The connection broke.
Ian blew out a breath roughly as he shook his head. That was a meet he wasn't about to make. There were too many eyes watching, too many ways he could compromise what he was doing.
He stared out at the rock outcropping once again.
"No chance in getting rid of you, is there?" He sighed.
"Not on a bet." Her voice was somber.
"It would kill me if anything happened to you." He admitted that, and even more privately, he realized it would destroy what was left of his soul. And there wasn't a whole lot of that left.
"I won't walk away, Ian. I won't be forced away. If you wanted to try that, then you should have done it before last night."
Hell yes, he should have.
"Ian, I'm not an innocent bystander here," she continued as she moved to him.
She took the coffee cup from his hand and set it on the small table at his side before sliding onto his lap. She wore one of his silk shirts. The material slid over his flesh, warmed by her skin and carrying her scent now.
He couldn't help but surround her with his arms and hold her close to his chest.
"I'm well trained," she whispered in his ear. "I'm fully qualified to walk by your side, don't pretend otherwise."
He cupped her head and held it to his shoulder, bending his head to her, his lips close to hers, his gaze holding hers as he spoke.
"If I lost you here, it would destroy what's left of my soul."
"And if I walked away from you, it would destroy what was left of me," she answered. "We've been playing a cat-and-mouse game for years now. It's time to stop. Here and now. I'm your equal in everything but physical strength and you know it. Don't push me away because you're too much of a chauvinist to work with me."
It wasn't just chauvinism. It was the certainty that losing her would kill him.
"You'll be crucified in the tabloids," he told her.
"Got the T-shirt." She grinned back at him.
His lips quirked. Yes, she did. She had been in the tabloids for years, either for the scrapes she had purposely managed to get into, or for the charities she and her uncle backed. She was controversial, flamboyant, and one of the government's most covert contract operatives. She was damned scary.
He lifted his head and pressed his lips to her forehead as he let his eyes drift closed, allowing himself to enjoy holding her in his arms, feeling her warm and sweet against him. Just a little while longer.
"We need to shower." He opened his eyes and stared into the clear, blue sky beyond the balcony. "I have to deal with what happened yesterday."
"You're going after them? Do you know who they are?"
He nodded again. He knew who they were. The information had been waiting in his in-box when he rose that morning.
"Sorrell's men," he answered her. "I received news he was in Aruba this morning. Apparently, he's been here for a while."
She nodded against his shoulder. "Are we going for intel or blood?"
"We're not going for either," he said. "I'm sending in a small team of Fuentes soldiers to capture Sorrell's contact as well as the two men in the boat yesterday. They left an hour ago. I just have to wait on the call now."
It was coming to a head slowly. He had managed to foul every attempt Sorrell had made to kidnap or kill him. All that was left was to draw the terrorist into a meeting. Once he identified him, Ian could take him out.
It was a waiting game, and Ian had once believed he had the patience for it. Patience had never been a problem until now. Until Kira had walked into his life once more.
"Are you going to make contact?" Kira asked then, and Ian knew who she was talking about.
Durango team. He looked up at the rise again and sighed wearily. Reno would be pissed when Ian and Kira didn't show up as he ordered. But hell, what could his former commander expect? Reno had no business here. His wife was just out of the hospital with their newborn child; he should have been in the States attending to his family, not out trying to cover for someone whose main objective had been to keep the team as far from this as possible.
Diego Fuentes loved playing with the men assigned to that team. He considered it his personal duty to see just how far he could push each man until he broke. He had nearly broken Nathan. If Fuentes had succeeded in his past plots he would have killed the commander's sister and a senator's daughter; both women were tied intimately to two of the SEALs on that team.
He shook his head in response to her question. "It's almost over. There's nothing they can do to help at this point."
"They can cover your back."
"They can get in my way." He lifted her from his lap, collected his coffee cup, and drew her back into the bedroom.
Closing the door and locking it, he moved to the bureau, flipped the security protocols to active then turned back to her.
"When this hits, Kira, it's going to hit fast. I have to be certain where your loyalties lie."
"In what regard?" Long black hair flowed over her shoulder as she regarded him warily now.
"Sorrell will die." Nothing else was acceptable. "If you can't handle that, then get out now. Don't come between me and this mission."
"Your mission is to kill him?" she asked soberly, her expression concerned. "I would think DHS would need the intel he could provide?"
"He dies, Kira. I don't give a fuck what DHS needs or what they want. So you decide now exactly who has your loyalty. Me or DHS."
He had her loyalty. He knew it, she knew it, but he wanted to hear it. He wanted her to feel it.
She licked her soft pink lips, her blue-ringed gray eyes flickering in acknowledgment of the power play.
"You have my loyalty, Ian," she finally whispered. "But don't make the mistake of abusing it. I'm not your puppet and I won't be used as one."
"I didn't ask for a puppet." He stepped to her, pulling her into his arms as he hid the grimace that contorted his features. "We can't let him live, Kira. Even for the intel. He has too many ties, too many spies. I won't risk his escape. I won't risk Nathan or his wife, even for the information."
