Darkness

by Karen Robards

  Gina shook her head. Her heart thundered so loudly that it was like a drumbeat in her ears. Her body was tight, pulsing, eager.

  He bent his head and took her nipple in his mouth. For real this time. The scalding heat of it made her senses reel. Ripples of pleasure shot along her nerve endings. She gasped and buried her hands in the short, thick strands of his hair.

  He kissed and sucked and licked until she was mindless, until she was arching up against him and moaning, and then he pulled her shirt up over her head and threw it to one side and started kissing her mouth again. Shivery with arousal, she kissed him back, loving the weight of his chest against her sensitized breasts, loving the roughness of his kiss, loving the possessive way he fondled her breasts before his hand slid down inside the sweatpants and between her legs, touching her where she most wanted to be touched.

  She cried out, moving against his hand, burning, melting, absolutely on fire. Wanting more, needing more, she reached for his belt buckle, fumbled at it with fingers made clumsy by urgency, ran unsteady fingers over the rigid bulge in the front of his pants. He muttered something short and profane against her mouth and lifted himself away from her and sat up. Her eyes popped open and her fingers sank into the softness of the sleeping bag, but before she could ask him where the hell he thought he was going or what was up or anything like that, he hooked his fingers in her waistband and yanked her pants down her legs, pausing only long enough to pull off her boots before stripping her nude.

  She lay propped up on her elbows on the silky gray sleeping bag, awash in golden lamplight, her tawny hair streaming down her back, her knees bent, her legs slightly raised. She felt just a little shy under his hard gaze but also incredibly turned on. He looked at her with open lust, and she found that the idea that he was seeing her naked brought its own fiery thrill. He took in every inch of her, and it was almost like she could see herself through his eyes: tousled hair, flushed face, lips swollen by his kisses; creamy round breasts with darkened, erect nipples; slim waist, flat stomach, gently curved hips; long, toned, tanned legs with a strip of fair pubic hair between.

  “You’re beautiful.” His voice was hoarse. His eyes glittered at her like black diamonds.

  Too turned on to answer, she murmured something wordless by way of a reply and watched him unashamedly. He’d shucked his boots and unfastened his belt buckle while he was looking at her, and the tiny sound his zipper made as he lowered it made her quake.

  Then he was shedding his pants, and she saw that he was, indeed, as huge and hard as he’d felt.

  Her heart pounded as if she’d been running for miles.

  “Oh, my,” she breathed, and as he saw what she was looking at, a corner of his mouth ticked up in the briefest of smiles.

  He leaned toward her, kissed her with a naked hunger that made her go up in flames, and bore her back down into their makeshift bed, his hands all over her, his big body pressing her down. When he had her wild for him, when she was moving beneath him and moaning and so hot, so ready, that she thought if he didn’t come into her right that very minute she would lose her mind, his mouth left hers and his body shifted. Opening her eyes, she murmured, “Cal,” and clutched at him in protest.

  That’s when he kissed his way down her body to the cleft between her legs, and pressed his mouth to her and licked her and did other thrilling, secret things.

  Until her body clenched hard. And she came, and came, and came.

  She was still shaking, still shuddering, still gasping for breath, when he levered his big body on top of her and pushed himself inside her so fiercely that she cried out. He was hard and hot and filled her to capacity and then some. He took her with a single-minded ferocity that had her quaking and burning and wanting again, and she did the only thing she could do: wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and held on. It was the most erotic experience of her life, and the end, when it came, was so hot and intense that she thought she would die right there and then from the sheer explosive pleasure of it.

  She bucked, and clung, and cried out his name. “Cal! Cal, Cal, Cal!”

  He drove into her one final time, groaning as he found his own release. Then he held himself shuddering inside her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  She’d made him tremble. He was a grown-ass man, a highly trained veteran of battle campaigns, firefights, clandestine forays, and any number of life-and-death situations, to say nothing of countless rolls in the sack, and the last time he remembered trembling was when he’d lost his virginity at fifteen.

