But she’d never, ever, experienced anything like the heat Hamilton branded into her skin with each lazy circle of his thumb. She almost mewled in disappointment when he swiveled back around and gently lowered her foot.
“I don’t feel any broken bones or swelling.”
“I…uh…probably just pulled too hard when I yanked my leg free of the control panel. The pain’s gone now. Really.”
She tried for a little humor to cover the fact that she was melting inside her flight suit.
“If you aren’t going back into the oil business when you get out of prison, you ought to think about becoming a masseur. You give great ankle, Hamilton.”
“Yeah?” His gray eyes glinted. “You ought to try my knee sometime. I have it on the best authority that it’s even better than my ankle.”
She cocked a brow and couldn’t resist another probe. “The ‘best’ authority being that ex-fiancée you want to look up in Miami?”
His mouth twisted. “Sharon didn’t care much for my knee-work.”
“She must have been dead from the neck down, then.”
“Let’s just say I was dead from the neck up.” He settled beside Suzanne on the springy turf. “Like a fool, I never saw that the only thing she did care about was how much she and her so-called cousin could extract from unsuspecting dupes using my name.”
There it was again. Every convict’s lament. He was innocent. He’d been set up.
Suzanne waited for disdain to sweep through her. Reminded herself yet again that Hamilton was no different from the sleazoid roofer who’d milked twelve thousand dollars from her parents’ savings. And yet…
She wanted to believe him.
Absurdly, illogically, she wanted to believe him.
Against all odds, he’d kept Flight 407 in the air after O’Connor’s heart attack. He’d been right there beside Suzanne when they went into the swamp. He’d climbed back through the wreckage to pull her out of the cockpit when he could have bailed out, like the others. What had he said?
I owe you, babe.
And I always pay my debts.
The dichotomy between the convict and the man fascinated her. No, fascinated wasn’t the right word. It went deeper than that. The past hours had forged a bond of tensile steel between her and Hamilton. She wanted to know what made him tick. Understand what fed the streak of fair play and decency that his years in jail hadn’t wiped out.
“Why do you want to look up this…? What’s her name?”
“Sharon.”
“Why do you want to look up Sharon? You’ve already been tried and found guilty. Obviously, the jury believed her and not you.”
“I was guilty. Of sheer stupidity, if nothing else. But the jury didn’t believe her. They never even heard her testimony. She skipped town just hours before the FBI knocked on my door.”
“Couldn’t the feds find her?”
“I doubt they tried very hard.” The Texas twang slipped back into his voice, as tough and blistering as barbed wire baking in the summer sun. “They nabbed the man whose name was on the phony oil leases. They got who they wanted.”
For reasons she didn’t stop to examine at that moment, Suzanne wouldn’t give up.
“If the feds couldn’t find her,” she said doggedly, “how do you know she’s in Miami?”
“Convicts talk, sweetheart. That’s about all we have to do most of the time. The prison communications net would put the Pentagon’s to shame. I pinpointed Sharon’s location months ago. She and Pauly-boy are fencing stolen goods in a pawnshop in South Miami.”
His voice hardened. He stared at the searchlights sweeping the swamp a mile away. “I’ve only got six months left on my sentence. I plan to pay them a visit when I get out.”
“And do what? Beat the truth out of them?”
“If I have to.”
“Sure you will, Hamilton,” she shot back scornfully. “I can see you roughing up a woman. Particularly one you loved enough to get engaged to.”
He swung around to face her. The glint of moonlight in his eyes made them hard as steel.
“How the hell do you know what I’m capable of? I’m a con, remember? Scum that had to be put behind bars for the safety of society.”
“I owe you, babe.” She threw his own words at him. “I always pay my debts.”
His jaw squared. “This is one debt that’s owed me, and I’m dammed well going to collect on it.”
“You sure talk a good game.”
“Back off, Delachek.”
“If you’re so tough, why didn’t you leave me? Why didn’t you escape with the others?”
“Back off.”
“Why, Hamilton?”
“You want to know? You really want to know?”
“Yes!”
He wrapped a hand around her nape, just as he’d done in the cockpit of the 727. His thumb, his so-skilled thumb, slid under her chin and tipped her head back.
“You got into my head, woman. Just like you said you would. Every move I’ve made over the past hours, you’ve made with me. I haven’t had a single thought that didn’t include you.”
Her breath caught.
His roughened.
“Watch yourself, Delachek. The thoughts I’m having right now would curl your toes.”
She wet her lips, half flustered, wholly aroused. He looked so fierce with his eyes narrowed to slits behind those ridiculously thick lashes, his chin and cheeks whiskered like a pirate’s. The words tumbled out on a husky laugh before she could stop them.
“You’re in my head, too, Hamilton. I’m having exactly the same thoughts.”
He tipped her chin farther back. Those gray eyes challenged her, warned her. “You couldn’t possibly be thinking what I’m thinking.”
Alarms started pinging like mad in her head. All systems flashed a warning. Ignoring every dictate of reason and common sense, she followed her instincts.
“Wanna bet?” she said softly, rising up on her knees.
