“Wes’s contact says they’re loading up cargo planes tomorrow with enough heroin to fill at least six pallets,” Sam confided. “If Nazar is going to be there to watch the loading—”
“Beats the shit out of trying to hit the compound,” Carey agreed. “I’d hit Nazar on the road. If anyone can roll him, Simon can.”
“But if I can get Nazar while he’s with the cargo planes, I can destroy that payload too,” Sam pointed out. “Think of the lives we could potentially be saving.”
“Smack heads will always find a source, Sammy,” Carey frowned, shaking his head. “Don’t try to play hero. Just get Nazar taken care of and get the fuck out of Afghanistan. I don’t want you over there any longer than you need to be.”
“Me neither,” she agreed. “How’s your chest healing?” she asked when she noticed him rubbing at the bandage peeping out from under his work shirt.
Carey shrugged, dropping his hand. “Right as rain, Sammy. Hell, I’d be joining you if all hell wasn’t breaking loose over here—”
Sam tilted her head quizzically. “What hell? What’s going on?”
Carey shot her a surprised look. “You really did end things with Jack, didn’t you?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she replied, defensive.
“Sammy, he hasn’t spoken to you at all?”
“He’s called, but…” she let her voice trail off as she glanced at her phone, guilt washing over her. She hadn’t answered any of his calls or texts since she’d left Chicago, the open wound of their relationship still too fresh.
“Baby girl, you gotta answer him. I don’t know if he’s gone off the deep end or made the most brilliant move ever, but it’s all over the papers.” Off camera, Carey shuffled around for something before he finally lifted up a copy of The Wall Street Journal. “He bought out Leviathan for you.”
“What?” she asked sharply, reading the headline: “Billionaire, Jack Roman, Buys Out Security Giant Leviathan in a Bold Move.” Sam clutched the screen of her laptop. “Are you shitting me?”
Carey pulled the paper back, dropping it back on the desk. “I couldn’t get a hold of Jack to verify the article. So I called Jaime to check in. He confirmed it. Apparently, Jack’s on his way to London to seal the deal. Jaime said if Jack couldn’t help you in Afghanistan, he was going to find another way to make sure Lightner couldn’t threaten you again.”
“Jesus Christ,” Sam breathed, shocked. “He’s lost his ever-lovin’ mind.”
“Over you, baby girl,” Carey chuckled. “You may have tried to finish things in Chicago, but it ain’t over for him. Not by a long shot.”
Christ, between Wes showing up in Afghanistan and Jack buying out Leviathan, she was beginning to think she’d inadvertently driven both men to the brink of insanity.
“Bear, I gotta go.”
“Alright,” he nodded. “Check in again tomorrow?”
“Unless I’m busy taking out Nazar,” she replied.
Carey smiled at her. “Well, that’s a good a reason as any, I suppose. Stay safe, Sammy girl.”
“Will do, Bear. Kiss your mama for me.”
“I will,” he smiled. “I’ll tell Dad you’re givin’ ’em hell over there too.”
Sam signed off with a grin, closing the cover of her laptop as she mulled over the news of Jack buying out Lightner’s company from under him. If there was something she’d done consistently with Jack, it was underestimate him. She knew she’d cut him to the quick in Chicago when he’d laid everything on the line for her. The very last thing she expected him to do was keep a dog in this fight.
The same was true of Wes. The man who’d given her every reason not to trust him had shown up right where she hadn’t expected him. Sam still couldn’t believe he’d appeared out of thin air and with so much viable intelligence. They’d stayed up all night with the team, going through all the details, talking through various scenarios, verifying what they could against Winch’s intel. Sam’d seen the results of his investigative journalism, knew Wes did an excellent job getting to the heart of a story, but she had a whole new level of appreciation for his commitment, his ability to land in a foreign country and get straight to the nitty-gritty.
Sam wasn’t kidding herself though. Wes was killing two birds with one stone: garnering her gratitude and playing on her affection while covering what could potentially be one of the biggest stories of the year. She could so easily see Wes writing up the headlines, something to the tune of, “Opiate Kingpin Assassinated in a Raid.”
