by Zoe Dawson
Struggling with guilt and desire, he kneaded her, feelings he didn’t want to acknowledge crowding in on him. She swallowed and swallowed again, and he realized she was struggling with some very raw emotions as well. His own throat closed up a little. In spite of what they had said, he didn’t want her thinking this was just sex. Sex could never be meaningless with her.
“It feels good to be inside you, kissing you. I love kissing you.”
Feeling a little raw himself, he grasped her jaw between his fingers and covered her mouth with a soft, searching kiss, trying to give her some comfort. He tightened his hold on her jaw, then kissed her harder.
He trailed his mouth down her throat and covered her nipple, sucking hard, then used his tongue with a slow, lazy thoroughness. Her breath caught again, and she moaned softly. She tasted so good, felt so good, better than anything had in his life.
Her fingernails scraped against his abdomen and he let his breath go in a rush, an electrifying weakness radiating through him. She did it again, and he tightened his hold on her breast, biting her nipple, his shaft growing hard inside her again.
“Dex,” she breathed. “Don’t stop.”
Her breathing grew ragged and uneven, and he shifted his hand lower, rubbing her. A sob was wrenched from her, and she clasped his hand, running her palm over the back, urging him on.
He raised his head and captured her mouth again with a thoroughness that made his own heart stammer. This time he was going to make it so good for her that there would be no doubt in her mind what was happening. This time he was going to show her that, in spite of everything that had happened in the past, she was alive. They were alive.
He flexed his hips, and she rose up to meet him, tightening her muscles around him, and his mind was filled with only her. He couldn’t ever get enough of her.
Chapter Nine
Outcast Headquarters, Kabul, Parwan Province, Afghanistan
Carl was drifting in his chair when his cell rang. “Yes,” he croaked into the receiver.
“I’ve got something,” Ted said.
“What?”
“Kaczewski saved some villager’s life and there’s a piece in the Navy Times. His name is Raffi Jamal.”
“What village?”
“Safid Darreh. It’s not far from here.”
“It’s early yet. Get your asses there and find that villager. If the SEAL and senator are there, you know what to do.”
“Yes, sir. Consider it done. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
Safid Darreh, Parwan Province, Afghanistan
Piper’s rise out of the soft drift of sleep was a languid affair, a lazy meandering of her mind from one pleasant thought to another, the limp relaxation of her body, the comforting sensation of overall well-being. It had been a long, long time since she’d awakened with a sense of such rightness with the world.
Maybe she would get up and go get a double-chocolate mocha latte. She could get triple whipped cream and work those calories off at the gym later. Yeah, work out…
Her eyes popped open on a flash of sudden and total awareness, her every cell coming fully awake, the full extent of her current situation hitting her with startling clarity all at once. It wasn’t whipped cream she’d worked off and it wasn’t the gym she’d used.
Nope, the equipment belonged to Lieutenant Dexter Kaczewski, Navy SEAL. The man who had risked his life for her, had pulled stitches and gotten an infection, dragged his wounded body ten miles in blistering heat and had made blazing love to her, explosive sex right here in a village home in the most dangerous country on the planet.
Unprotected sex―because she’d been lost in her misery and her pain and she hadn’t been thinking.
Oh, my God, what had she done?
Thank God she couldn’t get pregnant.
Very carefully, holding her breath, she slanted her gaze to the right.
What had she done indeed.
Damn, but that was a boneheaded question. What she’d done was as irrefutable as the six feet and two inches of purely nude, achingly male, gorgeous SEAL lying next to her. So obvious as the heat coming off him and the power that so clearly oozed from his body, as she remembered the feel of the dormant energy in the muscles of his arms as he’d held her.
He was easily the most beautiful man she’d ever known. The harsh angles of his face were softened by sleep and the morning’s pale light. His hair was thick and silky, and the color of dark caramel. Beard stubble darkened his jaw. He looked like a dangerous and disreputable rogue, so removed from her blueblood world as to be almost unreal.
The covering, pushed down from their tussling, was bunched at their feet. He was completely naked except for the white bandage, and she…she didn’t even have a bandage or any decency to call her own right now.
This had been an unexpected situation almost from the beginning, when she’d found him devastated over the loss of his men and comforted him. She’d never felt raw and exposed and vulnerable in any man’s presence before, not even her husband, but there was something about Dex that reached deep inside her and twisted.
He was the first man, since she was twenty-two and had fallen for Brad, to make her feel like this…like a total and utter mess. But, oh, God, he was so good at being who he was, and she had to admit that she loved that about him.
His honesty was just as true to his nature as his courage.
But this wasn’t a normal situation. They were fighting for their lives with death breathing down their necks. Dex wasn’t a normal guy; he was an elite Navy SEAL, trained in this battleground that, until now, she’d only seen from afar and in the safety of her own home. Her brother was a SEAL and she was quite aware of how often he got deployed and how little she saw him.
That just wasn’t the kind of life she wanted to handle.
Dex had made her think, though. Think hard.
Maybe it was time she took stock of how she’d been living and giving up every shred of her personal life to chase Brad’s dream, to live in despair of his loss and the loss of their child. If she kept to this path, she would die inside.
