excuses. You will find her. You will have her delivered to me. And you will dispense with the man who is helping her with expedience. Report when you have news I want to hear.”
He disconnected, then stared at the North Korean flag that hung on the wall above the entry door, a gift from Dear Leader. Who was this man? This man who could kill experienced warriors and continue to elude Ryang’s best mercenaries? He must be eliminated.
The woman must be brought to him. Everything in his carefully orchestrated plan depended on her presence for this one last delivery. When she was no longer of use, he would kill her himself for placing him in this untenable position.
“Is all well, husband?”
Jin’s melodious voice drew his attention. The crease between her brows troubled him. He smiled for her when her dark eyes met his across the room.
“All is well,” he assured her.
All would be well. He woul
d see to it. Just as he would see to it that his business ventures would never touch her or their daughter. He would not fail them. He would not fail at anything.
He did, however, need relief from the rage boiling up inside him. The kind of relief a creature as delicate as his wife could never assuage.
“Regretfully, I must meet with an associate,” he said, rising abruptly.
“But it is almost time to retire.”
He walked to her side, ran a hand over her sleek, stylish hair, then leaned down and tenderly kissed her forehead. “Do not wait up for me. This meeting may run late.”
She knew better than to question him. Understood without probing that there were questions best left unasked or unanswered. Did she know how he had acquired his fortune? Did she suspect?
He often wondered. Often regretted. But always he accepted his direction and his destiny.
Her eyes were watchful and concerned as he walked across the room but he did not hesitate. He let himself out of the apartment, placed a call on his mobile phone while in the elevator, then gave directions for his chauffeur to drive him across the city to the hotel that always kept a room waiting for him.
Wealth made that happen. And wealth, however it was acquired, made princes of paupers, power brokers of peons.
Ryang had overcome his past and hidden all traces of it from those who could destroy him. Still, he had miles to go before his importance would be fully appreciated in Kim Jong-chul’s eyes. It had been unfortunate when Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, had stepped down and named his youngest son as his successor several months ago. Ryang had been favored by the father. The transition had resulted in a loss of power for him. So he’d redoubled his efforts to prove himself in the young leader’s eyes. He now felt he was in a constant struggle to reassert himself in a power position within the government. This Western woman could undo all of his careful attention to detail.
The dazzling lights of Macau’s lavish casinos flashed by the windows of the town car as his driver headed unerringly toward the hotel where a diversion from his stress and his rage had better be waiting.
On the off chance that the gunmen decided to double back the same way they came, Luke swung a little wide of what he calculated their path to have been and headed through the trees. He hadn’t walked fifty yards when a rifle shot ripped through the silence behind him.
Valentina.
He spun around and headed out in a full-out sprint back toward her.
Three more rapid bursts cracked through the mountain air.
Oblivious to the tree limbs slapping him in the face and the slippery mountainside that repeatedly sent him to his knees, he fought his way back to her. Three more shots followed on the heels of the others.
Then three more.
Then silence.
Ten rounds fired.
Fuck. His heart dropped to his gut. She was out of ammo.
10
An experienced fighter didn’t think with his heart during combat. He used his head, called on muscle memory and training and instincts to keep him alive. The emotional warrior died.
Luke knew that if he didn’t get his heart out of the equation fast, he would die in these mountains. Valentina would be as good as dead, too—if she wasn’t already.
He could not go there.
He made himself slow down as he neared their hiding spot, then dropped to his belly and crawled silently up the rise that faced the cave.
When he reached the summit, he peeked over the rim.
And damn near swallowed his tongue.
Fifteen yards away, a lone gunman stood in front of the cave, a phone pressed to his ear. Directly in front of him was Valentina.
Alive!
His relief took a backseat to rage when he realized the guy had the business end of a rifle barrel shoved into the small of her back.
Luke made himself breathe deep and take stock. He couldn’t hear what the guy was saying and gave up trying to eavesdrop when he spotted the body of another man not ten feet away from them, a rifle on the ground at his side. The shooter was sprawled spread-eagle on his back. Blood still oozed from the rounds Valentina had pumped into his chest at what appeared to be close range.
Kick-ass, ran through his mind as he zeroed back in on the gunman. If Luke had his SIG, he could put a bullet in the back of the guy’s head without breaking a sweat. But he’d never fired this Glock; didn’t feel comfortable with it. And there was the jerk reflex to consider. Unless he hit the medulla oblongata—in sniper terms, the “apricot” which was the part of the brain at the base of the skull that controlled involuntary movement—it was 99 percent likely that the shooter’s trigger finger would spasm and he’d empty the HK’s magazine into Val’s spinal cord.
