Taken by Surprise (15 page)

On the other end of the line, Mallory sighed. "While I agree with the choice, I can't stand the thought of you disguising those eyes. You've got to take a picture."

"I most certainly do not," Jackson scoffed. The only people who would ever see him like this were the agents and officers present in tonight's assignment and the few who noticed him once inside the club.

"Oh, come on. I have to see."

The sound of Mallory begging put him in mind of the myriad of things he wanted to do to her that would make her beg for more. Would she plead with him to kiss her pussy if he trailed his lips over her flat abdomen, tongued the belly-button ring that drove him nuts on sight? Would she whimper for him to probe her sodden opening with his fingers if he glided them over her breasts, danced the calloused pads of his thumbs back and forth on her nipples? Would she cry for him to fuck her if he held his cock to her eager opening, raking the head over her engorged clit?

So do I,
he thought with a violent jerk of his head.
I have to see, to hold, to taste and possess.
He had to do it soon, or he'd likely go out of his mind!

"I can't believe you went for blue. I would have expected you to be way more subtle. Blond, maybe red, but blue, I'm shocked."

"It wasn't my idea."

"Bingham's?"

"Hutchens's," he corrected, sighing in resignation as he swiped the black leather pants off the bed. "She's the DEA agent I'm going in with tonight. She's part of the scene here, already known by the BDSM crowd. She insisted she knew better than me what I needed to do to fit in."

"Is she, um, pretty?" The jealousy that came on the heels of the question felt almost palpable. "Because if she is, you might have found yourself another fling in the coastal moonlight," she rushed on, far too flippantly.

"She reminds me of you," Jackson admitted. He saw Malory in the DEA agent from the tip of her fuck-me heels to the gleam of mischief and authority in her shining eyes.

"Keep this up, Agent Graham, and you just might earn your fling gang membership after all."

"I'm not looking for a fling with her, Mal." She was doing it again, trying to push him toward another woman, a definite one-night stand. Next, she would claim, as she did last time, that it would do them both good. If she got her way, he would become the leader of her little fling gang, not latching onto any strings or demanding anything beyond sweaty, body-numbing pleasure.

"That's too bad. It could do us both some good," Mallory said just as he predicted. Then all playfulness and jealously fled her tone, replaced by a seriousness that stilled his blood. "Jack, the tie might be coming off, but you make sure to keep that collar tight tonight. What you're walking into, well, it's different than anything you're used to.

"ACT, as always," he assured her, feeling all that divided them shrinking in the face of her concern and their friendship. It started out as a thing between himself, Cameron, and Alec McIntyre. ACT—alert, calculating, and tough—exactly how they needed to act to keep themselves alive in field. Then Mallory joined the bureau, and the trio of men took her under their wing to teach as much as protect her. All of them knew, even back then, that attempting to shelter her would only lead to trouble.

"ACT," she echoed thickly, then added, "sweetie."

Jackson sensed she was about to hang up. He needed to go, too, but before he did, he figured he'd give her something to think about, a little of that picture she wanted him to take, only he'd give it in the form of a mental image.

"Hey, Mal."

"Yeah?"

"This shirt Hutchens bought for me, it's black, tight, sleeveless, and doesn't have a collar." He heard her gulp and knew he painted the picture just fine for now.

"Wait until tonight. You'll find the collar."

A heavy silence followed her words as she hung up. Jackson stood holding his cell, thinking she had given him something to ponder instead and wondering like mad what the hell she meant by it.

Chapter Eight

Cambodian forest

"You aren't really planning to sneak up on a team of Navy SEALs, are you?" Rhonda rose to the balls of her feet in an effort to see over Michael's broad shoulder as she whispered in his ear. He'd stopped so abruptly a second ago that she plowed into his back with an audible
uph
. Solid and strong, the collision would've likely knocked her on her ass if he hadn't reached a swift hand behind him to catch her. The hand that closed around her hip in a steadying grip released her now and dropped to his side.

Their noses brushed as he turned his head, a cocky smile tilting the corner of his sexy mouth. "What, you don't think I could?" His breath fanned her lips, causing tingles of erotic heat to rain through her body.

Oh, he could. The confidence in his exotic eyes coupled with the surety of his stance said he could. She'd watched him move for countless hours now, saw the precision and stealth of his steps, the training and skill in every breath. It had been like being led through the forest by the god of nature himself. She had never felt safer and likely never would.

"I would rather you didn't," she admitted. Even the best of the best fell privy to accidents.

"I didn't intend to."

"Then how will we find them?" SEALs were trained to blend in with their surroundings, taught how to become invisible in any environment. She pressed her palms on Michael's shoulders, rising further to her tiptoes to see. He chose to stop in the narrow space between two unforgiving trees. She couldn't have squeezed by him if she tried. Since she couldn't see through him, her option was to peer over his shoulder.