“What the hell are you two thinking?” she muttered to herself, both frustrated and admiring of Wes and Jack’s bold moves to assist her, each in their own unique ways.
Sam stood and paced her room.
This didn’t change anything with either of them though. At the end of the day, her chances of success with this mission weren’t as high as she’d like, even with Davis’s help. And even if she did make it out of this, what would she do? Go back to Chicago to play house with Jack, the divide between the woman he thought he loved and the woman she actually was widening like a chasm of silent omissions and half-truths between them?
Would she return to Texas to live out a fantasy with Wes? As if he’d ever be happy running a simple agency out of Austin when he was so used to being at the front lines, just like her. Sam shook her head. Wes—God love that crazy bastard—he’d showed up where and when she least expected him, just to prove a point, just to make sure she knew he planned to stick around this time. It was insane how seeing him last night in the moonlit garden nearly made her heart stop. When he’d wrapped his arms around her in that moment, the years had peeled away, and she was just a girl again for a fraction of a second. It scared her how good that felt even after everything that had happened between them. Sam thought about that night with him in Austin, tucked under his sheets, pretending for a while that everything was alright between them; that they’d somehow truly made it into the parallel universe he told her about.
A soft knock sounded at her door, interrupting her reverie.
“Who is it?” she called out, checking her watch, wondering if it was one of the guys.
“It’s Wes.”
Sam paused, uncharacteristically unsure of herself.
“Sammy?” he called out after a moment. “I didn’t come all the way out to Afghanistan to talk through a door, darlin’.”
She took a deep breath, striding across the room to swing open the door.
“Wes,” she acknowledged, her demeanor all business. “You ready for the meet with your contact—?”
Wes wrapped his hands around her biceps, leaning down and kissing her hard before she had a chance to finish her sentence.
Sam stiffened, but the onslaught was too lush, too vivid, and too intense to resist. She pulled back for a moment, eyes wide as they stared at each other, both breathing hard.
“Goddamn you, Wes,” she muttered. “I don’t know whether to slap you or kiss you.”
He smiled at her, just like he used to when they were young before bringing her in again. “I’ll take either. Just come here.”
*
Dec 21st—Late Afternoon
Shindand Air Base, Afghanistan
W E S L E Y
Goddamn, it felt good to hold her like this.
Wes wrapped his arms around her as he walked her backwards into the room, kicking the door shut with his boot. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you like this since Rio,” he admitted, pressing in again, his mouth urgent and relentless. Sam’s hands slid up his shoulders, tangling in the hair at his nape.
Wes gripped her ass hard, coaxing her hips up high and tight against the rising pressure of his erection, the thrill of their connection spreading between them like a wildfire. They groaned at the same time, breathing into each other’s mouths, their fit so perfect, so out-of-this-world good, his head felt like it was spinning. Wes couldn’t quite believe how he’d lived without this for so long, but the way they kissed, the way t
hey fused together—Wes somehow knew this was always going to happen.
He was always going to find his way back to her. The rest was just semantics.
“What the hell are we doing?” Sam muttered hoarsely, pulling back, her pitch-dark eyes wide, lips red and wet.
Wes stared down at her, chest rising hard and fast. He held onto her, already missing the slippery friction of their damn-near-indecent kisses. Sam shook her head as if to clear it, her hips still hitched up against his.
“What the hell are we doing, Wes?” she asked again, dropping her head back against the wall he’d wedged her against. Wes leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers as they both fought to get their breath and sanity back.
“I went and did everything I thought I wanted to do, Sammy,” he admitted breathlessly. “But the truth is: Nothing in this world is worth doing without having what you truly need. And I need you, Sammy. Took me years to realize it, but I need you, darlin’. Just you.”
