Close Quarters (20 page)

“You're an amazing man, Roman.”

“You think so?” His tone was about ten times more serious than hers.

And just like that, the atmosphere around them changed, went deep and meaningful.

“You going to sleep in Mbari's tent tonight?” she asked.

Roman's brows rose. “You going to fuss if I say no?”

“Maybe.” She looked down at her nails, as if they had a full manicure instead of ragged cuticles and blunt tips. “Maybe not.”

“It looks like he and Kadin are making friends.”

“Yeah, I suppose they are.”

“So,
maybe
or maybe
not
?”

“Probably not,” she answered, knowing what the real question was. Did she object to his sharing her tent?

Whether it was his actions with the kidnapped children and Mbari, the things Roman had said, the claims Neil had made or simply the love that refused to be denied inside her, but she was prepared to share a tent without argument. Maybe more than simply share. Heck, who was she kidding? Definitely more.

At least this time she could be sure he didn't have ulterior motives for making love.

 

Ben didn't wait for Fleur to come back to the chalet, but started heading toward the dining hall as soon as her conversation with the director wrapped up.

He met her outside the medical hut. “You told him.”

“You look pleased, so you must be talking about me informing him that I will not be continuing as compound administrator.”

He took her hand, lacing their fingers. “Yes, that.”

“The sooner Sympa-Med is made aware of my imminent departure, the better.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Departure?”

“Imminent.”

“I do not know how long the paperwork will take to obtain, but I am ready to move as soon as it has cleared proper channels.”

“I work under the aegis of the State Department. We can clear proper channels in record time.”

“Nothing would make me happier.” And he could tell she meant it.

He wanted to kiss her right there, but knew she was shy about public displays. The fact she'd allowed him to hold her hand was pretty amazing as it was.

“You've got that look.”

“The one that says ‘I want to kiss you'?”

“Is that what it means? All I know is I've never had anyone look at me so tenderly. I believe I fell in love with that expression even as I fell for you.”

“I'll have to make sure I look at you like this often then. I don't want you falling out of love.”

“I do not think that can happen. Not for us. We are too aware of what a miracle it is we have found each other.”

“You are right. I hope you can forgive me.” But he could not hold back from kissing her right then.

She didn't even ask what for, just tipped her head to make the caress of his mouth against hers easier. He didn't let it get hot and heavy; he just needed the connection.

“You are so precious,” he said as he moved up to place a kiss on her forehead.

“I feel the same about you. You are an uncommon man.”

“For you.”

“For me.”

Drew and Rachel were waiting in the hut when Ben and Fleur returned.

“We've got to try to keep Sympa-Med's name out of the espionage case,” Rachel said as soon as the door shut behind Ben.

“Is that possible?” Fleur asked, her voice laced with hope.

“Probable? No. Possible? Yes.” Ben shrugged. “But our agency specializes in the improbable.”

Rachel grinned. “He's got that right. I remember the first case I worked with TGP. I was a DEA agent on leave then. I haven't been on an uncomplicated assignment once since joining.”

“You sound like you thrive on the challenge,” Drew observed.

Rachel grinned. “Yep. But don't try to tell me you don't. Super-spy, super-soldier, they're all about going beyond the norm, even when the norm is federal undercover work.”

Drew nodded. “True.” He looked at Fleur. “I called Roman with an update on your discussion with the director.”

“You must have called him right after I left the hut,” Ben said.

“I'd sent the connection before Fleur and the director were done talking. I didn't figure Roman needed deets on Fleur's move to the States.”

“I imagine Tanya would not mind having them,” Ben observed.

“True, but I already told Roman that you two are glowing like a couple of camping lanterns in the middle of the desert.”

Fleur made a sound of amusement. “You have quite the way with words, Mr. Peterson.”

“I have been told,” he said, with an attempt at humility in his expression that was less than convincing.

“How is Tanya?” Fleur asked without preamble.

“Doing fine. They've dropped all six boys off with family.”

“I thought there were seven.”

“Roman decided to keep one.”

Ben couldn't even begin to hide his shock at that. Fleur looked well and truly stunned too.

“Say again. I thought I just heard you tell me that your team leader has decided to adopt a child.”

“You heard right. The poor kid doesn't have any family.”

