“I will,” she said softly.
The question that loomed unspoken between them was what sort of relationship would they have when he went? It would be easy to say they were friends of a sort, with the promise of so much more, but the kindling heat inside her, and the pressure of grief and fear in her chest, warned that it wouldn’t be enough for her. She wanted more. She wanted him.
When he left the next day, she wanted him to take a piece of her along, not because she wanted to go to Rocky Cliff, but because she wanted him to come back safe. If she hadn’t been escaping toward Celeste, she never would’ve made it off the island. Was it silly to think the same might work for him, that maybe he’d be a little more careful if he was coming back to something other than the job?
They hadn’t settled anything between them, not really. He’d promised to trust her, but that trust hadn’t yet been tested. She’d promised to be on his side, but that hadn’t been proven, either.
Still, they might not have another night. They had tonight.
She held out her hand. “Come inside.”
He took her fingers in his but stayed put, looking down into her eyes. “Are you sure?”
There was no need to discuss what the invitation meant. The need for sex, the promise of it, spun out in the air separating them.
“I’m sure,” she said, and willed him to see the truth in her eyes, willed him to believe her. “I don’t want to wake up alone tomorrow.”
They both knew what she was really saying was, If you don’t come back from the island, I don’t want us to have missed this chance. She didn’t know if it’d last past tonight, didn’t know if either of them were ready for it to continue onward. She did know, however, that she didn’t want to live with the regret of not having taken this one night together with him.
She wanted him to have something to come back to, even if it was an illusion that dissipated once the danger was past.
“Come inside,” she said again. “Please.” As if in answer, the wind picked up, blowing between them, around them, and bringing the scent of the sea.
He lifted their joined hands. “Are you trying to save me, Sydney?”
Her laugh caught in her throat. “You’re not a lost cause yet.”
“That, sweetheart, is a matter of opinion.” He closed the distance between them, and kissed her, and that was when she knew for certain. She wasn’t in danger of falling for him.
She’d already fallen. She just hadn’t hit bottom yet.
JOHN DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER trying to talk himself out of following her into her hotel room—he’d passed the point of no return. Hell, maybe he’d passed it days ago, while he’d sat on his own couch and watched her sleep.
Then, as now, fierce protectiveness welled up inside him. All-consuming possessiveness. She was his in a way he’d never known before, never wanted before. But now it was all about want as he slid the glass doors closed, shutting out the night. Shutting out the storm that had come in so quickly, and now announced its arrival with a sharp splatter of rain against the glass slider.
Knowing that the others were out but not how long they’d be gone, he locked the connecting doors to the rooms on either side of Sydney’s. Then he turned to her, their hands still linked, and lifted his free hand to touch the ends of her dark hair and trace the soft curve of her cheek.
Her luscious brown eyes were shadowed and wary, and as fierce as they had been the first moment he saw her, dripping wet and spitting mad as she crouched on the deck of the coast guard cutter Valiant, ready to fight the world. Yet at the same time he saw a layer of vulnerability beneath. She was afraid for him, cared for him, and the knowledge resonated. It mattered, probably more than it should.
He needed to be focused when he led his team to the island the next day. He needed to be in charge, needed to be the Iceman, but that man seemed very far away as he leaned in and touched his lips to hers, and the layers of defense were stripped away, leaving only the man behind.
THE MOMENT THEIR LIPS touched, Sydney felt a shudder run through his big frame, as though something was changing within him. Then he slanted his mouth across hers and applied gentle suction, teasing her lips apart. His tongue touched hers, softly at first, and then with increasing pressure, and she knew she had him. He’d made his choice, and he’d chosen her.
Reveling in the knowledge, glorying in it, she lost herself in the kiss.
Fisting her hands in the fine cotton of his shirt, she leaned in and opened to him. Heat exploded inside her, muting the buzz of nerves at the thought that she was doing this, really doing this. With Sharpe. Or rather, John.
He pulled away and looked down at her. “What?”
She flushed when she realized she’d said it aloud. “I was practicing your name. It seems silly to think of you as Sharpe now.”
“You can call me whatever feels right,” he said simply, and the open invitation from a man as guarded as he was meant far more than it should have, sending a spear of emotion through her to join the heat.
She swallowed hard against the lure of affection—or more—and tried to keep it light, saying, “I’m all about doing what feels right.”
Shifting her grip to the lapels of his suit jacket—navy today—she drew him down for another kiss, one that started with their lips curved in pleasure and quickly morphed to an openmouthed, searching exploration that detonated bombs of sensation in her fingertips, in her core, in all the neurons between.
Murmuring something—maybe appreciation, maybe a suggestion—he slid his hands up her ribs, skimming the outsides of her breasts and causing her nipples to tighten with anticipation.
She lit up, humming with the electricity that had flared between them from the first. Her mouth turned greedy, and she tugged the tails of his shirt from his waistband and ran her hands beneath. His stomach was warm and hard beneath her fingertips, dusted with the faint irregularity of masculine hair, and though he wasn’t a bulky man by any means, everywhere she touched she found muscles that coiled in hard, ready knots beneath her hands.
