They were completely alone.
He moved like he didn’t care she was trailing behind him, shaking from the cold and the fear and whatever it was that he did to her.
“Was that an act?” She coughed as she caught up to his marching strides.
“Here we go with the questions.” He looked forward with a stone-cold face as if she weren’t in step beside him. “You don’t get to ask me questions anymore. You’ve lost that privilege.”
Lost the privilege? How could he close her out like that? Cold energy took hold in her chest like a sickness, and she fought to grasp her breath. Pain shot up and down her throat as she realized what it was like to lose something… someone.
“Ryder… are you drunk?” She said, trying to understand.
“Stop,” he grunted, unable to offer her more than one-word answers, marching forward like she didn’t exist.
Like they didn’t exist.
Olivia took two big steps in front of him and planted herself in his path, hands on her hips. The dark mass of his body was forced to stop, and they stood face-to-face in the night’s darkness with nothing but a constellation overhead to light their way.
She pointed at his chest. “What’s your fucking problem?” Her voice carried tangible frustration, but the tone wasn’t loud enough to disturb the night. Olivia knew better than to risk being overheard.
“I don’t have time for this.” He stood firm, unwilling to give anything up.
“Why are you so angry?”
“Do I sound angry? You sound angry.” Which was true.
“I’m a professional, remember. You are fucking angry. It’s as clear as day,” she said, her tone sounding more accusatory than she’d like. “What’s happening here?” She pointed at his chest again when he didn’t answer. “You’d better talk to me.”
“Or what? Or the deal is off?” he retorted. “You’ve already made that decision.”
“How am I supposed to exclusively interview you if you won’t even talk to me?”
He crossed his arms and brushed away her aggressive, pointed finger like it was a gentle butterfly. “I’m not interested in this on again, off again bullshit. Either you put your trust in me, or you don’t. Make a fucking choice.” Ryder’s tone got real, and she recognized that he was laying it all on the line. “Are you fucking in, or are you out?”
And there it was—the man’s need for trust in its purest form.
“Ryder, I always—”
“Talk is cheap. Save it.”
Her lips snapped together, and her eyes assessed the brooding operator before her. In such a short time, she’d learnt a great deal. He wasn’t going to confide in just anyone. He needed to know she was there for it. That she was loyal.
“Then how am I supposed to answer your question?” she asked. But his actions were beginning to make sense to her: he wanted to see how far he could push her, of course. What would it take to break her? What would it take to turn her away? She was the only candidate in her own selection process, and she hadn’t even realized it.
“Show, don’t tell,” he stated simply, putting the ball in her court. “Show me you are on my side. Show me you can handle this.” He opened his arms with those final words, motioning to his rock-hard body. Olivia couldn’t withhold a sound of realization as her lips parted, and her opponent watched with great interest.
“How am I supposed to show you…?” The question lingered as their eyes connected, neither willing to look away.
She wanted to rattle him to death and then kiss him back to life. Because it was all or nothing with Ryder, and he came with a price—and a clear condition.
But before she could ask any more questions, gunshots and an explosion went off somewhere on the horizon.
“Holy shit.” The sound made her fumble, wiping everything but survival from her mind.
Bombs and gunfire exploded over the pitch-black horizon, and she had no idea how close they. But they felt too damn close.
She stumbled forward. Ryder immediately stabilized her, his big hands holding her on either side of her arms.
“It’s okay,” he assured her, firm and strong. “It’s okay.”
His touch drove goosebumps up her spine. It was electric. She exhaled, allowing herself to sink into his protection, and flinched at the violent noises.
The dark man guided her chin to look at him. She felt some of tension release. Just some.
“I told you to trust me,” he said in a quieter tone. “Can you do that?”
His firm hold on her arms and chin were startling. She slowly forgot about the war sounds and thought only of his strong jaw and wide mouth, which had softened as he squared his body against hers. Staring back at him, mesmerized, she forgot to nod.
Don’t fucking fraternize…
“Can you be nicer?” she asked. “It would make it much easier to work together.”
For the first time, she saw a flash of softness in his eyes. Regret. Empathy. Understanding. His reaction reinforced Olivia’s instinct: that he was the key. To do the job right, she needed him. By any means necessary.
“Is this nice enough for you?” he murmured, and she swore to god his mouth moved a few inches closer to hers. The sounds ended, and the night was quiet again. He held her close, not releasing her, and though she wasn’t scared any longer, it felt like he had drawn her in even closer.
All she could do to prevent the kiss she so desperately wanted was to do what she did best—ask more questions. “Can we go back to the deal?”
But he didn’t respond. His mouth hovered over hers, threatening to kiss her at any second. Goddamn, she wanted it. Desperately.
“We’ll see.” He released her quickly and took a step back before walking away. He shook his head as he walked, and she shivered in the dark, exasperated. She’d never worked so hard for an interview in her life.
“This is horseshit,” she called after him, feeling just as frustrated sexually as she was professionally.