“That's true of a huge number of children in Zimbabwe,” Fleur said. “The AIDS plague and continuing spread of malaria, not to mention malnutrition have taken their toll on family lines.”

“Not all of those other kids got themselves into Roman's bubble of protection.”

“Must be a serious bubble.”

“It is.”

“So, Tanya really is safe with him?”

“As safe as she can be anywhere with a kill order out on her.”

“Isn't Rachel at risk right now?”

“She's pretty safe here in the hut.”

“Besides, I can take care of myself.”

“A sniper's bullet isn't going to bounce off your attitude alone,” Ben reminded her.

“I'll wear a vest if I leave the hut, Dad.”

He shook his head. “You'd better.”

“Besides, Kadin checked for line of sight into the compound and there are only a couple of places she would be vulnerable to sniper fire. One is near the south-end latrines and the other is the open area between the dining hall and the medical hut.”

“That's good to know,” Rachel said.

“The dining hall could be an issue.”

“Hopefully, the perp will act before the sick day story gets old.”

“She's in Harare until tomorrow,” Fleur said.

“You're convinced it's the director's PA?” Ben asked.

“I'm convinced she's connected,” Fleur replied. “No one else could have sent those e-mails.”

“Unless you think the director is playing a deep game.”

“I think there are few people in the world who think on the manipulative levels you do.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Think nothing of it.”

They agreed Drew would go to the dining hall early for the evening meal and leave a few minutes after Ben and Fleur arrived, sneaking back to Fleur's hut to watch over Rachel. The female TGP agent grumbled, but she'd taken her course in teamwork and didn't put up too much of a disagreement.

M
bari showed no visible disappointment when told he would be sharing a tent with his new friend, Kadin. He and Tanya went to the tents together and she hugged the yawning boy goodnight. He'd had a rough few days, but from the sound of what his life was like before, none of them had been easy for a long time.

He held her back from going into her tent. “You think he really take me America?”

“Yes, I do.” And it was in that moment that she realized no matter how hard she fought it, how futile it might be, she was in love with Roman.

The feeling was deeper than anything she'd experienced with Quinton, more uncontrollable than she thought love should be and she suspected irrevocable.

She hugged Mbari again. “Get some rest. Roman doesn't go back on his promises.”

He might withhold the truth. He might take advantage of an undeniable attraction, but he wouldn't break his word.

Just as he'd promised to protect Tanya and had stood between her and bullets to do it, not to mention risking the job he loved and believed in, he would do whatever it took to bring Mbari to America with him.

“I think he good man. You take him without cows.”

She laughed, tears only a heartbeat away. “I'll think about it,” she managed to get out with a smile.

“Yes. I like you for family. You very pretty without black stuff on your face.”

“Thank you.” Kadin had found them a small offshoot of a river to camp near that night. Bamboo hid them from curious eyes, at least of the human variety and Tanya had taken the opportunity to take a thorough bath. She'd even washed her hair.

Roman had watched her and watched over her and she hadn't even made a token protest about turning his back. She'd fled when he'd started stripping for his own bath after she'd rinsed her hair, though.

She had no desire to put on a show for the others and hadn't trusted her own control if both Roman and she were naked.

Roman joined her a half hour later, the darkness in the tent almost complete. She listened to the rustle of his clothing as he undressed, and waited in silence for him to join her on top of the sleeping bags.

His big body came down beside hers, his hand closing over her hip immediately. “Please tell me this is an invitation,” he whispered quietly.

She'd gone to bed completely naked. She reached out and placed her hand on his chest, burying her fingers in the masculine hair. Instead of answering verbally, she leaned forward and up so her mouth could brush the underside of his chin.

“Oh, thank God.” And he said it exactly like a prayer.

She smiled against his stubble. It scratched her lips, but she didn't mind. The rasp of it against her skin later was going to feel very, very good.

“I was going insane watching you bathe. You know that, don't you?”

She didn't bother to reply, just kissed along his jaw and down his neck, inhaling the clean male musk that would haunt her dreams when they went their separate ways.

“That feels good,
liúba
. Don't stop.”

She didn't, latching on to the join between his neck and shoulder and sucking gently while his big warrior's body moved against hers. His hard-on pressed hotly against her hip, letting her know that he wasn't exaggerating his level of desire.

