Surrendering To Her Sergeant (2 page)

He pulled away to lock his gaze on
her, too. “My dream includes this,” he growled.

A slow smile curled on her lips.
“Mine, too.”

“That’s not what your eyes are telling
me, sunshine.”

She widened those indigo irises.
“Wh-what do you—”

“What is it? What are you holding
back? Tell me now.”

“I—umm—”

“What
?” he demanded.

“Tighter,” she finally rasped, working
her wrists against his grip. “I need it tighter, Ethan.
Please…”

She had him at the throaty delivery
and the subtle Spanish accent, but the request itself ignited his
lust from a spark to a rager. With a snarl, he rammed her wrists
harder to the tree. With a gasp, she gave him the full access pass
to kiss her again. Forget sweet preludes. He went for the depths of
her mouth with passionate intent, spearing her throat just like he
yearned to get his dick, now aching to the point of pain, inside
her body.

A set of words echoed in
his brain. They’d come from his Army Special Forces teammate,
Garrett Hawkins, as glasses were raised to toast the guy’s upcoming
wedding.
Fate gives you the best shit when
you least expect it, guys.
Ethan was way on
board with that credo now. When he’d shown up to help with Hawk’s
last-minute ceremony, none of his wildest expectations had yielded
someone like Ava Chestain, especially after he “introduced” himself
by tackling her in Garrett’s living room in a misguided rush of
paranoia.

When she’d grinned and joined the
banter in teasing him about the incident, he’d been intrigued. When
she’d agreed to join him on a hunt through the woods for the bridal
bouquet flowers, he’d been encouraged. When she’d given him that
beautifully submissive whisper, he was a fucking goner. Just like
that, a piece of his spirit plunked out into her gorgeous little
palm—

And had remained there for the last
seven months.

“Shit.”

The self-directed oath
blasted him out of the memory like an air horn. In an instant, he
opened his eyes to the current suckage that was his life. The mist,
the trees, and the once-upon-a-time forest were gone, leaving a
Mexican Desert sunset that matched the battlefield in his head.
Orange, red, and yellow shot at each other past billowing cloud
boulders. It was over thirty-eight degrees Celsius, which sounded a
lot better than a hundred Fahrenheit. It was well over
that
inside his boots and
BDUs.

He slumped against one of the unit’s
mud-caked Hummers.

Every minute of the last seven months
suddenly weighed on him like lead.

Could it be because you’ve
fixated too many times on that kiss, dumbass, and not enough on
what came after it?

Oh, yeah. All
that
. Never mind that
thanks to the criminal who crashed the wedding, he’d ended that day
in battle gear and a debriefing instead of in his dress blues,
hogging every dance with her. And the rest, what came after? He
forced himself to remember that, too. The phone calls she never
picked up. The texts she never answered. Even the acknowledgement
that never came after he sent her a goddamn florist’s shop worth of
birthday flowers.

“Fuck.”

He muttered it before dropping his
head between his shoulders. A glance in the Hum’s rearview showed
that he looked as defeated as he felt. Thick dust transformed his
nearly-black hair into a weird blond. His blue eyes were bloodshot,
his face streaked with grime, his lips dry as a concrete
gargoyle’s.

He was tempted to laugh. If only all
those talent scouts and modeling agents, always ready with the
business cards and glam offers, could see him now. Because the best
hunk of the minute was the guy covered in five inches of dirt, ten
inches of rage, and fifteen inches of
what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-with-myself, right?

Behind him, the creak of a rusty door
sliced the humid air. The shack to which the portal belonged nearly
collapsed from the movement, a strangely appropriate symbol of the
interrogation that had taken place inside. Ethan grimaced. Nothing
like the sound of a grown man’s sobs to kill the lure of humor,
appetite, or any hope of forgetting about the head fuck he’d just
performed on the poor shithead.

