by Lucy Monroe
Straddling his thighs, she leaned down and kissed the rock-solid contour of his chest. So good. She loved the scent of his skin, the spicy maleness that she associated only with him. Brushing her lips over his warm skin, she moved her head until her open mouth was over one of his now turgid male nipples. She flicked her tongue out to taste, and remembering how much he liked it, she started to suck.
His fingers dug into her scalp, and she sucked harder, rubbing up and down against his erection with her torso. His big body vibrated under her, the sexual tension buzzing off of him palpable.
“Josette, this is going to get out of hand really fast,” he rasped.
She released his nipple from between her teeth and sat up. “No, it’s not.”
His brow rose, questioning her assertion as did the pulsing erection protruding even more stiffly from his body.
“I’m taking you in hand, not letting you get out of it.” She curled her fingers around the evidence of her effect on him, gasping when her fingertips would not quite meet. “You’re so aroused.”
“You’re sitting on top of me wearing my T-shirt, looking sexy as hel—heck, touching me in a way guaranteed to separate me from my sanity. Aroused is a tame word for the storm you’ve got raging inside me.”
His words made her thighs clench in excitement where they straddled his, and she couldn’t help rubbing herself against him, frustrated that the layers between them muted the sensation so much.
He made a hoarse sound low in his throat. “Is this part of your dream?”
She squeezed his erection, unable to tell if it was her hand or his penis that was so hot. “What do you think?”
“I think I want to see more of your body.”
She peeled the T-shirt off over her head, exposing breasts whose peaks were tight with excitement. He reached up and touched them, cupping her and rubbing his palms over elongated nipples highly sensitized by her monthly hormone changes.
She shivered, pressing herself into his palms, and then she pleasured him.
Using the small bottle of hand lotion the hotel had provided, she stroked up and down his length and over his head until he was bowed off the bed, his expression one of tortured pleasure. She felt as if he was inside her, touching her erogenous zones even though his hands were now fisted in the bedspread. Her lower body throbbed with vicarious pleasure, and her nipples stung with excruciating sensation.
“I’m going to come!” His hoarse shout reverberated in the room.
But he didn’t, and she could see the effort it was costing him. Whether he couldn’t take that final step and make himself completely vulnerable to her, or he felt some macho need to hold back his own pleasure when he wasn’t making it mutual, she didn’t know. And she didn’t care.
It was mutual, and she didn’t need him to be inside her to make it that way, but she did need him to orgasm with her hands wrapped around the most intimate part of his body. “Don’t try to hold back, Daniel. I want you to come for me.”
He looked at her, his expression reflecting conflicting desires, his body so taut with arousal it felt as if he was about to snap like an overextended rubber band.
“Give up control. Please.”
“It’s hard…”
“Do you trust me enough?” she asked, her own body trembling with an excess of feeling.
“Yes!” And he came, shouting her name and ejaculating in powerful surges.
As the warmth of his essence mixed with the hand lotion over her fingers, she felt contractions start low in her belly, and these contractions didn’t hurt. They were pure delight and corresponded to something happening in her heart she could no longer even attempt to deny. A well-spring of consuming love bubbled through her bloodstream like uncorked champagne overflowing its bottle.
She tumbled forward, a special gravity pulling her to him that could never be explained in a physics book. Locking her lips to his, her body convulsed in its own orgasm from the sheer pleasure of the man she loved allowing her to give him one.
His hands settled onto her bottom, and he kneaded her, his mouth voracious under hers. They shook together in aftershocks every bit as intense as any they’d had after full intercourse, only finally relaxing into sated passivity several minutes later.
She rubbed her cheek against the sweat-slick skin of his chest, and words came she did not plan, but had no desire to hold back. “I love you, Daniel.”
The silence of his response did not surprise her, nor did it diminish in any way the feelings engulfing her.
Love did not have to be returned to be as deeply embedded in her heart as the roots of an ancient oak in the soil under it.
Chapter 17
Josie stood beside Daniel at the airport’s security exit and watched for her father. Daniel had been quiet since she’d told him of her love, but not distant, so she had hope. He wasn’t pushing her away for bringing emotion into the equation of their mutual obsession.
He wasn’t embracing those emotions, though, either.
She didn’t blame him. He’d said all along his feelings for her were not rooted in sentiment, but physical desire. Whether or not he could change his attitude remained to be seen, but she certainly wasn’t giving up on him because he hadn’t made any declarations.
Several passengers came through the exit as they waited, but none of them were Tyler McCall, and she grew antsy.
“Do you think he missed the flight?” she asked.
Daniel’s hand settled on her shoulder, giving the comfort of his touch. “Don’t worry about it. Hotwire confirmed Tyler checked in for his seat assignment.”
“It could have been a smoke screen.” Her dad was tricky like that.
“He’ll be here, sweetheart.” The hand on her shoulder squeezed and then fell away. “Relax.”
