by Zoe York
Each time she checked the rearview mirror, her heart trembled. Even when he was reduced to nothing but a solitary bike light, the little drumming in her chest crescendoed. There was so much more she wanted to learn about him, but she had to stay away.
Right. The mission.
Elena led them to the Jigme Dorji National Park. Park, in this case, didn’t mean swings or campgrounds. The area ran wild with animals. Hardy trekkers and visitors passed all the time, but at over fifteen hundred square miles, it was hardly regulated.
She took the road in then veered off, relying on the strength of her satellite phone to plot their course. The headlights in the rearview mirror flickered. She hadn’t been driving fast—it was an impossibility in these forests—but Kent had to walk his bike to her window.
“This is as far as I can go on this. I’m assuming you charted our path. There’s no way...” His white teeth flashed when she tapped the phone. “I’m learning never to question you, Elena. Can we stop here? I’m starved.”
“Looks as good a place as any. Think you can handle roughing it?
She waited for him to say something glib, but her dapper prince went to work, using his phone to light his way.
“When you join the team—”
“If.”
“When, Elena. You’ll meet a guy named Eric. He’s a bit of a douche, but he makes the most delightful toys. Take these four things, and stick them in trees over there.”
Them looked like miniscule SIM cards, no larger than her gnawed-down pinky nail. She closed her fist around them and gasped as they pierced her skin. The things had razor sharp feet. She found a tree and turned around. The tiny cards hummed in her hand. She faced the direction she’d left Kent, and a little red light appeared. Smart. A miniature infrared alarm. She angled one black card in her hand until it synched with the other, creating an uninterrupted beam of red. After repeating the process a few times, she went back to the car.
Kent pulled out a bag of MREs and retrieved a silver lunch tiffin stuffed with bread and cold rice. Two days old, but still good. She’d eaten much worse.
They settled in an odd configuration in the old hatchback. He folded down the backseat and lay on his side. She took the other half, using one arm for resting and the other to reach for more food. It was almost a date night. Through the glass of the trunk, a few stars skipped between the prickly branches of waving trees. Between them, a small self-supporting light completed the date night ambiance. They really should talk about what had happened. It was important that he get where she was coming from and where she intended to go. “We need to talk about that kiss.”
Kent shifted enough to tug on her kira. “I’d love to repeat it, but business first. What do we know about this compound? Checkers didn’t send anything about it in the file. Just the coordinates.”
She almost laughed in this face that now he was the one to focus on work and not pleasure. It went against everything she knew about him—or thought she knew. The reality was that she didn’t know much about him at all. He had presented himself as a playboy when they’d met, then spent every hour thereafter proving he was so much more. She’d give anything to learn more about him—anything except her career.
“Pretty lady?”
“Nothing. Literally, nothing. No building permits, not even the name of the architect. Satellite only shows this.” She handed him her phone, and he nodded in recognition. “Same thing you got?”
“Yep. It was built to look like the old Bhutanese forts. No one would think anything strange.”
“That’s the genius of it.” Like all the other dzongs scattered throughout the Himalayas, there were massive white walls, a single red strip across the top, and roofs that seemed to float inches above the building. “If it has traditional construction, the roof is the weakest point.”
“Acknowledging that we don’t know what’s beneath it,” he said.
“True, but I doubt it’s heavily fortified. There’s not much in the way of firepower here. These guys won’t have any threats from the locals that can’t be solved with two men and some automatics. Plus, it’s a smaller dzong than most. We can sweep it fast and, if necessary, come back the next night.”
He waved two fingers between them. “We’re good.”
“I don’t want to get cocky, but we might be. Our bigger concern is stealing a truck. We need one big enough to carry the panels but small enough that they don’t question our Swiss diplomatic passports.”
“Speak for yourself,” he said with an Oxford accent. “I’m British when we exit. Do you kiss British men?”
