by Cherry Adair
She might not like his methods, but she reminded herself that she did trust him to find Alex, and to keep them all safe until he got them home. “May I suggest you put on some clothes before you burn—something important?”
“Christ, woman, you belong in another century,” he muttered, pulling on his clothes—black of course. Dressed, he sat on the sandy floor to lace up his boots.
Clearly the idea that she was so out of step with his definition of what was appropriate ticked him off. Too bad. “And this is what set you off like a lunatic out there?” Speaking her mind felt wonderful. Liberating.
She almost jumped out of her skin when he laughed. It sounded rusty, but it was a short soft laugh. “I thought you were a coward?”
Tory swallowed. She couldn’t believe that had just popped out of her mouth. Being defiant in her mind was one thing. Blurting it out quite another. “Believe me, I am.”
“I know this’ll come as a hell of a shock,” he said drily, getting up to fill his cup. “But some of the worst tangos—terrorists—in the world used to be shit scared of me.”
Clearly he’d like her to feel the same way. “I’m very happy to hear it. I hope they still are since many of them live here on Marezzo, and you’re going to have to go through them to get Alex.”
“Don’t get too—” He stopped abruptly, putting up a hand to silence her. In one smooth motion he picked up the big gun he’d had outside. Motioning her back into the shadows, he handed her the Uzi. Her eyes went wide as she felt the unfamiliar weight and texture of the weapon in her hand. It was unwieldy with the cast on one arm, but Marc positioned it with quick efficiency.
“It’s ready to go,” he said so quietly she was amazed she could hear him at all. “Shoot the first person that comes around that corner. No questions.”
In a blink he was gone.
COULD BE KIDS EXPLORING, Marc thought, keeping his weapon raised as he listened for the soft whisper of footsteps on sand coming from the other chamber of the cave. Could be one of the Spiders crawling around looking for the fly they’d invited into their web. He hoped it was the latter. Beating the shit out of something that could fight back would be just fucking great right about now.
His ploy had backfired. So much for that brilliant idea. Hopefully he’d retrieve her brother in the next couple of hours and get them to the mainland. Then he wouldn’t need to come up with asinine, unworkable plans to keep her at arm’s length.
Bring it on.
Whoever these guys were they didn’t want to be heard.
Not kids. Not locals, either. These guys knew how to walk silently across the gritty rocks. They weren’t chatting. Hell, they were barely breathing. He sensed them more than heard them. Their very stealth indicated an awareness that someone else—him—was in the caves.
A pleasant surge of adrenaline reminded Marc of how much he used to love his job. Of how badly he’d missed this in the three years of his retirement.
Scaling a low rock wall, he leaped lightly from there up onto a ledge he’d discovered earlier. The ledge ran nine or ten feet off the ground, and was less then twelve inches wide in some places, but it ran for a good two hundred feet around the south side of the main cavern.
Shifting ripples of silver reflected off the deep turquoise water, bouncing off the rock and his black-clad body. A convenient camouflage as he stalked his prey.
It wasn’t long before he caught up with them.
Three men.
Disappointing.
He waited for the right moment to take them out. They split up to skirt the small lake. Two on the opposite side, one, conveniently, almost directly below the ledge.
After holstering the Walther to free up his hands, Marc dropped soundlessly behind the guy, snapping his neck before he was even aware he wasn’t alone.
One down. Two to go.
Leaving the body on the sand, he caught up with the others in a narrow area not conducive to firing a weapon. Bullets had a tendency to ricochet. He pulled out the Ka-bar.
The men had to go single file through the opening. Hell, Marc thought coming up behind them, this was like shooting fish in a barrel. He needed a challenge for his rusty skills and these yahoos were practically handing themselves to him on a silver platter.
He wrapped his forearm around the man’s throat, jerking him off balance as he stuck the knife up high in his kidneys. It was a swift death. And silent.
Two down. One to go.
