by Julie Rowe
How could she train a man whose immediate and unconscious response to violence, even controlled violence, was to avoid it completely? How could she keep him safe?
If something happened to him, she’d never forgive herself.
Chapter Eight
Alicia turned to leave the office, then stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “What if you looked at what you’re doing in a different light?” she finally asked after several seconds.
“Such as?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Think of it like this—you’re not attacking anyone, you’re getting them out of the way, removing them from the possibility of coming to harm.”
Now it was his turn to blink. “How do you mean?” Max stared at her, trying to comprehend her idea.
“I mean, you’re not attacking me, you’re saving me from attack.”
For a moment Alicia’s face was overlaid by his mother’s. Screaming echoed from the dark hole where he’d buried those memories. Then the screaming stopped and all he saw was his mother’s death mask.
He had to work to control the urge to grab Alicia and run. Where didn’t matter, he had to get her away from the monster about to kill them.
“Max?” Alicia’s voice cleared the fog of memory from his sight.
He cleared his throat and attempted to breathe normally. He had to fight his own body to do it. “An interesting idea. Can I think on it? Possibly discuss it later? The rest of my afternoon is already busy.”
“Of course.” She fixed him with a look that told him she wasn’t going to let the topic slide. She opened the door and left.
Max collapsed into his chair and stared at his shaking hands. He’d had two flashbacks in as many days. That hadn’t happened to him in years.
A knock at the door gave him two seconds to compose himself, then Eugene came in with a note from Medical about an outbreak of what might be a flu in the supply department.
“Check your email, sir,” Eugene said.
Max read with some concern that half of the staff in the supply department were now showing flu-like symptoms.
Max stopped in the medical clinic and suggested the sick be encouraged to either isolate themselves in their quarters or be partially quarantined in the clinic’s overnight ward.
Flu was a concern because of its ease of infection and transference from person to person. Unchecked, it could have a third—or more—of the base personnel down at one time.
Max left Eugene in charge of the outer office while he went to the supply room where he had his portable lab stored. All his specialists had their own version of a portable lab. Some of the equipment was the same: microscopes, rapid test analyzers and the special media needed to grow bacteria and viruses. Each specialist, however, added their own equipment depending on what they might need. Max specialized in emergency care and infectious diseases, which meant he tended to have more first aid supplies tucked away in several of the bags that made up his lab-on-the-run.
He checked his supplies often. It was mandated for once a week, but he often added or removed items based on what he was seeing as hot diseases or pathogens out in the world. Today he was adding an additional backpack filled with IV sets and bags of saline.
Stone walked in while he was adjusting the checklist of supplies.
Memory of hands on him, the sexy growl her voice became during sex, punched him the gut. His dick got so hard he had to adjust more than the damn checklist.
One of the techs, Jones, was giving Stone a more in-depth tour, explaining equipment and how it was used.
Alicia stared at the bags lined up against the wall and asked incredulously, “You’ve got a complete diagnostic lab in those bags?”
He managed to get control of himself and answer in a professional tone. “Yes. With its own specially designed tent and ultra-compact, ultra-energy-efficient batteries. I can run the lab for forty-eight hours before I need to recharge.”
“How do you do that?”
Smart questions apparently turned him on. He cleared his throat. “Multiple ways. On base, I can plug them into the wall plugs and recharge off the base’s electricity. Off base, the preferred method is solar panels.” He showed her the panels, which were flexible and could be rolled up for storage.
“This is impressive,” she said, looking at all the bags and the checklists of contents on the wall above each bag.
“Feel free to examine the contents,” Max said. “Now’s the time, before we’re on the ground at an outbreak.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, nodding at him. “I’d like to find out how to set up those panels.” She and Jones left, already discussing a time to meet to go through the bags.
Max blew out a relieved breath, then finished up, put the room to rights and headed to the food court for a little dinner. He ate quickly and retreated to his room to write in his journal. A lot had happened today. Most of it good, some of it surprising, with the odd moment of terror thrown in for fun.
Alicia had somehow opened up the black hole full of horror he thought he’d locked shut in the base of his brain a long time ago.
She kept pushing and pushing, and he was afraid, terrified, she wasn’t going to stop until she had him all laid out before her.
What she didn’t know, what he didn’t want anyone to know, was that parts of him were broken. Some of them beyond repair. He hadn’t had this problem with his ex. She’d never asked, but he had the feeling Ali wasn’t going to leave it alone.
He never wanted that part of his life to touch her.
Mulling over it all wasn’t going to help. He shut his journal after writing what he deemed was safe to commit to paper, then took a shower. He stepped out, dried off and wrapped a towel around his waist before leaving the bathroom.
His bed was occupied.
Heat flashed through him. Fuck, he loved seeing her waiting for him wearing those soft pajamas.
