by Julie Miller
“I thought you said you weren’t hurt.” The emergency lantern from his pack cast enough light through the murky shadows of the hunting shack off Pinewood Trail that Jason could see the bruises up and down Sam’s arms, along with the shiner on her shinbone, scraped-up knees and the soiled bandage on her shoulder where her tracking chip had been removed.
“Jason!” It wasn’t like there were any walls in this place. He’d already changed into a clean T-shirt and shorts before sliding back into his cargo pants and thin-knit sweater and tying on his boots. He hadn’t expected to catch her half-naked. The arm over her sweet, full breasts and a hand in front of the boxer shorts she’d scrounged from Marty’s go bag did little to hide her beautiful, battered body from his worried perusal. “A little privacy, please?”
He obediently turned away, although the image of every curve, every strand of toffee-blond hair hanging loose and finger-combed into unruly waves, and every injury he should have prevented was indelibly imprinted on his brain. It didn’t help that he could hear her moving behind him, finishing a sponge bath with a moist towelette.
“I am so setting up a memorial fund of some kind to honor your friend Marty,” she said, followed by a quick gasp. He peeked over his shoulder to see her hooking her bra back on and tugging it into place. “The water, snack bars and extra clothes he packed in his bag are lifesavers, as far as I’m concerned. And an unopened toothbrush? That’s the best treasure I ever could have found. Jason!”
He held her gaze for a charged moment, feeling the temperature in the tiny cabin rise, even though he’d nixed the idea of building a fire in the structure’s crumbling fireplace. He liked her better in that bra she’d rigged with straps from cutting up the girdle thingy that had cinched her body from shoulder to thigh, covering up all the best parts of her rounded, earth-mother figure. He’d like it even better if those boxer shorts she was wearing were his.
The rush of interest stirring in his groin finally made him politely turn away to face the door. Whoa. Where had that possessive thought come from? He hadn’t been with a woman since Elaine. Hadn’t really been interested in finding anyone—partly because he’d been raw with guilt and grief for a long time after Elaine’s death, and partly because he didn’t want to saddle anyone with all the mental garbage that came with getting involved with him.
But a day with Sam Eddington had him thinking about the connections that were missing from his life. She had him wanting to be physical with a woman again. She had him opening up and sharing things he’d talked about only with his therapist. She had him wishing he had the right to do more than protect her, wishing he could explore where this surprising attraction between them might lead. She had his priorities all twisted up in a way he hadn’t felt in two long years.
But twisted-up priorities weren’t exactly something he could indulge in right now. Not with Marty Flynn and his radio dead, and his cell phone useless until they dropped down another thousand feet or so. His extraction plan had been shot to hell. And eight to ten well-armed men eager to recapture Sam and kill them both lay in wait somewhere on this mountain, hunting them.
That sobering assessment of the situation was enough for Jason to set aside his interest in this oddly fascinating woman and remember those priorities. He faced her again. Job one was survival, not sating his awakening libido or respecting her Puritan need for privacy. She was using the Swiss Army knife she’d taken out of the chopper to cut a length of cord she’d slipped through the belt loops of the man-sized jeans to cinch them around her waist. She chided him with a silent glare before turning her back on him to roll up the pant legs to her ankles.
“Don’t get many women up here in this neck of the woods, huh?” she tried to joke. “Is that why you keep staring at my girlie parts?”
“Stop.” He wasn’t in a joking mood. The gauze bandage that had been taped over her shoulder was caked with blood and had come loose. He closed the distance between them in three short strides. “I want to check your injuries before you get completely dressed. Especially that cut on your shoulder. Looks like it’s been bleeding. You should have told me the pack was rubbing against it.”
She batted his hand away and picked up the gray T-shirt that had also been rolled up in Marty’s pack, clutching it in front of her like a shield. “So you could carry both packs? It’s bad enough I got you into this mess. I want to do my part to help.”
“You didn’t get me into anything I didn’t volunteer for.”
