“Yes, but it’s completely hollow on the inside,” Ryan explained. “In the middle is a pool of water where the sub is berthed. The only way in is to submerge then pop up on the inside. But one submarine takes up the entire space, so the DEA can’t infiltrate using our own submersibles. A group of agents will need to fast-rope down through the opening at the top from a hovering helicopter.”
Eric straightened. “I can’t take a group. Along with Bomber, my AW, in the back, I’ll only have space for two of you.”
Ryan nodded. “That will work. Agent Gamboa and I had planned to be the first strike team, anyway.”
One of Eric’s eyebrows rose in a dark arc. “Two agents total for taking down an entire submarine?”
Nicole crossed her arms, covertly squeezing her ribcage. Mija, you have to stay focused. The moment your concentration slips, you lose. “Our snitch tells us there aren’t many men guarding the sub. It’s well hidden inside that lump of rock, so they assume they’re safe. Special Agent Aagaard and I will be able to handle it.” Very distracting that Eric’s dark hair had grown back to its former luscious glory. It was military-regulation short, of course, but still long enough for a woman to grab a fistful of it while screaming out her orgasm. Nicole clamped her jaw. Good going, thinking of that.
“You okay for getting on a helicopter again?” One corner of Eric’s mouth rose. “Last time we were together you called it a death trap.”
Last time we were together… The muscles along Nicole’s forearms tightened. Gonna punch you in the face now, O’Dwyer. Don’t ever say, “last time we were together,” ever again. She was having enough troubles here as it was. “For another shot at Carrera, yes.”
Ryan collected his photos and file. “We’ll meet here Monday morning at oh-nine-hundred, along with our backup team, for a final operational briefing. After that, we’ll head out.”
With everyone in agreement, Ryan strode for the wardroom door. Nicole exited with her partner, following him down the gray hall again. They’d just reached the door leading outside when the inevitable happened.
“Hey.”
She stopped. Turned. Confrontation time.
Eric continued several more long strides down the hall, then stopped right in front of her, smelling…really good. Like steel and hard work and competence: everything a man who rode a metal beast and shot missiles at hairball terrorists should smell like.
She glanced at Ryan. “Give us a minute?”
Ryan nodded stiffly. “I’ll wait in the car.”
She turned back to Eric. “I’m glad you stopped me, actually,” she said blithely. “I have a hankering for two scoops of chocolate with sprinkles.”
“Ha, ha, I’ve never heard that joke before while wearing this uniform.”
She straightened out her expression. “How may I help you, Lieutenant?”
“Wow, so formal.”
She didn’t say anything. Just tried to suppress the heat still lingering in unmentionable parts of her body and fix the tilt in her belly. Eric probably saw right through her formality to how she actually felt: standing on her head and growing stupider by the second. He really was obnoxiously handsome.
“Is nineteen-hundred tonight good for you?” Another glint lit in Eric’s eyes, more wicked than before. “That’s seven o’clock.”
“I know what time that is,” she said tautly. “Don’t.”
“Have to. You owe me a date.” He pulled a cell out of his back pocket. “I’ll need your phone number and address.”
Her teeth continued to clench. “I thought we’d decided that promise was bullcrap.”
“You decided, and I didn’t argue because we weren’t in the same city.” A lazy smile curved Eric’s lips, and for a moment she lost the room. “Now we are.”
How annoying was it that she still hadn’t gotten used to his smile? “For as long as this mission takes,” she retorted. “Then I go back to Bogotá.”
“I guess we’d better get busy having fun.”
It felt like steam was building behind her eyeballs. “That promise was extracted under duress.”
He chuckled. “I warned you I was taking advantage. But a promise is a promise, so…” His fingers hovered over the screen of his cell phone.
She grabbed the doorjamb. “We started out in too weird a place, Eric. How in the world are we going to figure out where to go from there?”
“Why don’t you not list all of the reasons why we shouldn’t go out before we’ve even had a chance to find out if we can have fun together?”