He needed to draw the sucker’s attention and get that barrel pointed away from Valentina.
He looked around, found a brick-sized piece of deadfall, and hefted it. The wood was hollow, didn’t weigh much more than a football, but it would make a lot of noise as it sailed through the lower tree limbs.
He heaved the wood so it whizzed to the left of the gunman’s head, crashing into limbs as it flew.
As he’d hoped, the shooter flinched and spun toward the sound. The instant the nose of that rifle barrel shifted away from Valentina, Luke double-gripped the Glock and squeezed off three fast rounds.
The first shot hit its mark and spun the bad guy around. The second went into his open mouth. The third was a little insurance, and totally redundant.
Round number two had been the kill shot. A perfect zero reflex shot that cut the spinal cord from the rest of the body. In combat lingo, a ballistic lobotomy: 9mm in the head, guaranteed to change a man’s way of thinking.
The body hadn’t even hit the ground when Luke was racing down the ridge toward Valentina. She hadn’t fully grasped what had happened when he caught her in his arms and crushed her against him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked urgently.
Her arms clamped around him like a vise, her fingers digging into his shoulders. “No. No . . . I’m f . . . fff . . . ine.”
She wasn’t fine, but he’d settle for safe. He breathed his first full breath in what felt like hours, though it had been mere minutes since he’d heard those ten heart-jarring rifle shots. He wanted to hold her like this until she stopped shaking, but that could end up getting them both killed. He didn’t think there were any more shooters in the immediate vicinity but he didn’t want to take any chances.
“How’s the knee? Think you can walk?”
“Try to keep me at a walk. I want away from here.”
He gave her a quick squeeze. “Hold on for a sec.”
Given the scarce cell service and lack of conventional comms in the mountains, Luke wasn’t surprised to see that the phone on the ground next to the body was a SAT phone. He reached down, picked it up, and pressed it to his ear. It was as dead as the man who had held it.
Who were these fuckers? And who the hell had sent them?
“Did you catch any part of the conversation?” he asked Val as he reached back into the hidey-hole for his hat and gear, then stuffed the phone inside the backpack. If he could get it back to BOI HQ, the crew could back trace the origin of the call and get a fix on whoever had been on the other end of the line.
She shook her head. “No. They were talking in . . . I don’t know. Mandarin, maybe? Japanese? I don’t know,” she said again, her voice shaky, her eyes glazed and fixed on the man she had killed. “Something . . . Asian.”
Which made sense. The man Val had killed looked Korean. There wasn’t enough left of the other man’s face to tell what he was.
“Don’t look at him,” Luke said firmly. He knew what she was thinking. Knew what she was going through. Yeah, it was kill or be killed, and the right person had died. But that didn’t make taking a life any easier to process.
“Don’t look at him,” he repeated more sternly when her gaze remained riveted on the dead man.
He quickly stripped both
bodies of all the intel that might be of use and could potentially lead them to their boss. He scribbled down the serial numbers of the rifles and handguns, in the event he could track down where they came from or tie the guns to end-user certificates. Then he quickly searched their shirts and pants pockets. One of them was carrying a military medal fixed to a red, green, and gold—striped ribbon. He tossed it in his pack along with their wallets to examine more closely later.
Their clothes were standard cammo pants and T-shirts, something any merc or private contractor would wear, but he cut off the shirt tags anyway in case they led to anything.
Satisfied that he’d gathered everything important, he disabled one rifle and one of the handguns and tossed them deep into the woods. Then he shoved the Glock in his belt, pocketed the extra ammo clips, and grabbed the second rifle.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, retrieving his hat and shouldering his backpack.
Gripping her elbow, he steered her east, where he hoped they’d eventually run into a road.
Neither one of them looked back.
Ryang leaned back in the spacious marble tub in the presidential suite of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and let the hot water shooting from the jets soothe the tension from his body. The girl—he did not know her name, nor did he care to know it—knelt naked on the floor behind him. He watched her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling wall of windows that overlooked the bay twenty-three stories below as her talented fingers massaged the knots from his neck and shoulders, her small, perfect breasts and boyishly slim hips pleasing to the eye.
He would partake of her special talents soon. Now, however, to his absolute annoyance, he still had business that needed tending. He glanced in cold silence at the phone clutched in his hand. One moment he had been speaking with his lieutenant who had headed the team in Peru. The next moment, the line had gone dead.
His man had finally reported in with news that was long overdue. The woman had finally been captured, but at great cost. A total of three of his assets had now been lost. And with the abrupt loss of connection, he must assume he had lost yet another.