“Yes, but you thought you’d be home in your cozy little bed tonight. You weren’t expecting so many well-armed men to be waiting for us. And I know you didn’t expect them to kill your friend.” No. This supposedly easy op had gone south almost from the get-go. When he didn’t respond, she reached out, probably to share more of the compassion she needed to keep for her own strength. Needing to take care of her more than he needed taking care of, Jason moved away to pull the first aid kit out of his own pack. Rebuffing her concern only made Sam transfer her worries in another direction. “Do you think Dad has called in reinforcements by now? Other members of your search and rescue team? Pellegrino and his men? The sheriff’s department? FBI?”
Jason pulled out the supplies and set them on the pine bench that passed for a seating area in the old shack. “I hope not. They have no idea of the kind of firepower they’d be running into up here, and we have no way to warn them. At this point, it’s easier, and probably safer, for us to hide and wait out Buck than it is to try to coordinate a new rescue plan. We’ll send the authorities in to round them up once I know you’re safe.”
“Dad must be worried sick that he hasn’t heard from us. He has a heart condition, you know. I hope Joyce is making him take all his meds because the stress could kill him.” Her eyes were focused on some far-off place as she pulled on the T-shirt. “The similarities between last night and my mom’s kidnapping are creepy. They feel almost intentional. She and Dad were at a party like I was. She left early by herself because she wasn’t feeling well. Never made it home. It was a business reception celebrating his first new builds in Wyoming—just outside Yellowstone and Teton.”
“The land Cordes accused him of stealing?” Sam looked surprised that he knew that, so he explained. “Richard Jr. was at the bar where I met your father last night. The two of them were arguing when I walked in.”
Sam’s cheeks went a scary shade of pale. “Did he hurt Dad? Threaten him? Do you think he’s behind my kidnapping? In retaliation for his father’s execution?”
“Pellegrino and his boy Metz kept Cordes away from your father.” Jason made no mention of the role he’d played in breaking up the fight. It hadn’t been any big deal to step in where he’d been needed. But it wasn’t modesty that left him analyzing the antagonistic behavior he’d seen at Kitty’s. “I’ve never known Junior to go by Buck. And he didn’t seem interested in your father’s money. Plus, he’s got an airtight alibi for the time you were abducted. But I don’t like coincidences like that.”
“Maybe he hired those men to kidnap me. Maybe Buck’s a friend of his.”
“Or a cousin. Lord knows there are enough of Cordes’s old militia group, their kids and grandkids, still scattered around the area.”
“It sounded like this was personal for Buck. You think this is about revenge instead of money?” She sank onto the far end of the bench. “Dad already blames himself for Mom’s death. I know he’s blaming himself for me. Hasn’t he been hurt enough?” Her gaze kicked up to Jason’s. “I have to get a hold of him and let him know I’m okay. I have to get home.”
Did she ever think of herself first?
“One step at a time, Sam,” he cautioned, straddling the opposite end of the bench. “I want to keep you in one piece first.”
“Do you think the kidnappers contacted him at noon like they originally planned? Even though I wasn’t there to make the video for them? I can imagine they’d say some vile things to
upset him. Maybe even lie and say they’d already killed me because he wouldn’t pay the ransom. They could have videotaped me when I was passed out from the drugs—I probably looked dead.”
Jason remembered his own advice to himself. “Priorities, Sam. We’ll figure out the who and how later. And I promise we’ll contact your dad as soon as we’re in cell range. But right now, we need rest. And I want to err on the side of caution and check your injuries. It’s not like there’s an emergency room I can take you to up here if an infection sets in. We’re still a full day’s hike down to civilization—and that’s only if we don’t run into Buck and his friends again.”
Nodding, she let him steer the conversation away from her concern for her father. “All right. I’ll let you tend my wounds if you let me change the dressing on your hand and check that spot where the flying helicopter part burned through your pant leg.”
“The metal was hot enough, I’m sure it cauterized the wound.”
