by Cindy Dees
But this was her night.
“Don’t move,” she murmured.
Such sweet torture. “I won’t move,” he ground out.
She sat back up and reached between their bodies. Her fist gripped him strongly and he couldn’t stop the groan of pleasure that escaped his throat.
And then she was sliding down onto him, impaling herself by slow degrees. The heat and tightness of her body nearly made his eyes roll back in his head with pleasure.
His hands jerked reflexively, started to reach for her. “Keep your hands over your head, please,” she whispered.
He slammed them back down to the ground as she started to move on him, easing herself up and down his erection. Gliding in and out of her tight sheath was almost more than he could stand. A need to explode into her rolled through him, and he clenched his teeth against it.
Long and slow and easy, she rode him. Gradually, her eyes glazed over with pleasure as she angled herself just right for maximum sensation. Her body undulated in the firelight, and was without question the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. Stretched out on a rack of pleasure beneath her, he lost himself in the blissful agony of letting her use his body however she wanted to.
And use it she did. She rode him faster, harder, until he was groaning aloud with the struggle not to come inside her then and there. She took pity on him and slowed her pace, letting him almost, but not quite, recover his composure before she rode him hard again.
Over and over she took him right to the brink of losing it and then backed off. Thankfully, she seemed wired for pleasure and achieved orgasms quickly, shuddering hard around him once. Twice. Three times.
Finally, when her body glistened with perspiration and his literally shook from the effort of holding back his own orgasm, she took pity on him.
Placing her hand in the middle of his chest, she leaned forward a little and rode him like a wild creature, a fey being of the night who’d come to him to take him on a fantasy adventure into a realm beyond humans.
“You can move a little if you want,” she panted.
His hips bucked beneath hers as he surged up into her over and over, completely lost in the pleasure she’d created between them.
“Now!” she cried. “Let go now!”
He surged up into her with abandon, and she slammed down onto him, their bodies raging together toward release. His entire body arched up off the ground and she slapped her hand over his mouth hard as he coiled, clenched, and then his entire being exploded up into her. Up into the night. Up, up into the magic spell she’d woven around them both.
The power of it tore away everything, leaving him raw and exposed, his soul bared before her. He fell back upon the blanket and stared up at her as she panted above him. Her muscular legs were relaxed now around his hips.
Both her hands were planted on his chest now as she leaned on him, catching her breath. He knew the feeling. Running a marathon didn’t even wipe him out like this.
She stared down at him in what he hoped was a modicum of satisfaction. Maybe even a bit of wonder shone in her clear, serene gaze.
“Warm enough?” he finally managed to gather his scattered thoughts enough to mumble.
She smiled knowingly. “I’m going to have to cool off and let the sweat dry before I dress again.”
“That’s a better problem to have than freezing half to death.”
“I’ll take this any day over being cold,” she murmured.
He reached up to wrap his arms against her, and she came down to him willingly, sprawling across him bonelessly.
“Am I crushing you?” she murmured.
“Little thing like you? Nah.”
“I’m not that little. I’m almost five foot nine. And I’m solid muscle.”
“I’m six foot two, which makes you a shrimp in my world. And you may be muscular, but you’re still lean. And may I say, beautifully proportioned.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you,” he replied fervently.
“I’m pretty sure I’m the one who should be thanking you for that,” she retorted, pushing up on his chest to stare down at him.
Her hair fell in a curtain around them and he pushed it back and tucked it behind her ears. “Tell you what. I’ll stop apologizing for getting you kidnapped and everything that followed if you’ll stop thanking me for what we just shared. I assure you, I got at least as much pleasure from it as you did.”
“Fair enough. But it was very nice of you to let me do whatever I wanted like that.”
He laughed up at her, “I’m definitely adding that to my regular rotation of things to do in bed with beautiful, sexy women.”
“Oh, and you have a lot of women in your bed? Your last name isn’t Bond, is it?”
“No. My name is Zane.” He added reluctantly, “Zane Cosworth.”
Very, very few people outside of his immediate family knew his name. For him, it was the ultimate signal of trust he could give to anyone.
She stared down at him, looking deep into his eyes. At least she seemed to understand the significance of him giving her his real name.
“Nice to meet you, Zane Cosworth. My name is Piper Ford. Captain, United States Army.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Captain Ford.” And then he added, “Who are the Medusas?”
Chapter 11
She rolled off him and sat up, hugging her knees and staring into the fire. “How high is your security clearance?” she finally asked him.
“High enough that the name of it is classified,” he answered quietly, sitting up beside her.
They really did need to get dry again before they thought about getting dressed. Ah, but what a way to get damp. He checked their clothes and turned over the sweatshirts and jeans to let their other sides dry.
Piper surprised him by saying, “The existence of the Medusas is a well-kept secret and needs to stay that way. I actually will have to kill you if you blab about it to anybody.”
“You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want to,” he responded seriously.
