Hold on Tight (13 page)

She paused, not wanting to answer.

“Is it classified?” he continued.

“No. Not anymore.”

“If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. You haven’t had a problem telling me anything else so far, though.” Saint shoved a large plastic cup from a local fast food place in front of her, plus a bagful of actual food. “Here—unless you were planning to catch lunch with your bare hands.”

“I’d use a net. Asshole,” she muttered. He’d turned his back to look through some mail on the counter, but raised his hand to acknowledge that he’d heard her comment. She tore into the food, letting the grease satiate her the way she hadn’t been able to let Saint do last night.

“I met your sister,” he said finally, his back still to her.

“You what?”

“She’s investigating one of my men. She asked me about you.”

“What did you tell her?”

“To leave you alone.”

She could’ve seriously kissed him for that, almost walked over and did so, until he came to her and sat down across the table. “You’re a spook, aren’t you? Maybe blacklisted.”

She snorted and took a long sip of chocolate shake through the thick plastic straw. “You’ve watched too much TV. And how did you know what flavor milkshake I’d like?”

“I guessed. This isn’t my first rodeo, PJ. I’ve been in the military for eighteen years, sixteen of those in the SEALs. I’ve been around more than my share of feds and spies, most of whom have been trying to recruit me.”

“I suppose you have.” She threw the empty containers in the garbage pail. “Thanks for the food.”

“You can’t go back out there—it’s pouring.”

Indeed, the storm that had promised to come all day had reared its head. Rain hit the doors at an angle and the ocean roared in all its powerful beauty. “I can’t stay in here.”

“Because you don’t trust yourself around me?”

She gave him a long look, and yes, he’d absolutely known she’d been watching him last night. “You hit the nail right on the head, Captain. I don’t trust myself at all. I haven’t for a long time and I don’t think I can start now.”

Her words hung between them, but before he could ask any more questions, her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and saw that it was Dave, the man she’d called late last night after she’d witnessed Saint’s nightmare and its aftermath.

When she answered the phone, Saint continued to watch her as she listened to Dave telling her, “PJ, we found him, called the Marines to collect the body. It’s being transported to the States as we speak.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“The Marines confirmed it according to the information they had,” Dave said.

This wouldn’t be easy for Saint to hear, no matter how badly he’d wanted Mark found. And she wasn’t sure how he would react to what she’d done, but she couldn’t worry about that now.

“Okay, hang on a second. I have his CO here.” She moved the phone away from her ear and looked into Saint’s intense blue eyes. “My friends in Africa, they found Mark’s body. They turned him over to the Marines searching the area.”

Saint simply stared at her for a moment, as if not comprehending. “You did that for Mark?”

“For Mark. For you.” She felt her throat tighten with a sudden rush of emotion.

“I can’t believe …” He swallowed hard. “For me …”

She actually had to press the phone into his hand and then, finally, he raised it to his ear and spoke to Dave, confirming some identifying marks. Hearing what he didn’t want to hear—that Mark was actually dead, not recovering in some remote African village and ready to come home, injured but alive.

When he hung up, he handed her the phone. Instead of thanking her, he simply sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs, a fresh grief etched into his handsome face.

Ignoring all her instincts to just leave, she closed the gap between them and sat next to him, touched his forearm. “I’m sorry you couldn’t have been the one to find him. But at least he’s found. He’ll be buried in peace. That has to mean something.”

His eyes were wet. “It means everything—you have no idea. I just can’t get past the fact that it should’ve been me on that mission, not him.”

“You should know that you can’t think like that.”

“No, I mean it was supposed to be me on the mission. Up until two days before, I was on the mission docket.” He slid his hands along the table for a second, palms down, and then he scratched it unconsciously with his short fingernails. “Mark filled in for me at the last minute. I had a family emergency—my mom was sick and needed surgery. Mark insisted I go be with her. He was big on family, since he didn’t have any. He considered us his family, especially Jake and Chris and Nick—he watched them come up through BUD/S. Christ.”

“I believe that when it’s your time, you go. Doesn’t matter, because at that moment, you’re where you’re supposed to be,” PJ told him as she put her hands over his. “I don’t know much, but I don’t think Mark would want you to do this to yourself.”

He opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it. Instead, he muttered something to himself and then asked, “Who the hell are you, PJ?”

She couldn’t answer that question any better now than she could two nights ago or two hours ago, felt that familiar fight-or-flight urge hit, the way it had earlier at Jamie’s house. Thankfully, she stopped herself from overturning the table and drawing her gun. No, instead, she stood and backed away from Saint. “You have no idea who I am, what I’ve done.”

“Then tell me.”

“No.”

He was on his feet now, moving toward her. “You’ve killed people.”

She had. And if she’d still been in the military, there would’ve been less guilt waking her up at night in a cold sweat. But the things she’d been forced to do in order to keep Jamie safe, the times she’d thought she wasn’t returning from Africa in anything but a body bag, if at all … She thought about the men she’d left behind, the ones who hadn’t gotten out with their lives, and she wanted to get the hell out of Saint’s house.

She’d broken her own rule—she’d let him in, enough for him to think he could break down her barriers.

Which, if given enough time and the right circumstances, he could. “Don’t come closer, Saint. Please.”

“I’ve let you into my home. My life. My feelings. You’ve watched me make myself come … and you wanted to be in that bed with me,” Saint said fiercely. “Tell me what you’ve done. Tell me who you are. I know you were in the military.”

The military—yes, she could tell him about that. Maybe that would be enough. “I was in the Air Force. I was a pilot.”

