She shrugged. “You complaining?”
“Hell, no.” Not with those lush curves beckoning to him. But he did intend to even the score. He stalked across the room as she laughed, backing her up to the wall, trapping her there as he lowered his head and captured her mouth. Her lips were as soft as they’d been out behind that barn this morning, as hungry as he’d dared to hope. She drew him in quickly, thoroughly, feeding off him. Meeting him as easily and squarely as she had that night in his bedroom. She didn’t give an inch. He didn’t want her to. And then they were both demanding more.
Hotter, deeper. Harder.
He grabbed the panties from her hand and flung them somewhere over his shoulder. The condom followed. He dragged his hands up her waist, cupping her breasts, squeezing, pinching and pulling her nipples as her hands seared down his chest. A second later, his stomach bottomed out as she stretched up to bite the side of his neck and suck hard. Adrenaline, abstinence and the truth in his heart slammed into him at the exact same moment, rocketing him straight up to the edge of the abyss. He growled and plowed his fingers into her hair, tugging her head back to the wall as he struggled for sanity, for control—for air. When he finally found it, it was short and ragged, coming in and out as rapidly as hers as he stared into those fathomless eyes, now smoke-blue with passion. Like that first time in his kitchen, they were going way too fast. He didn’t care.
She hiked her right leg against his restlessly, and he took the hint, grabbing her bottom and lifting her up to his level. His hoarse groan rivaled that blaring music as her fingers raked down his back and around to his groin. He lost his air again as she wrapped her hand around his erection and pulled—firm, hot, guiding. And then his entire world was wet. And tight.
Sweet heaven, he did not remember Dani being this tight.
He shuddered right along with her, into her, gripping her gorgeous bottom with his left palm as he slammed his right into the wall above her, bracing both of them as the brunt of their need rocked through them. He was piercingly aware of her legs hiking higher, locking around his hips, drawing him in deeper, holding him right there, as he pounded into her liquid heat again and again. He tried to slow down, but he couldn’t. She moaned into his neck, he groaned right back into hers. It was fast and it was furious—and, dammit, he was almost there.
No! Not yet.
But it was too late. It had truly been too long. It was her scream that did it. He caught it in the nick of time and swallowed it whole, praying it would help drag the moment out, at least a bit. But it didn’t. The moment her short nails ripped into his shoulders, down his back, and dug into his naked ass—one last racking shudder—and it was over. He was still gasping for air when she pressed her forehead into his sweat-slicked neck and sighed. He was pretty sure that was satisfaction. But still. He tipped her chin and stared into those huge eyes.
“I’m sor—”
Her fingers came up, pressed to his lips. She glanced at the Beretta he’d dumped on the nightstand. “If you apologize for that, I’ll put a hole in you before Rurik can.”
His lips twitched, but he could still feel the heat creeping up his neck. “Dammit, Dani, I didn’t even get you to the bed.”
She stared past his arm again, her beautiful, sated smile quirking. “Nice bed. Bit narrow, though.” Her gaze skimmed to his thighs, then up, stopping at the juncture of them. “Nice—ah—gun, too. The caliber’s as impressive as I remember.”
The caliber increased. He dropped his forehead to hers, confessing the truth as he shifted his hands to cradle her bottom in his right. “Yeah, well, it’s been a while since I’ve been out on the range. Eleven months to be exact. My grip’s rusty, not to mention my trigger was a bit…quick. But that’s nothing a little practice can’t cure, I swear.”
She snagged his left wrist and tugged it close, turning it until she could read the dial on his watch in the moonlight. “We still have fifty-six minutes. Care to reload and fire again?”
He didn’t wait for her to ask twice. He just wrapped both arms around her and swung her about to the bed. If they had fifty-six more minutes to kill, he intended to murder each and every one of them slowly this time, sweetly. Because if they did make it out of that barn alive, he wanted to make damned sure she came back for more.
Chapter 7
They still had nineteen minutes to go.