“Bernardo, it’s been a pleasure.”
Every word of the cordiality was dipped in Rhett Lange’s
distinctive mix of highbrow London and cocky New York. Ethan almost
expected the man to whip out a party bag stuffed with plastic
favors but knew better. A month back, Rhett had used the same tone
before dicing up a double agent’s gut.

“Chupa mi
pito
, Captain America,” wailed the guy who
stumbled from the shack behind Rhett. His wrists were still secured
behind his back with plastic cuffs. When he lifted his
tear-streaked face and noticed Ethan, he shuddered and cried
harder. “You too,
culero
.” He spat in Ethan’s
direction. “You and your devil word tricks. I curse you to the
bowels of the hell you came from!”

Ethan parked his ass atop the Hummer’s
front tire and flung his gaze to the dust. With a shitload of
weariness, he mumbled, “Bernardo, my man, you may be on to
something there.”

Pounding footfalls yanked
his head back up. The stomps also came from the shack, now making
the thing look like the San Andreas Fault was opening beneath it,
as a third man emerged. Daniel Colton, whom they’d nicknamed CIA
Ken in honor of his flawless haircut, ducked to avoid whacking his
trademark locks on the shack’s awning before strolling free, thumbs
hooked into his Dragon Skin vest, a chortle on his lips. “‘Devil
word tricks?’ ‘Bowels of hell?’
Mui bueno,
Señor Galvaz
. Been catching up on your
comic books between those heroin runs into California,
huh?”

“Screw you, Colton. And
your
puta
mother.
And your whore of a sister.”

Ethan tensed some more. It
took a lot to get Dan Colton riled but everyone knew the women in
his life were sacred. The spook surprised him though, keeping his
shit tight, pivoting back at Galvaz with enough smooth game to earn
a spot on Usher’s back-up line. “My mama’s baking bread with the
angels,
mucha gracias
for your concern. But I’ll thank you right now to refrain from
the sister references,
amigo
. They’re not gentlemanly. Or
wise.”

Bernardo glowered. “Or what? You gonna
come after me, big bad spy man?”

Colton let out a long, low
growl. “
She’ll
come after you, little narco.”

“Bah. Just keep centerfold boy away
from me.”

Ethan kept his stare locked on the
ground. The heroin dealer had laughingly given him the nickname
when they’d started the interrogation this morning, and nobody had
suggested a revision. The call was correct. When a prisoner thought
he was nothing more than a set of dreamy blues, some lucky bone
structure, and a well-worked pair of biceps, it made his mental
scalpel that much easier to use. Less painful for everyone
concerned.

And then there were the
exceptions—like Bernardo. Guys who resisted every cut, making his
job a sheer hell. He’d had to slice deep today, digging into
emotional marrow he hadn’t expected. By the time the dealer had
finally spilled, weeping his way through the details they needed to
stop the truckload of heroin and illegal guns bound for the states
tonight, Ethan had staggered to the shack’s sink and scrubbed
himself from fingertips to elbows. Not that it helped. Washing the
dirt of a man’s soul off your own wasn’t something you did with
rusty water. It was barely something you did with
holy
water. He should
know. He’d tried.

Are you seriously pulling
a pity party about this, dickface?
You
were the one who joined this
machine to feel more valuable and connected to the world, remember?
To feel like you mattered beyond your pretty face and your prettier
checkbook, right?

Guess he’d just stepped
into a pile of the world’s biggest lesson-learned-the-hard
way.
Careful what you wish for,
shit-for-brains
.

Colton’s harsh
pfft
broke into his funk.
“Damn, Galvaz. Why’re you still all Bambi tears on me? We haven’t
touched a hair on your head, man. What the fuck?”

His pragmatic tone matched
the gray matter under the government haircut. As spooks went,
Colton was one of the better ones. He’d wisely listened to the
advice of his peers—
let Archer do his
prisoner whisperer thing then stand back and reap the
benefits
—and now his cocky swagger emulated
his triumph in the decision. “It’s time for you to grow a pair,
man. You only have a few tiny scratches from where we cuffed you.
Keep your wrists covered for a few days and nobody’s going to
suspect you’re the one who surrendered the playbook on this shit
for tonight. If it makes you feel any better, you saved some lives.
Even without the smack on the truck, you know the family who paid
the cartel to be hidden in the back would’ve never seen San Diego
alive.”