Sliding her fingertips higher, playing across the hard ridges of muscle and man, she found her exploration blocked by the straps of his shoulder holster, so she reversed course, stroking down along his ribs to bracket his hips with her hands, then reaching up to tug at the holster. “You’re going to need to lose this.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.” He stepped away from her, unhooked the holster and shrugged out of it as raindrops blew in from the sea and hit the sliding glass doors with the hard rat-tat of a spring storm.
Placing the holstered gun on the dresser top, beside the hotel-standard entertainment center, he clicked off the wall lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Then he crossed to her and urged her to the glass doors, pressing her against him and wrapping his arms around her so they were aligned back-to-front, both watching the night.
He grazed his lips across one of her ears, sending a shimmery sensation straight to her core, and whispered, “Listen to the storm.”
The wild fury of it raged inland, whipping the waves to frenzied whitecaps that hurled themselves onward, only to die on the beach. The wind howled off the Atlantic, rattling the windows and making the glass bow in its frame. But Sydney felt safe in John’s arms. Protected. Like they were cocooned together in a moment outside of normal time, where nothing and no one could touch them.
It was an illusion, she knew, brought by the night and the storm and the feelings that bound them together.
The danger was still out there, waiting.
For tonight, though, she was safe with him.
“Will the storm change your plans if it keeps up?” she said softly, not sure what she wanted the answer to be. Part of her wanted him to say yes, for them to have another day. But that would only prolong the inevitable.
“It’ll pass,” he said with quiet assurance. “We’ll sneak onto the island tomorrow, as planned.”
They had the loan of a boat bristling with the newest in ste
alth technology. The Renfrew brothers, along with a half dozen coast guarders and combat-trained men, would move in on the main dock as a distraction, allowing John’s team to make it to one of the less patrolled beaches of Rocky Cliff Island. That was the theory, anyway.
In reality, so many things could go wrong, it made Sydney sick to think of the possibilities. So she let the storm beat in her blood, in her heart, and she turned in John’s arms, leaned up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.
Finally, she eased back and said, “Then let’s not waste the hours we have left.”
One corner of his mouth kicked up and his eyes turned sad, as though he’d read more into her words than she’d intended, but he said nothing, simply leaned down and kissed her. Then, without breaking the kiss, he swept her up into his arms and carried her the few steps to the bed.
The mattress yielded beneath their combined weight, and she gloried in the solidness of him pressing her down as she wrapped her legs around his, hooked her arms around his strong shoulders and gave herself up to the moment, to the spring storm, to the man.
Their kisses grew hotter and harder as the wind slapped stinging pellets of water against the glass barrier that was the only thing separating them from the maelstrom outside. The air in the small room heated with passion, with the mingling of their scents and the torturous rub of far too much clothing.
Sydney helped him wrestle her clinging pullover off over her head, then fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, parting the material so they could press skin-to-skin.
Far from being icy, he burned from within, his passion radiating outward and scorching her. She writhed beneath him as the heat built from want to an all-consuming need, until not even the storm mattered anymore, until the only thing that mattered was him—the taste of him, the good, solid weight of him and the feel of his skin against hers.
Then even that wasn’t enough anymore. She parted her legs and slid her calves up his thighs on either side, opening herself to the press of his solid length as he began to rock against her.
Heat spiraled upward, breaking over them both until he pulled away, breath rasping in his lungs. He held himself there for a second, muscles so tight he was practically shaking, and in the darkness she felt him fight to master himself, to stay in control.
The thought that she could bring a man like him to the breaking point was brutally erotic, and she would have slid against him, trying to drive him beyond. But then he bent his head and touched his tongue to one of her peaked nipples, suckling her through the fabric of her bra, and all other thoughts were lost in a wave of sensation.
She arched up beneath him and cried out. Dimly aware of the people who might or might not be in the rooms on either side, she clamped her lips together, stifling further cries as he drove her up using only his lips on her breasts. His clever fingers trailed along her body, touching her. Inciting her. Promising dark delights. Teasing her beyond reason.
She pushed his unbuttoned shirt off over his shoulders, laughing when it snagged on his wrists and he reared up to yank it free. By unspoken accord they rolled apart and pulled off the rest of their clothes, with him pausing a moment to slip a condom from his bill-fold.
She didn’t ask how long it had been there or who it’d been intended for. She was only grateful he had one, because if they’d been forced to stop now, she might’ve screamed in frustration.
The need for sex, the glory of it, beat hammer-loud in her blood, and sang in her ears, drowning out the fury of the storm outside.
Once he had the condom in place she reached for him, drew him down and offered herself to him, demanded he come to her and welcomed him when he did. It had been so long for her that she was tight, bringing a moment of pain as he entered her, followed by the burn of pleasure, the gut-wrenching feeling of being full, of being joined.
Of being connected. To him. Only to him.
Once he was fully seated with her, he paused and dropped his brow to hers for a second as they breathed in tandem, absorbing the moment, the sensation. An unexpectedly poignant ache fisted in her chest, just beneath her heart, and she closed her eyes tightly against the promise of tears.
