by Lora Leigh
He took the advantage and slammed his fist into Jafar’s jaw and followed it with a quick, striking knee blow to the groin.
Jafar’s eyes widened in agony as he inhaled roughly. A tight whistling sound spewed from his lungs as Abram caught his shoulders and slammed his knee into his cousin’s diaphragm. He followed that quickly with a hard right to his face, slamming a blow into his jaw, and throwing him backward to be caught by one of his men. The older, bearded fighter gave a wicked grin and threw his commander back into the fray.
Abram didn’t have the time or ability to draw this little battle out. He could hear the low hum of the helicopter moving in stealth mode, much closer than he had anticipated. Within minutes the extraction team would be in place and ready to collect them.
He couldn’t let up. He had managed to gain the advantage, something he had never accomplished as a boy and assumed he would never accomplish as an adult. With fists, feet, and another knee to both the groin and to the stomach, Abram dropped his cousin to the dirt with a savage snarl of triumph.
“I win,” he rasped, his voice sounding ragged and torn as he stared down at Jafar. “This time it mattered more than my father’s pride.”
Jafar stared at him, his breathing harsh and labored, his face bloodied, his odd green gaze strangely amused despite the pain that filled it.
“Be careful, cousin,” Jafar warned, his voice low. “To allow a woman to be such a weakness—” Something flashed in Jafar’s eyes, something bitter and filled with wild rage as he cut the words off.
“Be careful, Jafar. Without it, you become the monster you are beginning to face in the mirror each day,” Abram said before turning and moving toward where Paige and Tariq waited.
There wasn’t a second’s warning. Tariq’s eyes widened, Paige cried out in fear, and the feel of cold steel against his neck stopped him in his tracks.
Abram froze, regret for his cousin welling in his chest as much as for himself. “You used to be a man of your word, cousin. “And unfortunately, of all things Abram had expected Jafar to remember, it had been the honor of his given word.
“I used to be many things, cousin,” Jafar said softly. “Many hard lessons have taught me the error of my ways.” The blade scraped against Abram’s jugular as he allowed his gaze to meet Paige’s.
Terror filled the emerald depths as her tears washed over her cheeks. Tariq stood behind her, forcibly restraining her from crossing the distance.
She would have run to him, he realized in bemusement. Even knowing there was nothing she could do, and that there was a high chance she could have been harmed, still, she would have run to him.
“Jafar, please, don’t do this,” she cried out in horror. Abram felt the knife begin to bite into his flesh.
“I won’t go back,” Abram warned him softly, knowing the game his cousin was playing. “I can’t go back, Jafar. You know this.”
“Return or die,” Jafar snarled. “I cannot afford to allow you to leave at this time, Abram. You know this.”
“You have no choice. Accept it,” Abram answered quietly. “I won’t go back, Jafar, and I won’t give that vow. You and Azir have lost this game.”
“Perhaps I’ll put the blade to your lover’s throat, Jafar suggested mockingly. “Then would you do as I need you to do?”
Abram almost paused at the way the other man phrased his words.
Almost.
“You would have to kill me first,” he warned him. “I won’t let you touch her as long as I live.”
“Easily done.” His arm tensed as the blade pressed harder.
“You owe me, Jafar,” Paige screamed out furiously, her voice raw and hoarse as Tariq was forced to hold her back.
She strained against his hold, her expression twisting with rage.
“Damn you, Jafar, you owe me,” she screamed again. Abram felt a trickle of blood at his neck and yet he still stood silently, too curious about the path his cousin would take to attempt to break his hold just yet.
Jafar paused.
“You owe me,” Paige repeated as the tears rolled down her face. “You still owe me.” And just what the hell would Jafar owe her?
“She is a beautiful woman,” Jafar sighed, his hold against the side of Abram’s head tightening.
“And yes, I owe her much. Without her, perhaps I would be dead.” Surprised, Abram wondered what the hell had been going on over the years that he was unaware of.
“And this is how you repay your debts?” Abram asked him. “With blood?” Behind him, he felt Jafar breathe in slowly, deeply, as though preparing himself. As his body tightened, Abram tensed as well, covering his own anticipation within Jafar’s.
“I’m sorry, cousin,” Jafar said. “But I cannot afford your escape or theirs.” As the words left his mouth the viperous red lines of the laser rifles’ sights cut through the night, pinpointing Jafar and each of his men as black ropes and army rangers slid soundlessly into position.
They surrounded Jafar’s team of men as Abram let his gaze move to Paige once again.
Something in him tightened each time he allowed his eyes to meet the grief in hers and to acknowledge the fear that filled her face as Jafar kept that knife at his throat.
