First to Burn (32 page)

“Did you go after her? That’s what you were supposed to do.”

“I did, but—” He’d have to hide the extra SIM cards in the phone later, when Deavers wasn’t throwing him curveballs. After a deep breath, he took the plunge. “Some Class 1-A problems followed me to Jersey City.”

“Wait—New Jersey? Not the torched house with the six—”

“Yeah. That was her family’s place. Different last name.” He didn’t know how Deavers had missed making the connection. Being home with two kids must have been rougher than Paktia Province, because wall-to-wall coverage had blanketed the media for three days. Cable and internet couldn’t trumpet loudly enough that both the senator’s house and the house of the soldier who’d been in the car with him had burned down on the same day. The FBI wasn’t talking, but reporters had dug up the organized-crime connection, and now the least sensational headlines began Ivy League-Mafia Princess-War Heroine.

“Doc and her parents are fine.” With Deavers he slipped back into his nickname for Theresa. “But her stepbrother and cousin were two of the six.”

Chris breathed a word that summed up the situation in four letters.

Wulf’s hands hovered over a row of airtight containers before he acknowledged that he didn’t have enough focus to pack a belt buckle with explosives. He’d have to leave that for tomorrow. “Six more casualties across the street, guards, but that’s not public. They were all ex-FBI or Special Ops.”

“Guess you’re not calling to ask me to be your best man, then?”

Maybe if Theresa’s idea worked, he’d have the opportunity to become a regular guy who made normal plans like that, but tonight he had a different request. “I need help.”

“We can be wheels up in four hours. Tell us where and what to bring.”

“SAS Flight 926 day after tomorrow, IAD to Copenhagen.” After seeing Ivar’s motivation, he wasn’t going to delay getting started with the antiviral research. Having a goal might help his brother recover. “I need someone to watch my back while I find a Viking relic.”

“We’ll leave a few homebodies to cover the fort, but who do you want?”

“Cruz and Bama Boy. Nobody else.” This was the part he’d known would be hardest.

“Negative on that request. Bama busted his knee waterskiing—”

“In February?”

“Went to Mexico with his sister’s nanny. At least that’s what he says, so you get me.”

“Sir, you’re not invited to this party. Nobody with kids.”

Deavers continued as if Wulf hadn’t spoken. “And if the Big Kahuna finds out you called and I didn’t tell him, he’ll cut off my nuts. Your panty knots aren’t worth impairing my love life, so Kahananui’s in too.”

“Don’t you understand six guys with our training were taken out like factory chickens across the street from Doc’s? This is a bachelor party. Not you, not Big K, no one with—”

“No, you need to understand.” Deavers went into his rarely used pit bull growl. Rarely used because the team generally worked as an egalitarian unit, so he didn’t emphasize rank. “Do the math. I wouldn’t have kids without you, brother, just the dirt bed. Kristin got pregnant after our Fallujah vacation, where you saved my ass at least three times. If you need me, I’m in.”

“Talk about a fucking martyr complex!” Wulf stopped short of pounding the wall, but he couldn’t staunch his regrets over reaching out to his friend. “The people I need backup to watch out for aren’t Scandinavian nannies or piece-of-shit terrorists, or even other Special Ops. There could be three of them just like me. Get that? Like me.”

“Oh. Wow.” On the other end of the line, Chris took a deep breath. His chair creaked back and forth while Wulf hung on to his side of the call. “Well. That’ll make it harder to cover the spread, but it also leaves me with a sling load of unanswered questions.”

Wulf couldn’t, wouldn’t, satisfy his former commander’s curiosity over the telephone, but he had to persuade him to stay in Kentucky. “It’s not a game. It should fucking scare you.”

“Hell yes. It’s a ball shrinker, but you know me. I puke before HALO jumps, and I’ve never missed one yet.”

Deavers wasn’t the only one who found parachuting from above 25,000 feet and free falling at over a hundred miles per hour to be stressful. Wulf had never wanted to test whether his condition could overcome a big splatter. “If you’re trying to distract me, no dice. You’re not invited. Your regular work’s hard enough on Kristin. Don’t go off-roading.”

“All right, already.” Deavers made a disgusted sound.

“Promise you’re not coming, or I won’t be on the flight. I’m not under your command anymore.”

“Promise,” Deavers agreed.

