by Cherry Adair
"Pull over," Kane ordered at the same time.
"Damn. I wanted to make an oasis about a hundred miles down the road before stopping. But you're right. This is suicide waiting to happen. Alert the others." She pulled off the road, battling the seventy-mile-an-hour winds with all her strength to steer the vehicle to higher ground. The wind tended to blow hardest at ground zero. The tires bit into the soft sand, sliding and slipping before digging in as they climbed.
"Good to know Raazaq is probably doing the same thing. No one is going to be traveling for a while." Kane's calm manner was starting to piss her off more and more. Nothing seemed to ruffle the man's feathers.
Not spectacular sex. Not Raazaq transporting an unknown chemical. Not a sandstorm.
What the hell rattled the man's cage?
Kane's hand shot out and he grabbed the wheel as it spun out of her hands. "Give it more juice. That's it." His hand, between both of hers, held the wheel relatively steady as the heavy Humvee bounced and swayed. Thank God the vehicle was wide, and low to the ground. Built for just this sort of terrain.
They crested a small dune. AJ doused the lights and turned off the ignition. Kane's arm brushed hers as he withdrew his steadying hand from the wheel.
The darkness was loud, almost alive, as sand and wind buffeted the vehicle in ever-increasing gusts. Grains of sand pelted the windshield, and AJ knew that come morning, they'd be lucky to be able to see through the damn thing. The Humvee shuddered as the growling beast of a storm battered it. Sand sifted through the vents and sighed as it dropped to the floorboards. A few hours of this and they might be buried under a dune of their own. But there was nothing to be done about it.
"Now we wait," she said, more to herself than Kane. The man had an amazing capacity for stillness. Inactivity drove her nuts. She adjusted her seat to give herself more room in the cockpit and leaned her head back against the seat rest.
She couldn't see him—hell, she couldn't even hear him breathing. But damn it, she felt him. "This could go on for up to eight hours, you know."
"Uh-huh."
"You hungry?" AJ asked, voice raised over the wind.
"We just ate a truckload of sandwiches, and you had dinner before that." His voice, low and deep, coming out of the pitch-darkness, was curiously intimate.
"That was hours ago," she said, absently rubbing the aching muscles in her upper arms. "Besides," she told him, talking to avoid thinking, as she fumbled around for the small roll of mints in her pants pockets, "sitting around doing nothing makes me hungry." Antsy. Impatient. Reckless.
There were several beats of silence while she silently admitted that there were different kinds of hunger. And sitting here beside Kane Wright in the windswept darkness was awakening way too many of them. She thought about all the things they could be doing while they waited for the storm to blow over.
"What's wrong with your arm?"
AJ stared in the direction of his voice. She couldn't see him—he was just a deep voice in the dark. But she felt him looking at her. "Nothing." She shifted in her seat. "Jeez. You must have eyes like a cat."
"All the better to see you with, Annabelle. Arm?"
"My arm's fine. Just strained a bit from fighting the wind." AJ smiled into the darkness. "Annabelle?"
"Why not? AJ's gotta stand for something."
She turned in his general direction. "Want a mint?"
"Nuh-uh."
She dug a couple out of the tube, popped them into her mouth, and crunched down. "Do I look like an Annabelle to you?"
"No. You look like Angina to me, but you don't like that one, either. Give me the real deal, and I'll call you whatever you like."
"I like AJ." She yawned.
"Fine. Why don't you climb in back and get some rest? We're here for the duration, might as well make the best of it."
"What about you? There's room back there for both of us." The idea of stretching out, full-length and horizontal, in a small confined space with Kane Wright was probably not a good one. Not thinking about having sex with Kane was like trying to put a summoned genie back in his bottle.
Sex or no sex, it would be nice to have the human contact. The night outside sounded wild and untamed, and despite the heat, AJ shivered. "That's not an invitation for hanky-panky or anything," she pointed out into the yawning silence.
"No hanky-panky?"