She was circling toward the eye of the whirlpool, about to get sucked under. She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Tell me how you earned the call sign Landing Zone.”
He grinned. “Only if sex is guaranteed at the end of the date.”
She tsked. “That’s that, then.”
“I figured.”
“All right…how do you keep your shirt tucked in so neatly?”
His eyebrows popped up, then he glanced down at his waist. “I use shirt stays.”
“What?”
“They’re kind of a contraption. I’d have to show you how they work, but that would require me dropping my pants.” His eyes danced, more mischievous devil than seductive jerk, but…
She rolled her eyes anyway.
“You’re chickening out on everything today, aren’t you?”
“No.” She gave him her address and phone number. “But I’m jet-lagged. We’ll have to go out tomorrow night.”
“Saturday works for me.” Eric tucked his cell phone away.
At least she’d won one concession.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kyle planted a palm on the back of his front door, just below the peephole, and fumed. Un-be-fucking-lievable.
Had he earned no cred at all with the Universe? He wasn’t a litterbug; he donated monthly to an animal shelter; and he regularly put his life on the line in the name of freedom. One would think that sort of shit would warrant at least a little gimme. Unless the Almighty U was actually a giant, fake Oz behind a cosmic curtain, and that’s why Sienna was currently right outside his door. The woman lived in Virginia, for chrissake!
“Open the door, Kyle!” Sienna demanded loudly. “I know you’re in there. I can hear you breathing.”
Don’t do it, man. Exposure to the Queen Evil Spawnette would taint the cure-all, high-colonic cleanse he was on from anything and everything Sienna Kelleman.
“Have you ever thought about having that looked at, by the way?” she sniped. “You probably have a deviated septum.”
Or.
He set his jaw. He could depend on her fat mouth to keep him on the straight and narrow. Although that way of thinking would completely ignore their history of the bigger the fight, the bigger the aphrodisiac.
“Kyle!” A series of violent knocks sounded on the door. “I will not stop until you open!”
Snarling under his breath, he unlocked the door and threw it wide. “I’m already late for work, Sienna.” He pasted a glower on his brow, even though…
The woman had the annoying fucking habit of smoothing body glitter in the crack of her tits. Like the size of her hooters wasn’t enough to draw a man’s attention? Little bitch.
Bitchbitchbitchbitchbitch…Was it working?
No! He was still gawking at her boobs, which were practically spilling out of a tight white tank top. If she went for an itch anywhere below her waistline, he’d definitely get a nipple shot. On the bottom she had on a just-as-skin-tight pair of pink yoga pants, leaving nothing of her gotta-get-me-some-o’-that body to the imagination. The shapeliness of her legs made them seem twice as long as they were; she was actually petite—slender, but curvy.
Sweat broke out along his upper lip. He put this woman on the highest pedestal imaginable inside his mind, and yet he still managed to let himself get shocked to the moon by the gorgeous reality of her. How could he forget this body? The delicate bones of her face and lushly pouting mouth? Or all
that beautiful, tarnished-blond hair, cascading in bouncy waves down her back?
Sienna shoved past him and stomped into his house. “What’s your problem, Kyle?” she snapped. “You’ve been back from deployment for two weeks and you couldn’t show me the common courtesy of returning even one of my texts. You’re a little shit, you know that?”
He slammed the door. “No, I don’t know that, Sienna. Why don’t you list all the ways I’m a failure. You can consider it an early birthday present.”
She gave him a fierce scowl, her chest heaving.
Heaving, heaving, heaving.
He swiped the sweat off his upper lip. There was so much of it now, his sinuses were growing humid.
She plumped her fists on her hips. “Did it never occur to you that I might have something important to discuss with you?”
“You don’t. You never do. Now get out of my life, and never come back. I mean it this time.” The Universe was at least nice enough not to snicker. He stepped forward and took hold of Sienna’s upper arm, ushering her back toward the door.
“Get your hand off me!” She whirled and slapped him, her palm catching him fully on the plane of his cheek.
