by Cindy Dees
Finally, the lust took over and he lost control, matching her surging hips with thrusts of his own. Their bodies slapped together wetly, carnal and raw. Sherri threw her head back and cried out, and he clapped a hand over her mouth as his own strangled shout escaped. He clenched his jaw with all his might, and then his entire body exploded up and into Sherri, deep inside.
She went limp against him, panting. Her forehead fell to his shoulder. And his nose landed in her shampoo-sweet-smelling hair.
He wasn’t sure he had any intact bones left. She’d shattered him completely. He let her slide down his body, relishing the feel of her breasts against his chest, the muscles of her thighs against his, the softness of her relaxed belly pressing into his.
He took a step back, drawing her under the spray of water. Eyes closed, head tilted back, she rinsed out her hair. It was a simple act, but there was something so sensual about the way her fingers slid through the wet golden strands, the way her palms smoothed the water back from her face, the way the suds coursed down the slender column of her neck, that he felt his cock stirring again already.
Sherri felt it, too. She opened her eyes, gazing up at him in invitation so ageless, mysterious, and feminine that he could hardly breathe.
“What’s your pleasure?” he murmured against her lips.
A smile curved her mouth against his and she surprised him by turning around in his arms. She glanced over her shoulder at him, throwing him a come-hither look that had his cock springing to full attention.
She planted her palms on the wall of the shower, and the look in her eyes dared him to take her this way.
Oh, he needed no second invitation at all. He stepped up and entered her from behind, loving the way she groaned in pleasure as he impaled her. Grabbing her hips, he pulled her back against him in time with his thrusts, watching where their bodies joined until it was too much for him to bear without exploding.
Her ass was juicy and firm as it slammed into him. Her back, the inward curve of her waist, the slender length of her spine—they were so damned perfect he didn’t think he would ever tire of the sight of them. The thought that they were his made him so horny he completely lost control of his desire again and slammed into her mindlessly, faster and faster, harder and harder, holding her still and open to take all of him as he rammed into her, balls deep.
Sherri buried her face against her upper arm, biting her biceps to keep from screaming as he made her his.
She came so hard her legs buckled, and he held her up by her hips as he slammed home. The orgasm that ripped through him was so powerful he actually blacked out for a moment. It was as if a giant electrical shock had passed through his entire being, pleasure so intense it bordered on painful.
Gradually, awareness of water running over his body returned. Of shower walls. Of holding Sherri’s hips in his hands. Of the aftershocks zinging through him, one after another.
He helped Sherri straighten and soaped up her body for her again. It was as much a massage as a bath, and she stood quietly under his ministrations, utterly relaxed. He knew the feeling.
Unfortunately, the real world called. They both had places to go and things to do.
Man, what he wouldn’t give to spend about a month with her, stranded in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do but explore the myriad ways he could possess her body, mind, and heart.
Whoa. Heart and mind? What was up with that?
“You get out first,” she murmured lazily. “Us girls always take longer in the showers than you guys.”
“Why is that?” he asked, quickly rinsing off the last of the soap and Sherri.
“More hair to wash and a higher percentage of our bodies to shave if we’re going to be all smooth and sexy for the boys.”
“Honey, you could come to me covered in mud without having seen a razor in weeks, and I’d still want you like crazy.”
He dropped a quick kiss on her mouth and forced himself to leave the shower before he had to have her again. Nope, she wasn’t a fire in his blood. She was a full-on addiction.
He was in huge trouble.
Chapter 10
Sherri fell asleep fast that night, not troubled by horny dreams of the man she couldn’t have. Instead, her dreams were populated by images of her and Griffin in her favorite settings—lying on a beach, hiking in mountains, making slow, lazy love on a gently rocking sailboat—
A hard hand pressed over her mouth, and she jerked awake.
A combat wake-up. Which meant hostiles were nearby and silence was imperative.
Griffin bent over her cot. He murmured, “We’ve had word from downrange. The attack on Haddad is going down. Cal wants you to watch and learn from the live feed of the Reapers’ body cameras.”
Sherri nodded and threw back the blanket, climbing out of bed quickly. Griffin didn’t step back quite quickly enough, and she brushed against him as she stood up.
Their gazes met in a brief, private smile, and then he stepped away to wake up Anna and Lily.
The women dressed quickly and followed him outside into the chilly night. Sherri’s breath hung in the air as she hurried after Griffin, appreciating his muscular shoulders. God, she loved hanging onto those shoulders while he took her to the moon and back.
Kettering and the other men were waiting in the conference room, and all three video monitors on the wall were lit up in lime green. They showed a barren landscape below. The Reapers must be lying on top of some sort of ridge, looking down into a valley. None of the images were moving at the moment.
“Where are they?” Griffin asked tersely.
“Hunkered down, waiting for the air assets to come on location,” Cal answered. “I’m gonna pull up the audio feed from Ops. You ladies will hear everything the SEALs hear in real time.”
The way Sherri understood it, the SEALs themselves would say basically nothing from the time the op started until it concluded. Silence was the world of the SEAL in action.