Whenever she thought about flying, she felt the familiar tightening in her stomach. Nerves. She knew her CAG would’ve told her that the best pilots felt them, that it was better to have some fear than none at all.

She ached for the days when she’d felt none, even though that lack of fear had probably contributed to the accident two years earlier, the crash that happened when she was still in the Air Force. The reason she’d resigned her commission. “I was flying a C-130 over Africa when the engine failed.”

She’d tried without success to rectify the engine failure. She’d kept some of the team on board too long, trying to fly while the controls systematically shut down, along with the wind. “There were six Rangers on board with me and my co-pilot—we were taking them to their LZ. We’d gone in more quickly than usual for an emergency extraction and didn’t have the extra supplies that might possibly have saved us all.”

One rig for eight people. Even if they doubled, men would’ve been left behind and they refused.

She’d been the only woman on board. “I remember them shoving me out of the hatch. I went up with the wind, and the plane … it pitched toward the ocean and there was nothing I could do but watch it happen.” If it had just nosedived, the men on board might’ve had a chance, but the explosion had taken care of that.

“I’m sorry, PJ.”

“Yeah, you’re sorry, I’m sorry, everyone’s sorry.” But she wasn’t done yet—if Saint wanted it all, he’d get it. And then she could walk away. Mark’s body had been found, her work was done. “They wouldn’t let me fly anymore—I didn’t want to anyway. I got an honorable discharge and the CIA recruited me. And I was in their training program until I was recruited for another position. For a group called GOST.”

“GOST,” Saint repeated. Yes, he knew who they were—Government Operative Specialty Team. Mercenaries at the government’s command, and its mercy.

There had been an entire series of articles on the now-disbanded group, by journalist K. Darcy. The president had convened a cabinet to investigate how and why the group was formed, as well as how and why all the members of the group were dead—except for two.

And now one of them was standing in front of him.

Yeah, she was fucked up, but she had a damned good reason to be. And suddenly, he knew he didn’t want her to leave. “Jamie said you won’t stay.”

“What do you want me to say, Saint? That she’s wrong?”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I want you to say. I want you to tell me what you felt when you watched me jack off last night. Were you wet for me?”

Her mouth dropped—she hadn’t expected this.

“Yeah, I think you were. I think you were so close to touching yourself, getting yourself off … but you don’t want to admit it.”

PJ was like a feral cat. She’d attack if rubbed the wrong way, but right now, he didn’t have the patience or the heart for a gentle lure. Instead, he grabbed her, probably a mistake, and yet even though she dug her fingernails hard into his shoulders, she kissed him back with a ferocious need that was almost overwhelming. He could feel the strength pulsating off her slight frame even as she resisted with her body.

When she jerked away from him, he let her. She put the back of her hand against her mouth, stared at him, stunned, before she began to circle him, half-crouched. He took the same position, because she knew how to fight—and how to fight well. He had known that from the second she’d pulled the knife on him on the beach.

“You had no right to do that.”

“You liked it,” he told her. “You have a right to feel.”

“Don’t you dare attempt to analyze me when you’ve known me all of two days.”

“Why not? You’ve been handling me since the night we met, treating me like I’m going to fall apart any fucking second.” He was as angry as she was now. He moved to her again, got a good hold on her, wrapping his arms around her upper body and holding her immobile with her hands down at her sides.

He wondered why she wasn’t struggling more. Why she was half smiling at him.

In about three seconds, he knew the exact reason. She literally had him by the balls. He froze, his life in her hands—and of course, his dick didn’t care about anything but her touch. “I’m going to back off.” He spoke quietly, put his hands in the air.

“Tell you what,” she murmured. “I’m not.”

His body tensed expectantly, but the only thing she did was stroke him through his BDUs as she watched for his reaction. Which was, of course, to grow rock hard under her touch and allow her to unbutton and unzip his pants.

His breath came in short gasps as she discovered there was nothing between his skin and the BDUs. Her hand cupped his balls first—and Holy Mother of God, he needed her now.

Right now
. “PJ, please—”

She cut him off with a kiss, a long, lingering, gentle kiss that ended with her sucking his bottom lip for a second while her fingers played along his cock.

He groaned. “I’m taking you to bed. Now.”

“No, not in your bed. Outside.”

“You’re kidding.” He stared at the rain sheeting the deck.

“I thought you said you could handle the weather.”

“I’ll show you what I can handle,
bebe.”
He lifted her, carried her out the door. His foot still ached from the stitches, but his body ached in other, more important places, and that made any other concerns diminish considerably.

They were soaked from the second they crossed the threshold to the deck. He set her down on the lounge chair rather than put her inside the tent, to see how serious she was about getting naked in the rain.

In a show of faith, he tore his T-shirt off over his head and tossed it onto the deck.

Her clothes clung to her thin, finely muscled frame, and fuck, it was better than any kind of wet T-shirt contest he’d ever seen.

Slowly, appreciating his gaze on her, she pulled the shirt off and leaned back, palms braced, head back, mouth opened to catch the rain. And then she worked her pants off until she lay on his lounge chair in a pair of tiny black underwear.

She was thin and fit and tan and she was waiting for him. Inviting him. Her breasts were perfect, nipples taut, and he was on her quickly, mouthing one with an insistent suck. He heard her cry out softly, as if she hadn’t expected that and she tried to move away, to free herself, to tell him no.

Her words were lost in the sounds of the crashing surf. The rain intensified and he moved down her body, practically ripping the thong from her.