Tinderbox (Flashpoint Book 1)

by Rachel Grant

  She did as instructed. He stroked her ass, then licked her again. She pressed her face into the pillow and let out a hard groan.

  He positioned himself behind her and slid his hands between her breasts and the mattress. He pinched her nipples, then cradled their heavy weight. “Next, I’m going to fuck you like this, while holding your tits.”

  She whimpered. She loved that position, loved it when hands lifted the heavy weight of her breasts, loved the wild animal feel of it. “Now.”

  He twisted a hand in her hair and pulled gently, so she turned her head to the side, facing the edge of the cot. “Suck me until I’m hard, and I will.”

  She nodded and rolled to her side, and he moved and knelt before her, presenting the feast of his half-mast cock to her mouth. She took him in, and he was full-mast in moments. He tried to move away, but she wrapped her hand around the base, keeping him in her mouth. Just a minute longer. Tonight was all they would have. She would give herself—and him—memories that would last.

  He stroked her clit as he slid in her mouth. He brought her to the brink of orgasm, and she pulled back, releasing him. She had only so many orgasms left before she’d be oversensitized, and he was going to take her from behind like he’d promised.

  “Get a condom on,” she said. They didn’t need it for birth control—she was covered by a three-month shot—but since tonight would be singular, there was no need for the health history questionnaire. They were exchanging enough bodily fluids that the conversation was probably warranted anyway, but with only a few hours, she didn’t want to.

  Pax slipped on another condom. Morgan scooted up the bed so she knelt on the pillows at the top with her hands pressed to the wall. This would give him better access to her breasts.

  As he positioned himself behind her, she asked, “Are you still angry with me? For calling and texting you?”

  “Yes,” he said as he thrust inside her.

  She gasped against his thickness. His cock set off ripples of sensation inside her.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this.” He thrust deeper. “This could ruin me.” He cupped her breasts just like she’d hoped, and thrust again. “And yet I can’t stop.”

  “Don’t stop,” she said.

  “Never.”

  His hands slid over her breasts, to her side, then up her shoulders. He braced one arm on the wall and wrapped the other in her hair. He twisted and pulled it to the side, then his mouth was on her neck. Stubble abraded her skin in the most pleasing way as he nipped at the sensitive intersection of neck and shoulder. He moved to her ear and whispered, “I’m angry that I’m fucking you and grateful for it at the same time.”

  He released her hair and slid his hand along her shoulder, up the arm braced against the wall. “I love touching your soft skin.” The hand that supported his weight against the wall returned to cup her breast, while his other hand slid along her arm.

  He pinched her nipple, causing her to groan and clench down on him. Another orgasm started to build.

  His breathing changed, and she felt his body tighten against her. He was coming too. She crested while he grunted, and the pressure of his hand on her arm increased. They came together as he cupped her breast and leaned into her.

  Alarm bells clanged in her mind even as she rode the hard, fast orgasm. What was wrong? His weight shifted. She rocked with pleasure. Finally, the position of his hand on her arm registered. Oh fuck. The tracker.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Stop!” Morgan said, her voice low and breathy. She twisted, dislodging his hand, and Pax realized he’d been putting his weight on her as he had another mind-blowing orgasm.

  “Shit, babe! Did I hurt you?” He slid out from her body and turned her to look at him, cupping her face. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. It’s not that.” Her gaze darted frantically to the door. “It’s the tracker. In my arm. If you press on it for ten seconds, it goes off.”

  All the blood in his body charged straight for his heart. “You have a subdermal tracker?”

  “Yes.”

  He reared back, dizzy from the lack of blood. “Those things are top secret and only for seriously valuable VIPs.” Shit, exactly who was General Adler, anyway? He grabbed her arm and searched for the injection site. He only knew about trackers because his team had been sent to rescue a man in Yemen. But they’d been too late.

  He found the faint white line on her arm. “How long ago did you get this?”

  She ignored him and jumped from the cot. “You need to hide!” She grabbed the washcloth and ran to the sink. “Shit! I smell like sex and they could be here any second.” She ran the wet cloth over her skin, focusing on her crotch.

  “I can’t believe you have a fucking tracker in your arm and you didn’t warn me.”

  “I didn’t think of it! I guess I assumed you knew.” She ran to the door and flipped off the lights. She whirled to face him and pushed him toward the bathroom. He could just make out her features in the green glow of the alarm clock. “Get in the bathroom! Hurry!”

  He remained frozen in place as the full scope of this disaster sank in. How long had he pressed on the tracker? Was there a chance he hadn’t activated it?

  Not fucking likely.

  “I’ll act like I was sleeping with my head on my arm.” She plucked her panties from the floor and slipped them on, then grabbed a tank top and pulled it over her head.

  A cold, calm anger settled over him as he watched her try to make up for her massive blunder that could well ruin him. He’d made it clear they couldn’t be together. She knew exactly why. And still, she’d called him. Talked dirty on the phone and sent him selfies.

  Shit. His phone. Without a word, he grabbed it from the desk next to the door and then scooped his clothes from the floor and headed for the shared bathroom. If he made it through this humiliation undetected, Morgan might well wish she’d turned him in.