“Fine.” She got up to retrieve the silver locket from the pile of her discarded clothing and looped the chain over her head. Then she reached for the moth-eaten sweater they’d discovered, along with a few other abandoned, second-rate supplies, when they’d searched the shelves in the cabin. “I don’t take care of you, you don’t take care of me.”
“Sam.” He caught her wrist, tugging her back to the bench. “We’re doing this. You know I can outmuscle you if you don’t do what I say.”
“Yes. But I don’t think you will. Despite every effort to be a big, badass Marine on a mission, I think you’re a nice guy. The only time you’ve used your size and strength against me was when you were trying to save me, and you didn’t have time to explain what was going on. Clearly, the fact that we’re having this conversation right now means you don’t have to rush me. Even when you lost it back at that tree, you didn’t hurt me. And that means you won’t bully me into something I don’t agree with.”
Sucker. Couldn’t argue with logic like that. He released her and gestured to the bench, inviting her to join him again. “Well, then, I guess we’re going to be playing doctor with each other.”
Her eyes opened wide and she blushed, all the way down to her cleavage. Yep, watching that woman react to a suggestive remark or a simple touch wasn’t going to get old anytime soon. He wasn’t sure what she’d seen in Grazer, but he knew her ex was the one who’d lost something special when she’d rightfully dumped his selfish, cheating ass.
She sat with her back to him and Jason peeled off the gauze and tape and tossed them at his feet. He opened a bottle of water and poured it over the small, ragged gash to irrigate the wound. “This is going to hurt a little.” She winced when he dabbed at the cut with an alcohol wipe but didn’t complain. Without the means to put any stitches in the wound, he settled for gluing the jagged little hole shut, hoping it’d stay sealed once they got moving again. He covered it with a fresh bandage and cleaned and put ointment and bandages on the worst of her scrapes before he realized that she’d been quiet for an uncharacteristically long time. He helped her shrug back into the T-shirt and holey but clean sweater before he tugged down his pant leg to let her put ointment on the burn that had indeed sealed the cut the shrapnel had made in his skin. “Just so you know, I haven’t always lived off the grid. I’ve seen plenty of girlie parts.”
“It sounds silly when you say it.”
“It sounds silly when anyone says it.” When she pulled his beat-up hand into her lap to unwind the field dressing, Jason captured the waterfall of blond curls that masked her downturned face and draped them behind her shoulder, so he could read the expression in her eyes. “If you’re being funny, fine. But if you’re denigrating that fabulously generous figure of yours, stop it.”
“Fabulously generous? You mean I need to lose fifteen pounds.”
“I mean, you’ve got the kind of body fantasies are made of.”
She finally looked up to meet his assessing gaze. “Fantasies...? No, I don’t.”
“Is that something Grazer told you?” Yet another reason to smack that guy straight into Sunday for saying or doing anything to make her doubt herself or think she was anything less than a sexy, attractive woman. “He probably told you that old saw about women who wear glasses, too.”
Ah, hell. He had. “He asked me to buy contacts. They’re better for photo ops. And, you know, boys don’t make passes at girls who wear—”
He pressed his fingers against her lips to stop her from finishing that untruth. “Men do.”
Her eyes widened with the same anticipation that suddenly raced through his blood like a fast-running river breaking through an ice jam.
And then he replaced his fingers with his lips, claiming her soft, responsive mouth. Her welcome was instant and unhesitating. Her fingers cupped the side of his jaw, stroking against the beard stubble there, pressing into the skin and muscle underneath. He tunneled his fingers through the weight of her hair and clasped the nape of her neck, drawing her into the vee between his legs, knocking trash and the first aid box to the floor as he lifted her onto his lap. He’d never had an addiction before, but kissing Sam was quickly becoming something Jason couldn’t say no to.