Here we go. She leaned back and threw her arm over her eyes. “About that...I shouldn’t kiss any men. Not now. You have the job of my dreams. I want it too. That means no kissing the coworkers. What would the boss think?”
“I can handle him. He finds me exasperatingly charming. If I go to him on bended knee—and I would...” He grinned. “And I told him that I’d lose all the mojo that makes me awesome if I didn’t take you out to dinner, he’d foot the bill.”
“That makes it even worse. I won’t have it said that I only joined the team because I’m sleeping with the boss’s favorite.”
The man’s face had more light than the sky over Sweden. “Are we sleeping together? This is a tight spot, but I’m willing to shoulder—”
She swatted the lecherous fool. “And what would I do when you get tired of me?”
“Tired? Pretty girl, this is the longest I’ve been entranced. Sex? That’s easy. I get that all the time. You’re...well, fun isn’t the right word.” He ducked her next swat. “You’re intriguing. You’re me, only the other side of the coin. The women before, they’ve never had to shoulder armor the way we have. I think...”
“Yes?”
He thunked his head back and dragged his hands down his face. “I think this is a very deep conversation to have with a woman I’ve known for a couple of days.”
“Agreed. That’s why we must table all of this foolishness—”
“No, pretty lady. That’s why we need that date. We need to learn about one another and go from there. Thing is, in this short amount of time, you’ve ruined me for other women. That sucks.”
“Okay, you’re going a little far now.”
“I’m serious. I don’t want some dullard, and quite honestly, I need a woman I can talk to. Really talk.” He cleared his throat and turned off the light. “There was another woman—beautiful and smart, like you. I’d often wondered how we might have been together. I came back from a rough assignment. Shit, it was bad. A lot of people died, and I cried in her arms. She was—is—a doctor, and she put me back together. I never looked at her the same after that. I never kissed her, and after that night, I never wanted to. Fast forward to today,” he said with a snort. “Salty liquid came from my eyes again.”
“Mine too, if you remember.”
“I do, but here’s the damndest thing. I don’t feel weaker for it. Embarrassed, yes, but not weaker. That says more about you than it does about me. When you saw me without my armor, it didn’t hurt.”
Despite every logical cell in her brain screaming for her not to do it, Elena couldn’t stop her hand from moving. It went to Kent, drawn as a magnet’s pull.
He captured her wrist and drew it to his chest. His heart. “I used to think I wanted a girl to fight for. I’m smarter these days. Now I want a woman who can fight with me. I imagine that woman would be someone like you.”
A dozen excuses why they wouldn’t work stood on her lips. Only the strength of the thudding muscle beneath her hand held them back. She opened her mouth to try again, but all the wrong words came out. They were too soft. Too real. “I changed when you saw beneath my armor. I’m stronger, and it scares me that you caused it. I don’t know—”
And then her lips were the magnet. His mouth came to hers, desperate and demanding. She was strong and loved being strong. Yet with the heavy weight of his body pressing her down, she was small again, yet safe and pr
otected. She’d been swimming in a stormy sea for years, and here was her life preserver. Her body and soul sagged in relief, and she was boneless in his arms.
His hand fumbled with her kira as he grumbled about “stupid fabric” with a smile against her lips. She grabbed his hand, leading it to less dangerous territory.
“Stop.”
He pulled back at once, hovering on his elbows above her. She couldn’t see his face, but the tension in his arm and the halt in his breath were unmistakable. The man wanted her, even as he struggled for control.
She wrapped her arms around his neck as he crawled backward, but he didn’t stop until he reached the front seat.
“Sorry. You’re too warm and I’m too hard.” He did, however, lift the edge of her kira and kiss her ankle. “So a yes for dinner sometime?”
And like an idiot, she agreed.
*****
Kent wasn’t sleeping. Elena’s breathing had long gone regular, but he wasn’t physically able to think of anything other than her. Twice, he’d considered stepping outside and rubbing one out. He shifted in the driver’s seat and checked the rearview mirror before rubbing his palm over taut trousers.
