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She’d awoken and begun a slow, sensual assault upon him as he slept. It hadn’t taken much to awaken and arouse him. The third time had been gentler, more intimate and caring, making her want Nik one more time all the more before he left.
His hands lifted, cupping her breasts beneath the nightgown she wore, his thumbs caressing her tightened nipples. She moaned into his mouth and he kissed her hungrily, unable to get enough of her.
Daria wanted that kiss to go on forever, wanting his large hands to continue their slow, teasing exploration of her as they stood together. She heard Nik groan as he reluctantly eased them apart, a fierce, burning look in his raptor-like eyes. She was breathing raggedly, her breasts begging for his expert touch to continue. Her lower body glowed and throbbed, hungry to satiate itself again with Nik. She rubbed her hips against his suggestively, his erection once more hard and thick, straining against his cammos. “We have fifteen minutes,” she said breathily, smiling at him.
“You tempt me,” he growled, settling his hands on her hips, pulling her away from him. “You’ve had enough of me. You have to be very tender and sore, Kitten.”
Shrugging, she said, “I don’t care. There’s other parts of my body, my heart, that need you even more, Nik. In time, the soreness will go away. It’s not a big deal.” But she could see it bothered him. Nik didn’t like creating pain in another person. Not ever. It wasn’t in his DNA to do so. Pouting, she murmured, “At least you know what is waiting for you when you get home.”
He caressed her cheeks with his thumbs. “Home. You know that sounds so good?”
“Well,” she murmured, placing her hands on the backs of his as he framed her face, “consider me your new home?” and she gave him a serious look, meaning it. There was a flare of hope in his blue eyes, and she felt her words land with powerful meaning on Nik,
“I would like nothing more than to create a home with you, Kitten. Arealhome.”
“Then, let’s hold that dream together, Nik?” Longing to say so much more, Daria knew it was too soon. She wanted to leave Nik with something positive. Something filled with hope. “I live in a two-story cabin outside of town. Why don’t you think about what kind of house you would like? I’ll think about it, too. We’ll build the rooms in our minds? Each room’s color, the kind of furniture we’d like to see in it? That will be something for us to look forward to when you return? It will be something wonderful we can share with one another.”
He dragged in a ragged breath. “Dream for us, Daria. I can’t dream right now. I don’t dare, Kitten,” and he gave her an apologetic look.
Her heart broke a little more, understanding why he couldn’t. Stepping back out of his arms, she took his hands in her own. “Okay, I’ll dream for both of us. Stay safe out there for me, Nik?”
He squeezed her fingers. “That’s a promise I can give you,” he said thickly. Reluctantly, he released her fingers and shrugged on the massive ruck across his shoulders. He picked up his black baseball cap, settling it on his head. “I’ll see you as soon as possible,” he said. The words,I love you, wanted to tear out of his mouth. Deep sadness coursed through Nik’s chest. He knew it was too soon to say those words. Not to mention that they were both on a slippery slope, and there was no guarantee either of them would manage to come out alive at the bottom of it. He swallowed hard and gave her a fierce, tender look of the love he held for her in his heart. He saw her eyes glisten with love in return. Unspoken. But there. It was enough.
Daria nodded, watching him turn and leave the apartment. Silence fell all around her after he left. The room was barren of his larger-than-life presence and her heart shattered. She knew she had fallen helplessly in love with this brave, self-sacrificing soldier. And it hurt that she couldn’t gift Nik with the words she held tightly in her heart for him and him alone. There wasn’t any time, space, or anything else left for them now. Daria turned and walked down the hall to their bedroom. She would worry about Nik, but he’d survived out here for five years on his wits and intelligence alone. What she had to do was pull together her own life and her part in this mission. Jack had ordered her to continue the mission, despite the unexpected drug kingpin showing up. Looking at the clock on the bedstand, Daria knew her clandestine meeting with the Special Forces A-Team outside of town at 1100 was rapidly approaching. The meeting that had been scheduled ever since she’d arrived here in Aguas Calientes. She’d find out a lot more from Sergeant Kilmer then.
CHAPTER 16
At eleven a.m.,the low-hanging clouds were beginning to shred and show through a light blue sky above the tranquil area as Daria moved to a spot near a small clearing deep within in the jungle. She wore her knapsack and baseball cap and retained her cover as a botanist. Glancing at her watch, crouched partially behind a huge old tree, she had a clear view of the narrow clearing. With the photos from the Army Special Forces A-team in the front of her mind, she waited patiently. She’d worked with A-teams before and, in particular, hunter-killer three-man teams, in Afghanistan. She shifted slightly, her hearing keyed, her focus on the coming meeting.