“Is my lock that easy to pick?” he asked Stone. She sat on the bed with her feet tucked underneath her.
“Yup.”
If she was trying to get under his skin, she was succeeding.
“Did we have something else to discuss?” he asked, because he wasn’t going to assume she was here for a repeat of last night. He really, really hoped she was, but he’d learned long ago that it was never safe to assume anything.
She smiled at him.
“Drop the towel, Colonel.”
As much as he wanted to drown himself in her, it was also dangerous. He swallowed. “This is highly inappropriate, not to mention against regulations. We should’ve discussed it last night.”
The selfish part of him wanted to take what she was offering with both hands. He could numb the pain of his broken pieces with pleasure.
“No one saw me,” she said in a husky tone that turned his cock to stone.
She looked so damned innocent in her pajamas, the same pair she’d worn last night. Then she bit her lip and stared at the tent his cock had pitched with the towel around his waist. “Come here,” she whispered.
“Your father is going to shoot me himself,” Max said, his voice gone to gravel as he came to stand in front of her.
“No, he won’t.” She pulled the towel away and dropped it on the floor. “He likes you.”
“Enough to look the other way if we get cau...” His brain short-circuited as she went down on him. Her mouth was hot, wet and tight around his cock, and when she pulled back and sucked, hard, he lost his mind.
Somehow his hands were tangled in her short hair, guiding her to take him a little slower than she would have. “That’s it, Ali,” he said as she lifted her head, her tongue doing illegal things to his cock. “Holy fuck, don’t rush, let it build.” He looked down and met her gaze, her face flushed and hot, and there he was on the edge of an or
gasm he knew would wreck him. “Ali, stop. I’m going to—”
She did the opposite, taking him even deeper than before, one hand stroking his balls while she watched him from beneath her lashes.
His brain hazed over as he came.
She pulled her mouth off him and finished him with her hands.
When he recovered enough to make sense of what just happened, he shook a finger at her. “That was naughty.”
Ali laughed, and the sound of it, relaxed and happy, gave him another buzz of pleasure. He’d made her feel that way.
He wanted to keep that smile on her face for as long as possible. “Stay right where you are.”
She tilted her head to one side as he backed away into the bathroom, then came out only seconds later with a wet cloth to clean them both.
Her quizzically amused expression didn’t change as she asked, “What are your orders, sir?”
“I,” he said, throwing the cloth into the bathroom then returning to the bed, “want to return the favor.” He put his hands on her hips and slid them up, pulling her top up and over her head. Then he knelt in front of her and did the reverse, taking her pants off.
He sat her on the edge of the bed, slipped his fingers into the waistband of her panties and slowly pulled them down her legs. His mouth followed his trajectory, kissing her belly and sucking on the tender skin over the point where her thigh and pelvis met.
Alicia gasped and her legs came around his shoulders. “I had no idea that was an erogenous zone.”
“Hmm, I’m making it my mission to find them all.”
“No argument here.”
At least in the bedroom they agreed on things.
He moved closer and closer to her sex until he had her clitoris under his tongue and lips.
Her breathing became deep yet choppy and he knew she was close. “Give it to me, Ali,” he whispered. “I want all of you.”
She stared at him with pleasure-glazed eyes, and when he stroked two fingers into her without warning, she went off like Fourth of July fireworks.
He brought her down slowly, petting her until she groaned and flopped back on the bed. A quick trip to the bathroom to clean up and he went back to the bed, anticipating sleeping with her, but she was pulling on her clothes.
She smiled at him and walked over to kiss him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You could stay,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down her back.
“No.” She kissed him again. “I’d better slip back to my room now.” She stepped lightly to the door, peeked outside and was gone.
Max stared after her, standing naked and alone, the scent of sex in the air.
He felt like he’d been kicked in the gut.
Alicia had gotten under his skin and now that he’d touched her, made love to her, he only wanted more. A lot more.
More than she was willing to give?
He could understand not wanting to get caught sneaking out of an officer’s room, but this felt different. Had he done something wrong? She seemed happy, so why the quick dash as soon as they were done?
He wanted more than a fuck buddy. He wanted all of her—her devious brain, insolent mouth and deadly body. Without getting caught.
* * *
Max arrived at his office a few minutes early, before Eugene and the rest of his staff. He turned on his computer and discovered a couple of reports from two of his teams in the field.
He was writing a reply to a request for supplies and additional personnel when Eugene knocked.
“Sir?”
“Come in, Eugene,” Max said without looking up from his computer.
“Sir, I have an update on the flu here on the base.” Eugene’s voice was much too calm. “No more new cases, but three of the people who reported feeling sick yesterday are now showing symptoms of pneumonia.”
Max stopped typing to look at him.
“All three were admitted to the clinic ward last night.”
“How many are sick in total?”
