“Works for me.” She’d worry about later when she knew there was going to be a later.
Trailing her fingers down his chest she skirted his wound and went straight for the laces on his pajama pants. She couldn’t believe how hard his muscles felt. There wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on his body.
Wrapping her hand around his shaft, Annie felt the velvety smooth texture of his skin covering the steely hardness of his cock. He was definitely rock-solid all over. Her fingers played over his length, making him groan into her ear as he nibbled on her neck.
Annie was so busy exploring every inch of his length, she didn’t even realize Mace had unbuttoned her pants until she felt his fingers probing her pussy lips. Even his fingers were thick! Her muscles clenched around him and spasmed at his touch. He was stretching her, filling her, and this was only his finger!
“You’re so hot for me, so wet. I want to be in you.”
“I’m in-line with that plan,” Annie gasped as his knuckle rubbed up against her clitoris, sending shockwaves through her system.
“I don’t have any protection. Hell, I don’t even have any pockets.” Mace’s voice was close to a whimper.
“I’m on the pill, and I’m clean as a whistle.” Annie struggled to get her pants down her legs and kick off her shoes without letting go of Mace. Dear God, if he stopped now she would die!
“Me too.”
Maybe the military’s regular blood tests were a good thing after all.
Mace lifted her onto the stool and she balanced on the edge, waiting to feel him inside her.
“Hurry, hurry!” Annie had never wanted anyone so badly before in her life. The wait to feel him inside her was excruciating. Her core was throbbing, and she could feel her juices sliding down her spread thighs. Her legs quivered in anticipation, aching to have him fill her.
“Yes, ma’am!” Mace drove into her, pushing past walls that hadn’t felt a man for months.
Annie felt stretched to the limit. She couldn’t see Mace, but she could feel every inch of him inside her, filling her to the hilt.
“Good God you’re big!” Annie tried to relax her muscles to make room for him.
“Good God you’re tight. And hot. And feel so good.” Mace peppered his words with kisses to her face and neck.
A volcano of feeling was bubbling under the surface of Annie’s body, wanting to erupt. The sensations were flooding her mind, washing away any thoughts but how wonderful Mace’s body felt inside hers. When he nipped her shoulder then licked the spot, Annie felt the volcano bubble higher.
“Come for me,” he growled in her ear.
“I-I don’t know what to do.” Her embarrassment was no match against the feelings Mace was creating inside her.
“Just let go, I’ll take care of the rest.”
Let go? Who was holding on? Annie’s body had long since taken control and she was following along for the ride. She was tempted to ask him what he meant when she felt his finger stroke her clit.
Instantly the volcano erupted, shooting wave after wave of pleasure through her body. Hips bucking, Annie held on to Mace’s shoulders with all her might. Every infinitesimal quiver of her pussy touched his length and pulled him closer inside her, and even then it wasn’t enough. She wanted this feeling to go on and on.
“That’s how you do it.” Mace pulled a nipple into his mouth, and the pressure set off a new bevy of quivers inside her.
“I guess so.” Grabbing his arms for better leverage, Annie thrust her hips up and squeezed her inner muscles at the same time.
The initial explosion was gone, but the aftershocks were still powerful enough to keep her off balance.
“If you keep that up, this won’t last very long.”
“Oh, I think you’ve got long enough well covered.”
Something he demonstrated by hammering her almost to her womb. Squeezing him even tighter, Annie held on while Mace grabbed her hips and slammed into her again and again. Her world was focused on feeling him between her legs. The hair on his legs rubbed against her inner thighs, sending her nerve endings into overdrive. He was hard, and hot, and felt so good inside her, she never wanted it to end.
His hands tightened on her behind, pulling her harder against him, and he let out a muffled shout before lowering her back against the stool. His cock pulsed inside of her, matching the beat of her racing heart. Before Annie could fully recover from the roller-coaster ride her libido had been on, Mace pulled out of her.
“Shh, I hear something.” He covered her mouth with his hand and held her next to him. His body was tense in anticipation.
Mace lifted her off the stool and placed her gently on the floor, pushing on her shoulder in a silent signal to crouch down. Annie curled into a ball, and reached out for some clothing. One minute she was recovering from the first orgasm of her life, the next she was trying to find something to cover herself in case gun-toting lunatics barge through the door. Talk about a buzz kill.
A ray of light from the hallway emergency lights shined weakly through the door as Mace opened it a crack. The light gave Annie a glimpse of Mace as he searched for danger. The part of her mind not absorbed with trying to cover her nakedness marveled at the sheer masculine beauty of the man in front of her.
Broad shoulders she’d only just clung to like her life depended on it were covered in mounds of muscles. She could see his six-pack abs leading to narrow hips and ropey thighs. The shadows hid the package between his legs, and Annie shook herself out of the urge to crane her neck to get a better look.
Arrows of pure lust shot straight to her pussy, singeing her with need. She’d only just had the first real orgasm of her life and already the heat was spreading through her at the sight of him. At this rate she was more in danger of becoming a sex-starved maniac than getting shot by the lunatics patrolling the halls.
