by Julie Miller
“Bryce,” she whispered, desperate to help but not knowing how. “Please. Please.”
Like two leviathans, the men rose through the flood of knives and guns and splintered wood. Marcus had his hands on Bryce’s throat now. His pistol had disappeared. Tasiya wanted to retrieve it, but in a sea of weapons, which was his? Which was loaded?
Marcus found his footing first and rammed Bryce against the broken wall. Tasiya flinched at the momentary grimace that contorted Bryce’s face. His back! The wounds on his back!
But Bryce pounded on Marcus’s arms, loosening his stranglehold. He pounded again, driving Marcus to his knees.
“Run, Tasiya!” Bryce growled.
Marcus clipped him around the ankles and dragged him to the floor. With a sickening sense of déjà vu, Tasiya was suddenly back in that interrogation room. Bryce was putting his life on the line. Again. For her.
This time she would listen.
She grabbed the basket, along with the C-4, and stumbled toward the door. But one last look at her hero stopped her cold.
“Bryce!”
Marcus had found his gun. He was on his knees over the man she loved. Blood spewed from his ugly mouth as he squeezed the trigger. “Die, you big bastard.”
“You first.”
Marcus jerked. His eyes widened like saucers. Bryce shoved his hand into Marcus’s gut, and Tasiya realized he’d stabbed him. With a twist of Marcus’s own hunting knife, Bryce finished the job.
The gun fell from Marcus’s grip. His oversize body went limp. Bryce pushed him aside as the big ox fell dead.
“Bryce?”
He was shaking as he climbed to his feet and Tasiya ran to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and braced him with her strength as he pressed his lips into her hair and hugged her close. “I had to bust the damn lock open. You didn’t have a key that fit. I heard you scream.”
She could feel the sticky warmth of blood soaking through the back of his cold, wet jacket and knew that his wounds had been reopened in the fight. She’d been just as frightened for him as he’d been for her. “It is all right now. I am safe.”
With a steadfast determination, he pushed her away. His ragged breathing warned her that the fight had sapped most of his strength. “We’re not safe. Somebody might have heard.”
“But the storm—”
“I won’t risk it. Back-up’s not comin’ till midnight tomorrow. We’re still on our own.” He turned her toward the door. “Go back to my cell. I need to clean up this mess and hide the body. Go. Now.”
She planted her feet. “I will help. It will go faster if we work together. Then we can both leave.”
For once his overblown sense of chivalry took a backseat to practicality. He reached out and brushed his gentle fingers across her cheek. Tasiya winced at the swelling there. Regret colored his voice. “I was too late, wasn’t I?”
“I am alive, Bryce Martin,” she whispered. “I believe you were right on time.”
Chapter Twelve
For the second time in his life, Bryce awoke to find a beautiful woman gently tending his wounds.
This time he wasn’t whacked out of his head with pain and anguish. He knew where he was and, thanks to the spicy, wholesome smell that wafted beside him on the cot, he knew who was with him.
He rolled onto his side and looked up into Tasiya’s dark, exotic eyes. “Evenin.’”
It was about ten o’clock, he guessed, judging by the first stars dotting the sky outside his window. Melancholy and anticipation battled to dictate his mood. In just a few hours he’d be on his way to freedom—but his time with Tasiya would be over.
With her typical devotion to practicality, Tasiya urged him back onto his stomach to finish doctoring his shoulder. “Some of your cuts look infected. I wish I had an antibiotic to give you.”
What, no ‘Good evening, Bryce Martin’? He was growing used to the trills and musical articulation of his first and last name together. Her soft accent made it sound as meaningful a declaration of trust and caring as any words he’d heard from a woman.
She was probably nervous or preoccupied about her tasks tonight. Or still fearful that someone would discover Marcus Smith’s body in the unused prison cell where he’d stashed him.
Deciding she was done taking care of him, Bryce pushed aside her protests and sat up next to her on the edge of the cot. He took the cloth and ointment from her hands and set them on the floor beside the food she’d brought.
