by Bruhns, Nina
“One.”
IT was pretty clear to Gina that Gregg van Halen really liked tying her up. He enjoyed having that edge of power over her and was especially turned on when she walked a mental tightrope of uncertainty—would he go too far? Would he let her go if she asked? Would he ever actually hurt her . . . ? He was so big . . . so strong . . . so comfortable with his own barely leashed violence. She had to wonder if she was truly safe.
Especially when she was naked and spread-eagled, blindfolded, and tied wrist and ankle to the sturdy black ironwork of his specially designed bed.
She couldn’t believe she had consented to this.
She tested the strength of the velvet ropes binding her. She wasn’t getting away unless he let her go. Her heart pounded like mad.
“Comfortable?” he softly asked, the huskiness of excitement in his voice subtle, but definitely there.
“Gregg, you’re scaring me,” she admitted.
“Kinda the idea,” he murmured. “Being afraid arouses you.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
His deep chuckle told her he knew better. “You’ve been wet since the first time you saw me, babe. Because I scare the living crap out of you.”
The bed dipped and she turned toward the movement, listening carefully, trying to figure out what he was planning. She pulled harder at her bonds, wishing belatedly she had said no to the blindfold. “You’re a sexy man, Gregg. I’m attracted to sexy men. Not scary men.”
A stream of warm breath spilled down her body, leaving a shivering trail of goose bumps in its wake. Her back bowed up. Something made of soft, buttery leather touched between her breasts.
A needy, desperate sound vibrated in her throat. “What are you going to do to me?” she asked, barely able to get the words past her sudden shaking.
“Sweet thing,” he whispered, a barely there rumble in her ear. “I’m gonna do anything and everything I want.”
RAINIE was obviously one unhappy camper.
Well, too bad. There was no fucking way Kick was going to bring her along on this recon expedition.
Period. Done. Finito.
To her credit she didn’t yell, or break down and beg. She just watched him with those big unhappy eyes in her how-can-you-do-this-to-me-after-all-we’ve-gone-through-together? face. Which was bad enough.
Well, guess what? One thing he didn’t want to go through together was dying. At least not yet. Maybe in sixty or seventy years, in a big fluffy bed, in their sleep.
Yeah, dream on, buddy.
Well, she could dream on about coming with him now. He could very well be walking into an even bigger trap than in A-stan, if Nathan Daneby had warned the tangos they were coming. Kick was stressed out enough about this little foray without having to worry about Rainie tied to some post—No, not going there.
“You remember what to do, right?” he quizzed her.
“Same as the last twenty times you asked,” she answered testily.
“Tell me again,” he ordered, double-checking the SIG and tucking it back into its ankle holster.
She crossed her arms and recited impatiently, “If you’re not back by midnight, I’m to pack up and get as far away from here as fast as I can. Back to the Bedouin.”
He swung the H&K sniper around from his back and checked that, too. “And?”
“If a patrol comes by, I’m to hide, then pack up and get as far away from here as fast as I can. Back to the Bedouin.”
He did not want to think about patrols finding her.
He swung the rifle back, then touched the KA-BAR Mule folding knife strapped to his wrist, the water bottle and ammo clips in his DCU pockets, and the compass around his neck. He was leaving the NVGs with Rainie, and the GPS. Just in case. “And?”
She rolled her eyes. “And under no circumstances do I go back to the DFP camp. But Kick,” she protested, breaking out of their well-worn script, “I still don’t believe Nate would—”
“Which is exactly what he’d want you to believe,” Kick interrupted, “if he’s guilty.” Hell, he didn’t want to believe his friend was a traitor either, but until someone came up with an alternate explanation, that’s the theory he was going with. “And . . . ?”