“Twelve, sir.”
Not reassuring numbers. A flu with a 25 percent rate of serious secondary infection could be ridiculously deadly.
“I’ll head over to the clinic shortly to review their charts.”
Eugene nodded. “Another hospital pharmacy was broken into and all of its contents stolen last night. This time it was in Kirkuk, Iraq.”
“Do you have any good news for me, Eugene?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. We also have a report of an outbreak of flu in a refugee camp in Northern Iraq near the Turkish border. The numbers coming out of there are mixed. One person says only a dozen people are sick, while another says hundreds. What is clear is that the fatality rate among the infected is high, 25 percent.”
“Was that the only consistent thing to come out of the camp?”
“Yes, sir. That and a rather desperate request for help. Two doctors who were working there for the World Health Organization have already died.”
“What was the timeline?”
Eugene consulted his report. “The two men first showed signs of the illness, fever and intense vomiting approximately thirty hours before they died.”
“Was the cause of death dehydration?”
“No, sir, the report says viral pneumonia.”
“Thirty hours? That’s fast.”
“Yes, sir. I think they’re scared.”
“I would be too.” Max pulled up his master spreadsheet of all his specialists, where they were today and what they were dealing with.
Everyone was dealing with a medical crisis that they couldn’t just up and leave. That left only one person able to respond to this outbreak.
Him.
Chapter Nine
Alicia walked into the lab building expecting to meet with Max regarding the training schedule for his people. A perfectly normal, professional conversation. If only she could convince her brain to get with the program.
Her head kept replaying his expression when she’d gone down on him. Maintaining a professional distance was going to be a problem, but she couldn’t dredge up a speck of regret either. Last night had been amazing. She’d never felt as connected to another human being as she did to Max.
That was some kind of scary shit.
It all took the backseat when she walked into the lab office and found Eugene talking into two different phones at the same time. Max’s portable lab bags were on the floor next to Eugene’s desk and Max was pacing outside his office talking on the phone.
Eugene saw her, but didn’t do much more than angle his chin toward his boss’s office.
Max saw her a moment later and waved her over. He indicated she should go into his office. He pointed at his computer, so she sat down in his chair and read the report open on the screen.
Some kind of flu had killed three people in a small village in Iraq that had swelled in size due to an influx of refugees from nearby parts of the country recently taken over by extremists. Three out of the dozen infected people dead. She didn’t need a medical degree to know that was bad.
Max ended his call. “I’ve just arranged coverage for me from the chief medical officer on the base. I’m heading to the outbreak myself. He’s going to monitor the flu that seems to have knocked half of Supply on its ass.”
“Is there a connection?”
“I hope not, but we’ll find out.”
“Who’s going with you?”
“You are.”
Thank God she didn’t have to argue her way onto the team. She waited for him to list more people, but he didn’t. He just walked around her and headed toward the supply room. Two names wasn’t enough. “Just us?”
He didn’t even slow down. “I want this to be an in-and-out mission. We arrive uno
btrusively, identify the pathogen for the World Health Organization and leave. Short and quick.”
That was it? “Who treats the sick?”
He walked into the supply room like he was on a one-way mission. “The WHO will assign a team once we know which flu we’re dealing with.”
“You make it sound like it’s going to be a cakewalk.” If he didn’t stop to listen to her soon, three seconds soon, she was going to make him stop the hard way. He’d look good tied to her bed.
He stopped and looked at her. Well, finally.
“It won’t be,” he said. “But the fewer people we bring, the easier it’ll be to do our job and get out without ruffling any feathers.”
“Ruffling feathers? You sound like my grandmother.” Could she strangle him, just a little? “What you really mean is to do the job without pissing anyone off or pissing on their territory.”
He winced like he was in actual pain. “Your use of colorful language isn’t necessary is it?”
She laughed. “Piss is not a swear word. In fact, I don’t think it’s even on the soldier’s checklist of stress-reducing bad language.”
He glanced at her. “It’s a pedestrian word, and you’re smarter than that.”
“What are you, Greek now?”
“Audentes fortuna iuvat,” he said absently.
“What?”
“Fortune favors the bold.”
Now he was quoting military mottos. “I thought you didn’t speak fortune cookie?”
He huffed and glared at her. “I was saving it for a special occasion.”
He was getting mad. Good. Maybe he’d stop and think for a minute. “Really? What are we celebrating?”
“Wednesday.”
She couldn’t help herself. It just tumbled out of her mouth. “Shouldn’t we be naked?”
All activity within twenty feet stopped.
She shrugged. “Since we’re, you know, celebrating hump day.”
Max frowned at her. “Are you drunk?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I’m somewhat bemused at all the frenetic activity. If this isn’t going to be dangerous, you wouldn’t be so wound up. So, tell me again why we’re not bringing any backup?”