“It’s nothing. Must have just heard something through the vents.” Mace shut the door, cutting off her study of his attributes.
“So what do we do now?” Annie found her bra waded up near her pants, but her shirt was nowhere to be found. She’d have to wait until the power came back on to find it.
“We’ll listen to the scanner again. Maybe the news has something to report.”
Annie could hear the sounds of him pulling on his pants. If they lived through this, she was going to get a better look at all of him. A nice long look.
Fumbling around on the shelves, Annie found the scanner and turned it on. All she got was static.
“Damn, I must have moved the dial when I grabbed it. Hold on, I’ll try to find the right channel.” Her hands shook as she turned the knob slowly. Trying to find a frequency in pitch darkness wasn’t the easiest thing to do.
“All charges are in place and patients evacuated.”
“Stop there!” Mace ordered.
Annie’s hand froze on the dial. They must have intercepted the terrorists’ radio transmissions.
“Have you separated the civilian employees from the military?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Find one soldier to make an example for the press, then we’ll deliver our demands.”
“Yes, sir. And if they aren’t met?”
“Then the hospital is blown sky-high in the morning.”
* * * * *
His gut clenched at the coldness in the voice on the radio. Mace had no idea what their demands were, but he knew the government wouldn’t meet them. Giving into hostage demands only encouraged wackos to keep trying. They had a few hours until daylight to get out and save all the people in the building.
Hell, he couldn’t even save himself and Annie, how was he going to save the hospital?
“Do you want me to try to find the news station or keep it here?”
“Leave it there, we don’t want to take the chance of losing it.”
“That’s what I thought. What are we going to do?” Her voice quivered a bit.
Mace resisted the urge to pull her into his arms an
d comfort her. That’s what he’d meant to do when the power went out; instead, he screwed her brains out in a janitor’s closet. Prince Charming had nothing on him.
“I’m going to take another look at that bomb.”
“What do you think you’re going to find out this time?”
“It seems to me if they are dumb enough to talk on radios that can get picked up by a cheap police scanner, I might have given them more credit than they deserve when it comes to the bomb.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“It means I want another look at the bomb. I think some of those wires are decoys.”
“And if you’re wrong?” She didn’t sound very confident in his reasoning.
“Then I won’t touch it, but if I’m right, we might be able to get up those stairs.”
“And do what?”
“Divide and conquer.”
“Using what?” she snorted. “We have one knife between the two of us.”
“First we need to see if we can even get off this floor, then we’ll worry about how to take out the unfriendlies.”
Mace opened the door to the closet to let some of the light from the hallway in. He didn’t want to go searching for the knife blindly. Annie was standing right behind him wearing only the sports bra and her pants. He felt his cock stir yet again. Damn, how could he want her so badly when he had just spent himself inside her?
Her blonde hair was completely loose now and it hung down in a shimmering fall. What the hell was wrong with him? He was supposed to be concentrating on a freaking bomb, not the way the sports bra seemed to push her breasts upward. The adrenaline must be getting to him or something. He’d never had this much trouble focusing on a job before.
“Come on, let’s look at that bomb again,” he said more gruffly than he intended.
Grabbing the knife off the shelf, he turned and walked out. Annie followed him silently. At least she wasn’t tossing out sarcastic comments.
His brain had been churning ever since he heard the scanner pick up the terrorists’ transmissions. These guys weren’t that sophisticated if they didn’t know their conversations could be overheard with regular police scanners. Either they didn’t care that anyone could listen in, or they didn’t have the ability to scramble the signal.
The more Mace thought about it, the more he realized he might have been suckered. C4 was incredibly stable. Hell, the guys in ‘Nam used it in their fires for fuel. There was a good chance he could defuse that bomb; if he could focus his mind on it and not the way Annie’s body had milked his.
Don’t go there, buddy! Now was not the time to be thinking about sex. If he thought with his dick instead of his brain he could blow them to kingdom come! Another whiff of Annie’s perfume invaded his senses. Maybe this was why the Rangers didn’t allow women to join? One whiff of perfume and even the best-trained soldier lost his head.
Mace turned to look at Annie. “Stay behind me, and don’t go running off without telling me. We don’t know that these guys can’t get back down here somehow and I don’t want you to get grabbed.”
“Yes, sir!” She gave him a mock salute, reminding him that essentially she did outrank him.
“I’m not trying to be bossy, I just don’t want to have to worry about you, and I will if I think you are putting yourself in danger.” Why was he explaining himself?
“I’ll stand right by the door and keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to do anything to compromise the situation.”
Mace turned around and closed his eyes. He needed to get focused and devote all his brainpower to the bomb. Using the same ritual he employed when getting ready for a mission, Mace pulled himself into his zone.
Taking a deep breath in, he held it for a count of three, then let it go slowly. He did that three times before approaching the door. Looking at the bomb again, he noticed that the wires didn’t have any recognizable pattern.
Initially, he had taken that to mean that the terrorists had created a sophisticated pattern that he didn’t understand. But maybe they were just decoy wires put there to confuse him. If he could find the one that connected the timer to the fuse and disconnect it without detonating the C4, they’d be home free.