His head whipped to the side, his skin stinging as if it’d caught the lashing tip of a wet towel. He kept his face turned to the side long enough to fight the reflex to strike back. When he turned to look at her, his eyes felt like burning coals. “Do not. Hit me, Sienna.”
Her little chin stuck out at a stubborn angle. “This is exactly why I never ended up with you, Kyle. You’re so undependable.” She leaned forward and sneered. “Just like your father. I saw how depressed your poor mother was her whole life. Do you think I wanted to end up like that?”
He bared his teeth at her, growling as he charged forward.
She raised her hands to block him, but he snatched up her wrists, his oncoming body bearing her backward. Her shoulders met the wood of the front door, and he used his grip on her wrists to secure her arms above her head. “Get out of my life!” he shouted into her face. “You hateful bitch!”
She inhaled sharply, making her breasts push up against his chest.
Traitorous heat surged into his cock.
She lifted her chin to lock fierce eyes on him, the movement putting her lips close to his. So close… Her warm breath sluiced over his mouth, and he went hard enough to drive bolts into boards. He shifted closer, wedging his thigh between her legs…and the pressure of that lit off an ache in his old knife wound. He was suddenly back in that Colombian jungle, memories spinning out from every corner of his mind, swarming up from the floor, crashing down from the ceiling, crushing him like a weight he couldn’t heave off. A wave of dizzying fear engulfed him as he faced death in that jungle…
And what about that zero-zero night trying to land the helo with LZ?
He hissed air through closed teeth. No wonder the Universe refused to be his wingman. What Higher Power wouldn’t give up on a dumbass yokel who consistently didn’t heed warnings that all but slapped him upside his head? Just kept on doing the same old crap to ruin his life.
What if he had died either of those times? What would he have left behind?
Answer: nothing.
He jerked his hands off Sienna and stumbled back from her. “I can’t do this anymore,” he told her hoarsely. “Please, leave, Sienna. I’m begging you to let me get on with my life.”
Her honey blonde eyelashes fluttered. He hadn’t talked to her like that since they’d been together…when he had to plead for every scrap of attention she’d thrown in his general direction.
Emotion he’d never seen before flooded her gaze. It looked like grief and desolation, but why…?
“Kyle…” She placed a hand to her cheek. “We have a son.”
He froze. Stared at her. Words—have, we, son—banged around like metal tennis balls inside his head. What?
“The first night we were together, before you went to Pensacola for flight school…” Her lips quivered. “We didn’t use any birth control, Kyle. Didn’t you…ever consider that?” Tears shimmered in her eyes.
His throat clenched so tight the walls of his esophagus gummed together. He’d never seen Sienna cry—ever. He’d always considered her too mean for that.
“I got pregnant.” Her hand slipped to her chest, her fingers lying below her collarbone.
He just lumped there in front of her, like a bale of mentally challenged hay. His throat was still constricted beyond possibility of speech and his brain wasn’t really…. Pregnant, got, I.
“It’s why I broke up with you.” Her face stained red. “I was so angry, so hurt.”
The knowledge of speech-formation blasted back into his brain on a wave of fury. “What the fuck, Sienna, you’re blaming me for that!? You never even gave me the chance to do anything about it, so stick it up your ass. I don’t deserve your guilt trip. And, by the way, how dare you not tell me!”
She shook her head violently, sending strands of her hair whipping across her shoulders. “It wasn’t supposed to happen to me!” she returned in a near shout. “My life was meant to be different!”
“Where is he?” Kyle demanded between clenched teeth, taking a hostile step forward. “I can’t believe you’ve hidden him from me all these years.” I can’t believe you never TOLD me.
“I don’t have him,” she shot back. “I gave him up for adoption.”
“What?” Kyle tipped back on his heels, ramming both hands back through his hair. “What the fuck? Who? Where?”
“You weren’t ever supposed to know,” she cried.
