Bare Nerve (13 page)

“Because I said so,” he said, pushing his hand up under her T-shirt and feeling her smooth skin. He put both hands on her waist and lowered his head to her chest, listening to the steady beat of her heart.

“Jack?”

She ran her hands down his back, holding him close to her. He shuddered at her touch and knew the the cause was more than physical. “I thought I said hands behind your neck.”

He felt the minute shifting of her body beneath his and was ready when she pushed her heels against the bed and rolled them both over. When he was underneath her, he pulled the T-shirt and underwear from her body and tossed it aside. He cupped her breasts with both hands, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples.

She undressed him, slipped on a condom, and then shifted on top of him, straddling him. He felt the humid wetness at the apex of her thighs, and he hardened painfully. He shifted his hips, rubbing his length along the center of her body.

Anna moaned his name, scraping her fingernails down his chest. Jack slid his hands down her torso until he had her hips in his hands. He teased her with the tip of his erection, rubbing it at the gate of her body. Her hips rolled against his, and he groaned at the feel of her, so hot against him.

He felt a drop of pre-cum bead at the head of his erection and knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. He thrust up into her at the same time he rolled them so that she was once again underneath him.

Fully seated inside her body, he held himself still, even though he wanted to thrust until he came. He angled his head and caught the tip of her left breast between his teeth. He bit carefully on it and then suckled her deep into his mouth.

She shifted under him, trying to move herself on his cock, but he held her underneath completely under his will.

“Jack…”

Sweat beaded along his back as she tightened her inner muscles around him. Damn, maybe he wasn’t in charge after all. He slowly pulled back so that only his tip remained inside her. He shifted his mouth to her other breast before thrusting deep inside her again.

He grabbed her hips and held her still when she would have met his thrust. She tightened herself around him again, but this time he was ready for it.

“Lift your legs, Anna. Bend them back to your body so I can get all the way inside you.”

She did as he asked, and he slid all the way home. He buried his face against her neck, inhaling deeply the scent of this woman, and began to thrust slowly in and out of her body. He wanted to claim her as his own, but he knew he couldn’t, knew that he and Anna only had this brief time in Algeria before they had to part ways and go back to their normal lives.

She gripped his ass, running her fingers lower until she scraped his sac with her fingernail. The feel of her touching him made him boil.

He increased his thrusting until he felt her start to again tighten around his body. Anna threw back her head and screamed his name. He quickly covered her mouth with his and thrust deeper into her until his own orgasm rushed through him.

Breathing heavy, unable to move and unwilling to separate himself from her, Jack rested his head against her breast, licking at the sweat on her skin. Her hands stroked up and down his back. He wanted to lie here forever and forget there was a dangerous world outside the door.

A
nna woke up in Jack’s arms after the second-best night of sleep she’d gotten in a long time. The warmth of his naked body pressed to hers dispelled the lingering coolness of the night.

She rested her head on his pectoral muscle and felt his hand on her hip. He was stroking her torso. There was some latent sexuality to the movement, but she sensed that he was simply touching her without the intent to arouse her.

Too bad that wasn’t working. She tipped her head back and looked up at him with sleepy eyes.

“Good morning,” she said.

He leaned down and kissed her, rubbing his lips on hers and pulling her more fully into contact with him.

“Morning,” he said as he lifted his head.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked. He didn’t look tired, but she could tell he hadn’t rested. There was a battle-hardened look in his eyes that told its own story.

“No. But I usually don’t.”

She hugged him closer to her. “I’m sorry.”

He squeezed her. “Why? Because you got some sleep? You needed it. It doesn’t take a rested brain to fire a gun, but it does take one to work the computer. And you’re a whiz at that.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I really should get up and check on today’s route. I asked Sam to check on activity in the region so we know what to expect.”

“Good. I’m going to talk to my men this morning. I’m not taking any more chances on our safety.”

She nodded. If there was one thing she was coming to understand about Jack, it was that the job and this team were his life.

Suspecting Harry of being in league with Andreev was not an easy thing for Jack to think about. He stroked his finger over Anna’s face, down the curve of her jaw, and then to her neck.

“You are so pretty for someone lethal.”

Anna knew men found her attractive, but she’d never really been comfortable with labels. Inside she was always a mass of contradictions, and none of her self-image was driven by how she looked. “Thanks.”

“Don’t say it like that. I meant it as a compliment.”

“I know. You haven’t really seen me lethal yet.”

“I saw you shooting yesterday in the Humvee. You have a precision I’ve seen only in snipers.”

She shrugged and reached up to touch his stubbled jaw. “I’m not like you, who can do two things at once. I really can concentrate on only one thing at a time.”