Eyes narrowed; she spotted movement across the ten-foot-wide meadow. It was nothing obvious, but a trained sniper like herself would only be expected to see such subtle movements. For anyone else, they’d have thought the wind had ruffled that leaf, or turned those blades of grass, but there was no wind right now to do either such thing.
Slowly rising to her feet, hand on the bark of the tree, Daria turned to her right, well back within the line of scrub, and waited for the men’s silent appearance. It wasn’t long in coming. She first saw Sergeant Mace Kilmer, thirty-two years old, intelligent with shaggy black hair and a half-kempt beard lining his face, melt out of the surrounding greenery, his light gray eyes narrowed. He wore jungle-patterned cammos and carried an AK-47 across his chest, its silencer-fitted muzzle pointed down. The floppy hat on his head was dark with dampness. It was the lethal look in his narrowed eyes that told Daria this man knew his business. She saw two more men, all around Kilmer’s six-foot height, following without a sound. This team was good, but Daria expected that from them. She knew they’d probably had six or seven years to perfect their shadowy movement through this green hell. She wondered what drove them, but it wasn’t a topic to be brought up right now.
Kilmer’s gaze never left hers as he eased into the thick foliage among which she stood. He smiled a little, thrusting out his hand. “Mace Kilmer. Daria McClusky?”
She gripped his gloved hand. “Yes.” Releasing his firm grip, she nodded greetings to the two other bearded soldiers who stood casually alert on either side of Kilmer. “How do you want to handle this briefing?” she asked him in a quiet voice, her gaze never still, always watching the jungle surrounding them. She was an operator on equal standing with them.
“This way,” Kilmer said, flicking his hand toward the small trail she’d come in on. “Follow me.”
Man of few words.But then again, Daria mused, as she fell into step behind him with the other two soldiers bringing up the rear, living in a jungle for God knew how long, wouldn’t exactly make one chatty. Besides, their whole demeanor was stealth, and silence was their greatest asset. They moved onto a wild pig feeder trail about a quarter of a mile from the meadow. It twisted and wound for another mile before it opened up into another tiny clearing. Kilmer came to a halt within the tree line and turned to her.
“Welcome to Camp Alpha,” he said with a slight grin.
Looking around with her sniper’s eye, Daria saw a few hints that this was a sleeping place for the team. She could read that they slept here in hammocks above the ground. merely from the nicks here and there in a few of the surrounding trees. A casual hiker would never recognize what they were looking at.
She saw Kilmer lean down and pull over a wooden box.
“Have a seat,” he grunted, pointing at a partially-rotted log that had fallen a long time ago. “We’ll have coffee and talk.”
Sitting, Daria watched the three men go to work quietly, no talking between them. She saw their earpieces, and the mics they wore near their lips. They were each armed with a knife sheath on one leg, a drop holster with a .45 pistol in it, and their AK-47s. Each man wore a ruck that was probably their mobile home and, by the looks of them, weighed close to one-hundred and twenty pounds. She knew a hunter-killer team never remained still or in any given area for long, unless they were setting up an op to kidnap or kill an HVT: a high value target.
She slipped out of her own ruck, itself around forty pounds. Opening it, she pulled out a bunch of items and sat them at her feet. She saw Kilmer’s straight brown eyebrows rise.
“Seriously?” he grunted, rising and coming over to where she sat. “Fritos?”
Daria grinned. “I found out from Nik that you guys have junk food cravings.” She’d bought Fritos, potato chips and Cheetos for the three of them. And three jars; one with salsa and twos others of jalapeno bean dip. Nik knew their habits well from their many, many meetings over the past two years. He’d taken her to several stores in Aguas Calientes to acquire for them packages of the junk food that they loved, but never got out in this jungle. She saw delight dissolve Kilmer’s hard features as he crouched, picking up a bag, a grin widening his thinned lips. He grabbed one of the bean dip jars, pleasure wreathing his face.
“Morozov is one hell of a man,” he muttered, lifting the packages, nodding to her. “He’s one righteous dude. Thank him for this. And thankyoufor bringing it to us. We appreciate it.”