She saw the landing zone they had traveled all day to reach—little more than a wide clearing hacked out in the forest—barely a foot ahead. Blackened brush around it gave evidence of a recent fire. Did someone burn the area on a regular basis to keep nature from reclaiming the space? If so, who did the honors?

"Is that a military-owned LZ?" she asked in a hushed whisper. She didn't talk louder for fear of being overheard. If the SEALs found them first, okay, good. If the tangos were out there, too, that wouldn't be so swell.

Michael shook his head. "Probably belongs to one of the crime lords in the area. Phay isn't the only one out here."

"Great, so let's piss off another one while we're at it, invite him and his merry band of goons to join the party."

"You're a mother. I know you've heard the expression 'If you leave them alone, they won't come after you.'"

"We're talking about crime lords, Michael, not stinging insects."

"Are you sure?"

That shut her up. After all, how different were kingpins like Veng Kim Phay from say, a king wasp? Didn't the drug lord pass on his poison by getting it into people's bloodstreams? He certainly stung anybody who got in his way or disrupted his plans.

"How will we find the SEALs?" she asked again because he'd never answered her the first time.

"We won't. They'll find us."

"Okay, allow me to rephrase. How will
they
find
us
?" If sneaking up on them was a dangerous idea, waltzing out onto the LZ with arms waving and screaming,
Come get me!
could be definite suicide.

"Wait here."

Rhonda had had enough. She fell back to the flats of her aching feet, but not before she gave Michael's shoulder a stiff slap. "Would you stop trying to leave me behind?"

He shot her a look over his shoulder and down, surprise and puzzlement etching a frown in his forehead. "Would you stop getting so pissed when I ask you do to something?"

"If you tried asking, I might not get so angry."

Michael narrowed his eyes, shook his head, and made a barely audible sound of bafflement. "Why did I never realize how confusing you can be?"

"Probably because you didn't stick around long enough," Rhonda fired back.

She immediately recognized the expression that washed over his face as his shoulders rose and fell in a slow breath. She guessed it to be the same one she got when she struggled for patience when Lucas got unreasonable. She even understood how irrational she sounded. Reasons and experience made her this perverse, but he didn't know enough about that part of her past to get that.

"Would you please stay here, please, so that I can leave a signal for Ziegler's team out there? That's how they will know we are here, by the way. Would you please move back about ten steps and duck in that tiny alcove of trees until I get back?"

"Now you're just being an ass," Rhonda muttered, but her lips twitched.

He turned his upper body, reaching back to cup her cheek. "Is it working?"

"Yes." She scowled. "It shouldn't be, but it is." Unable to be this close to him without touching him, she splayed a hand at the small of his back just above the Glock in his waistband. Inspired, she inched her fingers to the handle as she pushed herself up slightly to brush her lips to his. "Be careful."

"Always." His tongue swept inside her mouth without warning or invitation, blistering her lips with a punishing kiss before he jerked away, letting her go.

If she didn't already have a firm grip on the gun, that kiss would've likely made her forget her intentions to snag it. She found herself holding it a nanosecond later when it slipped free of his BDUs as he turned to leave her.

"You're not leaving me here alone unarmed," she said by way of explanation when his gaze shifted from her to the gun and back again. "I don't care if you are only going a few feet away."

"Just make sure you know what or, for God's sake, who you're shooting before you pull the trigger. And get back behind those trees." He took two long strides before he stopped and shot her another look over his shoulder. She couldn't hear what he said, but she read his lips loud and clear.
Please.

Rhonda gritted her teeth and stepped back to where he wanted her to wait.
Shithead.
She stewed and waited and started to grin. She couldn't see him from where she stood, vigilantly holding the Glock, listening for any hint of his return or, God help her, a tango at her back.

To her immense relief, he couldn't have been gone for more than ten minutes before she heard his whispered warning. "I'm coming up at three o'clock." Thankfully she knew enough military speak to understand he meant he was approaching from her front and slightly to the right rather than making reference to the time.

"What kind of signal did you leave for them?" She scowled when he wordlessly reclaimed possession of the Glock, returned it to the waistband of his pants.

"The wrapper from a pack of Smarties I had in my pocket."

Rhonda's stomach grumbled. "You had candy in your pocket, and you didn't share?"

His laugh came silently, but lit his face in a way that monopolized her natural impulses to breathe. "It was empty. One of the guys on Ziegler's team, Cabelly, he's got a weakness for Smarties. I took a pack on the air ride over from the States. When he or one of his team members sees it, they'll know we're here."

"What do we do until then?

"We wait here."

"How will they see it?"

"They'll be looking for it, for some kind of sign that we're out here."

"What if they got here first?"

"I'm sure they did. They'll stay low, observe, and wait for the time to tick away."

"Shouldn't we warn them somehow? Phay's men, you said they were guarding the weapons back there. Isn't that what the SEALs are going after?"

