Locked and Loaded (12 page)

“Oh, God, what have I gotten myself into?” She took in a choked breath and allowed her fingers to splay across his back. “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror sometimes—and even if I kill that bastard, I don’t know if that’ll make a difference … it won’t matter. My Nana was right. There’s a line and damn you, Anthony Davis, for making me find it.”

A pair of rough, warm hands sought her face and lifted it as the most open gaze met hers.

“Sage … let me be your mirror for a little while then, because all I see is a beautiful woman, one with a beautiful heart, who’s capable and fearless, and decent and good. In the hospital, I saw it in your eyes—your heart and the toll this was taking on you. Don’t ask me how, but I knew you were near this point … that’s another reason why I came back. I promise you, I’ll never leave you in there alone, all right? We’ll get this done. We’ll get this over. And no matter what happens, nothing you had to do was in vain. You may never know how many lives you’ve saved by what you did. If nobody else knows that, I do … but even more important than that, you have to know it and believe it. Understood?”

She nodded and held onto his thick wrists, needing to feel tangible evidence of his solid presence. He wasn’t a dream, wasn’t a mirage. He was real and was someone she had to care about.

“I don’t let people in because I can’t bear it if they die,” she whispered, saying the truth out loud for the very first time. “And when it came to men in my life, I think I only let in jerks, so if they burned me, I could live with the loss … the disappointment wasn’t that great if they walked out of my life—which they all eventually did. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” She let out a sad sigh and tried to smile. “I told you, I’m really screwed up as a person.”

“I let in one person that I trusted and she burned me with my boy … he was stateside, I was deployed. Let’s just say it was a double violation. After that, I vowed I’d never go there again and I left a trail of very inconsequential hookups in my wake. I closed people out, too. So we both have a checkered past, and what?”

His thumbs caressed the edges of her jaw and he brushed a kiss against the cheekbone that he’d grazed. “We all have our ways to avoid pain, Sage. That doesn’t make you a bad person, just human. Then something unexpected happened. I met you. The timing really sucks. But it is what it is. The one thing this profession should have taught us both is, life is short and tomorrow’s not promised. Like I said, I’m not about holding back vital intel from where it needs to be communicated—and you need to know everything I’m saying to you tonight.”

She slid her hands off his wrists to place them lightly against his stone-cut chest. The gentle tremor that ran through his fingertips, coupled with the warmth of his palms, made her face feel like it would literally melt in his hands.

“This isn’t just physical attraction.”

He shook his head. “No. That wouldn’t be scary at all.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“That wouldn’t have made me fly from New Orleans to be here under circumstances that could compromise our careers, get us both killed, and possibly jeopardize the mission.”

She shook her head. “And if it was just that … I wouldn’t be standing here crying, whispering, and basically freaking out.”

“I should probably go,” he murmured as the tremor in his hands seemed to wash through his body.

“Is that what you want?” she asked, stepping in closer to allow their bodies to touch.

His stomach tightened brick by glorious brick. “No,” he replied in a hoarse whisper and then took her mouth again, but harder this time. “But that’s probably what should happen,” he murmured into her mouth as soon as their kiss broke. “God help me, that’s probably what should happen.”

CHAPTER 8

His body ignited as she pressed and writhed against him. Everything female about her imploded in his groin. Hard shaft contractions that were totally beyond his control made his hands tremble as they followed the lush contours of her curves until her breath hitched.

A soft, coffee-laced tongue swept his in a moonlit erotic dance. The scent of a woman, this woman, drilled down past all reason. Her perfume was now imprinted within the primal part of his brain—pure reflex was the only response to it … just like her butter soft skin caused delirium. Silken tresses spilled into his hands as he ever so gently cradled her skull, rough pelvic friction a fabric-induced serenade.

Every touch he landed against her skin was done with reverence, an apology for the earlier combat when he didn’t know who she was. He wanted her to know that would never happen again under any circumstances. She had to know that he understood the phrase “make love not war” when it came to the female form.

