Dammit, get it over with.
He dumped the smoldering cigarette into the ashtray and braced himself. By the time he turned, Dani was hugging the opposite edge of that painfully narrow bed, her back to him, quilt pulled firmly to her neck. He snagged the corners of the covers and crawled in, cursing every inch of his oversized, hulking body as he struggled to maintain the microscopic buffer of air between them. Air that was growing hotter by the second. He closed his eyes and forced himself to relax. Everywhere.
Eventually, he felt her relief ease out as his body managed to behave. An eternity later, he felt her yawn as exhaustion scored its first and probably only victory of the night. In this room, anyway. From the moment he’d accepted Rurik’s invitation, he’d known he’d be facing a long, sleepless night. But when Dani finally succumbed to sleep—and her warm, silky length gradually eased closer until it was searing completely into his—he also knew it had just gotten a hell of a lot longer.
Chapter 4
The bedcovers were missing.
Even with the sleep-induced mist fogging her brain, Dani was sure. She could feel a cool breeze drifting across her body. Jack must have opened the window when he’d gotten up to turn off the radio. Except for their breathing, the room was quiet. The mist cleared from her brain, only to leave a more disturbing discovery behind. She’d rolled during the night. Even though she’d yet to open her eyes, she was certain. She could feel one of Jack’s hands cradling her breasts. That wouldn’t have been so humiliating…if her fingers weren’t knitted together and tucked snuggly between the man’s thighs. His muscular, upper thighs. In fact, her hands were all but fused to Jack’s—
Maybe he was still asleep. It was possible. They were here, weren’t they? Trapped together on a case she’d never have volunteered for if she’d known the man lying two inches away, completely nude, would be on the same continent as her. She held fast to the belief that fate owed her one and opened her eyes. Unfortunately, fate had decided to leer back. Again.
Not only had Jack’s lashes parted, revealing dark, knowing pools, but the rest of his body was rapidly waking to the predawn light. Within seconds, the flesh brushing her fingers grew hot and hard. Very hard. Her nipples stiffened in response, pressing directly into his palm. And that made Jack’s flesh harden even more. His gaze merged with hers as the air between them smoldered. Ignited. Memories seared in. Another room, another bed. Hopes, dreams. The heady promise of what could have been. Someone’s breath caught, then rushed out.
Whose, she couldn’t be sure.
In the end it didn’t matter, because the half rasp, half groan that followed jolted both of them from the trance. The length of Jack’s erection singed her fingers as she jerked her hands from his thighs. A split second later, he pulled his hand from her breast, turned and jackknifed off the bed, snagging his fatigue trousers as he shifted away to don them. She grabbed the reprieve, swinging her legs off the bed and reaching down to snatch his T-shirt and shorts from the floor. By the time Jack had finished buttoning his trousers and turned to retrieve the pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, she’d donned both.
He tapped out a cigarette and exchanged the pack for the lighter she’d never have imagined he’d actually have the nerve to use. But he had. Based on the number of scratches marring the silver casing, more than once. Either that or he’d taken to carrying the lighter with him years before. Both options unnerved her more than she cared to admit. So much so, she took perverse satisfaction in the distaste he didn’t bother hiding as he purged the initial drag from his lungs. She hoped he choked on the filthy smoke. God knows she had.
Jack braced his right hand above the open window as he turned away, no doubt to keep that stifling smoke swirling inside the room instead of out. Despite the broad back obscuring her view, she knew he wasn’t studying the shadowy hills or even the darkened dairy barn off to the right. He was studying the lighter. The engraving. Thanks for the lesson.
Like her father, he probably still assumed those words and that lighter were meant to get back at him for the stunt he’d pulled the day after they’d met years ago. They were. But they’d also meant more. To her, anyway. Of course she’d had to mature a bit before she’d understood her own unconscious dig.
