by Cindy Dees
And then his body joined to hers seamlessly, pressing deep within her. Her pulse synched with his, and as he began to move inside her, her hips rose to meet him, finding and matching his rhythm as naturally and perfectly as their breathing.
Their lovemaking was achingly slow, each touch, each look, each caress savored as a precious gift between them. And through it all, she gazed up into his storm-tossed gaze, reading his heart in his eyes all the while. He cared for her, too. Maybe even loved her a little.
The crescendo of their sex built gradually in his eyes, darkening and intensifying until she was looking into the throat of a tornado. His turbulent gaze whirled her up and out of herself, pulling her along with him into a place of air, and light and infinite possibility. A place where they would both live forever and all their cares and woes were lifted away from them, leaving just the two of them, joined as one soul, one heart, one spirit.
A climax of such towering perfection, such unendurable sweetness that it made her weep for joy, broke over them. John’s eyes went clear and quiet, as serene now as they had been stormy moments before.
He felt it, too.
For just a moment, an unforgettable instant out of time, the two of them had touched heaven.
Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, unchecked. “Thank you,” she whispered.
A faint frown flitted across the stillness of his face and then was gone. “For what? I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
“For giving me that gift. I’ll never forget it.”
He didn’t ask what gift she was referring to, and she saw understanding in his eyes. It had been that special a moment for him, too. A perfect moment. Not a bad one to go out on, she supposed.
Too overwhelmed, frankly just too wiped out by it all to summon an ounce of anger, she accepted the inevitable. John was going to do what he was going to do, and it wasn’t her fault. She’d given him joy. She’d given him love. She’d given him acceptance. There was nothing more she could offer him. If those weren’t enough for him to live for, then he was truly not going to be swayed from his planned path.
And shockingly enough, she could live with that. She didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to drag her down with him.
Reality came crashing back in on her with a thunderclap of realization in her head that made her reel. She was planning to do the same thing he was! By a different method, and for vastly different reasons, but she, too, was bent on throwing away her life-which at this late date had turned out to be a pretty wonderful and precious thing indeed, thanks to John.
“I get it now,” she breathed.
“Get what?”
“What you’ve been talking about when you accused me of throwing my life away thoughtlessly. You’re right. I didn’t realize it until just now. I was so blinded by my need to save my family that I didn’t look past Huayar’s demand that I sacrifice myself to him.”
John stared at her in open shock. “Are you backing out of this crazy scheme, then?” he asked hopefully.
She frowned up at him. “I can’t abandon my family. I won’t abandon them. But I am willing to listen to other options.”
“Finally,” he breathed in profound relief. He drew his sleeping bag over them both, and settled back to stare up at the tarp a foot over their heads in the dim, gray light of dawn. “Here are your choices.”
She settled against his shoulder, suddenly eager to hear his plan and desperate to find a way to save her family and stay alive.
“First, you can make the trade as Huayar has proposed. You walk into his camp, he releases your family, you stay with him and teach him how to make this new drug. Maybe you stick around long enough to help set up and even manage his lab for a while before he kills you. But at the end of the day, he kills you. And then he kills your family. He’ll never leave them hanging around in the long term, possibly knowing what he looks like. Bottom line, you’ll all die, and Huayar gets his drug formula.”
She winced at hearing her original plan and its inevitable conclusion laid out so baldly. She’d never really thought past getting her family released to what would happen next.
“Second choice, you and I mount some sort of covert rescue op to see if we can pull out your family and not hand you over to Huayar at all. I have to be honest with you. The odds of us succeeding are not high. Huayar’s men know what they’re doing, and their security is tight. Not airtight, mind you, but definitely tight.”
She nodded, wincing.
“Behind door number three, we have some sort of hybrid plan between these two.”
“Like what?”
He shrugged. “We maybe let you walk into Huayar’s camp and use your presence there as a distraction while I go in from the back and try to free your family. Then, once I’ve got them clear of the camp, I come back for you.”
“What are the odds on that scheme?”
He exhaled heavily. “Not that great. If your family gets away but you stay in Huayar’s custody, he’ll try to cut his losses and force you into giving him the drug formula at a minimum. Then, he’s likely to come after your family again and try to recapture them.”
She shuddered. “Does there happen to be another choice?”
John was silent for a long time. “Yeah. There’s another option.”
“Which is?” she demanded impatiently.
“I walk into Huayar’s camp and offer myself as a hostage in your family’s place. They get released, and he uses me as leverage to keep you in line and get you to cough up the formula.”
She frowned. “But isn’t the point not to give him the formula?”
He nodded grimly. “You won’t hand over the formula. You’ll let him do whatever he wants to me, and you won’t give him the formula. Huayar doesn’t know I’m prepared and, in fact, planning to die. He’ll assume he can torture and mutilate me, and you’ll buckle and give him what he wants.”
“But John-” she started to exclaim.
He clapped a hand over her mouth. “Keep your voice down,” he snapped.
