Forged in Fire (Delos Series Book 3) Read online

  Gripping the table, her breath caught and she tensed as the cloth gently moved across her entrance. It was as if he was touching her with his fingers, and she moved against his hand, a low moan caught in her throat.

  Matt inhaled her sex scent, and it did nothing but make him harden even more. He should have been so damned exhausted that sex was the last thing on his mind, but no. It was right at the top. Number one. And as he moved the cloth lower on the inside of her thigh, the curve beautiful and firm, he gritted his teeth. How could he lie with Dara in his arms and not touch her? Matt didn’t know if it was possible. Yet, he knew that, as guests in a chieftain’s home, there were protocols to follow. Making wild love with Dara wasn’t on the list. They would have to wait until they returned to Bagram.

  Dara swallowed a whimper as his hands caressed her upper thigh and he moved lower, to wash below her knee. The calluses on his fingers sent tiny fires exploding across her taut skin. Her fingers were digging into the wood, her eyes shut tightly as the flames licked up through her. Her nipples were hard, begging for Matt’s attention. She knew how good a lover he was and right now, loving him was the most powerful need flowing through her. But the thin curtain over the entrance to their room wouldn’t stop the sounds, and she wasn’t sure she could keep herself from crying out if he brought her to orgasm.

  No, this was the wrong place to pursue loving him.

  “There,” Matt said, his voice gruff and thick, “all done.” He handed her the washcloth and then took the towel, patting off her back, her beautifully shaped rear, and her long, slender legs. He could feel her quivering and could smell her sex. He knew if he eased his fingers between her thighs, grazing her entrance, she would be wet and thick with the honey from her body that he wanted so badly to taste.

  “Thanks,” she whispered, her voice faint.

  “Come on. I’ll help you on with my boxer shorts.”

  Dara stepped into them and was touched as Matt made sure the material didn’t graze her bad knee. As he eased them to her waist, she looked down and then over at him. “They hang on me!” She laughed a little, melting beneath his hungry gaze. He kept his hands on her waist and as his gaze drifted to her nipples, she felt another wild sheet of flame arcing from them to her aching entrance.

  “You are way too beautiful,” he rasped, lightly kissing her and then releasing her. “If we were anywhere but here, all bets would be off, sweetheart.”

  He saw the need in her pleading blue eyes. He desperately wanted to slide his hands around her breasts, lean down, suckle each nipple, hear her cry out, feel her whole body galvanize in response, her fingers digging deep into his shoulders, telling her of the pleasure he was giving her.

  Instead, Matt forced himself to pick up the T-shirt. She gave him a pouty look and it damn near broke him. Above all, they couldn’t, as guests, do anything but be respectful of their hosts. They weren’t two animals in mating season, rutting with one another, which was exactly how he and Dara felt. Matt realized it was survivor sex at work, too. They could have died at any point in the last twenty-four hours. It made humans want to reaffirm life when they escaped danger and lived.

  Nodding, Dara pulled the huge T-shirt over her head. The desert-colored fabric hung halfway down her thighs. It felt warm. “It’s almost like wearing you around me,” she teased him, reaching out, touching his cheek for just a moment. His predatory eyes stole her breath away, and she allowed her hand to drop.

  “You’re next to wash up,” she said, stepping away.

  Matt gave Dara the pair of dry socks he’d brought in from his ruck and then spread their sleeping pack across the dark blue Persian rug. He rolled up the small wool blanket and made it a pillow for both of them. Dara carefully sat down on their bed and pulled on the thick, warm socks. She watched as he stripped off his sweaty, stiff, grimy clothes. He had brought in a clean pair, a set of trousers and another clean desert-colored T-shirt to wear afterward. It was such a pleasure to watch him undress. He had no embarrassment being naked in front of her, and she smiled, thinking that nothing she had seen in her anatomy classes rivaled the beauty of this man’s toned body. There wasn’t an inch of fat on him anywhere. Her gaze drifted from his broad shoulders downward. He had the nicest-shaped butt, and her hands itched to move around each tight cheek and feel those taut muscles. From the back, Matt was a modern Greek god, rivaling the statues she’d seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

  When Matt turned around, clean but naked, she smiled. His erection was thick, long, and hard, so there was no guesswork as to where his body and mind were. As he reached for his boxer shorts, she made a sad sound in her throat.

