"You're a fool, Jae Shaw," she whispered, her voice low and devastated. "A beautiful, goddamned fool."
She reached up, her hands moving with sudden, ironclad certainty. She gripped the back of his neck, her fingers tangling fiercely in his hair, pulling his head down that extra fraction of an inch until their foreheads pressed hard enough to bruise.
"You’re handling me?—”
“I—”
“Not deliberately. You have me, and you know it," she breathed against his mouth, her scent of hot desert air and dark metallic heat enveloping him completely. "If the world burns, we burn it together. But you aren't sending our boys anywhere."
She slid her hands down to his shoulders, her grip tight enough to leave marks through his shirt, her body shifting on the couch until she was entirely angled into his space, crowding him, taking control back the only way she knew how.
"Come to bed with me," she commanded, an ache bleeding through the heat in her voice. It wasn't a request. It was an eviction of the entire cosmos from her tower. "Right now. Fuck the font, Flash."
“Yeah, all of this is an adventure, babe, and I want to experience it all...with you, in you, all over you.” He leaned forward, whispering into her ear, her shiver uncontrollable. "I want the taste of you in my mouth, on my tongue, my dick. Take me. I've watched the skies. Now we fly free, together."
* * *
She heldhim with those predatory eyes for a long count, the kind of look a woman like Lechuza gives a man when she's deciding the terms of her surrender.
"Adventure." She tasted the word. "You're going to wreck me with that mouth, Jae Shaw."
"I'm counting on it."
"Stand up."
His body moved eagerly as she rose with him, her hand still locked in his, and the light moved across her face and caught the flicker in her irises that he had no name for and no defense against. She turned toward the stairs and drew him with her, and he followed without resistance.
She moved up the stairs first. He followed a step behind that beautiful, shapely ass. The tower's upper landing was dim. The two bunk room doors were closed. Behind one, he could hear Easy's breathing already gone deep, the kind of sleep operators fell into when their bodies finally accepted the perimeter was someone else's problem for a few hours. Behind the other, nothing. Twister and the junior grades had gone down hard.
She stopped at the door of his assigned room. She didn't let go of his hand. She just looked at him.
He understood. He slipped inside the room without releasing her fingers and grabbed his pack off the bunk, one-handed, gear already organized the way he organized every kit on every deployment, ready to move at any hour. He slung it over his shoulder, slipping back out like a ghost. She was still watching him from the hall.
"Smooth operator in more ways than one," she murmured.
He grinned. “You’re about to find out. I bet you can’t wait.”
The corner of her mouth pulled. “Cocky bastard,” she said with nothing but affection. His grin widened. She turned and led him down the hall toward the door at the end. Her hand was warm in his. He felt her pulse through the place where his fingers wrapped around hers, steady but climbing, the kind of climb she'd never let show on her face. She stopped at her door.
His body was a live wire, every nerve ending vibrating with a current that started in his palm and shot straight to his groin. His cock, already heavy and thick against his thigh, gave a hard, insistent throb, a primal demand that had nothing to do with thought and everything to do with the scent of her skin, the sway of her hips, the promise of this room. He could already feel the slick heat of her, a phantom memory that made his balls draw up tight. He imagined the soft give of her beneath him, the way her nails would dig into his shoulders, the sound she would make when he finally pushed inside, that sharp intake of breath that was half surrender, half challenge. He wanted to bury himself so deep that this lost feeling would find its home in her, to fuck her with a desperate, claiming rhythm until the only thing she knew was his name, until the only thing he knew was the clench of her around him, pulling him under, drowning him in her until there was nothing left of the world but their pleasure.
One hand on the handle. She didn't move.
He understood the second he saw the set of her shoulders. It was deliberation. Doubt had no place here. She was crossing aperimeter that she hadn’t crossed for anyone in years, possibly ever, and she was doing it consciously, with intention, the way she did anything that mattered.
He was done waiting. He covered her hand, turned the knob, and shoved. The door swung open into a dark room. She stepped inside. He followed, pressing up tight to her sweet, tantalizing body, with a soft exhalation of breath. Her soft groan almost made him come.
The door clicked shut behind them, and she said, quietly, "Lights, low," and the room woke in soft ocher the way downstairs had, low enough to see by and not bright enough to disrupt sleep.
The bed was a queen-sized solid-wood platform pushed against the wall, made up with charcoal sheets pulled tight enough to bounce a coin, a single pillow, military precision. Above the headboard, a rack with two weapons cleaned and ready, a Sig and what looked like a custom rifle in a setup he wanted to ask about. A monitor in the corner showed quad feeds from the Eyrie's perimeter, current, live, rotating through angles. A go-bag stood at the foot of the bed, packed, zipped, positioned for grab-and-go. The closet door was open enough to show tactical gear hanging in graded order.
This was a forward operating base with a mattress in it. Her battle station, andgeezus, he got so hard it hurt.
This woman was in his pores, his bones, his fucking DNA.
On the nightstand, small, carved, pale wood, worn smooth, an owl no bigger than the palm of his hand with its wings tucked and its eyes round and fierce. The kind of object a person had been holding for so many years that the grain of the wood had taken the shape of their hand. It was the only thing in the room that didn't have a tactical purpose. It sat there alone, watching the door.
His chest tightened in a way he’d never felt before.
