So no, he didn’t go back there. He’d just given himself another kind of cross to bear anyway. “You’re the first woman I ever told this story, the first person outside of my brothers, Maggie and my dad. And I can’t talk about this anymore—please, not right fucking now.”
“Then tell me what I can do to make it better right now.” She watched for a response, wondered if he’d shut down, the way he had before when he’d tried to tell her that there was nothing she could do to help.
Instead, he shook his head and stared at the floor for a second. And then he raised his head high—regally. Exposed. “Touch me. Any way you want to.”
“Nick… I want to. You don’t know how badly I want to, but you don’t need to prove anything to me. I don’t want to do anything that’s going to make you uncomfortable.”
He leaned back on his elbows, stretched out along the length of the bed as the rain continued to batter the windows. “We’re down to the wire here, Kaylee. In deep trouble. So please, do as I say now. Just try it.”
“I can’t refuse you.” She drew a deep breath, let her eyes rake the tanned skin on his chest, illuminated only by the small oil lamp that flickered on the nightstand. She reached out and started with a harder touch, a stroke to his biceps. And then she intermingled it with a softer one that made him start noticeably, as if he wanted to jump out of his own skin. “We can stop.”
He swallowed, hard—he was breathing hard too, his face flushed from concentration. But he wasn’t refusing her touch, and he was aroused.
At the sight of this strong man attempting to be even stronger, she grew intensely aroused herself.
“No, that’s the thing—we can’t stop.”
He was right. Her finger moved toward the trach scar, stopped before she reached the familiar place he always rubbed.
“Go ahead.”
Instead of a finger, she pressed her lips there, felt his pulse, his entire body react as if he’d been touched with fire.
“Just breathe, Nick.”
He nodded and she saw the hard swallow, the hands fisted at his sides.
He didn’t need to be put through any more hell. Instead, she hugged him hard as he remained propped on his elbows. And then she drew her nails down his back in a hard scratch and he drew in a sharp breath, as if the pressure eased.
His voice rumbled deep in his chest. “Kaylee…”
“Your lips are so soft,” she murmured as she straddled his prone body. “Everything else about you is so hard—all rock solid, unyielding muscle, but your lips… I want them on me. Touch me. Go ahead—do whatever you need to.”
He pulled back from her slightly, held her by the shoulders. “It might never get any easier. Would it matter if it didn’t?”
She looked at his eyes, incredibly green and flecked with gold. “It wouldn’t matter.”
“Why? What the hell do I do for you?”
“You make me feel alive,” she whispered. “Can you understand that—everything is intense when I’m with you.”
She was in his lap, straddling him, her hands twined in his hair, caressing his scalp roughly. “What do I do for you?”
“Everything.” His voice was a growl on that single word, vibrated through her like a shot.
“You don’t always like the way I make you feel.”
“Since I was little, I’m always looking for that sensation, that adrenaline rush. And sometimes… it’s not enough to even begin to take the edge off,” he admitted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why I need that so much. What I’m looking for.”
“What happens when you’re with me?”
A long pause and then, “I stop looking.”
She didn’t say another word, just drew his body to hers and let their bodies continue the dance.
His erection pressed against her belly, her breasts rubbing his chest. The two of them were skin to skin with secrets splayed out, closet doors open and skeletons tumbling to the floor, as she lowered herself onto him and began to rock.
The lightning illuminated the room through the softly shaded windows, bold and powerful, and she took in Nick’s scent, breathed into his neck. They were both slick with sweat and heat and want, and nothing was going to stop it now. Nothing.
CHAPTER 20
Chris dropped his and Jamie’s packs by his feet and checked his phone for the nine thousandth time that day. No more messages from Nick. Six hours left to get to a place that was pretty much six hours away by car, miles of road with no cars and this really sucked badly.
But suddenly, Jamie, who’d walked ahead a bit, was waving her arms and yelling to him, pointing to a beat-up car—the first and only one they’d seen for miles. He shut his phone and headed over to her as she spoke with someone inside the car through an opened window.
He stopped short when he saw the passengers—an African man and woman, husband and wife.
“They speak English—they’ll take us to a car only a few miles from here, for American money.” She tugged his arm as she opened the back seat of the ancient vehicle. “Why aren’t you getting in?”
He was still too busy staring at the very pregnant woman in the front seat, nearly due, and he breathed a deep, internal sigh and prayed that it wouldn’t happen this time.
It didn’talways have to happen.
“Are you scared of pregnant women?” Jamie asked.
“No, it’s just that it will slow us down.”
“Nothing is slower than slogging through this crap on foot. Come on.”
Less than half an hour later, the African woman had her legs spread, pushing against the door and one of Chris’s shoulders while he began the process of delivering her baby.
It had started innocently enough: with less than a mile to go to get the car these people had promised, the woman in the front seat had yelled, so loudly that Jamie jumped and looked around for snipers or soldiers.
Chris did nothing but put his hand on the woman’s shoulder and spoke softly to her, in her own language, and yes, Jamie had read in the file on Devane that his particular team spent an inordinate amount of time in this country post–9/11.