The shadows of the past washed over him. For a moment, just a moment, he was a child again, screaming in agony through an empty Texas night as his mother lay in his arms, near death. He had screamed until his voice broke, until he couldn't scream anymore. Until hope had leached from his body with the same burning pain that his mother's blood wept from hers.
Out of the night came a child and his father. The boy who had heard his screams and awakened his family. Nathan had saved his life and the life of his mother. Ian hadn't forgotten that. He wouldn't forget it.
"How's he doing?" The question was dragged from him. "He's holding up?"
"He's holding up." He heard in her voice what she refused to voice. The battle Nathan was waging just to live, to survive the operations he had had no choice but to endure and the effects of the whore's dust that had been pumped into him for so many months.
The synthetic date rape drug in such large amounts should have been fatal. Nathan shouldn't have survived the first month.
He released her slowly. "We need to shower. I have to check on Deke, and I have a few meetings to attend in Palm Beach. You'll be by my side. My trophy. Try not to let everyone see just how dangerous you can be for the time being."
If she was going to work this mission then he was going to use her particular talents effectively. She looked like soft fluff. Delicate. Girly. Femininely arrogant.
"I've got your six, bad boy." Her hands smoothed over the side of his ass and Ian couldn't help the smile that tugged at his lips.
"More than you know." A quick kiss to her lips and he turned and headed to the shower. "I'll get things together while you shower; for now, see if you can contact Daniel. You have a four-minute secure window with the security protocols. Make it fast and tell him to stay the hell out of the way. I'd hate to see him killed because he blindsided me or Deke, Kira. Make sure it doesn't happen."
Later, Ian braced his
hands against the shower wall and let the warm water flow over him. Control. That was all he needed, just a little more control and he could get through this. It was moving rapidly. The team he had sent in to take Sorrell's men was one of the best he had brought together from among the cartel soldiers Diego possessed when Ian took over the cartel.
Led by a former Russian militant, the men had training and experience that was on a level with some Special Forces teams Ian knew of. They were quick, effective, and merciless. And Ian had learned that mercy in this world brought nothing but more blood. There was no mercy. There was right of might and nothing more.
He lifted his head to the water, letting it flow over his face as his chest clenched and agony welled inside him. The blood he had shed since coming here would haunt him forever. It didn't matter that the blood was as vicious and evil as the world itself. He hadn't killed innocents. It was war, he tried to tell himself. A diseased world and he was weeding out the infection. But that didn't help anymore. It hadn't helped since the first night Kira had shown up.
It had sliced into him the night before as the words of love burst from her lips. Love for Kira would mean everything. Whoever or whatever she loved would have one hundred percent of who she was, she would give her life for whoever she loved. And he couldn't allow that. He had to keep her safe even while allowing her into the mess his life had become.
As his eyes opened, the shower door slid to the side, and she stepped into the steamy atmosphere with him. Her gray eyes were soft, her expression filled with concern, and with love.
He had to touch her. His arms went around her, his hands flattening against her back as he pulled her against his aroused body and took her lips before she could speak.
Whatever Daniel had reported to her, he didn't want to know. Not yet. First, he had to taste her once more. Fill his senses with her heat and her passion.
One hand slid between her thighs and found her creamy, slick with her own need. That was what he needed. Kira wet and ready for him.
Hands clenching in her buttocks now, he lifted her, feeling slender legs grip his hips as he pressed the painfully thickened flesh of his cock head into the folds of her sex.
No condom. Not this time. She was protected. He knew for damned certain he was safe. And he needed this. Needed to take her naked, with nothing between them, nothing separating their lust.
His head fell back on his shoulders at the intensity of sensation that whipped up his spine. His balls drew tight, his jaw clenched with the need to hold back. He could have spilled himself inside her in that moment as inch by inch she tightened around the impalement, her moans whispering around him as he braced her shoulders against the shower wall.
She was like pure heat. White-hot. Cutting through bitterness and pain to the core of his soul and wrapping around it tighter than her legs were now wrapped around his hips.
Opening his eyes, he tilted his head to lower his lips to hers once again. To sip from the shower-wet curves as he opened her slowly, his cock flexing, throbbing.
"It's like possessing life," he whispered against her lips. "And feeling it envelop me. Do you know that, Kira?"
Shock darkened her eyes.
"Do you know what you do to me?" He groaned roughly as he slid in to the hilt and felt her pussy tightening convulsively, milking his flesh.
"What you do to me?" She gasped, her hands tightening on his shoulders. "Oh God, Ian. You make me come apart."
She was coming apart? He was melting inside. He could feel the heat burning him alive as her head lowered to his chest, her sharp little teeth nipping at his flesh as he began to thrust inside her.
Her pussy was so tight. So hot. It seared his flesh with liquid heat and tightened on it with firm, rhythmic milking motions. The sensations stroked over the sensitive nerve endings of his cock head, rippled through the shaft, and struck his balls with fingers of heat. They drew tight beneath the shaft, ached with the need to come. Her lips scraped over his chest, adding to the pleasure tearing through him. Her hungry moans filled his head, the prick of her nails on his shoulders added to the incredible rapture he could only find in taking her, possessing her.
"Don't leave me." He tightened his teeth as the words slipped past his lips, as the emotions tearing through him found voice.