She tasted like minty toothpaste and heat and hope. Her responses to his touch were as natural and powerful as the mountain beneath their feet. She mimicked each thrust of his tongue, answered every press of his lips. Innocent as he suspected she was, Sam didn’t just meekly give back the caresses he offered. She ventured out into new territory, too, exploring his growling response to her teeth nipping at the jut of his chin, testing just how many times she could pull on his bottom lip and tug on his hair before he crushed her squarely against his chest and deepened the kiss.
Her breasts pillowed against him, her nipples pebbling into decadent little morsels of hard candy he wanted to touch and taste. Her breath quickened with every heartbeat, and that telltale hum in her throat told him she was enjoying this full-body contact as much as he was. Her exploring hands skimmed along his neck and shoulders before tangling with his hair again. Her needy tugs pulsed through him, heating his blood and stirring things up behind his zipper.
His lips scudded along her jaw as he tugged at her sweater and T-shirt to get his hands on bare skin. He found the nip of her waist, the smooth skin of her back. And while she was cool to the touch, his skin heated like fire when she tugged at the hem of his sweater and slipped her hands beneath to latch onto his waist. He skimmed his palms up to the edge of her bra and slipped his thumbs beneath the heavy weight of her breasts. He lifted her to spread her legs over his lap, nestling her feminine heat against the part of him that wanted to be inside her. He closed his teeth over the lobe of her ear and she giggled, a sound that was part delight and part overwhelming sensation.
He felt more like a man than he had in years when she responded to him like this. He felt more human.
He smiled inside at the pleasure she took in the simplest things. Quiet conversations. The tactile differences between his body and hers. The discovery of a particularly sensitive spot at the base of her throat. There was no calculated seduction in the way she kissed, no subterfuge he could misinterpret that might come back to bite him in the butt. Sam wanted to kiss and be kissed. She wanted to touch and be touched. When she tipped her head back, offering the creamy arch of her neck to feast on, Jason did a little exploration of his own, chasing that needy hum of arousal.
Jason slipped his hands into the tight space between them, rubbing her nipples with the pads of his thumbs and cradling the sweet, sexy weight of her breasts in his palms. “Oh, Jase. This is so...so good.”
She squirmed in his lap, her hums becoming breathless gasps of pleasure that fueled his own desire. He reclaimed her mouth as he rocked helplessly against her. There wasn’t a part of her body he didn’t want to taste—no part of his own where he didn’t want to feel her touch.
But this was crazy. This was p
iss-poor timing. It was selfish to see this lightning bolt of electricity arcing between them through to its inevitable conclusion. Warning bells from his past sounded an alarm. He moved his hands away from bare skin but clutched the flare of her hips instead, pinning her thighs around him. He tore his lips from the delicious grasp of hers but ended up peppering her face with a dozen little pecks instead because he wasn’t ready for this to end. Her heat called to his, and with a few flicks of his thumb at just the right pressure point, he could turn that humming passion into the release she craved. Would she come with a breathless moan? Would she cry out his name in that husky voice of hers?
Focus on the mission, Marine.
“Sam, we can’t do this.” It did him no good to indulge this need if there was a chance his feelings could get involved and distract him from the job at hand. It did her no good to promise something with his body that his broken heart and fractured brain might not be able to give. She found the button of his pants and unhooked it, dipping her fingers into the front of his shorts, her knuckles sliding against bare skin. Jason had to grab her wrists and pull her free before he couldn’t think with his brain anymore and this turned into a mutual hand job. “Samantha,” he growled with a mix of want and regret. “We need to stop.”
“No.”
“We have to.” He lifted her from his lap, pushing her back across the bench. He made a token effort to pull her sweater and T-shirt back into place, but when she scooted back toward him, he held up his hands to ward off the temptation of her primed-and-willing passion. “I’m sorry.” His nostrils flared with deep breaths, but he needed a slap of cold outside air to cool his jets and make this crazy craving for her go away. He gingerly swung his leg over the bench and stood, rebuttoning his pants. “I can’t afford to forget what’s at stake here. Your life.”
Sam hugged her arms around herself, as if she was feeling the chill he so desperately needed. “Not the sweet nothings I was hoping for.”