"Not an invitation." Which were two completely different statements. AJ grabbed the flashlight from the console between them, then without turning the flash on climbed between the seats to get to the back cargo area. Wind and sand struck the vehicle, making it rock and shimmy. "Hell on the paint job." She intentionally switched the subject.
AJ moved Kane's camera equipment and various other boxes out of the way by feel, then stretched out on the carpeted floor with her head on her bent arm and closed her eyes.
It had been a long day. The adrenaline rush had come and dissipated, come again, then not been necessary once more, leaving her feeling agitated and cranky. She was tired, but too restless to sleep.
"You don't have claustrophobia, do you?" she asked Kane. It was close back here. Close, and hot and dark. She kinda liked it. Would like it more so if he were back here with her.
"No," he told her unequivocally. "We have plenty of water and enough food to last days. We'll be fine."
Days?
It was possible. Not likely, but certainly possible.
Days alone with Kane on a horizontal surface. With no interruptions… It boggled the mind. "Of course we'll be fine," AJ said cheerfully. "How much trouble can we get into with the wind blowing like there's no tomorrow?" She paused, and then said with a smile, "Unless it blows us way the hell and gone to Oz. Damn, where did I pack my ruby slippers?"
She wondered if he'd come back here and want to make love to her again. Slowly. Because this time they could take it slowly. Her breasts ached for his touch. "Anyone ever sweated to death?" she asked rather desperately. Lord, she'd had more sex in the past twenty-four hours than she'd had in the last year. How could she already want him again?
"Not that I'm aware of. Drink plenty of water."
She still had on a perfectly decent tank top, and under that an unadorned, unromantic, unsexy sports bra. Not that Kane Wright was going to see the bra—AJ bit off a smothered laugh and added a mental. Not in the dark, anyway.
He'd seen all there was to see already, anyway, and apparently was unimpressed.
"Sure." She pulled her T-shirt over her head. "I don't know about you, but I'm stripping down." Oh, Ka-aaaane.
"Go for it. It's going to be a long night."
A long, slow night, AJ hoped.
It wouldn't be because they were stopping their pursuit of Raazaq to indulge. So if they were here, anyway, why waste time? She grinned into the darkness and removed her bra.
The vehicle was large and spacious—still, it was close confines for two people who were already hot.
She stripped off her heavy boots and socks so she could be comfortable. "Do you know my brother?" She wiggled her toes. Thought about taking off her pants and undies for half a second—then removed those, too.
The carpet was scratchy against her bare skin, but just being naked, when Kane wasn't yet aware of it, turned her on even more.
"Only by reputation," he answered out of the darkness. "He's been undercover for three, four years, right? Are you guys close?"
AJ rolled onto her stomach and cupped her chin in her hands. The darkness alone made this conversation much more intimate than if they'd been having it in a well-lit room. Chances were, Kane wouldn't have a conversation like this with her in a well-lit room. Naked or not.
"Not as close as I'd like to have been." AJ raised her calves and crossed her ankles. "He's eight years older than I am, first of all. And our folks separated when I was barely five. I'd see him when I went to my father for weekends. The age difference and sporadic visits prevented us from getting too close. How about you? Are you close to your brother
s? You have three or four, right? I've heard their names bandied about at HQ."
"Three brothers, one older, one younger, and a sister, Marnie."
"That's two brothers."
"And my twin, Derek."
"A twin, huh? Are you identical or fraternal?"
"He's prettier."
"Is he, now. Are you all close?"
"Yeah. We are. Don't see each other as much as we'd like. Everyone is pretty much spread out. Marne and Jake live up in Northern California. They have a couple of great kids, and a pretty cool dog that rules the roost."
"Are all your brothers married, too?"
"Kyle and Michael are, Derek and I are the last holdouts."
"Five kids? Your mother must be a saint."
"She died when we were pretty small."
"That must have been tough."
"Yeah, it was. But our grandmother moved in with us, and we didn't lack for a female influence."
"And I had a little too much female influence," AJ said, shifting around to get more comfortable. "My mom was obsessed with me getting every title she could lay her hands on. She loved everything about the pageant business, just as passionately as I hated it."
