They were too protective, too worried. She loved them for it, but she also felt more and more suffocated as the days went by.
Her fingers glided over his skin, skimmed the planes of muscle. He stood very still and let her touch him, but he couldn’t hide the reaction beneath his towel. Swarms of butterflies swirled in her belly as she reached for the edge of his towel and unhooked it.
It fell to the floor, revealing hot, hard muscle and a very stiff cock.
“Oh,” she breathed.
He caught her hand before she could reach for him, and her gaze collided with his. He looked like a lion ready to pounce. A lion currently working very hard not to do so.
“I should tell you to get the hell out of here… but I can’t. God help me, I can’t.”
“That’s good,” she whispered. “Because I think I will die if you send me away.”
He dragged in a harsh breath. “If at any moment you’re scared, you need to tell me. Don’t stay quiet and hope it gets better.”
She put her hand on his stubbled cheek. “How could I be afraid of you? You took care of me in Qu’rim, and you’ve been a friend to me through everything. I’m not afraid, Ry.”
Yes, she’d wondered if she could be intimate with a man again, but she didn’t wonder anymore. She knew, because the moment his body was revealed to her, wetness and longing had flooded all the darkest recesses of her inner core.
Nothing Ryan could do would scare her. He was too good to her, always had been, and she didn’t fear him. He was the only man—the only man—who could touch her this way.
He turned his head and pressed a kiss into her palm, and she shuddered with the hot sensation flowing through her nerve endings. Her clit swelled and tingled, her folds grew wetter, and her pussy ached in a way she’d almost forgotten. She hadn’t felt desire in so very long.
Ryan hooked her arm around his neck and tugged her in, flush to his body. Their skin met, his hot and damp from his shower, hers hot from looking at him.
He slid a broad hand down her back, over her ass, and flexed his hips against her. He was big and hard and far stronger than she was—but she didn’t fear. He wouldn’t hurt her. Never.
His skin against hers was heaven. She pressed her mouth to his chest, dragged her tongue across the taut muscle until she found his nipple. He stiffened and swore when she sucked it into her mouth.
And then the world tilted and she realized he’d swept her up into his arms. He carried her over to his bed and laid her down on it. While she watched the play of dark and light across his beautiful body, he unzipped her jeans and tugged them down her body. Her panties and bra followed in short order.
Then he was sitting back on his haunches and staring at her. His cock leapt, the only part of him that didn’t seem to obey the command to stay still.
“You’re beautiful, Emily. Everything I imagined and more.”
She felt a little shy lying in his bed, which was silly. “You imagined this?”
He snorted. “Pretty much every day since I met you.”
That thought made her stomach flutter. He’d been thinking about her, and she hadn’t known. She’d spent so many nights wondering if he was even the tiniest bit attracted to her or if he thought of her like a little sister. Because the longer she’d known him, the more she’d wanted him.
He’d been off-limits though. Still would be if she weren’t leaving tomorrow morning.
“I imagined it too.”
He stretched out over top of her, his body so close but not quite touching hers as he held himself up with his powerful arms.
“So many things I want to do to you, Emily.”
She put her arms around his neck and tugged him down. “Then do them. Please, please do them. But start with a kiss, because that’s what I want most right this minute.”
Her eyes closed as his head descended. His lips touched hers. It was a featherlight touch, a tease really. No tongue. Just lips, soft and perfect. That bow in his upper lip—oh, that bow. She darted her tongue out and touched it, and he shuddered.
Then his mouth captured hers in a hot, thrilling kiss that curled her toes and sent syrupy heat pumping through her veins. She opened beneath him, moaning when his tongue touched hers. Their mouths fit perfectly, and their tongues slid and dueled and tasted for what seemed like hours.
He kissed her for a long while, gently sometimes, harder other times. Her nipples were tight little points that scraped against his chest, begging for his attention, but he wouldn’t leave her mouth, wouldn’t stop tasting her lips.
It was the most intimate experience she’d ever had. She hadn’t had many lovers, but the ones she’d had were always eager to get to the main course.
Not Ryan. He kissed her like that was his sole purpose in life, though she could feel the hard swelling of his cock against her pubic bone.
And suddenly she didn’t care about anything but having him inside her. She didn’t need another second of foreplay. She just needed his mouth on hers and his cock deep inside.
Emily shifted her body, opening her legs and wrapping them around him. He groaned as he slid one hand down her side, shaping her, learning her texture, cupping her ass and lifting her against him.
“Please, Ryan,” she begged, tilting her hips, seeking his hard cock. “Please.”
He didn’t refuse her. He shifted, and then she felt the blunt head of his penis as he entered her body. She gasped as he filled her, moaned when they were fully joined skin to skin.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his eyes searching hers.
“Yes. Kiss me again. I need you to kiss me.”
His mouth took hers once more. It felt too good, almost too wonderful to bear. Emily locked her ankles around his waist as he began to move. He was slow at first, controlled. And then he tore his mouth from hers as the tension spiraled higher and he buried his face against her neck, his body pumping into hers faster and harder than before.
