Dangerous Territory: An Alpha Ops novella (5 page)

“I understand better than you can imagine. Forgetting isn’t an option here. It never was. What you see at war stays with you, and if you don’t deal with it, it will always be the monster in the dark room waiting to spring. Forget ‘forgetting’ and try dealing.”

Silence.

“You think I don’t know how you feel about it? You think I don’t know the images that flick through your mind when you’re on a date, or at the movies, or having Sunday lunch with your folks? I know. I’ve lost”—
shit, this got real, fast
—“too many people. Friends. People I knew only to salute or nod at. Men I hadn’t ever seen before. And each one of them is in my head for good.” Where had that come from? So much for allowing her to chat so he could make a plan.

A small voice came through the dark. “How do you manage? How do you cope with watching the life slip out of someone’s eyes?” She sniffed quietly, and the knowledge that she was in peril yet crying about someone she lost felt like a tiny piece of shrapnel had lodged in his heart. An overwhelming need to comfort and protect her flooded through him.

“Sweetheart, where are you? Come here.”

“I don’t want to. I’m fine,” she said.

“You don’t sound fine. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to miss her and want to punch someone when you remember she’s not coming back. It’s normal. Just embrace it. That’s what I do. Hit something or someone. But you have to talk about her, right? Otherwise it’s like she never existed. Come here. Tell me about her. What was her name?”

He felt her sit next to him. Close, but not close enough. Shit. What was he thinking?
Keep your mind on the plan, idiot
.

“Sarah. She was a supply person at Bagram. Everyone loved her. I mean everyone. It was my first time embedded, and she took me out on a few supply runs, you know, before I braved the actual patrols. For the best part of a year, I hung out with her. And then one time, we were just heading into the gym when I realized I’d forgotten my weight gloves. I turned back, telling her I’d meet her inside. I made it maybe twenty steps when a mortar came over the fence and blew up at the entrance to the gym.” He winced in the dark, remembering the incident.

“Bits of her just weren’t there anymore. I pulled her onto my lap, and the last thing she said to me was…” Her breath started coming in shorter and faster, and he wondered if he should try to calm her down, but he knew she needed this.

“What did she say?” he asked.

She gave a choked sob and laugh. “She said, ‘Anything to get out of exercising.’ And then she… left.”

“Come here,” he whispered.

She shuffled closer to him, and he slipped his arm around her shoulders, letting her head rest on his. He held her until she stopped crying. He wondered how she could feel so much and do what she did for a living. And how she had the courage to come back to the war after experiencing that. And how good she felt tucked next to him.

And how she could live with herself, doing what she did for a living.

Enough
.

He withdrew his arm from her shoulders and grabbed his water bottle. “Do you want to rehydrate?”

“Sure. I drank all my water in the MRAP.”

“Here.” He reached up into the darkness, and his hand collided with bare skin. He felt farther up and encountered more bare skin. “What the…?”

“Oh! That’s embarrassing. When you brought me in from the bathroom, I had only put my panties back on. My jeans are still out there.”

“What? You take your pants off to pee?” He was getting a strange insight into women here, and he was incredibly uncomfortable and intrigued. Not about the pee, but about the type of woman who felt comfortable enough to take off her clothes in the middle of a war zone.

“I don’t have a dick, you know. How did you expect me to pee?”

“You might not have a dick, but you have balls,” he said grudgingly. “Do you want me to get your pants?”

“It’s okay. I’ll get them. I know where I left them.” Her voice trailed off as she went around the corner toward the entrance to the cave.

“No. Wait!” he hissed. Shit. What was he thinking, letting her wander around outside? He jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg, and rounded the corner, to see her perfectly silhouetted in the mouth of the cave against the moonlit sky. “Get down!”

She turned to look at him instead of ducking. Damned civilians. He launched himself at her, pulling her to the ground but trying to brace her fall. He didn’t really succeed.