“That’s all you have to do.”

She rested one elbow lightly on his chest and looked down into his face. “I’m glad you came to me last night. I really wanted to see you.”

“Why didn’t you walk down to my room?”

She shrugged her shoulders, unsure how to put her insecurities into words. Maybe it was the fact that they had seen Martine just that afternoon, and he reminded her of her uncomfortable past and distrust of men. Or maybe it was the fact that as they’d driven through the dark and dangerous night, she’d tried to put into perspective the danger Jack had been in, and she was scared at how terrified she’d been of losing him. Or maybe it was the fact that she was starting to really care for Jack Savage. A man she knew very little about. She really knew only what he’d told her. And that petrified her.

She struggled to find words, and that’s when she realized she was changing. She knew the process had started months ago when Liberty had taken the bodyguard case with Daniel and she’d watched Charity fall in love. Then the process had continued when Justine had fallen for Nigel.

There was something about Anna that had irrevocably been altered by those events, and there was no going back.

But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it with Jack.

She rolled to her side and sat up on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t sure she liked this new direction of her life. Was she really falling for Jack? Or was her emotional attachment to him simply a reaction to her friends’ attachments to their men?

She rubbed the back of her neck as she sat there, lost in thought. Jack put his hand on the small of her back. Though it was just his hand, she felt the warmth of him spread throughout her entire body.

She glanced back at him and saw something in his eyes that reflected the turmoil inside her. Her computer pinged, telling her she had a new message, and she used that as an excuse to turn away from Jack.

She got up, finding her T-shirt on the floor, and pulled it on. She walked over to her laptop and tried to ignore the sounds of Jack as he moved around behind her.

She checked the message from Sam, who said he had a contact near Andreev’s camp in the Aaggar mountains. And that his contact had been approached to take out the women of Liberty Investigations.

She e-mailed Sam back, thanking him for the intel, and then got out her BlackBerry and IMed both Charity and Justine. They all needed to be on their guard, now that they were targets. This wasn’t the first time a client had gotten squirrelly on them, but it was the first time they’d had someone of Andreev’s stature after them.

Andreev was a man at home with weapons and death. A man without conscience who had spent his entire adult life peddling death. And now he was gunning for Anna and her friends, and she aimed to do everything in her power to keep him from succeeding.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

She hadn’t realized he was standing, reading over her shoulder. “Yes. This just makes me more determined to catch Andreev and put him away.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Jack said. “That’s a promise.”

Jack still didn’t like the thought of Harry or anyone else compromising the safety of the group, so after he and Anna were both showered, he met with her, Charity, and Justine.

“The only way we’re going to expose the leak is to set up a dummy site for your team to go to. I’ve looked at the maps, and I think we should say we’ve decided to stop driving to Tamanrasset and instead put you three on a flight to the city.”

Anna nodded. “I like the idea of this trap, but to be honest, we can’t put a planeful of civilians at risk.”

“I agree,” Jack said. “Do you have the contacts here to get a charter plane?”

Charity pulled out her BlackBerry and hit a few keys. “I might be able to get us one. Let me go and make a call.”

“Don’t go too far,” Jack said. “As soon as my team sees you’re all alive and well, a call could be placed to Andreev.”

Charity nodded.

“Why don’t we just put your men in a room, and then I’ll go in there with my guns and we’ll have a talk? I guarantee someone will talk,” Justine said.

“Maybe because we aren’t the Sopranos,” Anna said. “Again, I like this plan. It gives the man who leaked our location a last chance to redeem himself.”

Jack doubted redemption was going to be in the cards, but he hoped like hell it was. The Savage Seven were his family, and he didn’t take lightly to the fact that one of his own would betray him. “I’m more of a mind to follow Justine’s suggestion—”

“Right on,” Justine said. “There’s nothing wrong with a little old-fashioned American persuasion.”

Anna shook her head. “If Charity can’t get a plane, I’ll radio Martine and ask him to send one. But if this plan works out, I have the feeling we’re going to see a plane blown up.”

“That’s exactly what I think will happen. It should reveal our leak and give us an edge if Andreev thinks he’s killed the three of you,” Jack said.

“Why isn’t Andreev trying to kill you as well?” Anna asked.

“I suspect he thinks he can buy me,” Jack said.

“That’s the crux of the problem with men who sell their sword to the highest bidder: there’s always a higher offer.”

“You have to learn to goddamn trust me, Sterling. I haven’t betrayed you yet.”

Anna flushed and looked away.

