by Cindy Gerard
And as he flipped her onto her stomach, then dragged her to her knees and moved in behind her, she realized how much she trusted this man.
He braced a knee on the sofa between hers, parted the wet, pulsing lips of her vulva with his fingers, and plunged inside her again.
With a primal moan she arched back against his pumping hips, loving the feel of him inside her this way as his big hands guided her hips and set a rhythm that raised the sensation to a fever pitch. She cried out again when he reached around her and finessed her clitoris, enhancing the friction as he filled her again and again until finally, he tensed with a low, guttural moan.
His entire body stiffened; his grip on her hips tightened, and he slammed into her on one final, deep thrust as his orgasm overtook him. She buried her face in the sofa cushion and screamed as her own release ripped through her, long, intense, and electric.
She was still gasping for breath when his big body curled over hers. He pressed his cheek between her shoulder blades and wound his arms tightly around her ribs as he, too fought for breath, clinging like he never wanted to let her go.
He brushed her damp hair away from her eyes. “What you do to me,” he murmured against her nape, then slowly withdrew from her body.
She felt his weight sink down on the sofa behind her, then he ran a fingertip over her hip and trailed it lazily down her thigh. “And me without a camera.”
She pushed out a weak laugh. This wasn’t exactly a Kodak moment for either of them. He was wearing only a T-shirt; his pants were jammed around his ankles where they were stuck on his boots. Her bare butt pointed skyward; her T-shirt was bunched up around her shoulders. Both of them were drenched in sweat, smelling of sex, and wrung out within an inch of their lives.
No, not a Kodak moment—but a very, very good moment.
She collapsed then shifted around and snuggled up against him, where they stayed for long blissful moments.
The euphoria lasted until they staggered into bed.
As exhausted as they were, neither could sleep. Because nothing had changed, nothing could change until Sierra Leone was behind them.
So they lay in the dark silence, and waited for morning to come.
“Men like Ryang are successful because the flow of weapons is so difficult to police,” B.J. said as she and Crystal walked Val to the shooting range the next afternoon after lunch. “Small arms and many light weapons have legitimate military, law enforcement, and even sporting and recreational uses.”
“So governments can’t flat-out ban them,” Val surmised as B.J. unlocked a cabinet that held a huge selection of handguns.
“Which makes it difficult to enforce restrictions.” B.J. pulled out a sleek black pistol, double-checked to make certain the chamber was empty, and slid it into her belt holster. “And because they’re so plentiful and easy to conceal, small arms are a smuggler’s dream and a law enforcement nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of small arms in leaky government arsenals are vulnerable to theft, loss, and diversion. Once Ryang and his ilk make a buy, the weapons are smuggled across borders in every conceivable way—hidden under sacks of vegetables in the back of pickup trucks, packed into household appliances that are then loaded onto cargo ships, even air-dropped out of old Soviet military transport planes.”
“Or in humanitarian aid supplies,” Val said, grimly.
“Yeah,” Crystal agreed with a sympathetic look.
“I feel like such a fool. How could I have been so oblivious?”
“Look. You weren’t the first to be used. You won’t be the last,” B.J. said in her typical straightforward style. “Government officials who are trained to spot this stuff get the wool pulled over their eyes all the time. Last year, Ryang was in collusion with a Colombian arms dealer operating out of Panama. They duped the Nicaraguan government into selling them three thousand AK-47s and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition. The bastards convinced them they were procuring the weapons on behalf of the Panamanian National Police, using a forged end-user certificate.
“Anyway,” she went on as she loaded a clip with ammo, “they cut the deal and loaded the weapons into a Panamanian-registered ship and headed out from Nicaragua. Two days later the shipment arrived in Colombia, where members of FARC—a terrorist paramilitary group—were waiting to claim their prize.”
“Only they got a surprise. We were there to intercept it,” Crystal added. “Score one for the good guys.”
“And we’ll turn this into another score,” Val said with determination.