The Creator must have heard his prayers and sent him an angel—someone to restore his battered faith that there was something still worth fighting for, someone in this world beyond his band of brothers who would care or think that he made a difference. Yet, from the way her smooth hands caressed his back and her long, slender fingers threaded through his hair, he could tell she was asking him for forgiveness when all he could do was beg for hers.

How could she know what he couldn’t put into words himself? He knew her fatigue, the kind of battle weariness that clawed at one’s bones and gristle. It was more than exhaustion, it was the wearing away of the human spirit after witnessing too much gore and violence, only to have that made a mockery by war-profiteering fat cats and politicians, none of whom would know patriotism if it jumped up and bit them.

He and Sage had the same questions. They were both fighting for justice in an unjust world. And both of them were tired and had clearly recognized that in each other’s eyes.

Endless battle bred uncommon despair, just as seeing injustice at home and not only abroad bred dangerous questions like, what are we fighting for? She’d no doubt seen abuses in the criminal justice system like he’d seen abuses in the military. It had made him start to wonder who the true enemy was and why the politicians weren’t declaring war and spilling the blood of their sons and daughters, too.

As he kissed Sage deeply, he was sure she’d asked herself why justice only seemed to work for the wealthy and why so many kids from the hood seemed to get the harshest sentence. Sage Wagner was cut from the same bolt of cloth that he was sheared from—the old neighborhoods with common sense and a solid moral compass as a guide.

Rhetoric be damned, he needed a woman who understood, whose touch communicated that she did. Inside he’d been trying to figure out what he was doing in the service—why the fat cats’ stocks were rising on the Dow and NASDAQ while their buddies were making millions in military contracts, but those with their asses on the line, who’d literally bled for the American dream, were trying to stave off foreclosures?

He kissed Sage harder, seeking answers and redemption in her mouth, washing his mind and hands clean against the soft skin of her back and the wondrous swell of her divinely perfect ass.

Each hard exhale and inhale she caused was a silent pardon, a prayer chant to just make him forget so he could go forth and do his job. But instead of exonerating him, she filled his mouth with a soft moan and made him swallow it, then echo it back. She would give as good as she got—a pardon for a pardon, a mercy for a mercy, a blackout for a blackout … oh … God … yes …

Didn’t she understand that he’d been searching for her all his life—a woman to whom he didn’t have to explain what being a soldier meant? The knowing meant freedom; that she still wanted him after comprehending was sexy as all hell.

Not many women, he suspected, and certainly none he’d ever met, knew what it really meant to take a life and then live with that. None he’d ever slept with could imagine what it felt like to day after day, year after year, hunt an enemy that multiplied like cockroaches no matter what you used against them. And how did a man who’d seen too much and lived to tell about it, bring all that home to the suburbs and shopping malls and expect to be normal?

Sage Wagner didn’t expect him to be civilian normal. With her, he didn’t have to pretend to fit in. That was the true promise of freedom she offered. In her arms were truth, justice, and the American way. She was a warrior and knew down to her marrow what he was. They didn’t have to talk about it or analyze it; they just had to live it … and right now he wanted her so badly that it was almost impossible to breathe.

With that intimate knowledge, her hands sought his skin to soak up the pain. Her gentle touch anointed his body with healing through pleasure. She was the first responder to his tortured soul. And as his hands slid up her torso beneath her blouse, she released a low, sexy gasp that let him know that he was hers as well.

Only inches from his face, their eyes met as she slowly raised a shapely leg to hook it around his waist. Staring at him, huffing short bursts of warm, moist breath into his mouth, she rode his shaft through his pants, watching him slowly thumb her tight nipples, making them both crazy as she bore down harder like he was already inside her.

They both knew they were playing a dangerous game of chicken to see who would blink first. She lifted his shirt, tugging it free, and allowed her searing touch to fan out across his chest and nipples. The skin on skin contact was too much. He blinked and blinked hard, lifting her up by the tight globes of her ass while thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth.

But when they were halfway to the bedroom, walking blindly, her cell phone rang. They both froze. He set her down, breathing hard. Her eyes cast a warning that she never had to verbalize.