All it took was a little lean forward, a touch of her mouth to his, to short-circuit the warning systems completely. His lips were warm and still wet and incredibly delicious. Suzanne took her time, tasting, touching.
“You want to know what I’m thinking?” she murmured, sliding her tongue along his lower lip. “I’m thinking that you give great ankle. That I’d like to take you up on your offer of knee. Maybe test your navel technique. Or even…”
He jerked his head up, his entire body so taut it quivered. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“So everyone keeps telling me.”
“Listen to me.” He caught her face in his cupped hands. “It’s the crash. The adrenaline rush of beating the odds. You’ll hate yourself come daylight if you give in to this insane impulse.”
She would. She knew she would. Yet calm, rational, always-in-control Suzanne could no more keep from sliding her palms over his slick, wet shoulders than she could keep Flight 407 in the air.
His muscles jumped under her touch. Hers jumped at the feel of his smooth, supple skin. Leaning forward, she dropped little kisses along his collarbone where his T-shirt had torn.
“Daylight is a long time away,” she whispered between kisses.
He groaned. Or maybe he laughed. She was too busy drinking in his taste and the fresh-washed scent of musky male to pay much attention to the sound rumbling from his chest.
Ryder made a last attempt to convince her of the utter insanity of this moment out of time. Grasping her shoulders, he held her at arm’s length.
“Think about this, Suzanne. Just think! I don’t have any condoms. They don’t issue them for con-air flights. What if I got you pregnant?”
“I’m on the pill. I was married for a while and got used to protecting myself.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a marriage.”
“It wasn’t.”
Funny, she couldn’t even remember what Jack looked like right now. Ryder Hamilton’s face filled her vision and her mind. Frownin
g in concern. Tight with desire.
His stark hunger sparked her own. Emotions she’d kept under rigid control since she’d climbed in the chase plane boiled over. Need swept through her, so raw and urgent her womb clenched and her hands curled into tight fists.
“Dammit, Hamilton, are we going to make love or not?”
He stared at her for long moments. Then the slow, wicked grin she was coming to identify as his alone tugged at his mouth.
“Yes, ma’am. We surely are.”
Ryder had never undressed a woman wearing a flight suit before. He decided he liked all those little zippers on the green uniform. One for each arm. One for each leg. Then that long, slow slide of the middle zipper that bared her breasts, her ribs, her hollowed stomach.
When she shimmied out of the wet suit and knelt to face him, Ryder’s throat went as dry as a played out well. Her white cotton bra and panties were more functional than provocative, but they clung to her like a second, transparent skin.
“Oh, baby.”
The hoarse croak earned him a smile.
“I’d take that as a compliment, but you probably haven’t gotten this close to a woman in two years.”
An answering smile glinted in his eyes as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it aside.
“I’ve never gotten this close to a woman like you, darlin’.”
She would be a complete and utter idiot to fall for a line like that, but Suzanne figured she’d passed the point of idiocy sometime around the first stroke of his thumb on her ankle. Ridiculously, she felt flattered. Even more so when she unhooked her bra and let it fall, then peeled her panties down her hips.
He didn’t touch her. Just knelt on the springy grass a foot or so away, naked to his waist, his tan pants riding low on his hips.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
He made her feel beautiful. Despite the mud, the reeds no doubt clinging to her hair, the total absence of anything faintly resembling makeup. His eyes devoured her.
He reached across the small space separating them to cup her breast. As mammary organs went, Suzanne considered hers to be fairly average. But Ryder worshipped the soft mound, first with his hands, then, wrapping an arm around her waist to draw her close, with his mouth. Before he finished, her nipple was hard and tight and on fire.
So was Ryder. His skin burned wherever she touched him, and she made a conscientious effort to touch him everywhere. His flesh strained, hard and insistent, pressing into her belly when he tightened his arm and pulled her down atop him. They rolled together on the spongy grass, tongues tangling, legs twisting.
In the distance, planes and choppers still hovered. Loudspeakers still blared. Searchlights still cut through the night.
But here, on this island of palmetto and mangoes and buttonwoods rising above the saw grass, they were out of reach of the searchlights, and hours away from the reality that awaited them with the dawn.
Right here, right now, there was only the feel of his body hard on hers, the heat of his mouth, the urgency in his hands when he parted her legs, positioned himself between her thighs, and sank home with a sure, smooth thrust that left Suzanne gasping.
The man knew how to pleasure a woman. This particular woman, anyway. He buried his fists in her hair. Covered her mouth with his. Drove into her. Slowly at first, then faster and harder and deeper.
All too soon, she felt the first, tight waves spreading from the center of her body. Desperately, she tried to push them away. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t want this impossible moment to end.
“Not yet. Ryder, not… Oh!”
She arched her back, let the sensation lift her, spin her through a universe of pure pleasure.
“Ooooooh!”
She was still riding the waves when Ryder stiffened. He stayed rigid and unmoving until she’d gone boneless beneath him. Only then did he pick up the rhythm again. This time the strokes were shorter, the lunges tighter.
He entered her a final time, lifting her half off the grass with the force of his thrust. For a moment…maybe an hour…Suzanne lay beneath his taut, slick body. Only half aware of what she was doing, she traced tiny circles at the base of his spine.
