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She smiled and said softly, “You guys are more like Indians, not whites. In my culture, the hunters go out and hunt deer and bring it back field dressed. They then give the heart and liver to the elderly, plus the best meat. They take only enough of that deer for their own family and distribute the rest to the tribe.”
“These villages do the same thing. By bringing in a boar to them, it gets us a lot of intel,” Cale told her. He got up and peered at the chicken frying and popping in the skillet, looking satisfied. “When we first got here, they feared us just as much as they did the Russians. When they found out we were going to medically care for them, give them food and dollars, then, they adopted us. It’s been a good relationship between us. They always let us know when Belov and his men have come through. They’ll tell us which way he left so we can follow his trail and, hopefully, catch him.”
Sierra saw Mace wander over. For whatever reason, he looked more relaxed. Had their talk done it? Had she convinced him she wasn’t some female airhead? That she was a worthy candidate to be in his team’s midst? Sierra had worked with Special Forces teams before. One thing they had in common was the Sergeant, the leader, was damned protective of his men, of their care and safety. She couldn’t blame Kilmer for being threatened by her entrance into their team. He came and sat down, saying nothing, on the same log where Nate was sitting.
“Cale?”
“Yeah.”
“I brought a box of Potato Buds with me. Would you guys like some real mashed potatoes to go with this chicken?” Sierra instantly saw all three men’s faces light up. She laughed to herself: a way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. For a moment, a thread of sadness wound through her own heart. Jeb had loved her cooking. She’d often brought US food in boxes and jars out on their missions. Just getting a little home-cooked food every once in a while, was a treat. And no less there than it was here.
“Damn, you’re mighty handy to have around, Chastain,” Nate said. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, have some butter with you?”
Giving him a wry look, Sierra said, as she turned the chicken over in the skillet, “I do, but by now, in this tropical heat, it’s melted in the bottom of the jar I put it in.”
Rubbing his hands, Cale said, “Mashed potatoes with real butter AND fried chicken tonight.” He looked at his buddies. “Does it get any better than this, dudes?”
Sierra chuckled. “Cale? Come take over for a minute? I’ll get the plastic bag of flakes and the jar of butter from my ruck.”
Nate got to his feet. “I got a small saucepan in my pack. We’ll use it to make the mashed potatoes.”
Sierra turned and saw Kilmer looking at her. His mouth was relaxed. The color of his eyes was a stormy gray, and she had no idea what that meant. Automatically, her body went hot, reacting to the burning look he was giving her. It was as if she had caught him without his tough soldier’s mask in place. As if this was the real Mace Kilmer. She rose on shaky knees, still under his intense perusal. Quickly looking away, she forced herself to leave the circle and go to her hut.
Her pulse was amping up. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes this time, though. He damn well desired her. It was a naked, scorching look and she was old enough to know when a man was hungry for a woman. Her fingers trembled as she pushed into her hut on her hands and knees. Dragging over her ruck where she kept her stash, she opened it. Mouth dry, she licked her lower lip, unable to explain fully why her body was blazing like a three-alarm fire. The fire’s flashover consumed her lower body, and she felt the gnawing ache of wanting a man who really knew how to love his woman. All the way. She sensed Mace would be a skillful lover. Her skin skittered as she visualized his long, calloused hands moving across it. Closing her eyes for a moment, Sierra told herself to get it together.
There was no WAY she was going to let Mace’s naked, hungry look dismantle or distract her. He hadn’t expected her to turn around like that. He’d been staring at her backside. Sierra knew she had a nice butt. Jeb had told her that it was one of her finer attributes. Pulling out the gallon Ziploc full of Potato Buds and locating the small pint jar with the melted butter, Sierra tried to settle down her suddenly riled body.
Kilmer was like a flame. And she was the hapless moth. Sierra knew she wasn’t helpless in this unexpected development. He had never made any move toward her in any way to suggest he wanted her sexually. But she knew these teams stayed out three months at a time. And not having sex for three months was a pressing detail. She laughed to herself, closing her ruck. She hadn’t had sex in nearly two years, not since Jeb had died. But Kilmer seemed to fan the flames of her traitorous body like a blowtorch. What was she going to do?