Jack knew his words were angry, and he didn’t give a damn. He was pissed off at everyone this morning. And hearing Anna say the same thing she’d said so many times before about men bothered the hell out of him. He wasn’t going to sell out her or Liberty Investigations—no matter how much money he was offered.

He stalked to the window, his mind already going over how he could protect the women. Logically he knew they could take care of themselves, but he couldn’t go against his baser instincts. Yesterday had been harrowing because he hadn’t entertained the possibility that they’d be in danger until they’d reached Tamanrasset. He’d thought the journey would give them the time they needed to gather information and get ready to capture Andreev.

He heard Anna’s step behind him a minute before she put her hand on his shoulder. He glanced down at her small hand on his shoulder, and he felt a surge of testosterone. He was a big man, a strong man, and no one would harm this woman. His woman.

He took a step to the left, out of the view of the window.

“I’m sorry about what I said. I know you wouldn’t sell us out for money,” she said.

He stared down at her. “What
would
I sell you out for?”

She tipped her head to the side, watching him with those serious blue eyes of hers. “I think you’d sell us out if we did something that betrayed your honor. Something that made you question our integrity. But otherwise you aren’t going to budge from our side.”

He knew better than to let himself feel any kind of warmth toward Anna—it was bad enough that the lust had turned into the kind of desire he knew he was never going to quench. But her words made him feel good. Made him realize there was a part of her that got the fact that he was the kind of man who lived by his own black-and-white rules. “Thank you.”

She smiled up at him. “You’re welcome. Now come back to the table and let’s finish figuring out how to plug this leak Andreev is manipulating.”

He followed her back to the table. Justine said nothing as he sat down, but she’d been poring over a computer map of the local airport.

“Is it possible Andreev has some kind of leverage on Harry?” Anna asked. “I hate to keep fixating on him as the leak, but he’s the only one with a connection.”

Jack had no idea. “Harry’s not the type to form attachments. He lost his brother in Operation Desert Storm. I don’t think he has any other family.”

Anna carried over her own laptop. Her fingers moved quickly over the keyboard as she studied whatever information she’d accessed. Jack stayed where he was, looking for a good place to set up an ambush.

“If we use this hangar, we should be able to set a trap for Andreev’s men.”

“I agree. I have a few RPG launchers, but they can be a bit dangerous, so I think we should stick with semiautomatic rifles and handguns,” Justine said.

“I agree. We don’t want to piss off anyone else in this area. The Berbers have been hospitable, for the most part, and we still have to go into the mountains to capture Andreev.”

There was a knock on the door. Jack went to it and asked, “Who’s there?”

“Bay.”

He opened the door and let the veiled man enter. Bay stopped in the doorway. “Your team knows we’re here and that there was an attack on the women.”

“Who told them?” Jack asked.

Bay shook his head. “I’m not sure anyone did.”

Anna didn’t like the tension in the bedroom as all five of the Savage Seven guys (Kirk was still with Andreev), Bay, and the Liberty Investigations team sat there discussing yesterday’s attack. She carefully watched all the men on Jack’s team, trying to see if any of them revealed in their expression anything that could be a lead. But they didn’t.

“Now that we can communicate easily, I think we should stick together,” Tommy said. “We can definitely take on whatever Andreev sends if we operate like a team.”

“I agree,” J.P. said. “I think the Liberty team should be considered part of our group for the duration of this mission. Anyone who attacks them attacks us.”

Anna smiled at J.P. J.P. and Tommy were both very old-fashioned in their views toward women, and they were outraged that Andreev had dared try to kill them.

“I don’t know. I think if the women are safely in Tamanrasset with Bay, we can concentrate on going into the mountains and finding Andreev’s base,” Hamm said. “It’s not that I don’t want you ladies around, but if Andreev is concentrating on finding you, we can sneak up on his flank.”

Anna agreed that it made a certain kind of sense. But she also knew a team divided fell more easily. She used her laptop to make a note to keep investigating Hamm. Was there something she’d overlooked about him?

“I don’t like it. I think we should stick to our original plan,” Harry said. “Just keep moving on to Tamanrasset in the vehicles. We know he wants to stop the Liberty team from getting close, so we can watch out for his next attack.”

“Well, as we are essentially your boss for the mission,
we
will be deciding what our next move is,” Justine said.

She saw Harry bristle. Anna wondered if something as simple as not liking to work with women would have been enough for any of Jack’s team to sell them out.

“Where’s Kirk?” Harry asked. “He should be here if we’re dealing with an aggressive threat from Andreev.”

“He’s working another angle on the mission. He’ll join up with us tomorrow in Tamanrasset. For now, I appreciate everyone’s opinion, but as Justine said, we are working for the Liberty team, and we will bow to their wishes on this.”