She jetted out a curse, then, “And I find the Bedouins, who’ll help me over the border to Egypt. Though why I’d need their help to get to the goddamn border if I can manage to find them in the first place, I’ll never—”
“I told you. They’ll keep you safe. You need someone trustworthy to smuggle you over into Egypt. There are all sorts of—”
“Whatever. Kick, please—”
Okay, scratch that about not begging. He gave her a look. She shut her mouth and didn’t say another thing. Right. All set. Time to go. He felt the full measure of her discontent as he gazed at her, for maybe the last time ever. The silence stretched.
Ah, well. Had he really expected a repeat of her unexpected and emotional declaration of love? Tcha. Not after he’d rejected her so soundly the first time, he didn’t.
But damn, how he longed to hear those words again. Just once, before he—
Fuck it.
He wrapped his hand around her jaw and kissed her whether she wanted him to or not. But with a soft noise, she melted into his embrace, clinging to him like a burr. Thank God.
“Please be careful,” she pleaded when he finally lifted his lips from hers. So maybe he could get used to the begging thing. The look of naked worry in her eyes was almost as good as her declaration. Almost.
He nearly broke down and made one of his own. Telling her how much he loved her, and how he wished to God that—
Yeah, nearly.
But instead, he said, “I’ll be back in a few hours. I promise.”
As he strode off toward the setting sun, all he could do was hope like hell that was one promise he’d be able to keep.
KICK fully expected to be attacked any second by a swarm of angry fanatics out for his blood.
His heart was pounding like an M-3 the whole time he belly-crawled across the open desert surrounding the training camp, keeping to the shallow dry creek beds and using the ever-lengthening sunset shadows as cover.
He had to get close enough to see the details he’d need to know to complete his mission. Like how many tangos were being trained. How many were in charge. Where they slept. Where they ate. Defenses. Weapons. Transpo. Etc. But not get close enough to be spotted by one of the two dozen or so scruffy men wandering around the conglomeration of mud-walled, tin-roofed Quonset huts. The tangos were all armed to the teeth. Naturally. What terrorist-in-training worth his salt didn’t walk around in gazillion-degree heat draped with an assortment of MP-5s, Remingtons, and AK-47s as fashion accessories?
However, to Kick’s immense relief, not one of them paid the slightest bit of attention to anything outside the camp perimeter. Which was not fenced. Or even guarded.
Un-fucking-believable. Either these bozos really sucked at security, or no one had warned them he might be showing up. Hopefully both.
Thank you, Lord. He might actually survive this gig.
With palpable relief, he shook off the sweat and the roiling tension that had been cramping his muscles ever since leaving Rainie, and pulled out his binoculars.
He lifted them to his eyes. And that’s when he saw it.
What the fuck! He almost dropped the nocs in shock.
A Westerner. Limping badly and obviously hurt. Unkempt, dressed in rags, beaten black-and-blue, and thin as a rail, the man was being mercilessly pushed through the camp with a gun to his back.
Holy shit.
The fuckers had a prisoner.
Shit, shit, fucking shit.
Kick’s stomach zinged in dismay.
And just that fast, everything changed.
TWENTY-ONE
A hostage?
Goddamn it. Kick drilled his hands in his hair and pulled it back so hard it hurt. So what the hell did he do now?
When the poor fuck was shoved uncere
moniously into one of the smaller, more squalid huts—not that there was a huge difference between squalid and merely disgusting—Kick lowered his field glasses, rolled onto his back in the shelter of a low dry creek bed, and stared up at the darkening sky. He was trembling all over. And not from drug withdrawal.
Hell.
That guy was one of ours. Under all that filthy blond hair and beard, his features were unmistakably Northern European. Odds were, American.
God only knew how long the poor slob had been held and tortured in this pile of shit camp. Kick dredged his memory for any hint of a newspaper story or CNN report of a Western soldier or businessman or diplomat having disappeared in the region. There’d been several abductions over the past five or so years in the Sudan, but the victims were all accounted for. Rescued or dead. Gruesomely executed or scooped from the jaws. He knew for a fact that STORM had been involved in at least one of those invisible rescues.
Jesus H. Christ.
