Stranger Mine: a Base Branch novel (4 page)

“
N
o dead bodies
?” Piper arched a brow and made a show of peering around the chunky wood island and the table nestled in the breakfast nook. “I’m amazed.”

“Keep on pushing me. I could add another.” Ryan deposited the first aid kit he’d snagged from the hallway bathroom and narrowed his gaze at her.

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Cocky aren’t you?”

“Confident.
You’re
cocky.” She dropped her gaze to his crotch. Her head tilted and her thin lips pursed.

“Here I was trying to be gentlemanly and discreet. You stomp all over tradition, don’t you?”

“Meaning?”

He crooked a finger at her. “Come here before you get angry and try breaking my nose again.”

“You might want to check it. I see blood and a hump at the base.”

“The hump is courtesy of the last guy who tried and succeeded. The blood will wash away.”

“All of it?” Her lips formed a grim line. “Seems you have a penchant for taking lives.”

“I have a duty. Now get over here,” he snapped.

When she didn’t budge, he jangled the keys he’d confiscated from one of the dead men along the way. Piper curbed her urge to stomp her feet like an agitated bull. She settled for a huff, crossed the kitchen, and offered him her cuff.

“You chose a male-dominated profession in one of the toughest precincts in the States. If you’re ever in distress, there’s no damsel in it. Just one pissed lady. You’ve probably never needed a man for anything. Not even to get you off. And you’d probably spit in any guy’s face who had the cajones to ask for your hand in marriage.”

He was already too damn close to the mark, to her body. The thick pads of his fingers warmed her forearm, while his eyes warmed her everywhere else.

“Who was dumb enough to hurt you? Father? Lover?”

Piper snapped her jaw closed the moment she realized the damn thing dangled open like an anglerfish on the hunt. She snatched the keys from his blood-crusted hands and green-stained fingers. He let her retreat to the other side of the island without a word. She longed to turn away from his knowing gaze. The azure-blue orbs with their reflective, nearly white flecks saw too much and reflected back her flaws.

Pinning the latch to the counter with her wrist and hip, Piper unlocked the crude accessory, removed her arm, and watched the heavy links tug from the shiny surface. It
thwacked
atop the pile. Freedom lightened her mood and body like the Lord above flipped a switch. Piper raised her chin.

“No one has ever hurt me. Not a father or lover.

“My dad was donor number 489760 from The Sperm Bank of California. I’ve never needed a man for anything. Neither did my mother, who raised three daughters on her own. I like men to get me off. I just don’t like them to hang around long after.”

His head canted and his studying eyes shone bright, surrounded by the dull gray and green of combat paint. Piper mapped the contours of his face. His wide-muscled jaw. The depression of dimples below his high cheeks and the lickable one at the brunt of his chin. Lips thicker than her own. A gently sloping brow pinched in thought. And damn that smile. She’d only seen a flash of it and knew she couldn’t take any more.

Sure, the stranger was crazy handsome, but something below the All-American exterior pulled her deep. A quiet pain hid behind his blinding smile. When he turned away and stepped to the sink, Piper released the breath she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding. He turned the water to steaming and went to work rolling the sleeves of his BDU’s. With copious amounts of soap he scrubbed the paint and life force of several men from his hands.

But damn, she couldn’t rip her gaze from his forearms. Tanned skin stretched over fibrous cords of muscle stacked in a thick pile. A pathway of veins coursed over them and disappeared beneath his cuffed sleeve. Most surprising of all was the thatch of golden blond hair sprinkling the expanse. She hadn’t paid much attention to the hair slicked atop his head. Now she saw the blackness for what it was, black grease to hide the shine of his boyishly light hair.

When he called her over with a tilt of his head she moved her ass, unprepared for another battle or to see those arms in action. The roller coaster of emotions over the last thirty minutes left her bone weary. As she cleared the island, her steps slowed and renewed energy coursed through her body. Saliva pooled in her mouth, better used exploring his body. The lips of her sex bloomed an invitation. The beat of her heart accelerated to the point of pain. Every gauge in her body blinked red. Warning. Danger. Run. Never before had she approached a man who saw through her as though she were his personal looking glass.