“Release him, Jafar,” the commanding voice of the black-masked ranger closest to him ordered.
“I cannot do this.” The lazy amusement in Jafar’s voice was at odds with the tension in his body.
“Don’t make us start picking off your men,” he advised when Jafar refused to move. “We will.”
“We are called martyrs for a reason.” Jafar mocked them though the knife never moved.
It wasn’t going to move. What fucking game was his cousin playing? If Jafar was going to cut his throat, then he would have already done so.
Abram found it a little too easy to slam his elbow into his cousin’s diaphragm as he caught the wrist holding the knife at the same time.
Thrusting Jafar’s arm to the side as he held his wrist, Abram broke away from the hold, twisting the wrist as he moved and taking his cousin to his knees.
Abram released him. He jumped back to safety behind the rangers now circling the team of terrorist soldiers.
“Drop your weapons and we’ll leave just as quietly as we arrived,” the commander ordered.
“Otherwise, we’ll kill, if we have to.”
The terrorists’ weapons were tossed carelessly to the ground as Abram moved quickly to Paige.
They were gathered up and confiscated to ensure a safe escape, but Abram had other things to take care of besides watching the soldiers’ defeat. He had to get to Paige. He had to ease her fear and her tears before she broke his heart with them. Her arms flew around his neck as she cried out his name.
The broken sound of her voice and the trembling of her body had all his protective instincts screaming.
“We have to go,” he whispered into her ear as the rangers moved to help Tariq into the harness that would lift him into the hovering helicopter.
Easing from her he took the harness from the waiting ranger and helped her into it before strapping on his own and clipping it to the rope.
Just in time.
As they were lifted into the darkened sky, the lights of the Matawa’s vehicles began cutting through the winding vehicle paths that eventually led to their location.
Once the Matawa arrived, there would be no escape without bloodshed.
Within seconds the ropes were pulled into the helicopter, the rangers climbing in and securing their passengers then themselves, before the helicopter shot through the sky.
“Captain Mustafa, we’ll be landing at a hidden airbase and loading you on a transport plane straight to D.C.” Commander Ramsey jerked the mask from his face as he made the announcement.
David “Race” Ramsey settled back against the frame of the stripped-down Black Hawk helicopter as he stared at them.
“Thanks for arriving on time, Command
er Ramsey.” Tariq grinned. “It looked as though you might be running late for a minute or two there.”
Race gave a small chuckle as his blue eyes twinkled in amusement.
“General Jack Walters will be waiting in D.C. to debrief you, Captain Mustafa, and Ms.
Galbraithe.” Ramsey grinned at Tariq. “One of you are going to have to advance in rank soon, before things get confusing.”
“Yes, sir,” Abram responded, only half listening as he felt Paige tense in his hold.
“Captain Mustafa?” she whispered.
“A formality, nothing more,” he answered quietly, praying no one would explain before he had the chance to do so himself.
Ramsey’s lips quirked, obviously catching the less-than-honest response.
It was another lie told to her. It was one of many, and God knew she didn’t deserve the dishonesty.
“Your brother and parents are being notified of your rescue,” Ramsey assured her before nodding to Abram. “It’s good to have you back, sir.”
“It’s good to be back, Commander.” Abram nodded. It had been a while since he’d had to consider the rank he’d earned while working undercover in the place he should have been able to call his home.
Abram turned his head and stared for a second at the darkened sunbaked land below them.
There were no regrets.
As he watched the land of his birth recede into the distance he couldn’t feel anything for the years he had spent there, except sorrow.
Lessa was buried there, as was the second wife he had barely known, along with their unborn child.
He was leaving behind his youth, but it hadn’t served him well while he had it. Just as the land he had been born to had refused to protect him.
“We’re going home,” Paige whispered against his chest. In her voice he could hear the underlying question.
As her head tipped back to stare at him, he saw the silent question in the emerald depths.
It was a question he wasn’t ready to face.
“You have your life back now,” he promised her as he deliberately moved her to the seat beside him. While he held her, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t feel anything past his need for her.
“Yes,” she announced softly.
“Your job.” He moved in front of her to help remove her harness.
She blinked, her breath hitching as he watched the realization entering her gaze.
She nodded hesitantly. “My job,” she agreed, though that wasn’t true, he remembered. She had no job, because of him, Jafar, and Azir. She’d lost that, but maybe she could be rehired or else she could find another, he told himself. Another job, another apartment if she had to, and at the worst, she could find more friends. But she could only die once.
“Please don’t.” Her fingers lay against his lips as they parted again, her fear of what he might say almost as bad as the fear for her life had been. “If you’re going to walk out of my life then just do it, okay? I don’t want to know.”
