“What do I do with this?” He lifted his free arm. Kinda felt like it was in the way and he wasn’t sure where to put it.
“Just act natural,” she said and raised her camera, snapping a few shots of an area of his anatomy he’d really rather not be captured in a photo. “Where would you put it normally when you’re up on your side?”
If she was looking to make him more uncomfortable with his body, she was succeeding. But two could play at this game. If he had to be uncomfortable, so did she.
“Between your legs,” he answered.
A pink flush filled her breasts and crept up her neck into her cheeks. “Nice, Seth. But I’m not always in bed with you. Just relax. Forget the camera, forget posing. How would you naturally lie if you were going to sleep right now?”
He flopped over onto his back, spread his legs, rested one hand on his chest and threw the other arm over his head.
“There. Hold that.”
He shut his eyes, breathed out. Heard the click, click, click of her camera.
“All right, perfect. Now roll over and get comfortable on your stomach.”
He rolled, dragging the sheet with him, and wrapped his arms around one of the pillows. He felt Phoebe move to the top of the bed by his shoulder. More click, click, clicking. A few times, she had the camera so close to him, her breath skimmed across his skin and raised goose bumps as she looked through the viewfinder. His cock perked up, pressing painfully into the mattress.
And then, it wasn’t just her breath, but her lips and tongue lightly tracing the scars crisscrossing his back.
He groaned and turned his head to capture her mouth. Kneeling beside him like she was, with her legs spread open just enough, he had a perfect view of the pink lips of her sex. He stroked his fingers through her slit, found her wet, and dipped inside. She broke from his kiss with a moan and arched her back, riding his fingers until she was panting, straining toward climax. Her camera still hung from a strap around her neck and bumped lightly against her belly with each rise and fall of her body. Shamelessly, she took her pleasure from him and his own grew with every soft, sexy whimper from her throat.
When he skimmed his thumb over her clit, she came on his hand. Head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut.
Christ, she was beautiful.
He lifted his fingers to his mouth and sucked, the taste of her arousal like honey in his throat. It wasn’t enough. Gripping her hips, he lifted and repositioned her so that she was straddling his face. She gasped and tried to get up, but he held her still and tasted her. She vibrated over him and her protests faded into moans as his tongue flicked out, dipped inside her, then circled her clit. When she came again, his name was on her lips and a primal thrill shot through him, drawing his balls up tight.
Christ, he wasn’t going to last much longer himself.
Phoebe laughed breathlessly and a pink blush filled her cheeks again as she stretched out beside him. “Well, that was unexpected.”
He rolled up onto his side and took his cock in hand, stroking himself. She watched with hungry eyes, then covered his hand with her own and squeezed just hard enough. He cursed as his body jacked off the mattress and his release jetted into both of their palms.
“Shit.” He scrambled upright and reached for the sheet. “Sorry. Let me—”
Phoebe waved him off and sucked the remnants of his orgasm off her fingers. And, fuck him if that wasn’t the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in his life. If he hadn’t just come hard enough to see stars, he had no doubt he’d burst again from the sight alone. He fell onto the bed, exhausted, sated, and yet unbelievably aroused again.
“Phoebe, you’re…I don’t have words. Gonna kill me probably.”
Chuckling, she took the camera from around her neck and set it on the nightstand, then snuggled in beside him. Her head rested on his shoulder. “That’d be something, wouldn’t it? After everything else you’ve survived.”
“Death by sex.” He tangled his fingers into her curls. They weren’t soft, but springy, and he liked the way they felt around his fingers. He tugged on one curl. “No better way to go.”
“Imagine the eulogy.”
He swept a hand in a grand arc through the air. “Here lies Seth. Survived a war only to be sexed to death.”
She snorted and buried her face against his neck. “That’s so wrong. I shouldn’t laugh.”
“I wanted you to laugh. That was the point.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Phoebe started at the knock of a fist on their door. Seth simply lifted his head and scowled at the interruption.
“Hey.” She smiled up at him. “An unexpected noise and you didn’t jump.”
“Progress,” he said.
Bang! Bang! Bang! “Yo, lovebirds!”
“Fuck off, Marcus.” He lay back again, content to ignore his teammate. He tugged another of Phoebe’s curls until it was completely straight, then let it go and watched it bounce back.
She harrumphed. “Are you going to do that all night?”
“Yup.” To prove it, he wound another around his finger and dragged it out.
“I’ll look like a burning bush by the time you’re done. A frizzy burning bush.”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Hey, man, I feel ya,” Marcus called through the door. “I hate coitus interruptus as much as the next guy, but Gabe told me to pick the lock again if necessary and I’d really rather not. So just get dressed and get your ass downstairs, okay? You have fifteen minutes.”
Phoebe sighed. “That sounds kind of important.”
“Unfortunately.” He’d hoped for more than a few hours with her before the team headed out. Wanted to stay in this room and indulge in the warmth she caused in his chest and revel in the sense of peace just lying beside her gave him.
Yeah, it was selfish. And yeah, he felt like shit for even thinking it, but for the first time in years, he was…content. Relaxed even.
