Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2 (13 page)

Was her Allah different from his God? What did she know about Allah apart from what she’d been told as a child? Everything she’d ever done wrong, she’d been told Allah would not forgive. But Allah did forgive.

Was Roger right? Was she not forgiving herself? Did she blame herself for the men who had attacked her years ago, like her father did? Her heart had been pure even though she’d made a mistake and like Roger said, bad things had happened.

Roger’s words helped, but more importantly, they helped her understand him and see a little into the darkness he tried to keep hidden from her. The pain she sensed inside him. For the first time she felt something deep within him reaching out to her instead of turning away from her. She set her hand over his heart and pressed her fingers into his warmth and his solid strength. “You too,” she whispered, meeting his gaze. “You’re human too. And you must forgive yourself as well.”

He sucked in air as if she’d punched him. His body trembled beneath her touch. And if she did not get up and move that second, she was going to kiss him. She felt his attraction for her thundering in his heartbeat, and heating into a hard need beneath her thigh. Her heart answered in kind as did her arousal, but pain twisted with the pleasure.

Roger leaned forward and brushed his mouth to hers. Electric heat zapped everywhere. She shook her head and leapt from his lap.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, letting her go.

She ran to the bedroom door before she spoke, needing as much distance as possible to keep her from going back to the comfort and excitement of Roger’s lap. He looked completely devastated, almost like how she felt about having no shame. As if he’d committed an unpardonable sin. Could life get any more complicated?

“It’s okay. It’s not you. It’s me. I cannot seem to forgive myself for forgetting my baby’s father. It happens every time you walk into a room, every time I look at you I forget Neil. What does that make me?” She shut the door and locked it. Not to keep him out, but her in.

Chapter Fourteen

Atlanta, Georgia

The fire in Rico burned a path from Angie’s curling toes all the way to her heart. Every time she shut her eyes, she heard the sniper’s rifle echo through her mind. She hadn’t wanted a dead hero. She’d prayed to have him alive and vibrant in her arms, but was unprepared for the explosive combination of his unrestrained desire and her aching need.

She couldn’t get enough of him. Whatever it was that had held him in check for weeks had come unleashed. She could read it in his heated gaze and feel it in the deep thrust of his tongue—sexual, demanding and all hot male. Her tongue met his in a succulent dance that upped the urgency between them with every stroke.

Even though his cream-colored shirt had grass stains from his fight with the sniper, he tasted and smelled delicious, a combination of seductive cologne and something she could only name as pure Rico. Potent sex pheromones that were an unimaginable aphrodisiac—the final
crème de la crème
that had iced his Latin looks of black curly hair, dark eyes and tanned skin to an impossible-to-resist level. Rico Santana was “So Smooth”, just like Santana’s hit song.

Before meeting Rico, Angie hadn’t given much thought or credence to humans being in tune to pheromones. That was a phenomenon relegated to the animal world and their heightened senses. At least for her, because she’d never experienced the awareness of others described in pheromone research until she’d met Rico. The instant he’d walked into the room her every sense had exploded into life and completely succumbed to his appeal.

May the good Lord forgive her, but the man was a walking orgasm. From the lift of his brow, to the flash of his smile, to every move his honed body made. And that was before he’d even really looked at, kissed or touched her.

She’d been perched on so sharp an edge for weeks, sexually, emotionally, spiritually that now, in one fiery look, in one consuming kiss, and in one urgent touch as he cupped her nape with his left hand, bracing her for another kiss, she hurtled into an abyss that in thirty years of life she’d never fallen into before.

When she was ten, her father left to go get the tires changed on the car one Saturday morning and never came back. After forty-eight frantic hours of calling police, hospitals and every person known to them, her dad had called. He’d decided that the responsibility of the commitments he’d made was too much to uphold and not what he wanted out of life. He’d ditched his wife, Angie, his job and moved into a commune populated with New Agers. She hadn’t seen him since and in some ways, like her mother, she kept men at a distance from her heart.

Moving his hand from her neck to her back, Rico urged her even closer to him and Angie moaned in a mixture of ecstasy and fear. She knew from the things he’d said that in past relationships, he hadn’t even come close to the casual-commitment status to which she’d ventured—sort of a friends-with-benefits thing with men that she’d kept in touch with even after interest in the benefits had waned. She cared about them, just wasn’t about to count on them.

Rico had done one-nighters, weekenders and an occasional monther or two and then moved on. At first she’d thought they’d get along famously until two things happened. One, she realized casual and Rico didn’t fit into the same sentence in her world, and two, he’d waited weeks to make this move. Why? Did that mean what he felt for her went beyond the casual?

He’d sounded like it. The vibrations of his deeply toned answer to her question when he put his plate on the coffee table still reverberated inside her.

“I’m starving. Hungrier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.”

Her breasts met the solid wall of his chest and desire wiped coherent thought from her mind. All she wanted to do was feel. Feel every nuance of him. She pushed him back as she rose up from the couch to straddle his lap. Kissing him hard, she went for the buttons of his shirt and spread its edges wide, exposing the chiseled contours of his chest and shoulders to her gaze, her hands, her mouth. A thick gold chain hung around his neck with what she knew to be a Saint Christopher Cross. The vague legend that the saint supposedly carried the world on his shoulders flittered briefly in her mind.

Rico was far from saintly though. Thank God. He was a living, breathing warrior defined in muscle and supple flesh. He shifted, trying to slide his shirt down and off, but then winced and groaned with pain at the movement.

He cursed under his breath and exhaled in a sharp hiss.

A wounded warrior.

His pain twisted her insides and she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. Are you all right?”

He nodded, jaw clenched. “Not your fault. I’m just frustrated with this…”

Injury
…
weakness
…she could read the anger in his eyes even if he couldn’t say it. Along with the anger, she sensed his fear that his physical situation wouldn’t improve.