  She settled into the cot as he stepped inside the bathroom and locked the door to the opposite CLU. He leaned his forehead against the door and tried to control his breathing so he could hear.

  Not thirty seconds after he was inside, there was a knock on Morgan’s unit. She called out, groggily and took her time unlocking the door. Her words were muffled, but he thought she did a convincing job sounding like she’d been deeply asleep. Too bad she—and the whole damn CLU—smelled like sex.

  Her voice rose with alarm, and her words became clear. “I set off the tracker? Shit, I was so tired from the field today, I was dead asleep. I must’ve had my head on my arm. No wonder it’s half-numb.”

  Another voice uttered indistinct words.

  “Just let me throw some clothes on and I’ll go with you.” He heard the door close and a locker open. A minute later, she reopened the door. “Okay, let’s go.” The door shut firmly, telling him he was alone in the CLU.

  It would take about two minutes to drive to the building where someone would reset the tracker—and they would drive instead of walk, because timing was critical to battery life on those things.

  Jesus, triggering a tracker—which were ungodly expensive—because of careless sex was yet another layer of trouble that could land at his door. As if sex with her weren’t bad enough.

  He considered going back to his own CLU while the getting was good. But he decided against it because this would be his only opportunity to have this particular conversation with Morgan Adler.

  He slipped out of the bathroom and grabbed her cell phone, which he found on the nightstand, not the desk. He deleted his number from her address book and the text messages they’d exchanged. He then deleted her selfies from his phone. Surprise ripped through him when he saw she’d sent him another text—probably when she was in bed, waiting for the knock: I’m sorry. So sorry.

  Yeah, he didn’t think sorry would cut it with this one.

  He returned to the bathroom to wait for her return, hoping like hell she’d be dropped at her door and no one would find an excuse to enter the unit.
How humiliating to be reduced to skulking in a bathroom like a teenage boy who’d sneaked into a girl’s bedroom.

  Ten minutes later, he got his wish. She walked straight to the bathroom and tapped softly on the door. “Pax?” she whispered.

  He opened the door.

  Those big, beautiful blue eyes gazed up at him. “I’m sorry, Pax.”

  “You fucked up, Morgan. And your fuckup could well have put my role on my Special Forces team in jeopardy. Disobeying a direct order—even if it’s about my personal life—is bad.”

  He stepped out of the bathroom. “I shouldn’t have texted you, but I wanted to let you know how I felt, while underscoring that you are off-limits. My texts weren’t an invitation.” His gaze landed on the cot. Sweet Jesus, being inside her body had been as intense as he’d imagined. He looked away. “But you called, and I came—that’s my fault, I should have hung up on you and stayed the hell in my CLU.” He finally met her gaze again. “But once I was here, why the fuck didn’t you warn me you had a high-tech tracker in your arm? What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t. I was just…playing. I thought it would be fun to talk dirty to you. That it wouldn’t go anywhere. We wouldn’t violate your orders.”

  “Yeah, well, while you’re playing, I’m trying to do my job, which is training Djiboutians to be guerilla fighters. You may not think much of the Army because of your asshole father, and you may not give a crap about my role in it, but it’s damn important to me. The work we do here is important. You’ve seen what it’s like out there. There are fucking warlords who traffic in young girls, starving refugees from Somalia, and countries all around gunning for what little precious resources these people have. They need an army to defend their borders and their children, and I’m helping them build one. So you can play all the fuck you want, but I’m out. I’ve got a job to do and don’t have time for bullshit games.”

  He grabbed the knob and jerked open the door. Outside, he marched down the row of containers without looking back. Her security was someone else’s problem, and now that they’d had sex, he had her out of his system. In every way that mattered, Morgan Adler was now out of his life.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Morgan plastered a fake smile on her face for the guard as the Humvee passed through the last checkpoint and entered the base. It had been a long-ass hot, miserable day in the field, and she was exhausted from her sleepless night. All she wanted was a shower and bed. She’d have dinner tomorrow. Or maybe never. Food no longer held appeal.

  She feared Pax hated her, and she couldn’t blame him. Even worse than his anger was knowing she’d lost his respect. He saw her as a foolish, selfish woman, with no knowledge or care for the problems of Djibouti.

  Worse, she feared his assessment wasn’t far off. Not that she didn’t care about Djibouti, but the foolish and selfish part. She’d been so caught up in her desires, she’d gone blind to the risks. Blind to what it meant to Pax. Blind to the fact that this was neither the time nor the place to indulge in a selfish fling. No matter how badly she wanted him. No matter how badly he wanted her.

  He’d made the stakes for his career clear, and she pushed anyway. Because she’d been hurt by his rejection. But taking something just because you wanted it was a spoiled child’s reaction. She’d never considered herself spoiled, but now she had to examine her emotions and actions. Pax probably saw her as an overindulged general’s daughter, which was an especially bitter pill, because something had happened to her as they made love, and it wasn’t the three orgasms that had rocked her crumbling foundation.

  She could fall in love with Pax. She might even be halfway there. He was everything she’d never wanted: a soldier, bossy, downright domineering in bed, a possessive caveman at the wrong times and in the wrong place, and her father’s dream son-in-law.

