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“So what are you doing here?”
“Playing? Escaping the marriage market?” He held her closer as the sound of the helicopter hovering overhead had her shuddering against him. The camouflaged top of the blanket, added to the dead brush secured to the narrow timbers above them, would hide them from sight. He had a moment to worry about Faisal, then pushed it away. If they were caught, they were probably dead anyway, despite the extraction team that he knew would be barreling its way to him.
He had pictures, layouts, troop movements, and hidden terrorist bases. He’d been out in bum-fucked nowhere for six weeks now after completing the primary mission he had been sent on to aid in the extraction of another captured agent.
That agent had been rescued. So why hadn’t a team been sent out for this one?
“They’re getting closer. ” Her voice was a breath of terror.
“No worries, baby. By nightfall, we’re going to be safe and sound and celebrating with some homemade shine I’m saving just for the end of this mission. I’ll get you drunk and seduce you. ”
“Seduce me?”
“Oh yeah. ” He held her closer. “I’ll lay you down and kiss every bruise, then lick all the hurt away. I’ll lave those pretty, tender nipples, and when I go lower, you’ll forget all about the pain. ”
“Ego. ” She was shuddering in his arms at the sound of the vehicles moving into the ravine.
“Truth. ” He kissed the top of her head. “When I’m finished, this will all seem like a very bad dream. Distant and gone away. It will be just me and you, sweetheart. Sweaty and hot and doing things that might make both of us blush. ”
“I bet you don’t blush. ” She buried her face in his chest at the sound of voices shouting in Arabic.
“I bet you could make me blush. ” He kissed the top of her head and smiled, triumph singing through him at the feel of the light vibration of the radio at his thigh. “You gonna make me blush tonight, sugar? I just got signal. ” He took her hand and laid it against the radio. “Five minutes and hell is gonna sweep through here. Five hours and I’m going to make you blush. ”
“You can’t. ” He could have sworn he heard tears in her voice.
“Making you blush would be my sole aim in life,” he murmured. “I promise, baby, I can do it. ”
“I’m married. ”
PROLOGUE II
Lake Cumberland, Kentucky
August, Four Years Later
Chaya Greta Dane found the tracking device that had been left beneath Dawg Mackay’s vehicle on the side of a dirt road so deep in the Kentucky mountains that she knew she would play hell finding her way out.
She blew out a hard breath and shook her head. The Mackays weren’t stupid, but sometimes her boss liked to pretend they were, and that was a very big mistake, especially in light of the fact that Cranston really wasn’t a fool.
She stared around the area before brushing back her dark blond hair and resigning herself to the inevitable.
Dawg Mackay had led her on a merry chase, and he had known exactly what he was doing. Through twisting hollows, up steep mountain roads that barely passed as trails, and into the thick forests that surrounded Lake Cumberland like a protective lover.
She would find her way out, eventually, but there was no doubt she was stuck for the night. Her satellite phone wasn’t cooperating for some reason, the cell phone had no reception, and night was coming on.
She straightened from the crouch where she had found the locator another agent had placed beneath the Mackay vehicle, propped her hands on her hips, and stared around the thick forest surrounding her.
It would have been enjoyable if she’d been prepared. Simple things like enough water to get her through the night, a sleeping bag maybe. She did have her weapon. And her thoughts. Too many thoughts the longer she stayed in Somerset—the longer she was around Natches Mackay and all the memories she tried to push behind her.
She shook her head and reached inside her back pocket for the habit she had picked up again in the past few months, only to find the cigarette pack she had stuck there earlier empty. Great.
Shaking her head, she wadded up the pack and tossed it into the back of the borrowed jeep her boss had had waiting for her just outside of Somerset, after she had reported the direction Dawg and his lover, Crista Jansen, had been heading in.
Crista Jansen looked too damned much like the woman brokering a missile sale between hijackers and terrorists to suit the Department of Homeland Security. It had been her job to follow Crista, to keep an eye on her and whoever she met with.
Knowing Dawg Mackay, Crista Jansen was meeting with nothing less than every inch of that Kentucky native’s hard body. Dawg wasn’t a traitor. He wanted those missiles as much as they did, and it was apparent he believed his woman was innocent.
But, hell, everyone thought the person they loved was innocent. Human nature had a tendency to overlook the truth whenever it wanted to. She had learned that lesson herself, the hard way.