Despite her profanities, he didn’t flinch, walking further and further away from her. If that wasn’t a metaphor, she didn’t know what was. In retribution, she wanted to take a different route, just to show him she could. But she didn’t. She’d learned her lesson. So she followed behind, stewing in silence. Where was her self-respect? She wasn’t that type of woman. It was incredible that he assumed she’d just follow him.
“You expect me to blindly trust you, but do I have your trust? Do you believe in me and what I’m doing here?” she grumbled absently as they approached her bunk, not sure if he was even listening to her anymore.
Coolly, he pivoted toward her in the dark, and in his usual Ryder way, he refused to answer her questions head on. “Situational Normal: All Fucked Up,” he said, staring down at her. “SNAFU.”
Olivia looked up at him and cocked her head. “How ironic. All Fucked Up.” She laughed dryly—she couldn’t have described their predicament any better. “Goodnight, Ryder.” Narrowing her eyes at him as she walked past, she forced herself not to stand in front of him until he kissed her.
As he remained silent, watching her, she found her way up to her bunk and into her safe haven away from him. All she could think about was the cards she held, and how the hell she was supposed to play them. There was something so distinctly unprofessional about her dynamic with Ryder. With him, she was the opposite of unattached and unemotional—she was red-hot, fiery, uncontrollable.
Aroused. Determined. Hungry.
And she had to fucking cut that out—because the question of trust had a lot to do with the energy that flowed, uninhibited, like water between them. And how the hell was she supposed to move water when it was already flowing in the direction it wanted to go?
14
Ryder sank back into the abyss of the night as he watched Olivia code into the female bunk. He didn’t quite catch the whole code, but it wouldn’t be hard to crack. It amazed him that he was even thinking about it. Once she was safely in, it would have been a good time
to turn around, go back to his bed, and sleep off all the booze rolling around his gut.
But he wasn’t ready. He could hear drunken guys left and right. Occasional arguments. Distant fighting. So the master chief dug in his heels and leaned back against the shadowy gunmetal siding of the nearest building. He needed to keep watch.
He was damn invested in Olivia. He felt an overpowering need to protect her from every terrible thing in his world.
Is it… personal?
As the question lingered, he pushed off the wall in a fury. For fuck’s sake. Of course he had to protect her. He had to protect everyone. It wasn’t personal. With one last look at her bunk, he ripped himself away, forcing himself down the packed dirt pathway on his way to his own bunk.
There were things he couldn’t ignore anymore—the evidence was mounting. He didn’t want to admit how his blood boiled, watching her laugh, flirt, and smile at the table of guys she sat with at the mess.
Am I jealous?
Ryder could barely ask himself the question. He didn’t want to. It was a weakness. She was becoming his weakness.
Emotions were weakness, and goddamn, he sought to excise them.
But, fucking hell, when he’d seen her jogging through the base with all the guys watching her—checking out her ass as it bounced in those tight athletic crops—he’d almost snapped and killed everyone. Maybe he’d always known, from the moment he met her at the airport, that he wasn’t going to like seeing her on base with all of his men. They were idiots, half of them immature bros, and she was an incredible woman. She was more educated, successful, talented, and intelligent than he’d ever be. She was a gem, and it burned him to see her mixing with the enlisted.
Ryder turned a corner in the obsidian night and nearly slammed into someone else creeping in the dark.
“What the fuck?” he snapped, immediately pushing back, violent and angry and more physically frustrated than he’d ever been.
And that was saying something.
Senior Chief Liam Blackshot bounced backward, and his surprised face could just barely be discerned in the dim moonlight.
“Christ.” Blackshot blinked and breathed quickly. “Ryder.”
“What the fuck are you doing, prowling around here?” Ryder demanded suspiciously, standing a few feet away from the lighter-haired but equally tall and built SEAL.
“Prepping for tomorrow.” Blackshot nodded too fast, his eyes more bloodshot than before. The signs of drug abuse continued to scream at Ryder, who was determined not to let it poison the once-good SEAL any longer.
“You need to stop.” Ryder stepped toward his subordinate with a warning tone in his voice. “I know what you are doing.”
Blackshot blinked at him rapidly, seemingly lost for words. “I can’t,” he finally ground out.
Exchanging menacing glares, the air hung thick between the estranged men, who’d once been so close. Brothers in combat. It seemed like a distant memory. Another time. Another world.
“Do me a solid, Liam.” Ryder stepped toward the operator. “Tomorrow, I want you to follow my words. My lead. Not Fuller’s. He’s only going to keep making things worse for you. Stop making this harder on yourself.”
“You of all people know war is bloody, dirty, messy,” Blackshot snapped back. “I’m doing what I have to do.”
“But there are rules,” Ryder cut in, staring down the man in front of him. “What you’ve done—what we’ve done—breaks those rules. We aren’t fucking barbarians.”
“This is war, man. Our job is to fucking kill people. What the hell is the difference between a lawful execution and an unlawful one?” Blackshot used air quotes. “Don’t fucking lawyer me.”
“You know as well as I do that at the end of the day, it’s how HQ sees it. It’s how the politicians see it,” Ryder snapped. “How are you going to justify the need to execute detainees?”
