Code Name: Bundle!

by Christina Skye

  Above her head, thunder rumbled. In a crazy way, Miki felt a sense of belonging here, even though she was thousands of miles from home in the company of near strangers. As she scratched Truman’s head, she listened to Max sleep, shocked by how responsible she felt for this man, his dog and for the pilot who had saved her life in the crash. The small stuffy room felt like the true world, while everything else shrank to pale irrelevance. Miki had read enough to know the effect had to do with stress and captivity, a mixture guaranteed to play havoc with normal outlook. Logic warned her this was a dangerous illusion and her emotional bonds would evaporate as soon as she left the island. Without this life and death situation to keep them together, she and Max would forget each other.

  The thought left a lingering sadness.

  MAX WOKE ABRUPTLY, peering into darkness.

  He didn’t move, one hand wrapped around the automatic he kept under his head when he slept. Instantly awake, he listened to the small sounds in the darkness, letting the sense of movement take on location and meaning.

  Rats, most likely. Nothing big.

  It had been an hour since he fell asleep, he was certain of that. He had always had the ability to set a mental clock, even when he was exhausted. “Miki?” he whispered.

  There was no answer.

  Something moved nearby, and a cold nose nudged his face. Laughing, Max smoothed Truman’s fur. “That’s one question settled. Glad to have you back, ace. Nice job out there on the beach. We’ll have to do some damage control later, and Izzy will want to track our nasty friends, too.” As Max sat up, the dog caught the edge of his shirt. “Where’s Miki gone?”

  Truman tugged hard to the right, and Max heard the drum of thunder marking the storm that Izzy had predicted. But another sound echoed off the stone walls, and the muffled hiss pulled him to his feet, gun in hand.

  He followed the noise through the darkness toward a line of restless light. Beyond the light a shadow separated from the darkness, tossed against the bunker’s stone walls.

  Max didn’t move, his senses sharp and focused. There was a freshness to the air that was new, and he heard a steady rustling over his head.

  Rain. Falling hard.

  In the dim light, he saw Miki standing beneath a current of water channeled down from the ceiling. Her hands raised, stripped down to her underwear, she was singing softly and very off key.

  Taking a shower.

  It was the most erotic thing Max had ever seen.

  His throat tightened as he drank in the sight of her. With his eyes dark-adapted, he had no trouble picking up the pale outline of her skin, slim and strong beneath the coursing water. All she wore was a set of damp lace underwear that might as well have been invisible.

  Max felt his pulse spike unnaturally, and the perception wasn’t idle. He was trained to read his basic body functions, and what he was feeling now went beyond normal male reaction into something hard and gut wrenching.

  Something that felt dangerously personal.

  She was doing it to him again, twisting him up in tiny knots, messing up his world. Max was pretty sure he felt sweat covering his face. What was it about the woman that dug under his skin and played havoc with his control?

  Hell if he knew. How could he know, when it had never happened to him before?

  She was humming a little tune, running her hands through her hair as the water beat down on her shoulders. Max didn’t recognize the song, but it was making her swing her hips from side to side, rocking in time to some remembered hit from the past.

  His throat went bone dry. All he could think about was having her, deep and hard, right against the stone wall.

  He watched her body sway and sensed the drum of her pulse, though he was fifteen feet away. He still couldn’t place the song, but that didn’t surprise him. He’d spent most of his boyhood in foster homes, where there had been no time or opportunity for privacy or relaxation. Music was just sound you caught from someone else’s open windows.

  As an adult, none of that had changed. All his energy had gone into his work and his constantly upgraded training. Max had never regretted the sacrifices he had made since joining the Navy. The way he looked at it, he’d been given far more than he’d lost. But right now, he couldn’t get Miki’s voice and her husky little tune out of his mind, which made him obsess about the words.

  Something about dark summer nights. About feelings that were too fast, too hot. All of it was unfamiliar to Max, one more example of how different their futures would be and how disparate their pasts.

  But thinking about his past reminded him of all the reasons why he shouldn’t be here. What he was feeling was too intense, breaking every rule of his Foxfire training. In spite of that, his feet kept moving through the shadows, driven by a tortured need he couldn’t explain. There was no permanency, no future for them, but whatever happened here would be enough. Her body was a landscape of secrets and dreams, and Max meant to find his way along every inch of her before they finished. The certainty of that knowledge drummed in his blood, tightened every muscle.

  Something bound them. He couldn’t deny that knowledge any longer. He didn’t believe in fate and he wasn’t sure he believed in religion, but he did believe in the sight of Miki and the husky tone of her voice as her body teased him in the darkness, offering him things he couldn’t name, things he hadn’t realized he’d been missing.

  As a boy he hadn’t known how to dream. As a man, there had never been time to try. But now, looking at her, he knew what it felt like to dream. To want.

  To mate. Max wasn’t sure where that thought came from; all he knew was that it was true. His logical mind was losing ground to his primitive side, the part of him that hunted silently and without mercy. As he felt himself moving deeper into that primal world, the pale trappings of civilization fell away and instinct took control.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes from Miki’s body.