Breath huffed out of her as he landed right on top of her. “Shh,” he said against her ear. In the distance, he could hear voices. With the echoes, it was difficult to know if they belonged to people who were directly in front of them or across the valley. And suddenly, as the voices drifted off into the distance, he became aware of her body under his. The silence. When he moved slightly, his mind shifted to the perfect night they’d shared in D.C. The night he’d thought about so often. The night that had sustained him through some difficult deployments. He’d wanted to find her but was honestly too scared to let go of his fantasy. Reality always sucked, and her being a damn reporter sucked the most.

He raised himself on his forearm and whispered against her ear, “Are you all right?”

She nodded, causing her short black hair to brush against his face. He closed his eyes and inhaled. His body weakened and then got a lot harder. Fuck. He almost wanted to cry. He had dreamed of being this close to her again, being on top of her, able to feel her scent overwhelm him again. But hell. Fate had played a dirty trick. Here, in a fucking cave in Afghanistan. What a fuckup.

She moved under him, and holy shit, he was sure she had moaned. Or wait. Maybe that was a groan. “Am I hurting you?” he asked, suddenly concerned.

“In ways you can’t possibly imagine.” She let out a sigh. “No. I’m fine. I might need help up, though.”

He pulled himself off her and helped her up, and was very, very glad for the darkness of the cave. He knew his dick was tenting his BDUs. Thank God no one could see him. Then she stood to one side, and the moon shone directly at him.

“Well, soldier, is that a night-vision scope in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”

“I’m a fucking
airman
, not a soldier. And what did you expect, you writhing under me when I was just trying to save your sorry ass?”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I was joking, I thought that
was
your scope in your pocket. I was just trying…”

Shit. Shit. Busted.

He took a deep breath. And tried to laugh. “We seemed to understand each other better three years ago.”

“Well, we didn’t exactly do a lot of talking back then.” She smiled wryly.

Josh tried really hard not to close his eyes and give in to the emotion still coursing through him from being so close to her again after all those years of just dreaming about her.

Holding up one finger, she turned. She pointed at her jeans and nodded for his approval. He gave a tiny nod, and she virtually scampered out to pick them up.

As she entered the cave again, with a grin, he leaned against the wall to watch her in the moonlight. She bent to step into the pants, and her glossy dark hair swung in front of her. She pulled them up and started to fasten them. He couldn’t stop himself, God help him.

His hand hooked over the top of the jeans, preventing her from finishing doing them up. She straightened. She should have had a quizzical look on her face. But she didn’t. It was like she knew. She met his eyes, and he detected a tiny flicker of her eyebrows, as if saying, “Yes?” Still holding her jeans, he pulled her toward him, his whole body throbbing for her. Every one of his cells felt as if they were reaching for her. Every feeling he had ever had, every warm thought, wrapped around her. He wanted her so badly. Had wanted her for three years. If he didn’t think about it, maybe he could forget she was a soul-sucking hack. His body certainly seemed to have forgotten already.

Desperate to taste those lips again, he abruptly pulled her against his body and, in the same instant, claimed her mouth as his. She tasted every bit as good as his memory served. His body responded instantly, as if it had been waiting three years just to find itself in this very place.

Her mouth opened under his, kissing him back, her tongue dancing under his, making him long for the feel of her tongue elsewhere on his body.

A crack of a twig or something from outside put his instincts back in place as he wrenched away from her. Christ. What had he been thinking? He never broke the rules. She looked puzzled, but still she didn’t say anything.

He took a huge step away from her, shaking his head at himself. What. The. Fuck. Was wrong with him?

She took a deep breath in and let it go in a long sigh. But still she remained silent. Why didn’t she say something? Shit. Was she planning on writing about this? Of course she was. That was what she did. His career was over. His status as one of the most fast-tracked senior-enlisted airmen in his career field was over. Damage control.

“I don’t know why I did that. I’m sorry for breaking protocol. I hope we’re still off the record.” He hated how hopeful he sounded.

She laughed lightly. “Exactly what about this”—she gestured around the cave—“is protocol? Exactly what are you breaking?”