"There's no way to warn them until we hook up with the rest of the team. They likely split off as soon as their feet touched ground. The ones sent in for the weapon retrieval are probably already working their way toward the designated site."

"Where they'll get ambushed by Phay's men waiting for them," Rhonda concluded. Fear for the SEALs gripped at her insides, making her feel sick to her stomach.

Michael pulled her into the crook of his arm, and he settled on the ground to sit, taking her down with him. "You know as well as I do that SEALs are trained for situations like that. Ziegler isn't going to send his men into a hot retrieval zone without making sure the area is secured first."

Rhonda burrowed her cheek against his chest. Under the grime and sweat, he felt smooth and smelled masculine, perfect. "How will we know they've seen it? The wrapper you left for them, I mean."

Michael angled his head to study her. "You're making mental notes, aren't you?"

She was, though she hadn't realized it until now. She shrugged. "Know what the one question I get asked most is?"

"Where do you get your ideas?" He said it more as a statement of fact than a question, as if he didn't need her to confirm he got it right.

"Bingo," she said anyway. "And my answer is anywhere and everywhere. Case in point." She gestured to the forest around them. "Need I say more?"

"Do you think you'll be able to write about it?"

It.
Her experiences, the horrors she witnessed, the terrors she felt. "I'm sure some of it will make it into a plotline or two. Writers tend to write from personal experiences most of all."

"I think it would be good for you, to put it all into words. Writing is how you express yourself best."

The fact that he knew that about her, that he understood it, spoke volumes about how much he actually listened to her. She remembered being surprised the day at the docks when he revealed he'd found her Web site, read one of her books. It served as one of her first inklings that the man could be well and truly dangerous to her heart.

"I'll probably try once we get back to Silver Springs." She heard herself make a sound that came close to a laugh, but held even more cynicism. "All that time on my hands in Phay's room, I actually longed for a computer, would've been satisfied with a pen and notebook. As if having either would've done me a bit of good. I wouldn't have been able to write anything."

"It would've given you comfort."

Michael's knowledgeable words brought tears to her eyes.

"It would've provided you a place to focus your concentration, an outlet for everything that went through your head."

"Maybe." Rhonda swallowed the emotions clogging her throat. "I have the beginning." In her mind's eye she saw herself standing in the cereal aisle of the Wal-Mart Supercenter, heart tripping and body tingling as she spotted Michael for the first time. "The climactic middle." Her mental picture show flashed to the day in the restaurant when he unexpectedly popped back into her life, to the days and nights talking on her sofa and going places with him and Lucas, to the horrors of the past days. She sighed. "Now all I need is that satisfying ending."

As if on cue, a series of short, staccato sounds came splitting through the forest. It startled a gasp out of her, made her jolt in Michael's embrace.

"You asked how we would know when the SEALs found the wrapper," Michael told her, hands moving to close around hers. "There's your answer. Come on. It's time to find that satisfying ending."

With hours still ahead before nightfall, the three-man team of SEALs who stayed behind to keep the LZ secure had hunkered down in the foliage to do just as Michael said they would, observe and wait. The other half of the six-man team had departed almost immediately, making slow progress in the late afternoon light, following the coordinates to the crate of weapons they had been sent in to retrieve.

The team's medic, introduced to Rhonda as Lieutenant Brandon McCormick, took her aside to give her feet medical attention. Michael stayed to converse with the SEAL team commander a few feet away while the third SEAL to remain at the LZ continued to keep a vigilant eye on the perimeter.

Rhonda put her hands behind her and leaned back, her focus on Michael rather than the medic who knelt at her feet. Oblivious to her attention, he stood stiff and straight, looking dangerous as hell and twice as sexy as he listened attentively to the SEAL commander before saying something in return. His head turned slightly, eyes landing on her like a pair of erotic lasers. Apparently he wasn't so oblivious after all. Desire shimmered warmly through her veins.

He looked away, and the part of her that had already started to grieve whimpered a little more. Their time alone had come to an end. The realization had slammed into her when they took that first step into the cleared land of the LZ to meet up with the SEALs. The last several hours had been hell. She had followed Michael through the forest, not knowing if Phay's men would find them, not knowing if they would make it here in time to be rescued, not knowing if she would ever make it home to Lucas again. Yet, she and Michael had made memories in those hours that she knew were worth keeping.

"I read one of your books." Ace, as his teammates called him, glanced up at Rhonda through hazel eyes in a face streaked with war paint. The SEAL still managed to be handsome enough to remind her of Brad Pitt in his younger years. "I can't remember the title, the one about the marine biologist and the private investigator."

"
Under the Surface
," Rhonda supplied, looking at the SEAL with a newfound interest.

He nodded. "That's the one. It was good. Solid plot, suspenseful mystery, descriptive, um…" He cleared his throat.