by Lori Ryan
And then he was inside of her, lost in the way she was both soft and tough and melting for him, all at once. Her hands clutched at his ass as if trying to pull him deeper. He was happy to oblige, lifting her leg and slanting to bury himself again and again until she cried out and clenched him tightly. It wasn’t until after he came that he realized he hadn’t used a condom. Not something he ever did, but something he now wanted to do again and again with her. With his Sam. She must have been thinking the same thing.
“My mother will probably kill me if I walk down the aisle visibly knocked up.”
He barked out a laugh but then kissed her. A long slow, sweet kiss. He rubbed the tip of his nose against hers, his eyes locked on hers. “Then, I guess we’d better get you down the aisle quickly.”
Her laughter was all the answer he needed as he slowly started to move inside of her again, his cock swelling to the challenge of loving her over and over throughout the night.
Chapter Twenty-six
Sam let her hands wander over Logan’s torso, the taut muscles and light smattering of hair that tickled her fingers were all mesmerizing. She could spend hours exploring his body, learning every detail of it, memorizing every plane. Memorizing the scars that carved out who he was as a person. Her hands ran over the smooth skin that made up the largest of his scars. The one that ran over eight inches on his hip. It was surrounded by more scars, smaller, but no less angry looking.
“Ernie makes me tell him about it over and over,” he said.
She didn’t answer, just kept running her hands over it.
“He says if I can relive the times that haunt me over and over, the smells, the sights, the sounds—all of it, then I won’t be as affected by them when the memories hit me.”
“Do you think it’s helping?”
“Yeah,” he said, but there was a weight to his voice and she knew each retelling cost him.
“You don’t ever have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I won’t ask you about those things, but if you need or want to tell me, you can. I’m always here for you if you need to get the words out, or if you think it would help me to know so I can help you.”
He nodded, burying his face in the soft skin at the side of her breasts and then shifting so his head lay on her stomach. He loved how soft her flesh was there. He knew she thought it was unattractive, having a soft belly instead of toned, tight abs, but he loved it. He thought a woman should be all soft curves to his hardness. He wouldn’t want her any other way.
She ran her hands through his hair and he closed his eyes and let the feel of her fingers soothe him. He knew Ernie would tell him that sharing the stories took away their power, weakened them, but he couldn’t tell her this one. He’d only told Ernie the story one time so far and he wasn’t ready for any more than that. As Sam’s hands caressed and quieted him, he let his mind wander back to the session where Ernie had finally gotten the worst of it out of him. His last mission. The one that had taken so damned much. Cost too damned much.
“Tell me about the last one,” Ernie had said.
Logan had sat stock still for a long time, frozen in the memory of that last mission. As far as all of his friends were concerned, he’d been a SEAL right up until the day he separated from the Navy. While that was technically true, he’d been reassigned in that last year. He and several of his team. They had left the sandbox behind and were being given assignments that technically fit within the rubric of the Navy SEALs, but they weren’t your typical SEAL assignments. It sure as hell wasn’t overwatch duty in Fallujah. That shit had been bad enough.
The new shit they’d been assigned? Well, it was something else altogether. He and a few of his SEAL team who’d been hand-picked by the higher-ups joined up with several CIA operatives and a few Delta team operatives to become an off-the-books, blacker-than-black ops unit. They had joked, trying to come up with a way to describe what they were. Obsidian? Onyx? What was blacker than black in a shadow world where you would be cut off and left behind by your government if you were caught at what you were doing?
Because getting caught was not an option in their world. With only a handful of people in on approving their ops, they couldn’t chance getting caught and they all knew it going in. But, the work they did was important. They went after the bad guys no one else could bring down. And, in that last op, they brought down the baddest of the bad, Nikolai Bogomolov, after he’d begun to target US military installations abroad.