  She fed his need until he hungered to claim her, to mark her as his own just as she had marked him with her bravery and laughter. Some part of him wanted to shove her against the wall without a thought for her wishes, taking his own release without preliminaries.

  He knew how she’d feel, slick and warm against him.

  His hands tightened and his blood took on a heavy, pulsing beat that mirrored the drum of the rain. Though they hadn’t touched yet, Max knew the cool curves of her skin and the unexpected strength of her hands. With all his senses stirred, he caught layers of a dozen hormones scattered warm and rich across her skin.

  The force was so strong, so unexpected that he took a deep breath, fighting a need to dominate and overwhelm her. The pounding in his blood warned him there was danger here, danger from his mind and from his strength, but nothing mattered beyond physical completion, her body opening to his, driven to him by shared hunger. As a man it was his right to command and he would start now.

  Now.

  He stopped walking. His hands closed into fists.

  This wasn’t him. He didn’t ever lose his edge of control. His planning and organization had been legendary from the first day he joined the SEALs. But that control seemed to be crumbling, destroyed by the simple magic of a woman’s off-key voice and the shimmer of her slender body beneath a restless veil of water.

  Was he crazy or was she?

  Pain dug at Max’s neck. She still hadn’t seen him, her eyes closed against the water, the sound of her voice and the thunder overhead masking his quiet approach. Distantly, he noted the growing hammer of his pulse and wondered if this was the prelude to another nosebleed. There was no mistaking that something happened when he was around her. He didn’t believe in coincidence, and his instincts still whispered that Cruz was involved, though there was no reason to distrust Miki now that Izzy had identified her.

  Her threat to him came as a woman, not as a hostile agent, and he wanted—no, needed— to understand the nature of that threat.

  He slipped off his tactical vest. His black t-shirt went flying b
eside it. The movement finally caught her attention.

  She spun around, her face sheet-white, one of her knitting needles leveled like a weapon. Max saw the moment she recognized him, saw the instant fear changed into uncertainty and then something else that mirrored his own dark hunger.

  She started to speak, but he reached through the cool sheet of water and touched her mouth with one finger, silencing her as he took the knitting needle from her unsteady hand. There were questions to be explored, but Max knew that words weren’t clear enough for the answers he needed. Only skin would do. Only in the most intimate of touches could he read the shifting tides of her body through the language of a potent chemistry.

  His awareness of her was almost painful, her movements so quick and full of life that they hit him like a dangerous magic. The cold soldier in him insisted that he turn away.

  The hot-blooded man in him didn’t listen.

  She stared at him, close enough that he felt the warmth rise from her skin. “Don’t you need more sleep?”

  “I’ll get by. No need to use your needles on me,” Max said.

  “I thought you were…” Her voice tightened.

  “I know.” His foot hit something sharp and he bent down, picking up her second needle. “Where did you get these?”

  “I used one of the scalpels you left and made them. I was restless and knitting always helps me think.”

  Max stored that information away, surprised at her ingenuity. He didn’t understand how two sticks and a string could make you relax. Trying to knit would have made him crazy. “I have ways to help you relax,” he whispered, aware that he was about to break the first rule of his training. But he had to have true contact, skin to skin and nothing held back.

  Just once.

  Over their heads lightning cracked. Electricity seemed to dance along Max’s skin, gathering in Miki’s hair. Slowly he slipped off his gloves.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Touching you. I can’t seem to think of anything else.” Miki moved first, brushing his mouth with unsteady fingers. In that moment of contact he felt her need and uncertainty laid out naked on her skin.

  “You need to understand something first. This won’t be sweet or tender.” He forced out the gruff words. “It won’t be all the things it should be.” That much Max was certain of. His control was fading and his blood was on fire. She had to know how he was affected—and the risks she took.

  She slid her fingers through his hair. “You’ll hurt me, you mean?”

  “Not if I can help it.” His muscles locked as she leaned closer and stared hungrily at his mouth.

  Her tongue brushed his lip. “I don’t want sweet or tender. And what if I hurt you?”

  “Honey, you’re welcome to try.”

  The sudden nip of her teeth made him curse. Though her hands on his chest were torment, her sensual challenge made Max smile faintly.

  “So what are we waiting for?”

  He shuddered, feeling a trace of her saliva on his tongue. The taste of her was strong and complex, and he could pick out the notes of her body the way a wine connoisseur read tannins, oak and fruit signatures. Her body was slick and strong, and his control took another hit. He wanted to hear her cries of pleasure echoing through the darkness. He wanted her naked, lost in his arms. Foxfire’s icy civilian project manager would have told him to plunge ahead and treat this like a medical experiment to be carefully studied.

  But there would be no reports or analysis because Max would never mention this to Ryker or anyone else. Tonight was between Miki and him, a stolen moment of forbidden contact, never to be repeated. There was sudden pain in that thought.

  Never forget that you’re different, Max thought.

  But tonight he didn’t want to be different.

  “You’re wearing too many clothes.” She gripped his head and slowly drew his face down to hers while he stood just beyond the water’s spray. She scissored her wet mouth across his dry lips, giving him her moist, slick tongue until his senses screamed for him to take her violently and completely, pinned against the stone wall while he hammered deep and spent himself inside her.

