Behind Enemy Lines (21 page)

His voice came out of the darkness, a low growl of command. “Come to bed, Annie.”

She fumbled her way to the bed and climbed between the crisp coolness of satin sheets. Reaching for Tom, she was surprised to discover he was still fully clothed.

“Expecting to make a quick departure?”

“Nope. Just a precaution.”

Her hands found his chest and roamed across its delicious expanse.

“A precaution against what?” she asked.

“You.”

“Me?”

She propped herself up on one elbow and explored the far side of Tom’s neck.

His response was stoic. “Yup.”

He held himself rigid, refusing to respond to her touch.

“I don’t understand, Tom.”

“I do. You’re wired tighter than a two-minute bomb. All that tension is going to turn to lust any minute. I know the signs.”

Now that he mentioned it, she was feeling a certain tightly coiled need deep in her belly.

“So what’s the problem?” She threw a leg across his, rubbing the arch of her foot against the cool fabric of his pants. “Are you too tired to, uh, rise to the occasion?”

A noise that sounded like half snort and half laughter came from his side of the bed.

“Let’s just say the combination of your adrenaline and mine could be a bad thing.”

She rolled over until she lay partially on top of him. A bad thing? What was he talking about? He felt pretty darn good to her right about now, all bulging steel muscles and masculine appeal. Sexual vibes poured off him like steam from a sauna.

Heck. She was alive. He was alive. That’s what mattered. They’d barely escaped with their necks, but they’d
done it.
The rush of having avoided death surged through her veins. He felt it, too. She knew it in the way he went stiff beneath her.

“How can this be a bad thing?” she murmured as her hands roamed over his shoulders and arms. The soft cotton of his turtleneck belied the power beneath.

Tom’s hands gripped hers painfully tight, stilling them against his chest. “Sex can get a little…intense…after a brush with death. Trust me. You don’t want this.”

Heat flared in her at the violence in his voice. Something restless and wild was loose inside her tonight, and it was in dire need of taming. There was no doubt about it. She most certainly
did
want this.

Her thigh moved across his, and she writhed sinuously against him. The way his clothes rubbed against her naked skin was maddening. She was woman, and he was man. Why was he holding back?

He lay rigid beneath her, breathing heavily, his heart thudding beneath her ear.

“Come on, Tom. Let it go.”

He gritted out a single word from between clenched teeth. “No.”

She rolled fully on top of him, demanding that he acknowledge her, demanding that he feel her desire. She rubbed shamelessly against the hard bulge in his trousers, knowing she could make him give in to her, needing him to give in.

“I want you, Tom.”

“You don’t know what you’d be getting into.”

“Show me.”

Abruptly he surged beneath her, reversing their positions in an instant. His leg lay across hers, his foot hooked around her far calf as he pinned her to the bed. He yanked her roaming hands away from him and thrust them up over her head.

“I just came off a mission. It takes me a while to wind down. Tonight I’d play rough.”

Her voice dripped with challenge. “And?”

His voice was a low growl. “Annie, I don’t want to hurt you.”

She tested the strength of his hold on her. “You think I can’t handle it? Is that it? Didn’t it occur to you I might feel the same way?”

He went still against her. There was a long pause. She could all but hear him wrestling with himself.

“Are you sure, angel? I can’t promise to be gentle….”

She cut him off, kissing him wildly, with her whole body. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and surged up into him, searching for the release she knew he could give her.

He pulled back, disentangling himself for a brief moment.

His voice came to her out of the velvet blackness of the night, taut and edgy. “You do like to live dangerously, don’t you?”

The dark tone of his words sent a thrill down her spine. He was part of the night. He enveloped her in his arms, his demanding weight pinning her in place. His callused hands roamed over her naked flesh just shy of painfully, taking pleasure where they willed.

The night’s desperation broke over her, and she returned his caresses. She tore at his clothing, maddened by a need to feel his naked skin against hers.

“Slow down, sweetheart,” he murmured. “We can’t afford to lose any of this equipment.”