“The medics can pump me full of antibiotics once we get off this island tonight,” he reassured her. He hiked up his jeans and turned to prop one knee on the cot so he could face her and take her hands in his. “From the sound of things, I’m more worried about Craig O’Riley’s injuries.”
“When I gave him your message to be ready at midnight, he said he would be strong. He will be greatly motivated to ‘kick butt,’ he says.” Bryce grinned at her endearing recitation of words that didn’t fit a literal translation. “Your friend, Jacob Powell and Mr. Campbell, said they would be there to help him.”
Tasiya looked down to where her smaller hands joined his in his lap. Her fair skin glistened in the dim shadows against his darker fingers. The differences in color and size created an evocative contrast of male and female, yesterday and tomorrow, despair and hope—and just how intrinsically linked and delicately balanced they each could be.
Bryce turned her hands so he could stroke the racing beat of her pulse at her wrists. Somethin’ was eatin’ her up from the inside out. “You worried about your daddy?”
She shook her head, stirring the long fall of hair that only partially hid the swollen purple bruise on her cheek. “No more than usual,” she admitted.
“You afraid of what’s gonna happen tonight? I promise you, Blackhaw’s a stickler for details. Nobody’s gonna get hurt. I’ll whisk you outta here before Boone Fowler knows what hit him. I’ll see you all the way back to Montana or New York City or Lukinburg, if that’s where you wanna go.”
Tasiya stiffened. Her eyes darted up to his. “You think I want to go back to Dimitri?”
“When you’re free, you have the right to choose wherever you want to be.” Bryce swallowed hard. Maybe this was the part she was dreading. He knew he’d been avoiding the inevitable. “I know you’re probably feelin’ grateful for me helpin’ you out, or listenin’ to ya talk, or thinkin’ we’re a team or whatever. But don’t feel like you have to choose me or Montana when we get out. You don’t owe me a thing. I don’t want you to think you’re tradin’ one kind of blackmail for another. I wouldn’t be any better than Fowler or Smith, then. I promised you freedom. And I’m a man of my word.”
Even in the semidarkness, he could see the color flooding her cheeks. She pulled her hands away and stood, pacing clear to the steel bars before she turned and fired away. “I swear to God, Bryce Martin, if you were not injured, I would slap your face.”
Huh! Maybe his looks weren’t the only reason he’d never had a decent relationship with a woman. He threw up his hands. “Then what the hell’s buggin’ ya, honey?”
She twisted her lips together, struggling to contain somethin’ that was too much for her to bear. “I have learned more about freedom inside this prison cell than I ever knew existed in my own country. You’ve taught me that I have value in this world. That I can make choices.”
“Yep.”
Her breath emptied out in a hushed sigh. “I choose you, Bryce Martin.”
He squashed down the surge of boyish joy and lifelong hope that licked its way through his veins. “Honey, I’m just one man. You’ll meet others on the outside. Better-lookin’ ones. Ones who know what to say to a lady.” He rose and paced to the window, scrubbing his hand over his bristly jaw and starin’ up into the sky. He couldn’t look her in the eye and say this, couldn’t see her sweet face and send her to another man. “You’re a beautiful woman, with a kind heart and a stubborn streak a mile wide. You’re smart. Gutsy. There’ll be plenty of other men for
you to choose from.”
“Like Marcus Smith?”
“No.” Bryce fisted his hands around the bars at the window. “I’m talkin’ about good men. Ones who’ll treat ya with respect. You can choose any one of ’em. Or no one, if that’s what you want.”
He flinched when he felt her cool hands on his shoulders. “I choose you.”
Bryce turned around. He lost his resolve to keep his distance in the sirenlike call of her innocent smile. He brushed aside the hair at her temple and gently cupped her jaw, smoothing his thumb across her velvety cheek. “I might look pretty good to you right now, honey, but that’s just ’cause I’m the only man here.”
She leaned her cheek into his fingers and kissed the palm of his hand. “The first night I met you, you frightened me. I thought you were a monster.”