Fuck it.
He reached for the discarded gho and got out of the car, dick in hand. He pistoned his cock as he walked, thinking of her and what he’d give just to be inside of her. One arm was propped against the tree, the other moved like too-dry lightning.
Her hair. Her laugh. Her ass.
Kent tipped his head back, ready for glory. Then the infrared alarm shrieked to life.
Seconds earlier, desire had twisted through him like ribbons of fire. Without it, his feet froze and his teeth chattered in the cold. Kent whipped around and barely made out the form of something a few feet from the car. He dropped to his knees. His fingers crawled through the hard earth, looking for a rock or anything to use as a weapon.
Idiot. How the hell had he been so stupid to leave his gun behind?
Fine, he’d kill the man with his bare hands. Kent started to charge. Light flickered inside the car.
“Are you kidding me?”
But no. And it wasn’t a man who’d turned at his words, but a bear—a big one of the I-Eat-People-For-Fun variety.
“I don’t have a gun, Elena.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“Do something!”
Through a window, she fired a shot in the air. The bear turned to the car, but she eased out, waving a flare in front her, and the beast backed away.
Good. Not good. It was coming straight for him.
“Kent, catch!”
A streak of light cut the air as the flare sailed over the bear’s head. He had to jump to catch it. He waved it out between his body and that of the beast. Kent made a wide circle toward the beckoning car and its open door. He screamed at the bear, backing toward the car when he could, but threatening forward when the creature tried to follow him.
Within a few feet of the door, his brave Elena stepped out again with a gun in each hand.
“If I ask you to get back inside the car, what will you say?”
She clicked her tongue. “If I ask why you’re in bear, leopard, wild dog, other leopard, and takin infested woods without a gun, what would you say?”
“What the hell’s a takin? Gimme the gun.”
“Here, but don’t shoot it. We’ll defend ourselves from there. Aim over its head.”
“Through.”
“Over.”
“It’s a bear.”
“It’s a moon bear. They’re endangered.”
“We’re endangered,” he said, shoving her in the car as she moaned about vulnerable species. “Dear, we don’t have time to ponder the world’s problems.”
“Turn on the radio. It’ll go away. They’re mostly herbivores.”
Kent blared the horn. The bear answered with a roar. It shook its mighty head, splattering the windshield with its spittle. “I don’t think he knows that.”
They turned on the car and the lights anyway, and finally the bear seemed to weigh its options.
“Why is your penis out?”
“Bathroom break,” he said, stuffing his junk back in. “Don’t be gross. Big picture, okay? There’s a bear...oh.”
Elena let out a whoosh of air as the thing backed up and disappeared into the forest. She cleared her throat and flicked out the overhead light. “I saw the big picture just fine.”
“You do know how to make a man feel good. Watch my back while I stomp out the flare. We might need it later, and we don’t want to attract any human visitors. When I get back, I’ll take first watch.”
— ELEVEN —
Kent awoke to the sweet smell of rotisserie. He popped up, angry that he’d finally succumbed to jetlag and that he’d left Elena on her own long enough to find, kill, skin, and damn near finish cooking breakfast. But Elena wasn’t like other women. So far, they’d saved each other’s asses at each and every point of danger. They made a good team.
“Look who’s awake.” She pointed from him to the rabbit with a steel-tipped arrow in her hand. “Breakfast,” she added with no small amount of pride.
“I’m stunned to silence.” He plopped down on the log next to her and angled over until their shoulders met. He toed the long back cylinder he’d seen in the hotel. Inside was a folded bow. “Impressive.”
“Archery is the national sport of Bhutan. I learned on a wooden bow, just like my mother.”
He fingered it, a shiny black thing that glinted all of the sun’s morning light in tiny sparkling colors. “This is a long way from a simple wooden bow, dear.”