Over the next few minutes, a steady stream of information flowed into the SEALs’ earpieces, however. Estimates of how long it would take for the surveillance and attack drones to come into place overhead. Reports of sentry activity outside the farm compound in which Haddad was sleeping and which the attack team planned to take down.
A final readiness check was called for, and the various groups of operators verbally checked in with brief mutters or replied with single clicks over their microphones to indicate their readiness to roll.
The DEVGRU guys were going to attack the cave complex on the other side of the valley, a hairy and incredibly dangerous mission inside tunnels and caves likely to be inhabited by hostiles and booby-trapped up the wazoo. The three Reapers and two other strike teams from SEAL Team 8 were apparently going to sweep down out of the hills from both sides and take the cluster of mud-walled buildings.
A force of a hundred Marines was perched at the far end of the valley, about a mile away, guarding its entrance against any Taliban reinforcements who might try to come to Haddad’s aid. The narrow valley itself made for a steep, rocky natural barrier that would prevent all but the most agile and well-equipped warriors from entering the area. Fortunately, the SEALs were both.
The main purpose of the entire support team—Marines, photo analysts, intel specialists, translators, and air support—was to make sure the SEALs weren’t surprised by anything. It allowed the operators to worry only about what was ahead of them and not what was behind.
Sherri felt her pulse leap as the go order was given. The images on the video monitors began to move as the Reapers started creeping down the hillside into the valley below.
Griffin muttered to Kettering, “How do you stand the suspense of sitting in an ops center, watching missions go down like this? I swear, my heart rate’s double what it would be if I were out there myself.”
Cal grimaced. “It’s no fun. I try
to watch for any detail you guys miss, any hint of something going off plan that might get you in trouble. I console myself with being an extra pair of eyes for the team.”
Sherri caught Anna’s infinitesimal shift in her chair to lean closer to Trevor. Interesting. Had that been a conscious move on Anna’s part or not? Even more interesting was the fact that Trevor didn’t pull away from the contact. He seemed prepared to let the gorgeous brunette lean surreptitiously against his right arm.
Beside her, tension vibrated off Griffin. He really was suffering, being left behind like this. An impulse to reach over and offer him comfort nearly got the best of her. She settled for throwing him a sympathetic look when he happened to glance over at her. He quickly looked away.
Kenny, Sam, and Jojo formed one of three three-man strike teams approaching the compound from different directions. The idea was for at least one team to get inside, and they all would create diversions for one another.
Occasional faint sounds of gravel rolling underfoot were all Sherri heard for the next several minutes as the Reapers crept down the difficult terrain.
Without warning, an explosion and then a huge puff of smoke, dust, and fire erupted from the cave opening across the valley. Tracer rounds burst out of the compound below, and a second huge explosion shook the hillside mere yards in front of the cameras.
Griffin swore at the same time Kettering bit out, “Mortar. Big one.”
Griffin leaned forward. “That mortar came from the target compound! This is an ambush!”
It was Kettering’s turn to swear.
Tension in the conference room was so thick Sherri struggled to breathe against it. Griffin was rigid in his seat, his knuckles white on his armrests. Trevor and Axel looked about to explode as well.
For the next minute or so, the camera images jiggled wildly as the Reapers beat feet down the mountainside. Now that stealth was blown, it was all about speed. This was why SEALs trained so obsessively. They could run faster, farther, and for longer than anyone could possibly anticipate, thereby gaining a tactical advantage in combat situations.
Kenny, Sam, and Jojo slipped and slid in the loose scree as they raced for the compound. Sherri heard heavy breathing on the audio feed. No doubt about it: they were going balls to the wall.
One of the cameras suddenly sailed up in the air and then crashed to the ground.
“Dammit!” Kettering exclaimed. “One of our guys is down!”
“Which one?” Sherri cried.
Lily asked quickly, “Did he fall down, or was he knocked down?”
Nobody answered either question.
The downed Reaper didn’t get back to his feet immediately. The camera view lay still and unmoving, pointed at a clump of dead grass.
Sherri felt bile rise to the back of her throat. That SEAL was hurt. Maybe unconscious. Possibly worse.
Even while barreling down into the Kirdu Valley, even with one of their men down, the Reapers maintained complete radio silence. The other two video feeds showed their owners proceeding forward more slowly now. The tips of the men’s assault weapons came into sight now and then as the men swept them back and forth in tightly controlled arcs.
The downed camera moved.
“Yes!” Griffin cried at the monitor on the wall. “Get up!”
The video image slowly righted itself. A long pause and then a wobble as the Reaper climbed to his feet rather slowly and clumsily for a SEAL. Sherri winced. The guy had to be hurt.
Who was it? Clever Kenny with a dopey song lyric or a quick comeback always on the tip of his tongue? Friendly Jojo who struggled to be an asshole when it was time to yell at the female trainees, and who let them cut off a few pull-ups or push-ups at his station when they were exhausted? Or young, sweet Sam, the baby of the bunch and still finding his place on the Reapers?
The injured Reaper moved forward, his pace closer to shambling than sprinting. The tip of his assault weapon wavered and then steadied. Wavered again.