Yep, he got a lot of that.
But she took away the sting of reality with her next words. “Since that night I have seen into your beautiful eyes. I have seen into your heart.” She spread her fingers across the left side of his chest. “There is no monster in you. I do not believe there are better men than you out there.”
Bryce covered her hand with his own, holding her gentle acceptance against his beating heart. “That’s sweet of you to say, honey, but—”
“Make love to me, Bryce Martin. I may not live through this night. I may be forced to return to Lukinburg and give myself to Dimitri Mostek in order to save my father.”
Make love? His body lurched in shameless response at the mere suggestion. The blood seemed to rush from his extremities and pool behind his groin.
But he listened to everything she said and shook his head. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You cannot promise that. As well as you mean, you cannot know that something will not go wrong.” She dug her fingertips into his skin, pleading by her touch as well as her voice. “I want one night with a man whose hands do not make me feel dirty. Whose words inspire me with hope instead of fear. I want to know what it is like to be loved by a man who cares about the woman I am inside. If this is to be my last night in America, or on this earth, I want my memories to be of you.”
He was already on fire for her. But to ask this, to give him this… “You don’t know what you’re sayin’ to me, honey.”
“You told me that, in America, a woman may ask for what she wants. I want you to make love to me. I want…you.”
“I want you, too, honey. More than my next breath. It hurts sometimes to think how much you mean to me.”
“Then it is settled.” Ever practical and efficient, Tasiya’s hands went to the hem of her sweater and she pulled it up. “I will try not to hurt you.”
Damn. All that creamy skin and a plain lace bra that clung to pert, ripe breasts. He wanted to laugh at the irony of her promise, but his breath seemed to catch in his throat. “I should be sayin’ that to you.”
He tried to be a gentleman. He tried to look away. But he was a man. And he loved her. And his hands were drawn to that skin like a magnet. He skimmed her flanks, caught the weight of her breasts in his palms, moaned along with her, then joined her hands on the sweater, pulling it off over her head and tossing it aside.
Her hair cascaded down and she shook it loose, filling the air with her scents and covering her shoulders and breasts in a cloud of ebony silk. “If I do something wrong, you will tell me?”
Screw being a gentleman. This might be his last night on the planet. His last night with Tasiya. He wasn’t a strong enough man to walk away from somethin’ they both wanted.
“You’re beautiful.” His voice came out as a husky growl and she blushed. Bryce gathered her into his arms, binding them together skin to skin. Her curves fit snugly against his harder planes, and the twin buds that pearled at the tips of her breasts branded him with a searing heat.
She was supple and cool to the touch, yet he thought he might burn up with need for her. This was no slow fuse, no time-released detonation. He’d been primed to make love to this woman from the first moment she’d shown him tenderness, that first night they’d touched through the bars of his cage and an electric current had sparked between them.
Her hands rested on his biceps while her gaze darted back and forth across his chest. Seein’ his scars? Havin’ second thoughts?
“I do not know where to begin.”
“You put your hands on me wherever you want. Ask for whatever you want. Tell me no if you’ve had enough or I scare you in any way.” He nudged her beneath the chin. “And you look me in the eye.”
She skidded her hands across his shoulders and clasped them together behind his neck. “I am not afraid of you, Bryce Martin. I was only admiring how strong you are. How very—” the frown appeared between her brows “—not like a woman you are.”
Bryce laughed and kissed her frown away. “Honey, you’re gonna discover there’s not much like a woman about me anywhere.”
And then he was kissing her, drinking in the generous gift she offered, giving her everything there was in him. He skimmed his hands along her spine down to her bottom and lifted her up into his rising heat. He swept his hands into her hair, scooted the straps off her shoulders as he came back down. He pressed his lips to the delicate point of her collarbone, supped at the straining swell of her breast. He swirled his tongue around one distended nipple, wetting it through the lace.
Tasiya gasped. “I… You…”
Speechless. Bryce grinned.