“Save your emo act for a
fourteen-year-old who cares,
cabron
.”

Dan’s answer to that was a
soft
thwick
, the
ejection of his pocketknife blade
.
“I’m cutting you out of these now, Galvaz. I need
your hands at full circulation by the time we get you back to town.
But try anything weird and we’ll toss you right out of the
transport. If you survive that part, you can play man against
nature, Sonoran Desert style. Glad to see you don’t like that
option because
I
sure as hell don’t. Your return to the Aragon Cartel is of
much better use. You’re clear on that?
Sí,
amigo
? You get back in there and stay
alert. We may be coming by for a play date with you again real
soon.”

Bernardo took advantage of his
physical freedom to wipe the tear-streaked grime off his face with
his forearm. “If you bring the centerfold bitch again, you can eat
my shit. And I expect to be paid next time, spy man.”

Colton rolled his eyes.
“I’m not sure you’re square with how this whole thing works,
amigo
.”

“Oh, I am ‘square,’
chingado
. Make sure your
palms are growing lettuce next time or stay home and let them whack
you off to videos of your slut sister.”

“Hell,” Ethan spat. He pushed off the
tire and slammed his cap back on, expecting to pull Dan’s fist out
of Galvaz’s face any second. But again, CIA man impressed him.
Though Colton’s chiseled features went tight as stone, all he did
was swing his weary gaze back toward Ethan, like they wrangled an
obstinate teen together.

Ethan spread his hands and shrugged
during his approach back to the shack’s porch. What mental poker
would be the best to shove back up Bernardo’s ass? He had a lot to
pick from. A childhood of abuse and poverty. Teenage days capped by
being blackmailed to make his first drug run, followed by getting
tossed out by his grandmother when she’d learned of his involvement
with the cartels. The girlfriend who left him when she discovered
the same thing. Terrifying, what the mind believed once the heart
lost its trust.

Silver lining? Galvaz was trying to do
the right thing now. Too bad the dickwad was being a little snotty
about the process, including the dramatic sob as Ethan got near.
“Get away from me!”

Ethan turned up his hands. “Shit,
’Nardo. You need to chill.”

“Don’t come another step
closer!”

“Not a problem.” He let his
left eyebrow kick up. “As long as you treat my associates with
better respect.” Squaring his stance sent up a small but effective
cloud of dust. “To be clear, that’s an ongoing request.
If I hear otherwise, I’ll be happy to hop back on
the helo and come for another visit. They know how to reach me real
quick.”

“
Fine.
Fine.
” Bernardo’s lips trembled as he
inched a step backward. “Just stay the fuck out of my head. And
watch out for my family. You promised you would.”

“That we did.” He exchanged an
affirming glance with Colton. “And that we will.”

“You fuck me over on that,
centerfold boy, and I’ll be up inside
your
head—with the barrel of my
pistol.”

The guy stalked away. Colton and Rhett
grabbed him by the elbows and walked him toward the dry riverbed
serving as their helipad. Soon a Black Hawk helo hovered into view,
though the modified bird made as much noise as a pinwheel, allowing
Dan and Rhett to exchange a hearty handshake and promises that
they’d get together when Dan made his way through Seattle, where
their battalion was based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Colton
tossed a wave to Ethan as well, before joining more government Ken
dolls aboard the helo, who’d already latched Galvaz in.

As the Black Hawk arced away into the
sky, Rhett strolled back with a pace that suggested he was about to
strip down to a Savile Row suit and whip out a perfect martini.
Once they stood together again, he gave Ethan a solid clap on the
shoulder. “You,” he uttered, “are a bloody god.”