Logan jumped from the memory of telling Ernie in his office, back to the present with Sam, and suddenly telling her some of it wasn’t so hard. She simply held him and ran her fingers rhythmically through his hair. He wouldn’t tell her all of it, but enough. Enough for her to understand what had been at stake. Pieces were all he could tell. It was the most confidential of ops, the kind of thing you couldn’t share with anyone. So he told her bits, but his mind ran through all of it.
“We were sent after a man who brought new meaning to the word evil.” What he didn’t tell her was that Nikolai Bogolomov was responsible for bombings in two US states, Paris, London, and Spain. No one realized he was behind them because he always backed others, but he’d been the driving force. The US and several allies had known that for a long time. And, they’d decided to do something about it.
“But the op went bad,” he said, still talking with his head on Sam’s stomach, eyes staring at the wall, letting the feel of her hands on him keep him in a protected bubble where what he had to say couldn’t hurt him. “It was bad from the start and we all knew it. One of those fucked up situations where you all know shit’s off and you tell your command, but they aren’t in the mood to hear it.”
He paused for a minute, remembering. The feel of the team, the tension in the room as they all looked over plans they knew were iffy at best.
“This guy, Nikolai, he was called Dooh.” He gave her the Americanized pronunciation of the Russian word, but she translated immediately.
“Specter” she said softly.
“Yeah. Because he was. No one could catch this guy. He was like an apparition.” For years, the CIA had tracked him but they were always one step behind.
“They finally had him nailed down. What they didn’t tell us was the reason he was nailed down in one place was because it was his oldest son’s birthday. Nikolai, Jr.—Kolya—Bogolomov was turning twelve. His mother and brother were there with his father. And, by the time we discovered that, it was too late.”
“You would have called the operation off if you had known ahead of time?” She asked the question, but her tone said she knew the answer. She was just making the point to him.
“Yeah, but, things went sideways for a lot of other reasons. We’d just been assigned a new guy. He had plenty of experience, but he wasn’t one of us, you know? We didn’t know him yet, didn’t run smooth as calm waters with him yet, like we did with each other. I didn’t want him there. Didn’t want to have to bring him in on an op when we didn’t know him well enough. If I was a better leader, I wouldn’t have shoved him aside to a spot where I thought he couldn’t do any harm.”
He hadn’t been a good enough leader that day. He’d been impatient. He hadn’t wanted that guy there, so he’d tasked him with watching Adeline Bogolomov and her two sons while the rest of the team rounded up Nikolai and his men.
Sam didn’t offer platitudes or judgment. She just kept up that same steady rhythm with her hands. He didn’t finish telling her the story. He wasn’t ready to do that yet. He wasn’t ready to tell her that the new guy hadn’t paid enough attention to the woman and children in his care. That he’d been so pissed at being given babysitting duty that he had underestimated them. That no one had swept the room they were in for weapons until it was too late. That one of the kids had gone for a grenade and tossed it. That when the smoke cleared, too many of Logan’s team members were injured or dead. The whole of Bogolomov’s family and team were dead. All except for Bogolomov’s daughter and nephew who hadn’t arrived yet.
<
br /> Logan had taken a shit ton of shrapnel to his leg and hip. He’d failed to keep his men safe. He didn’t know how Ernie planned to take away the reality of that. He might manage to desensitize Logan to the memories to take the shock out of them, but how did he plan to take away the fact that Logan had gotten members of his team, his brothers killed? That he was responsible for the deaths of two children and a woman, whose only real crimes had been being part of a madman’s family?
Sam began to rub his temples and he let his eyes close. Instead of seeing the broken pieces of his team, the hell and fallout and nightmares of that last op, he saw only Sam’s trusting face in his dreams. He saw the way she opened her arms to him and wrapped him up. The way her eyes showed no judgment, no disgust at how he’d failed. Just love.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chad hung up the phone and turned to Sam and Logan.
“It’s been confirmed. There were no prints on the rifle used to shoot at you the other day, but Lazarus Alonzo was spotted on the security tapes in the building a day before the shooting. They found a couple of his prints in the room where they found the rifle. It looks like he’s the one coming after you, Sam.”