  So why the hell had she wanted him so desperately, she’d made that damned booty call, even when he’d made it clear he couldn’t cross that line?

  And why did it hurt so much to know she’d never make love with him again?

  “Morgan?” Ripley asked from the driver’s seat.

  She opened her eyes, which she hadn’t even realized she’d closed to relive another memory from the night, and saw the Humvee was stopped in front of her CLU. Home sweet home.

  Except she wouldn’t be getting that shower or bed anytime soon, because standing in front of her unit was none other than her dear old Dad.

  One damn day. All Pax wanted was twenty-four damn hours without having to see Dr. Morgan Adler. Of all the days in the world, this one—a mere fourteen hours after he’d left her bed—would’ve been the perfect day to be Morganless for an entire rotation of the earth. But he’d been called to a meeting at command destined to involve the very person he wanted to avoid. He had no doubt the woman in question would be front and center.

  Initially, he’d feared he’d been found out, but that would have been a confrontation with his XO, not the base commander. And one thing he knew about his XO, the man would handle such a breach privately. He’d make Pax’s life a living hell, but he’d deal with his anger and disappointment in an off-the-books sort of manner, unless he intended to seize on the excuse to boot Pax off the team. A possibility, given the tension between Bastian and Pax since Yemen—but again, that action wouldn’t involve Navy brass. That was Special Operations Command all the way, and SOCOM didn’t air dirty laundry in front of other commands.

  He took his three-minute shower in the public facility, feeling envious of Morgan’s private shower not for the first time. In a different world, if he were no longer in charge of her security detail and without orders to keep his hands off, he could have pursued something with her, and he’d have made good use of her private shower and private CLU. The tracker in her arm wouldn’t be an issue. He’d put a bandage on the spot before sex as a reminder to avoid it.

  It was too easy to slip into sex fantasies involving Morgan, and he snapped off the shower in frustration. She was out of his system. Done.

  Except he had to face her in a few minutes. With a towel around his waist, he stepped to the mirror and proceeded to shave, bracing himself for the coming encounter with the centerfold with a PhD.

  Twenty minutes later, he was presentable, wearing a clean ACU, and climbing the steps to enter command, Cal and Ripley with him. Cal hadn’t been summoned to a meeting involving Morgan since the first one in the skipper’s office, making Pax wonder what was up now.

  Odds were high Cal knew Pax had slipped out of their unit last night, but he hadn’t said a word, which Pax appreciated. If Cal ever learned Morgan’s tracker had been set off during sex, he’d laugh his ass off, but for now, fortunately, that remained a secret.

  All subdermal tracker use was top secret. Special Forces found out about them only when they were sent in to save someone’s ass. In this area, that job usually fell to SEALs. Yemen had been an exception.

  Most of the seats around the conference room table were taken when they arrived. Given that Morgan and the skipper weren’t present and there were only three seats left, Pax opted for a seat along the wall. Cal and Ripley followed suit. They were the only enlisted in the room and didn’t warrant seats at the table.

  Pax met Savannah James’s gaze as low murmurs of conversation buzzed around the room. She wore that speculative expression he wasn’t fond of, as if she knew all his secrets. He wondered if she practiced that unsettling look in the mirror.

  From the whispers that flitted around him, he gathered that no one—not even his XO—knew the purpose of the meeting.

  Finally, Captain O’Leary arrived with Morgan and an older man wearing a crisp ACU. Someone called out, “Attention!”

  Pax stood along with the others. He scanned the Army officer and caught the two stars in the middle of the man’s chest. Shit. A major general.

  “At ease,” the general said as he took his seat.

  A glance at the name tape could confirm his worst fear, but all he needed was a gl
impse of the man’s familiar, wide blue eyes.

  Ah, hell. Pax dropped into his chair. Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any worse, Morgan’s daddy had arrived.

  Morgan took the vacant seat to her father’s right and grimaced. Pax was in her direct line of sight. She could do without seeing his every reaction to her father’s never-ending condescension. But then, she could do without seeing Pax at all.

  Captain O’Leary stood. “Officially, General Adler, the commanding general of Intelligence and Security Command at Ft. Belvoir, is here to inspect and confer with INSCOM’s subordinate command at Camp Citron, but the timing of his visit was moved up due to the recent threats to his daughter, Dr. Adler.” O’Leary nodded in her direction. “The purpose of this meeting is to bring General Adler up-to-date on the search for Etefu Desta and the security arrangements that have been made for Dr. Adler and her archaeological project.” He turned to her father. “General, did you wish to speak before we begin?”

  Her father stood and cleared his throat. Morgan braced herself, knowing exactly where dear dad would start. “Sorry we were late. My daughter insisted on taking a shower first, as if you all have nothing better to do than wait on her, when you’ve been out fighting the good fight all day, and all she’s been doing is looking at old rocks.”

  Yeah. Because that was what she did, she lived to waste the military’s time. She took a deep breath. Anger would only cause tears, which in this room was not an option. Her father knew damn well that anger was her trigger, and he was trying to diminish her right out of the gate so he could ride roughshod over her.