She was finally done.
“Can I come in for a minute?” Stan asked.
She stared at him, but then stepped back, giving him access to her room. “Sure.”
He took the door from her, closing it behind him with a very definite click.
Her room was cool and dim with the curtains still drawn. Well, it was cooler than it was outside, anyway. It was identical to his, only her room didn’t have his dirty laundry tossed into the corner—including a pair of socks he’d worn for two days straight that should have been bagged and labeled biohazard.
He’d surprised the hell out of her by asking to come in, that much was obvious.
His being there made her nervous. He could practically read her mind as she took off her jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. His asking to come into her room like this was the dead last thing she’d expected. Why was he here? What did he want?
He was already scaring her a little just by being here, and if he did this right, he’d kill two birds with one stone. The hero worship would vanish, and she’d maybe learn a thing or two about standing strong.
Only now that he was in here, he wasn’t sure what to do. He was frigging nervous, too.
This felt too real.
Bullshit. It wasn’t real. Stop thinking like that. Come on, just do it. He’d seen guys act like assholes plenty of times. He’d even been one himself a time or two.
Or ten.
But not like this. Never like this with a woman like Teri Howe who looked at him with such warmth and hope and trust in her eyes.
It wasn’t real. None of it was real. Stop thinking. Just do it.
She cleared her throat. “Was there something specific you wanted to—”
“Yes,” he said. Two steps toward her, and he caught her in his arms. He meant to say something rude, something suggestive, something along the lines of what Izzy had said to her yesterday in the stairwell, but she was staring up at him, her lips slightly parted and . . .
And Stan kissed her instead. No, kiss was too nice a word for it. He crushed her mouth with his—that beautiful, delicate mouth—pushing his tongue past her teeth, kissing her as hard and as deeply as he’d ever kissed any woman, with no warm-up, no warning, no sweet words or courtship. Just, bang. His tongue in her mouth, his hands all over her, on her ass, yanking up her shirt, her full breast heavy in the palm of his unwashed hand.
He pushed her back toward the wall, pushed between her legs, trying to convince himself that it was more to protect himself from the knee in the balls that he deserved for doing this than because he desperately wanted to be there, right there, cradled by her soft heat.
Except she didn’t fight him at all. She didn’t try to push him away. She just kissed him back. Christ, she was kissing him back, pulling him even closer to her and . . .
He was the one who leapt away from her, embarrassed as hell because he was completely aroused and there was no way she could’ve missed it.
This wasn’t real. This was just an exercise, so what the fuck was he doing getting a hard-on? And what the fuck was she doing kissing him back?
Damn, he was a fool. He’d imagined she’d fight him, maybe crack him one across the face. He’d imagined them having a good laugh about it afterward.
But she wasn’t laughing. Not even close. She said nothing, did nothing. She just stared at him wide-eyed and breathing hard as she leaned against the wall. Her lips were swollen from the force of his mouth against hers, her shirt untucked from her pants and slightly askew. She looked like his own personal sex dream. Replace some of that confusion in her eyes with a touch more heat. Let her lips curl in the slightest of seductive smiles as she reached up and slowly started unbuttoning her shirt . . .
He backed farther away. “Teri, Christ, at the very least you’ve got to learn to give out the kind of signals that tell a man you want him to stop!” It was the wrong thing to say, and he knew it the instant the words left his lips. “God damn it, I’m sorry. It was my fault that that went too far. I was trying to—”
“Get out,” she whispered, closing her eyes as if she didn’t even want to look at him anymore.
“Okay,” he said, trying desperately to turn this back into the exercise he’d imagined. “You need to be louder. More aggressive—”
“Get out!” She shouted it now. “Get the hell out of here!”
“That’s better, but—”
She opened her eyes. “That’s better? How dare you?”
“That’s good,” he said. “That’s right. Tell me off. Come on. Hit me if you want to.” God knows he deserved it. And he must’ve misread her when he was kissing her. Maybe she hadn’t really kissed him back. Maybe she’d been . . . what? Trying to fight him off by jamming her tongue in his mouth, too?
Hell, no. She’d kissed him. He knew what a kiss was, and that had definitely been one. But it didn’t make any sense that she could’ve been so okay with it a minute ago, and so mad at him now.
“I want you to go!”
“Why? So you can feel bad later because you didn’t take the opportunity to tell me to go to hell? It’s okay to fight back, Teri, even if the guy is someone who intimidates you, someone you respect. You didn’t say anything to Rob Pierce—”
“Rob Pierce didn’t . . . he didn’t . . .”
“And you didn’t get angry enough to tell him off. Instead you internalized it, where it would fester and make you feel even worse. Who the hell needs that? You don’t! You could’ve said one thing to Pierce, just one thing—snowball’s chance in hell, pal—and he would’ve known you were on to him. So say it now, to me. Don’t kick me out. Confront me. Get angry. Tell me to keep my freaking hands to myself.”
But she just looked at him with those big wounded eyes.
God damn, this was a total goatfuck. He knew she wanted him to leave, but he couldn’t. Not now. Not like this. So he took a step toward her. And then another.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t,” he repeated, hardening his heart. “That’s supposed to stop me? Tell me to go to hell.”
“Go to hell,” she whispered.
“Louder.”
“Go to hell.”
He made himself laugh at her, still moving closer. “That’s not loud. Christ, no wonder Hogan thinks you’re a pushover, because you goddamn are.”
“Go to hell! Stay away from me! Keep your fucking hands to yourself!”
Jackpot. She was livid, and she was far from done.