Dani glanced across the room. Despite those minutes, Jack was already dressed, boots, fatigues, concealed weapons and all. He slipped his Beretta into the waist of his trousers as he turned to stare out the window at the barn below. He retrieved the open pack of cigarettes and tapped one out, the flame from the silver lighter she’d given him all those years ago flashing to life for a brief moment as he lit the end. The tip of the cigarette glowed as he tucked the lighter home and braced his hand against the top of the window frame. It wasn’t until she finished wrapping his belt around her waist twice and watched him take his second, searing drag on the cigarette and then saw his hand tremble before he anchored it firmly back on the frame, that she realized what was really going on.
Jack Gage, a man legendary among even the Shadow Warriors of Delta for his calm, cool composure, no matter what the risk, what the job, let alone the nonexistent odds, was nervous. Scared. Because of her. That’s when it hit her. Actually, when it punched into her fist-first, straight into her heart.
She loved him.
Even as the mind-numbing aftershocks continued to pummel into her, she knew it was true. Finally. For ten long years she’d managed to convince herself that what she felt for the man standing across this darkened room with his back to her, staring out that window, was infatuation. Even during this past year, ever since that murder-for-hire case had forced them to pose as man and wife, she’d still managed to avoid the truth, chalking up this familiar feeling in her heart to a searing case of lust. It was both. And neither. It was love.
And maybe, just maybe, he’d hung around so long, not because of her father…but because he was in love with her, too. Oh, God, she hoped so. Prayed so. The mere thought made her knees tremble, her stomach churn. But she had to know. Tonight. Now. Before they walked out of here and into that barn. She needed to know if Jack loved her, too. She crossed the floor silently as the smoke from his third drag filled his lungs and then the room, reaching out to close her hand over his as he brought the cigarette back for a fourth.
“You don’t smoke.”
He stood there for a moment, silent amid the music still blaring out across the room. Still staring out the window at the barn. At C’emal, who was doing his best not to pace as the man waited for his lover to finish her chores so he and Zorah could leave…and she and Jack could begin.
He finally sighed and turned. “We have to talk.”
She nodded. He was right, they did. He opened his mouth, but instead of words coming out, his sigh filled the space between them. She waited as he shook his head and crossed the room, recognizing the distance he was putting between them for what it was and not some concern about his status as a guest who cleaned up after himself as he stopped at the nightstand to grind the cigarette out in the ashtray. He retrieved his Beretta, released the clip and checked it before slapping it home. Then he just stood there and stared at it.
Maybe she should say it first? God knows she’d made this hard enough on him as it was. She stepped out to follow him, only to halt as he finally spoke.
“Dani…if I don’t make it toni—”
“No.” She shook her head as she stepped out again, grabbing his hands as she reached him, clamping his fingers into the cold steel of the Beretta’s barrel. “Don’t start like that. Start any other way. Just don’t start like that.”
“Dammit, just listen to me.”
She dropped her hands. Swallowed hard. “Okay.”
He sucked in his breath. “If something happens to me tonight, I want you to promise me—” He broke off. Drew in another breath, this one deeper. “I need you to promise me…”
&n
bsp; What, dammit? That she’d remember he loved her? That she’d move on, find someone else? Bull. She’d do neither. Nor could she do this. She could not stand here and look into that expression on this man’s face. She’d rather go another round with Youssef than stare into that torture. She opened her mouth, took a deep breath, and said it for them.
“Jack, I—l—”
“Promise me you’ll talk to your father.”
What?
She blinked. Waited through an entire verse of that god-awful folk song until, finally, somehow, she managed to speak. “Tell me you didn’t just ask me what I think you did.”
But he nodded.
She stood there, for what seemed like eons as she struggled to absorb the blow. The heart-wrenching disappointment. The iron fist of truth. Memories slammed into her. The past, the present. A future she was so stupid to believe could ever be. Just like that, she was sixteen and yet twenty-six, standing in front of both those doors at the exact same time. Listening to both those men. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to slug the man standing in front of her for daring to make her dream. But most of all, she just wanted to curl up into a ball. In the end, she just did what she’d always done. She turned away. Only this time, he knew she was there—and he stopped her.
