by Cindy Dees
She looked up just in time to grab the magazine and keep running without breaking her stride. Booyah. Perfect pass.
“You missed your calling, Lambo,” Tessa panted. “Should’ve played football. You’d have made a great quarterback.”
She must have reached her next sniper nest, for pops from her rifle started up, along with yelps from the Kimball brothers. They’d decided earlier not to make tonight easy for the Kimballs. This encounter was about sending a message to the brothers to leave him and Tessa the heck alone.
He’d also used this ambush as a training opportunity for Tessa, working out infil and exfiltration points, optimum firing positions, field of fire problems and a host of other tactical considerations. Which was to say, the Kimballs weren’t going to know what had hit them when this ambush was over.
He’d made absolutely sure he and Tessa would win because the idea of her getting shot panicked him more than he wanted to admit. He only prayed that once the Kimballs got serious and started shooting live rounds she would realize this wasn’t the career field for her.
He and Tessa pinned down the brothers in painful, but nonlethal, crossfire for about two more minutes. Beau had just started for the third hide when something slammed into the side of his right knee. A screeching scream of metal on metal split the night air and the Kimballs hooted with glee.
Damn. He was shot.
Chapter 12
Beau’s knee collapsed out from under him and he pitched over whether he wanted to or not. Using quickness and agility honed over years of training, he managed to turn the fall into a roll from back to belly, landing in a firing position.
He ignored the searing pain in his right knee and fired off a pair of beanbags in quick succession. A series of rubber bullet shots, one right after another, came from Tessa’s position. Man, she was reloading fast. Must be pissed off that a lucky ricochet had hit her partner.
As he flexed the joint experimentally, he felt his pant leg for wetness that would indicate heavy bleeding. It bent without increasing the pain, and his trouser fabric wasn’t soaked. There was blood, but nothing life threatening.
He smiled a little. Never thought he’d be so glad to have a knee brace on his leg. The titanium had protected him from taking a slug through the knee that would have truly messed up the joint forever. Hey. He always said he’d rather be lucky than good.
Another gunshot zinged past uncomfortably close to his head. All right. Enough of this garbage. He keyed his throat mike and breathed. “Go live. One shot. No kill.”
Which was easier said than done. It took a fine shooter at the top of his or her game to actually hit a specific target on the human body. Even simply aiming at the center of mass on a human was no guarantee of a hit for most people. But Tessa was within twenty yards of the nearest Kimball, and she was a fine shooter at the top of her game.
“Roger,” Tessa replied low in his earpiece.
It took about fifteen seconds for her to load a Teflon-tipped, low-grain-load sniper round and take aim.
The shot rang out stunningly loud in the night after the soft rubber rounds. Simultaneous with the shot was a scream. Interesting. She’d gone after Jimbo. Good choice. He’d always been the ringleader of the bunch. If Jimbo could be persuaded to bug out, the other boys would follow him.
“Son of a bitch! Bastard shot me bad! I’m bleedin’ all over heah’. Git me to the boat. Jeebus, I need me a doctor. Gimme yo’ shirt, Travis. C’mon, now, I’m dyin’.”
Beau listened in grim satisfaction as Jimbo ranted and cursed all the way back to the dock. The other Kimballs eventually horsed Jimbo into their boat. A motor roared, and silence settled around the peninsula.
“Clear your quadrant,” he ordered Tessa.
He hobbled through a sweep of his quadrant of the backyard and made sure no Kimballs had stayed behind to give him and Tessa a nasty surprise of their own. Searing pain shot through the joint when he reached the back porch and tried to bend his knee to take the first step. Nope. His knee was done.
“I’m clear,” Tessa reported.
“I have a small problem. Make your way to me.”
She joined him, clearing her way as she went. Good girl. “What’s up?” she said low.
“My knee’s hit.”
She moved quickly to his right side and wedged her shoulder under his armpit. With her help, he made his way into the house. She took him into her room and helped him sit down on her bed. Quickly, she pulled out their first-aid kit—a medic’s crash kit with excellent supplies, thankfully.
“Can you get your pants off, or should I cut them?” she asked.
“Honey, any woman who looks like you will never have any trouble getting me out of my pants.”
“I see the bullet didn’t ding your sense of humor.”
He gritted his teeth as she fumbled at his crotch. “How about I unzip my own trousers?” Otherwise, she might end up joining him on this bed for a little unscheduled sex, shooting agony in his knee or not.
She sat back on her heels to watch. He peeled his camo pants down over his hips, and her hands were abruptly there to help skim them down his legs.
“Ahh. Well, no wonder your knee hurts,” she announced. She ripped free the thick Velcro bands securing the brace and lifted it away from his leg. As soon as she did, the knifelike pain in his joint subsided.
She held the brace up and relief rushed through him. The bullet had damaged the titanium, causing a sliver of the metal to tear and bend inward so it jabbed the side of his knee. A thin gash in the side of his leg was trickling blood down his calf.
“Lemme clean that up and get some butterfly bandages on it. I don’t think it’s deep enough for stitches.” Tessa turned away to dig in the med kit.