He snagged her wrists and dragged them upward. He wrapped her fingers around two spindles of the headboard. “Don’t let go,” he ordered.

He rolled away and his weight left the bed.

She waited impatiently while he shed his throat microphone, his ear piece, binoculars, pouches and pocketfuls of bits and pieces of explosives, assorted knives and his spare pistols. Annie noted that one of those went under his pillow.

Finally she heard the whisper of clothes hitting the floor, and the mattress moved beneath her.

Then his mouth captured hers. He kissed her rapaciously, biting her lower lip, plunging his tongue inside her mouth aggressively, burning her cheeks and chin with his beard.

His hands trailed down her arms until they encountered her bra. He all but tore the garment off her body, baring her to his greedy mouth. He twirled and flicked her nipples with his thumbs, sending her surging up off the mattress into the almost painful pleasure that seared through her.

He did tear off her underwear, and then his knee intruded between hers, opening her for his invasion. It came first from his hand, his fingers plucking mercilessly at the very core of her until she thought she’d scream in pleasure and frustration. He followed with an assault by mouth and tongue, driving her beyond thought, beyond anything but an all-consuming need to have him inside of her.

He made her beg until she nearly wept for him, and then he rose over her, lifting her hips to him. He filled her with a single violent stroke that brought her to an immediate, shattering release.

He gave her no quarter.

While she was still shuddering around his burning heat, he began to ride her, plunging again and again into her, stoking the fires of her desire, demanding more and yet more from her.

She could no more deny him than she could deny her unfettered exultation at being alive.

Again and then again she scaled the heights of ecstasy, while Tom dragged her ever higher until she could no longer breathe, overcome by such an excess of rapture, she thought she’d die from it. She twined her legs around his waist, urging him wordlessly to take every last bit of her.

He wrapped his hands over hers where she gripped the headboard, his vise-like grasp barely noticeable as he pounded into her. At the last second before she screamed aloud with the glory of it, his mouth closed over hers, drinking in her cries as if he would suck the very life from her.

For a single, endless second, she and Tom became one. They breathed and felt as one in a union of bodies. Everything else ceased to exist as they experienced a moment of pure sensation, a moment of quintessential perfection.

In that single second Annie knew exactly what it felt like to be truly alive, down to the very last fiber of her being.

If there had been any doubt in her mind about whether or not they’d really made it through the night’s perils, that doubt was erased as Tom’s perspiration-slicked body pressed intimately against hers.

And then he rolled away, taking her with him and tucking her under his shoulder.

His whisper was rough, yet infinitely tender. “Are you all right, angel?”

Shuddering pleasure still rippled through her body. With effort she found the strength to answer.

“‘All right’ doesn’t quite capture how I’m doing.”

Concern laced his voice. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She snuggled closer to him, smiling against his chest. “Do I seem hurt to you?”

He answered with a low chuckle. “I guess not. If anything, you seem…well pleasured.”

“And you? Are you all right?”

“I’m better than all right, angel. Although, I’ve got to tell you—I can’t imagine there will ever be another egress to top this. This is one for the record books.”

She smiled. She had to agree with him on that score.

A dull flash of steel glinted off a bloody knife as it descended toward her. A rebel soldier with skeleton face and a gaping, bloody hole in his chest wielded it. She turned to flee from him and ran out into a street where a tank was waiting to cut her down. She ran and ran, but she couldn’t find Tom anywhere. A dark mist closed in around her and she was trapped, unable to see her way out of the maze.

Very gradually Annie became aware of a hand on her shoulder shaking her. An urgent voice murmured, “Wake up, Annie. Wake up!”

She lurched awake abruptly. It was very dark. She was in a strange bed, and she was not alone.

Tom.

He was with her in the bed. The nightmare loosened its grip a little at the thought of him coming to her rescue. Tanks and knives and crumpled bodies began to jumble together in her head in a grisly tableau.

Instantly Tom’s arms were around her, almost as if he’d been waiting for this moment. “I’ve got you now. You’re safe.”

She huddled against him, grateful for his solid comfort.