The car was pulling to the side of the road.
“We can’t stop now,” Jamie said to Chris, but he was halfway out the door.
He stuck his head back in briefly. “I tried to warn you that this would slow us down.”
She scrambled out the other side, nearly crashing into the woman’s husband in order to get to where Chris was, helping the woman out of the front seat and getting her to lay down in the back.
“Get in behind her, let her lean on you,” Chris instructed the husband, who did as he was directed. “Jamie, grab the medical kit from my bag. Get me gloves and scissors and twine. And a towel and some bottled water.”
“Are you really going to deliver this baby?”
Chris reassured the woman softly and placed a blanket across her legs before backing away from the car. He turned to Jamie and kept his voice low. “I told you that my momma was a midwife. And really, there’s not much choice here.”
“How did you know she’d go into labor?” she demanded, keeping her voice as quiet as his.
“Happens all the time.” He shrugged and shook his head as he laughed softly. “I don’t go into hospitals anymore—the maternity ward goes insane.”
“Was it like that for your mom too?”
“Hard to say. Women who wanted to go into labor used to come to the house—I was never sure if it was me who made that happen or her. But now…”
“Now it’s all you.”
“Guess so.”
“Does it always turn out all right?”
“I’m done talking about this. Can you get what I asked for? And if you can’t help, you need to walk away.”
She bit back a reply because of the look in his eyes, the one that told her things didn’t always turn out okay. She wondered if he thought about this as a burden or a gift and realized there probably wasn’t all that much difference be
tween the two. “I’ll help.”
“Thanks, Jamie.”
She went to the bags they’d thrown into the back and began to collect the things he asked for.
He’d turned his attention back to the woman and Jamie wondered what she was thinking now, her dress pulled up to her waist and Chris standing there, shoving rubber gloves on.
“Will it be a while?” she asked.
“She’s crowning already. Push, Momma. Hard.”
He counted and Jamie realized she was holding her breath as he did so. Every time he instructed the woman to breathe, she breathed as well, until Chris told her to spread a towel on the front seat, have the water and suction ready and get rubber gloves on her own hands.
“Push again, Momma,” he encouraged as the woman screamed. “Last push… that’s it… don’t stop.”
Jamie didn’t breathe until Chris told her to give him the bulb syringe, and she held the breath until she heard the soft wail.
“It’s a girl,” he told all of them, and the woman and her husband cried and clapped. “Jamie, come here—tie the twine to the cord … right there, good, nice and tight. Now cut.”
Her hands shook as she did so, freeing the baby. He promptly handed the impossibly tiny baby to her. “Clean her in the front, then wrap her and give her to her mama.”
“Chris, I’ve never—”
“I have to finish here.” He stopped talking to her, focused on the now nervous mom, and she did what he said, laying the baby on the towel carefully, using another one to wipe off the smooth skin until the baby was all clean and content.
The father handed her a brightly colored cloth and Jamie wrapped the infant as best she could and handed it over the seat to the mother, who was smiling again.
Jamie backed out of the car, stood a little bit away to give them some privacy. Chris had finished, was pulling down the woman’s dress and taking off his gloves.
And before she could stop herself, she was walking up to him, putting herself into his arms and she was crying—for the first time this trip, for the first time in years, she was crying, and it was over a baby, a healthy, breathing baby.
She hadn’t even cried at Mike’s funeral, or when she’d discovered that he’d died on the OR table, because that would’ve been like admitting he was really gone.
She hadn’t cried for her parents either.
But Mike was really gone, so were her parents—and for now, so was Sophie. Everyone was gone except for Chris, whose arms were solidly around her.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s an emotional thing when you see it for the first time. Or the hundredth.”
“You’re really crazy, you know that?”
“I think everyone needs a little crazy in their lives. Especially you.”
“I’ve known you for all of two days.”
“My father knew my momma for one before he told her he loved her. But don’t worry, I don’t move that damned fast.”
She laughed against his chest.
“Come on, sugar, get back in the car so we can go find your sister.”
“You, Mama—you name the baby,” the woman said.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly…” She paused. “She has to be named after you,” she told Chris, who shook his head no.
“You have no idea how many babies are named after me. Your turn.”
She looked at the baby—impossibly tiny and precious, born into a place that was half hell, and still, the infant looked happy. Innocent.
She wished it had been that easy when she’d been forced to be reborn all those years ago. And so really there wasn’t any other name she could choose for the baby except the name that was her own past. “What about… Ana?”
He smiled at her. “I think that’s beautiful. Now let’s go find Nick and Sophie and bring them home.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan. I’ll put this stuff in the back—you make sure Mom and baby are all right for the rest of the ride.”
“She said it’ll take ten minutes to get to their house; there’s an old Land Rover there we can take,” he called over his shoulder as she collected the supplies he’d used that could be reused and placed them into the plastic bag.
