Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2 (33 page)

She let go of her towel and melted into him, her tongue tangling with his eagerly, matching him stroke for stroke, thrust for thrust. He couldn’t get enough. He kept kissing her, tasting her, wanting more of her, wanting to know every nuance of her response to his desire.

She moaned, pressing her breasts to his chest. He urged her even closer as he cupped her bottom and thrust his erection against her soft flesh.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. Liquid gold, pure hot liquid gold. He was already drowning in it and all he could think about was delving deeper. He scooped her into his arms and placed her in the center of the bed then stood back to gaze at her.

“Do you know how amazingly beautiful you are to me?”

“As beautiful as you are to me.” She slid her gaze down then back up with one of those secret smiles that played havoc with a man’s mind.

He shook his head. “Nah, I couldn’t be, because you’d be insane with your need to just watch me. You’d ache every moment to just touch me. Your nights would be consumed with dreams of me and you’d live every moment just to love me.” He climbed onto the bed, brushed her lips with his then delved lower.

“You’d want to devour me.” He swirled his tongue around each nipple as he cupped and lifted her breast to his hunger. She arched to him, offering more of herself and he took more. Fervently, until she writhed beneath him, crazy with her desire.

“I do,” she whispered.

He kissed her lips then moved even lower, sliding his tongue over her tummy, nipping her hip, and blowing his warm breath over her sex as he settled between her legs. She gasped.

“You do what?” he asked, parting her slick flesh to reveal the pink pearl of her clitoris.

“Insanely watch you. Obsessed with looking at you.”

“Watch me now.” He slid his tongue up the groove of her sex, tasting the sweet musk of her core as he flicked his tongue over her pearl. She moaned, opening more to him, arching her hips. He anchored her in place and feasted until her body shuddered and she cried out in pleasure.

“I do. I do. I do,” she said over and over as she pulled him up to her.

He kissed her as he matched his body to hers, reveling in the feel of her all over, her legs to his, her breast to his chest, her gaze to his gaze. He shifted and brought his erection to her wet, welcoming sex. In just one thrust he would be inside her. In heaven.

“I do,” she said again, bringing her arm around him and urging him closer.

“You do what?”

“Ache every moment to touch you. I am consumed with dreams of you. And I live every moment to love you. I was never afraid of you. I was always afraid of myself with you.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Neil found me near death. He saved me. He brought me here. He loved me and I loved him. I didn’t know there was anything more. Then one day you walked into my home. I looked into your eyes and something inside me burst into life. I nearly fainted from the force of the desire I felt. I rushed to my room, took to my bed and prayed for Allah to forgive me. I could fight my thoughts of you during the day, but I couldn’t stop my dreams of you at night. I never would have been unfaithful to Neil but, Roger, I have wanted you, craved you, desired you and dreamed of you from the moment I met you.”

He froze in shock as he thought back. He remembered going to Neil’s house and meeting Mari for the first time, but all he remembered was downcast eyes and swallowing garments more suited for cloaking the dead rather than the living. He drew a deep breath as he gazed into her eyes. This was for real. He was humbled and he shook with emotion, speechless.

Mari blinked at Roger. Her whole heart and guilt were splayed open for him to see and he just stared at her. His blue eyes pierced right to her soul, but why didn’t he say something? Had she said too much? Did he think her awful? “Roger?”

He leaned forward and gently kissed her. “I love you,” he said quietly then thrust inside her, making coherent thought impossible.

She gasped with pleasure and wrapped her legs around him.

He thrust deeper and deeper as if reaching for her soul.

She arched to him, matching him thrust for thrust and demanding more and more. He kept his gaze locked with hers, claiming her, connecting with her completely, body and soul as he drove her passion higher and higher. Everything faded away. The world. The pain. The strife. The problems. Nothing mattered more in this moment than the pleasure of joining herself to him.

The exquisite desperation taking over her soul was unlike anything she’d ever known, ever experienced. She not only wanted to be as close to him as she could possibly be, she needed to be with a hunger that frightened her in its intensity. She gave him all.

“I love you,” she whispered and opened herself to him, absorbing his raw need. She didn’t close her eyes as her breath quickened and her vision dimmed, but kept her gaze locked with his as ecstasy shuddered along her every nerve until stars burst inside her head and she saw nothing at all. At some point she knew he followed her into heaven then eased them both to her unhurt side. He kissed her and wrapped her tightly in his arms.

She should have said something, done something, but all she was capable of was pressing herself close to his solid warmth.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Outskirts of the White Aryan Vipers (WAV) Militia Training Camp

Harnett County, North Carolina

2000 hours

Jack limped across the road, the pall of defeat heavy in his gut. Armageddon had come and still smoldered. The Viper camp lay empty except for investigators. The bomb squad had removed the stored C4 and weapons. All Vipers had been arrested, hospitalized or sent to the morgue, except for two. Dugar and an undercover agent named Slayer, who’d managed to take control of the group when their previous leader had been killed.

They now knew for sure that Roger and Mari weren’t in the camp and hadn’t been taken by the militants or Dugar. Jack was impressed with the operation, but Dugar had been the holdup on wrapping everything into a neat bow for months now and unfortunately still was.

Jack glanced at Beck. “Why did you turn back?”

“What was I supposed to do when I turn around and see you running into hell as the world explodes?”

“What else but follow me?” Jack sighed, knowing he’d probably do the same.

“I figured I could track Dugar later. He stopped shooting once the bombs went off.”

Beck wouldn’t be tracking Dugar for a few days at least. The blast at Mac’s car had thrown Beck, who had been ten feet behind Jack, into a tree and snapped his tibia. Another team was on Dugar’s trail, an army of helicopters were scouring the area, and roadblocks every ten feet, but Jack had a bad feeling about the whole situation.