  He looked up, grinning. “Look, but don’t touch,” he growled, hauling the boxers on.

  “I know,” Dara said, shrugging. “But a girl can appreciate. Right?”

  He gave her a heated look as he pulled the T-shirt on, a sour grin on his face. “That’s all you can do.” Padding to the sleeping bag, he sat down opposite her and pulled on his last pair of clean socks. “I want to deal with your knee. You ready?”

  “Yes, doctor.”

  Matt took a piece of gauze and placed antibiotic directly on it. “No infection that I can see, but plenty of swelling.”

  “I’ll take two ibuprofen,” she said. “That will reduce it a lot.”

  “Yes,” he said, bandaging the area and gently taping adhesive all around it. “There.” He looked up into her exhausted face. “Want to lie down? I’m going to get dressed and try to call Bagram with my sat phone.” He stood up, hauling on his cammies, and shrugged into his heavy winter jacket. “I’ll be just outside the house.”

  “Good luck,” Dara said. What would happen if Matt couldn’t get Bagram? What then? She had no idea how far away they were from the Army base. Anxiety tore through her, but Dara tried to squelch it, watching him disappear from the room. She tried to tell herself that everything would be all right, but nothing had gone as planned, so far.

  Dara longed for her quiet, steady practice as a resident at the hospital and at her clinic. Everything had a rhythm there, and she knew what to expect the next hour, the next day. Here in Afghanistan, nothing was assured but constant change.

  She realized she couldn’t lie down and try to sleep because her emotions were a mess. Matt finally returned about fifteen minutes later. His face was grim.

  “What happened?” she asked, her voice strained.

  Matt placed the phone in his ruck and shut it up. “Several things.” He turned, coming and sitting down facing Dara. He took her hands. “The bad news first,” he told her, holding her frightened gaze. “They’ve had no contact with Beau and Callie.”

  Gasping, Dara cried out, “No! Oh, God, Matt. What does that mean?”

  He held her hands a little tighter. “Maybe nothing,” he growled, unhappy. “It could mean that Beau’s sat phone is broken. He has a smaller radio, so its range is only good for a mile. They could be working their way back to Bagram on foot. That’s a good thirty-five-mile hike, but it can be done.”

  Dara pulled her hand from his, wiping away the tears streaming down her face. “But the Taliban could have them, too. They could have killed them!”

  Matt whispered her name, slid up to her, and pulled her into his arms. She sobbed once, burying her face in her hands as he gently cradled her against him. “If that happened, Dara, they wouldn’t kill Callie,” he said roughly against her temple, holding her tightly. “They’d kill Beau, but not her. They’d take her prisoner.”

  And he didn’t want to say anything more. Callie could be raped by the group, kept a sexual prisoner, taken across the Pak border, or sold to a high-ranking al-Qaeda official as a sex slave. She could die from being raped, beaten, or tortured, because she was an American female. They were all horrific possibilities and he refused to give them voice.

  Dara was shaking in his arms, coming apart beneath the constant strain of the last few days. He soothed her with words near her delicate ear, moving his
fingers softly across her golden hair, feeling the strength of it through his fingers. His heart ached for her, and there was no way to make this easy.

  “Look,” he rasped, pulling her away from him so he could look into her moist, red-rimmed eyes, “Beau is a Delta soldier. He knows escape and evasion better than anyone in the Army, Dara. My gut tells me he’s lost contact with Bagram because his sat phone has been compromised. I honestly believe they’re making their way back to Bagram right now. He’s a hill boy. He knows how to hide and evade.”

  She hiccupped and sniffed, her fingers trembling as she tried to wipe her eyes. “H-how long would it take them to get to Bagram?”