Not that she doubted it. The one thing she could not doubt between them was the reality of their mutual passion.

If she did, she couldn't do this, no matter how much she loved him. But she believed now that he had used a convenient situation, not seduced her into thinking he wanted her when he didn't.

He wanted her all right. The increasing urgency of his movements made that undeniable.

“I want to be inside you,” he gritted. “But I want to taste you too.”

He sounded confused by his own conflicting desires. That was okay by her. How fair would it be if she was the only one with disconnected thoughts and feelings?

He pulled her into his body, rubbing them together with passionate purpose. She bit his chest to muffle the moan snaking out of her throat.

He grunted, but he didn't try to push her face away. Instead, she could feel pre-come leaking onto her skin from the tip of his penis.

And then, somehow they were kissing, and not a gentle, let's-get-started kiss, but rather a demand for more and deeper and more again. His hands roamed her body while she returned the favor and did her best to stifle the sounds of passion coming from her.

He broke the kiss and whispered next to her ear. “Do you want my bandana?”

She sensed that he was asking something more, something bigger, but she wasn't sure what. One thing she did know, if she said yes, she would be legitimizing the time before, acknowledging it had not only been about the data on her security chip. She was ready to accept that it had been real passion. Perhaps she was even ready to forgive him.

She nodded against his head.

“Say the word. I need to hear it.”

But she didn't want to talk. If she let words out, the wrong ones might escape.

“Come on, baby, tell me. No doubts.” He tugged at her earlobe with his teeth.

“Yes,” she hissed out, needing the bandana to stop her from blurting out her love as much as to keep her passionate noises muffled.

He tucked the knotted center of the bandana into her mouth and then tied it snugly behind her head. Having it in her mouth brought back the feelings she'd had that morning in her bed, leading to an arousal so intense, she was shaking with it.

They touched each other in a frenzy of need that had her gripping his erection and tugging it, while he used his fingers to spread the wetness between her legs along her swollen lips to her clitoris. She thrashed against him and he growled with need.

This felt so primal, so intensely unique to them that she could not even consider it mere sex. Despite the level of passion flowing through them both, or maybe because of it, this felt spiritual and elemental and absolutely necessary.

“I love the gag, especially here in the dark where we can't even see each other, just feel,” he said into her ear. “But I want to kiss you.”

She nodded her understanding, rubbing her cheek along his.

“I'll just have to kiss you everywhere but your lips.”

She moaned at the image his words presented and then moaned again when he started with her collarbone. He didn't just kiss her, or at least he made the kisses as erotic as anything they'd done with their mouths. By the time he'd reached the apex of her thighs, she was floating on a haze of eroticism that turned the dark around them into a sensual blanket of air caressing her oversensitive body with invisible fingers.

He pressed inside her with his very real, thick, long fingers while using his tongue to kiss her nether lips with powerful intimacy. He was so intent on her pleasure, showing no impatience to consummate this lovemaking. Apparently, he had decided what he wanted most was to taste her.

She reveled in the experience, her heart storing away every drop of pleasure, every emotional response for later, when she would not have his hard body to make her feel both wanted and safe.

Her climax caught her by surprise, jolting her body into rigidity before the convulsions of her womb radiated the ultimate pleasure outward into her every extremity. She was still shuddering in aftershocks when he pushed inside her body, stretching and filling her in a way she knew she would miss for the rest of her life.

The moment was so profound, so intense that she could not hold back the emotion washing over her, drowning all her inhibitions with a tidal wave of feeling. “I love you,” she cried out, praying he could not understand the words through the gag.

Because she simply could not hold them back.

He untied the gag with jerky movements and then yanked it from her mouth before covering her lips with his. The kiss carried them through her second orgasm and his first.

He collapsed on top of her, but pulling out, rolled to the side all too soon. She didn't know what he did with the condom and she didn't really care right then. She just let him curve her into his body and draw her into sleep.

 

Ben carefully disentangled himself from Fleur's body and silently left her bed. The muffled sounds of someone coming into the hut had woken him from his light doze.

So, someone in the compound
was
working with the espionage ring.

He crept to the door in time to see one of the security guards going into Tanya's room. Ben trusted Rachel to be awake, but feigning sleep. That didn't mean he wasn't going to watch her back though.