CHAPTER 6
Mace sat aloneon his log, fried chicken, mash potatoes and melted butter in his kit. Cale had invited Sierra to sit with him and Nate. The three of them looked cozy on the same log together and he felt a frisson of envy. She had a quick smile for his two men. Given that he’d been a bastard to her since she arrived, Kilmer couldn’t fault her on not wanting to get anywhere near him unless she had to. But damn, the woman’s natural good looks, her wide, lush mouth drawing into a smile, her teasing and giving as good as she got from Cale and Nate back, made him damned jealous. Okay, so he admitted it. He wanted that curvy, firm, tall body of hers parallel to his. He was already fantasizing about it, which pissed the hell out of him. He’d been doing ops in Peru for three years, out in the bush three months at a time, and he’d NEVER been so damned sexually hungry as he was right now. Worse, he was partly erect, which really made him irate. He couldn’t even taste the wonderful chicken, it was that bad.
It would be easy to blame Sierra, but he was old enough, mature enough, to take responsibility for his thoughts and actions. That long, thick braid of hers swinging gently between her shoulder blades as she turned her head right and left to talk with Nate or Cale, sent a yearning through him. What would it be like to loosen her hair? Thread his fingers through it? Feel how cool and silky it felt? His men had lit up like Christmas tree light bulbs when they invited her to sit between them and she did. He was shocked, grumbling to himself that he should have invited her to sit by him. If only he had any social skills left. But hell, he knew she wouldn’t have. The golden sparkle in her cypress-green eyes made him ache. And her laughter was low and husky to his ears what mellow whiskey felt like flowing down his gullet, warming his entire body. Sierra was easy-going, jabbing Nate in the ribs with her elbow when he mercilessly teased her. The three of them laughed quietly, keeping their voices down. In the jungle, noise was swallowed up by all the nearby vegetation. Still, they knew they were in hostile territory.
The slope of her cheeks was high, her eyes slightly tilted. Mace decided she probably took after her Cherokee mother in spades. Her black hair had a reddish tint. It was thick, slightly curled around her temples, giving her a wholesome look. Mace had a helluva time reconciling her young, fresh college-aged face with the fact she was a deadly sniper. Reminding himself she’d been a Marine; he was amazed at her ability to unwind and relax. He wished he had that ability, but he didn’t. The fact that he was team leader was a burden he bore willingly, but it also didn’t allow him to let down that much, either. He felt himself longing for a different connection with her when she tipped back her head, exposing her long, slender throat, her hand against her mouth, laughing hard over one of Cale’s comments.
He’d never seen his team this loose or this happy. Hell, with a good-looking woman around, he was happy too. Still, he wished Sierra was with HIM and not THEM. How juvenile could he get? Apparently, very much, Mace admitted sourly. One thing age and maturity gave him was the power to be brutally honest with himself. That way, people didn’t disappoint him. Nor did he project his personal shit on them, either. Or… he tried not to, and he hadn’t done well with Sierra in that regard at all. He’d projected a lot of unfair judgements on her, none of which she deserved. His conscience smarted mightily over it and he wished he could somehow fix all that. He watched as Cale wiped tears out of his eyes, the three of them laughing so hard they all had one hand across their mouths to mute the sounds, and the other against their bellies. Grinning sourly, he tasted his chicken, tasted the cornmeal with its hint of thyme, salt and pepper combined. The fact that Sierra had personally made his next forkful of mashed potatoes, had poured the liquid-gold butter over every man’s kit, just made them seem to taste all the better to Mace. Damn, having a woman around as a teammate wasn’t such a bad thing in some respects. It brought a sense of the feminine into their harsh, dangerous lives. Sierra brought softness. A maternal touch. He saw both his guys blushing like school kids whenever she reached out spontaneously and touched one of their arms over some comment. Yeah, his men deserved this, and he felt warmth crawling through his chest and then making a dive south.
