by Warren, Rie
“So much conflict. So much war. So many lives lost.” Madge’s black eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “It always haunts us.”
Majedah Chehab was no longer a terrorist threat. She wasn’t a political pawn. She wasn’t the sheikah. She was simply a human being—Madge—a person who wanted peace for her own people.
Peace.
I hadn’t had that for too many years.
Didn’t even know if it was possible for someone like me.
I nodded, and Madge dipped her head. Jade touched my arm, her fingers squeezing briefly.
That moment drew us together more than any other. Because we knew what was at stake.
Madge wisely commandeered a room of her own on the opposite side of the suite from the only other bedroom. We didn’t unpack, ready to run in an instant. But when I checked the bathroom attached to the bedroom I wanted to share with Jade, I noticed her toothbrush laid out next to my shaving kit.
Something intense kicked me in my stomach.
Returning to the large lounge, I avoided making eye contact with Jade. To look at her was to drag her into my arms and carry her to the bed, kick the door shut, and make love to her all night long.
I flicked through the room service menu. Meat. Red meat and strong spirits, I needed them.
Jade only let me get away with ignoring her for a couple minutes before she ripped the menu from my hand.
“Walker, I demand to know where you’re taking us!”
So much for peace and joy.
And silence.
I plucked the menu back. “Not now. You’re hungry. I can hear your tummy growling. And I’m starving. And Madge oughtta have a big fat midwestern steak to enjoy the full American experience.”
Jade pulled her arms across her breasts and pouted out her lower lip. “I’m not shutting up just because you put food in my mouth.”
My eyebrow arched in a dare. Because I could definitely put something else in her mouth to shut her up, and she damn well knew it.
Dinner was delivered to our door, and Jade and I didn’t even draw our guns when we let the waiter inside.
Okay.
I had my hand on my hidden revolver, and I knew Jade palmed the dagger behind her back.
At least we tipped well.
I ignored the unstoppable woman for one full hour—hard to do when she tried to interrogate me over a hot, steaming, fresh-from-the-oven dinner wearing nothing more than one of those terrycloth robes barely concealing her body.
Drinking another glass of wine after I had my fill of decadent dessert, I set about booby-trapping the rooms and windows, the very nice, very open balcony we wouldn’t be enjoying tonight because sometimes nice shit was way off limits.
Like Jade.
Madge let out a ladylike burp as she pushed her chair back from the table. “Pardon me.”
“A pardon. Yeah.” I threw myself into a seat. “That’s pretty much what we need right about now.”
The tension that had simmered too long during our road trip suddenly boiled over from both Jade and me.
“Not a pardon! Full acquittal, freedom!” Jade jumped up, looking ready to pounce on me. “Majedah has done nothing wrong, and you . . . you—”
“You! Goddamn you, Jade.” Scraping my chair back, I stood, leaning across the small table. “You are in my fucking face all the time. In my head. I can’t get away from you. Don’t want to.”
I ranged behind Madge who watched with absolute avidity. Stopping in front of Jade, I wrapped my arms around her waist.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“So you want to . . . you want me . . . you’ve been an utter wanker because—”
“Not even a question.” Tilting Jade’s chin, I hooked my thumb across her lush bottom lip.
“I have to agree, Jade. You do talk too much. And you have angst? Is that how you say it?” Madge picked up her glass of wine and sauntered to her bedroom. “But thank you for protecting me.”
Want and need and lust coursed through me.
Fuck.
I was so horny for Jade. But there was more.
The closer we got to the destination I refused to disclose, the more my memories bore down on me.
I didn’t want to go back, but because of Jade I had no other choice.
My emotions were way off the rez.
Dropping my arms, I pivoted away from her. I poured another glass of wine and shot it down my throat in one long glug.
I stared at the glass, turning it between my palms. “There’re still a few things I just don’t get.”
Jade sighed heavily from behind me. “What now?”
