The two men who’d discovered her in the back rooms of one of Abasi Chuma’s holdings had seemed to buy her nosy-tourist-in-the-wrong-place ruse—she could tell. At least, she’d thought they had.
But they’d still abducted her. After a heck of a fight, which she’d hoped they’d interpret as a desperate woman fighting out of terror for her life, they’d knocked her out.
She’d woken in that cell with three men standing over her whom she’d never seen before. They weren’t Egyptian, but she hadn’t realized they were Moroccan, either. Though, just because they were in the mountains of Morocco, that didn’t mean her interrogators were local.
“I bet you fought like a tiger,” the Texas twang opined.
Kadin grunted a sound of agreement, and she wanted to touch him, just to see if he was real.
“I did,” she agreed. “I still lost.”
“It happens,” Kadin said.
Kadin. He was really here. Wasn’t he?
The need for reassurance of her sanity overwhelmed her, and she reached out to touch the man lying beside her. But something tethered her hand, and when she tugged against it, it stung.
She must have made a sound, because his hand was there, holding hers in place. “Don’t pull, Rach. You’ve got an IV, and Doc says it stays in until you’ve taken the full bag.”
“Okay.” She remembered the medic, a beautiful woman with Hispanic features and a slight Puerto Rican accent who had handled Rachel as efficiently as any doctor she’d ever been to.
“Yeah. We don’t mess with Doc.” The cowboy stretched the word yeah out as if it had two very long syllables.
Rachel understood that. “Back at the agency, nobody messes with Vannie, either.”
“She’s your tech-wizard, like our Neil, right?” The Texan chuckled. “Our boy has a hard-on for Vannie’s toys, that’s for sure.”
“Yes.” The word came out on a croak, Rachel’s voice failing under the stress of trying to talk with strained vocal cords.
“Hush now, angel.” Kadin’s voice sounded kind of strained itself as he pressed a big finger against her lips. “No more talking.”
“Or Doc’s going to have all our hides,” the cowboy’s disembodied voice added.
“You and Spazz get some shut-eye while you can,” Kadin instructed the other man.
“Roger that.” And then silence.
Kadin’s hand slipped down to cup Rachel’s cheek. “You, too, angel.”
She opened her mouth to remind him she was anything but, but his finger traced her lips in silent command not to speak anymore.
And she found herself drifting off to sleep again, feeling safer than she had any right to in a tent in the mountains of Morocco.
Kadin leaned down and kissed Rachel’s soft lips. And in her sleep she responded, her mouth curling into a smile as his name whispered past her lips. He’d lost the right to call her his when he made his first kill, but damned if he wasn’t going to make sure she was safe from herself as well as the world before he walked away from her again.
“I don’t have a ‘hard-on for Vannie’s toys,’ ” Neil said as Wyatt climbed into their tent.
“Heard that, did you?”
Neil didn’t bother to reply.
Cowboy climbed into his sleeping bag, his body thankful for the chance to rest, no matter how short the break might be. “Don’t worry, baby. I won’t tell anybody else about your toy fetish.”
“I do not have a ‘toy fetish,’ and stop calling me baby .”
“I don’t know. I seem to remember you liking certain toys, sure enough.”
The growl that came from the other man was pure frustration laced with a sexual need Wyatt was damn sure Neil was hoping the Texan hadn’t noticed.
“Why did you request the transfer to my unit?” Neil asked after several seconds of charged silence.
“You can’t make a guess?”
“No.” Neil sighed. “You can get ass anywhere—you sure as hell don’t need mine. It comes with too many requirements you can’t fulfill”
“You sure about that?”
“I