He made his way across the hall without making a sound. The guard had left the door ajar, probably not wanting the
snick
of the tumbler to wake up the woman sleeping within.

Rachel was lying on her side with her back to the door. The guard held some kind of device near her. He checked his watch twice over the next ten minutes, his nervousness a discernible presence around him.

The tableau did not change for fifteen silent minutes, but then the guard checked his watch again and tucked the device into a pocket before backing away toward the door.

Ben melted into the shadows, following the other man when he snuck out of the hut. The guard went to the security dormitory and slipped inside.

After waiting fifteen minutes to make sure he wasn't coming right back out, Ben made his way to quarters and woke Drew to tell him what had happened.

One of the Marine privates came out of the other bedroom, weapon drawn and moving on quiet feet.

Ben nodded approval at him. “Good reflexes,” he said quietly.

The private let out a breath. “Sorry, sir. I thought you were an intruder.”

“Don't apologize for doing your job.”

“And doing it well,” Drew said, tucking his shirt in.

“Is there a problem, sir?” the private asked.

“We do have a situation, soldier, and I'd like you and your fellow private's help with it.”

“I'll go get him.”

“I'll stake out the guards' dormitory,” Drew said as the other man left. “Send one of the privates to relieve me once you brief them on the basics of the situation.”

“Will do.”

When the Marines returned, Ben shared a very truncated version of what was going on. “I need you to keep a protection detail on the director and help us watch the security guard to see who his contact is.”

They agreed and the one who had woken when Ben had entered the hut went to relieve Drew. Ben put in a sat-call to the old man, asking for more Marine backup to be on standby for the arrests. He would have enjoyed arresting the spies himself, but that wasn't the way TGP operated.

They maintained secrecy by not participating in the cleanup segment of an assignment.

When Drew returned, he made his own call to Roman, telling the team leader of the guard's involvement.

 

Roman waited until morning to tell Tanya about the call Neil had brought to him in the early hours of the morning.

“So, they know who the spies are?” she asked with an unreadable expression.

“They strongly suspect the PA, but they're sure of the security guard, of course. They're watching to see who he has a rendezvous with.”

“Is Fleur okay?”

“She never even woke up while the guard was downloading the data with another hand-held scanner.”

“He must have gotten it from one of the Sympa-Med people.”

“That's the current theory.”

“So, I can return?”

“Not quite yet. I called my boss, but he wants us to lay low for the next forty-eight hours while he gets the kill order rescinded and any teams in the field recalled.”

Corbin had also promised to expedite the paperwork on Mbari.

The General thought the Zimbabwe government would cooperate in order to keep another story about the human-trafficking problem within their borders out of the international media. They were already at risk for further economic sanctions; they couldn't afford a major incident right now.

“That makes sense.” She hugged herself, somehow looking more vulnerable than she had when he'd told her they had to leave the compound. “Are we going to stay here and camp out until you get the all clear?”

“No.”

When he didn't say anything else, she gave him a look. “Care to expand on that?”

“I thought we'd take Mbari into Harare and do some shopping for him.”

“Won't they be looking for me in Harare?”

“Actually, no. Even if they knew you had left the compound, they would assume you'd made a run for a border, most likely South Africa's, just like we planned originally. There's no reason for an Army kill team to be in Harare and whoever arranged the roadblock to get to you believes you are still in the compound, so they won't be looking for you. Even if they were, they wouldn't be looking in Harare.”

“But you were going to take me out of the country.”

“That was before we got sidetracked returning Peter Pan's lost boys. We can stay under the radar for another two days and then return to the Sympa-Med compound.”

“Sounds good by me. Are we staying in a hotel tonight?”

“We are.”

She perked up at that, the first time she'd really smiled since they'd started talking. He would have thought she'd be happier to find out that the people who had used her as an information mule were going to be brought to justice.

“You want a hotel bed?”

“I want an unlimited hot shower. I haven't had one of those since the last time I was back home.” She looked at him through her lashes. “I wouldn't mind sharing the water.”

And just like that he was hard enough to bust a zipper. “I'll keep that in mind.”

But they had things to do before that.

The drive into Harare was uneventful. They found the market and took Mbari shopping for extra clothes, paper and art supplies and a hand-held game system that Kadin insisted the kid needed. Roman wasn't inclined to disagree.