Dugar didn’t get the satisfaction he’d been after. Other than the two dead EMTs—investigators had found the body of a second EMT not far from the tattooed man he and Beck had discovered by the motorcycle Dugar had ditched—there were only minor injuries across the board from the explosions. The few that had been shot were in serious condition but recovery was expected.

The deranged militant didn’t have any of his prized stash from the cave. The authorities had confiscated it all, but Jack knew in his gut that Dugar still had enough C4 on him to cause a major tragedy.

There wasn’t anything left for him and Beck to do here. Once it had been determined that the commander wasn’t here, Sergeant Vance returned to Fort Bragg’s CID office. He took Surf with him. Mac was in the hospital with a nasty gash to his skull, but he was going to be fine.

“You ready to go to the hospital?” Beck had declined the EMT’s help or use of an ambulance several times.

He grunted. “Guess so. You can drop me off and I’ll likely take a cab home.”

“What? No man that follows me into hell takes a cab home from the hospital.”

“With Lauren waiting, I thought you had better things to do than to sit for hours in the ER.”

“I do.” Mainly the ring in his pocket that was burning a hole in his soul.

“So?”

“So I’ll drop you off and you call me to pick you up.”

“Deal.”

An hour and a half later, Jack parked in front of his apartment on post at Fort Bragg. He didn’t know how he was going to say it, but he wasn’t going to wait another minute. He slammed out of his car and rounded the hood, practicing in his mind four simple words that had held men in agony and ecstasy throughout time.

He looked up and there she was, standing in the yard like a dream, moonlight kissing her golden hair and pale face. All of the worry she’d spent hours over was written on her face. Had it been too much for her? He’d come just exactly as he was and hadn’t tried to sugarcoat that he’d been to hell and back today. He didn’t want to lose her, but he wasn’t going to lie either. She was the best slice of heaven a man could have on earth. He limped to her and fell to his knees.

She gasped, clasping his shoulders. “Are you all right?”

He dug the ring out of his pocket and opened the box. “Will you marry me, Lauren? Be with me no matter what life dishes out?”

Lauren couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She didn’t know where Jack had been. She didn’t know what danger he’d been in. From the look of him, it was a miracle he was there. She’d seen him in action before. She’d seen him kill and almost be killed, but she’d never seen him this beat up. She didn’t have to ask to know that he’d gone more than twelve rounds with death since he’d walked out the door. Death hadn’t won, but Jack didn’t look as if he had either.

He’d come home though. But what about the next time?

She drew a deep breath, met his hungry gaze and knew that it didn’t matter. Him being alive and safe would always matter, but her loving him or not loving him because of it wasn’t a consideration. She’d fallen in love with a hero. He was a hero when he showed up on her doorstep and saved her and her sons and he was a hero when he walked out the door earlier today to do what he had to do. He’d be one to his dying breath and she’d love him to hers.

“Yes.”

Jack put the ring on her finger then buried his face against her stomach and sighed. She went down on her knees to hold him as close as she could for as long as she could. This moment. The haven of his arms and the solace of his soul tangled up with hers was all that mattered.

Chapter Forty

River of Blood Camp

Union County, Georgia

Rico walked through the terrorist camp again, hoping against hope to find something, anything to indicate Roger was still alive. Men searched the woods for clues. It had yet to be determined exactly what went down here.

The black van they’d been following with the ’copter had disappeared beneath the cover of trees and never came out the other side. By the time a patrol car arrived, the van was empty. Roger’s and Mari’s prints had been found on the floor.

Dick de Jerk had played out his scenario at Aleem’s house and at the Dairy Queen without success. Aleem’s Honda, front damage and all, was parked at the DQ and all of his employees thought he was back in his office, but there was no Aleem. He’d cleaned out his bank accounts earlier that day and he and his family had disappeared. Agents were sifting through Aleem’s house for clues. The only thing that had surfaced was that Aleem had a brother who drove a hearse in Gainesville. Several GBI agents were working that angle.

So all they had left was the carnage at the terrorist camp in the national forest. Spotlights had turned the night to day. An entire group of armed men lay on the ground, ripped apart by bullets as if they’d stood there and let someone massacre them. There were bodies scattered about. One woman in traditional dress had been shot in the head, execution style. The gun in her hand hadn’t done her any good either.

Generators had provided electricity for a TV and a few lights, but there were multiple empty plugs suggesting that other devices such as computers and cell phones had been used at one time and cleaned out.

Fruitless frustration clawed at him. Roger had been here. Was he now dead? Were they too late? This had also been their one chance at stopping the snipers terrorizing the country, but they didn’t have a single shred of information to make that happen. No forgotten cell phones. No papers. No lists. Nothing to go on. If nothing turned up at Aleem’s house, business or with his brother they were SOL.

Aleem didn’t even have a cell phone registered in his name, which Rico knew wasn’t true. The man had to have had one.

A commotion and the scream of a woman jerked Rico from his thoughts. He ran across the camp. SA Gibson pulled a woman out of a large wood box stored underneath one of the cabins.

“Let her go. Do not touch her,” a man yelled in a variation of Arabic, fighting Dekker and another agent who held him back. The man’s robe had been soaked through with blood from the waist down and he wasn’t standing with any stability. He was injured. Both were in traditional dress.

“They will not harm her,” Rico told the man in Arabic.

“She is unmarried and must remain pure,” the man said.

Rico heard the woman gasp. He explained to SA Gibson the man’s concern and the traditional Muslim code.