Oooch.
She was glad she wasn’t close to his grinding teeth. She could see that the kiss had unraveled something in his brain, something that had been wound so tightly before. She doubted he had ever broken a rule. Poor thing.

“You don’t think that these extraordinary circumstances allow for a slackening of your rules? Not even a little bit?” She slowly closed the gap between them and couldn’t help but giggle as he moved farther and farther back from her.

“Stay. Where. You. Are.” He held up his hands to ward her off, and she held up hers in submission.

“Okay, okay. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” It wasn’t okay, and it was far from over. She wanted him, and her body was screaming in defiance of her words. His kiss had very nearly brought her to tears. The memory of how he’d saved her before and how he was here to save her again was almost too much to bear. If they were going to die in the next couple of days, she wanted to go out with a bang of her choosing. He wasn’t immune to her; she was sure of it.

Was she really going to do this? She was single, on the pill, young… ish, and maybe about to die in a war zone. Was there a better time?

She needed him in every way you could need someone. After thinking about Sarah, she so desperately needed to feel alive. And if he truly hated her profession as much as it seemed, this was likely to be her only opportunity to consume him. To hold him. To do everything she had fantasized about for three years. She was never going to have another opportunity to live her dream. Or at least pretend to live her dream. And tomorrow? Well, tomorrow could bring anything. At least here they were safe and warm and together. A tear trickled down her face as the unbidden emotion of being with this man bubbled to the surface.

As she moved closer to him, he continued to retreat until his back was firmly against the wall of the cave. Although she knew that only by the sound of his heel hitting the stone and by his muffled curse.

Ha! No escape now.

As quickly and as silently as she could, she stripped off all her clothes. The feel of the air swirling around her and the complete darkness excited her. She was laying it all on the line for one proper night with him and the hope that he wasn’t a slave to the rules of combat.

“Catch,” she said, and threw the helmet light that Walker had given her. He fumbled in the dark for it and switched it on.

It illuminated her bare feet first and her bare calves.

“Christ,” he groaned. “What the fuck are you doing?” He didn’t sound annoyed, though, and she took that as a win, even though he clicked the light off.

“Don’t you want to see more? Don’t you think it’s time to make up for the sixty-eight, three years ago?”

He swallowed audibly. “The sixty-eight?”

“When you go down on me, and I owe you one?”

There was a second of silence, and then he laughed. “I’ve never, ever met a woman like you before.”

She remained silent, not wanting to get into a conversation about women like, or unlike, her.
Switch on the light, dammit.

The light clicked back on, still on her legs. It wasn’t Walker’s light. He had switched on his own pencil light. It emitted a beam so thin, it lit up only a few square inches of her at a time. With her eyes closed, she could feel the heat of the bulb trained on her ankles. And then the heat slid up her calf. It was becoming hard to stay still. To stay upright. The hot beam of light drew patterns on her. Sculpted the side of her thigh, warmed her stomach, and then in agonizingly slow circles, he ran the beam over her breast, around and around, until her breaths became shallow. And then the light hit her nipple, and she took a sharp intake of oxygen as it hardened in the heat, as if his mouth were around it.

She heard him move closer, but still, only his light touched her. She flashed back to the Four Seasons, when he had teased her mercilessly.
Quid pro quo, baby.

*     *     *

Up until that moment, he hadn’t admitted to himself what he was going to do. He was following the rules literally if not ethically. Seeing her like this, inch by inch, after so long fantasizing about her, was almost too much to take. His dick was as hard as it had ever been. Maybe it was his body’s reaction to the forbidden, or maybe it was just her.

And when she covered her illuminated breast with her hand, he wanted to call “no fair,” but then she stroked herself. Once. Twice. Lingering over her nipple. And then her fingers, gently rolling it between them, squeezing and teasing. She started to moan, and he was almost undone.

“What do you want? What are you doing?” He needed to know, needed to hear it from her own lips.

“I want you to tell me what
you
want,” she whispered back.

In the second that he hesitated, her hand dropped from his flashlight. Lost for a second, he followed the outline of her arm until he discovered where her hand was.