“Isn’t he hurt?” Anna asked no one in particular. “Shouldn’t he pull back?”
Kettering shrugged. “Half a SEAL is still more capable than most armed soldiers. Whoever’s hurt knows he can’t operate at full speed with the other guys, but he can still provide covering fire or watch their backs. Maybe hold a doorway, or clear an egress route.”
Griffin added, “If nothing else, seeing a third fully armed SEAL approaching adds that much more intimidation factor when the team encounters hostiles.”
Which he seemed certain the Reapers would do.
Sherri gulped. It was one thing to train hypothetically for this stuff. It was another altogether to actually see what she was getting herself into. On one hand, it scared her silly. On the other hand, a burst of adrenaline in her gut shouted nothing but excitement at the prospect of being out there in the dark and danger, saving the world.
All of a sudden, the entire valley erupted with movement.
Voices from the support team monitoring the overhead drone cameras shouted, and a deafening cacophony of gunfire erupted.
“What the hell?” the men at the conference table muttered in unison.
Sherri leaned forward, staring in disbelief at the video images. Taliban fighters were standing up, lining the entire rim of the valley. Hundreds of them. Rifles in hand, they started charging like bats out of hell down the mountains at the SEALs now crouched beside the compound.
“Where in the hell did they come from?” one of the operators on the ground broke silence to demand over the cacophony of gunfire.
Ops answered tautly, “We had no heat signatures. They either came out of undiscovered tunnels, or they were hiding under some sort of heat-shielding material.”
“Head count?” the same operator demanded roughly.
“At least a hundred.”
Griffin shoved a hand through his hair in what looked close to despair. “Our guys have to fall back until the Marines arrive. Engage the hostiles in a front-and-back firefight. And Ops needs to call in gunships ASAP.”
Cal replied grimly, “It’ll take the Marines a solid ten minutes at top speed to join our guys. As for gunships, that valley is narrow and steep. It’ll be a bitch to run a ship down in there and not crash.”
“Attack drones, then,” Griffin responded desperately. “Something! They need support, or they’re all going to be slaughtered!”
It was a hell of an ugly ambush. Whoever had planned it had done his work well.
The three Reaper camera views dropped close to the ground. The guys were no doubt taking cover behind whatever they could find at the edge of a broad expanse of dirt.
The Reaper belonging to monitor one held up a fist in camera range and signaled his teammates to prepare to move out.
Anna asked, “Doesn’t he know he’s got a hurt man with him?”
Trevor answered her gently, “Until that hurt man tells the team leader he can’t continue, the team leader will assume the hurt guy can function and not hinder the team.”
Griffin muttered, his gaze never leaving the monitors, “We fight wounded and shot up all the time.”
Cripes. This was that heart-of-a-SEAL stuff Griffin kept talking about.
The three camera images took off at a run across open terrain. Spits of dirt around their feet indicated that they’d drawn incoming fire. Sherri counted several grunts across the audio feed. Did those translate to bullet hits on their Kevlar vests, or were one or more of the guys shot now, too?
A wooden gate with huge iron hinges came into sight. All three camera feeds halted and then pointed out at the valley.
Streaks of tracer fire, muzzle blasts, and small explosions lit up the entire mountain in front of the Reapers. It had a certain macabre beauty that reminded Sherri of fields of fireflies in the summer up at the lake house when she’d been a kid. Except these fireflies were lethal, each one
holding a promise of death. She shuddered in spite of herself.
The disembodied operations voice announced, “Scotty, Sulu, and Bones are in place.”
Those were the code names for the three strike teams set to enter the compound in search of Haddad. Bones was the three Reaper operators. Spock was the DEVGRU team, and Kirk was the Marine contingent.
“They can’t seriously be sending those men in anyway, knowing it’s a death trap!” Sherri exclaimed.
Griffin glanced over at her. “We’ll never get another shot like this at Haddad. We know he’s in there. Even if all we do is kill the bastard and lose our own men, it’ll be deemed a worthy trade.”
She flopped back in her chair, aghast. The military was willing to sacrifice so many highly trained Special Forces operators to kill one terrorist?
Ops was speaking again. “Go on my count. Three. Two. One. Go, go, go!”
All three cameras were moving again. Fast.
Camera one went through a recently blown hole in the wall and peeled left. Its wearer scanned the courtyard for movement and hostiles.
Camera three showed a SEAL in full night-combat gear jumping through the hole.
Griffin muttered, “That’s Jojo going in. Which means Sam was probably the one who went down before.”
The agony in Griffin’s voice was palpable. It was clearly killing him to be sitting here and not running this critical mission.
The audio feed went silent as the three Reapers moved swiftly between buildings toward their assigned targets. It was as if the support team knew to shut up and let the SEALs do their jobs now without distracting them.
Kenny paused beside the doorway into a simple two-story structure with perhaps four rooms on each floor, trying the doorknob stealthily. The knob turned a bit under his hand. Kenny waited for his buddies to get into position on the other side of the door. Then he threw the door open while Jojo lobbed in two grenades, one with each hand, then threw in two more for good measure.