Oblivious, the man in front had moved twenty paces ahead, but he turned, perhaps to say something to his partner, possibly because he’d heard the sound of the body dropping.
“Figlio di Gotta!” After a nanosecond of shock, he remembered he had a weapon in his hand—a Ruger 9mm—and probably figured now would be a great time to take aim.
“Fessacchione!” One shot and the bullet could take them both out. He watched the guy’s eyes—mere glints in the semidarkness to see if he really was stupid enough to fire.
“Baciami il culo!”
“Yours isn’t the ass I want to kiss,” Marc assured him as he flung the Ka-bar. It turned blade over hilt in a glittering arc, then struck the man in the throat. Blood spurted from his jugular. His eyes went wide. The Ruger discharged as he crumpled to the ground. Marc threw himself down as the shot went wild, bouncing off the stone walls like the pinball in a video game.
After zigging and zagging unpredictably the bullet imbedded itself in the rock a foot from Marc’s left shoulder.
Three for three.
He dragged each man to the lake, and the whirlpool that indicated the tunnel that drained out into the ocean. Nature’s garbage disposal, he thought, feeding the bodies into the vortex. In seconds each body disappeared.
And Marc was back to being alone with the woman he most wanted to avoid.
“It’s me,” he said before rounding the corner. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Tory would shoot as instructed. The Uzi wasn’t that discriminating. Even a bad shot could hit a target eventually.
“Identify yourself.”
“You have a birthmark under your left breast.”
“Your name would have been sufficient,” she told him without moving. Her lashes flicked as she looked down at the Uzi braced on her hip. Her fingers were white with tension. “Would you please take this thing?”
Marc clicked on the safety, then took the weapon from her.
“Put it down,” she instructed quietly. He shot her a glance.
“Now.”
He set the Uzi near the pack, ready if he needed it. He’d barely straightened, when, without warning, Tory flung herself into his arms. “I heard the shot. I was so worried you’d been hurt!
Her cheek was damp against his throat. Marc smiled as he cradled the back of her head in his palm. He could feel the syncopation of her heart against his chest. “So little faith, princess?”
She pulled away. Face pale, she ran cold hands across his chest and over his arms. “Were you hit?”
Marc bracketed her face and kissed her.
Tory choked back a sob as he fitted his mouth over hers. She’d been terrified. The blast of a single shot still fresh in her mind. Deathly frightened by the prolonged silence as she stood there in the semidarkness, the nasty weapon gripped in her good hand, her heart beating in her ears. Listening. Waiting. Praying.
At the sound of gunfire, she’d almost cried out, biting her tongue so as not to give away her position. She couldn’t begin to imagine what was going on out there, but she was certain that at any second a man would appear in the entrance to their camp and shoot her on sight. Conversely, being shot would have been a blessing. She’d already had one run-in with these people and she didn’t relish the idea of a repeat performance.
Marc’s mouth was hot and wild on hers, and Tory couldn’t help but respond to the urgency in his kiss. Her tears made the kiss salty. He tangled his fingers in her hair, drawing her more tightly against his body. His mouth softened on hers.
“I’ve ne
ver met a woman like you,” he said quietly. With barely exerted pressure he pulled her down beside him onto the sand. It wasn’t difficult. It was where she wanted to be.
She looked up at his face looming above her. The hard line of his jaw was blurred under the dark, bristly shadow of several day’s growth of beard. His pale eyes glittered as he wiped her wet cheeks with his thumb. “You know you’re out of your league here, right?”
“My league? I keep telling you I don’t have one. But if you’re talking about my lack of sexual experience, that was a choice, one I’m proud of.”
“Yeah. I know. I was there. But you shouldn’t have chosen me. All that did was add another thing to my list of demerits.”
Her heart tripped. “I’m not keeping a running tally.”
“You should. God help you, you really should.”
“This is a unique situation. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.” Her arm circled his neck as his head blocked out the sapphire glow from the lake in the next cavern.