Blackshot stepped forward then, his voice fraught. “And you know as well as I do the punishment for insubordination. We had orders—and you followed them, too.”
“I did what I had to do to protect my men. I live with that every day,” Ryder retorted. “But I’d do it all again if it meant protecting them from the likes of him.” He nodded in the general direction of the command building. The senior chief trembled for a moment before catching himself.
“You didn’t protect me!” Blackshot chewed him out. “Where were you when he sank his teeth into me? Fuck, man.”
“We need to stop him,” Ryder ordered. “Now. I’m ordering you.”
The man coughed and spun to leave. “It’s too late now. String me up if you want. With what I know, he’s going to kill me one way or another.”
Ryder reached out to grab him, but the twitchy, desperate Blackshot instinctively swung back at Ryder’s face, grazing his cheek as Ryder moved aside just in time.
“Fuck!” He growled and pushed Blackshot hard until he stumbled a few yards away.
Standing up once more, the two men stood a chasm apart—farther than they’d ever been. By then, it really was too late. Blackshot was far, far gone, and Ryder didn’t doubt he would follow the commander to the end, though he couldn’t understand why.
What did the snake have on him?
As his senior chief sneered and then disappeared into the night, Ryder knew he had to do everything he could to prevent what happened to Blackshot from happening to the next well-meaning SEAL who got caught up in a game of fast and loose. He had to dig deep and disrupt the commander. He had to lay bare his own guilt before Olivia. He had to trust and believe in her to make waves. And he was going to have to break a lot more rules, throwing himself right into the line of fire for court martial and dishonorable discharge.
But in his wildest dreams, Ryder had never thought that the one crime he’d want to commit the most was the one he had no honorable justification for: fraternization.
15
The blistering midday sun of the Sahel threatened to burn the two occupants of the black pickup truck that hurtled down the dusty dirt road heading even further north in Mali. The rocky sand that was the typical ground cover in the region came up in plumes as Ryder and his driver sped over it.
Riding shotgun, the master chief held onto the metal beam on the side of the beat-up, piece-of-shit truck. That was the aesthetic they were going for: as discreet and local as possible. In reality, the truck was as jacked up as it could get, full of fun mil-grade toys.
“Remind me why the fuck we are doing this in broad daylight?” Ryder growled into the mic connected to his earpiece, adjusting the kaffiyeh over his face as he inhaled pounds of powder-fine dust.
“Fuck, man. You tell me.” John, his driver, laughed into the mic hooked on his vest, allowing the two men to converse over the roar of the truck’s engine and the whipping wind. “You are the fucking boss here.”
Ryder released his hand from the trigger of his assault rifle just for a moment to adjust his own mic. The goddamn thing was always misfiring on that deployment. He needed better kit.
“This isn’t my op,” Ryder said into his mic, returning his hands to ready position and scanning a village on the horizon. “Fuller insisted we’ve got to off this target today because it’s our only chance down the garden path to their leader.”
“If it makes sense to you. Way above my pay level.” John took the truck into overdrive, heading quickly into the populated area. “Let’s get this fucking done.”
“Hooyah.” Ryder nodded, but struggled to find the one-hundred-percent focus that he usually had on lock.
The truck shook side to side, up and down, as they made their way over uneven dirt terrain. They were due to meet up with Blackshot’s team of SEALs at the waypoint on the other side of the town. As master chief, Ryder had to show up and support different ops when things were going sideways. And it didn’t surprise him one bit that Blackshot’s op was going to shit and enemy combatants were threatening direct action. They were quickly looking down the throat of an ambush.
What the hell has the snake led us into?
As their truck hammered through the outskirts of the sparsely populated town, they passed enough broken-down stone buildings and compounds to make Ryder uneasy. Lots of hiding spots, and they had no fucking backup. They were the fucking backup.
As his eyes scanned left to right, that pure SEAL focus was compromised, and Ryder felt the risk creeping up his throat. He didn’t like it when his focus slipped. Sure, it was hot as sin today, and Ryder felt like he was melting beneath several layers of tactical garb and body armor. But he’d been deployed to the Sahel so many fucking times that he couldn’t blame his mental state on that.
It was how he felt inside.
He’d woken up that morning without emotion. Numb. Because before he’d fallen asleep, he’d lain on his bed, stared at the gray celling, and made a pact with himself. Olivia. Talking to her didn’t seem so cut-and-dried anymore, not after seeing the emotion she inspired in him. The emotion that he inspired in her, too. He didn’t need added complexities in an already complex situation—and breaking a rule threatened her credibility as well as his.
Ryder knew the ugly truth. He had to shut her out emotionally. It was the only way. A crush was stupid. Sex was stupid. He needed to focus. He had a commander to disrupt and a mission to run. He had to focus on keeping his men alive, and keeping himself alive in order to protect them. On operation, if any part of his mind got distracted by what she inspired in him, he’d be dead.
A case in point: “We’ve got company.” John spoke quickly into the mic, barely audible over the engine even through the earpiece.
“Shit,” Ryder replied, only then observing the faded and beat-up red truck full of men carrying guns. It moved quickly out of a war-torn compound to the left and came up from behind them.
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