“No, Wes,” she said as she pushed him back. “It’s not that easy. It’s not that simple—”
The look in her eyes seared him—fiercely passionate and bitter and vulnerable all at the same time. She didn’t trust him; she didn’t trust herself. He could see that conflict, that rare uncertainty causing a rift between her heart and her mind.
“Neither of us ever really needed each other, Wes,” she continued. “We just wanted one another. We wanted our fantasy badly enough to wish it true for a while—”
“Bullshit, Sammy! I taught you not to lean on anyone, didn’t I? I taught you not to trust,” Wes countered. Something intangible circled the space between them as they stared at one another. “I’ll regret running out on you for the rest of my life. But I’m not that boy anymore, Sammy. I’m not that guy.”
Wes found her mouth again even as she tried to evade him, absorbing the hitch in her breath, the sexy little gasp she didn’t mean to emit.
Sam reached for his wrists, gripping hard, pushing him back. “Wes, stop. Jesus, just give me a minute here—”
“Sammy—I love you darlin’, but you think too much,” he responded, letting her hold onto his wrists as he crowded her space, pushing her back against the wall with the firm, enticing pressure of his body. He explored her mouth roughly, acutely aware that this craving was so much more than the brief physical encounters he’d enjoyed over the years. How brief and sparse those small pleasures seemed compared to this powerful, visceral connection between them.
At some point, Sam let go of his wrists, her hands traversing the terrain of his body as she kissed him back with sweet, succulent kisses that felt like falling through a vortex and landing home again. Wes slid his hand along her bottom, picking her up easily as he circled her against him in a lazy, exact pulse, triggering another set of delicious sounds as she ground herself against him.
“You missed me too,” he murmured. “I felt it back in Austin. But I knew you needed time—”
“Now you need to shut up,” she breathed, dragging him back and catching his tongue in a tantalizing articulation. Sam kissed him like she was searching for something, each pass deeper, more intense, just more…
Wes yanked up her t-shirt, pulling back just long enough to jerk it over her head and toss it across the room. He felt intoxicated, trapped between love and lust, thrilled to touch and hold her like this again after so many years without her. He was greedy, eager, unable to kiss her enough, to get close enough. Wes was certain she felt the tremor in his hand as he stroked his fingers into her hair, yanking the long coil down. Wes tangled his fingers in that silky skein, kissing her hard, the sounds between them low and savage.
“Christ Almighty, it’s not enough,” he muttered against her mouth, one hand finding the clasp of her bra and releasing it. “I can’t get close enough to you—”
“God help me if I didn’t miss you too, Wes,” Sam whispered back, eyes tightly closed, like she was fighting total recall, her body tilted up, everything she wanted telegraphed in the way she offered herself up with the subtle, sexy undulation of her hips.
Wes peeled her off the wall before tossing her onto the single bed, smiling a little when she bounced and let out a surprised gasp, the springs squeaking. His hands were at her waist before she’d even opened her eyes, watching him while he popped open the button of her pants, fingers curling around her waistband and the thin fabric of her panties.
He looked at her for a long moment, the question of whether this was really happening cycling between them before he made the call, yanking everything down until she was naked in front of him. He sucked in a breath as he stared at her.
Sammy was a vision—glorious—and far more stunning than any photo or memory he’d ever punished himself with over the years. Wes ran a trembling hand down her body, one long, rough stroke, squeezing her flesh, touching her scars, reveling in the silky softness of her skin. She was rounder now, more voluptuous. She’d lost some of the angular, skinniness of her youth. But she was also stronger now. He could see the sinew, the definition only years of hard work could produce.
“Jesus Christ, you’re gorgeous, Sammy,” Wes marveled, pulling her up toward him. “I thought I’d memorized you, but there’s no doing it justice—”
She moved to her knees on the bed, hands finding his shirt, making quick work of the buttons, before she unlatched and loosened his belt. The rasp of his zipper sounded loud in the cool darkness of the little room. Wes helped her shove his jeans down as he toed off his boots, tumbling her backwards as he crawled over her on the single bed.
“This reminds me of your old dorm room at A&M,” he said, smiling down at her as he traced her mouth tenderly with his thumb.
