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“Know what?”
“…That I was shivering?”
“Saw it.”
She felt the deep heartbeat in his chest, closed her eyes and pressed her ear against him, greedily sponging the sound of him into herself. With a ragged sigh, Sierra pulled away. She blinked several times, lifting the hat off her head, realizing she saw grayness on the eastern horizon. Looking at her watch, it was nearly 0700. Where had the night gone? Had she slept against Mace and not realized it? It was only an hour until their watch was over. Rubbing her eyes, she lifted her chin, staring up into his hooded gray eyes that silently regarded her. She saw amusement in them. And something else. Something that Sierra couldn’t translate. But she felt Mace wanting her, man to woman. That, she was clear on. But not here. Not now. Probably never. She had a job to do.
Giving him an apologetic look, Sierra pulled free of his arm and out of his jacket. Instantly, she missed his body warmth. Missed him. “Do you do this with all the newbies?” she asked, managing a small smile of thanks.
“You’re the first.” He smiled a little, looking at her hard, as if memorizing her.
“Now Cale and Nate will really have something to laugh about,” she said, moving away from him, standing, her knee joints stiff. The cammie trousers were still wet, clinging to her legs.
“It’s none of their business, Sierra. What happened is between you and me. It stays here, with us.”
It was the first time he’d ever called her by her first name. When he said “Sierra” it had felt like a soft, tender brush of his hand across her skin. He hadn’t touched her but Sierra’s goose-pimpled skin still felt like he had. Turning, she frowned, staring down into his deeply shadowed face. It had to be her imagination. It was what she wanted from him. Her lower body flamed to life. Wanting him. Wanting all of him. “You’re sure?” she demanded, her voice dropping with concern. The look in his gray eyes was clear. She felt no manipulation. Just the honesty gleaming in his narrowed gaze, making her feel like she had a stove turned up to high deep inside of her.
“One hundred percent.” Mace looked her over. “Remember? You came out of Somalia a week or so ago? You were there for three months? Blood turns thin in a high-temperature, low-humidity climate, Sweetheart.” He gestured toward the low-hanging clouds over the jungle. “Out here, it can be ninety degrees and ninety-nine percent humidity, but when one of those storms roll by, it can drop the temp to forty degrees just like that,” and he snapped his fingers to emphasize his point. “You were in a mildly hypothermic state. No need to go there. And you were smart enough not to fight me but came into my arms so I could warm you up.” He smiled thoughtfully. “It comes down to survival, Sierra. And you’re a smart woman. You’re a survivalist at heart.”
She looked around, hearing the birds begin to chirp and welcome the coming day hidden in the clouds. The howler monkeys were starting with soft hoots. In a few minutes, it would escalate into a crazy cacophony. Pushing her hair away from her face, she ran her fingers downward, pulling her thick, damp braid over her shoulder. Shaking her head, she held his gaze. “How do you stand this?”
“What?”
“This… awful weather.” Touching her crinkled cammies clinging to her legs, she muttered distastefully, “I hate this. I love to see the sun. See blue sky. I don’t like getting wet like this.”
Mace chuckled and rubbed his stubbled jaw. “You picked a helluva MOS to be a sniper then. I’m sure you’ve had ops where you got good and wet and stayed wet for hours? Days?”
Shrugging, she quickly loosened the braid, rewinding it with quick, knowing twists, wrapping the rubber band around the end of it. Pushing it across her shoulder she saw Mace’s expression falter for a moment. That hungry look for her had returned. And then, in just one blink of her eyes, it was gone. “Yes, but it was always over in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa.” She scowled as she looked around through the moist, laden air, the denseness of the humidity painting everything with a gauzy cotton veil. Nothing seemed what it really was out here in this jungle, she realized.
The moment she had untangled her braid, allowing her thick, rich hair to fall across her shoulder, Sierra had seen Mace’s expression change. It wasn’t lost on her that most men like a woman’s hair. For many sensual reasons. If she’d been thinking, she wouldn’t have done it. Sierra didn’t want to look like she was teasing or flirting with Mace. She was afraid to lose her professionalism. She never had, in all the years she’d been in the military, and she wasn’t about to start now. She had an unblemished record that she was proud of. A love affair was not on her to-do list of things she wanted to immerse herself in.
Mace slowly rose to his full height, stretching, putting his arms over his head, his M-4 in his left hand. “You never got to rest up between ops,” he said. “If you’d had a month in Virginia, your blood would have thickened. You wouldn’t be so sensitized to being wet and cold.”
She nodded. “No question.” And then she gave him a slight smile. “You weren’t cold or shivering at all.”
He lowered his arms, twisting and moving his broad shoulders. “I’ve been out here for three years. I’m acclimated.”
“That’s a long time,” she said softly.Too long.She had never heard of a Special Forces team being put into a mission phase for three years like this. “You could have had other assignments, Mace. Why did you stay down here?”
He moved around the log, stretching his legs, getting the circulation going. “Between you and me?” and he held her gaze.
“Yes?” Sierra saw the sudden sadness come to his eyes along with a flash of anger in their depths. She yearned for this kind of intimate, personal talk between them. And for whatever reason, Mace had opened up to her. He trusted her. She trusted him.
“I had two younger brothers, Caleb and Joseph. Caleb died at twelve years old of a drug overdose.” Mace frowned, looking down at the ground. “I was sixteen when that happened. He was just a kid. Some dirtbag of a drug dealer handed him some fentanyl-laced heroin on the street. Caleb died of an overdose.”
Sucking in a deep breath, Sierra stared into his hard, fixed face. She felt the anger radiating around Kilmer. “I’m so sorry…”
He glanced at her, pulling the strap of the M-4 across his chest, settling the dull-black rifle against his back. “There’s more. Joe, the middle son, ran away and went to Charleston where he got mixed up in a drug gang. Later, he became a dope dealer.” Mace shook his head. “I guess he’s still alive. I don’t really know. He never came home, and he never called my father. Or me. He’s lost to our family…”
Sierra felt her heart open with such agony for Mace. “That’s why you’re down here. That’s why you keep coming back. You want to stop the flow of drugs into the States.”
“Yeah, once you know my history,” Mace said wryly, “I’m pretty easy to figure out. I want to take these vermin down. I want to take every last one of them off this earth. If I can take them out here, that’s one less kid that’s going to die from an overdose.” He settled his hands on his narrow hips, looking around, his voice low. “Or tear a kid out of a good family, a loving family, and become lost for the rest of their life… gutting his entire family in the process…”
Sierra stood there feeling tears burn in her eyes. Feeling how much Mace Kilmer had gone through. “There’s nothing I can say that will fix this or help you,” she said quietly.
Mace turned, looking at her. His mouth had thinned, and he gave her nod. “No, there’s nothing.”
She wanted to close the distance between them, throw her arms around this man’s thick neck, draw him against her and simply hold him. Just for a little while. Mace had been given no reprieve in life. No love. That had been torn away from him. And the loss of both his younger brothers had to be a constant reminder, like salt in the open wound of his heart, of what drugs had done to him and his family. No wonder she had felt that heavy blanket of sadness around him. Aching to hold him, despite knowing she had the strength to do so, Sierra forced herself to stand exactly where she was.