He didn’t see Sierra as motherly at all. She was hot. Damned hot. And that muscle shirt she wore, although loose, clung damply to her flesh, around those small breasts of hers, and Mace just about lost it, starting in on a visualization of his large hands slowly grazing their curves, feeling the fullness of them under his palms. He scowled, forcing himself to look down at the last leg of chicken on his kit. He grabbed it, biting into it like he was a wolf biting into a recently killed carcass. But he listened. He WANTED to hear her low, smokey voice, the natural warmth that was in it. And all he could think about was how her voice made his flesh riffle with need, imagining her lips, her teeth nipping and tongue licking him here and there. Mace decided that whatever else he did when they went into Cusco in a week’s time, he was going to find a willing woman to bed and take the edge off this ridiculous situation.
“What do you do in your down time?” Sierra asked Nate.
He shrugged. “Sleep. Because we don’t get a lot of it out on the trails. Humping a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound ruck. Our weapons. We’re drinking a couple gallons of water a day. Mace, here, relents every once in a while, and gives us two or three days of downtime after a hard push,” and Nate grinned over at Kilmer. “But he’s such a hard ass that we usually don’t get time outs like we’re getting now that you’re here.” Nate blinked and teased, “You’re special, Chastain.”
“Yeah,” Cale chuckled, “and we’re damned glad you are. We get three days to rest up.”
Sierra gave Mace a quick glance. He was slowly chewing his food, staring into the fire pit. Her heart squeezed. He looked so alone. Sad and alone. There was no other way to couch it. She felt it, intuitively. Even though the corners of his strong, well-shaped mouth curved naturally upward, there was a heaviness he carried that she couldn’t define. And he didn’t seem the type to dump anything on anyone. Well, except on her at first. And he seemed to have realized he’d been doing that, and reined in his prejudice, and even seemed a little grateful that they were on a more equal footing with one another. That was the problem with operators: they buried their feelings until they’d never see the light of day again. Her heart wanted her to get up and move over and sit with Mace. To excuse herself from the pleasant company of Nate and Cale. She felt kind of uncomfortable that the three of them were behaving like old friends on an overdue meetup, while Kilmer sat there alone. Really alone. And sometimes, she would feel his gaze on her. It felt like his hand was lightly skimming her body whenever he was trying to secretly look at her. And when she would look up and see him studying her, it triggered her all over again. This time, Mace’s gray eyes were not hard. Nor was there anger in them. Just—yearning. Need.
Swallowing against a dry throat, Sierra kept her gaze on her kit, finishing up the mash potatoes and butter. Did Mace need her? In what way? She allowed herself to remember the burning hunger in his eyes as they’d gathered wood earlier and had her answer. And instantly, she felt her lower body clench in its own kind of hunger. Sierra hadn’t known a sex drive could die, but hers had when Jeb did. Her body had gone dormant. And never once, not until just now, had it stirred and began to awaken. It was a hungry beast, not polite and not subtle. Sierra wasn’t going to lie to herself. The man was pure sex and so damned charismatic in his stony, silent way. It just rippled off his powerful, muscular body like heat waves and she felt every wave, silently lapping them up like the starving animal she had become. No question, Sierra sensed Mace Kilmer could satisfy her completely. All she had to do was remember how his big hands were when he had slid that radio band around her head, her scalp taking off like wildfire, and how she’d known then that, despite his size, he could be gentle. And most of all, because she’d been around big men in the military, and she’d always been shorter and leaner than them. Neither their height nor weight had ever intimidated her.
As she scraped up every last bit of the mash potatoes left in her kit with her spoon, she literally ached to feel Kilmer’s mouth upon hers. There was something so terribly lonely about him and it felt like a knife slicing at her heart. Sierra wondered if he would open up to her in the future. Would he trust her enough to do that? To lower those tough shields, he wore around himself? Maybe Cale or Nate could fill her in on his private life? They were treating her like a kid sister, Cale even tugging once on her braid. She liked these two men. They had the capacity for childlike play, like she did. And Sierra knew how important it was to let down and relax out on an op. It wasn’t always tense. It wasn’t always dangerous. There were long periods of boredom, and then there were these kinds of playful moments to balance out the intensity of an op.
“What do you do,” Cale asked, “when you’re slumming on an op, Sierra?”
She gave them a wicked grin. “I’m usually out with a sniper partner, my spotter. And if I’m not, like when I’m assigned to a larger team, I like to grab sleep. But when I wake up, I like to challenge the guys to a game of Scrabble.”
Nate laughed.