"You won about every title there was, didn't you?"
"I won a few," AJ told him self-deprecatingly. She'd won more than a few. Every win was a feather in her mother's cap, and further humiliation for her. She'd hated parading around winning anything on her looks alone. It was as though she didn't exist. Just a face and a body.
"My mother loved, worshiped, pampered, and paid attention, to that… shell. Her daughter, the beauty queen. It got old after a while." The inner AJ, the soft, tender, hungry core other, had gone neglected and unnourished while her mother fed her own ego with her daughter's trophies. Until AJ had put her foot down and realized she hated what she was doing more than she loved her mother.
"You stopped short of your eighteenth birthday, right?" Kane asked.
Why don't you come back here and talk to me? "I dropped out just before the Miss America." The memory of that confrontation still gave AJ hives. "I went straight into college so I could eventually join the P.D. Once I'd ruined my mother's life I moved out and into a dorm."
"Quite a switch."
"Culture shock to the max." AJ smiled. "God, I loved it. Not college particularly, but oh, man, the second I stepped onto the shooting range at the Academy I felt at home.
"I didn't tell my family what I was doing until I passed the final exam at the Academy, and had finished my first week in the P.D."
"How'd your family take it?" Kane asked, his voice carrying clearly over the noise outside. Perfect pitch. Of course.
"My mother was predictably furious. Our relationship's been strained ever since. We try, but it was never about being mother and daughter, anyway. Our bond was the pageant crap. Once that was gone…" AJ shrugged in the darkness. "Gabriel and my father, on the other hand—Now, their reaction came as a shock. I thought they'd both be proud of me. Since Darrel was a retired Navy SEAL and Gabriel had just started with T-FLAC about the same time, I truly believed that if anyone would understand, they would. But instead they were both livid, and both of them tried to get me to quit."
"But you didn't."
"Nope." She'd been hurt that neither man in her life had bothered to look beneath the surface. "I guess people see what they want to see, huh?"
"Sometimes it's safer that way," Kane said flatly.
Wind sandpapered the Humvee, grains of sand stinging the steel body like thousands of tiny bullets, shaking the vehicle and its contents.
The intense darkness, like a thick, black, extremely noisy cocoon, sealed them off from the world. They were literally inside the island in the storm.
"Move over, I'm coming back there."
About time. AJ's heartbeat sped up as Kane moved into the back. When he settled with his back against the forward-facing seat, his knee brushed her arm. Kane stretched out his legs parallel to her prone body. The back area wasn't that big. She felt the heat of him all the way down her right side as he lowered himself to the floor beside her.
She braced her chin on her hand. The smell of him so close—sweat and Kane Wright—made her salivate. Clearly the man was catnip to her cat. How long before Mr. Perfect realized he was sitting next to a naked, available woman?
After several moments of silence, when Kane didn't fall on her ravenously, AJ sat up, reached out, and touched his face. "What's going on in that head of yours, Kane Wright, sir?" she asked softly.
He took her hand and kissed her palm. "I'm thinking, Anaglypta Joy, Why are we sitting here in the dark talking, when we have better ways to occupy our time?"
"And what was your answer?"
"This." He tugged her down until they were both sprawled flat on the floor. "Hey," he whispered against her mouth. "You lost your clothes. I'm shocked."
CHAPTER TWELVE
« ^ »
Ah, damn. He smelled so good. His body radiated heat, which seared her skin despite the layer of his clothing separating them. Sprawled half over him, AJ pressed closer, loving the sensation of the hard plane of his chest against her sensitized breasts. She rubbed against him like a cat, and lowered her head, already so aroused she could barely think. Openmouthed, she brushed his lips with hers. Fire erupted in her stomach and she tangled her fingers in the cool silk of his hair, holding him, even though he hadn't moved. She licked the Fort Knox of his lips. Hungry. Eager. Hot.
Unresponsive?
The man beneath her lay still, unmoving. She couldn't say totally unresponsive, since his erection was rock hard and ready, nudging her thigh, and she felt the thick, heavy throb of his heart beneath her right breast.