Emily caught him close. She flung her head back, surprised at the fresh heat flaring to life in her core. She’d never come like this, never with a man inside her, but as Ryan moved against her, she knew it was going to happen. Joy filled her as she arched into him and thrust her hips up to meet him.
The pressure built and built until it caught her by surprise and flung her out over the edge. She held on for long seconds—and then she let go, falling into pleasure so intense it stole her breath away.
Ryan jerked backward, and then he was spilling onto her belly, his warm semen jetting onto her damp skin as he wrapped his hand around his cock and finished that way.
He got up and grabbed the towel he’d been wearing, cleaning her where he’d spilled himself onto her body. She didn’t know what to say, how to express what he’d given her tonight.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she told him softly. “Pull out, I mean.”
He looked fierce. “Yeah, I did. I should have protected you better than this—”
“I can’t get pregnant.” Tears filled her eyes as she said it. She’d never voiced it to anyone before now, and it hurt to say. Surprisingly, since she’d never been certain if she wanted kids anyway.
Ryan’s eyes filled with sympathy—and maybe even relief. She didn’t like to think of him being relieved they wouldn’t have a baby together, but it was the reality of her life.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry.”
She sucked in a breath. His sympathy had the power to break her if she let it. “No, it’s okay. You’re relieved, and I get it. We got a little carried away… I should have told you it was okay before.”
He shook his head. “You still deserved better. You don’t know who I’ve been with or what I might have caught.”
She couldn’t help but laugh just a little. “Ryan, you work for a highly specialized military outfit that wants to know if you so much as sneeze. I’m pretty sure you’re okay.”
He finished wiping her clean and threw the towel on the floor. “Yeah, guess that’s true.”
/> She felt a little shy as his gaze slid over her. She sat up and tugged her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. “Thank you,” she said. “That was amazing.”
She couldn’t read his expression at all. He reached out and skimmed his fingers over her arm.
“Any regrets?”
A million of them, but none that involved him. “No,” she whispered, dropping her gaze.
He tilted her chin up and searched her eyes. “Thank you for trusting me. I know it can’t be easy for you.”
She smiled. It was easy because it was him. “You’ve always been so good to me. I appreciate it more than you know.”
He turned and sat back against the headboard, then pulled her into his arms. “You deserve happiness, Emily. You deserve everything good in life. And you deserve to be treated like the special woman you are.”
She wrapped her arms around his as they sat there together. There was so much she wanted to say to him. So much she couldn’t say. Somehow, Ryan had become her best friend. But how did you tell your best friend you were about to do something he definitely wouldn’t want you to do?
“I wish we’d met under different circumstances,” she said quietly. “I wish so much was different.”
He hugged her tight. Then he nuzzled her hair aside and spoke in her ear. “The only thing I wish is for you to be happy and safe.”
She turned in his arms, tilted her face up to his. “I am happy when I’m with you.”
He looked torn, intense, and she knew he was thinking they couldn’t do this again. But he didn’t know the real reason—and she wasn’t going to share it with him.
“Kiss me, Ryan,” she whispered.
His head dropped to hers. Everything faded but the heat between them.
CHAPTER FOUR
TWO MONTHS LATER…
“Flash, ready room. Now.”
Chase “Fiddler” Daniels had just peeked his head around the corner of the team storage room and barked out the words before disappearing again. Ryan stood and opened his locker, stowing the gear he’d been checking for worn areas, before heading down the corridor and into the ready room.
When he walked inside, his teammates were all there. So was Echo Squad, another team they often worked closely with on assignments. Cade Rodgers, Echo’s leader, nodded at him as he went over and sat next to Fiddler. Cade was a big motherfucker, tall and broad and about as mean as a rattlesnake. Just the kind of guy you wanted in your corner.
Then again, all the men in this room—and the two women, of course—were the kind you’d want in your corner.
Fiddler gave Ryan a look. It was one of concern and puzzlement. Hell, all the guys had been looking at him like that for the past two months. They knew something was wrong. They just didn’t know what.
But it had been going on since they’d learned Emily had left the country with Ian Black. Fucking Ian Black. Ryan’s gut clenched tight. If he ever got in a room with that bastard again, he’d kill him. Didn’t matter if the dude was on their side—or at least he’d appeared to be at last count—Ryan was going to kill him for involving Emily in whatever scheme he had going.
Ryan clenched his fists. It didn’t matter how many days had passed since that last night with her, he still couldn’t fathom that she’d walked away from her life—from him—the way she had. She hadn’t told him a fucking thing! She’d lied to him that night. Lied about everything.
She’d made love to him for hours and then left him to return to the Middle East. The last time she’d gone to the desert with a man, the experience had chewed her up and spit her out and changed everything for her.
Jesus. Ryan scrubbed a hand over his face.
He still didn’t understand. He refused to understand.
He looked at Victoria, at the tight lines around her mouth, and he knew she didn’t understand either. She’d been filled with rage the day Mendez delivered the message from Black. Victoria had wanted to hop on a plane and go to the desert right away. Ryan had wanted to go with her, and to hell with everything else.
