Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) (18 page)

“Yeah.” Tanner blinked, cleared his throat. “I keep this up, we’ll start to hear violins playing in the background.”

“How does a boy left to get through life on his own end up in an elite service? Because that’s what STUD is, isn’t it? An elite service?”

He sighed. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re as persistent as a mosquito at a nudist colony?”

She grinned. “Nice analogy, Akecheta, but it’s not going to get you off the hook.” Her grin vanished. She reached across the table for his hand. “I just want to know you.” Her face colored. “Not only in bed, you understand?”

His heart did that tightening thing he was starting to get used to.

“I did something I’d never believed in,” he said, clasping her hand in his. “I went on a vision quest. It’s a kind of spiritual journey to help you see inside yourself. And I took part in a ceremonial dance. The Sun Dance. It takes you even deeper into yourself. When it was over, I was somebody else. School took on meaning. A college degree became a goal. And after that, becoming a SEAL and then a STUD…” He paused, shook his head, and gave a bewildered laugh. “Amazing. We met, what, three days ago? And you know more about me than any human being on this earth.”

“I want to know everything about you,” she said softly.

He looked into her eyes. Then he got to his feet, went around the table and bent to her. She looped her arms around his neck and he kissed her and took her back to bed.

* * *

They made love.

And slept in each other’s arm.

When they woke, Tanner checked in with Chay.

“No changes,” Chay said. “Weather’s still coming in. And we lost the bunch of guys that might have been Bright Star.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Tanner sighed. Chay was right. Maybe it was good. Maybe it wasn’t.

“Okay,” he said. “Got it. Over.”

“Hang in there, dude. Out.”

Tanner stowed the satphone, turned to Alessandra and drew her into his arms.

“Looks as if we’re gonna be here for a while.”

“Well, we have plenty of food.” She reached out one hand, ran the tip of her index finger lightly down the center of his chest. “We’ll just have to come up with some creative ways to pass the time.” She leaned forward. Kissed his sternum. “Maybe we can find a deck of cards and play gin.”

“You know how to play gin?”

“No,” she said, and grinned. She moved lower. Kissed his belly button. “Or we can play some other game.” She nuzzled the covers down, exposing his penis.

It had just been very, very busy, but that didn’t stop it from giving an impressive twitch.

“For instance,” she said, looking up at Tanner, “just see what’s happening here. What an amazing toy. Changes shape, changes size…

She giggled as he rolled her onto her back.

“You,” he growled, “are a bad girl, Ms. Bellini. And ve haf ways of dealing with bad girls.”

“I hope so,” she whispered.

Tanner moved onto his side and took her with him. He folded one arm beneath his head and held her close in the curve of the other.

“Tell me about yourself. When were your parents divorced? Were you a little girl? Was it hard to see them split?”

She sighed, folded her hands on his chest and propped her chin on her hands.

“They didn’t divorce.”

“But your old man said—”

“He lied.” Her voice took on a bitter edge. “Lying is what my esteemed father does best.”

“Honey. If you don’t want to talk about it…”

“Like I told you, he had two wives. At the same time. One in Texas. The other in Sicily. Neither knew about the other, and none of his children knew, either.”

“Jesus.”

“He says he loved each wife too much to give her up, but the truth is he dug himself so deep into a hole there was no way for him to climb out without ruining his precious career.”

“When did you find out?”

“When our mother died.”

“When you were already grieving for your mom? Man. You must have been devastated.”

Alessandra sighed. “Things happen. I know how pointless that sounds, but it’s true.”

Tanner brought her hands to his lips.

“You have to keep moving forward,” he said. “One of the docs told me that when I was feeling sorry for myself because the wound in my calf just wouldn’t heal. I told her she was looking at life through rose-colored glasses, but she was right.”

“The wound in your calf,” she said softly. “The one that’s making you limp.”

“I’m not…” He expelled a long breath. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “I was in a firefight and I got hit.”

“Why do I think it was more complicated than that?”