If this was it for them, she thought, it would have to be enough.
Then he began to move within her, and the sadness gave way to a roar of heat and need, and the delicious, wonderful friction they created together. The mad power of it broke over them like one of the storm-tossed waves, but instead of cresting and losing momentum it kept building, kept driving them up until they were racing to the peak, gasping and hanging on to each other while he drove into her and she clung to him.
And when they got there, she turned her face into the pillow to muffle her cries of completion, and he shuddered and groaned close to her ear, keeping the moment private, keeping it hidden from the others.
Afterward, she wrapped herself around him, turned her face into his throat and clung to him some more while the world changed shape around her, and she thought, This is it. This is what it feels like to love a man.
At one point she’d thought she’d loved Richard, but she’d long ago realized she’d loved the idea of him far more than the reality, had loved the symmetry of being with someone from within the small world of the university. In the end, it hadn’t even been much of a surprise to learn that he’d stolen some of her work and claimed it as his own, then ran to the dean’s committee and accused her before she could accuse him.
It had been messy and embarrassing, but it hadn’t been heartache, not really.
Not the way she felt it as she slid toward sleep, knowing that when the dawn broke, the man she loved would be going up against a monster.
HOURS LATER, SYDNEY awoke to the shrill ring of a strange phone. Groaning, she rolled over and fumbled for the thing, blearily registering the hotel room and a scattering of her belongings, and snapping to attention when she saw unfamiliar clothes slung over the desk chair—suit pants and a button-down shirt—and a holster neatly folded on the desk.
The sight made her acutely aware of the warmth at her back, and the rumble of a man’s breath.
She’d slept with Sharpe. With John. He’d stayed the night.
Consciousness returned with a punch of heat, and the memory of them turning to each other time and again through the night, each encounter growing slower and more languid, though no less hot. More like affection than flat-out lust. Almost, at times, bordering on more. Almost like love.
Don’t even go there, she warned herself, glancing over at him and stilling at the sight of him sprawled on his stomach, gloriously naked and gloriously male, with his face jammed under his pillow as if to keep the morning away a few moments longer.
Fully appreciating the desire and knowing they damn well needed to keep their night a secret from the others, lest it disrupt the day’s plan, she kept her voice low when she answered, “Hello?”
She expected one of Sharpe’s teammates or maybe the front desk.
She got a smooth, silky voice that was all too familiar.
“Rise and shine, Sydney.” Tiberius couldn’t have sounded more charming, as if he was holding all the cards in the deck at once. “But don’t—” he emphasized the word with a snarl “—even think of waking Agent Sharpe. If you look to your left, you’ll see why.”
Fear seized her by the throat, closing off her breath, choking her until the world spun. Shaking, afraid to look and afraid not to look, she turned her head.
The green dot of a laser-guided gun sight danced across the back of Sharpe’s neck, skittered along his dark, thick hair and slid to his temple.
“Boom,” Tiberius said in her ear. “That’s what’ll happen if you don’t cooperate. Nod if you understand.”
She nodded as a tear slid down her cheek and sobs backed up in her throat.
“Good girl. I want you to get up and get dressed. There’s a car waiting for you outside. Do you understand?”
Another nod.
“You have two minutes. And Sydney?”
He waited for a response, forcing her to whisper, “Yes?”
“The sniper will remain in place until you’re on one of my boats, headed for Rocky Cliff Island. If you do anything—and I mean anything—to signal Sharpe or the other members of his team, then he’s dead. They’re all dead…and they won’t enjoy it.”
He hung up before she could nod, but the green light shifted, crawling across Sharpe’s arm and up her thigh, pausing a second to circle the area of her breasts, which were hidden by the sheet she clutched to her chest.
She batted at the light, trying to shoo it away as tears blurred her vision.
Then the green dot moved to the alarm clock as if to say, Ten minutes, Sydney. Don’t be late, or he’s dead.
She hit the ground running and told herself not to look back.
THE MORNING OF THE MISSION to Tiberius’s island, the Iceman overslept. He didn’t wake up until his cell phone went off with the raucous shrill he’d programmed in on the theory that only the dead could sleep through something that loud.
Even then, it was a struggle.
He felt heavy-limbed and lethargic, as if he’d been drugged or beaten up, or had a night of really great—
Sex. Oh, hell.
Shooting upright in bed, he grabbed for his cell phone. A second before he answered, he got a good look around and realized he wasn’t in his room. He dropped the phone when he realized he was in Sydney’s room, and odds were that his entire team knew it.
He could trust them to keep that quiet from the higher-ups, but that wasn’t the point. They knew. And in a couple of hours, he was going to be leading them on a hell of a dangerous insertion, based on information they’d gotten from Sydney. From his lover.
The thought brought a wash of heat and an ache of tenderness in the region of his heart, one that he thought he might be able to get used to over time. Despite their problems and differences, she was exactly the sort of woman he wanted at his side—clever and resourceful, tough enough to stand up to him when he got off track, tender enough to let him be tender in return.
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