When she’d first met Jack Gage, she’d been a kid. Sixteen years old, newly expelled from Miss Porter’s Prison for Proper Ladies and downright desperate for her father’s attention—good or bad. Getting caught with a pack of Lynette Cove’s cigarettes and condoms on the eve of one of West Point’s stuffy spring banquets—specifically, one her father had to attend—had finally earned her the latter. It had also earned her Jack, West Point formal, dress gray uniform and all. Though Cadet Gage had tried to hide it at the time, Jack had been as dismayed as she when his mentor had asked him to play junior jailer for the night. To their surprise, they’d actually hit it off. Or so she’d thought.
Her polite, but too-proper escort had loosened considerably after he’d discovered that she, too, studied jujitsu. By the time Jack had taken her into his arms on that dance floor, her first serious crush was already budding. The next day, it was in full bloom. A late-afternoon movie with a handsome, though still very serious twenty-one-year-old Jack would have turned any girl’s head—much less the intimate dinner for two at a quiet, out-of-the-way sidewalk café in nearby Highland Falls. So when Jack had excused himself and slipped inside the café for a moment, she hadn’t suspected a thing. Not even when he’d pulled out a pack of Marlboros over coffee. She’d been so full of herself, not to mention too terrified to let him know she wasn’t the fallen—or rather, mature—girl her father had accused her of, she’d accepted the cigarette Jack had casually lit for her and inhaled.
She’d nearly lost her dinner on his boots. Even after she was breathing again, she hadn’t suspected a thing. Jack was that good, that concerned, that contrite. And she’d been that dumb. It wasn’t until he brought her home and she’d snuck downstairs to listen in at her father’s study that she’d discovered the truth. The betrayal. The debrief. Jack wasn’t interested in her. He’d simply been tasked with a mission. Colonel Stanton wanted to know if his daughter smoked, so Cadet Gage had set out to uncover the truth. Mission accomplished. In return, Cadet Gage had earned the gratitude of one of Delta’s most respected senior officers. She, however, had received nothing but yet another wave of her father’s cold, distant fury…and a broken heart.
Dani waited as Jack tapped the line of ashes from the dwindling cigarette out the window. With no one around but her, he didn’t bother with a second drag. Nor did he face her. He simply braced his hand above the frame once again, though this time he actually stared out the window. Silently. Tired of waiting, and definitely tired of avoiding that muscular back and the memories it stoked, Dani turned to the bed. Big mistake.
She’d rather face the man’s sleek back than their rumpled sheets. Though white instead of blue, the covers spilling over the foot reminded her of another bed. Another silent, predawn morning. Of her burning need. Not so much for sex. That had been well-sated by then. No, by then she’d been consumed by a searing need to ask Jack if those steamy hours they’d just spent together had been about more than blistering sex. Did he care about her? For her? Did they have a future outside the bedroom?
Before she could scrape up her nerve, the alarm had gone off. Jack had suggested they meet after work for the conversation they’d skipped hours before, along with a fresh pizza to replace the cold one still sitting in his oven. She’d agreed, hoping she’d get the answer to her question. She’d gotten it, too, sooner than she’d expected. It just wasn’t the one she’d been praying for. But it was one she should have expected.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Well, she wasn’t going for thrice. Dani stepped up to the dresser and switched on the radio. The bawdy sevdalinka that filled the room was easier on her nerves than Jack’s slow, studied breathing. In deference to the thin walls and open window, she n
udged the volume down and turned to shake out the quilt before smoothing it over the mattress. She retrieved Jack’s Beretta next and fluffed the pillow. The bed made, there was nothing left to do but clear the round Jack had chambered the night before. He finally deigned to turn around as she thumbed the 9 mm’s safety and released the magazine onto the bed.
“I want you to carry the extra pack of cigarettes.”
She jerked back on the slide, tracking the ejected round’s trajectory from the top of the barrel down to the quilt. “We’ve been through this. Unless my fashion ensemble changes, that pack will stick out like a transvestite in a wet T-shirt contest.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, I do. Frankly, I’ve got enough—”
“Dammit, woman, look at me.”