He coldly watched tears tumble down her cheeks. “Thank you. How nice. So why now? Why tell me now, if…oh, shit! You are not this cruel.” He stalked away from her a few paces, then spun back around, raging. “You knew I was genuinely tossing you out of my life this time, so you flung this at me to up the ante of my torture. That’s low, Sienna, even for you. Verging on sick.”
Her lips whitened. “Our son is ill.”
The air evaporated from Kyle’s lungs. His heart pumped desperately, trying to compensate so he wouldn’t pass out. “He’s what?” he croaked.
“His adoptive parents contacted me. He has,” her throat jerked around the word, “cancer. They’ve asked if I and the…the boy’s father could have our bone marrow tested to see if we’re a match for a transplant.”
Kyle shook his head in slow motion: left, middle, right. “No,” he whispered.
“This is what I’ve been trying to get in touch with you about.” She glared at him through her tears. “Is it important enough for you, Kyle? Can you make time to talk to me now?!”
“Stop.” He pressed the heels of his palms to his temples and squeezed hard. “I want you to stop!” He smelled her, felt her body heat, and then she was grabbing his wrists, pulling his arms apart so she could fling herself against his chest.
Her arms wrapped around his neck and she pressed her face against his skin. “I’m sorry.”
Kyle was naked.
He had no recollection whatsoever of how he’d gone from clutching Sienna to him in shared agony to having her hiked up against the front door, equally naked, her perky ass cupped in his palms. But here they were.
“Kyle.” Sienna breathed his name into his mouth as she crushed her lips to his again.
Kissing, yes…That’s how this had started; gentle, comforting kisses had quickly warped into passionate intensity.
Sienna’s legs clamped hard around his waist, like a jockey urging her horse to go faster, her soft breasts shoving against his chest. Now she was nearly sucking his tongue into the back of her throat.
He groaned deep in his chest. With his hands on her ass, he spread her cheeks wide, and her labia, bent his knees, then rammed up, thrusting himself deep inside her. Another groan spilled out of him. God, she felt great. Even with a condom between them, she was tight as a silken fist around his cock. And, yeah, good thing one person in this party was in possession of enough functioning brai
n cells to have seen to birth control. Her, not him, because he was gone, baby, gone…and apparently still not learning life’s lessons.
No time to rehash this conversation with the Universe, though…
He began to buck violently in and out of her, thump, thump, thump, sending the knocker on the other side of his door into a Disneyland Haunted House play-along. Her awesome tits bounced against his chest, and he gasped raggedly as his balls hugged him close. Pleasure careened out from his cock through his pelvis. Even his toes tingled. He dragged his lips from hers, gritting his teeth. Don’t wanna come, yet.
“It’s good, Kyle, so…oooooh.”
That little oh noise she made when she finished—like she was discovering all over again for the first time how great it felt to climax—was sexy as all get-out. And since his brain well-recognized it as her orgasm-noise, all kinds of switches got tripped that answered his Don’t wanna come statement with a Too bad. The floodgates opened and his cock pumped ejaculate into the condom. A gust of harsh air was torn from his throat, followed by a long, guttural moan.
He gave one final push into her, flexing up on his toes, his back arching, then sagged against her. Their sweaty chests labored together and their breathing was rapid and noisy.
“Lord.” Sienna caressed a hand down the back of his hair. “That’s always so crazy-good between us, isn’t it?”
He slowly shut his eyelids, savoring the feel of her soft palm on his nape. Her touch felt incredible. “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie, but, as usual in these moments, he refused to let his conscience insert any ahems. He eased out of her and gently set her feet on the floor. Stepping back, he slipped off the condom. His pecs were smeared with glitter.
She reached for his face. “What happened here?” she asked, her fingers dancing along the line of scar on his jaw.
He smiled slightly. “Very bad shaving accident.” This was…different. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d had sex with any amount of affection attached to the act.
“Oh, Kyle.” Her voice was imbued with a lazy quality that hinted at her Southern upbringing. Or that she’d just had her pipes cleaned pretty effectively.
Wings of Gold Series Page 15