A dapper older gentleman, wearing a conservative gray suit and carrying a briefcase, came toward them, and it was only as her dad got within ten feet that Josie recognized him. His military haircut was hidden under what had to have been a wig. It looked like a very real head of graying hair, cut in a typical businessman’s style.
He smiled as he reached them, his eyes warm with approval behind the silver-rimmed glasses he wore. “I knew you’d figure the journals out.”
With better than perfect eyesight, he’d never worn glasses, but they complemented his alter ego rather well. While one part of her admired his ability to camouflage in any environment, she was pretty frustrated by the whole cloak-and-dagger thing at this point. He could have been hurt while she was busy trying to figure out the clues in his diaries, and she’d spent a lot of unnecessary time in a state of anxiety.
She did not appreciate the added stress. “Why didn’t you just call?”
“Could have had a bug on your phone. Didn’t need the enemy realizing I had lived through their little explosion sooner than they had to.”
“I’ve been worried sick about you.”
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Why?”
“Someone tried to kill you,” she reminded him with exasperation. “Why did you leave the hospital?”
Her dad’s eyes dimmed. “I’m not sure. I was a little confused. Couldn’t remember why I had to get away, just knew that I did. I was halfway here before I remembered why I was headed to Nevada and what had happened. By then, I figured you’d find me through the journals, and like I said, I didn’t want to risk your phone being bugged.”
He started walking, even his gait that of a businessman, not a soldier. “Come on. I’ve got a checked bag.”
It took several minutes to get his single piece of luggage, and when she asked him why he checked it, he told her it went with the cover.
He picked up the medium-sized suitcase. “Did you bring a car?”
“Yes.” Daniel put his arm around Josie’s waist and began to lead the way outside.
She raised a startled gaze to him, but he was looking at her dad and asking how the recon mission went. Her father’s reply confirmed Daniel h
ad been right in assuming reconnaissance had been her father’s objective.
“They’ve got fifteen soldiers, nine wives and eleven kids in the compound. Four of the soldiers have been through my training camp in the last year. Little pricks thought they could get rid of me after a six-week training course when I’ve been a soldier longer than most of them have been alive.”
They’d reached the car, and Daniel opened the trunk for her dad to drop in his bag. Josie climbed into the backseat and waited for the men to get in.
Once they did, she asked, “Did you get any names?”
“No more than the ones I’ve already got. I didn’t want to risk going in through security until I’d scouted the whole area. When I did go in, I didn’t have time to do anything but get some details on the internal structure of the compound I hadn’t been able to achieve via long distance observation.”
“How’s security?” Daniel asked.
“It’s all right. Nothing like what you and your friends would have set up. We’ll get past it pretty easily.”
She’d been afraid of this. “Get past it for what?”
“Not to blow them to kingdom come, if that’s what’s worrying you, Josie-girl. I don’t kill innocent women and children.”
“I know that.” It was her turn to look at him as if his brains had leaked out through his ears during the flight from Missoula. “However, that doesn’t mean whatever else you’ve got planned won’t get you into trouble.”
He rolled his eyes and looked at Daniel. “She been worrying like this the whole time?”
“Not all of it,” Daniel said noncommittally.
Her dad grimaced. “I guess the feds are already involved?”
“Yes.”
“Would be a hell of a lot easier if they weren’t, but I figured they would be, what with the Homeland Security Act and the area surrounding my property being national forest.”
“They thought you’d set the explosion yourself at first,” Josie said, still unable to comprehend what kind of logic had worked that scenario out.
“Idiots.”
“Josie’s also a suspect. The extremists took out a life insurance policy in your name and named her as beneficiary. Then told the press about it.”
She hadn’t wanted him to tell her dad that. He was bound to be angry enough as it was.
“They spread the blame around. The press also acted like they’d received tips indicating the responsible parties belonged to ELF,” she said by way of getting his attention focused on something else.
“And caused reporters and cameramen to park themselves in Josette’s front yard and harass her through the door or in person whenever she went outside.”
“You are not helping,” she said as her dad slammed his fist against the dashboard.
“Those sons of bitches!”
“My feelings exactly.” Daniel sounded only slightly more controlled in his fury than her dad, and it occurred to her that he’d been hiding from her a lot of his reaction to what had happened.
They couldn’t afford to dwell on their anger. “The important issue is what you’re planning to do about it.”
“Take them down.”
“How?”
“Break in to their compound, dispose of their armory and weapons, find their records and turn the sons of bitches over to the feds for disposal. If my investigator’s research is accurate, and there’s no reason to believe it’s not, getting documentation of the group’s activities to the feds will have several members facing arrest and long-term prison sentences.”
“Not to mention the ones responsible for your attempted murder.” She wasn’t sure how practical his idea of neutralizing their armory and weapons was, but his objectives were way better than she had been expecting. “I assume you have an idea of how to go about doing all this.”
“I do, but I’ll want some time to put it into mission-briefing form before I present it to you and Daniel. I spent the flight flirting with the woman in the seat next to mine.”
Shocked, Josie squeaked, “Flirting?”