Her lips trembled and it broke his heart. But as he nodded slowly and said nothing more, it broke her heart worse. He watched the pain move into her eyes, watched it drain the color from her face. There were simply no promises to give her.
She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and stared dismissively over his shoulder. As though she were done with him.
And God help him, he couldn’t blame her.
* * *
ARMY TRANSPORT
FLIGHT TO WASHINGTON, D.C.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
She was sleeping. Soft lips were parted, innocently belying the dark shadows beneath her eyes and the smudge of tearstains on her soft, pale cheeks.
Tariq simply could not believe his cousin’s stupidity. As if he and every man in the army helicopter hadn’t seen Abram’s gentle though destructive rejection of her.
Sitting in the netted area that posed as the passenger seat, he watched her sleep and wondered what Abram was thinking by walking away from her.
“I have to say, you’re a dumber bastard than I thought you were,” he commented quietly, his voice just loud enough to assure that Abram heard him.
He glanced at his cousin, catching the look that Abram shot the sleeping beauty as well.
There wasn’t a chance in hell that Abram wasn’t regretting any thought of walking away from her.
“I have enough ghosts haunting me.” Abram sighed. “I can’t add to them, Tariq. I don’t have the promises she needs.”
“She’s a woman, not a ghost,” Tariq objected with an edge of disgust. “And I didn’t hear her asking for any damned thing.”
Hell, talking to Abram was like talking to a wall, with the exception that the wall was probably more receptive on occasion.
“Let’s keep it that way,” Abram suggested, his tone caustic as he leaned closer to be heard over the sounds of the plane’s engines.
Tariq sat silently for long moments. He needed to figure this one out, quickly, before his cousin made the dumbest mistake of his life.
“Well, if you’re walking away then you can’t have a problem with me trying a hand at her heart, right?”
The look Abram turned on him promised violence. “Stay the fuck away from her.” Tariq stared back at him, their gazes locked in a battle of wills that neither were used to.
“Tell me, Abram, do you think every man you give that order to is going to obey? Do you think Jafar considers this battle done in any way? That it’s over?” His brow lifted as he leaned back into the heavy interlocking straps of the cargo seat. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh yeah, here’s a better one,” he suggested. “When you’ve completely fucked up, figured out where you fucked up, and convinced yourself you can fix it, do you really believe she’s going to be sitting home alone, just waiting on you?”
Tariq had no doubt that was exactly what Abram thought. His arrogance could only be bested by Khalid’s or Jafar’s.
“Stay the hell away from her,” Abram repeated. “It’s my fault she was placed in danger this time. If it’s your fault the next time, then I’ll have someone’s ass to kick to make me feel better. I can ensure that ass kicking is yours.”
If nothing else, his cousin could be predictable when it came to Paige. He was incredibly stubborn sometimes, and Paige was one of the things that he could be incredibly stubborn about, but he was predictable.
Tariq nodded slowly before sliding his gaze to the side to catch Abram’s look, heated and filled with longing as he stared at her.
“Don’t make the mistake of asking me to be your third again,” Tariq warned him, aware of the look of surprise Abram shot him.
“Blackmail?” Abram’s brow arched as he turned a glare on him.
“Whatever you want to call it, cousin.” Tariq shrugged. “I think I’m rather like Paige. I’m just sick and fucking tired of you teasing the hell out of both of us. And be careful, I might just decide to take that ass whooping to get the girl. It didn’t look that damn bad when you were pounding on Jafar.” If Abram’s look had been a bullet, it would have pierced his heart, shattered it, then probably found other important parts of his body to deal with.
“I’d make Jafar’s ass whipping look like a mother’s loving pat,” Abram retorted, his tone turning dark, furious. “Don’t push me on this, Tariq.”
Before Tariq could argue or throw the punch Abram was daring him to throw, his cousin surged to his feet. He moved quickly to the front of the plane where he could sit alone.
And Paige slept on. Maybe.
Tariq’s gaze narrowed on her lashes. He could have sworn he’d seen a glimmer of her gaze beneath them. Hell, if he had known she was awake he would have made certain to make it a little more entertaining for her.
There were times the life of a third could be a definite pain in the ass.
Abram stared at the woman that should be his lover, his gaze hooded, hunger pounding at him.
The a
drenaline produced by the fight with Jafar still thundered inside him, the need still raged and pulsed through his body.
The ending of that fight had left him questioning his cousin in ways he hadn’t before. He had never known Jafar to break his word on a deal. What had caused it this time? And why had he been so intent on keeping not just Abram, but also Paige?