"Never. Oh God, Ian. Never."
He braced her against the wall, held tight, and pounded inside her. He fucked her like the demon he sometimes felt he had become, starving, demented. And she was his softness. His corner of peace.
His hands tightened on her hips as he felt his release boiling in his balls. Holding on wasn't an option. Not when she was crying in his ear, her orgasm unraveling around him, flexing on his dick and tearing his control from him.
He continued to thrust, feeling his cum spurt from his cock in hard, pulsing streams as he locked his teeth against his own cry.
Shudders of pleasure exploded through nerve endings and muscles, racking his body with an ecstasy that still amazed him. An ecstasy found only with Kira. A pleasure that went beyond the flesh and filled the soul.
If he lost her, it would kill him.
* * *
Twenty
WHAT HE WAS AND WHO he had become once he entered Diego Fuentes's world had begun to merge before Kira's arrival. Ian had recognized the signs, the lines that had been blurring between what was just and right, and what was expedient. He had been slowly becoming the same sort of monster he was tracking, and he hadn't realized it until Kira had given him her heart.
What part of him did she hold though?
A week later, he locked himself in his office, pulled up the reports Deke and Trevor had managed to collect, and tried to hide from that question.
Unfortunately, hiding from it changed nothing. She owned him. Heart and soul. The good man, and the man that had become dark, honed by the blood and the evil he had witnessed since accepting the name Fuentes.
He stared at the report and the pictures gained by the interrogation of the two men who had sent the missile exploding into the front of the limo the week before. Tourists, they had at first claimed to be. Nothing more than tourists. They had come in on the yacht Cantrella, rumored to be Sorrell's favorite seagoing vessel. Just tourists.
Timothy Vangressi and Adrian Hughes were anything but tourists. Once Ian's lieutenant, Antoli Kovalyov, began questioning them, they had broken easily enough.
He pulled up the video of the interrogation. He didn't wince at the pain Antoli had dealt out to the two men. The fact that they had held out for over an hour was proof of their training. But Antoli had trained under some of the masterminds of torture. He knew tricks Ian hadn't witnessed, even within the interrogations he had seen as a SEAL.
"Sorrell will kill us," Vangressi had finally sobbed, his face bloodied and swollen, although it was nowhere near as sad a shape as his testicles were in. The drugs Antoli had pumped into the other man, and the pain, were too much. "We were to kill him and the girl. If the McClane girl backs him, he'll have too much power. Too much backing. The girl can't be allowed to influence him until Sorrell has the operation." He was slurring his words, gasping for breath as Antoli slowly eased the pressure of the clamps on his testicles and turned down the power to the electrical lead attached to them.
"Who is Sorrell?" Antoli asked, his voice calm, cold.
Vangressi shook his head. "I haven't seen him. He's here, on the island, but he only calls. The cell phone is just for his calls."
"The cell phone you carried?" Antoli could have been discussing the weather.
Vangressi was sobbing. "The cells we carry. Just for contact and orders. That's all. I swear. We met the Cantrella in Paris and loaded on. We disembarked after it anchored here and slipped ashore under nightfall with the missile launcher and the paperwork to rent the boats. He knew about the meeting that day. Knew the route Fuentes was taking after we arrived. We waited."
"Who on the Cantrella was your contact?"
"Please," Vangressi sobbed, pain
and fear contorting his handsome features. "Please. He'll kill me. He'll kill—" His scream was high-pitched, horrible to hear, as Antoli applied power to the electrical leads, straight to the other man's balls.
He would have come out of his seat if he hadn't been strapped to it.
He slumped back a second later, dry heaves racking his body as the power was once again lowered.
"Who was your contact?" Antoli asked again.
"Ascarti," Vangressi whispered. "Gregor Ascarti. He knows Sorrell. He can identify him."
A gunshot followed the information. Then another. Both men slumped in their restraints, their gazes dimmed, death instantaneous from the single bullet buried in each brain.
Antoli was highly effective.
As he watched the video, it hadn't been Vangressi that had filled his mind though, it had been Nathan. The proof of the horrendous torture he had endured during his stay with Fuentes would always scar his mind and his body. There had been no relief, as Vangressi had found. No peace.
Ian pushed his fingers through his hair before rising from his chair and pacing to the bar across the room. Splashing the smooth, expensive whisky he kept on hand into a glass, he turned as a soft knock sounded on the door.
"Yeah?"
The door opened to reveal Diego. As impeccably dressed as ever. White slacks and a white cotton shirt tucked neatly into the waistband. Leather shoes and a gold watch. His black and silver hair was combed back and his patrician features were inquisitive.
"Have you learned much from the interrogation?" he asked as he stepped into the office and closed the door behind him.
"Not enough." Ian shrugged.
He moved ahead of Diego and casually closed the video before the other man could reach his side.
"If you were not my son, I would have killed you by now." Diego stared back at him ruthlessly.
"You didn't let brotherhood stop you, why let fatherhood?" Ian asked as he closed the folders on his desk before looking up once again.
The pain that flashed in Diego's eyes surprised him. It surprised him even more that he acknowledged it.