Taking Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’d done felt remotely like a sacrifice.
    She rolled onto her side so she could see him. He lay on his back, naked and beautiful. Undeniably a warrior, even in sleep.
    He’d flung an arm up over his head, revealing a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm: a helmet bearing the letters RIP hung over the tip of a rifle barrel supported by a pair of worn combat boots. A tribute to his brothers in arms who had died in battle.
    Like her, he was no stranger to war or to loss. And she had no business thinking about that. Or about guilt. This scene had played out thousands of times in hundreds of wars. Two strangers in a war-torn country, reaching out for human companionship. Needing something to make them feel alive when their lives could be taken in a heartbeat. By a sniper’s bullet, by artillery fire.
    By a betrayal that ripped their world in half.
    The thought finally jolted her back to her mission.
    As the night teetered on the edge of daybreak, she slipped silently out of bed, careful not to jar the mattress. She felt around under the bedside table until she located the radio-frequency identification tag she’d taped to the bottom of the drawer and tugged it free. She’d already memorized the creaking spots on the old floor and avoided them as she tiptoed around the bed and searched for his clothes.
    A quick glance over her shoulder assured her he was still sleeping as she found his pants and dug his phone out of a hip pocket. Checking again to make certain he hadn’t awakened, she removed the back cover of the phone and piggybacked the RFID tag to the battery. Cell-phone location via GPS monitoring alone, especially in Kabul, wasn’t going to do the job. The RFID tag would make it possible to track his phone and locate precisely where he was from up to a quarter of a mile away.
    After quickly returning the phone to his pocket, she laid the pants on the floor where she’d found them and headed for the bathroom. If he woke now and found her up, he’d think nothing of it.
    A few minutes later, she opened the bathroom door. He was still sleeping. She breathed deep and had started gathering her own clothes when two strong hands gripped her by her hips and pulled her back into bed.
    â€œYou’re very busy,” he murmured, nipping at her ear when he’d dragged her close against him, curling spoonlike behind her. His erection pressed hot and hard against her back.
    â€œA girl’s got . . . to . . . oh, God . . . work to . . . eat,” she managed around her rapidly beating heart, as he cupped her breast with one hand and coaxed her legs apart with the other.
    Then she quit thinking and just felt—the expert strokes of his fingers against her swollen flesh, the boldness of his domination, until finally he rolled her to her back, slid down the bed, and tilted her hips to his mouth.
    â€œSpeaking of eating,” he murmured. Then, with his busy, busy tongue and erotic and thorough suction, he drove her beyond the ability to do anything but writhe in pleasure, until she came with a soft cry. Boneless, delirious with satisfaction, she lay catching her breath and riding the aftershocks.
    â€œThat,” he whispered, kissing his way up her body, “was to make up for my quick trigger earlier.”
    She pushed out an exhausted laugh. “Apology . . . accepted.”
    *   *   *
    â€œDid I break you?”
    An amused male voice woke her as a gentle, callused hand skimmed along her bare hip.
    Talia opened her eyes and saw him standing by the bed, smiling.
    He appeared to be fresh out of the shower; his only nod toward modesty was a towel wrapped low on his hips.
    She took a leisurely visual stroll up the length of his beautifully honed body to his intriguing face, his smiling green eyes, and back to the tenting towel.
    â€œI can’t believe I fell asleep again.”
    â€œI thought you’d