His lips touched hers—softly, gently. Tory found her fingers tightening in the thick hair at his nape; as if in response, his lips moved more insistently on hers and his tongue invaded her mouth. She closed her eyes as sensation washed over her. Her T-shirt was up around her throat, her bra loose and hanging, as her breasts were pressed flat against the hard wall of his chest.
She felt the pounding of his heart beating in perfect rhythm with her own. Her skin felt alive as he drew his hand under her head and swept her hair out of the way. It would be full of sand, but she didn’t care. “You’re pure hell on my good intentions—you know that, princess?” He lifted his head to look down at her. He caressed her bottom lip with his thumb, his eyes locked with hers.
Tory tentatively tasted his skin with the tip of her tongue. His pupils flared. She took a little nip from his thumb and he retaliated by crushing her to him, devouring her mouth until she was weak.
He kissed her with an intensity and dedication that would have awed her if she’d been in her right mind. When he eventually broke the kiss they were both breathing hard. Then his clever lips moved down her throat and she felt the shocking wet heat of his open mouth on her nipple. She kneaded the damp skin of his back as he lavished his attention first on one hard peak and then the other. Tory realized that she was making small insistent noises in the back of her throat. He wouldn’t be hurried, though. With slow thoroughness his mouth moved down her rib cage. Her skin was on fire as his fingers opened her, and as predictably as a sunrise his mouth found her. She couldn’t help herself; her legs moved restlessly under the onslaught as his lips and tongue brought her right to the edge.
She wanted him. Now. “Marc…please, oh, please…” She clutched at his hair until he moved back up her body and settled into the cradle of her thighs. He surged into her and her climax came forcefully and immediately.
He held her in the harbor of his strong arms until the shudders that racked her body died away. And then he started to move again as if he’d never stopped.
Tory’s head thrashed in the sand. “No…more…I can’t…”
But she realized with amazement that she could, when she felt his powerful hands grip her bottom and his steady thrust become harder, faster, deeper.
“Come with me, sweetheart. Come with me.” His voice was harsh in her ear, as he drove into her again and again.
“Yes…Like that…” He inhaled sharply as her hips rose, then she felt his hands slide under her as he clutched her bottom, showing her how to move. “God! Yes…yes…!”
Astounded she felt her muscles gather and tense, and when he gave one last surge, his shout was echoed by hers.
Her body tightened and soared, then dissolved in a heap beneath him as he collapsed against her, his breath ragged against her throat.
Her hair had been tossed about and Marc moved a strand from where it stuck to her hot, damp cheek. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. His hand lingered on her face as he looked down at her with a slightly bemused expression. “When I look at you, all I can think about are clean sheets on a big bed.”
“We seem to have done all right on the ground,” Tory said shyly, smoothing the frown between his eyes with one finger.
He took her hand from his face and kissed her fingertips before rolling onto his back, taking her with him. Her chin rested on his chest where his heart still beat an excited tattoo.
Turning her head so his chest pillowed her cheek, Tory smoothed her hand down the hard flat muscles, playing with the crisp dark hairs. She felt his lips against her hair. “Talk to me,” he said.
Perfectly relaxed and content in the semidarkness, Tory complied. She told him how, when she’d been a young child, her grandmother had been a night nurse, and the house had always been closed up and dark during the day so that the woman could sleep. She told him of her heartache over her grandmother’s refusal to adopt Alex or allow him to visit his sister.
Tory said little about her bookkeeping job and skirted around his question about whom she’d dated. Her grandmother had refused to allow her the usual freedoms granted most teenagers and by the time she’d died and Tory was living on her own, she’d felt painfully out of sync with the men she met.
She nuzzled closer, blissfully happy. In a few hours he’d leave to go out and look for her brother. When the two men returned it would be time to say goodbye. She was going to treasure every second with him until then.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“HAVE YOU EVER BEEN in love?” Tory asked softly. Sprawled bonelessly over his body she nuzzled her mouth against the underside of his jaw.
