The Colonel's Man (10 page)

The bag had been re-stuffed since her last workout and she started with light jabs first before slipping into her groove. Soon she was throwing a flurry of strikes against the bag, quick and powerful and designed to overwhelm the target into submission.

“Damn lady, you’re gonna break that thing again.”

Arita paused her attacks long enough to glance at Jason who was taking a drink from a canteen. Drew was nowhere in sight, leaving the two of them alone. He capped the canteen and set it back down on a nearby bench as he wiped off his sweat with a towel.

Gorgeous, shirtless and sweaty…she started throwing punches again to avoid watching how his muscles rippled with his every movement. She wanted…fuck, she didn’t know what she wanted. Something she couldn’t have.

“Then they’ll have to replace it again. They’re used to it. We go through a lot of bags,” she said between punches, working her way around the bag to the other side. “You got nothing better to do than drip sweat on the floor?”

“What?” His brow furrowed as he looked down at his chest. “I’ve been working out for an hour.”

He tossed the towel over to the benches next to his duffel before he took place behind the bag and held it still for resistance. “Does it happen that often?”

She knew what he was talking about but continued to work the bag, avoiding his gaze. Just her luck: a player who was too damn perceptive. No, that description didn’t fit. If he
was
just a player, she’d have bedded him and shipped him out, or avoided getting into this mess altogether since he was so damn good at the job. But he wasn’t, there was something about him…something that called to her and fascinated her all at the same time.

“Does what happen often?”

“Don’t give me that. You know what I mean Arita.”

His blue eyes were focused on her like she was a target. She didn’t like it. It was disconcerting and she felt like he was reading her mind. At least being human he really couldn’t read minds but he was sharp and he came pretty damned close to being able to.

She stopped punching and moved to walk around the bag, the side nearest the wall but he blocked her. Great, just what she needed, a pushy man before breakfast.

“I just don’t sleep very well.”

She stripped her gloves off with short, jerky movements. Tension swirled between them, so thick it could be cut with a knife. Memories of their mission…the office yesterday assaulted her. All she wanted to do was reach out and touch him, rise on her tiptoes and press her lips against his. Feel his hard body moving against hers again. But she couldn’t. She was his boss. More so, she was his commanding officer and he was enlisted.

“Yeah I heard it last night Arita. I could hear it through the walls of my quarters. I felt like…” He paused and took a breath. “What helps you with it? Like do you need sedatives or medication?”

Heat hit her cheeks. She hated this, hated the weakness it exposed, but as he spoke he backed her up against the wall in a way that both terrified and thrilled her. Lifting her chin, she looked him in the eye. “You were there last night, so you know I take medication.”

Leaning back against the wall to put a little distance between them, she ran a hand through her hair. It was loose, having come free from its confinement as she worked out.

“You helped. You stayed, didn’t you?”

“I helped?” He looked surprised for a moment then smiled as he brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m glad I did. I would never leave you if you needed me.”

He took his time stroking her hair and grazing her earlobe. She fought hard not to shiver from his touch.

“I can do it again, if you like… So you won’t have to be so haunted at night.”

She looked at him, wariness running through her veins. “That’s gotta be the worst pickup line I've ever heard.”

Her attempt at a joke fell flat as he moved in some more. Her instincts screamed at her to move, her experience and training supplied all the moves she could use to push him away then make sure he regretted coming anywhere near her.

She didn’t use any of them. Instead she lifted her chin, turning to meet his lips.

It felt so good to give into the temptation and not think about how wrong it was to be kissing him like this when it felt so deliciously right. She felt him groan and found pleasure in the knowledge that she could please a man like this with a kiss. He had her pressed against the wall like he had before and her nipples hardened, her breasts tingling at the memory of his touch. But while his kisses then were brutal and primal, he kissed her now gently, thoroughly as he thrust his tongue in her mouth, leisurely, taking his fill as if they had all the time in the world.

She whimpered against his lips, unable to believe the soft, feminine sound had come from her. But then it didn’t matter as he moved closer, hard body pressing into hers as he deepened the kiss. Instinctively she opened up, yielding to his unspoken demands as he slid his tongue along hers, stroking and teasing. Her hands lifted to his shoulders, clinging and holding him to her as she kissed him back.

She had always disliked being backed in a corner, disliked the vulnerability she felt but now this was different. She was trapped between the cold surface of the bulkhead and the warm wall of his chest and she found herself relishing this kind of vulnerability. The hard bar of his cock pressed against her soft belly and her knees almost buckled.

“We can’t…” She pulled away to protest, but her hands stroked rather than pushed away. She couldn’t stop touching him, was having a hard time trying to remember why this was a bad idea. “Jason, please…”

“I know…” he murmured against her neck. A sigh issued from her lips as he licked and nibbled the sensitive column. “But I can’t help it…”

She didn’t want to stop him, but she had to. They were on back-to-back missions this week and the last thing she needed was two of her team, herself included, distracted. If it had been two other members of her team, she’d have told them to fuck and get it out of their systems, but she couldn’t. She was his boss…there was a line she couldn’t cross.

“Jason. Stop.”

He was slow to listen but he finally stopped, pressing his forehead against hers as he took deep breaths. He held her face with his hands as he gazed at her searchingly, his eyes peering into hers.

“Arita,” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Whatever you want. Whatever you need. You come to me, alright?”

She nodded, barely breathing at the look in his eyes. Soft and gentle, protective and possessive with the heat of their kiss not far away, it took her breath away.