He didn’t answer. She sighed. She didn’t know a lot about men, but she knew about her brothers. Sometimes it was best to back off.

“And this?” she asked, lightly touching the scar on his shoulder.

“Souvenir of Afghanistan,” he said, with another lazy shrug.

“There’s a scar on your belly, too.”

“Knife wound.” He drew her close and kissed her. “The guy who gave it to me would have been better off using his knife to butter his bread.”

She knew he wanted her to laugh, but she couldn’t. Thinking of him being hurt was too painful.

“And these,” she said, running her finger lightly over first one small scar on his pectorals and then the other. “What kind of weapon could make scars like these?”

At first, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. He caught her hand. Held it against his chest. A few long seconds of silence passed. When he finally answered, it was in a low voice.

“Not weapons,” he finally said. “A knife.”

“I don’t understand. These are knife wounds?”

“They are what remains of small cuts into my skin, done by a tribal elder, who then threaded strips of rawhide through them and tied them to the sacred pole used in the Sun Dance.”

He felt her body stiffen, and heard her small whisper of… Shock? Horror? Disgust?

Akecheta,
he thought grimly,
what a monumental fool you are!

Why had he told her this? The dance was not a thing he had ever discussed with anyone outside the tribe. There were far too many who still thought of Native Americans as barbaric. Had he just given credence to that stereotype?

“It’s a sacred ritual. It began two centuries ago, and then the federal government outlawed it. They said it was barbaric.”

“But your people said it was sacred.”

Tanner nodded. “It’s a ceremony of renewal. Of conviction. It reminds the dancers of their connection to the earth, to the circle of life. And, if you are very, very lucky, it renews your sense of self.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. “I needed that renewal of self. I needed to find my way out of the darkness and into the light.”

Slowly, she drew her hand from his. He let it happen. If he had said too much, if she needed to put some space between them, he would not stop her…but when, instead, she moved even closer and spread her hand gently over first one scar and then the other, his heart lifted.

“Is it still outlawed?”

“No. The government finally saw the dance as what it was and is, an important sacred rite for the tribes of the Plains.”

Her hand was over his heart.

“And did dancing take you into the light?”

Her tone was soft and sweet. He rolled towards her and slid his hand into her hair.

“I’d been a lost kid, sweetheart. The dance, my commitment to what I experienced during it… My life changed.”

Her lips curved in a gentle smile.

“What you mean, Lieutenant, is that
you
changed. You changed your life.”

“Yeah,” he said, in a way she’d learned meant he was embarrassed and didn’t want to talk anymore.

That was fine with her.

She didn’t want to talk anymore, either.

She wanted to kiss him. Make love with him and to him. Tell him with her hands and mouth and body what she couldn’t tell him with words.

She loved him.

This strong, gentle, amazing man. She loved him.

I love you
, she thought, and she brought her mouth to his.

To his throat.

To the scar on his shoulder and the ones on his chest.

To his flat belly.

“Alessandra,” he said, “wait…”

Why wait, when kissing him everywhere, as he had kissed her everywhere, was what she longed to do?

His penis hardened. Rose against his belly. It was as beautiful, as powerful as the rest of him, and she lowered her head and kissed the tip.

He whispered her name

She licked the silken length. Licked it again. Then she closed her lips around the head and her mouth took him deep just as her body had done.

His hands fisted in her hair. He gave himself up to her and then, when he could take no more, he withdrew from her mouth, cupped her shoulders, rolled her on her back and knelt between her thighs.

“I want to come inside you,” he said in a raw voice, and she arched towards him and he plunged into her and seconds later she cried out. He felt her muscles contract around him and then he stopped thinking and the world shattered.

* * *

The storm was merciless.

The rain beat down on the house. The wind tried to tear it apart.

But whoever built the place had anticipated tropical storms. The house stood fast against whatever the elements hurled at it.

The afternoon passed slowly.

They made lunch, and had it in front of the living room fireplace. Bowls of tomato soup from a can. Macaroni and cheese. It came from a box, but Alessandra found little canisters of spices in the pantry and turned the old standard into a masterpiece.