Without looking in his friend’s eyes, Wulf couldn’t tell if he was lying. “Tell Cruz to bring a black work passport. It’s that kind of trip.”

“His favorite kind.”

After the call ended, Wulf assessed his packing. He was close enough to being finished with stowing the cash and gear he planned to smuggle into Denmark that he could go upstairs. At the least, he’d be able to watch Theresa for one more night. But maybe—he remembered that half smile from above him on the stairs—he wouldn’t have to spend it in the chair.

* * *

Other evenings, Theresa had folded her clothes and put them away, but if she wanted to entice Wulf to the bed, she probably had to leave obvious hints. She dropped the pink turtleneck sweater she’d worn to dinner inside the doorway, where it couldn’t be overlooked, and left her long black skirt puddled two steps farther into the room. She aligned the cups and straps of her bra until she’d made an arrow pointing to the bed, but that looked weird, so she nudged it into a pile. She chickened out before removing her panties and instead donned a pair of Wulf’s soft flannel pajamas. The bottom hung low around her waist, and the top button of the matching shirt fell between her breasts.

As ready as she could make herself, she concealed her stump among the blankets and waited. Anticipation, not fear, made her hold her breath when the door opened.

“Hello.” Pitching her voice low was easy with the nerves inside her chest threatening to block her ability to speak. She rose on one elbow and made sure her top gaped.

“Are you sure?” He bent toward her, providing a whiff of yeasty residue.

“You smell.” She pressed her hand against his shirt, as much to hold him away as to feel his body heat through the cotton. “Like beer sweat.”

“That I do.” His voice was slower, with a throaty sound, as if the alcohol had pulled him to another era or place where people spoke more slowly. “Shall I wash?”

“That would be nice.” This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to work. And she didn’t have a backup plan.

“Come with me.” Taking the duvet in his hands, he looked to her for permission.

In her imagination, he was supposed to climb into bed beside her in the dark, not smelling like beer, and he wouldn’t need to see any part of her lower torso without clothes. Reality, as usual, was totally different, but she knew this was their chance to find each other again and she had to work with what he offered, so she nodded. “My leg’s next to the bed.” Not as hard to say as she’d expected.

“I’ll carry you.” When he scooped her in his arms, static made the empty pajama leg cling to his elbow. He couldn’t see her stump, not with the long flannel flopping over it.

“But I want—” Before she’d finished her request, he popped the leg and the liner sleeve sitting next to it into her arms, like he knew how much security they gave her. She clung to him as he dipped to reach the doorknob. “Where are we going?”

“Wait and see.”

At the end of the hall a set of stairs continued up to what was probably the roof. Tucking her stump closer to Wulf to avoid bumps as they ascended, she anticipated the cold February night. Instead they entered a warm and earthy-smelling room.

“Ivar’s conservatory.” The exertion of climbing had erased the blurriness of beer from Wulf’s speech, although he wasn’t panting as he carried her past shelves of plants with multi-fingered leaves, some smooth, others with edges like bread knives. Flowers ranging from pale green to purplish-black nodded as they brushed past. “He propagates hellebores.”

She forgot what Wulf had said as soon as they emerged through a heavy plastic curtain. Simultaneously inside and outside, the glass-ceilinged room around her bloomed with azaleas and tightly budded tulips. His breathing remained as even as it had been when he’d first lifted her, until she slipped two fingers between his shirt buttons and touched the hot skin of his chest.
That
made his breath catch and hold.

“Welcome to my sauna.” He ducked through the door of a wooden building the size of a large closet and settled her on a wide bench.

In the cedar-scented dimness, she saw a shower as well as a stove with rocks piled around it and stacks of fluffy towels, but as soon as Wulf began to strip, she couldn’t look at the sauna. “Um, don’t you have to light a fire or something?”

“Gas power. It heats quickly.” He touched controls by the door. Every move he made highlighted the sculpting of his arms and shoulders. Even the mundane act of bending to shove his shirt in a basket showed the muscles of his abs and torso playing together. “The steam will be ready by the time I finish my shower.”

So will I.
She realized she was cradling her leg to her chest unnecessarily since she was secure on the bench. No curtains or walls blocked her view of Wulf as she stowed her prosthetic under the wooden seat. She could happily lounge in this spot all night.