He used the moment to allow the panic he’d been holding at bay to flow through him, give him a short, hard shiver, and then to drain away. He’d thought for a minute there that it was all over for him as an operator.
He watched in relief as she cleaned up and bandaged what was, in effect, a boo-boo on his knee.
“All better,” she announced.
He bent the joint a few times, and it was blessedly mobile and relatively pain free with that sharp piece of the brace out of it. “Right as rain, Nurse Wilkes,” he declared.
“Does that mean I can yell at you for scaring me now?”
He shrugged. “Guys are going to get shot and injured all the time in the field. Get used to it.”
“Yeah, but they’re not you,” she muttered under her breath.
“I told you not to—”
She cut him off and said defensively, “I know, I know. Don’t fall for you. I remember. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be concerned for you.”
Dammit. She had fallen for him. And then he became aware of something strange. A knot of warmth in his gut. What the hell was that all about? He was not glad she was worried about him! But that little lump of warmth wouldn’t go away no matter how much he swore at it or threatened it.
* * *
Tessa’s heart dropped to her feet as an angry expression flitted across Beau’s face in response to the idea that she might have fallen for him. Why was he so dead set on her not having any feelings for him? Was he that determined never to open himself up to love?
The L-word startled her. Whoa. Where had that come from? She wasn’t looking for love any more than he was. A real relationship with a decent guy who rocked her world in the sack? Maybe someday. After the Medusas. Beau had shown her that much was possible with a man, for which she was deeply grateful. But true love? Not a chance.
She bent her head, studying his knee intently, to hide the dismay in her eyes from his all too perceptive stare. She unzipped his combat boots and unbloused his pants, then pulled his pants the rest of the way off his legs. No sense knocking off the bandage and starting his cut bleeding again just when she
’d gotten it stopped.
Beau stood up, putting her gaze exactly crotch-high on him. All she had to do was lean forward. Pull his underwear down, and take him in her mouth. Even as the thought crossed her mind, his male parts stirred, swelling rapidly behind the thin Spandex.
Hands gripped her shoulders. Lifted her slowly to her feet. Her unwilling gaze traveled up his body, taking in the washboard abs, the bulging pecs and broad shoulders. A finger touched her chin, tilting her face up, forcing her to look him in the eyes.
“We good?” Beau murmured.
Jeez. How to answer that? They would be great if he would just kiss her and forget about the whole “Don’t fall for me” thing. She ended up mumbling, “Umm, yeah. Sure. Fine.”
“I don’t know much about women, but I do know one thing. When a woman says nothing’s wrong, something’s always wrong. And when she says she’s fine like you just did, she’s emphatically not fine. Talk to me. What’s going on?”
She winced. If only he wasn’t so direct all the time. She knew better than to try to lie to a special operator—they all had training that included knowing how to lie and how to spot a lie. She opted for partial truth. “I want you, Beau. Right now.”
“Post-mission adrenaline got you jacked up again?”
Actually, she’d been shockingly calm out there earlier. Which she was secretly pretty darned proud of. Tonight was the first time she’d ever shot a real bullet at a real human being. At the time, she’d been so focused on protecting Beau that it hadn’t dawned on her what she’d done.
But now that he mentioned it, adrenaline was, indeed, screaming through her. And it was demanding an outlet in no uncertain terms.
“I feel as if I could run a marathon right about now,” she confessed. She risked a glance up at him. “Or have epic sex with you. Your choice.”
He laughed, low and sexy. “Best sex you’ll ever have is right after a scare-you-to-death mission. And they do get a lot scarier than chasing off those yahoos tonight.”
Whatever. She wanted sex. She slid her hands up under Beau’s T-shirt against hot, naked male flesh. “Didn’t you get even the tiniest adrenaline spike out there tonight? When your knee brace got shot, maybe?”
His arms swept around her and she gasped as his hard body abruptly was plastered against hers. “I might have a little spike,” he murmured in her ear. “You’d better check.”
Laughing against his chest, she let her hands roam down his back to cup his tight, muscular rear end. She’d never been much of a caboose girl, but dang, he had a nice one. Her hand slid inside the waistband of his athletic shorts and around to his front. She plunged her hand downward and was rewarded with a fistful of erection so hard and so hot it could definitely deliver the kind of sex she had in mind tonight.
She pushed his shorts down while he tugged his T-shirt over his head. He stripped her with shocking efficiency. The man sure knew his way around women’s clothing. And around women’s bodies. In moments he had her moaning in his arms as his hand slipped between her legs. Clever, clever fingers that man had. In turn, she gripped him tightly, running her hand up and down the iron and velvet shaft.
He backed her up against the wall, looping her right leg over his hip. He slammed up and into her with a groan as she shuddered in delight and arched into him.
“Again,” she demanded breathlessly.
He obliged, sandwiching her between the wall at her back and his driving thrusts from the front. She wrapped one hand around his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair. He captured her other hand with his, lacing their fingers together and plastering the back of her hand to the wall above her head. He all but lifted her off the floor with the force of his thrusts and she opened herself to him eagerly, driving down onto him with abandon.