That was what Tanner called it, anyway.

“A masterpiece,” he said, scraping the last bit of mac from his bowl. “Where were you while I was in college, existing on packages of ramen noodles?”

She laughed.

“I was probably a few years behind you, existing on those same noodles.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” She brought the spoon to her lips and sucked the cheese from it. “To save money, same as you.”

“Your father didn’t pay for your education? But he earns a general’s pay. And that big ranch in Texas…”

“El Sueño. Well, we didn’t know that. He did offer to help with costs, but I didn’t want his help. None of us did. We already knew something was strange about his relationship with our mother. We didn’t want much to do with him by then.” She worked the spoon around the bowl, lifted it to her mouth and sucked off the last of the cheese. “What?” she said, when she saw the expression on Tanner’s face.

“Nothing. Everything. I’m just thinking what a dumb, self-important SOB your old man is…” He grabbed for Alessandra. She dropped both the bowl and spoon, squealed, and absolutely made no real effort to get away as he tumbled her beneath him before the fire. “I’m also thinking that if you don’t stop sucking on that spoon, I’m gonna show you that you’d have a lot better time with me than with a cold piece of stainless—”

Bzzz.

Tanner froze.

Bzzz.

“Sorry, baby. The satphone…” He sat up and reached for the phone which he’d left on a table beside the couch. “Chay?”

“Akecheta.”

Chay’s voice was crisp. This was business coming up and Tanner knew it.

“Talk to me,” he said, rising to his feet.

Chay talked while Tanner paced.

“The eye of the storm will be over you in an hour. Blake’s sending in a couple of choppers to get you and the woman out.”

“Fine for me, but for her… It’s night. Dark.”

“No choice. Bandits on the move, dude. Two dozen, maybe more. Heading for you. ETA ninety minutes, maybe less.”

“Crap. Bright Star?”

“Affirmative.”

“What’s happening?” Alessandra asked softly.

She had come up beside him, her face turned up to his, her eyes filled with concern. Tanner put his arm around her and drew her tightly against him.

“Timeline’s gonna be close,” he told Chay.

“No question. Also no choice. You won’t have enough firepower or manpower to stop them.”

It was true. Tanner knew it. He also knew the risks of running such a tight operation. If the guerrillas somehow got there at the same time as the rescue helicopters…

“I’ll let you know when the Hueys are a couple of miles out, but you’ll hear them comin’ in. The landing zone is that sea of grass between the mangrove swamp and the house. Got it?”

“Got it.” Tanner cleared his throat. “Olivieri? Tell the chopper guys—tell them to be careful with her. Tell them—”

“Tanner.” Chay’s voice lowered. “You know they’ll do this right.”

“Yeah. Sure. Of course they will.”

The call ended. Tanner stood with Alessandra in the curve of his arm.

“Tell me,” she said.

So he told her. When he’d finished, she stepped in front of him and dug her fingers into the fabric of the T-shirt he wore.

“Helicopters? More than one?”

“Yes.”

“But they’ll take us out together,” she said, she said, her eyes searching his. “Won’t they?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

“Because I’m not going without you.”

He smoothed the golden curls back from her face. He wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear, but he had to make sure she was prepared for a glitch in the plans.

The years had taught him that there was always the chance of a glitch, no matter how carefully a mission was organized.

“We’ll go together,” he said softly, “unless we can’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? There’s no way I’ll—”

He kissed her. It was the only way he knew to stop her from making a vow he would never let her keep. She was going home, no matter what.

“Tanner.” He could taste the salt of her tears on her lips. “If anything happened to you…”

“We have less than an hour,” he said. “Much less. I’ll want us to be ready to roll in half that time.” He lifted her face to his. “You want to waste it talking, or you want to spend it with me inside you, where I belong?”

His words, the way he looked at her… He’d managed to reduce all they’d discovered about each other and about themselves to the only thing that mattered.