Slowly, on a painful, unfulfilled and bitter path.
That’s why she’d pushed him. She needed to feel alive. Desired. Wanted.
Dex made her feel more alive than she’d ever thought possible.
“You’re thinking pretty hard over there.”
The sound of his deep, husky voice made her look at him. His eyes were caressing her face with that look that made her knees weak. She had no barrier to those eyes and what he held for her in them.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped out, and that was suddenly there, too, in his eyes, his big body turning toward hers, a flinch on his face when he moved.
“No.” She covered his mouth with the tips of two fingers. “Please, don’t regret this. I don’t. I wanted you. I needed you and you didn’t let me down, again.”
He swallowed and pushed her hair off her face. “You are a piece of work, lady. If it’s any consolation, I was blindsided by you, your beauty, and I’ve wanted you almost from the moment I saw you.”
She had to smile at that because he looked so contrite. “I don’t need consolation, Dex. Not with you.”
He took a deep breath. “This was about us only being able to rely on each other. Adrenaline, attraction…it’s the danger, Piper. Right? We just lost control.”
He was giving her a way out and she took it, because even though she realized that she’d been hiding and running for the last eighteen months, she still didn’t have the courage to let go. Her fear of loss was much too embedded.
“Of course. You’re right. But I don’t regret it.”
“I want you to know I haven’t been with anyone for a year and at my last checkup I was clean. I never go commando when it comes to sex and protection of my partner. I don’t have any excuse.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since my husband, and I can’t get pregnant, Dex, so it’s all right. We don’t really need to worry about it or
condoms. You’re clean. I’m clean, and I can’t conceive.”
He nodded and let out a breath. “We’d better get going. It wouldn’t do for Blessing to find us like this.”
“Let me take care of your bandage before we get dressed. Afsana laid out some of Raffi’s clothing for you and her son’s for me.”
“No more burka.”
“No, thank you. I’d rather dress like a man, and the suit I came here in is completely ruined.”
“I’m partial to what you’re wearing right now, if I’m being honest.”
She tipped his chin, bringing his sexy gaze up to hers and his focus off her legs.
He grinned in a knee-melting, oh-so-sexy male way, his eyes a warm, liquid blue. “Someone is feeling better,” she said, removing the bandage and inspecting the cluster of wounds. “They look really good. Barely red at all and healing.”
She smoothed antibiotic cream carefully over the injuries, trying to stay detached and focused, but it wasn’t easy. “The only easy day was yesterday.” Her brother said that enough for her to pick it up.
“Hooyah,” he murmured as if he was picking up on exactly what she was thinking. “You put a whole new spin on that, lady.”
She smiled and rose. “Thanks. I think.”
“Oh, it was a compliment,” he said, sitting there looking delicious, with just the covering across his lap. Now that she knew what he was packing under that wrap, she did wish she were home and in a private, safe place with him.
“Get dressed, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied in a deep, sexy voice.
She left the room where Dex was recovering and headed to Afsana’s room, brought Dex his set of clothes and went back to wash up. Donning the garments on the bed, she made a mental note to figure out how she could repay this family who had risked so much to shelter them and had helped her to save Dex. For that, she would be eternally grateful.
As she wrapped the headscarf around her neck, a hand came around her mouth and something hard pressed into her spine. A voice whispered in her ear. “Hello, Senator. You are a resourceful woman.”
It was Markam’s voice.
Oh, God. She was dead.
Bagram Airfield, Parwan Province, Afghanistan
Austin was at his computer again, running another search for any information on Lieutenant Kaczewski.
He sent sidelong glances in Derrick’s direction. Derrick knew the language. That only added to the mounting evidence in Austin’s book that he’d pegged the reserved special agent and colleague correctly. He had been a spook.
CIA.
As in black ops, the deep state, experienced at assassination, blackmail, instigating coups, torture and even brainwashing. Something about Afghanistan was getting under Derrick’s skin and it wasn’t just the sand. Had something happened to Derrick here, something that had him quitting the Company? Sending him to NCIS? Austin was convinced Derrick had been here before. His gut was never wrong.
“You keep looking at me,” Derrick said without taking his eyes from his own computer. “You have something on your mind?”
“You know the language.”
Derrick sighed. “So. A lot of people know Pashto. What’s your point?”
“That’s not the only language you’ve mastered. You know my point. There are other tells, too.”
“My sports car with the machine guns in the tailpipes?”
Did that sleek car Derrick drove have…damn the man. He sounded completely sincere as usual. “You’re always playing your radio at work, and screw it, but you look like the kind of guy who would fit right in.”
“You know, for a guy who’s so good at hacking, I don’t see much result, surfer boy,” Derrick said.
“Go ahead and try to change the subject by taking potshots at my ego.” Austin smiled when Derrick gave him one of his intense looks. But Austin was sure he liked to keep him off balance. It annoyed Derrick that his attempts never seemed to affect Austin. Surfing was all about balance, and Austin paid his dues and then some.