“No. I want to. You shared with me who you are, and if I don’t miss my guess, risked your life to do that. I owe you no less.”
He shrugged. “You’re not wrong that knowing my name gives you a lot of power over me.” He threw a couple logs on the fire and then settled beside her again. “This isn’t a tit-for-tat relationship, Piper. I don’t think in terms of you owing me anything. If you’d like to tell me about it, I would love to hear more about how you acquired your...atypical...skill set.”
“The Medusas are a joint military task force, manned—or womanned, as the case may be—by women from all the branches of the military. We’re a small all-purpose, all-female Special Forces team.”
“All female?” he exclaimed under his breath.
“Correct.”
“Well, that certainly explains a lot about you.” He fell silently, obviously thinking back to everything he’d observed her do over the past several days. At length, he asked, “What were you doing at an elementary school in Houma, Louisiana?”
She laughed ruefully, “Dropping off my neighbor kid’s lunch that he forgot in my car. I gave him a ride to school that day.”
“What a stroke of luck that was. I couldn’t have asked for a better hostage.”
“Thanks, I think?” she replied wryly.
“You know what I mean. If Mahmoud and his guys were going to snatch anyone, you were the best possible person to end up being their prisoner. Have you had enhanced prisoner-of-war training?”
“Oh, yeah. We’ve had all the training.”
“I thought so. When you knew how to take a punch, and you knew just how long to hold out under interrogation, and just how much information to eke out to your interrogator, I wondered where you’d learned that.”
“I didn’t tell Ma
hmoud much. I just parroted back stuff you’d already told me and then followed Mahmoud’s lead from his questions.”
“Like I said. You were the perfect hostage.”
She poked at the fire with a stick, and the flames flared. This fire was life to them out here. It was recovery from hypothermia, dry clothing and hot water to drink and bring up their core temperatures.
“What kind of missions do these Medusas of yours run?”
“The previous Medusa teams did all sorts of missions. They guarded high-value female targets, went undercover on rescue missions, even freed a hijacked cruise ship. We mostly go into nations where women are ignored and marginalized, or where we can work under the radar because the locals aren’t looking for women operators.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I can think of some situations where you ladies would be handy assets.”
“Next time you need a woman, give us a call.”
He laughed a little. “Next time I need a woman, I’ll give you a call.”
A blush made her cheeks feel even hotter than the fire did. “You know what I meant. Next time you need a female operations team, call the Medusas.”
He grinned at her, and she ducked her head, embarrassed at her slip of the tongue and secretly a little delighted that he would consider calling her again. Most of the men she met were intimidated by her confidence, intelligence and self-possession. That, and her utter failure to be impressed by their macho posturing and mansplaining.
To his vast credit, Zane hadn’t done any posturing or talking down to her ever. He had always treated her with complete respect. Even when he was pretending to rape her, for crying out loud.
“We need to get some sleep now that we’re out of danger from hypothermia,” he said, jerking her thoughts back to the situation at hand.
“We’ll need to take turns sleeping and tending the fire,” she responded.
“Are you tired now?”
She shook her head. “If you can sleep now, I’ll take the first shift on fire-guard duty.”
He pulled on his underwear and now-dry T-shirt, then stretched out along the back wall of the crevice on his side, facing her and the fire.
“Here.” He held out his Ka-Bar knife to her, hilt first. She took it easily, hefting it in her hand, getting the feel for its balance.
He murmured, “Wake me up if there’s any trouble at all.”
“I will.” She added, “But I can generally take care of myself, and I don’t get afraid of the dark. It’s my preferred work environment.”
One corner of his mouth curved up as he planted his head on his bent elbow for a pillow. “Duly noted.”
She added wood to the fire as the night grew colder around them. The rain came and went, sometimes nearly stopping, sometimes coming down hard.
During a lull, she pulled on her sweatshirt, which was mostly dry, and her jeans, which were damp but not sodden, and went out to gather more wood. She dug under the leaves for branches that were less soaked than the stuff lying above the deadfall, and hauled it back to their little camp.
On the way back, she noted with worry that the glow of the fire was still somewhat visible through the blanket they’d hung to screen it. Hopefully, this awful weather would drive Mahmoud and his men back to their cabin.
If they knew what was good for them, Mahmoud and his guys would leave the United States altogether. They had no way of knowing how soon they would be reported to the authorities and when a massive manhunt for them would be launched.
But one thing she’d learned in her Medusa training: there was no accounting for the logic of terrorists. If they were zealots, they might get it in their heads that she and Zane needed killing at all costs.
She spread out the wood to dry around the fire and stripped off her clothes to let them dry again. She passed the time alternating between watching Zane sleep and gazing out over the valley below for any sign of pursuit. Of course, the night was pitch-black with the total cloud cover, and she wasn’t likely to see anything out there, let alone a team of stealthy bad guys. But it didn’t keep her from staring apprehensively out into the darkness.