“Come for me, baby,” he growled in her ear. “Scream for me.”
That was all it took. She buried her face against his neck and cried out her pleasure as an orgasm tore through her.
“I could do this all night long with you,” he growled. He spun her around, dumped her on the bed and followed her down, impaling her from behind this time and pounding into her like a jackhammer.
He drove her over the edge into bliss again, and amazement coursed through her. He did it so easily to her. A few kisses and a few strokes of his magnificent body inside her, and she was lost.
“More,” she panted, well aware that he had not found his own release yet and greedy for more herself.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he ground out.
“I promise you are not hurting me,” she gritted back. “Please.”
He rose to his knees, gripped her hips and lifted her onto her hands and knees.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he muttered as he positioned carefully. “I’ll try to hold back—”
“Don’t you dare!”
Beau made a strangled sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. And then he drove into her and all humor fled in the face of the towering pleasure abruptly building between them like a firestorm. It swept away everything in its path, leaving only the two of them, their bodies straining toward each other, and the promise of release so powerful they wouldn’t be able to stand before it.
Faster and deeper he drove into her. Harder and higher she pushed back onto him. Their bodies collided over and over, each time wringing a cry of delight from her throat. Her blood burned through her veins like molten magma seeking escape. Higher and higher the heat and pressure built until her body felt as if it couldn’t contain it all anymore.
Beau grabbed her hips and slammed into her one last time as he pulled her back toward him, and completely uncontainable pleasure ripped through her as her entire being exploded. He shouted and drove into her one last time as the pleasure utterly and completely consumed them both. She shivered as he shuddered against her, pouring his entire being into her and taking everything from her in return.
Beau collapsed onto his side, taking her with him and tucking her against his front, spooning with her like they had that very first night in the motel. She was gratified to feel him breathing as hard as she was. Well, then. Sign her up for adrenaline-fired sex any day.
“See what I mean about the adrenaline?” he said lazily.
“Why, yes. Yes, I do,” she managed to answer.
He laughed quietly and his arms tightened affectionately around her.
The two of them were so much better at communicating with their bodies than with their words. She didn’t have to hear him say he had feelings for her, too, when he made love to her like that. Goodness knew she poured her heart and soul into it, as well. Nope. She had no need for words from him. His demonstration of passion and tenderness and caring and desire spoke volumes.
They lay there together for a long time, wreathed in contentment.
Eventually, she roused herself enough to ask, “Think the Kimballs will be back for more tonight?”
“Nah. Jimbo thought he was dying. He’ll want to get patched up before he comes back for more. Where’d you shoot him, anyway?”
“Right shoulder. Round passed through cleanly from what I saw.”
“Yup, that’ll lay him up for a few days. The other boys won’t make a move against us without him to lead the pack.”
“Not the self-motivated types, huh?”
Beau nibbled her ear lightly. “Hardly.”
She turned in his arms to face him. “So you’re saying we have all night to rest up before they try again?”
“I am.”
She smiled up at him. “So. How fit are you Spec Ops types? Is your recovery time from strenuous exercise as good as everyone says it is?”
The corner of his mouth curved up in the soft glow of the kerosene lamp. “You looking to find out?”
“Hey, I run triathlons for fun. I know I can recover on a dime.”
His grin widen
ed. “Is that a challenge, Wilkes?”
“I guess it is, Lambo. Whatchya got?”
* * *
Beau climbed toward consciousness lazily, a little disoriented at registering himself lying in a bed with a lush female body draped over him. And not just any body. Tessa’s glorious body. It was a damned fine way to wake up in the morning.
She moved a little, half-waking, as well. Her hand stole across his chest and dipped lower, tracing the sharp indents of his stomach muscles, which tightened under her touch. As did other portions of his anatomy.
They’d gone at it for a good portion of the night last night. He would think his body had had enough, but apparently not. This woman was hard to get enough of. Honestly, he didn’t think he would ever tire of her. There was always something new to discover about her. Another layer of personality, another dimension to their passion. And the miracle of it all was that she seemed to be as addicted to him as he was to her.
He was abjectly grateful that she didn’t seem to require romantic speeches and grand declarations of his feelings. He was a thousand times better at showing how he felt, and thankfully, she seemed to understand his unspoken message.
As he became more alert, less lazily half-asleep, it dawned on him to wonder exactly what he wasn’t saying to himself about his feelings for Tessa.
Tessa’s leg was already thrown across his thigh, and she pressed herself upright, sliding the rest of the way across his hips to straddle him. She smiled down at him sleepily. “Morning, handsome.”
“Mornin’, beautiful.”
Her dark hair was wavy and tousled around her face and shoulders, her breasts peeking out from among the silky strands. She looked like a Siren smiling down on him and was as irresistible as one. It really was a minor miracle that she not only found him attractive, but was also bold enough to take on a guy like him romantically and meet him halfway.
Strike that. No romance here. Just sex. Lots and lots of truly amazing sex. No feelings. No strings. He repeated the mantra to himself over and over.