“Let me help.” She eased his shirt off his shoulder and arm then leaned forward, kissing the angry, red scar.

He sucked in a breath.

She met his gaze, sensing an undefinable dark emotion mingled with his sharp need, evidenced by the heat of his arousal pressing against her damp sex through the thickness of their jeans. “It’s okay. We’ll take it slow. It doesn’t matter to me. I am just thankful that you’re here and I don’t have to do anything insanely crazy to get to you.”

She ran her palms over his pecs, her mouth watering at the broad expanse. Michelangelo couldn’t have sculpted better.

Rico huffed out a laugh and his brooding darkness receded. “Seems you’re as hungry as I am.” He shifted his hips, sliding his arousal against her crotch.

She shivered. “That is the understatement of the year. I would have dynamited my way into the Fulton County Jail. There was no way I was going to spend another night only dreaming of you inside me—”

Anything else she planned to say disappeared from her mind as Rico pulled her shirt up to cup her breast. His heated hand felt so OMG good, she could hardly jerk her shirt off or unclasp her bra.

He groaned as he snatched the lacy scrap away and gazed at her breasts, then thumbed her nipple into an aching point.

“You are so freaking beautiful,” he said huskily. “I can’t get enough of you.”

Looking down she arched her back, giving him more. His tanned complexion against her milky, slightly freckled skin was visually stark and sexually exciting. She watched as his mouth claimed her other nipple, stroking it with his tongue, and her vision blurred as he rhythmically rocked his erection against her sex.

Hot, damp, desperate, she braced herself with her hands on his knees behind her and met him thrust for thrust, pushing hard. Breathing as heavy as he was, she trembled with the flash fire of passion overtaking them both.

“You’re killing me.” Deep and guttural, his voice was caught between a cry and a groan. “I am freaking exploding from the inside out and going to die unless I can get inside you right this minute.”

Angie shook her head. She couldn’t think. They should have stripped naked before they even started, because right that second she wasn’t capable of stopping what she was doing. She was out of control, beyond gone. Even whimpering—if that raspy cry was her.

Rico cursed.

One second she was straddling him, on the verge of everything, and the next she was on her back on the coffee table as boxes of Chinese food and paper plates flew to the floor. Rico was on his knees between her legs, his mouth and good hand doing a damn good job of getting her jeans off. She lifted her hips and shoved down the clinging denim, swearing she’d wear skirts and go commando from now on.

The waistbands of her jeans and panties only made it to her knees before Rico spread open her sex and planted a tongue lashing right on the swollen nub of her core. Wave after wave of fiery pleasure burned through her in an explosive rush to an orgasm that rocked her world because it was so good, but it wasn’t enough. She didn’t have Rico inside her. She didn’t have his arms around her. She couldn’t look into the drowning depths of his eyes. She pulled on his good arm, feeling his body trembling with his desire. “I need you now. More than ever before I need you inside me now. Please.”

He didn’t say anything. Just like her, he was breathing hard and shaking with need. He fumbled with his belt and jeans and brought a condom from his back pocket, tearing the foil package open with his teeth before he slid the protection on with one hand. She knew she should help him, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything else but watch and absorb his every move.

Meeting her gaze, he gripped her hips and thrust into her deeply, completely then repeatedly, rebuilding the fire with strokes so intense and powerful that her whole being swept up with his into a convulsing orgasm that had her screaming his name.

Rico’s every nerve burned with pleasure, even his injury throbbed with a pleasure pain. He was on fire for Angie and drowning in the depths of her misty green eyes at the same time.

She hadn’t needed dynamite to blast her way to him tonight. She’d only needed herself, and he was rocketing to a universe he was sure he’d never been to. With every thrust of her hips she propelled him farther and farther from any comfort zone he’d hidden in before. Her red hair framed her heart-shaped face with a mass of sexy curls. Her lush mouth waited for his kiss, parted and inviting. Her rosy breasts shook with his every thrust, begging him to go deeper, harder, faster.

Being inside her surpassed his every experience. He tried hard to hold back, tried to make the pleasure last longer and longer. He could watch her come until he went insane. Leaning down he sucked each nipple until she cried for release. Her freckled, milky-white skin glowed in the lamplight. He wanted to slide his tongue over every inch of her. He could still taste and smell the musky sweetness of her sex. He—

“Rico!” she screamed, shuddering in her release. She tightened her legs around his hips and reached her arms out for him. Her sheath clamped his erection like a burning fist as her body demanded he follow her over the edge. Physically that was already happening. Big time. He was buried all the way in with his balls kissing her sweet ass as the biggest orgasm of his life blew his mind. He literally saw stars. But it didn’t end there. Emotionally and spiritually she was sucking him into her and he was driving harder and harder to get there himself as his gaze locked with hers. She grabbed his heavy necklace and pulled his mouth to hers, demanding and claiming, giving no quarter. They rode out the pleasure, wave after wave, milking every drop of it together with moans, touches, tiny thrusts, and sealing it all with an endless kiss that left him breathless—soulless—everything-less. She stole it all.

Chapter Fifteen

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Roger stood beneath the punishing blast of cold water, shuddering from shock, regret, desire, guilt. Hell, he didn’t know what all from. He had so much crap battling inside him that if it wasn’t for his do-or-die-until-the-mission-was-done training, he seriously doubted that he’d be functioning.

He wanted to cut out the part of him that had felt a rush of something akin to pleasure at Mari’s parting words. She’d rocked the ground he stood on.

It’s okay. It’s not you. It’s me. I cannot seem to forgive myself for forgetting my baby’s father. It happens every time you walk into a room, every time I look at you I forget Neil. What does that make me?