He propped himself up on his elbow and smiled down at her. Except she wasn’t smiling back. She stared at the door, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.
“Hey.” Dragging a finger lightly along her jaw, he guided her gaze to him. “If you’re worried about the op, don’t be. We got this.”
“Oh,” she said and released her lip as if suddenly noticing the nervous gesture. “No, it’s not—I have complete faith you’ll stop Siddiqui.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
She opened her mouth. No sound emerged.
Stomach tight with dread, he sat up. “Phoebe, what’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “It’s not important right now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Absolutely. We can talk when you get back.” She jumped from the bed. “I should shower again. I don’t want to face the guys with sex hair.” At the bathroom door, she glanced over her shoulder and finally smiled. “You’re welcome to join me.”
“Yeah, okay. Be there in a sec.” He put his feet on the floor, but that was as far as he got. He stared into the open bathroom. Water came on, splashing against the tile floor. The shower door slid shut.
Still, he didn’t move.
When he first cornered Phoebe at the market, he’d been so sure she was lying, hiding something. As he’d gotten to know her in the days since, he had convinced himself his initial impression of her was nothing more than his paranoia talking.
But the look in her eyes just now…
Goddammit. Should have trusted his gut.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Seth never joined her.
By the time she realized he wasn’t going to, the bedroom was empty. His gear was gone.
Phoebe stood in the center of the room, towel clutched around her, hair dripping onto the carpet, and replayed the last ten minutes in her mind. He’d been sweet and almost playful when Marcus knocked on the door.
So what changed to make him leave without a word?
As if she didn’t know.
Damn. Phoebe grabbed s
ome clean clothes and made quick work of throwing them on. She was out the door in the next instant, hair still dripping.
She shouldn’t have opened her mouth to tell him about the article. At least not yet, but he’d looked so content lying next to her, playing with her hair, and she’d been overcome with a choking guilt. Her timing was shit, though, which was the only reason she’d pulled back from telling him. She couldn’t hurt him like that only hours before he left to put his life at risk.
When she made it to the briefing room, she found the team suited up, readying enough gear to wage a small war. A tremble jangled down her spine at the chorus of clicks from around the room—magazines snapping into weapons, bullets into chambers.
Oh, God. They weren’t supposed to be leaving for another few hours. “What’s going on?”
“Mission’s a go,” Gabe said, barely pausing as he shouldered his weapon and strode by her. “Let’s move, gentlemen.”
The team filed out.
“Wait.” Phoebe grabbed Seth’s hand. Sure the men had been training incessantly for this raid, but she couldn’t suppress the bone-deep fear that gripped her. She stood on her toes to press a kiss to his mouth. “Please be careful.”
He gave a tight smile and then he was gone without promising a thing.
Phoebe sank into one of the plush chairs at the paper-strewn table and the wall of screens at the front of the room flickered to life. Helmet cams, she realized when she spotted Seth on one. They were on the roof, climbing into the helicopter, and their voices came from a speaker somewhere as each of the men checked his radio. Her heart clenched at Seth’s matter-of-fact “Radio check, over.”
Please let him be safe.
“Ms. Leighton.”
She stiffened at the sound of Tuc’s voice from the door. “Mr. Quentin,” she said, but didn’t look away from the screens and watched as Seth ran through last checks of his gear. “Why aren’t you out there with them?”
“Wish I could be. Unfortunately, I have one of those recognizable faces and according to the tabloids, I’m on my yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, sipping cocktails with a certain supermodel—I forget which one is supposed to be my flavor of the week. Still, I’d hate to disabuse anyone of that pretty notion.”
Of course. Couldn’t have the tabloids knowing about his secret second life as a mercenary. A sour taste filled her mouth, but she decided not to comment.
Tuc strode in and picked up a keyboard. Seconds later, Seth’s helmet cam came up on the big screen. “Better?”
A sickening apprehension filled her as Seth strapped himself into the helicopter and the camera began to shake with liftoff. Could she really sit here and watch him do this? No. But was she going to leave this room until he was safe again? Absolutely not. She would be with him every step of the way, even if it gave her a heart attack.
Needing a distraction, she glanced over at Tuc. “Back in the village, you knew me before we met. How?”
“I have my ways.” He flashed his Hollywood smile and nodded toward the cameras. “So. You and Seth?”
On screen, Seth took a photo out of his vest pocket.
Oh, no. She couldn’t watch him handle Emma’s picture with such tenderness again. Not when the memory of making love with him was so fresh in her mind.
She spun her chair to face Tuc. “I’m assuming you also know about my former job.”
“I do.”
“Are you going to tell him about the article?”
“Yes,” Tuc said without a blink of remorse. Heartless bastard. “That is, unless you plan to.”
She opened her mouth to say that she did, but no sound came out. It was a lie anyway—she could admit to herself she was never going to tell him, despite her every intention. Look at how many opportunities she had already passed up. She shook her head. “I can’t. He’ll hate me.”
“If you’re sleeping with him, he deserves to know.”
“Yes, but—it’s not that simple anymore. When I wrote that piece, I didn’t know him. He was just another juicy, tragic story. And now—”
“Now you do,” Tuc finished. “Which is why he deserves to know before things progress any further between the two of you. He’s already on unstable mental ground.”