Her fingers latched on to his head and took his mouth to the other breast. He toyed with it, teasing it through the lace, making her hips squirm against his. And when he didn’t think he could take any more of those whimpers of pleasure that hummed in her throat, he unhooked her bra and let it join the sweater. A shiver of goose bumps pricked across her wet skin and Bryce eased the shock by taking her into his mouth. She was delicate and sweet and more responsive than he could have imagined.
This was a crappy place to make love to a beautiful woman, but when she threw her head back and arched into his mouth, Bryce thought he was in paradise.
“I want you, Tasiya,” he whispered against her breast. “Any way you want.” He kissed the thrumming pulse at her throat. “Now.” He suckled her bottom lip, caught her stuttered breath in a kiss. “Tell me now if you want me to stop.”
“No.” She planed her hands across his chest, flicked across a flat male nipple, and he groaned. “You like that, too?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
A quick study, she kissed the spot, then ran her tongue around it. Bryce’s arms convulsed around her at the sweet agony of her innocent touches. “Honey, I won’t last much longer if you keep doin’ that.”
She raised her mouth for a kiss and her fingers dropped to the snap of his jeans. “I do not want to wait. Now, Bryce Martin. Please.”
Bryce needed no further encouragement. With the frenzy of last chances and moments stolen out of time, they stripped off their remaining clothes. Bryce laid them over the cot to make a relatively clean bed for them. Then he reached for Tasiya’s bottom and picked her up, stretching her warm, moist heat against him. He sat down with her straddling his lap and the evidence of his desire butting against her thigh.
For one precious moment, she tore her mouth from his and looked down with a little bit of awe and worry in her eyes. “You are so…big.”
Bryce caught her face between his hands and laughed. It was a tender, intimate sound shared in the darkness. “You know, ninety-nine men out of a hundred would take that as a compliment. But I don’t want you to worry. Nature has a way of making things…fit…the way they should.” He kissed her then, deeply, reverently, stirring things inside him that had nothing to do with sex. “But if I hurt you or scare you in any way, I will never forgive myself. I can still stop.”
“I said I was not afraid of you, Bryce Martin. Not of your scars, not of this.”
Bryce forgot to breathe when Tasiya wrapped her hand around him.
Unable to help himself, he th
rust into her curious grip. He leaned his forehead against hers and willed enough patience into his system to wait until he knew she was ready.
But Tasiya Belov had had a taste of freedom. She knew how to ask for what she wanted “Oh, Bryce. Please be inside me…now…”
With no answer but a kiss, Bryce lifted her. She held her breath as he sheathed himself inside her. She gasped against his neck and dug her fingers into his shoulders when he pushed through her barrier, and then he felt her relax. She sank down around him, took him deeper and deeper. She hugged him tight and he hugged her tighter. Mouth to mouth, chest to chest, sex to sex.
Her glorious hair was their only cloak as they rocked together and fell into a rhythm that transcended any differences in language or culture. Tasiya gave him her body and trust. Bryce gave her his heart.
Their joined mouths muffled their cries of passion and pleasure, and in the deepest corner of a solitary prison cell on a forgotten island, their lonely spirits finally soared free. Tasiya whispered his name as the tremors of her release broke through her and around him. “Bryce Martin. Bryce Martin. Thank you. Thank you.”
He poured himself into her, stunned by the humbling power of his release. Then he gathered her into his arms and lay down beside her on the cot, keeping her warm with the blanket of his body until she drifted off to sleep.
Bryce Martin had been to hell and back more than once in his life. But tonight was the first time he’d been to heaven.
EVEN WITH HER ears covered, the explosion was deafening.
But Tasiya didn’t wait for her nerves to settle or her courage to falter. Bryce and his friends were counting on her. And she had no intention of letting them down.
She darted through the shadows, unseen in the sudden darkness illuminated only by hastily drawn flashlights and the flames from the generator room where Bryce had set the charges. Her footsteps were silent beneath the shouts of men and the slap of the ocean against the shore. She clambered over the stone wall at the edge of the courtyard, then took off at a dead run through the sea of cord grass and sand.