“It was a gift from my sister when I joined the ranger battalion.”
Kent coughed out a laugh between his yawns. “Your family sounds a lot like mine. I got my first twenty-two at age five. By ten, I’d moved on to handguns. My parents were—are—warriors to the end.”
“And then they had you.”
“Funny. No, and then they had five. Then me and two more.”
“My god, there are eight Avery kids in the world? I’m not sure I can handle another Kent.”
He reached for the bag of water at her side and took a sip. “Dear, you’ll never find another quite like me. To your point, however, we kids were given two choices in life: direct military action or government intelligence. You can say that I majored in the latter and minored, spectacularly, in the former.”
“And your siblings, are all the opposite?”
He split the air with the side of his hand. “Straight down the middle. Our Christmases largely involve gifts of guns and ammunition caches along with logic clues about where to find them.”
“Sounds fun. We’re a terribly traditional Swedish family. All around the tree, warm blankets and mulled wine. I told you how my parents met. What about yours?”
“At the end of Vietnam.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Why? They met under the harshest of situations. I suppose my father figured that if he could meet and care for a woman when the world had gone to shit, he could really love her when it wasn’t.”
He waited for a response, but she gave him nothing. She wouldn’t of course, just to prove a point. Elena was naturally contrary, like his father. Luckily for her, he took after his mother. “Anyway,” he continued, “she writes curricula for combat nursing, and he’s commandant of the Academy.”
“And the rest of your siblings?”
He ticked them off on his fingers, one by one. “Covert, super black ops, Marine, other Marine—black ops, a sailor...” He stopped to clear his throat. “The sailor was Lisa, killed in action.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Uh, then there’s me, another covert action type, and the youngest is in grad school.”
Her hand closed over his, and he brought it to his lips. He needed her, and she didn’t withdraw. Instead, she leaned into him and planted a kiss on his cheek. “You all sound very close.”
“We are.” But he needed a
topic change and toed the black carrier. “Tell me about that. Bows are hot.”
“I hadn’t touched a gun until I joined the army. But this,” she said, twirling an arrow between her hands like a whirling baton, “I learned from my mother, and she always kept one eye shut.”
“Bad form.”
“Different form. I’m right eye dominant—or was. When I first shot this after the accident, I was consistently off by five feet or so. I learned to shoot again with the bow. I adjusted. Learned to compensate and...” She shrugged and bit her bottom lip. “I don’t want to brag but—”
“But you caught breakfast before I woke up. It’s okay to brag on that,” he said, flipping the rabbit another turn.
“Thanks.”
“Question.”
“Hmm?”
“Won’t this attract Baloo?”
“Moon bears sleep during the day. That thing was probably out of it anyway – it ought be hibernating. I wonder what happened to stir it this early. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, a lady needs a bit of privacy. I’ll be right back.”
He worked in her absence, if only to keep his mind off her absence and thoughts of his family. It didn’t work, and soon images of her and his family merged. They had to meet. She’d fit there as well as with any knight of Ambra.
Weirdly, he had an insane urge to meet her people, to find out about her seemingly opposing cultures and this sister she spoke so fondly of. In short, he wanted to know Elena. Everything about her.
He’d lost his man-whore card for sure. The woman had him hooked and all with just a couple of kisses. The truly sick part was that he didn’t feel bad about it.
He’d fallen. He’d fallen hard. He’d fallen fast.
On the other hand, it was a typically Kent thing.
He chuckled as he walked from tree to tree, pulling out the infrared devices as he went. There wasn’t a single thing in life he’d done halfway. Why shouldn’t he approach the possibility of a relationship with the same fervor? There also wasn’t anything he couldn’t perfect without a little practice. Seducing her, learning to make her crave him too, would be the greatest success of his life. He wanted what his parents had, and he was tired of waiting for it. In the end, he couldn’t think of a single damned reason not to go after a prize like Elena. She was his for the taking, and by god, he’d have her.