She hadn’t gone for the hard sell; he might as well give the soft-shoe shuffle a shot, Marc thought drily. But he couldn’t resist stroking her back beneath the silky skeins of her long hair. “I’m not a stick-around kind of guy. You might have guessed that by now.” How could skin be this soft? This sensitive? How could she smell of vanilla after all she’d been through in the last few days?
“Why not?” She traced a path along his jawline with her damp mouth, her fingers tangled in his hair. He liked the weight of her blanketed over his body. He enjoyed the feel of her slender hands petting him.
“Too many people I cared about have—” Betrayed me, he thought, and replaced it with “—been taken away from me. I just don’t trust the hell out of fate.”
“What if I trust it enough for both of us?” Her mouth was beside his ear now, and her warm breath made him shudder with every soft word.
Then I’d call you a fool, he thought grimly. “Don’t delude yourself, I’m not capable. I’ve seen too much to ever have the naive belief that love will conquer all. Any excess emotion makes a man weak, be it love or hate. I can’t afford to be off guard. My life and those of my colleagues depend on my having a clear head.”
He missed his T-FLAC operatives. He missed the life that had once been his world. Guilt still ate at him that he’d allowed Alex Stone to come here to Marezzo alone. Whiling away the useless hours before dawn with his friend’s sister wasn’t exactly a stellar move. Another rock in his suitcase of guilt.
He seemed to be compounding it stone by stone.
Tory cupped his cheek in her cool palm and brushed her mouth over his as delicately as a butterfly’s wing. “And an empty heart?”
Yeah. It probably would be empty. If he had one. He didn’t. Made life a hell of a lot easier to deal with that way. He tilted her chin up so that her eyes met his, needing her to understand just a little. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted another woman—if that means anything.” It shocked him to realize that he spoke the truth.
“Does it to you?” she asked wistfully.
“Yes.” His mouth was less than a whisper away as he breathed the words like a prayer, “Yes, God help me. It’s all I’ve got to give.”
“Who hurt you, Marc? What woman made you lose the ability to love?”
“What makes you think there was a woman?” What makes you think I was ever capable of giving or re
ceiving love?
Tory regarded him steadily in the rippling glow from the distant lake. Her eyes were very green, very serious. She brushed her hand across his shoulder. “Because I know that someone hurt you very badly. Because sometimes when you look at me, and I can see how much you want me, you rub at this scar right here and the heat goes out of your eyes and you try to make me hate you.”
Marc eased her down against his chest so she wasn’t looking at him with rainwater-clear eyes and a mouth made for his kisses. “I shouldn’t have to convince you to stay away from me, Tory. I’m a man. I’ll take whatever you offer me. Sex doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Okay. I get it,” she said without heat. “What was her name?”
“Krista Davis.” He waited for that dark hole to open up inside him. He waited…But the darkness that always came when he thought of Krista’s laugh didn’t materialize.
“Blue eyes, silky blond hair,” Tory guessed. “A chest out to there. A petite Barbie doll who could probably shoot a gun beside you all day and then be home in time to cook a gourmet dinner. Probably wearing a black negligee. Every man’s fantasy—lucky you.”
“Ever heard the expression, ‘Be careful what you wish for’?”
“My grandmother said it all the time. I learned early to keep my ‘wishes’ few and far between. And realistic.” When he tightened his arms around her she prodded him with her chin. “Go on.”
He glanced at his wristwatch. Half an hour until he figured it was safe to go out. Safe was a relative term. Safe normally entailed stealthily moving unnoticed in the darkness, but apparently Tory’s special sensory gift required a minimal amount of light for clarity. Half an hour of pillow talk wouldn’t kill him. Would it? And it would keep his mind off the risky daylight assault ahead of them.
“I recruited and trained Krista myself. She was one of my best operatives. God, she was quick as lightning. She would size up a situation and handle it before any of my other people had even realized that there might be a problem. She was absolutely fearless. Afraid of nothing.”