  Dr. Gina Sullivan, ornithologist, college professor, uptight, angst-ridden twenty-eight-year-old widow, was by no means his type, which tended toward busty platinum blondes who liked to have a raucous good time in bed and out. She was beautiful, all right, but not in the eye-popping, head-turning way of his usual. Hers was a quieter, more refined type of beauty that Cal saw now had been sneaking up on him until finally it hit him over the head, which had happened with all the force of a baseball bat swinging for a line drive the moment he saw her naked. Then he’d realized: hers was a face and body to die for.

  He’d wanted to fuck her senseless.

  Instead he’d taken his time, reined himself in, been mindful of her hang-ups and history and almost certain relative lack of sexual experience, and set himself to making it good for her, first and foremost.

  She’d been so hot for him, so hungry and eager, that it had been all he could do to keep himself under control. By the time she was coming hard against his mouth, his body had been screaming with the need to take her. As he’d lifted himself over her, more than ready to get down to it, his arms had trembled.

  That was when, finally, he’d given up on the whole self-control thing and let his animal instincts rule.

  The memory was making him hard all over again.

  Right now she was sprawled on top of him, silent and sated and limp as a glove, because after he’d finished rocking her world he’d rolled with her, not wanting to crush her with his weight. The heavy mass of her hair lay across his shoulder like a blanket. He could feel the flutter of her breath just over his heart. He could feel other things, too: the swell of her tits against his chest; the small, hard points of her nipples. The brush of her sweet little bush on top of his abs. The heat between her long, sexy legs, which were open and sprawled on either side of his.

  That heat was doing a number on his thought processes, to say nothing of his cock, which was assuming the approximate size and consistency of a log again. That heat was drawing his hand down from where it had been idly resting on the warm, silky skin of her back to stroke over the curve of her gorgeous ass on its way to investigating it. That heat was fogging his brain to the point where, when she stirred and braced a forearm against his chest and lifted her head to unexpectedly pin him with her big blue eyes, all he could think to say was, “Hey.”

  She smiled at him. A warm, intimate, you-just-got-me-off smile that did a number on his heart rate. With her honey-colored hair spilling like a waterfall over one of her pale shoulders and her eyes all dreamy-looking from sex and her knockout body all slim naked curves painted gold by the lamplight, she looked hot enough to fuck into next week. Again.

  “That was amazing,” she said. Her voice was husky and low.

  “Yeah?” So he wasn’t up to making brilliant conversation. His cock was currently doing all his thinking. It was a wonder he was even able to talk.

  “Yeah.”

  “Glad you think so.” His hand was on her ass, palming the smooth, warm curve, and he tightened his grip and shifted her just a little so that she was lying right on top of his erection. Jesus, that felt good.

  Her eyes widened as she felt him stirring under her. Her lips parted to give him a glimpse of her pretty white teeth. Then she gave a little wriggle, pressed her hips deliberately down, and—

  Holy Mary Mother of God, if he got any hotter he’d catch fire.

  His hand slid on down to check out that enticing hea
t of hers.

  “Oh,” she said as his hand moved between her legs, parting her folds, stroking, exploring. He pushed two fingers inside her and was blown away by how tight she was, how hot and wet. She said “Oh” again, on a squeaky little note of surprised delight that instantly made him so big and hard that the marble monolith of the Washington Monument had nothing on him.

  She closed her eyes with one of her sexy little moans that made every muscle in his body tighten, every time she did it. Then, with his fingers moving purposefully in and out, with her body undulating on top of his like she was deliberately trying to drive him out of his mind, with her panting and flushed on top of him and her nipples practically branding his chest and enough heat rising off the pair of them to steam up the air, she opened her eyes, gave him a dead-sexy look, and said in a throaty growl, “I knew there was a reason I pulled you out of the sea.”

  That surprised a laugh out of him. First time he could remember laughing while he was in the middle of some serious foreplay, with his cock begging for action and his balls aching like they were getting ready to explode.