“God, I hate how you guys all think that. He’s not any more unstable than Ian. Or what about Quinn? ’Cause that guy’s got some serious baggage. And you can’t tell me Jean-Luc doesn’t have a Disneyland of issues he’s trying to rid himself of by sleeping his way through the female population.”
Tuc smirked. “You think so highly of them all.”
“I do,” she shot back. “But Seth’s not any more broken than the rest of them and I’m sick of hearing everyone tear him down time and again.”
“And what about me? Am I broken? Do I have issues?”
She snorted. “You’re the poster child for issues. You have a classic case of Hollywood child star syndrome, but instead of partying your way in and out of rehab, you’ve ramped the entitlement thing up to a whole new level of crazy.”
“Maybe,” he conceded with a little one-shoulder shrug. “But I save people.”
“You move people around like chess pieces. All this?” She waved a hand at the room with its high-tech gadgets. “This is you playing God and it’s disgusting.”
Tucker’s blond brows lifted. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“No, I don’t. I did like your father’s movies, though. Hated yours.”
“Ouch,” he said without even a shade of indignation in his tone. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I hated them, too. I never wanted to act. It was expected of me because that was my father’s profession. But all this, what you call me playing God? This is what I’m good at. Strategizing, maneuvering. I use it to save people, to give good men second chances. What exactly do you do, Ms. Leighton?”
With that, he set down the keyboard and left her alone.
Fuming, she pushed out of her chair to follow and give him a piece of her mind. Yeah, she’d done some unethical things in the past, but that did not dictate her worth. She’d done a lot of good since then and if he thought he could get away with diminishing that good all because—
She stopped short, hand outstretched to shove open the door.
Oh, was she a gullible idiot or what?
Tuc had said that on purpose, knowing it’d piss her off and she’d feel the need to set him straight. He didn’t think she should be watching the mission and this was his way of distracting her.
Manipulative bastard.
Well, he had said he was good at strategy. No doubt about that now.
She about-faced and stalked back to her chair. Seth’s helmet camera showed the guys all standing, Quinn by the door with his hand through a loop in the ceiling. He tossed a rope out of the helicopter and waved an arm. The first man grabbed the rope and jumped. Seth went third in line and she held her breath until his feet were on the ground, his rifle in hand, and he was moving toward cover.
Relief flowed through her in an exhausting wave and she sank back into the leather seat. This was going to be a long night.
Behind her, the door opened.
“Didn’t work, huh?” Tuc said with a note of resignation. He handed her a mug of coffee then settled into the chair beside hers.
“Almost,” she admitted and blew across the top of her mug before taking a sip.
“Can’t blame me for trying. You don’t need to watch this.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I suppose so.” He faced the screen and raised his own mug. “Jesus, I wish I was there.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
The sand-colored mansion looked empty through Seth’s scope. Tucked into the side of a mountain, facing a desert dotted with little more than scrub brush, it was a very defensible position for anyone inside—if there was anyone inside—which was a major plus for the bad guys. The surrounding terrain did not offer a whole lot of cover for those looking to attack the place—not so great for the g
ood guys.
Flat on his belly behind a natural rise in the land, Seth continued to scan for signs of life.
“Anything?” Ian asked. They’d been lying in the dirt for close to eight hours. Waiting. Watching.
“No. You?”
“Nada. This waiting sucks.”
“You just wish you were in there so you could get your hands on that bomb,” Seth said.
“Yeah, you’re right. Bombs are what I do, so if anyone’s going to handle it, it should be me. Instead, I’m stuck out here in the middle of the desert babysitting you.”
“Maybe if you weren’t such a volatile fucker, Gabe would trust you to get closer to the action. Besides,” Seth added and swiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, “I needed a spotter and you’re surprisingly good at it.”
Ian made a derisive sound. Several minutes ticked by in silence, then he asked, “Think we’re jumping at shadows? If this deal was going to happen, don’t you think it would have happened under the cover of darkness?”
“I don’t know. Siddiqui’s not in control of this. It’s all on Zaryanko’s watch. Maybe he tried to jump-start the deal last night and things fell through.” Seth rested his forehead against his arm and closed his eyes for a second. He had to look away from the reticle before the image of crosshairs burned into his retina. “Sooner or later, they’re going to show.”
Ian grunted. “I’m starting to doubt it. We spent the last two days training to raid Siddiqui’s house in Kabul and look how that turned out. We’re sitting here baking our asses off watching an abandoned shithole.”
“Plans change all the time, Ian. You know that, and Tuc’s intel was solid.”
“Yeah, well. Dunno how much I trust that guy.”
“You don’t trust anyone.”
“List is a short one,” Ian admitted.
“Yeah?” Seth fitted his eye back to his scope. “Name one person you trust implicitly.”
“Like you’re one to talk about trust, Hero.”
He didn’t have to look at the guy to know Ian’s ever-present sneer was firmly in place. He heard it loud and clear in his voice. “I trust Phoebe.”
Honor Reclaimed Page 23