“You,” he said hoarsely. “I want you.” He stepped toward her, and inches away, touched her shoulder with his fingertips. Her skin was so silky. He ran his hand down her arm, wrist, and hand, to her fingers. He matched her, stroke for stroke until her hand fell away.

She moaned and opened her legs for him, allowing him further access to her heat and wetness. He slid a finger inside her as his thumb continued to play with her clit. The yielding of her flesh mesmerized him and made him want to almost absorb her through his skin. He was definitely way too overdressed for this. He found her hand and moved it between her legs again while he made quick work of his uniform. As soon as he dropped his pants, her hand, still slick from her wetness, was on his dick. His restraint exploded into dust.

What rules? What war? What air force?

He found her breast again, this time with his lips. She arched back, pressing more into his mouth. He sucked and nibbled until her breaths sounded like sobs. Lifting her effortlessly, he pressed her back against the rock and teased her with the tip of his cock. With her legs wrapped around his waist, he used one hand to rub the head of his dick over her clitoris, feeling her whole body heat under his touch. She gasped his name over and over, and each time it fell from her lips, he grew harder.

“Don’t stop. Don’t. Stop.” Then her whole body tensed, her heels digging into his ass, as she orgasmed. Before her shudders subsided, he slipped into her, groaning with the intensity of being inside her. Of the heat and wetness. He felt her still spasming around his dick, and he couldn’t help but grind himself into her. She dug her nails into his back, and the pain tipped him over the edge, and he came.

When he’d regained his strength, he laid her on the sandy floor of the cave and shifted her around so that her head could rest on his shoulder.

“We should have done that three years ago,” she murmured.

“We would have if you hadn’t passed out,” he said, pulling her closer.

But she didn’t hear.

*     *     *

They had gotten up in the middle of the night to get dressed and then had laid back down to try to get a bit more sleep before the sun came up. After they dressed, he didn’t attempt to touch her, or hold her, and for that she was grateful. She didn’t want a stupid adrenaline-filled night to make crazy suggestions to her emotions.

When the sun hit the side of the cave, she awoke to find Josh already fully kitted up, wearing his body armor, weapons, and backpack. She beckoned him from around the corner of the cave so they could speak without it echoing around the valley. “So what’s the plan for getting us out of here?”

He paced, casting shadows from the flashlight that was still dimly glowing on the stone ledge. “Could you be pregnant?” His voice was tight and jerky. “Are you going to write about this?”

Well, guess who wasn’t a morning person. “I’m on the pill, so no. And if that’s your morning-after gambit, I’m glad you left before I woke up in D.C.,” Grace replied, a little hurt and cursing herself for injecting that hurt into her tone.

He didn’t answer, but obviously all his reporter-based animosity had returned with the sunlight. That’s okay. This wasn’t personal. It wasn’t a thing. It was a “we might die soon” Hail Mary. She made a mental note to hide her camera in the very bottom of her bag. She didn’t want him going off every time he was reminded what she did for a living.

“Alrighty. So, what’s the plan?” she repeated.

“Base is about thirty klicks from here, I think. We’re going to walk it, keeping to the mountain ridge, to avoid being seen. Can you walk thirty kilometers?” he asked.

“Of course I can, but what are the chances of us getting killed—or worse, kidnapped—on the way?” Was he really thinking they could be out in daylight all the way back to the base? He was nuts.

“We can definitely go by night if you like, but with no light, it’s likely to take us one night to go just three klicks. So ten days to get back to base? Or by day, just two days? Your choice, sweetheart.”

*     *     *

As they stood in the mouth of the cave ready to go, Grace pulled out her long black and white scarf and expertly wrapped it around her head and neck. With her dark eyes and beautiful dark hair peeking out from beneath the scarf, she almost looked like a local. This could work. He watched her crouch down and repack her backpack and wondered why she was different from any other woman he’d met. Why she kept peeling up the corners of his life, the ones he had firmly nailed down.