He held a clean, tanned hand out for her injury. Her eyes riveted on thick scar tissue bisecting the girth of his palm. It splayed like a red spider, a lump at the center with fissures sprawling in nearly every direction. She found his gaze and stilled her hand inches from his.

“It’s okay.”

Piper didn’t know what he referred to, but the reassurance gave her the muster to move again. Before she could stop herself, the tips of her fingers skimmed the dune of pink marring his wide, callused hand. She slid along the scar until it ran over the edge and their palms met in an intimate handshake.

The shock of contact reverberated around the room like the concussive waves of detonation. His Adam’s apple bobbed on a deep swallow, telling her he felt it too. The pad of his thumb danced over the back of her hand. Her nerve endings wept at the tenderness. The heat she could handle, but the care speared too close to the center of her heart.

“I can’t…I can clean it myself,” she fumbled.

He tugged her against his side. “You’re right handed and probably wouldn’t clean it well enough to stave off infection. It’d be a shame to lose your shooting hand.”

“It hasn’t gotten infected yet.”

“How long has it been like this?”

“Two months. Give or take a couple of weeks.”

The pack of weapons and ammo strapped to his torso gave a few inches of cushion. Still, the closeness pinged out her sensors, until he put her wrist under the water. The irritating sting she’d lived with over the course of her captivity was a gnat bite compared to this rattlesnake strike. Her eyes watered of their own volition. She tried to blink the tears away, but the bastards rolled down her cheek.

“How’d you manage to keep it clean for so long?”

“Gabrone took care of me.”

“I’ll bet he did.” The words growled from his throat.

“Not like that. He had a weird fixation and wanted me willingly. He didn’t want anyone else to have me either. It worked to my advantage.”

“What’s an LA cop doing in the middle of a Mexican cartel’s human trafficking ring?” The slanted gaze he flashed over his shoulder ruffled her already disheveled feathers.

“I’m not dirty, if that’s what your expression implies.”

Ryan placed her raw wrist back under the flowing water and scrubbed.

“Son of a
puta
.
Que te den
.” She screamed the insults and clamped onto the thick base of his bicep with her free hand.

“If you keep talking like that, when I’m done here I’ll have to scrub your mouth out.”

Piper clamped her lips between her teeth and howled at the ceiling. When she ran out of breath she refueled. “Sadomasochist.”

“I take no pleasure in your pain. Or my own.” His gaze found hers then dropped to his arm where her nails bit into his skin. “But I have enjoyed your gyrating hips.” His dimple flashed before he turned and got back to work.

Focusing on her breathing and not moving a muscle, Piper survived the next thirty seconds by force of will. Ryan turned off the water, stepped back, and revealed her hot-pink wrist. She looked as though she had a raw strip steak for a bracelet. Very unfashionable. Very disgusting.

“Hold it up and don’t touch it.” He turned to the first aid kit and pulled out several packages of gauze, tape, and salve. “I’m sorry it hurt, but I had to remove all the dead skin. I’ll change your bandage again tomorrow, before we go to war.

“Are you prepared for it? Because that’s what it’s going to be—an all-out battle. You and me against all of them. Plus, we have twenty or more innocents to keep out of harm’s way.” A long exhale curved the edge of his mouth into a frown and his gaze returned to hers. “If the Sinaloa use them as shields, if they all die, can you handle it?”

Piper couldn’t answer. Was she willing to risk twenty lives for one? Her mind said, “No.” But her fissured heart said, “Yes.” And for once, her heart would win out over her head. Ryan’s hand warmed the sensitive skin under her bicep as he pulled her toward him. They stood imbued in silence, mingling uneasy breaths.

Caught in his heat, her lips fell open in wild invitation and waited. Her momentarily reckless heart galloped behind her breasts. She longed for him to yank her against the hard metal weaponry strapped to his chest. To seize her mouth with his own painted lips. To smudge the already spent camouflage over her face and neck. To make her forget it all for a little while.

His searing gaze alighted on her mouth and he pulled her closer still. The other hand spread across the column of her neck, heating through to her aching core. His fingers skated up her keen flesh, burning a path over the ledge of her chin. The pad of his thumb swept across her top lip then into the wet edge of her lower on its way back.