She answered on the fourth ring and made her voice sound sleepy. “Roberto?”

Anthony walked away toward the sofa and rubbed the nape of his neck. Frustration and jealousy made a dangerous cocktail in his bloodstream right now.

“I was asleep,” she crooned with a frown, mouthing “I’m sorry.”

He just silently nodded, groin throbbing, and wondered how in the hell he’d found himself playing the role of the secondary lover to a drug baron.

“Yeah … I miss you, too,” she said, rolling her eyes. Then her voice changed and her expression became pained. “Baby … I’m tired … yeah, I miss you, too, but I don’t feel like it right now. Come on, I’ll see you soon, right?”

Jealousy bristled the hair on the nape of Anthony’s neck, and yet this was a part of the mission. He forced chivalry into his eyes and nodded at her and then motioned to the door. She nodded and blew him a kiss, mouthing “thank you” and “I’m sorry.” He quietly collected his gun and slipped into the adjoining room and shut the door behind him with a soft click.

Of course a man as paranoid as Roberto Salazar would do a bed check on his woman. Made sense, who was he fooling? Not to mention, being away from her could be eased by some late-night phone sex. What red-blooded man in his right mind wouldn’t want to call Sage like that? But the entire situation just kicked his ass.

Anthony allowed the gun to dangle by his side for a moment, defeated. It didn’t help matters that the erection she’d left him with needed immediate attention. And as much as he hated who she was on the phone with, knowing that she was probably in the next room with her hand between her lovely legs was driving him insane.

The mental picture was vivid. If he trusted himself enough not to make a sound, which he didn’t, right now he was so far gone that if she asked him to, he’d get on his knees at the edge of her bed and taste her till she screamed whatever on her cell. Once she got that crazy bastard off her phone, he’d finish her off hard and long.

The fantasy made another wave of desire crawl through his heavy groin. He briefly closed his eyes as a shudder of want washed through him. Damn …

Anthony shook his head and banished the thought, then pushed off the wall, left his gun on the TV cabinet, and headed to the bathroom for a towel. A light, feminine tap at his door stopped him mid-step. He swallowed hard and then rushed over to open it. She was standing there, chewing her bottom lip, eyes troubled. The combination was so sexy that he forgot to breathe.

“I’m sorry. I got him off the phone as fast as I could … and I know—”

His kiss crushed her mouth, stopping the awkward apology. He didn’t want her to say another word. Whatever she’d had to say or do to get rid of Salazar was on a need-to-know basis, and he damned sure didn’t need to know right now.

The important point was, she’d come back for him. This wasn’t sloppy seconds in the least. The way he saw it, Salazar had interrupted them. He didn’t care whatever bullshit she had to say to their enemy to get him off her phone as quickly as she did. She came back for him.

Her hands covered his ass, pulling him against her, thanking him in friction for not damning her for just doing her job. Careful not to mark her skin, he spilled kisses down the side of her neck, paying homage to the goddess of mercy that she had returned. She rewarded him by stripping off her blouse and bra, leaving him so in awe that for a moment all he could do was stare as her breasts bounced from the royal blue fabric.

Pretty caramel nipples called his name, begging for his mouth with their taut pout. Her head tilted back, she breathed through her barely parted lips and moaned without censor as his tongue grazed her pebbled skin.

The sound told him she was still on fire and nothing that had happened on the phone had quenched her. Maybe she hadn’t cum for Salazar and had just gotten him off alone, making pretend like phone sex operators did while painting their nails … or maybe she’d just talked trash to the guy while really thinking of him. He hated to admit it, but it did make a small difference. An important one.

Slipping a hand deep into her pants confirmed his theory. Warm, wet, folds of swollen heat met his fingers as her grip tightened on his shoulders. Before he could shimmy her pants down, she bucked against his hand, locking it between their pelvises, holding him by the back of his shirt. Her breath said emergency; she needed release now and couldn’t wait. Her grimace and tempo was the meter for how close she was, edging him closer to insanity with her.