“Try this one,” B.J. said, keeping on task. “You look like a Glock 19 girl to me. Should be a nice fit.”
Crystal passed around headsets to protect their ears and shooting glasses to protect their eyes. “Come on, girlfriend.” She headed for the door to the shooting range. “Let’s go turn you into Jane Wayne.”
The day was warm and overcast, the light breeze heavy with the promise of rain.
“Four cardinal rules,” B.J. said gravely. “Treat all guns as if they’re loaded; never point the gun at anything you don’t want to destroy or kill; finger off the trigger; and be one-hundred-percent certain where your bullet will end up. Memorize them, live them.”
A couple of hours and a hundred rounds of ammo later, Val had the fundamentals down. She knew how to load and reload. How to rack the slide and chamber a round. How to adopt a solid stance and a firm, two-handed grip, align the sights, and squeeze, not pull, the trigger.
“Breathe,” B.J. reminded her more than once. “Take a breath, let half of it out, and then caress the trigger.”
“Think about the way Luke touches you,” Crystal added with a grin.
Val rolled her eyes. But the advice helped. Once she softened her trigger pull, her accuracy improved.
She was still only hitting the paper target fifty percent of the time, but she’d finally conquered a limp-wrist problem that had resulted in the empty brass spitting out and hitting her in the forehead.
“I think that I’m seeing a depth perception issue,” B.J. said as they’d discussed her tendency to shoot high and to the right. “With practice, you’ll learn to compensate.”
“We’ve got another day before we leave, so we’ll give it another go tomorrow.” Crystal grabbed a broom and started sweeping up their spent casings.
Since her arms were trembling from muscle fatigue and she had a raging blister on the web between her thumb and forefinger, Val didn’t argue. “Sounds good.” She felt a long way from marginally able, and one more day wasn’t going to make a big difference.
Her concern must have shown.
“It’ll come,” B.J. assured her. “In the meantime—you do realize that you’re never going to come within a football field of the line of fire on this op, don’t you?”
Yes. She knew that. They’d had a team briefing first thing this morning. Along with tying up some loose ends—among them the news that they’d linked both the gunman’s call on the SAT phone in the mountains and the IP address from the e-mail addy Luke got at the airport to Ryang—Nate had reiterated that Val’s only part in the operation was window dressing.
That fact was pounded home again a few minutes later when she, B.J., and Crystal filed into the situation room after their session on the shooting range. “One last quick briefing,” Nate said, “then we’ll call it a day.”
One look at Luke’s face, however, and Val knew that this day was far from over.
26
“Santos, Carlyle, and Waldrop.” Nate tossed the folders on the three operatives across the table to Luke. “Work for you?”
Feeling the eyes of the rest of the team on him, Luke glanced at the folders, then drummed his fingers on the table. He still wanted to be pissed, but he actually felt some relief.
Several months ago, when they’d needed additional manpower for job in Nicaragua, he’d personally vetted these three men, whom they’d then contracted for that op and several others after that.
Enrique Santos, a retired Marine, was in his
early thirties. The short, stocky Latino was born in the Bronx and wore his head shaved, sported a soul patch, a Semper Fi tattoo on his left pec, a tribute to his mother on his right, and easily bench-pressed an impressive 275 pounds. When he didn’t have his nose buried in Tolstoy or Kafka, he was on the shooting range honing his expert marksman skills.
Brett Carlyle was an Iowa boy. With his auburn hair and lanky six-foot frame, he looked all of sixteen instead of thirty. He’d been a pentathlete in the Army, had training as a medic, knew how to handle an arsenal of different weaponry, and God help the fool who saw Boy Scout instead of warrior when they looked at him.
Josh Waldrop was the senior citizen of the group at thirty-seven. Waldrop clocked in at a honed one-eighty on a five-foot-eleven frame. He was a former SF staff sergeant, a martial arts expert, favored his custom Bowie knife for close-quarters combat and never went anywhere without a pocketful of Red Hots candies.