He nestled his scarred palm behind her ear and burrowed his fingers in her hair. His powerful hand aligned their gazes and his lips fell open. “The absence of something, a father, a lover, doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.”

Piper struggled at his gut-twisting words, pushing against the hulking rounds of his shoulders with all her might. His hands twisted in her hair and firmed on her arm in a latch similar to that of a mating lion. Her nipples peaked beneath the fabric of her cotton tank, and she hated her traitorous body as much as the man inciting the reaction.

“Shhh,” he crooned.

Her chest heaved in pants that soaked her panties through and left her light headed. But her struggle ceased at his easy command. His gaze roved her face, burned her chest, and caressed her shorts-clad legs. The muscles in his neck and jaw flexed, and his nostrils flared in an unmistakable sign of lust. She couldn’t see past his full vest, but his hard length, cuddled against the joint of her thighs, made her wish she could speak to beg.

He tugged her head forward and rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t know what you’re after, but if you look at me like that again, you’re going to get something you’ve not bargained for. My fuck em’ and flee days are over and my true sexual proclivities require your total surrender. Something I doubt you’re willing to give.”

His exhale washed over her breasts, making her wish she were capable of such yielding. But her mother hadn’t raised her to cow to anyone, especially a man. Sierra Vega taught her to fight for what she wanted. To hold her head up through a storm. To never lose sight of what was important in life. Family.

“Tomorrow we’ll set up an ambush that will keep the people safe. So, unless you can see yourself on your knees before me with your head bowed, after I bandage your wrist, I suggest you go to the first bedroom upstairs, shower, and sleep. We have a couple of long days ahead of us.”

M
ark that shit
down in a record book.

Never in his life had Ryan sent a wildly beautiful and willing woman from his arms. But fuck, he owed it to himself to get what he needed from a relationship. Cold couplings with women who didn’t possess the strength to handle his desire were a thing of the past. His days of club play were behind him too. The Dungeon had satisfied part of his need, but left him as cool as the others in the end. Too bad the woman slamming stuff around in the room over his head wasn’t relationship or submission ready. She stirred a protective instinct inside him that boggled his mind and balls.

Ryan pulled the satphone from his ruck and dialed Base. “Sierra. Hotel. Echo. Papa. Hotel. Echo. Romeo. Delta. One. Nine. Nine. Six.”

After a series of beeps, an operator answered. “Voice confirmation complete. Agent Noble, how may I direct your call?”

“Commander Tucker, please.”

“What’s wrong?” Tucker answered.

“Extraction’s blown.”

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

“Compromised?”

“No, but I’d like to be.”

“Spill it, Noble.”

“They had a prisoner. An a—”

“Put Ruez in interrogation. And check our other teams.” Though he’d covered the phone with his hand, Tucker’s holler filled the line. The connection rustled again. “The place is supposed to be clean for two weeks.”

“She’s American. An unusual case. Former L.A.P.D. Allowed herself to be caught for information. I need to know what she’s after.”

“Name?”

“Piper is all I have so far. There’s something else.” Ryan’s thumb increased its beat on the end of the magazine at the front of his pack.

“No shit,” Tucker huffed. “Otherwise, you’d have tossed her on your back and made it to the damn HELO as ordered.”

“Yes, sir. They’re expecting a shipment Monday. We’ll need on-site extraction for thirty-five at 0400” Shit, he hated disappointing people. But the truth was, if he’d left the shipment, the people, behind, he’d have disappointed himself more. So, he had Piper to thank for this misadventure.

“I’ll send Khani on the Chinook with a couple of old friends. But you know I can’t give you on site pick-up. I’m squashing too many international laws as it is. All I can give is five miles from the coast. Your drop location.”

“Yes, sir.”

Over the next two hours Ryan poured his angst and agitation into cleanup. He stuffed the seven bodies scattered about the house into the Suburban in the garage. The three at the perimeter he propped into the Jeep since they’d be “on guard” when the cargo arrived in the wee hours of the morning. He took special care wrapping the seatbelt across Big ’Un’s chest and around his neck. Before heading inside he closed the door to Piper’s prison and scooped the broken handle from the dirt. He molded the metal in his hand and hoped they’d make it stateside without a small metal box.