“Why don’t you tell me about the Marines, especially about that embassy takeover? Weren’t you the hero of the day? Saved the ambassador’s very pretty wife after three days barricaded with her and fighting for your lives. Didn’t they pin a medal on your chest for that?”
“Shut up, Gunn,” Austin growled. Damn him. He’d been rummaging around in Austin’s record. Maybe he wasn’t the only primo hacker here. “How do you know that?”
“You talk in your sleep, Beck.”
Austin’s phone rang, and he answered, “Beck.”
“Hey, this is Amber. I’ve been going through Lieutenant Kaczewski’s file and I found a commendation he received for helping an Afghani man sort out a case of mistaken identity.”
“Okay, how is that relevant?”
“He lives in a village about ten miles from Bagram. Safid Darreh. His name is Raffi Jamal.”
Austin sat up straighter. “Hey, Gunn, Kaczewski saved some villager by the name of Jamal. He lives about ten klicks from here. Safid Darreh.”
“First name?”
“Raffi.”
If Austin didn’t know Derrick as well as he did, he might have missed the imperceptible tightening of his fellow agent’s mouth and the narrowing of his eyes. “Let’s check it out.” He sounded apprehensive, which was another red flag in Austin’s book. Derrick never sounded anxious.
Safid Darreh, Parwan Province, Afghanistan
Dexter braced himself against the wall, watching as the guy led with the barrel of an M9. As soon as it sufficiently cleared the doorway and was no longer a threat to his body, Dex grabbed it and swung the guy inside. His mind was on subduing this bad guy tango, but he’d compartmentalized the fact that Piper might already be dead.
The tango fought and Dex pushed him against the wall, shoving his arm into the air. A suppressed shot went harmlessly into the ceiling.
The guy struggled, but Dex countered his moves and knocked the weapon out of his grasp, already prepared to use both hands to capture his attacker’s hand as he stabbed toward Dex’s abdomen with a knife. Deflecting the blade away from his body, he jerked the guy forward and shoved his body into the tango’s back, twisting his arm until he heard it snap. The man cried out in agony, then Dex stripped the blade out of his hand and dragged the man’s back against his chest, setting the knife against his throat.
Just then, Raoul Markam dragged Piper into the doorway across from where Dex restrained the man he’d just fought and now held prisoner with the knife at his throat.
“Kaczewski,” Markam said, his voice low and menacing. “Drop the knife and let him go or I’ll put a bullet in her head.”
“You’re going to kill her, anyway, Markam. Believe me, if she dies, I’m going to take you apart and make sure that you die very slowly.”
Markam did exactly what Dex hoped he would. Dex watched Markam’s eyes and he knew the millisecond he was going to pull the trigger. Dex dropped and with a flick of his wrist released the knife.
The bullet went into the tango’s heart, but Dex wasn’t watching him as he fell dead in front of him. Markam’s head jerked back and he stumbled against the wall, the knife protruding from his eye. He took her with him and, as he slid down the wall, he knocked Piper to her knees. She scrambled away and Dex rushed over.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She pushed his arm down and snatched up the gun on the floor at her feet and brought it up, the barrel right along his ear. The gun discharged twice and Dex spun to find another man crumpling to the floor.
Piper sat there for a second, a shocked look on her face, her hand tightening around the weapon. “Not Dex. Not today, buddy,” she said fiercely. Then she closed her eyes, snarling through clenched teeth, “I am really getting sick of these guys.”
Dex chuckled. “Hooyah, Senator. Locked and loaded, ba-by. I’m going to start calling you Double Tap.”
She gave him a grim smile. “Stay here,” Dex said. “
I guess I don’t have to tell you to shoot to kill.”
She nodded and Dex moved through the house, the gun at the ready, peeking around doors and into closets. There were no other baddies.
He started back for Piper when the back door squeaked and started to open. Dex waited with his finger on the trigger.
“Mon Dieu,” Blessing said, pulling up short and gasping, her hand to her chest. She glanced down the hall where Markam sat. She crossed herself. “Looks like you’ve had some uninvited guests.”
“Piper,” he called softly, and she came out from the living area into the kitchen with their backpack. They all headed for the back door.
“My Jeep is parked just outside the gate,” Blessing said, hugging them both. “I’d say it’s time to leave.”
“It damn well is,” Dex replied and preceded both women out the door, checking thoroughly around before he motioned them out. They rushed through the backyard and slipped out the gate. “Sit in the front,” he instructed Piper as he climbed into the back.
Blessing jumped into the driver’s seat and as soon as she closed the door, she gunned the engine and peeled off.
Piper turned around and wedged herself through the small opening in the seats, then threw herself at Dex. “I don’t want to sit in the front. I want to be close to you,” she said, her voice firm. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as the Jeep wobbled and jostled them against each other until they hit the main paved road.
“There was a man parked at the gate. That’s why I went on a circuitous route to get us to the main road. I don’t think he saw me.”
“Probably another one of Markam’s lackeys.” He looked behind them and the way was clear. “Looks like we got away clean. Your timing is impeccable, my friend.”
“What about the mess we made?” Piper said, looking up at Dex, the gratitude in her eyes shining in their tawny depths.
“Don’t worry. Afsana and Raffi will handle it.”