He wiped his hands down his face. Okay. Okay. So. Stick to the plan for now. Watch the tangos for a few hours to see if anything noteworthy happened, keep his eyes peeled for the head motherfucker himself, then get the hell back to Rainie. Call STORM. Figure out how to extract that prisoner without compromising the mission. Because one thing was for damn certain, he was not going to call in an air strike until the guy was safely out of there.
Daaamn.
And he’d thought it was going to be tough to escape this clusterfuck in one piece with Rainie in tow. Now he had a goddamn crippled POW to contend with.
Things just got better and better.
“SO basically, what you’re saying is, we’re screwed.”
Kick nodded wearily. He’d wracked his brain, but he simply hadn’t been able to come up with an easy out, or even one with a fifty-fifty chance of success. “That about sums it up.”
Rainie bit her lip. “That poor man. What he must have gone through.”
Kick had just pretty much outlined a death sentence for at least two of the three of them. Leave it to her to be concerned about the wounded prisoner and not herself.
“Poor all of us,” he corrected. “If I take out abu Bakr, the hostage will be executed instantly. If we go in and liberate him, abu Bakr will be gone so fast we saw his dust yesterday, and his buddies will be on us like F.O.S. We can’t lift the prisoner without alerting the whole camp to an attack. STORM can’t air strike without killing the hostage. Any which way, someone dies. Probably us.”
“F.O.S.?”
He grimaced. “Flies on shit.”
She grimaced back. “Charming. So what are we going to do about it?” Her eyes filled with angry determination.
Hell. Once she’d gotten past that whole terrified-of-life thing, she’d turned into some kind of big-time, kick-ass ninja-wannabe.
He held up his hands. “Whoa, there, sweetheart. There’s no ‘we’ involved here. You can help me brainstorm ideas, sure, but that’s it.”
“But I—”
“Nonnegotiable.” He gave her a smile to soften his uncompromising edict. “Unless it involves sex.”
“You are so not funny.”
“Hell, I’m serious. If I’m going to die in the next twenty-four hours, I’d—” She gave him a withering look. “Okay, fine. Ideas?”
As she pondered, she took the bottle of tea he was holding and sipped. The Bedouin had thrown in a small packet of China oolong along with the camels and waterskins, and Rainie had made sun tea in one of the plastic water bottles she’d saved, hanging it from her saddle. The brew was tepid, with a slight note of eau de goat, and they had to strain the leaves out through their teeth, but all things considered it tasted damn good.
She passed the bottle back to him. “All right. Let’s take a page from their own book. Create a diversion. Were there any explosives in that field pack?”
The first thing he’d thought of, too. “Yeah, but what do we blow up? And how do they not think it’s an attack on the camp so they don’t kill the prisoner?”
Her lips turned down. “True. Okay, how about we stampede the camels through the camp and create a panic.”
“With two camels?”
“Well, I’d be panicked.”
He couldn’t help chuckling. “Yeeeah.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Okay. So, we, um . . . We take one of them hostage and make a trade.” She glanced at him hopefully.
The moon had risen, painting a silvery glow over the brown of the desert, and reflected bright twin crescents in her eyes. She was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her.
“Uh-huh,” he said, swallowing away the pain of knowing she would never be his. “I was thinking along those same lines.” Sort of.
She perked up. “Really? So who do we snatch? And how do we—”
“I was thinking more of using me as a hostage. Trade myself for the prisoner.” Well actually, more like turn himself into a prisoner. Your basic Trojan Horse bang-and-grab scenario. The only thing he could think of that had a prayer of succeeding. Maybe not exactly fifty-fifty odds, but definitely in the double digits. Possibly. If things went down perfectly.
She blinked, surprised. Clearly undecided as to whether or not he was serious. She nibbled her lip. “Okay,” she said, “that sex thing is sounding pretty good about now. You’re obviously delusional and need a break from the strain.”
She did not, however, start taking off her clothes.