  Some thread of sanity remained, holding him still. Control and logic had become dim memories, but he recognized the trust that shimmered in her eyes.

  He wanted—needed to be closer, to wrap himself up in the deep trust he saw there. He could withstand torture, betrayal and uncertainty, but this simple trust was his undoing.

  How long since a woman had trusted him rather than used him?

  He smoothed his fingers over her wet hair and tongued the hollow at her shoulder, her soft moan an explosion against his senses. With one arm he dragged her out of the water. She shivered, staring at him helplessly, her skin growing cool to his touch.

  Too cool, Max thought. He sensed her shudder before he felt it, the nuances of her emotions brushing his skin like fog. He rubbed her back and shoulders, then dried her hair with quick strokes of his shirt. Only then did he catch her face and kiss her slowly, drawing out a whimper. She rose onto her toes, her hands at his neck, her body shifting restlessly against him.

  Hunger like a knife. Need like the beat of a heart.

  Desire stripped them both bare.

  Max pulled away, yanked off his pants and kicked them into the pile with the rest of his belongings while desire hammered through him. He closed his eyes and ran one hand over her slick skin, drinking in the hot cloud of her response, read clearly on his fingertips.

  Sweat and confusion.

  Need and excitement. Even her smell had changed, dusky with sex and pheromones.

  The mix hit him like a blow. He hooked his fingers around the lace of her bikini pants, trying to clear his head.

  Her body strained toward him. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “I’m out of control. It’s too strong.”

  “You’re the doing the same to me, honey.” Max brushed her breasts, smiling when he felt her nipples harden. “We don’t have much time.” The words were rough, muttered as he cupped her breasts, leaning to pull one tight nipple between his teeth.

  “Then hurry.” She whimpered, her nails raking his back. “I’m burning up for you, Max.”

  “That makes two of us,” he said grimly. He gripped her waist, pulling her against him. “Tell me where you want me, honey. Otherwise, I’m going to take you now and I’ll make my own choices.”

  But Max found that he didn’t need her words. Under his hands, her body sang, damp and urgent. Every bead of sweat answered his question, clueing him by the nimbus of her arousal.

  Here, he felt. Where her breasts met his tongue. There, where his fingers slid under lace, buried in warm, tangled curls until she gasped, rubbing her hips against him in unmistakable response.

  Heat and need.

  No hiding.

  No lies.

  A woman could never lie when he held her like this, tapping the secrets carried in her body’s arousal. And those secrets, now bared, left him awash in primitive instincts, his blood drumming with the need to control and claim. He had a dark vision of her legs wrapped around his waist as he slammed home inside her, again and again. One vision became two, and two became ten.

  He wanted her hot against his mouth. He wanted to hear her moan when he worked three fingers inside her and pressed his tongue to her heat, intimately tuned to her orgasm as he pleasured her, worked her slick skin with unerring precision.

  Max knew his rules weren’t fair. He couldn’t fail to read her emotions when his skills gave him that advantage. But he could never tell her that.

  He bit her shoulder, pulled off the damp lace at her thighs, every touch fueling his own need. There were no casual social contacts for the men of Foxfire. Security precautions meant that women were arranged at necessary intervals. Sex was fast and impersonal, with no messy emotions and no questions asked.

  But Miki was nothing like any of those women. She made him smile and then made him curse in the next breath. She wasn’t weak an
d she definitely wasn’t compliant—and the mix was driving Max crazy. Their encounters were raw and personal, and he realized things were probably going to get messy fast. Worst of all, he didn’t care if they did.

  He scowled, driving away all thoughts about their future. Whatever happened here had to end here. There would be no quiet bonding, no gentle laughter, no white picket fences. This was scream-out-loud, screw-your-brains-out sex and nothing more.

  Not that Miki appeared to mind. Her eyes were wide, her body restless and wet like a quicksilver fish he could never hope to hold. She ran her fingers through the soft hair on his chest and watched his face as her hand slid down, curving over his hard stomach.

  And then lower, sliding cool and damp to cup his out-of-control erection until Max had to grind his teeth and force her to stop.

  Because he wanted more, because he craved softness as much as force, he denied himself and denied her, hardening his face and making his voice cold. “Don’t look for a future here, Miki. Don’t ask me for anything but what’s happening right now.”

  “You have a name for this?” she rasped. “I’d love to know it if you do.”

  There had to be words, but Max couldn’t remember them. There had to be definitions and calm descriptions. But he wasn’t aware of anything beyond her damp skin, warm hands, urgent eyes.

  He frowned at her. “Look, Miki, I—”

  She pulled his head down and bit his mouth, drawing a bead of blood. “Do it. It’s all I can think about.” She was panting when he gripped her shoulders, drove her body back against the wall, came inside her hard.

  Her hands seared him, urging him to take what they both wanted. Awash in new sensations, Max fought for control when there was a real possibility that he might hurt her badly. He forced himself back from the edge as their bodies brushed, separated, then brushed again. Her foot traced his calf, her mouth restless, her nails impatient.

  Shaken by the pounding force of his feelings, Max tried to pull back.