Logan felt Sam lean into him a little more as she nodded at Chad. He tightened his hold on her shoulder and tugged her to him. Laying a kiss on the top of her head, he leaned in and whispered. “We’ll get him, Sam.”
“No, you won’t.” Monique spoke up and Logan gritted his teeth. He appreciated the woman and all she’d been doing to keep him out of prison, but damn, he wanted her out of his life. That sounded wrong. He just wanted her to be unnecessary in his life. The reminder that a trial and possible prison sentence hung over his head was never very far away, and having her here only served to keep the issue at the forefront at all times.
“She’s right,” Zach said before Monique could explain her objection. They all knew Logan needed to lie low. “You can’t go after this guy, Logan.”
“None of you can,” Monique said. “Any of you are caught going after this guy, no matter how dangerous he is, Westbrook is going to have a field day. He’ll glom onto that and run with it all the way to the polls and through the election. You can protect Sam if he comes at her, but you sure can’t go after him. Let the police do their jobs, guys.”
Logan thought his teeth would crack if he didn’t stop clenching his jaw, but dammed if he could figure out how to stop.
“So we sit here and wait?” He knew his anger was misdirected. It wasn’t Monique’s fault, but sitting and waiting for someone to come at Sam was the last thing he wanted to do.
“No, we find him and we get that info to the cops. If he’s this close, I can find his trail,” Sam said picking up her laptop and crossing to the couch. She perched on the cushion, legs tucked beneath her as she started working. “The FBI could never find him before because they were sifting through the whole world trying to find him. Now we know he’s close by, I can pick him up. We’ll get the info to the cops and let them pick him up.”
Logan sat next to Sam and rubbed one hand up and down her back as she worked. The others moved quietly around the town house as Sam buried herself in some trail only she could see. Logan knew if anyone could find him, it would be Sam. Sure enough, three hours later she had done it.
“Got him,” she said. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is. I’ve scoured accounts and guest logins at coffee shops with free wifi. He’s still using account names and passwords that are very similar to his old ones. People don’t want to have to memorize new info so they just change one or two numbers or add a number at the end. And, even when they have a hotspot for use or create a hotspot on a phone, their computer sometimes automatically signs on to a free wifi spot and they aren’t careful enough to interrupt the sign-on. He’s used a computer at a coffee shop ten miles from here twice already. I’d be willing to bet he’s at a motel or hotel near there and that he’ll return to the coffee shop.”
Chad lifted his phone and began typing, looking over Sam’s shoulder onto her computer screen as he did. “Luckily, the FBI wants him in custody as badly as we do,” he said. “I’ll get this to one of my contacts there and see if they can do the legwork to track him the last bit of the way. They can get agents out to the motels and hotels, and plant someone at the coffee shop.”
The group was quiet for a while before Chad spoke up. “Got some time to kill while we wait. I can call Jennie and have her grab Jack and Kelly and a movie. I’m sure they can grab food on the way over.”
Sam nodded, but Logan could feel the tension rolling off her. The waiting would be the hardest part.
“Chinese?” Zach asked and Sam nodded again. Chad nodded to Logan and went to make the call. They would hole up with Chinese food, friends, and a movie. With any luck, this would be over soon and they could breathe a little easier.
*****
Logan squeezed Sam’s hand as they watched footage on TV of the FBI swarm the hotel where Alonzo had been in hiding. They’d gotten the call about an hour before that they had tracked him to a local motel. Now, they watched as the reporter stood outside showcasing the lights and sirens and uniforms still swarming the scene and a small corner shot showed the footage of the hotel.
“He looks so different. A few years ago he was so much younger-looking. I mean, he’s still young and all, but I can see the wear on him. I guess running doesn’t agree with him,” Sam said.
“You did that, Sam. You were the one to bring him to his knees years ago, and now you’ve finished the job. You brought a truly horrible man down. You stopped him from hurting so many women.”