When she’d judged that several hours had passed, she reached out to touch Zane’s foot. She was glad to feel that it was warm and dry. His eyes opened, and she reveled in their beautiful golden color. She’d nicknamed him well indeed.
“Hey, beautiful,” he murmured in a sleep-roughened voice that made her toes curl in delight.
He sat up, stretching lazily and throwing off the blanket he’d been wrapped in. “Feels like it has gotten colder.”
“It has. Rain’s letting up, though.”
“Okay. To sleep with you, Piper. I’ve got the watch and the fire.”
They traded places, with her tucking back under the ledge on the bed of dried leaves, while he took her place huddling by the fire. The ground still held a little of his body heat, and the heat of the fire had collected under the overhang and warmed the rocks. They radiated that heat back gently now. It wasn’t exactly a spa hotel room, but on a wet, freezing night, it wasn’t half-bad.
And the blanket smelled like Zane with a hint of his male musk. She went to sleep with a smile on her lips.
* * *
Zane replenished the fire and settled down beside it, his feet stretched out beside the pit. He leaned back against a big rock, and alternated staring out into the darkness and glancing over at Piper. Her face was relaxed in sleep, and she was beautiful with the firelight glinting off her satin skin.
He couldn’t get enough of looking at her. Which was a first for him. He wasn’t the type to sit around gazing at any woman. He was all about the job. Always the job. In his line of work, anything less than total concentration spelled a mistake, and a mistake spelled death.
But then Piper had become the job.
The rain trailed off and finally stopped about an hour before dawn, according to his watch. He was glad for the earlier nap, but his eyes were gritty again, and his eyelids heavy. This was the worst time of day to stay awake. His biorhythms were declaring in no uncertain terms that this was sleep time.
He got up to gather more wood and check his trip wires. Moving around would help him stay awake.
He was on his way back to camp, just inside the inner ring of trip wires, when he heard a sharp snap behind him.
He froze. That was one of the outer mousetraps. He had set the wires thigh high specifically so that small and even medium-sized animals wouldn’t set them off. It would take a bear—or a man...to hit the fishing line stretched between trees.
Gliding back toward camp on silent feet, he moved swiftly nonetheless. He had the advantage of having walked around out here a fair bit last night, and he knew his way back to Piper well.
He barged into the camp and dropped to his knees beside her, pressing his hand urgently over her mouth. She woke instantly, her eyes alert. He signaled fast, holding up three fingers and pointing in the direction of the tripped mousetrap. She nodded and yanked on her jeans and shoes at lightning speed while he pushed the pile of dirt near the firepit back into the hole, dousing the flames. He packed the water bottles, wadded up the blankets and shoved them in his rucksack, and helped Piper scatter leaves all over their little site.
They had no more time to cover their tracks, for another, closer snap sounded in the woods. Whoever was moving around out there was headed this way. And was now two hundred yards away.
He hand signaled for Piper to take the lead. She took off, heading out of their little camp away from the sound. She moved so fast through the trees that he seriously struggled to keep up with her.
Damn, she was good.
Which might just save their lives out here. He would never in a million years have guessed that a woman could run that silently, that quickly and sure-footedly through terrain like this.
After about fifteen minutes, he was b
reathing hard. After a half hour at the killer pace, he was sucking wind.
Thankfully, Piper stopped without warning, ducking under the spreading branches of a pine tree and melting into the deep shadows there. The sky was just starting to turn gray in the east.
You okay? she mouthed.
He nodded, concentrating on breathing deeply and exhaling fully. He had to get as much oxygen to his screaming muscles as possible.
In exactly one minute, she breathed, “Ready to go?”
He nodded resolutely. At least when she took off like a bat out of hell this time, he was expecting it. There was no way Mahmoud and his guys could move this fast. Not if they were having to track his and Piper’s movements. And to her credit, she was following anything but a straight line out here. At varying intervals, she made direction changes of at least thirty degrees or more. Assuming they were even making a trail that could be followed, she was giving Mahmoud’s tracker hell.
They settled into one pattern, though. Every ten minutes, she stopped for about a minute to let both of them catch their breath. They didn’t speak. They just breathed deeply and then took off again.
Dawn came and went, and early morning came and went. And still they ran. She slowed the pace a little, to a ground-eating run that allowed them to pass quietly through the forest but put a ton of distance behind them. Hopefully, they were putting a ton of distance between themselves and whoever was behind them, too.
In a perfect world, that had been a bear.
But in a worst-case world, they had to assume Mahmoud and his men were hot on their trail.
On and on they ran, until Zane was so exhausted he could barely see straight. How Piper was continuing to hold this pace, he had no idea. Maybe she was superhuman. They had to have covered four or five miles before she finally stopped again, just shy of a wooded ridgeline.
“I’ll top the ridge first and have a look on the other side,” she whispered in his ear. “Wait here.”