The sun was just up, but by his estimation it wouldn’t be wild sunlight for another hour or so. A purple glow lit the landscape. It was probably the best time to go. The Taliban had been walking the valley until around three a.m., so he figured they would be sleeping now. Hopefully, if anybody had actually been looking for them, they’d have given up. He just needed to get Grace out of the valley before the sun rose completely. This was doable.

He wanted to say something to her, anything really. But what could he say to make sure everything was smoothed over—and to remind her that everything was off the record? Shit.

Worth it, though.

Maybe. Shit.
He still didn’t feel like he could trust her. Not totally. If he was totally honest, he didn’t trust many people anyway, but reporters were notoriously closemouthed about what they were writing, and he doubted she’d tell him how she was planning to cover this adventure. He wished he hadn’t seen so much fallout from embedded reporters—positions given away, troop numbers published, patrol routes compromised. He shook it off. No time to ponder that now.

While watching, and silently admiring her, he didn’t hear the tumbling of small stones outside the cave until a split second before a figure appeared in silhouette in the mouth of the cave.

He slid his sidearm from around his chest holster and pointed it straight at the intruder’s head. “Stop!” he said quietly, not wanting to alert anyone else who could be out there.

Grace’s head snapped around first to Josh, then to what he was pointing his weapon at. She jumped up immediately. Looked back at Josh and said, “Are you crazy? Put that down.”

No fucking way.

It was a kid, he realized, dressed in a long shirt and barefoot. Maybe about eight or nine. He was looking at Josh and the gun he was holding, in interest, not fear. Then suddenly the kid laughed, made his fingers into weapons, and started shooting his fingers over his head, making the sound effects to go with it. Josh lowered his real gun.

Grace giggled and crouched next to the boy. “
Da zrra sara, sta sa noom de?
”

Wait, what? What did she say? Fuck. Was she just fluent, or… Dammit, he knew he shouldn’t have trusted her. He’d just had sex with someone he didn’t know, in a war zone, a dismissible offense. He wasn’t about to take his sights off either of them. He’d seen too many kids used as bait, leading troops over IEDs or into ambushes. Dammit. Why didn’t she move away from him?

As he watched them, with his eyes mostly on the kid, Grace made to tickle the boy, all over his body, making him squirm and shriek and giggle. She looked back toward him and shook her head. Damn, she was good. She had just frisked the boy to make sure he wasn’t carrying explosives. Reluctantly, he released his grasp on the gun and slowly shifted it back into its holster.

“Sta taro golai khwakh wee?”
she said.

Grace rifled in her backpack and brought out a big round lollipop and took off its plastic wrapping. The boy’s eyes lit up, but he waited for her to actually give it to him. She did, and it took all of a second for it to be in his mouth, an expression of heaven on his face.

“What shall we do with him? Do you want me to tell him not to say anything?”

“How do you know how to speak Pashto? You sound fluent.”

She stood and shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “I was in college when this war started, and I decided to change my major from English to journalism and thought a language would be useful. I wanted to come here and talk to the people about the aftereffects of war and the reconstruction. It never occurred to me that the war would still be going on when I graduated.” She looked down at the boy who had shuffled into the cave and was squatting against the wall, still enjoying his candy. She crouched down and talked to him in a very casual, friendly way. She’d never spoken to Josh like that.

The boy nodded and kept sucking on his lollipop. More nods, and Grace stood, rearranging her hijab carefully over her head. She looked like a nun, which he guessed was more than a sacrilegious thought, as was the twitch in his pants. The faster they got moving, the faster they would get to the base and the faster he could say good-bye and then hope he never saw himself in print or… Hell, he didn’t even know if she was on television, or wrote for…? He had no idea. Had never even asked.

She patted the back of the child, and he skipped out of the cave. “So?”

“I told him we were playing a game, that it was a secret we were here and no one could see us. He seemed to like that.”

“Can you talk your way out of everything?” he said as he double-checked her heavy Kevlar vest. The one that reminded him exactly what she was: press.