“Part of my cover, but she was a nice-looking woman. Oriental. Tiny thing, with a voice as soft as an angel’s. Gave me her phone number. She only lives about twenty minutes from my house here. Can you believe that?”
She couldn’t believe any of it, but before she could think of a way to phrase such a statement diplomatically, Daniel asked, “How did you know the Society of New American Patriots was responsible for the bombing?”
“The man who runs the background checks on my students discovered a connection between a soldier who’d been in my January training camp and one that had just taken the early summer training. He had just figured out that they both were involved in this stupid-ass white supremacist organization when the compound got blown up.”
“You knew you had somebody after you, and you didn’t say anything?” Josie asked, much more dismayed by this revelation than by her father’s apparent attraction to a woman for the first time in her memory.
“I didn’t know they were after me. I only knew I’d been training domestic terrorists. I was deciding what I wanted to do about it when they tried to kill me.”
“You didn’t tell me about it,” Daniel said.
“It was my problem. They came through the camp before you bought in to it.”
“I’m your partner. All problems related to the school are mine, too.” There was no give in Daniel’s voice, but then she hadn’t thought that argument was going to hold water with him.
“Hell, Nitro, you’ve got enough trouble on your hands courting my daughter. Any idiot could see that.”
“He’s not courting me, Dad. I swear, sometimes you talk like you were born two centuries ago, not a few decades before the new millennium.”
Her dad snorted. “Doesn’t matter when I was born. Call it what you like. Courting is courting, and I wasn’t born yesterday. I can see what’s going on right in front of my face.”
“You’re more perceptive than Josie is. She thought I didn’t like her.” Daniel sounded amused, and she glared at the back of his head.
Was this some kind of guy thing or just another case of her dad and Daniel being alike? How was she supposed to know that glaring, brooding and general cranky behavior was the male mating call for the modern-day warrior?
Her dad turned around to face her. “I guess you’ve worked it out different by now?”
“Yes,” she clipped, still irritated with both of them for acting so superior.
She didn’t repeat the assertion that Daniel wasn’t courting her because he hadn’t denied it.
There were only a couple of reasons she could think of for that, and the first one she already knew to be false—that he really was interested in marrying her. She remembered what Daniel had said about how her dad had been warning men off of her since she was young. As his new partner, her mercenary lover probably didn’t want to start his new working relationship with a huge fight over his desire to bed but not wed the other man’s daughter.
Since she wasn’t up to a big argument with her dad either, she understood where Daniel was coming from. She didn’t know if his present silence on the truth was going to help anything in the long run, however.
“I’m glad you finally got smart,” her dad said. “I thought Nitro was going to self-destruct the way you ignored what he felt for you.”
“I didn’t realize you were aware of it to that extent,” Daniel said, his voice now laced with chagrin. “I’m not usually so easily read.”
“I notice everything related to my daughter.”
He hadn’t noticed she craved some level of normal domesticity in her life, but then even the best parents were blind to some things about their children.
Tyler’s plane had arrived late evening, so it was dark when Daniel and Josie drove him back to his house. He was tired and wanted to get working on the mission strategy, so they left him and continued to the hotel.
They returned the next morning after breakfas
t.
Tyler made coffee and served it on the brick patio, having pulled some chairs out of the storage area attached to the back of the house.
“I noticed you didn’t stay here while I was gone,” he said as he took his seat next to Josie. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
Josie smiled, looking so sweet Daniel wanted to lick her lips like a lollipop. “We knew that, but we thought staying at a hotel would be better.”
“The bed was more comfortable. She’d have had to sleep on top of me in yours,” Daniel added, winking at Josie and enjoying the way she choked on her coffee.
She was damn cute when she got embarrassed.
“You’ve staked a claim on my daughter.”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
The look Josie gave him was enigmatic, and Daniel wished he knew what she was thinking. She’d said she loved him and given him one of the most amazing experiences of his life, but he didn’t know how she felt about the fact he hadn’t repeated the words. He couldn’t.
He didn’t equate the way he felt about her with the way his mother had been devoted to his father in the face of her own compromised safety. He sure as hell didn’t see what his father called love as having anything to do with the way Daniel reacted to Josie. He wasn’t sure what he did feel about her, except that he had no intention of letting her go.
“So what are your plans for taking the target?” Josie asked in the silence that had stretched after his declaration of intent.
Tyler looked from Daniel to his daughter as if he was trying to gauge what was going on between them. Daniel wished him luck.
With a small frown, the older man shrugged and focused on Josie. “I figured a small force of four to six soldiers would have the best chance of pulling it off. We go in at night when they’ve got two sentries patrolling the perimeter. The soldiers guarding the compound are pretty much weekend warriors, despite what they might think—even the four that have been through my training camps. They rely heavily on their not-so-incredible security system.”
“So, we disarm the system, neutralize the sentries and follow through on our objective uninterrupted? It sounds too easy.” And Daniel didn’t trust easy on a mission.