Locked and Loaded (11 page)

She swallowed hard and nodded. “Thank you.” After a moment of staring at his intense gaze in the dark, she glanced away. “How about that coffee, Captain?”

“I’d appreciate it, but not Captain between us.”

“Right … Juan,” she said, remembering his alias.

“No. As Anthony.”

Again she just stared at him for a moment. Yes, Anthony … the man who’d returned to personally ensure her safety … a man who’d just asked her to drop his rank and alias to let her know that this unspoken thing went beyond a mere job or even duty. He was standing there clearly ready to take a bullet for her, and not necessarily in the name of God and country or the current mission.

“All right, Anthony,” she murmured, and moved through the dark to get the coffeepot. “Cream and sugar?”

“Just sugar, not a lot.”

He hadn’t moved from where he stood by the door, shoulders back, head held high, senses on what seemed to be full alert.

She motioned toward the chair that was by the sofa. “Why don’t you have a seat? It’ll only be a few minutes.”

He complied without argument, bringing his weapon near to set on the coffee table. “Did you get a full report?”

“Dan only gave me the highlights. But why don’t you give me the details while this brews.”

She listened intently as Captain Davis filled the empty spaces inside her with his low rumbling voice. The vibration of it and the caring within it warmed her to her very core, and then radiated heat throughout her limbs. In all the years she’d spent alone with just her and her Nana, all she’d known at the hands of men was competition, abuse, heartache, and lies. No one had ever come back to check on her to see if she was truly all right.

Handing Davis a cup, she took a seat on the small ottoman across from him in the dark and stared at him.

“Thank you,” she murmured and then took a sip of too-hot coffee. “You even had a small unit disarm the cars you’d set to blow?”

He nodded. “When I drove around South Beach this afternoon and saw that the security vehicles were tailing you through heavily commercial areas with civilians, that was one of the first calls I made. Two good men in my unit got to them when you were in the piano bar. It was the first opportunity we had, given the target’s security forces were with the vehicles until then.”

Sage briefly closed her eyes. “When I think of what could have happened…”

“Exactly my concern, too,” he replied, now sipping his coffee but never breaking eye contact with her. “Those guys were giving their rides to valets and double-parking outside of retail stores … that wasn’t in the plan. Collateral damage of that magnitude is not acceptable on my watch. We thought we were going in to blow the compound and cripple unmanned vehicles in the private garage. Things changed.”

“Things always change,” she said. “That’s the nature of the beast.”

“And that’s exactly why I’m here.”

They looked at each other for a long time, and finally she shook her head.

“You’re here for more than a mission change or a complication,” she said just above a murmur. “That’s what worries me.”

When he looked away, she placed a light hand on his knee. “I’m a really screwed-up person, Anthony. I’m not a solid bet. But I’m an ace in a firefight. That’s all I really know how to do. And after this case closes, if I live, I don’t have a clue what I want to do next … it damned sure isn’t this anymore. Going in this deep once was enough. But this is all I’m cut out to do. Sad truth is, I’ve spent so long wanting to bring down the Salazar drug empire and invested so heavily in hating them that, once that happens, then what? I don’t even know how to be a regular civilian with a normal life.”

“Then we’re not that different. I have no idea how to do anything but this. Once we break up this cell, another will grow in its place. I’ve been at this for years, busting terror cells … and there’s no end to the cancer. Makes the soul weary after a while.”

She withdrew her hand from his knee and hugged herself with one arm, clutching her coffee cup. “Can I be honest with you? I mean, really speak off the record here?”

He nodded. “Sage, we are so off the record that a record doesn’t exist right now.”

“Yeah … true.” She took another sip of coffee, trying to find a way to allow the words to flow past her lips. “I don’t want to do this job anymore,” she said slowly closing her eyes. “But I’m in too deep and there’s no way out other than to finish it.”

She opened her eyes, surprised to find her vision blurry from unshed tears. Her voice quavered from emotion that she refused to allow to spill out with the truth she’d just told. Why did this man affect her like this? Extreme fatigue was the only reasonable answer. That, or something too dangerous to think about.