She whirled around, wrenching her arm from his. “Don’t.”
“I have to. honey, you don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand. You’re still doing his dirty work.”
She could make out the fire smoldering within his gaze, despite the dark. “Wrong, I’m trying to help.”
“Well, guess what? We don’t need help. I don’t need it. Neither does he. Hell, he doesn’t even love me. I’ve known that from the time I was twelve. One day, the man just shut down. I guess I must have used him up because all I’ve gotten from good ol’ Daddy Dearest since is ice-cold silence. You, on the other hand, got to become the surrogate son. The Chosen One. You got to go fishing with my father, have dinner at his house any damned day you wanted, gather his professional pearls of wisdom. And, of course, you got to hear firsthand how I never belonged in his man’s Army and how I never would.” With that she spun around. But again, Jack grabbed her. This time, with both arms. And this time, when he twirled her around, she couldn’t break loose.
Damn him. Damn the both of them. She renewed her struggle with a vengeance.
“Stop. Dani, just listen to me for once instead of shutting down. And quit running away. The two of you are so alike it’s not even funny. There are things you don’t know. Things I didn’t know, let alone understand until last month. Until this week—this case. But I know now. I understand. But that’s not enough. You need to understand. All I want you to do is promise me you’ll talk to him. Ask him about your mother.”
Her mother?
Just like that, the fury she’d held on to for so long with this man—that she’d been using to shield herself from him—just shattered. Rippling fear replaced it. She couldn’t explain, let alone understand the chill that slithered down her spine before snaking into her belly—simply because he’d mentioned her mother. And when the frustration bled out of Jack’s gaze, and the fear slid into him, she wasn’t sure she wanted to explain it. She had no idea what to say, so she just said the obvious. “Jack, my mother was killed when I was three. I barely remember her.”
“I know.”
He did. She’d told him in that café. She’d described her one and only memory of her mom. A hug. And then she told him how her mom got into her car and came home in a box. “Then what are you trying not to say? Please, I want you to be the one to tell me, not my dad. What do you suddenly understand?” Instead of answering, he released her wrists. He cupped her face, the torture locking back into his gaze as he smoothed his fingers over the bruises he’d gently kissed one by one on that bed not more than twenty minutes ago. “Jack, please. You started this, now finish it. Tell me what my mother’s murder has to do with my father and me.”
“Everything.”
She opened her mouth—and froze instead. So did he.
The door! She hadn’t so much as heard the tentative knock over the music, as felt it. And then she saw them. The keys. Whether she wanted it to be or not, their conversation was over.
Because it was time.
The howitzer was in the barn. She could sense it.
They both could. Dani waited until Jack slid the door shut before she risked turning on his red-filtered mini Maglite. A moment later, he slipped the flashlight from her hand and snagged her elbow, drawing her along with him as he took off across the moldy straw. Even without the red illuminating their path, the acrid stench of gunpowder and diesel would have led them right to the roughly 25-foot-by-10-foot artillery piece. Though slightly narrower in girth than a tank, the howitzer’s massive, towering gun barrel hung over the front of the tracked wheels by another ten feet, forcing Rurik to run the rear scooped stabilizer almost flush with the back of the barn.
Dani stopped with Jack as he swept the scarlet wash in front of the metal beast and pointed. “There. To the left of the gun barrel, at the base of that narrow door.”
She saw them. Nine bags of pre-measured gunpowder, the size and shape of one-pound coffee cans. But it was the two-by-four-foot wooden crate behind the pyramid that held their attention.
“Here.”
She took the flashlight from Jack’s hand as he hunkered down, bathing the oversized bullet with red as Jack removed the lid. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make out the colored band near the base of the round. Jack flicked his gaze to hers. The tension that’d been winding through her gut ever since that unfinished conversation in the bedroom five minutes earlier fisted tighter as he shook his head.