  “Lucky me,” he said, meaning it, and rolled so that she was beneath him again.

  Their gazes met as her arms came around his neck and he bent his head to kiss her. Her eyes were hot for him, just like her body was hot for him, but there was something else in those big baby blues of hers, too, something that he couldn’t quite—

  “Lucky me,” she said softly, and lifted her mouth to meet his.

  The instant before their lips touched, he had it. He knew what was looking out at him from behind the blaze of torrid passion in her eyes: vulnerability. And trust.

  What do you do with a woman who looks at you like that?

  He fucked her until she screamed.

  Afterward, she passed out, while he managed to stay awake long enough to get up and retrieve the flashlight and his weapon, which he wanted to keep within easy reach.

  Ordinarily the phenomenal sex would have been enough to occupy his thoughts, but as he rolled their coats into substitute pillows and then blew out the lantern, Cal found himself once again turning over in his mind the unwelcome scenario that had first occurred to him when Gina had described the Texas accent of the gunman she called Heavy Tread. Cal’s CIA handler, Lon Whitman, who’d hired him for this job, was from San Antonio, and his twang was as Texas as they came.

  Was it possible that Whitman had sold him and the operation out?

  That would mean that Whitman had gone rogue, a possibility that Cal ordinarily would have rejected as impossible. He’d known Whitman for a number of years, and the guy was a straight-arrow, by-the-book operative whose integrity he’d never had any reason to doubt.

  But someone had gotten to Hendricks and Ezra. Hendricks he could, very dimly, envision being corrupted by any number of unsavory interests. Ezra? Cal once would have said, never could happen. It had happened, though, and the only way Cal could envision that going down was if Ezra was approached by someone like, say, Whitman, their trusted CIA handler. With some plausible reason why Rudy should be prevented from returning to the United States and why Cal should be kept in the dark about this, along with a promise, coupled with the power to follow through, to make the less-than-positive repercussions from their losing Rudy after obtaining him from the Kazakhs go away. Plus the money. Thirty million was a lot of money. Having that much on the table certainly would have inclined Ezra to listen when Whitman talked.

  When Ezra had shot Cal, he hadn’t been shooting to kill. In what possible scenario could Ezra have thought that was going to work out? Not killing Cal after turning traitor on him and shooting him was like leaving a live grenade in your own house, and Ezra would have known that.

  Unless Ezra had been assured that everything would be smoothed over and explained once the alternate disposal of Rudy was accomplished. Just about the only person Ezra might have trusted to be able to smooth over what he would have known Cal would see as a base betrayal was their CIA employer, Whitman.

  Ezra had said Cal would get his share of the money. He would have been counting on ten million dollars going a long way toward mollifying Cal, too.

  The scorched-earth magnitude of the response to his survival would have been exactly what he would have expected if the CIA—that is, Whitman—was directing it.

  If he was right in what he was thinking, and Cal profoundly hoped he wasn’t, he and Gina were in exponentially more danger than he had thought. Cal knew his own skills and abilities, and had every confidence in them. But if Whitman, with his CIA resources, was behind this, the technology and manpower they might be facing would be overwhelming. With Cal alive, Whitman would have everything to lose. He would stop at nothing to make sure no one who could tell the tale lived to do so.

  There were other possibilities, of course. So many bad players on the world stage made for a large pool of suspects. But Cal kept coming back to that Texas twang. What were the chances that there were two drawling Texans involved in this?

  Very small, Cal judged. In fact, almost infinitesimal.

  Shit.

  Nothing to do about it at the moment, he told himself grimly. Tomorrow would be time enough to deal. For now, he needed to sleep.