Her body felt bruised and sore, not only from their love-making, but also from hours spent lying on the ground and then that frantic sprint for their lives. The thought of it still made her shudder. Were it not for the last second help by Tom’s men, she’d have died out there in the street.

She savored the slow, steady beat of Tom’s heart beneath her ear.

“I had a nightmare,” Annie finally whispered.

“So I gather. I was expecting it.”

She pulled back enough to look at his darkly shadowed face. “You were?”

“I do this for a living, remember? I’ve rescued a few civilians in my time.”

She turned her head away from him, ashamed. “But I’m not a civilian. I’m a military officer.”

“Who’s never seen combat, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“I’ve been shot at before.” Her tone was defensive.

She felt his smile against her forehead.

“Oh, yeah? When?”

Annie went stiff. When she nearly got him killed, that’s when. She changed the subject and prayed he wouldn’t become suspicious. “I hope you’re not mad at me for bringing you and your team to a brothel. It was all I could think of in the heat of the moment.”

His voice caressed her out of the silken darkness. “We’re alive. How could I possibly be mad at you for that?” Humor crept into his voice. “Besides, it’s a rare mission where we get to spend the night in a comfortable, safe bed.”

“Not to mention the hookers provided for all your men.”

Silent laughter shook him. “I’ll never live this mission down. Try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will probably be worse than today.”

She stiffened, lifting her head in a futile attempt to see his face in the darkness. “Why?”

“We’re going to have to get past whoever wins tonight’s fight.”

“Oh.” She already felt naked and exposed just thinking about it.

“Don’t think about tomorrow, Annie. It’ll take care of itself. Sleep now.”

She shook her head. “I’m too wired to sleep.”

Tom sighed. “I know the feeling.”

They lay comfortably entwined for several minutes. He remarked quietly, “You did good tonight. That was a nice run you made.”

“I almost didn’t make it.”

He tightened his arms around her. “But you got the job done. You gutted it out. I’m proud of you.”

A warm glow spread through her until she remembered the tightness in her chest, the heaviness of her feet, the awful certainty of failure. She willed away encroaching memories of the narrowness of their escape. “I’d have died without your guys’ help.”

His voice was velvety soft, soothing. She focused on it. “That’s what teamwork is all about. They helped you run a little faster, and you found us a safe place to stay.”

“Well, for tonight at any rate.” She paused. She truly didn’t want to hear the answer to her next question. “Tom, what do we do next?”

He sighed, his voice shifting into a tone of military command. “Tomorrow we’ll scout the area and find a way past whatever army ends up controlling this sector.”

Hating herself for asking, but needing to nonetheless, she said, “I’m going to be in the way again, aren’t I?”

“Of course not!”

“I nearly got you guys killed tonight.”

“No, you didn’t. I nearly got us killed. I’m the one who decided to stick around and wait for Tex.”

She could hear the self-recrimination in his voice. “You’d have left if I hadn’t made you stay, though.”

He shook his head, his chin brushing lightly against her brow. “You didn’t make me do anything, angel. I was in command, and I’m responsible for what happened. We waited for Tex, he had the information we needed, and we all made it out. That’s what matters.”

Annie listened to the steady beat of Tom’s heart beneath her ear. He’d made the courageous decision that she hadn’t when she’d been faced with the same dilemma over the jungle. He’d understood the value of saving one person, even if it meant risking the whole team to do it.

And yet, he’d been willing to turn his back on Tex for her. He’d been willing to abandon that very sense of teamwork that was the glue holding them all together. She might be a noncombatant, but she knew exactly what had happened in that alley. He’d been about to destroy his team for her.

“Tom?”

“Hmmm?” He sounded relaxed, on the verge of sleep.

“Why were you going to choose my safety over keeping your team together?”

He was silent a very long time. So long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But finally he spoke. His words sounded ripped from the depths of his being. “Do you really have to ask why I chose you?”

Annie squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe that was the difference. Maybe if she’d known Tom before she decided to sacrifice him by dragging him through the jungle, maybe if she’d loved him then, she’d have had the courage to risk herself and all his men for him.