  “I don’t know. Beau isn’t going to move during daylight hours. He’ll hide them both and travel under darkness. He has goggles to see at night, so that’s a helluva perk in a situation like this.”

  “But,” she whispered brokenly, searching his eyes, “what is the Army doing to help them?”

  “They’ve just gotten a drone up to circle the route they might be taking to reach Bagram.” Grimacing, he muttered, “While drones are great, the damned things have software issues all the time. They just got one repaired and up. They’re looking right now, but it’s daylight, so if Beau and Callie are on the run, the drone won’t find them. At the earliest, it might spot them during the night hours. This drone has infrared capability, so if they’re out there, they’ll be spotted.”

  He slid his hand across her cheek. “I’m sorry, Dara. So damned sorry. This mission sure went sideways.” Bowing his head against hers, he felt her anguish. How would he have felt if Tal or Alexa had ever disappeared off the radar screen during an op? It was something that had never been far from Matt’s mind because Tal, in particular, had lived a black ops life on her own with her spotter partner, Jay Caldwell. She had always been in danger, like he was.

  Fortunately, she was now out of the Marine Corps and stateside. The only way Alexa, his fraternal twin, could get in trouble would be if her Warthog stopped flying on her. She lived above the fray the others experienced daily, though she was still in harm’s way.

  Dara’s sobs were low and ragged, like the sounds of an animal that was mortally wounded. And all he could do was hold her, murmur words of comfort to her, rock her in his arms, and try to ease her pain in some small way. “Listen,” he told her roughly against her ear, “Callie is a very smart, brave person, Dara. She’s a fighter. And so is Beau. Together, they’re one helluva a team in this kind of situation.”

  Matt closed his eyes, hearing her sobs lessen, her face buried against his chest, her fingers digging spasmodically into his skin. Dara hadn’t cried at any other point. She’d soldiered on, and he was proud of her, but he knew how close she was to her baby sister. His gut knotted with anguish. If he had to, Beau would give his life, or risk everything he had, in order to get Callie back to Bagram alive and in one piece.

  Matt just didn’t believe that the Taliban had captured them. And he didn’t want to.

  “Is there any good news?” Dara croaked, her voice broken and strained.

  “Yeah, there is,” he told her, gently kissing her wrinkled brow. “Bagram’s got a drone on the way up here. They’ve got our GPS location. It will be on station in an hour. If it sees anything, Bagram will contact me by sat phone immediately. That drone will be our eyes in the sky. It will keep us safer. When night falls, they’re bringing in a Night Stalker Black Hawk helicopter to pick us up. There’s a flat area outside the village. I’ll ask Sorosh to get his men out to the landing zone area and pick up any rocks or sticks that might get blown up into the air by rotor wash. The drone will show if there are enemies in the area. If it’s clear, they’ll send in the Night Stalker. There will also be two Apache combat helicopters with it, to protect it, just in case.”

  He kissed her cheek and used his thumbs to dry her tears. “If everything goes according to plan,” he told her huskily, “by 2200 tonight, you’ll be back on Bagram. And you know what? As soon as they clear us at the hospital, we’re going to the Eagle’s Nest, where I can take care of you until we hear about Callie and Beau.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Matt brought Dara into his arms and drew up the sleeping bag. She nestled her head into the crook of his shoulder, their legs entangled with one another. He bit back a groan as she pressed the front of her body against his, and it took everything he had not to initiate loving her here and now. It was what she needed. There was nothing like sex to distract a person.

  But it was far more than just sex with Dara. His body burned with need for her in every way, as her feminine scent combined with the sweet odor of her hair and entered his nostrils. She smelled of lye soap and cleanliness. His heart ached, because even though she was trying to relax, her hand softly curled against his chest, he could feel her mind going a million miles an hour. That worry gene was in high gear now, and Matt had no other way to distract her. Damn, he wished they were anywhere but here right now. He could kiss Dara, love her, and she’d entrust herself to him in every possible way. Beneath that cool doctor exterior was a molten wild woman just waiting to be engaged and set free. And he was the man to help her do just that.