She slapped the slide home. “Why? Because you’ve decided it’s time for eye contact, oh Great Delta Master?” His answering growl skirted beneath the fractious folk song. Barely.
She didn’t care. Nor did she comply. The three hundred bucks the man had shelled out had obviously gone to his head. Either that or he was still pissed because she’d managed to cut through his lies and beat him to the punch—chalking up the night they’d shared to pure emotionless sex before he could. Adrenaline hadn’t driven her into bed with him a year ago. It had driven him. Whether he’d admitted it or not. Jack might have been twenty-one the first time she’d overheard his Benedict Arnold routine, but he’d been thirty-one the second. She might’ve been able to chalk up the first betrayal to youthful indiscretion, but not the second. There was no way he could have cared about her and then blithely said what he had to her father.
She plucked the bullet from the quilt, ignoring his sigh as she snapped the round into the top of the magazine.
“Dani…will you please look at me?”
She slammed the magazine home as she finally complied. “Why? So you can order me to do something that could very well get me killed? Rurik may like them young, but Youssef doesn’t much care. He may not have raped me yesterday, but neither did he keep his hands to himself. Those filthy paws were all over me and I don’t just mean my neck. His friends aren’t any better. Do you understand what I’m saying or must I spell it out for you?”
From the way Jack’s jaw locked as his gaze shifted past her shoulder, he’d caught the image vividly enough. Or maybe not. She had the distinct impression there was more to that frozen stare than the sight of Youssef’s hands on her body, copping a feel. He continued to stare at the wall as his fingers closed over the smoldering cigarette. They didn’t stop until he’d crushed it, glowing ember and all. He didn’t even flinch.
“Jack?”
He wrenched his gaze back to hers. “No. You don’t have to spell it out.”
“Good. Then maybe you can see why—”
“You need to carry the transmitter.” He pitched the pulverized cigarette to the floor and closed the distance, his gaze burning more fiercely than the flame on that stupid lighter as he locked his fingers to her shoulders. “You have to listen to me. Rurik and I are supposed to finalize our deal today. I may have to leave the farm with him. Not only will I probably not know when, I may not even know where I’m going, much less how long I’ll be gone. In other words, I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to watch your back. If you don’t carry that transmitter, Hamid won’t be able to watch it either, however distantly.”
“And what happens when Youssef corners me by the well and shoves his hands up my shirt and finds cigarettes tucked in my shorts? You think he’s going to wait until Sgt. Jackson returns before he opens the pack and steals a ‘sample’ from there, too?”
Jack closed his eyes.
Dammit, he had to stop doing that. Jack didn’t care for her any more than he cared for Lina and the rest of those girls. She was just another component to his increasingly complicated mission. She wished he’d stop making her feel like she was more. He jerked his hand from her shoulder and shoved it into his pocket. The unopened pack of Marlboros surfaced with it. He grabbed the Beretta and shoved the barrel into the waist of his fatigues, then pushed the cigarettes into her palm.
“You can’t order me to carry this and you know it.”
He plowed his fingers into her tangled hair, forcing her head and her gaze up until she was drowning in those dark, unnerving pools. “I’m not ordering you. I’m begging.”
Good God, he was. Why? Stranger still, whatever had been in his mind’s eye when she’d shoved Youssef’s behavior in his face was back. For the second time, she had the feeling he was holding out on her. But as she opened her mouth to question him, someone pounded on their door, then bellowed through the wood.
Rurik.
The doorknob twisted through a wider range of motion than it should have as Rurik pounded on the door again. The bastard was using his key! She jerked her gaze to Jack’s, shoving the pack of cigarettes into his hands as his swift nod confirmed her suspicion. The door swung open with the next series of thumps.
The man feigned surprise. “Excuse me. The lock must be broken.” Nope, no Academy Award nominations there. Rurik Teslenko’s acting was as rotten as his teeth.
She didn’t bother disguising the glare she shot Rurik. In deference to their covers, she turned a meeker glance on Jack. “I’ll help Zorah with the water as you ordered.” She headed for the door before Jack could pretend to change his mind.