“Look—”
“Are you insane?” she demanded, cutting off the explanation—okay, rationalization—he was formulating. “There is no flipping way you are doing that.”
“Rainie—”
“No.”
“Just hear me—”
“No!” She jumped to her feet and started to pace across the wadi. “How can you even think—”
“Get the hell down!” He grabbed her arm and yanked her onto her butt.
“Oof.”
“Goddamn it, for any of this to work, you, at least, need to stay alive.”
“No one’s out there patrolling. You said we’re too far awa—”
“I don’t care what I said. You are not to take chances with your safety!”
“Oh, oh, but it’s okay for you to just walk into that nest of terrorists with your hands on your head and expect me to—”
“Damn it, Rainie, we don’t have a choice here! Besides—”
“There’s always a goddamn choice!” Her eyes were shooting flames now, and her fingers held onto his arms so hard it would take the jaws of life to pry them off.
Hello? Who are you and what have you done with the timorous Miss Martin?
This woman was a warrior.
A strong, sexy, amazing, confident warrior queen.
God, if she turned him on before, this version of Rainie made him want to get down on his knees and howl like a caveman.
Daaamn.
He slid his hand behind her neck and pulled her to him. Before either of them knew what he was doing, he’d covered her mouth with his and rolled her under him. In a motion he had her Bedouin robe over her head and—there was a God—she hadn’t put her clothes back on after last time they made love. She was soft and lush and desperately welcoming, and completely, soul-permeatingly naked.
This time the buttons on his DCUs didn’t give her warrior fingers the least bit of trouble. They were down around his ankles in record time.
And then he was inside her.
Oh. My. Sweet. Lord. This was where he wanted to be. Forever and always. Not tortured and dead in some—
Not going there. Not now.
He kissed her and kissed her, thrusting his cock in so deep he was momentarily afraid he’d hurt her. But she just moaned low and wrapped her legs even tighter around his waist. “Oh, Kick.”
It sounded so sweet on her lips. But suddenly he needed more. “My real name’s Kyle,” he told her, almost hesitantly.
She looked up at him, her face a portrait of exquisite pleasure. She smiled.
/> “Kyle,” she whispered into his mouth, and for a second he couldn’t move, hung in suspended animation. No one had ever called him by his real name before while making love. It felt . . .
He broke through his emotional paralysis, pulled out of her and thrust back in. “Say it again,” he wanted.
Wanted to test it. Roll it around on his senses. The sound of his real name wrapped in a moan of need. Test the way it made him feel. The unbelievable reality of someone truly wanting Kyle Jackson, of someone calling it out loud, not with hate or disgust, but with love.
“Kyle,” she breathed, that love so obvious in her beautiful green eyes that it almost made him believe in miracles. Except if this truly were a miracle, he wouldn’t have to go out there tomorrow and sacrifice his life for a man he didn’t even know.
Or maybe . . . Maybe this was the punishment and penance demanded of Kick to redeem all the bad he had done in his lifetime. Maybe if he did this one noble, unthinkable deed, sacrificed the only good thing that had ever come to him, gave up the only woman he’d ever loved, maybe then his sins would truly be forgiven.
“I love you, Kyle,” she whispered.
And his heart bled.
I love you, too, Lorraine Martin, he wanted to say to her. Over and over. But didn’t dare. Instead, he bit his tongue and held her tight, tight, tight. Wishing he didn’t know for certain what he must do. Tonight. Before she woke up and stopped him. More than you’ll ever know.
KICK moved.
Rainie awoke abruptly. One nanosecond she was asleep, dreaming of making sweet, wonderful love to Kick—Kyle—and the next nanosecond she was awake, filled with the certain knowledge that he was slowly, gingerly, trying to extricate his protective arm from around her body.
Goddamn it.
He was actually planning to do it. To go to the insurgent camp to exchange himself for that damn prisoner he’d probably hallucinated to begin with. Honest to God, what did he think those terrorists would do when he showed up and asked them to let their prisoner go and he’d take his place?