All three were combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. And to a man, they were solid, steady, competent, and trustworthy.
Luke would feel comfortable with them watching his back any day. And since Val’s celebrity came with a built-in expectation of bodyguards, the extra muscle wouldn’t rouse any suspicions.
“Her protection exclusively.” He met Nate eyes. “They don’t pull double duty working any other aspect of the op.”
“Done,” Nate agreed.
Luke still wasn’t happy. “I want them on her like white on rice. Every second, every minute, every hour.”
“White on rice,” Nate agreed without hesitation.
His boss made it hard to stay pissed.
“One more thing,” Nate added. “Brown’s signed on for the ride.”
“Primetime?” Rafe grinned. “Excellent. He’s missed us, huh?”
“Us? Maybe,” Nate said. “The action, absolutely. He’ll be on the ground when we get to Freetown. By the time we arrive, he’ll have extraction transpo arranged if we need it. So let’s hope we don’t.
“That’s it. Unless anyone has anything else to discuss, we’re done for the day.”
Luke gathered up the jackets on Santos and company and held them out to Nate. “Thanks,” he said with a grateful nod.
“Jesus, I’m glad you two finally kissed and made up.” Reed made a big production of looking relieved. “I was beginning to think we were going to have to break out the dueling pistols.”
“Stow it, Reed,” Nate said as he walked out the door.
Never knowing when to quit, Reed snapped to with a sharp salute. “Stowing it, sir.”
Crystal pumped a closed fist into his breadbasket.
He folded with a grunt of pain. “What’d you do that for?”
“Because you made it so easy. And because one of these days, he’s going to get tired of your lip and give you the boot.”
“Naw.” Reed slung an arm over his wife’s shoulders and pulled her close. “He lurves me. We’re going to go pick out a china pattern tomorrow.”
“Wear gloves when you go to the range tomorrow,” Luke said as he applied ointment to Val’s hand.
They were back at his apartment, after stopping at the market and shopping for dinner. Then they’d cooked it together, washed dishes together, lingered over a couple of glasses of wine, done the whole domestic-bliss scene.
He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t real—even though he was beginning to want it to be.
Which was pure lunacy.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He cut his gaze to her face. The gravity of her expression told him she was referring to the trip they would be making in less than forty-eight hours.
“No,” he said, putting his medical kit back together. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He got crazy just thinking about what could happen to her and he didn’t want to ruin the mood.
“I want to finish this glass of wine,” he said, leaning in and kissing her, long and slow and deep. “Then I want to take you to bed.” He trailed his mouth along her jawline, nipping, sipping, teasing with the tip of his tongue. “Work for you?”
For a moment, he thought she was going to pressure him into talking. Thankfully though, she only tilted her head back and allowed him easier access. “Works very well.”
Later he lay in the dark, mellow, sated and spent, listening to her breathe, loving the feel of her naked and warm against him.
Wondering how he could arrange the rest of his life around her, this bed, and the occasional meal.
Finally admitting that he wanted this. Wanted her to be a part of his life.
But it wouldn’t be fair to her to ask.
The job took such a fucking toll on everyone. Gabe had lost a leg on an op, and for a while he’d lost his direction as well. Sam Lang had lost a sister, and until Abbie had come along, none of them had thought he’d ever drag himself out of the abyss of self-recrimination. Johnny Reed—hell, Reed had been lost before he’d ever teamed up with the crew. It had taken Crystal to make him whole again. Even Wyatt had lost the better part of himself somewhere along the way—so much so that he was still on an extended leave after his honeymoon with Sophie. No one knew when or if he was coming back.
The danger, the close calls, the death and destruction . . . it took too much. And with every life Luke took—even the lives that needed taking—a little part of him had died, too.
So, yeah. The BOIs had been through the fire, yet all of them had managed to recover then hang on to the things in their lives that held them together. Their integrity. Their moral compass. Each other. And for most of them, that included hanging on to a good woman.