“How dare you come in here and play this stupid game? How dare you practice your stupid pop psychology on me! Have I entertained you, Senior Chief? Have I amused? Or maybe I’m just this month’s charity case—is that it? Well, screw you! Screw you! Why don’t you just leave me alone? Why doesn’t everyone just leave me the hell alone! Just stay out of my house! Stay out of my goddamn room! Stay out of my . . .”
The look on her face broke his heart.
“Bedroom,” she whispered. She looked at him, her eyes huge in her face, and she knew that he knew. But she tried to hide it anyway. “Get out of my room, Stan. Please.”
It was the please that did it. Stan didn’t want to leave, but how could he stay when she begged him to go like that?
He went out the door, closing it gently behind him.
As she stepped into the courtyard that surrounded the hotel swimming pool, Alyssa nearly turned around and went back to her room.
Because Sam Starrett was there. In the pool.
If he hadn’t chosen that very moment to turn around, she might’ve run away. But once he saw her, she couldn’t retreat. No way. She walked out onto the cracked concrete and put her towel on a dilapidated lounge chair. Took off her sunglasses.
He was alone. Not even his obnoxious friend WildCard Karmody was with him. Of course not. Sam had finally seen the light and kicked Karmody off his team. And probably out of his life for good. He’d also taken him back with a stern warning, but the damage had already been done. And Ken Karmody seemed the kind of moronic idiot who would let hurt feelings ruin a friendship.
For a second, Alyssa actually felt sorry for Sam.
But then he swam to the edge of the pool. “Women’s swim’s not for another forty minutes,” he drawled lazily, his Texas redneck twang set on heavy stun.
She glanced at him as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “Do I really look like I care?”
His dark, shaggy hair was wet, slicked back from his face in a way that accentuated his cheekbones and blue eyes. If he ever cut his hair short, he’d be even more devastatingly handsome than he already was. “Nice attitude, Locke. Way to respect the customs and traditions of your host country.”
“I called the concierge desk and was told the pool was open all day, with American rules,” she reported. “I asked if there were restrictions as to swimming apparel and was told that tank suits were preferred.” She shrugged out of the sweatshirt and sweatpants she’d worn—as requested—through the hotel lobby. “Good thing I left my thong bikini at home.”
Truth was, she didn’t own a thong bikini, but Sam Starrett didn’t need to know that.
“You shouldn’t be wearing that while I’m out here,” he said with a frown, as if her faded red Speedo were something that might’ve been featured on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. He pointed up toward the windows of the buildings that surrounded them on all sides. “We’re not the only ones staying in this hotel. There are locals here, too. If they see us in the pool together—”
“I’ll be sentenced to death,” Alyssa said, slipping into the water. It felt sensuously cool against her hot skin. “That’s another delightful Kazbekistani custom—women being punished by death for being found in a compromising position with a man who’s not their husband. Do you think we should follow that one while we’re here, too, Roger? Out of respect for our host country? And oh, by the way, compromising positions that women should stay away from include rape, did you know that? Because of course it’s a woman’s fault if a man forces his way into her home and attacks her, right?”
Starrett pushed himself up and out of the pool, water sheeting off his body. His swim trunks were Navy issue—the same snugly fitting style that divers had worn since World War II.
Don’t look at his ass. Whatever she did, she could not look at his ass. If she did, he’d know that she still found him intensely attractive.
Along with infuriating, outrageously arrogant and . . .
And she never would’ve guessed he’d be one of those guys who used some kind of voodoo to center himself during a high stress operation. Sitting at the same spot at the same table in the dining room at every meal?
Superstitions and rituals weren’t uncommon in their line of work. Alyssa just never suspected Sam Starrett would have one of his own.
It almost made him seem human.
“It sucks,” he said, following her along the edge of the pool as she did a leisurely breaststroke with her head above the water. “The way they treat women in this country. I’ll be the first to agree with you about that. But we’re not here to lead a revolution. We’re here to get those people out of that airplane—alive. To do that, we need the cooperation of the K-stani government. We—all of us, even the FBI observers—need to come across as respectful at all times, so that the next time some fuckhead hijacks a 747, they’ll let us come back to save the people on that plane, too.”
If he had left it at that, she might’ve gotten out of the pool and gone back to her room.
But he didn’t.
“What we don’t need is you walking around looking like sex for sale.”
Alyssa stopped swimming. “Excuse me?”
“Excuse me?” he mimicked her as he stood there nearly naked—more naked than she was—and dripping on the concrete. “You know damn well what I’m talking about. At lunch this afternoon I get on your case about being in the dining room with your jacket off, so this afternoon you wear something to the airfield that makes you look like a comic book superhero.”
She smiled at him sweetly. “You mean, in the dining room when you had to push me out of your way because of some asinine and completely childish superstition—”
“Sure,” he said. “Go ahead. Try to put the attention back on me. I guess you had enough of it today, prancing around, looking like—”
“You don’t need to worry about me sitting at your special little table tonight,” Alyssa spoke right over him. “I’m having dinner with Rob Pierce and the SAS team.”
“—some kind of fantasy fuck in that skintight Nazi-bitch jumpsuit.”
Nazi-bitch? “Fuck you!” The words escaped before she could bite them back. Why, why, why did arguing with Starrett always make her as disgustingly foulmouthed as he was? Why did he have the power to make her so completely lose control? She climbed up the ladder and out of the water, furious with him and unwilling to let him continue to loom over her that way.
“Figures you and Rob Pierce would find each other.” Starrett laughed in disgust. “Why am I not surprised about that?”
“I’m the furthest thing from a Nazi that you know, asshole,” she told him, jamming her finger in his chest. “And that jumpsuit is not skintight. At least get your facts straight before you insult me.”