“How the fuck did the Feds know? Who’s been leaking our locations? First Mt. Pleasant then New York?”
“You’re accusing me?” Jade hauled me around. “How fucking dare you!”
She reeled back then slapped me across the face with a concussive blow.
Eighteen
He Who Dares . . . Wins?
I LOOKED AT JADE with all the cold arrogance I could marshal because to give in to this feeling I had for her would end me forever.
“If you hadn’t . . .” Jade’s voice dropped, but she shook with rage and her eyes flashed incandescent green fire. “If you hadn’t insisted on getting your dick wet with me, we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place, Walker.”
My jaw clenched hard, and I set down the wineglass before it splintered apart in my white-knuckled fist. “You didn’t put up much of a fight at the time.”
She tapped me on the sore shoulder. “Beg to differ. “
Manacling her hands behind her back with sudden force, I drew her straight up against me. “You wanted it just as badly as I did.”
Our mouths hovered close. Heavy heated breaths pushed our upper bodies together. Want flared to life, fanned by days of close proximity, years of simmering desire shooting off the charts.
“One more reason not to get involved with you. We cocked it up big time that night.” Jade ripped her hands free, shaking her head at the floor.
“That wasn’t the mistake.” I kicked a chair out of the way, working my fingers through my hair. “The mistake was trusting you in the first place.”
“Fuck you,” Jade spat at me. She grabbed my arm and wheeled me around. “Why’d you let me keep my weapons then?”
Jade patted the pocket of her white robe where the Beretta resided, the butt-end evident.
“You know what? I don’t care anymore. Fucking shoot me if you want to.” I turned my back, giving her the easy way out if she wanted.
“Is that what you want?”
“No.” I snarled, jolting around. “I want you!”
She jumped into my arms, slamming an unforgettable kiss to my lips.
I bit at her mouth, her moans lashing me higher—the days of sexual torment finally finding an outlet.
Ripping her bathrobe open to the waist, I flung it away. With her legs at my hips and her fingers fumbling with the button fly of my jeans, I drove her against the wall. Shirt over my head. Her tits filling my palms.
“I hope you’re fucking ready.” Biting her neck, I growled. “’Cause I can’t wait.”
Arching up in a sinuous move, she dropped onto my cock with sizzling, seizing heat.
I stumbled, shouting.
Heat and passion took over.
Fast. Tight. Loud.
Harsh. Rough. Raw.
A lamp fell over as I fucked Jade upright against the wall, the loud crash barely making an impression above the shockingly wet desperate fuck while we grabbed at each other.
I bucked into Jade, surging inside her with her ass in my hands. She threw herself into each deep stroke, the heat of her moans breaking against my ear.
She screamed like a banshee, clamping down on my rutting cock, drenching me all over. The spear of release began in the balls of my feet. I lifted her higher, digging in, rocking her against the wall as the pain-pleasure sped up my calves, up my t
highs until it settled low in my groin. I gripped her hip, her neck, grunting and licking across her half-open mouth.
The dam burst inside.
My cock swelled and kicked inside her, what felt like white-hot jizz rushing out of my dick, painting her spasming insides, her slick warm sex swallowing it all like a mouth on my cockhead and slurping at my shaft.
Holy shit.
My head swam, and I collapsed, pinning Jade against the wall with my body weight.
Shivering, shuddering, damn near stuttering—never mind the hypothermia incident from the Hudson—I slurred against her neck, “Y’okay?”
“Uhnnnn . . .”
“Me too.”
Slipping around so my back pressed against the wall, I slid down until my ass was on the floor and she straddled my lap. Heated wetness spilled from where we joined, and I had no intentions of moving.
In fact, my cock waved inside her from its snug warm home.
“Walker!”
I swept the hair from her face. “Hush now. My dick likes you.”
She snuffled a laugh against my shoulder. “I can tell.”