“Dani?”
Damn. She stopped, turned slowly back. Waited. Relief washed through her as Jack nodded his permission—until he tossed the pack of cigarettes toward her.
“You forgot these.”
She caught the pack instinctively—and promptly tossed it back. “Thank you, Sergeant. But I’m trying to quit, too.” She crossed the room, careful to give Rurik the respectful berth he believed his due from the inferior sex. She needn’t have bothered. Rurik had latched on to the fact that Jack knew her name.
His decaying grin settled on Jack with grudging admiration. “You do persuade better than Youssef, my friend. You will have to tell us exactly how you accomplish this.”
Dani ignored Jack’s dry response as she snagged the bath towel Zorah had loaned her off the back of the chair and stepped out into the darkened hallway. Jack might not be a criminal, but he could be an arrogant bastard all the same. No wonder Delta had assigned him this mission. The man fit in far too easily. She hurried to the kitchen. If she was lucky, she could forge an inroad with Zorah, convince the woman that despite the rare trust Rurik had placed in her, she didn’t fit in. Dani reached the dimly lit kitchen less than a minute later.
Unfortunately, Zorah wasn’t there. The back door was slightly ajar, too. Odd. The day before the door had been locked whenever the kitchen was empty—from the outside. She’d checked. Not that she’d had any plans to escape, even before Jack’s arrival. But Zorah didn’t know that. Nor did it seem in the woman’s nature to be so careless. Especially with the radio droning faintly from the guest room above. Dani folded the bath towel and crossed the freshly swept tiles to lay it on the kitchen island, even more intrigued when she spotted the empty pails beside the stove. Zorah couldn’t have gone for water, not with all four pails accounted for. Rurik would be bellowing for his breakfast soon. So why wasn’t the woman busy making it?
Dani grabbed the opportunity to find out. She hooked a pail over her arm and retrieved the spare kerosene lantern from the shelf above, lighting the lamp with a match as she stepped out onto the path to head for the water pump behind the barn. Ten steps across the cold gravel, she realized how great her opportunity was. The sun might be below the horizon, but there was enough of a glow bleeding up that she should have noticed someone guarding the dairy barn. So far, no one.
Ten more steps confirmed her excitement. The armed thug she’d noted the day before was definitely missing. And there was still no sign of Zorah. Another thirty paces and she was at the man’s post—and definitely alone. She glanced at the house. Though the windows on the western side were open to t
ake advantage of the breeze, none of the rooms were lit. Jack had even turned out the light in theirs. Nor was she able to detect any motion within. She spun around to the front of the barn. To those massive sliding doors and the iron links looped about the handles. To that gleaming padlock. Do it.
She dropped the pail onto the grass and stared at the lamp for all of two seconds before extinguishing the flame. While she could have used the flame to peer inside, it also served as a beacon. She set the lamp down beside the pail and tiptoed over the remaining gravel, wincing with every crunch that echoed across the grass. The double doors had been hung from a single rail running across the top. She tried the padlock just in case. As expected, it refused to budge. She tried the left door next. That did budge, but by less than three inches. There wasn’t enough give in the chain for more. She jerked the chain in her frustration—and the door moved. At the bottom.
The track at the top had allowed the twin slabs to move away from the barn by a good eight inches at the base. More than enough room for her face. She shot over to the far left only to freeze as she noted the haphazard line of nail heads embedded down the door’s frame. Unlike the rusted heads on the wooden doors themselves, these nails were new. She tucked the discovery in her brain, slipping her fingers beneath the bottom edge of the slab as she dropped to her knees. She ignored the splinters stabbing into her fingers as she wrenched the door away from the frame and wedged her face into the opening. Damn. Nothing but dank shadows. She should have risked the lamp.
Five more seconds of squinting and she blew out her breath and sucked up her disappointment—and stiffened.
An Unconditional Surrender (In Love and War Anthology) Page 5