  Caressing her back, trying to get her to fully relax, he rasped, “This is going to be over soon, sweetheart. The radios we carry short out all the time. My bet is Beau’s radio and his sat phone aren’t working. But that means he’s making his way back to Bagram with Callie. He’s fully capable of doing that.” How Matt wished he could offer her platitudes like “Everything’s going to be all right,” or “Callie and Beau will probably show up in a day or two at Bagram.” But he couldn’t, as much as he wanted to. As an operator, things never turned out as he’d wished sometimes.

  Matt felt Dara stir, felt her belly move against his erection. Clenching his teeth, he willed control over himself. Her belly was strong and yet soft, a sweet velvet pliancy against him, and it was almost as if she were massaging him, bringing her urgency through him so he would be unable to resist her.

  “I can’t stop thinking,” she whispered, moving her hand across his chest. “How are Callie and Beau doing? Are they on the run? Have they been captured? Are they injured?” Her voice hitched, and she pressed her head deep against his neck and jaw as if to escape the horror of her own questions, and the possible answers that scared the hell out of her.

  “I know,” he said soothingly, sliding his hands through her hair. “I know …”

  “I’m so tired, Matt … to the bone …”

  So was he. Because he loved Dara, his emotions could not be suppressed. Matt opened his eyes, staring at the curtain across the entrance. He’d finally admitted it to himself. He couldn’t conceive of his life without Dara in it. She completed him in ways that were impossible to give words to. But it was too soon, and Matt knew it. He couldn’t let her know the true depth of his feelings for her. Their lives weren’t their own right now. He’d have to wait, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t show her in other ways, such as stroking her sweet, long spine. He heard her moan softly, nuzzling against his jaw. Desperate, he eased her away just enough to tenderly take her mouth. There were times when wild, hungry sex was great, but this wasn’t one of them. He knew Dara was hurting and suffering with worry over where Callie might be.

  He slanted his mouth across hers, tasting her, feeling her warmth and response, absorbing a sweet moan as she twisted her body sinuously against his. He gripped her hip, lost in the welcoming wetness of her mouth opening eagerly to his. Matt tensed, his erection flooded with burning heat, wanting to bury himself into Dara’s hot, awaiting depths. Her mouth was soft, wreaking havoc on his exploding senses, and he smelled her sex scent, knowing how wet and ready she already was for him. It was a special hell reserved for lovers in a no-win situation. Matt could feel her neediness, her desire to bury herself in loving him to forget reality. He wanted to, but the price wouldn’t be worth it. Dara didn’t realize the implications. He slowly left her mouth, her lower lip slightly swollen from th
e power of his kiss.

  Matt looked down at her and saw love shining in Dara’s eyes. Instantly, his heart swelled with that realization. Yes, there was arousal, heat, in her eyes, but there was also something so much more important that his heart cleaved open and melted into hers. So fierce was his love for this woman that all he could do was hold her in that molten moment, strung silently between them. Could he keep his mouth shut? Could he withhold his love for her? Matt had no idea what it might do to Dara under the circumstances. He knew half her heart and mind was centered squarely on Callie and her predicament. It had to be. Yet, he saw such glistening love in her eyes that he couldn’t ignore it, nor could he minimize it.

  Leaning down, he grazed her soft, willing lips. “There’s so much I need to share with you,” he rasped against her. “So much …”

  *

  Matt jerked awake. For a moment, he was so deeply asleep that he felt torn in half, his mind on full guard, his body screaming for more healing rest in Dara’s warm arms. He heard Sorosh and Farhat murmuring in low tones out in the main room. Sitting up, he left Dara and slipped out of the sleeping bag. He was now wide-awake and alert. Matt didn’t hear anything urgent in either of their voices, so he relaxed. Looking at his watch, pushing the cover aside, he realized it was five p.m.

  It was dark outside, and the sky was clear, the stars shining brightly. All good. If the weather was clear, the drone could see. And his sat phone had not buzzed to alert him to nearby enemies.