He was in awe of this woman standing beside him. She was so strong and tough, so capable of incredible things. For a moment, he almost wondered if she’d ever really need him, but then he knew that was stupid. They needed each other. Not to save one another or be the hero, but just to be. Just to share a life together. They were equals in that way.
Sam clenched his hand and gasped as the action on screen took a turn. Alonzo fired on FBI agents and several agents returned fire.
He heard Sam’s deep inhale and a moment later a slow, long exhale. Alonzo lay in a heap on the ground. Several agents covered another agent as he approached Alonzo’s body and appeared to be checking for signs of life. The shot cut back to the reporter who confirmed Alonzo had been shot and was believed to be dead at this time.
Sam’s voice came out in a whisper. “It’s over.”
He nodded. “Looks like it.” They had gotten another call moments ago. Apparently, Westbrook had faced increased pressure since it had been determined that the plot to harm Sam was traced back to a man wanted in numerous countries for horrific crimes. And the public outcry Westbrook would face if he continued to come after Logan wasn’t worth it. His plan to use Logan as the anti-big-government poster boy for his reelection campaign had backfired when he’d chosen a veteran as his target. He wouldn’t be pursuing charges any longer.
Logan lifted Sam, wrapping her legs around his waist, drawing a loud squeal from her. He walked with her to the couch and put her down, sinking to his knees before her.
“It’s over,” he said as he drew the waistband of her yoga pants down her hips. “Lift up.”
She laughed but lifted herself to allow him to tug the pants down her thighs and slip them off her ankles. For the first time in weeks, they were alone. Everyone had left to head back to their own families when the news about Alonzo’s death had come in. With the exception, of course, of Billy, who now poked his nose into Logan’s face.
There was humor in his voice when he told the dog to bug off. “You’re not invited to this party.”
“Sorry, Billy,” said Sam as the dog flopped himself down in the corner melodramatically.
“Where was I?” Logan turned back to Sam, pulling her hands away from the hem of her T-shirt. She’d been trying to use it to cover herself from him, but he growled at her and lifted it.
“My girl.” It was a simple declaration as he
leaned in and pressed a kiss to her shoulder, her breasts, the opposite shoulder. He trailed down her belly, nuzzling and kissing as he went, then spread her legs wide, using his shoulders to hold her open to him. When she tried to cover herself again, he took hold of her wrists and held her arms to her sides.
“All mine,” he said. She cried out when his mouth covered her mound over the lacy sheer panties that she still wore. He breathed out, letting the warmth heat her and she groaned. He couldn’t get enough of the sounds she made. He was hard as a rock and halfway to heaven just from listening to her. He didn’t know what would happen when he got his tongue on her, when he tasted the slick wet heat of her after tearing off her panties. But hell if he didn’t want to find out. Logan pulled her panties aside, unable to wait the short amount of time it would take to pull them down her legs.
Heaven on earth. She tasted like heaven and felt incredible against his tongue as she writhed up and swung her head back and forth. He continued to lick at her wet folds, the sweet taste of her sending him nearly over the edge. He slid two fingers inside of her as he came down on her clit, suckling hard, and she grabbed his head and pulled him against her, harder. Feeling her come in his mouth was a high he never wanted to come down from, but then she was tugging at him, wanting him up on the couch with her, and who was he to refuse her?
No one, that’s who. He didn’t have it in him to refuse this woman. He stripped and knelt with one leg on either side of her, then lifted her hips to guide himself home. The growl that built in his chest and escaped before he could stifle it, seemed only to egg her on. She whimpered and pushed against him.
“I want my legs around you,” she said and he pulled out long enough to let her put her legs over his and wrap them around his waist. With the adjustment, he was able to bury himself to the hilt in one slick, wet, tortuous motion and he stilled at the feel of it. It was too much. He focused on his breathing and held her hips firmly in place, not letting her move, despite her efforts.