She kissed him again, and when he still didn't respond, lifted her head. The dark pressed down unrelentingly, and the wind howled a deep, mournful bass. "Kiss me back, damn it," she demanded.
"I don't play at this, AJ."
"Who's playing?" She grabbed fistfuls of his hair and kissed him again, sliding her tongue between his lips to sweep into the warm, wet cavern of his mouth. He opened for her. But that was it.
Every one of AJ's previous lovers—all three of them—had wanted it fast and often. While they'd been around. Kane was no different—as he'd proven already today. Five times in twenty minutes at the hotel.
Fine. She'd take it any way he wanted to give it to her. AJ tried to clear the sultry fog from her brain to figure out why this wasn't working. She didn't believe for a moment that these sensations were one-sided. She felt the tension in his body the entire length of her own—he practically emitted a crackly electrical current. Hell, no, this wasn't one-sided.
Was he changing the rules on her?
Perverse bastard.
His hard grip on her upper arms belied his calm tone and lack of… vigor. Other than his enormous erection, which moved and pulsed against her thigh, he was unnaturally still.
She huffed out a frustrated breath. "Damn it, Kane. I'm not asking you to take vows, here. I'm just asking for a little body heat. A little…"
"Distraction?" he suggested coolly.
"As I recall, you didn't mind being distracted in the elevator."
"That was different."
"Why, because you started it?"
His silence rang out loud and clear.
"What's wrong with this if we're both willing participants?" And my heart won't be in tatters when I'm no longer the right trophy for you. It won't hurt as badly when you walk away. She felt an annoying prick of tears. Why was she never enough?
"Not only is this ridiculously unprofessional while we're in the middle of an op," he told her, his voice gratifyingly ragged, "your brother would castrate me if he ever found out."
I'm sorry your heart's cracked, short stack. Not every guy out there is as superficial as that asshole. Trust me. There'll be a man one day who'll see beyond the packaging and know how beautiful you are on the inside, too.
When? she'd cried. When will a man
look beyond this damn face and see that I'm a real woman, and not his playboy fantasy come to life? Love sucks! I'm not falling in love ever, ever, ever again. I don't need or want a man to validate who I am.
Memories. Crowding in, tugging at the raveled edges of her mind, and damn it, making her doubt herself. Not now, she cried. Not now when my body is humming, and the man driving me to distraction is just an erection away.
Nothing wrong with two consenting adults having sex, was there? A biological urge that had nothing to do with emotion. Good old-fashioned lust. There was a lot to be said for simplicity, damn it. If Kane would just let himself go. For heaven's sake, the first time ever she made the pass, and the guy had to go all noble on her.
Fortunately it was dark enough so that she didn't have to see his mocking gaze as he rebuffed her. "Believe it or not, Boy Scout, my brother doesn't run my sex life." She paused to press her fist to her chest, where a familiar ache was spreading. Damn it. Damn it. "Why the sudden change of heart, Wright?" she asked thickly. "Did you just want to see if I'd let you do me? Was I just a couple of notches on your belt?"
"That's no—"
"No? Then please explain your reticence to me. What's going on? First you can't get enough of me. Now you don't want me anywhere near you. Which is it?"
"I made a fucking mistake," he said through gritted teeth.
A bitter laugh welled up in her throat. "Oh, yeah. You made that fucking mistake more than once. You're going to hell anyway, why not go for one more?"
"We don't have to compound the mistake."
"God," AJ said, not bothering to keep the anger out of her voice. "That just makes a girl feel warm all over, knowing she's a mistake."
"I don't want the responsibilit—"
"Good!" AJ swung around to stare in his general direction. "Because I don't want to be anybody's responsibility. So we're even."
"No, damn it. That's not what I—God damn it, woman!"
"Do you find me attractive?"
"Christ, Cooper—"
"Do you?"
"Yes," he shouted. "God damn you, yes!"
She reached between their bodies and stroked the hard, rigid length of him. He hissed in a breath.