I laid my hand against her neck, loving the silkiness of her skin, the roundness of tits against me, and the turn of her thighs spread around me.
“That didn’t fix anything.” Jade protested, but she didn’t move away from me.
“Beg to differ,” I said with a lazy curl of my lips.
She hid her face deeper against my chest. “Walker. We can’t keep doing this.”
“Sure we can.” Kissing the top of her head, I wrapped my arms more strongly around her.
“This is getting out of control. The BND, the SVR, MOIS and the Feds, the fucking Easter Bunny, all of them gunning for Majedah. How do we keep her safe?”
“Control is overrated. As just proven.” I smirked.
“You are impossible. And a brute.” Jade halfheartedly swung at my shoulder with a closed fist. “I don’t even know how you’ve managed to stay alive this long.”
“Just waiting for you to come along and do me in, one way or the other.”
That is the goddamn truth.
Peeking up, she ran her index finger over my upper lip, coasting across the bottom one before she cupped my face. “If I was going to kill you, I’d have done so already.”
Her words were meant to be harsh but her eyes were so hazy soft. Besides, I was still hard and thick inside her, and she kept wiggling her bottom.
“And they say romance is dead, babe.” I grinned.
“Absolutely impossible.”
“Dead sexy.” Swooping down, I captured any further protests with my mouth on hers.
The immediate spark pulled me deeper inside her—my never flagging cock, my darting tongue.
Jade withdrew, softly panting my name. “I still need to know where we’re going from here.”
“The only safe place I know.”
No matter how much it hurts me.
“I have a location. But I need to know everything.” Slipping her off my lap—groaning when my wet erect cock emerged—I scooted away from temptation. “And you and Madge are still keeping me in the dark about something.”
Jade shook her head.
“Look at me.” Kneeling in front of her, I swear the depths of my soul shone in my eyes for her.
I rubbed my thumbs across the crests of her cheeks. “You have to trust me, Jade, or this isn’t gonna work.”
The instant her sparkling irises—forest green and oh so wise—met mine, I knew she got me. It wasn’t just this fucked up mission, but her . . . and me. Together.
Jesus.
“It’s just me. Has nothing to do with Majedah. And it won’t affect you or her.” She cupped my hand, kissing the calloused fingers. “I’ll tell you. As soon as you get us where we’re going. Deal?”
I was holding out. So was she.
So be it.
Instead of shaking her hand, I pulled her up into my arms and carried her to our bedroom.
I kicked that door shut.
And made love to her all night long, just like I’d imagined.
* * *
We’d crossed state lines from Minnesota to South Dakota by midmorning the next day.
We made the last leg of the journey in a beat-up old pickup in tones of rust red and shit brown I’d had the foresight to stash in a locked-down storage unit in Rapid City. Only my dad and I had access, and I knew as soon as the engine fired to life he’d been out this way, making sure it was fine-tuned and prepared whenever I had need of the Chevy.
Damn if the winter weather didn’t follow us all the way as city gave way to rolling hills the closer we got to the so-called Badlands.
I’d considered it a bad place for five long traveling years, but now, seeing the distant Black Hills wreathed in low gray clouds sifting down pure white snow like a wife’s bridal veil, I sat forward, eagerly taking in the land I’d grown up on.
Closer and closer through the vista that would become spring lush and grassy green—as green as Jade’s eyes—every moment delivered not the pain I’d imagined, but a new sense of peace.
Welcome to Inyan Kara Reservation. The Lakota Sioux. Buckle up. It’s the Law.
I heard Jade gasp.
The final miles found me urging the truck faster while Jade stared out her window, seemingly awed by the vastness of this wild, untamed land.
The word road wasn’t an apt description for the minimally snowplowed track. I shifted into fourth gear to jar us out of each deep hidden rut. Excitement hummed through my veins as I hit the gas at the exact moments, steering the stubborn wheel across the whitewashed, windswept landscape with Ȟe Sápa—the Black Hills—rearing up like great gray monoliths of solid rock.