She nodded her understanding and he pulled his palm away from her face. “But John!” she exclaimed under her breath. “I can’t let you hand yourself over to him like that! He’ll do horrible things to you!”
John nodded, his chin lightly rubbing her hair.
“No way,” she declared forcefully, if quietly.
“It’s the best option. Your family gets away, Huayar doesn’t get the formula right away. It’ll give my buddies time to get there and rescue you. If you need to, you can buy more time by giving him fake formulas or claiming to need to perfect the formula you’ve got.”
“But I do need to perfect it-”
He cut her off gently. “I can probably hold out for two days. Maybe three. You’ll only need to buy a day or two more before my buddies get here in quantity and pull you out. Five days. If you can just stay alive for that long, you should walk out of this thing alive, along with your family. I get my fitting ending, and you all get your lives back.”
She didn’t stop to think about what she was doing. She balled up her fist and jammed it into his gut as hard as she could. He jerked up off the ground, grunting in surprise and pain.
“What’d you do that for?” he complained.
“I told you to quit making stupid remarks about deserving to die,” she groused back.
Unaccountably, he unfolded from around her fist, stretching back out beneath her. His body began to shake suspiciously. She frowned for a moment and then realized he was laughing. Whether it was out of despair or actual humor, she couldn’t tell. But either way, it was better than his calm, cool, controlled martyr act.
“I’m telling you, Mel, this is the best option. I’ll pop a big bottle of pain pills before I go. Even without the pills, I can take a world of pain. It’s part of my Special Forces training. I can buy your family days to get away from here before Huayar realizes he’s made a mistake. I’ll have the guys from Pirate Pete’s pick your family up. They have connections an
d can arrange for you and your family to go far, far away and get new identities, new lives.”
“You’re asking me to hand you over to a madman to let him do his worst to you.”
He shrugged. “Death is death. The means isn’t all that critical.”
She closed her eyes. How could a moment of such perfection degenerate into this so fast? Could she seriously allow John to throw himself upon his sword for her? Could she bear to let him be tortured and mutilated, undoubtedly before her eyes? No matter that he was volunteering for the job, could she let another human being die for her?
Chapter 13
John stared deep into Melina’s eyes, a little stunned himself that he was making the offer. A year ago, he’d never have dreamed that he could find himself in this situation. He’d always known on an intellectual level that there were principles and beliefs worth dying for. And he’d discovered in the past eight months that there were certain events, even certain feelings, that made death preferable to going on living.
But he’d never, ever dreamed he’d meet a woman he’d be willing to die for, no questions asked, no hesitation, no doubts in his mind.
Was this love?
The question exploded across his mind, a comet burning bright across the black landscape of his soul. The answer followed immediately, as sure and clear as his willingness to give his life for Melina. How could it be anything else? He loved her. With every fiber of his being. Beyond all reason, without reservations, heart and soul. She knew the worst of him, and had seen his devastating weakness and fatal flaws. She’d gazed into the darkest corners of his soul, and not only had she not flinched, but she’d dared to like him, maybe even to love him a little. The sheer humanity of her acceptance of him as he was took his breath away. She was an extraordinary woman. How could he not love her?
He didn’t relish the idea of being tortured to death, and he had faith that Huayar would make him suffer to a degree he couldn’t even begin to imagine. After all, the guy was famed as an artiste at inflicting pain. But to submit himself to Huayar for Melina? Shockingly, he embraced the opportunity to show her his love.
She interrupted his train of thought. “John, what are you trying to do by martyring yourself for me? Is this about redemption? About allowing yourself to be punished for living when your men died?”
He frowned up at her. He wished there were more light to see her by. As it was, her face was a collage of shifting gray shadows. Full dawn was still several minutes away. “A few days ago, it would have been about that. But now…”
She propped herself up on his chest and stared down at him intently in the gray half-light. “Now what?”
“Now,” he paused, searching for the right words. “Now, it will be a gift. From me to you. You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. You’ve given me peace, and that’s the greatest gift you could possibly have given me. I want to repay you. Give you something back. Something of great worth. If I can give you your family, then my death-as gruesome and painful as it might be-will have been well worth it.”
She stared in disbelief. “So you’re telling me you want to die to show me how much you care for me?”
“No. I want to give you my life to show you how much I love you.”
She lurched and he had to grab onto her and hang on tightly to keep her from heedlessly leaping to her feet and destroying their shelter.
“John Hollister, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard another human being say.”
Stung, he frowned at her. “I just declared my love for you and you’re calling me stupid?”
“Absolutely. If you love me, you big, sweet moron, then you live for me. Don’t die for me!”
Stunned, he pulled back from her-as much as he could in the tight confines of their shelter-to stare at her. Live for her? A shocking concept. He’d been so focused for so long on finding a way to die, that the idea of finding a way to live felt…strange.
Which was odd, given that the entire creed of the Special Forces was to find a way to do the impossible and survive. He and his men had done their damnedest to stay alive at all times. As the team leader, it had been his job to get the mission done, but even more important in his mind had been his mission to bring his men back alive and kicking every time.