“Just like anyone else, I want a normal life,” she admitted in a low murmur when he didn’t jump in to offer any rebuttal. “I want all the horrible memories of what happened to me and what I’ve done, gone … but God help me, I don’t know how to make that happen.”

“Neither do I, Sage,” he said in a mercifully quiet tone. “I don’t know how to forget all the missions, all the deaths, and everything I wished I’d told the right people at the right time.”

Sage swallowed hard again and set her coffee down on the floor by her feet. There was an unspoken confession hidden behind Anthony Davis’s words, and just knowing that made her heart ache for him. “Tell me what happened?”

“Not much to tell, other than I could have come back for my brother … could have maybe saved his life, if I’d told the right people when and where they were going to rumble. I didn’t. He and his gang were outgunned and outmanned three to one—but he’d told me not to come back there. Made me promise to keep everything on the low. He said he’d be all right. Until that night, he always was, and I didn’t want to be responsible for snitching to possibly land him in prison. But I had knowledge that could have gone to the authorities … but…”

“But you were
a kid,
” she said firmly. “I grew up in the hood, too. There was a code. You and I both overcame that early conditioning later.”

“Later was too late, and that code got my brother dead.”

“But
you
didn’t get him dead.” She took up Anthony’s free hand and squeezed it, all too familiar with the pain he tried to conceal. “Listen to me—you know that if he and his gang were hell-bent on rumbling another gang, it would have only been a matter of time before they settled that beef by having a showdown somewhere else. Bullets were going to fly, some kid in that mix was going to get shot, along with any unlucky passersby. If the cops went in there blazing, your brother still stood a fifty-fifty chance of getting shot and/or going to prison for a very long time.”

Anthony took a deep swig of his coffee and set it down on the coffee table beside him. “True, but I swore to myself from that point forward that I’d always come back for my own … would personally make sure that if I knew anything that could keep someone alive, I’d get it to the right place fast.”

“And I promised that I’d be a part of the solution, and not a part of the problem after everything happened to my family,” she said softly. “I was too afraid, back then, to tell the police what people in the neighborhood were saying … knowing that no one would back me up or protect me.”

“I’ve got your back on this one, Sage.”

“I know,” she murmured. “That’s what scares me.”

She could tell from the troubled look in his eyes, even sitting in the dark, that he thought she was afraid of him. That wasn’t it at all.

“I know I hit you, and vets sometime have a bad rep … but…”

She placed a finger against his lips. “Don’t. I’m not afraid of you attacking me, having a flashback, or anything like that. I know you’re not some dude with a jacked-up psychological profile.” She stared at him and then drew back from him and wrapped her arms around her waist. “I don’t know what’s happening here between us or why. All I know is that I have a role to play and from the moment I met you, for some really bizarre reason, I can’t go back in and fake being with some man that I despise—and
that’s
dangerous. That’s what scares me.”

“I don’t know what’s happening either, Sage, but I want to find out. Technically, I’m not even supposed to be here,” he said quietly. “this is so off-mission that if I had to stand in front of a military tribunal to explain my actions, I couldn’t. My only defense would be, I took one look at you and couldn’t leave you in there with those animals. I know what can happen to a hostage. I can’t let you become one.”

“Don’t do this, Captain,” she whispered and then hugged herself tighter. “I haven’t allowed myself to go deep into anything real in a very long time, and what I’m feeling right now is way more terrifying than facing Salazar.”

“The fact that I’m sitting here without a plausible explanation for being here scares me, too. The mission is front of mind, don’t get me wrong. I know what we’ve both gotta do. But you’re also right up there sharing that same space and I’ve never had that happen to me.”