“I promise.”

* * *

“Archangel this is Wildcard. Are you receiving me?” Nothing. “Shit!” Jason pounded the console with a fist in frustration as he leaned back in what used to be the co-pilot’s chair in defeat.

It had been days since they had been shot down and crashed into the jungles of this planet. They had been providing operational support for the ground team and covered their exfiltration. The ground team had managed to escape without a hitch. They weren’t so lucky.

As they headed up the stratosphere, a surface to air missile had struck them right in the engines. The pilot managed to get them out of the planet’s gravitational well before he started to lose control. Pursued by renegades in fighters, the pilot had attempted to land them on a small jungle planet where the perpetual high atmosphere storms would keep them hidden from the enemy hunting them.

The idea worked well and they had managed to evade detection but the ion storm also meant that there were no comms. No way to contact the
Mandrakion
for evac. They lost power on the descent and a freak lightning hit fried what was left of their flight control. Jason moved up to the cockpit to help the pilot land while Arita strapped herself in the back. He had only hoped the mayday they sent to the ship had reached it in time before they lost communications.

He looked up to the rain beaten windscreen and the sharp, bloodied branch that had punched through the canopy and impaled their pilot. There was still blood on the chair where the man had bled out. For Jason it was too close a call and whenever he didn’t have to work on reinforcing their shelter from the torrential rains that battered the wreck to looking for food and trying to raise the ship over comms, he pondered his luck.

That branch could have just as easily gone through his side of the windscreen. He could have just as easily been the one buried just outside their camp in a rough grave instead of the poor bastard who’d never get to see his wife and daughter again.

Re-securing the tarp covering the damage to the windscreen, he returned to the back section. They’d stripped out the majority of the seats to give them room to move. Two survival mats were grouped by the back wall, a pile of sleeping bags on top of them.

Barefoot and stripped down to her combat pants and a sleeveless top, Arita leaned back against the metal bulkhead, a canteen held against her forehead. Even from here, he could see the flush across her cheeks.

“Still got the temperature?” He sat down next to her and reached over. She’d been running a low-grade fever for a couple of days and it was beginning to worry him. “Christ, lady…you’re burning up. Are you
sure
you didn’t get bitten or something?”

The lone medkit aboard contained enough medical supplies to treat even the worst field wounds but their rough landing had rendered the handheld med scanner too damaged to be useful and broke several vials of medication. He had been giving her Prolazine since yesterday to help bring down her temperature, but whatever was burning her up was too strong for the drug.

He pressed a hand against her neck and felt for her pulse which was higher than normal. “Your pulse is still the same.”

Reaching through the tarp that hung over the rear cargo doors, he retrieved his canteen from the water collection system he had set up just outside their door. He took away the canteen that she had been holding against her forehead and replaced it with the new one.

“I’m fine. Had worse.”

She shivered at the contact, opening her eyes and swallowing with effort. It was the same litany he’d been hearing for hours as he watched her symptoms get worse, and his temper was frayed. There was something wrong, and her close-lipped attitude wasn’t helping.

There was something she wasn’t telling him…and that pissed him off.

Mouth set in a grim line, he went over by the rear cargo doors to the thermal burners he had salvaged and turned into a makeshift cook stove. Arita had insisted on hunting for the past two days and that pissed him off more. She was already sick; she didn’t need to be wearing herself out hunting for more food than they could eat in a week. The rations they had would be sufficient for several more days and he had managed to catch some fish from a nearby pond in between hours when the rain wasn’t pounding them.

Despite threats of bodily restraint, she had managed to slip away when he wasn’t looking. She always came back with the wild game indigenous to the planet. Each time he made it clear to her that so help him God, he would take drastic action if she chose to be hard-headed.

That just sparked the “I’m your superior officer” debate which had ended in a stalemate between them when neither side refused to budge. He wasn’t about to let her pull rank on him when it was so obvious she was distressed.

The grilled fish and the meat of some sort of wild rabbit made up their entree for the night. Quickly portioning it off, he took both loaded plates over to Arita and set hers next to her. When she made no effort to reach for it, he filleted a piece of the fish with his knife and held it to her. “You need to eat.”

She shook her head. “I’m not hungry. I’ll get something later.”

Leaning back and closing her eyes, she ignored the food he held out and that did it for Jason. Calmly and precisely, he put his knife down and the plates aside, ignoring the anger and frustration raging within. Fear for her condition, the relief he’d felt when it had been the pilot and not him, the shame he felt at that relief all came to the boil over the fire of the tension between them.

“You’re sick. You need to eat. If you don’t, I’ll damn well force feed you.”

She cracked an eyelid and looked at him. He didn’t miss the shiver that raked her body. “I’m
fine.
There’s nothing wrong with me, it’ll go away in a few days.”

“
What
will go away? You keep going out there even if you’re wet and miserable. When I insist on doing the hunting you bail without leaving any room for argument. I keep trying to make it easier for you but you won’t let me. You keep giving me the same answers like a broken record and I can’t take it anymore!” he snapped, his voice sharp but he didn’t care.

“I know you’re keeping something from me, dammit, and I don’t like being fucked around with. If there’s something that’s going on with you, you need to tell me so I can help you instead of just lying there suffering in silence and driving me nuts!”

“I
can’t!
”

She pushed away from him, surging to her feet to pace the small confines of the drop-shuttle. Her hands shook as she pushed them both through her hair. She looked as fragile and delicate as he’d ever seen her look, the expression in her eyes haunted.