He’d been so wrapped up in his men’s deaths for all this time that he’d forgotten why it had been such a trauma to him that they died. Because to them, living had been the most important thing of all.
Maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn’t a fitting tribute to their memories for him to die, too.
He went still at the thought. Physically still, but also emotionally still. Way down deep inside him. The wild carousel he’d been riding round and round stopped whirling for just a moment of clarity.
That single moment of understanding was enough. The words all the counselors, and psychologists and his colleagues had been throwing at him to no avail finally got through. If he wanted to honor his men, then he’d go on living. He’d find a way past the impossible odds of his guilt and grief, and he’d go on. For them.
The terrible tension in Melina’s face drained away. She must have sensed the direction of his thoughts. She relaxed on top of him, still propped on her elbows, gazing down at him. That might even be the beginning of a relieved smile flirting with the corners of her mouth.
He let out a long, slow breath. “I think I get it now.”
“Praise the Lord,” she replied fervently. “I really wasn’t looking forward to trying to whack you upside the head with a heavy object. But I was about to resort to that.”
Gratitude flooded him. And something else…was that joy? That she cared enough about him to go to all this trouble? It was a humbling thought. “I don’t deserve you,” he mumbled.
She laughed under her breath. “I don’t know. I think maybe we deserve each other.”
“I have a deal to offer you,” he said soberly.
She matched his tone when she replied cautiously, “What’s that?”
“I’ll do my best to walk out of this mess alive if you will.”
She stared at him for a long time, doubt swimming in her gaze.
Usually the soul of patience, he couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting for her answer. He gave her a nudge to tip the scales his way. “I promise we’ll do our damnedest to get your family out of here safe and sound, but let’s both try to stay alive in the process.”
That did it. She nodded in quick agreement. “I don’t know if what you’re offering is possible, but I’m willing to try.”
They gazed candidly into each other’s eyes for what seemed like forever. The promise of a lifetime leaped between them, of a million tiny stitches weaving together into a single quilt that would warm them in its love until time ended. They had no need for words. There was nothing left to say. They loved one another, and they would live for each other.
Finally, reluctantly, John broke the silence. “We have a small problem.”
“What’s that?” she murmured.
“Everything I’ve done so far on this mission has been on the assumption that we were both coming up here to die.”
“And?”
“If the object is now, as you succinctly put it, for us morons to live, then we’re not exactly ideally situated to make that happen.”
She grinned down at him. “Who are you calling a moron, buddy?”
He grinned back. “Any woman who would love a wreck like me might just qualify for the title.”
She reached up to run her fingers through his thick hair. “I’m just the only one to come along who was smart enough to see the potential in you.”
“Thank God for that.” He paused, then added, “Thank God for you.”
She smiled serenely at him. “I have complete faith in you, John. You’ll figure out a way for us to rescue my family and get us out of this alive-all of us.”
He frowned. It was a tall order. After all, he’d led them right into the lion’s den. Heck, the lion’s jaws. T
hey were under-equipped and under-manned…by a lot…for what she was asking of him. Not to mention time was short. Huayar wouldn’t wait more than a another day or so before he decided that Melina had welshed on her end of the deal. No telling what Huayar would do to her family in that event. He, for one, didn’t want to find out what the guy would do.
John gently put Melina aside and sat up. He had to think up a plan, and fast. Brute force was the last resort of the Special Forces. They’d much rather move into a scenario in complete stealth, do their job with the least possible fuss, and exit as quietly as they came, invisible and undetected. In this case, he and Melina-even assuming she knew how to handle a gun, which he highly doubted-didn’t have enough firepower between the two of them to even begin to consider any kind of frontal attack on Huayar and his men. They would have to rescue her family by pure stealth.
At the end of the day, there wasn’t much to plan. He’d park Melina somewhere nearby, safe from discovery but close enough to meet up with him and her family when they egressed the area. He’d go in alone. Since he was without any intelligence on the camp beyond what he’d seen earlier, he’d have to improvise as he went. On the plus side, he had a career’s worth of experience to draw on. On the minus side, he hadn’t been out in the field since the ambush. He was bound to be rusty.
His boss, General Wittenauer, was prone to say he’d rather work with an American Special Forces team on a bad day than any other soldier in the world on a good day. Apparently, that theory got to be put to the test, and he was the guinea pig.
He glanced at his watch-7:00 a.m. He could probably catch a few hours’ sleep, but then he’d have to get moving and start his approach to the camp. He’d need to be in place close to the compound before nightfall. He’d need all of the coming night’s hours of darkness to rescue Mel’s family.
He set his wristwatch alarm to vibrate him awake at noon. He was cutting it close, but he was in lousy physical shape after the past few days’ hiking and emotional upheaval, and he needed to be at the top of his game for what he had planned. Melina seemed content to doze beside him as the day heated up and their tiny shelter grew sultry with humidity and body heat. He mumbled instructions to her to wake him if she heard or saw anything at all out of the ordinary, and then he crashed.