Years of driving my pop’s rigged 4x4, not to mention riding roughshod horseback over every square acre of the land, meant I knew where each furrow lay and how to avoid every snow-covered ditch.
I easily navigated the plains despite the inclement weather.
Hump-backed bison huddled together in the background, shaking their shaggy coats.
Madge sat between Jade and me, open-mouthed and amazed. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“At least the Feebs can’t touch us here. Presumably.” I cracked a wry smile, gunning down a hollow, the pickup’s tires finding purchase on the fleecy white ground.
Then we followed the last snowdrifts, rounded the final turn, and I saw the roughhewn structure of the meetinghouse. I fishtailed to a stop on the skiddy snow, but I controlled the truck and parked with hands that almost shook.
I stepped out beneath the white fluff floating down. Fat snowflakes melting on my dark skin, I hoisted out Jade first, then Madge.
The chief stood before us against a backdrop of winter white and the sturdy timbers of the longhouse.
Barrel-chested, he drew his height to the full six foot five inches. Wearing modern clothes—a flannel shirt and faded jeans—beneath a buffalo robe that had belonged to his father. The hide was turned out, the geometric pattern painted in pigments no longer as vibrant as they’d been, and the fur collar caressed his brawny neck. When he bent slightly toward me, the ancient bear-tooth amulet rattled, and his long braided white hair slid over his shoulders.
“How did you know I was coming?” I halted in front of him, stiffly formal after so many years away from home.
“The spirits speak.” He loosened his foreboding expression long enough to wink. “And so does your mother. She said you texted her.”
I swallowed that unnerving feeling of having failed the tribe, my family, my . . .
“Welcome home, Wakiza.”
“Até.” I clasped my dad’s hand, and he pulled me into a hug.
Nineteen
Sacred Mountain, South Dakota
“WAKIZA!”
My mom elbowed my dad aside. Tall and slender, she looked like a willow reed beside him.
“Five years?” Pushing off the hood of her cape, she bared a scathing glare jus
t before winding back and smacking me on the face. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
As elegant as ever, but man, she still had that hitting hand.
Patting my stinging cheek, she hugged me. “I’ve worried about you every single day.”
We stood there in the snow, sheltered by the longhouse. I embraced my ina—my mother—her familiar scent of clover mixed with the expensive Chanel No. 5 bringing me home.
Clearing my throat, I brought Jade forward, her hand in mine.
“This is my nation, Jade.” Intense pride swelled in me after I’d tried so long to forget and forego my roots. “Dad, this is Jade Huntington.”
She nodded toward my father who merely grunted in response.
“Jade, White Buffalo.” Then I passed her onto my ina. “Mom, I’d like you to meet Jade. Jade, this is my mother, Red Thunder, Shappa.”
My mom took her hand, looking her over with a brimming smile. Somewhere during the intros my heart got stuck in my throat.
“And this is Majedah.” I introduced the last of our party, waiting for the interrogation to begin.
Didn’t take long.
With the tribes people appearing, dogs barking, voices rising, and kids buttoned up to their chins, everyone crowded around like I was the prodigal son when I was anything but.
It’d take more than a cold blast to keep the curious folk at bay, not with newcomers in the midst.
From the longhouse to the outskirts of the settlement, houses emptied, torches lit, and the tribe circled around.
Mom started the inquisition in Spanish, natch. The first language she’d taught me after Lakota and English. “Qué pasó?”
I smirked at Jade then whispered to mama, “She understands Spanish.”
“Wewe akarud, Wakiza.” My mom joined her arm through mine.
You came back.
“She knows Swahili too,” I explained.
Mom’s laugh coiled up to the sky and her hair shone like silver filigree. “I taught you well. Someone taught your woman better.” She patted my hand. “Come. Tell me how you met your match.”
“She’s not my woman.” I spared a glance at Jade.