She stood up quickly, but he rose from the sofa slowly. She was only inches away from him now; the heat from his body enveloped her. It was as though an internal master switch had been thrown to light up every nerve ending within her. Suddenly her skin felt so overly sensitive it ached. Standing in the wake of his intense heat, she felt herself moisten as though her body was trying to put our unseen flames. True hunger crept between her thighs, licking at her swollen, hot flesh. Just as suddenly her nipples tightened, sending pinpoints of stinging need to raise gooseflesh on her arms.

Reason warred with primal instinct. She knew the right thing to do was to step away from this man. Never in her life had anyone had this kind of inexplicable effect on her. Not this fast. Not this intense. She didn’t know him, and this was too crazy to consider. But her body was betraying her badly, even if she couldn’t fathom why. More damning was the fact that he looked just as bewildered and out of control as she probably did, appearing as though this unnamed thing had blindsided him, too. That silent confession that he offered by his intense gaze, his slightly flaring nostrils each time he took what seemed like a deliberately slowed breath, only raised the stakes of the chemical chain reaction.

“We have to stay focused on the mission … and then if we live, we’ll see what happens.” She bit her bottom lip, hesitating. “But right now you should probably leave.”

“Is that what you want?” He waited and stared at her, his gaze making her stomach do flip-flops.

“No,” she said just above a whisper. “But that’s probably what should happen.”

“Yeah … That is probably what should happen,” he repeated in a deep, sensual rumble.

But neither of them moved as he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her gently, allowing her to taste black coffee and sugar and freedom and hope. The clean, uncomplicated scent of Ivory soap filled her nose, that and his wonderful male signature blended into it. She deepened the kiss and stepped into his warmth, feeling a pair of strong arms slowly enfold her to block out the cruel, ugly world.

In that fragile moment a promise was cast. He’d come back for her, to serve and protect. Tears of relief spilled down her cheeks. Never in her life had anyone made her feel safe. That had been the catalyst, the trigger that flipped the master switch inside her. No one had ever stepped into that dangerous void to make her feel like he could handle come what may.

That dark place in her soul where hope was a dying light was an amazingly complex place that no average man could occupy. Captain Anthony Davis stepped into the breach with authority. Her intellectual mind didn’t have to know him; she felt this man at the cellular level.

His presence radiated through her being as an honest street warrior, an assassin with swagger, an honorable man with blood on his hands—one versed in dealing death, but who would never hurt an innocent … someone who could give her absolution for all her crimes against her own body, mind, and spirit, understanding why she did what she did and still finding something redeeming within her. A man who could still see some innocence left in her battered heart.

This man knew what she did for a living, knew what she did for a cause greater than herself … and yet he’d come back for her and had wrapped her in his arms. That shit was so sexy she could barely catch her breath. To clearly be an alpha female and to be able, for once, to look into the eyes of a true alpha male—not a pretender, not a wannabe alpha, but one so secure that he didn’t even have to raise his voice or do stupid power plays … one who didn’t blink or stutter about what he wanted, one who plainly made it clear that he wanted more than her body, wanted the whole package … and wasn’t afraid of that, either … well, just damn …

She held on to him tightly. No man that she’d been with had ever known the full extent of her job or what she was capable of; not one of them could deal with her in total. Those who did know, the men she’d worked with all her career, might have wanted her physically, but not as the whole package deal. To them she was just for fun, and since she wasn’t playing games with her body or heart, she’d given them neither. Captain Anthony Davis was dangerous in that regard, because he was well within the strike zone of being able to claim both.

This man felt different than all the others before, and if her life depended on it, she couldn’t have explained why. Maybe it was a knowing that was loosely connected to the fact that he’d fought her in hand-to-hand combat and had still returned. The way he looked at her told her without words that to him, she wasn’t a freak or a conquest or a potential lay on the job; he’d come back to put himself between her and sure harm.

Sage broke their kiss and buried her face against his shoulder. To her surprise, he petted her back and then stroked her hair.

“It’s going to be all right, baby,” he murmured, which only made the tears come in earnest.

No man had ever told her it was going to be all right in a way that made her believe it. But somehow the confidence in his tone, and having seen what he did for a living, made her know she could bank on whatever this man said.