“I can’t tell, either. We need white light.”
Great. She wasted precious seconds unscrewing the filter from the flashlight, then flashed the Mag again. A split second was all it took for both of them to blanch—and curse.
“It’s a nuke.”
Jack nodded as he stood. He took the flashlight from her and quickly reattached the filter before pressing the lighter as well as his switchblade into her palms. He kept his Swiss Army knife for himself. “Go see if you can crack the track’s control panel open and disable the battery. I’ll take the warhead.”
“You sure you know how?”
“In theory, yeah. In practice?” His grin flashed amid the red light washing the scruff covering his cheeks and jaw. “We’re about to find out, aren’t we?”
Or not.
They must have heard it—or rather them—at the same moment because he grabbed her arm, hauling her with him as he spun around. A split second later, light flooded the barn, blinding them. By the time they’d blinked off the effects, Rurik stood ten feet away, just under the howitzer’s barrel, the phony cross still hanging around his neck. Youssef stood several feet to the right, Zorah in his arms…and a Makarov pistol to the woman’s head. One look at the agony in her brown eyes and Dani no longer wondered where C’emal was. It didn’t matter. The guard was dead.
While her heart and nerves were still screaming in concert, Jack had already reverted back to cool. He reached down and casually shifted his hand behind him, retrieving the switchblade from her fingers. She clamped down on the lighter as he tucked the blade into his back pocket and spoke, “I guess this means Isha Du’a has been canceled for the night, eh?”
Rurik laughed. Youssef scowled.
Zorah all but fainted. “I am sorry, Dani. I tried to warn you with the knock. They—” She received a vicious knock of her own for her efforts, compliments of the pummel master himself.
Dani stepped forward without thinking—only to run smack into Jack’s torso as he shifted to block her path. She took the hint and pulled herself together. Jack, meanwhile, capitalized on her mistake, slipping the sealed pack of cigarettes into her fingers. She hadn’t even realized he’d palmed it from his pocket. He shifted again, covering her movements as he nodded to Youssef. �
�I see you’re still hiding behind a woman’s skirt.”
The man stiffened. “Neist!”
“Silence!” Rurik smoothed out his scowl as he faced Jack. “And you, my friend, be careful. I do not need you anymore.”
“You never did.”
That decaying grin spread wider. “Very good. Correct, as well. But when you stumbled across my path, I could not turn down the opportunity. I should thank you. Your sacrifice will ensure my name is exalted all the more long after you and I—and naturally, all of Sarajevo—have passed from this earth.”
“But why, brother? Why kill so many? Your own people now?” Dani winced as the pummel master rewarded Zorah’s impertinence with a harder whack. They wore matching split lips now.
“Dammit, leave her alone!”
Rurik ignored his sister—herself too, continuing to focus on Jack. “You know why.”
Jack kept his gaze on Rurik as he nodded, but he answered Zorah. “Your brother hopes to unite the Muslim world. He thinks if he murders half a million Muslims and makes it look like a Catholic Croat and an American soldier are to blame, that ought to do the trick. Maybe even kick off World War Three.” They both even knew why the man had been careful to keep up his slave trade until the bitter end—so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
For an insanely calculating monster, Rurik’s shrug was remarkably sheepish. “A lofty goal, yes.”
But one that might come to pass…since Dani couldn’t seem to get the pack open. The irony of fumbling around with a pack of cigarettes six inches from Jack while trying to look cool about it bit into her. But this time, he wasn’t about to lean over and snag it from her hands and help her out. Relief seared though her as she finally located the tail of the plastic strip embedded in the cellophane. She peeled it off and wrenched the pack open, shoving her right fingers into the box to feel around for the switch as Jack shifted to maintain his block on Rurik’s view. She was almost there when—
“You stupid, bitch!” Youssef dragged Zorah with him by her braid as he vaulted towards her. Before Dani could blink, he had his free hand locked to her wrist. “What are you doing?”
In Love and War Page 21