When he rolled to one side, he took her with him. She cuddled next to him on a bed of grass and discarded clothes. She was hoping that they didn’t share this particular piece of real estate with anything creepy or crawly when Ryder gave a grunt of utter male satisfaction.
“Now that,” he muttered, drawing her closer into his side, “was what I’d call one hell of a landing.”
The giggles started somewhere inside Suzanne’s chest. She tried to hold them back. Told herself it was absurd to feel so happy, given the fact that she’d just put a 727 down in a swamp and made love to a complete stranger.
No, not a stranger.
Ryder.
He could never be a stranger to her now. He was in her head. A piece of him was in her heart. Burying her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder, she let her bubbles of laughter float on the night air.
Chapter 4
Day 5
“So tell me about the jerk you were married to.”
The deep drawl drifted toward Suzanne in that hazy state somewhere between deep sleep and almost awake. She pried open one eyelid and squinted at the shadowy figure leaning over her, his head propped in one hand, his beard looking even more scruffy in the faint light of predawn than it had in the cockpit yesterday.
Good Lord! Was it only yesterday? Just… She scrunched her forehead, forcing her sleep-muddled brain to count backward. Just nineteen hours since she’d climbed into the chase plane? Twelve since she’d ditched Flight 407 in the swamp? Eight since…
Since Ryder.
She forced the other eyelid up.
Nope, she hadn’t hallucinated him. He was right here beside her, his gray eyes lazy on her face, his black hair sticking up in spikes. Wearing nothing, she saw with a sudden tightening in her belly, except the tan pants.
It took her a moment to realize he’d draped his ragged T-shirt over her chest and upper arms, the flight suit over her lower body.
“Mosquitoes,” he said when she fingered the cotton, a question in her eyes. “I didn’t want them feasting on your succulent flesh.”
“What about your succulent flesh?”
“I’m tougher than old horsemeat, sweetheart. Not even our homegrown skeeters can get through this hide.”
Or through the thin coat of mud he’d smeared over himself, she noted wryly, more awake and observant now.
“So what about him?” he asked, reaching up with his free hand to twist a strand of her hair around his finger.
“The jerk I was married to? He was…just a jerk.”
“How long were you married?”
“On paper, four years. In fact, probably about three months. Jack had a short attention span, but it took me a while to recognize that fact. Even then, I refused to give up on our marriage. I hung on long after I should have. I, ah, tend to get a bit tenacious at times.”
“I noticed that about you.”
“You did, did you?”
“Yep. I also noticed that you’re smart as hell, braver than a Saint Bernard, and have legs that won’t quit.”
“Anything else?” she asked, a smile dancing on her lips. “I might be able to use some of this on my résumé.”
He gave the strand curled around his finger a little tug. “You make love with a joy that takes my breath away just thinking about it. You crinkle your nose when you laugh. And you’re cooler than dry ice when the chips are down. I like that about you…now.”
“Now, huh? What about yesterday afternoon?”
“Yesterday afternoon…”
His teasing expression faded as memories of the day before crowded in on him. On both of them. Suddenly, the dark pewter sky held not the promise of morning and rescue, but the remembered residue of terror.
Reality seeped back, curling between them like the cool mist ri
sing from the saw grass. Suzanne shivered and started to draw the thin cotton T-shirt tighter around her shoulders only to realize she’d feel a lot more comfortable in her flight suit. More comfortable, and far more prepared for the rescue aircraft that would widen their search patterns come dawn.
The thought of rescue brought with it another dash of cold reality. In another hour, two at most, they’d go their separate ways. Suzanne back to Oklahoma City and her job with the FAA. Ryder to whatever prison he was headed to when he boarded the ill-fated Flight 407. Without moving a muscle, she could feel the chasm they’d bridged so briefly begin to widen once more.
She’d known it would happen. So had Ryder. He’d warned her last night that she would regret giving in to the insane impulse that had propelled her into his arms. She didn’t regret it, exactly. She could never regret these stolen hours. She’d carry the memory of this brief, incredible interlude with her for the rest of her life.
But it was time to face the dawn. To rejoin the real world. To reshoulder her responsibilities as pilot-in-command of a downed aircraft. She knew she’d feel a heck of lot more prepared for those responsibilities once she got dressed and splashed some water on her face.
Yet the mechanics of getting dressed in front of Ryder Hamilton now seemed a whole lot more complicated than getting undressed had a few hours ago. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, wondering how to suggest she needed a little privacy, a little space.
She didn’t have to suggest. Ryder must have read the withdrawal in her eyes, or experienced the same dash of cold reality. He stared down at her, his own eyes shuttered, then released the strand of hair he’d been playing with and rolled away, taking his warmth with him.
Suzanne missed him instantly.
Turning his back, he pulled on his socks and boots. She ached to lay a hand on that broad expanse of skin and somehow reconnect. Before she could decide whether that was wise, or even what she wanted to do, he pushed to his feet and raked a hand through his hair. His gaze swept the dense stands of mango and tropical hardwood before coming back to her. Whatever he saw in her face tightened his own. Under the prickly three-days’ growth, his jaw squared.
Special Report Page 19