Before she could open Chris’s bag in the back of the truck, her phone began to ring. Finally. She stared at it, the information she’d been trying so hard to dig up for the past weeks suddenly right there in front of her in a text message. “Got it,” she whispered to herself. “And I’ve got you, John Caspar. Once I tell Kaylee, it’s all going to be over for you.”
Kaylee was taking a hell of a chance by writing this article, and Jamie was grateful she wasn’t alone in all of this. The more people involved, the more hope she had of helping Sophie, she thought as she texted Kaylee the intel on Caspar.
Normally, Jamie wouldn’t share her intel this easily, but this was anything but normal.
“Everything all right?” Chris called. “We’ve got to get moving.”
“I’m ready.” She put the phone back into her pocket and began shoving things into his bag before slamming the trunk shut.
She squeezed into the front seat next to him so the mother and her new baby could relax in the back, and as the car rolled forward she forced herself to forget everything else but their current mission.
They weren’t getting power anytime soon. Nick cracked the windows but couldn’t hear anything beyond a persistent wall of rushing water. Since the door opened out, there wasn’t much he could secure from the inside, but he’d done a perimeter check inside and out every hour.
He was just drying off from the last one when thunder boomed overhead and Kaylee moved nearly on top of him. Jesus, she just did it for him—every time her body brushed his, he was ready for her. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“Sorry.” She sounded embarrassed. “I know it’s thunder, but I’m jumpy, I guess.”
“I just checked. No one around—no new cars in the lot or on the road, which is under water.”
“Here, take more towels—you’re soaked.” Her hands were on his chest—through the shirt, the touch wasn’t bad. He’d been ready for it.
“I can’t make contact with my brother,” he told her as he rubbed his body down.
“Which means he’ll go straight to the warehouse, right?”
“I guess. He could still make it here, though. Driving through extremes hasn’t ever been a problem for him.”
“But you’re still worried.”
In the past, he wouldn’t have admitted that, would’ve seen it as a weakness. An admission that he wasn’t up to the job. But Kaylee, she knew he wasn’t weak. She knew… everything. “A little.”
“He’ll check in—it’s the weather, he’s probably just waiting it out. And he’s probably just as worried about you.”
“Yeah, true.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “Hopefully he’s already borrowed a car.”
“Ah. So you and Chris have the same skills with cars.” She sat next to him, cross-legged in the dark, her hair loose around her shoulders, and he leaned his elbows on the bed and told her the story.
“When I was seventeen, I was arrested for boosting cars and selling them. And I sat in that jail cell with Chris and planned to stay there as long as my sentence was. I didn’t want the military, more rules and regulations. My dad tried to talk to me, and Chris, and Jake even came in to try. But I didn’t listen to any of them,” he told her.
“So why did you finally decide not to stay in jail?”
“It’s what Walter would’ve wanted. And I decided, fuck him, he’d had enough control over my life. So in a way, I should thank him for what I’ve become. I should thank him for my career, for my brothers, for my family—I wouldn’t have had any of that if it wasn’t for him. It’s weird to think I actually owe that to Walter.”
“Well, that’s a step in the right direction, I guess—a new way of looking at things.”
Yes, a new way. She was right again.
But something else wasn’t right. His body
stiffened, instincts screaming, and he stilled completely just before the window broke—a soft, tinkling sound.
He put a hand on her shoulder and prepared to head her out the door when he realized she was having problems breathing—and this time, she wasn’t alone. His lungs were filling quickly and he noted the small grenade sending out gray smoke in the darkness. Quickly, he yanked her toward the door but it wasn’t opening. He shot the lock, but still it wasn’t moving. Barricaded from the outside.
“It’s blocked,” he choked out.
“What’s happening?” she gasped.
“Some of kind of gas.”
Before she could answer, strong arms pulled at him, hard. The world was going black and the last things he heard were a soft cry from Kaylee and a gunshot.
For the second time in her life, PJ was the only survivor. There had to be some kind of limit as to how many times she could get lucky, but so far her supply seemed limitless.
Lucky. She wanted to laugh as that word rolled around on her tongue until she realized she was babbling to herself in the midst of the crash. And then the words turned into a sob that wrenched the last bit of adrenaline out of her, and she found herself on her hands and knees in the dirt, breathing the smoke from the explosion.
She’d checked and rechecked the controls on the Cessna, was almost to the point of obsession about it thanks to the crash she’d endured when she was still in the Air Force.
Then, she’d landed in the freezing cold Pacific Ocean. This time, it was the jungles of Africa, maybe ten miles from the warehouse.
It must have been a bomb that wasn’t timed correctly that went off and took out the wing. She’d steered the best she could to get the plane on the ground, ignoring the fact that Horse and Sway had been yanked out of the plane when the wing pulled away part of the wall. Ignored the screams of Smoke too as he yelled that it wasn’t supposed to end like this for him.
It had ended for all of them quite a while ago, but she hadn’t yelled that back, had concentrated on crash landing.
When she came to, her head was against the console. She’d smelled the gasoline and knew the plane was on fire.
Too Hot to Hold Page 24