But Colonel Mendez had rightly pointed out that they had about as much chance of walking into any part of Qu’rim or the surrounding states and extracting her safely as a snowball had of surviving a furnace. They didn’t even know if she was actually there. She could be anywhere, and until they knew more, they couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.
Every day since then, Ryan had grown angrier and angrier. He felt… betrayed. Used. Cheated on, and that was a ridiculous notion considering they’d only ever been together once.
But they’d been friends for months, and he’d thought Emily could tell him anything.
Anything but the fact she was doing something crazy like leaving the country with Ian Black. What if she was fucking Black now? Ryan couldn’t even see straight when he thought like that.
Colonel Mendez walked in, and everyone in the room shot to attention. He looked them over for a long minute before he spoke.
“At ease.”
They sat down again as he went over to the computer console and tapped on some keys. A map of Acamar appeared on the whiteboard hanging on one wall.
“We’ve just gotten notice that a group of archaeologists working in the Kuma Desert have been taken hostage by a Freedom Force cell. One of the archaeologists is pregnant.”
“Shit,” someone said.
That sentiment was echoed by everyone in the room.
Mendez stood with hands on hips, looking every bit as angry as a lion with a thorn in his paw.
“We’ve been tasked with the rescue.” His gaze slid over them, hard, angry, and Ryan knew that something else was coming. Something that none of them was going to like. “Our contact on this mission is an old friend to HOT.”
Ryan’s gut churned at the twist on the word friend. He didn’t like where this was going. He knew, deep down, the name that Mendez was about to say—and it filled him with a kind of helpless rage he’d never felt before.
“Ian Black,” Mendez continued, “has an asset inside the Freedom Force cell. He’s getting his information from this asset and passing it through channels. We don’t know where the archaeologists are being held, but once we get boots on the ground in Acamar, we’ll work with Black and his team to locate and extract them.”
“Can we trust Black’s information, sir?” Fiddler asked.
It was probably the politest thing anyone could say. Ryan couldn’t form a coherent sentence, much less ask something so nice as whether or not Black could be trusted. As far as he was concerned, Black could never be trusted.
But he’d gladly take the opportunity to work with the man on this mission. Because once he got Ian Black in his sights, he wouldn’t rest until he knew precisely where Emily was.
He glanced at Victoria. Her mouth had flattened, and Brandy had moved closer to her. Yeah, she was pissed as hell at her former boss—and she’d been one of the few people who’d ever defended him.
Ryan didn’t think she’d defend him now.
“Victoria, you’re sitting this one out,” Mendez said coolly.
It wasn’t unexpected considering the circumstances, but Victoria looked surprised nonetheless.
“Sir, I can do the job.”
“I know you can, but I think it’s best if you don’t. You’re emotionally compromised. Your sister went to join Black, and I don’t need to worry about the inevitable explosion when you two meet up again. The hostages are our priority, not a family feud.”
“Yes, sir,” Victoria said, her voice as tightly controlled as a spring. The fury in her words was unmistakable to anyone who knew her, though. “Does this mean Emily is in Acamar, sir?”
“Yes. I am assured she’s safe.”
“And will you bring her home?”
Mendez’s gaze didn’t falter. “If that’s what she wants, yes.”
Victoria swallowed and nodded, and Mendez let his gaze slide across everyone there.
Ryan’s pulse thumped as he waited for the colonel to single
him out next. But that would mean Mendez somehow knew about Ryan’s relationship with Emily—and he was pretty certain no one knew. He’d been careful. She’d been careful.
Or so he’d always thought.
Mendez turned back to the screen and called up another slide. Ryan breathed a sigh of relief as the colonel moved on with the planning. He informed them they’d be on a plane tonight and on their way to the zone. They would arrive in the city of Al-Izir and make contact with Ian Black and his mercenaries. Hopefully by then Black would have information about the hostages’ location. If not, HOT was going to bunk in the compound with Black’s mercenaries and wait for the coordinates.
Ryan didn’t like that option. A quick glance around the room told him that no one else did either. Especially Iceman, who’d fought with Black when it appeared the man was responsible for trying to kidnap Grace Campbell.
After an evening involving a dunk in the Tidal Basin and a jail stay for both Ice and Black, they’d learned the mercenary was actually on their side. He’d been embedded with the group seeking to kidnap Grace Campbell, but he’d been working with Mendez when it came time to rescue Grace.
That didn’t mean a damn thing to Ryan. So Black had been on their side that time. There was no guarantee he would be this time. His loyalties were unpredictable at best and traitorous at worst. He didn’t care about people. If he did, he never would have recruited Emily.
That’s what killed Ryan every day. Not knowing if she was okay or scared out of her mind. Wondering where she was. Who she was with. Wondering if Black was touching her the way Ryan had touched her.
He dipped his chin to his chest and studied the floor beneath his boots. Anger rushed through him, filled him so full he felt like he would burst at the seams with a single touch to his body. It was too much like when he was a kid and he’d been angry and hurt because his mother had left. He’d been fucking helpless to fix a damn thing, and he’d hated it.
Hot & Bothered (A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 8) Page 3