  Gina was still sleeping soundly when he stretched out beside her, but she must have felt him slide the pillow beneath her head and then subconsciously registered the warmth of his body next to hers, because she turned over to snuggle against him. He managed to get her tucked up against his side and pull half the sleeping bag over them both without waking her. They had these few precious hours in which he judged they were relatively safe, and he had no idea when they’d get an opportunity to sleep again. If he had any chance in hell of getting them out of this alive, he would need a clear head and a body that was as functional as possible. On that thought he closed his eyes, concentrated, and was gone, falling fathoms deep asleep in an instant as his military training had taught him to do.

  CAL WOKE abruptly, shaken out of a sound sleep by—he didn’t know what. It was pitch dark. His body was comfortably covered, but the air around him was cool and smelled like musty earth. He couldn’t see a thing—but there was a woman in his arms, warm and slim and silky soft. Naked, just like he was naked. Then realization clicked, and he was fully alert, fully aware of where he was and of the identity of the woman sleeping with him and the deadly situation they were in.

  In the total absence of light the cavern felt vast. Tiny sounds echoed, making it difficult to zero in on their source. His muscles tensed as his body went into automatic defensive mode. He turned every sense he possessed to rapidly scanning the surrounding area for a threat.

  Gina didn’t move. Except for her breathing, which seemed abnormally fast. Was she awake? He couldn’t tell, and he didn’t dare to even so much as whisper her name in case someone was near. She lay with her back to his front. His arm was draped around her waist and her delectable ass pressed against his crotch, which was already sporting significant morning wood, although he was as sure as it was possible to be that they’d only been asleep for a few hours and it was still the middle of the night. Strands of her hair tickled his face, she smelled of soap and woman, and his hand was full of a soft, warm tit. She felt slender and supple and sexy as hell against him. So much so that he felt a stab of regret that at the moment he had more urgent things to think about than how horny she was making him.

  Carefully he removed his hand from her breast and reached up for his weapon, which he’d tucked beneath the coat his head was pillowed on, and brought it down to rest on the part of the sleeping bag that covered her hip.

  Asleep under battlefield conditions, which he considered these to be, he almost never woke up for no reason. Something had jolted him back to awareness. But if there was anything that shouldn’t be there in that cavern with them, he wasn’t picking up on—

  She gave a little mewling cry, startling him, and began thrashing around in what seemed to be a desperate attempt to escape the shro
uding sleeping bag. Careful to keep his gun hand out of the fray, he grabbed her to keep her from throwing herself out onto the stone floor, caught a heel in the kneecap and an elbow in the ribs for his pains, and had his answer: she’d woken him up.

  From the small distressed sounds she was making, he was pretty sure that she was having a nightmare.

  “Gina.” Placing his gun carefully back beneath the pillow, he wrapped both arms around her, imprisoning her flailing arms. He threw a leg over hers to keep from getting kicked again and nuzzled her ear. “Gina, wake up.”

  She did, with a gasp and a shudder, then went stiff as a board in his hold as, he thought, she struggled to get her bearings. She was still facing away from him, and he could hear her agitation in the raggedness of her breathing.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got you.” He freed her trapped arms and legs while still keeping a precautionary arm around her waist, and at the same time reached for the flashlight, hoping that feeling less physically restricted and being able to see something besides utter blackness might help her get oriented. Switching on the flashlight, he was treated to a glimpse of a fall of tawny hair and a slim shoulder and a beautiful bare breast emerging from the confines of the sleeping bag as she turned her head to cast an alarmed glance back at him.

  Her big blue eyes, awash in tears, glistened as the light caught them.

  “Cal.” She breathed his name with obvious relief, then said, “Turn the light off, please,” in a constricted voice that confirmed it for him: she was crying.

  The knowledge unexpectedly made his gut clench.

  He switched off the light, returning the flashlight to its place beside the gun. She wriggled around to face him, and he gathered her up, turning onto his back with her, cradling her in his arms. She snuggled close, naked skin to naked skin, her head and a hand resting on his chest, a slender, sexy leg sliding over his thighs. He could feel her heat, her curves, the satin of her skin, pressing full length against him, but what got to him most, what garnered his attention and made his stomach twist, was the hot dampness leaking onto his chest.