“Take a walk with me,” he ordered tersely.
She concurred wholeheartedly with his impulse to finish this discussion in private. “By all means,” she retorted.
Aleesha warned quietly, “Don’t get so wrapped up in fighting with each other that you drop your guard. A team of killers is floating around out there who’d love to get their hands on Kat.”
Mamba’s warning checked Kat’s irritation in midstride. Aleesha was right. And the woman should know-she’d fallen in love in the middle of an op, too. Too?
He seemed to take Mamba’s warning to heart as well, for he paused just outside the cabin to let his eyesight adjust to the dark and to take a long look at the surrounding foliage before heading down the narrow, sandy path to the beach.
She stomped along as best she could beside him. Unfortunately, the soft sand didn’t make for good angry stomping. He walked until they’d reached a cove mostly surrounded by cliffs that funneled the waves into crashing surf here. More to the point, the surf was extremely loud. Someone three feet away wouldn’t be able to hear them.
He turned sharply to face her. “Don’t do this to me, Kat.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t make me choose between my head and my heart.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t send the woman I’m planning to marry into a death trap. You may be a ninja to your core, but bone deep, I’m old-fashioned. Hell, a chauvinist, if you will. I can’t send a woman I care about into danger.”
“Oh, puh-lease. You of all people know I’m not some helpless little thing. I can take care of myself.”
“You’re not Wonder Woman, dammit!”
“You’re right, I’m not. I’m real. I can do stuff Wonder Woman’s creators never dreamed of…except for the invisible jet, of course.”
“Don’t joke around about this,” he retorted raggedly.
She peered at him in the faint starlight. He was really worried about her! “Jeff, I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be okay. I’ve got a heck of a good team to back me up. We won’t get taken by surprise.”
He threw his hands up in the air in frustration.
She tried again. “If I were one of your men and I’d volunteered to do this job, would you have a problem with it? Is my idea operationally sound?”
His gaze narrowed. Reluctantly he answered, “It’s a little on the risky side, but yeah, I’d give it serious consideration.”
She glared at him reprovingly.
“Okay, so I’d go with the idea if you were one of my guys. And yes, I understand that if I’d let one of them do it, I’m supposed to let you do it, too.”
“But…” she asked leadingly.
“But…” He took a quick step toward her and swept her up in his arms. He kissed her with such passion that her toes curled into the cool, damp sand, and her knees went suspiciously weak. Ho-lee cow. Their tongues tangled, mouths slanting across one another hungrily, as they strained closer to one another, pressing body to body from shoulders to ankles.
Eventually, he tore his mouth away from hers. “Can you honestly tell me you feel nothing when we kiss like that?” he demanded.
Panting, she managed to answer, “No, I can’t. When you kiss me like that, my world tilts on its axis. I’ve never pretended otherwise. But that doesn’t have anything to do with my doing this job.”
“It has everything to do with it, dammit!”
“Why? Male operators expect their wives to wait patiently at home while they put their lives on the line and not to question their judgment out in the field. Why can’t I, as a female operator, expect the same of you?”
He shook his head. “I guess I’m not as strong as you. I’d be a wreck, waiting at home while you ran around out here playing superhero. Is that what you want to hear me say? That you’re stronger and tougher emotionally than me?”
She couldn’t help smiling sardonically. “All women who wait at home for men who do dangerous jobs know
“Then you admit that you feel something for me?”
She stared up at him in surprise. “Of course I feel something for you. I feel a lot for you!”
“Show me.”
“Here? Now?”
“Right here. Right now.”
For once, she didn’t feel like shying away from his challenge. She was just mad enough to grab the bull by the horns. She dragged her shirt over her head defiantly and threw it down on the sand. He stared, speechless, at her bare breasts. She gave him a moment to take that in, and then she yanked off her belt and flung off her pants and underwear. She was already barefoot, and it was a quick thing to pull out the rubber band holding her hair and shake it loose around her shoulders and breasts. The wind blew cool air upon her naked skin, and the night caressed her damply. The waves pounded wild and free, calling to the siren within her.
“Here I am, Jeff. If you want me, I’m yours. But you have to take all of me-the good with the bad. The whole package.”
He gaped for a moment more, and then all of a sudden was fumbling frantically, yanking off his clothes in clumsy haste. “You’re magnificent,” he breathed.
And then his mouth was on hers, his hands on her body, drawing her down with him to the sand, cushioning her body with his. She stretched out at full length upon him, and the sensation of his body cradling hers all but made her pass out.
“I’ve wanted you since the moment we met,” she mumbled.
He laughed against her lips, his hands busy as he cajoled her body to a fever pitch of need with hands and mouth and delicious friction of skin on skin. “I thought you hated my guts when we met,” he mumbled back.
She kissed her way down his neck to the hollow over his collarbone, gasping at the way his thigh rubbed between her legs. “I loved it when you called me baby. Nobody ever calls me things like that.”
“Why the hell not?” he asked as his fingers dipped into the crevice at the base of her spine and all but made her jump out of her skin at the melting lust that shot through her. “You’re a sexpot. Men must hit on you all the time.”
That made her laugh, her nose buried against his chest. “Not hardly.”
“Must be that I’ll-break-your neck-if-you-touch-me vibe you put out.” And then his hand slid down her belly and touched her in ways that made her want to sob in pleasure.
Gasping as she arched into his hand, she managed to reply, “But that vibe didn’t stop you.”
He grinned, looking deeply into her eyes. “I was a goner before you even dropped me in the gym. I took one look and I knew I had to have you.”
She cried out as his finger stroked across her moist heat and swollen flesh.
“So responsive,” he muttered. “How could anybody miss how sensual you are?”
That startled her. Sensual? Her? She’d never attached that adjective to herself. But as Jeff played her body like a fine instrument, she couldn’t argue with him.
His big, warm hands gripped her hips, guiding her down onto him. His heat and size were iron hard and pulsed deep within her, erasing any remaining semblance of organized thought. As her control shattered utterly, her cry of unfettered pleasure rose to mingle with the crashing waves.
She rode him with abandon, matching the rolling rhythm of the ocean, embracing its grandeur and power, letting it wash through her and direct her movements as she gave herself over completely to the moment. She reveled in driving them both deeper and deeper into the night, in letting go of everything-opening the floodgates of her emotions and letting them gush over the dam of her training, her control, her entire being.