If it picked the wrong one, they were dead.
Put that out of your mind. Don’t think negative thoughts. The guys he knew on the bomb squad had always told him it took more ego to do bombs than to fly helicopters. If you thought for one minute you’d blow yourself up, your confidence was shot and you wouldn’t trust yourself.
Hell, he operated million dollar birds, bringing Ranger teams in and out of places most sane people wouldn’t even fly over. He could pull one little wire, no sweat. Right.
Looking closer, Mace traced the path from the timer to the fuse. There were several wires wrapped together confusing the trail. Gently feeling each wire, he waited until he found one that was hot. Two of the wires vibrated, and the other three were cold and quiet.
Carefully scraping away the cold wires, Mace examined the timer again. If he could identify the one that led to the timer he’d be golden. He wiped sweaty palms off on his pants and looked again. Three wires to choose from. Only one of them was the right one.
“Can you get me a pair of wire cutters from the closet?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Here you go. I thought you might need a pair.” Annie’s hands shook as she handed the cutters to him, but her face didn’t look the least bit uncertain.
He took the cutters and turned back to the wires in front of him. A drop of sweat slid down his nose. One wrong move— He couldn’t think like that! Confident; he had to be confident he was making the right choice.
The three wires that were left were black, green and red. Normally it was “cut the red and you’re dead”, but these guys made up their own rules. This configuration of wires made no sense whatsoever. Either they were dumb as stumps or so supremely clever they were bluffing him completely.
Mace touched the wires again. All three led from the timer to the C4. The black one was hot, and the green and red ones vibrated. Holding onto the red one Mace waited for a sign. His gut was telling him it was this one, but the limited training he’d had said otherwise. The timer kept ticking away, counting down the seconds until the decision would be out of his hands.
Ticking. That’s it! The vibration of the red wire matched the ticking of the timer. Mace carefully took his fingers off the wire. Could the green one be a double timer? He rubbed his fingers against his pant leg and touched the green wire.
This one had a steady vibration, probably hooked to the battery just to throw him off. The red one was it. Taking a steadying breath, Mace lined the cutters up and took a deep breath. Praying to the powers that be, he closed his eyes and cut.
The silence was deafening.
“I did it,” Mace croaked out.
“I never had any doubt,” Annie said from behind him.
Her face was pale and her lip showed teeth marks, but her smile was beautiful.
“Let’s kick some ass.”
Chapter Five
Annie used a strip from her ruined shirt to tie her hair back, and another one to strap a screwdriver to her leg. She would have preferred a knife, but the janitor didn’t have one lying around. Mace had another strip of the shirt wrapped around his ribs to soak up some of the blood from his oozing stitches. He didn’t seem to be in much pain, but he didn’t want to leave a blood trail either. So far he hadn’t showed any signs of slowing down from his injury. Screwing her brains out hadn’t fazed him.
“Let’s go over the plan one more time.” Mace turned to her, looking intently into her eyes. His emerald green gaze blazed into her.
“It’s not complicated. I act as bait and you take the guy out.”
“And you don’t do anything even vaguely heroic. I don’t want you getting in the way of a stray bullet or trying to take the guy out yourself.”
“I’m not an idiot. I think I can handle it. You just worry about how we
’re going to get to the next floor. If all the doors have bombs on them we are shit out of luck.”
“I don’t think they’re motion-activated. Let me worry about the bombs, okay? Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Annie reached forward and kissed him on the cheek. She wanted to plant one on his oh-so-sexy lips but didn’t want to get too carried away. She’d never been good with morning-afters.
“What was that for? Not that I’m complaining.” Mace brushed his fingers down her cheek.
“For luck. Lead the way.”
There was no way she was going to tell him it was because she was afraid they wouldn’t make it out of this. She’d keep her self-defeating thoughts inside. Mace had enough on his mind without worrying about her not holding up her end of the deal.
Her gut clenched as Mace opened the door, but nothing happened. Annie tried to let out the breath she’d been holding as quietly as possible. There was a reason she’d gone into nursing instead of the bomb squad. When it came to blood and guts, she was steady as a rock. Explosives were another story.
The irreverent thought that she’d never be able to tell Blayne about this because he’d laugh his ass off popped into her brain. Of course, that would be after he kicked Mace’s ass for touching his baby sister. Good thing he was on his honeymoon.
Mace’s bare feet made no noise as they climbed the metal steps in the fire exit. The next level up was the surgical unit. Luckily they didn’t perform surgery at midnight or who knows how many people would have died.
Annie held back while Mace tested the door. When he deemed it safe, he carefully opened it.
“Follow me. I’m going to do a recon, prepare to duck and run if I give the word.”
She nodded her answer and followed his broad back down the hallway. The rooms showed signs of hurried exits and there were medicine carts knocked over in the halls. Were they trying to get to the narcotics? Those were kept locked up in a computerized unit.
“Wait a second,” Annie hissed at him. “I want to grab something.”
By Honor Bound Page 21