The sound of his zipper was louder than the heartbeat in her ears, but not faster. When his jeans came down, it was obvious he’d noticed her interest too. Heat from the stove stuck her pajamas to her skin, and her underwear felt damp as she watched him slide his boxers down his legs. Knowing she shouldn’t stare so blatantly, she tore her gaze away from his thighs and groin, but not before
that part
bobbed a wave at her.

“You don’t have to look away. I liked it.” He definitely had.

“I—” Thankfully, he turned on the water and she didn’t have to form an answer. While she watched his buttocks flex, she recalled their firmness under her hands and how she’d clutched those muscles when he pumped over her. Steam saturated the air until she plucked at the flannel clinging to her thighs. Still, she stared.

Eyes closed, he faced her and raised his arms. The motion pushed his chest toward her and delineated his abs, a work of art to admire, while his eucalyptus-scented shampoo mixed with the mist to wrap her in fragrance. When she followed the path of dissolving bubbles down his chest to his abdomen and the solid evidence of his desire, she wanted to be that water. She wanted to flow across his body.

Opening his eyes after a final rinse, he stepped out of the shower stream. “Want to join me?”

“Yes.” The heat had increased. Sweat trickled between her breasts. Remembering the glide of his skin on hers, she wanted to be wet next to him, even though she didn’t know how she’d stand.

He solved her dilemma by kneeling, naked, in front of the bench and raising her shirt hem while she lifted her arms. Bared to him, her nipples beaded as he cupped her breasts, one in each hand. When he bent to suck, the scrape of his stubble was a drug worth craving. Arching to push herself closer to his mouth, she felt as shaky as an addict seeking her fix. His pulls reached through her body and, she would’ve sworn, into her soul.

“I missed you,” he murmured, his face buried between her breasts and his fingers rolling her nipples with the hypnotic rhythm of his words. “Memories were nothing compared to this. You’re beautiful.” He reached for her drawstring.

Beautiful.
Maybe she had been, once, but certainly not now. Her thighs squeezed around his torso hard enough that he couldn’t remove the last pieces of her clothing. “Turn off the lights,” she ordered.

Crouched between her knees, he looked up. “I want to see—”

“No!” Humiliation trumped desire, and she jerked back as his fingers undid the knot at her waist. “Turn off the lights. Now.”

“Let me take these off.” His hand slipped beneath the loosened waistband.

In Italy they’d made love in sunlight and among candles, but she wasn’t that woman anymore, so she crossed her arms over her chest.

“All bodies are equal in the sauna. It’s an old Finnish saying.”

“Well, I’m Italian, and I want the lights off!”

He finally complied, turning off the stove as well and plunging the room into darkness so complete she couldn’t see her lifted hand. This time when his fingers brushed from the bare skin of her stomach to her waistband, she knew he couldn’t see her damage.

“Someday you’ll be comfortable with the lights.” His mouth followed his fingers, trailing sensations that encouraged her to drop her knees farther apart. “I promise.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” Her warning ended with a moan, weakening her threat, as he slid the pajama pants and underwear off her hips.

“Don’t hold yours.” His mouth moved lower, following his hands to the places that waited, begging, for him. “Wouldn’t want you to faint.”

“Modest much?” Her head lolled on the wall behind her as she flexed her buttocks and raised herself. Hard to think, harder to speak. But feeling came easier as he opened her legs and a hand slipped under her hips to tilt her off the bench. Flutters began deep inside. They matched the pounding in her blood, the rhythm of his tongue and the satisfaction from his fingers moving harder between her legs. First her stomach muscles, then her chest and arms and shoulders and neck, everything, every part of her body, felt pulled taut and stretched to breaking, until they all snapped into a kaleidoscope of sensation. She couldn’t hold back from yelling his name.

As they lay entangled, she gradually floated back to herself enough to become aware of his erection against her hip. He was still hard, still wanting, while she was one of the steam clouds, shapeless and drifting.

His hands tenderly arranged her on top. He took his time kissing her. She sank into his lips, met his tongue and danced with him, and then she felt more of him than his tongue slide into her when the head of his cock breached where his fingers and mouth had already graced. He pushed into her slick readiness, pushed her back to the precipice, but flat on top of him her body didn’t angle enough for what she wanted. To feel him deeper, to connect harder, required her to abandon the pleasure of his kisses, but there would be more if she pushed herself up.