She nipped at him gently. “Don’t talk about the past,” she whispered. “Not here. Not right now.”
Before Wes could respond, Sam looped an arm around his neck, bringing him down to her, his weight settling deliciously in the valley of her legs. Nothing had ever felt so good, so synchronistically perfect as he ground against her in shameless deliberation, a shiver chasing down his spine.
“I’m not the same—” she began, the flash of something uncertain in her eyes. Wes silenced her with a kiss, his mouth communicating everything words couldn’t as his other hand found the humid center of her, curling in and up. A pleasured gasp escaped from her as he thumbed her clit. Sam let loose a long, low hum.
“Neither am I,” Wes whispered against her lips, feeling her shift against him, chasing the tender, skating movements of his fingers. Wes watched her closely, loving the way she strained against him, her hand sliding down to his wrist, holding him there as she worked herself around his touch, the tension building, muscles contracting as she lost herself in the rhythm. Wes took her mouth again so he could taste her moans, the open aching sounds of her pleasure as she swiveled faster, impaling herself tighter against his fingers as she began to rupture on a low cry.
The moment Sam relinquished herself to him, Wes gave her what she needed, the way he knew she liked it. He pulled his hand away, lifting her hips up so he could slide into her, stretching her open with the luscious, inexorable force of his entry. Wes groaned at the swell of her body even as the soft tissues resisted. Her body tightened, shuddering around him as he pushed his way in, in further still.
“God in heaven, this is amazing,” he choked on a tight breath, looking down at her, eyes heavy-lidded, skin flushed as he felt her slick inner muscles spasming around him, milking him in all that hot, wet heat.
Wes gritted his teeth, adjusting the angle of his thrust, changing his grip so that he could deliver the long, heavy strokes he knew she loved. Sam arched her hips into each delicious push, her fingers indenting his arms as she clutched at him with every counterpoint, finding that perfect bias, that essential rhythm their bodies never forgot. Sliding out, back in, this time to the hilt, the tip of his cock kissing her womb. Wes pressed against her, allowing his pelvis to rub against her clit in a tight swivel that made her eyes pop open on a groan
.
“Nothing ever felt so good,” he whispered, awash in sensation. “No one ever loved you like this, Sammy—” It was overwhelming, each stroke becoming more powerful, more jagged with each thrust, each push and press. Her sex sounds squeezed out of her throat as she powered against him, needing more, wanting it harder.
“Wes,” she hissed, shuddering as she gripped him. Her fingers tightened around his neck, caught around the chain of her dog tags. “Wes—”
“I’m here, darlin’,” he promised, driving into her again. “I’ve got you, Sammy. I’ve got you—just let me—”
Sam unraveled on a fractured cry, arching helplessly against him. She wound her arms around his back, burying her face into the crevice between his neck and shoulder, her hot mouth biting the skin there as he shifted so that she was straddling him now, working furiously with every wave of her climax.
Wes shunted deep until the friction became too much, her knees clamping around his hips as she took over the cadence, thrusting down and sealing his body to hers as she rode out the silky spasms, forcing him to join her as he whispered her name again and again—a prayer, a vow, an incantation. Please, please, please just… Wes shuddered, emptying himself into her, momentarily lost in the wake.
Chapter 29
Dec 21st—Early Evening
Shindand Air Base, Afghanistan
S A M A N T H A
It seemed to her that a dam had been released inside her body, the deluge of her climax releasing not just the endorphins but with it, the history and emotion and apprehension she’d been feeling since laying eyes on Wes again. Sam relinquished all the pain and sadness she’d been holding onto like so many anchors, feeling herself float up and over the detritus of their past as she held him close, absorbing the last of his shudders as he caught his breath.
“Sweet Jesus, Sammy,” Wes sighed, his soft laugh a puff of breath against her shoulder. “I remember the two of us being good together, but that was—” he shook his head. “That was something else.”
Complicated Creatures: Part Two Page 30