Luke was one of the last single men standing. He’d been fine with that. Never wanted the responsibility that came with partnership. Even if he had, he’d never figured a woman would want to sign on for the ride.
Val sighed in her sleep and snuggled closer against him. And stirred his yearning for more.
B.J., Tink, Jenna, Abbie, and Sophie had all taken the leap. Even Nate and Juliana, who had danced around each other for years, had finally committed to each other. They were making it work.
But him and Val? He pressed his fingertips to his temples and rubbed at the dull ache there. Hell, look at her. Look at her life. As soon as they got through this op she had a career to get back to. The limelight. Adoration. Fame.
No way in hell would she want to put up with the stress that came with his line of work.
He didn’t even know if he had what it took anymore to do the job. And yet, what else was there?
How could he possibly saddle her with that man?
Easy answer. He couldn’t.
Easy decision. He wouldn’t.
End of the fucking discussion.
After a ten-hour flight from B.A. to Dulles, in D.C., Val was settled on board the Operation SR Foundation’s Boeing 737 and waiting on the tarmac to take off for Sierra Leone. She’d established the foundation six years ago, using her own money and donations from both hers and Marcus’s high-profile friends. Their first purchase had been this older-model Boeing, that had been reconfigured to a cargo bus, with extra fuel tanks in the belly to support the transatlantic flights from D.C. to Freetown. The cargo compartment filled half of the passenger space, and a cargo door added to the back end of the plane allowed for even more storage.
Both cargo holds were already loaded with the humanitarian aid supplies when Marcus stepped on board the aircraft.
She’d been dreading this confrontation.
One look at the haggard and drawn shell of the vital man she had married, and it was as though years had passed, instead of months. He was broken. Beaten. Ashamed.
Even through her anger, her heart clenched with compassion and pity as he walked down the narrow aisle toward her.
“I am so, so sorry, Val,” he whispered.
She met his eyes through a film of tears, then quickly looked away.
There was nothing to say. Nothing she could say.
“You okay?” Luke sat down in the seat beside her.
She gripped his hand when he covered hers and didn’t even attempt to lie to him. She wasn’t okay. Nothing felt like it would ever be okay again.
The last time the team had landed in Sierra Leone, it had been the dead of night and they’d HALO’d in—high-altitude, low-opening parachute drop. They’d been hundreds of miles away from the capital city of Freetown, where the upper echelon of the RUF regime had set up shop while their enforcers, armed with military uniforms, guns, and machetes, viciously maimed, raped, and killed hundreds of thousands of defenseless villagers throughout the country.
This time it was bold daylight, early afternoon. No flares were necessary to lead them to their landing zone; the control tower guided the pilot down to Lungi International Airport.
They touched down and the interior lights blinked on. Luke watched the faces of the men who were as close to him as brothers, and knew every one of them was thinking of Bryan Tompkins. Though the RUF ambush had been over ten years ago, none of them had ever forgotten.
Beside him, Val was somber. Her hair hung loose and free and shone like silk. An hour ago, they’d cleared out what had once been the first-class section of the modified 737, pulled the privacy curtain, and she’d changed clothes.
When she’d stepped out from behind that curtain, Luke had flashed on an unforgettable photograph of Princess Diana dressed in a simple white shirt tucked into tan pants, a flak vest, and a clear protective face shield as she walked through an Angolan minefield to bring attention to her own personal cause. He’d been so impressed by her. Her love and caring and approachability was what had shown through that day.
He saw that same courage, commitment, and integrity in Val as she settled back down beside him wearing tailored white slacks and pale pink silk blouse. Hell yeah, the pants hugged that fabulous ass like a second skin and hell yeah, the blouse showed off her world-class breasts. She was like a Monet under a perfectly placed exhibit spotlight—a draw for the press, which in turned drew attention to her cause. She carried it off like an American princess, and he’d never been so proud of anyone in his life.