His captors had tied him up and come at him with a knife. They’d wanted information. He hadn’t given it to them, so they’d sliced him over and over on his stomach, his chest. Cuts meant to break him.
But he’d gotten away.
They’d died.
There was nothing light or easy about him—nothing safe.
So why in the hell did Sydney want to be with him? She could have anyone.
“What do you mean?” Sydney still seemed confused.
She was so beautiful. Fragile, though that delicacy was a deception, he knew.
“Why was it me...and not someone else?” Not that guy in the bar who’d had his hands all over her. Sydney could have taken another lover over the past two years. She hadn’t. He knew because he always watched her too closely.
If she had tried to take another lover, what would he have done?
Better not think about it.
With her, his control could be a delicate thing. If she’d actually turned to another, Gunner wasn’t sure that his control would have lasted. That other guy would have found himself in a battle.
“I’m with you because you remind me that I’m alive.” Her smile seemed bittersweet. “When I’m with you, I feel. I want. I need.”
He felt too much when he was with her. That was dangerous—for them both.
“I don’t like being back here,” she told him quietly, “but I’m glad that I’m with you.” She rose onto her toes. Her lips brushed over his. “I’ve wanted to be with you for a long time.”
He’d been rough with her before, so hungry and desperate. This time, before the mission started, he was determined to use care with her. She deserved care.
Gunner lifted her up. Held her in his arms and then took her to that big, giant bed. He laid her down, slowly stripped her, kissed every inch of flesh that was revealed to him, and he kept a stranglehold on his control.
This time, he’d show her the way things were supposed to be between them. This time, it would all be for her.
He kissed her breasts, loving the tight peaks of her nipples. Like candy. So good and sweet and perfect for his mouth. Her stomach dipped down, and he explored all of her, sliding his fingers gently over her skin, over her sensitive core.
She arched against him, whispering his name.
He kept touching her, kissing and enjoying the silken feel of her skin.
“Gunner, I want you.”
Those were the words he needed. He’d never be a stand-in for a ghost, but Sydney wasn’t asking for a stand-in. She wanted him.
He pulled away from her just long enough to push down his jeans. Then he positioned his body between her thighs. One strong thrust—yes—and he drove into her, pleasure pulsing along his aroused length.
Her legs wrapped around him. She urged him to thrust deeper, harder, and he gave in to her. Moving quickly, wanting to give her as much pleasure as she could stand, wanting to give her everything.
When her body tensed beneath his, he knew her release was close. His spine tingled, his body tightened, but he forced himself to hold back.
He needed to feel her pleasure first.
Then she was gasping, calling his name, and her nails were scoring his shoulders. The pleasure washed across her face, brightening her eyes and flushing her cheeks.
Only then did he give in to his own need. He drove into her and let go.
The climax ripped through him, just as strong as the pleasure he’d gotten the night before.
He’d always known that Sydney was a dangerous woman, but he hadn’t realized that once he’d had a taste of the paradise she offered, there would be no turning back.
* * *
THE RAP SOUNDED on their door an hour later. Gunner glanced up to see Sydney coming out of the shower. Her hair was still wet, and her clothes clung tightly to her body.
“Must be Cale...or Logan,” she said, glancing toward the door.
Logan would know what they’d been up to. Even though they’d tried to fix the wrecked bed, Gunner knew that the minute Logan looked into his eyes, he would know.
Logan was his friend, and the man could read him too well.
Logan also knew well enough not to say a damn word that would make Sydney feel uncomfortable.
Gunner rose and headed for the door. He checked through the peephole and saw Logan staring straight ahead. After opening the door, Gunner stepped back so that Logan could enter.
Their team leader stalked inside, his body tight with tension.
Frowning, Gunner locked the door behind him.
“Did you get a visual?” Sydney asked as she approached him.
Logan gave a grim nod.
Then Gunner saw Logan’s gaze sweep from Sydney, to the bed, to Gunner.
Logan’s stare was...guarded. No emotion.
Gunner’s gut clenched.
“Is Cale coming in for the update?” Sydney glanced toward the door. “I’m sure he needs to hear—”
“I need to talk to the two of you first.” Logan’s words were emotionless. Just like his eyes.
Gunner didn’t like where this scene was going.
“Mercer...Mercer is the one who handed down this job. He asked specifically for our team to handle the mission.”
“We are the best,” Sydney said, grinning a bit.
Logan didn’t smile. “He had a tip about the hostage, and he wanted us to follow up. I wanted to get a visual before I passed on the suspicions to the team.”
“Just what kind of suspicions are we talking about?” Gunner crossed his hands over his chest and waited.
Sydney came to his side. Her grin was gone. Her shoulders brushed against his.
Logan’s watchful gaze noted that light touch. His eyes narrowed, and he blew out a hard breath. “Mercer had intel that an American pilot was being held. A man with strong ties that could potentially be...manipulated by the group holding him.”
“What kind of ties?” Sydney asked.
“Military ties to a covert team.” Logan’s shoulders straightened. “To our team.”
Gunner’s heartbeat kicked up.
“I saw the hostage earlier.” Logan’s hands were clenched. That wasn’t a good sign. Not good at all. His gaze came back to Gunner. “I got the visual confirmation that we needed.”
Why wasn’t he just coming out and saying—
“The hostage...it’s Slade.”
Sydney’s body swayed next to him, and Gunner automatically reached out, wrapping his hands around her shoulders.
Then he froze.
Slade?
“He’s thinner. His hair’s longer. He’s got a beard and a limp but...it’s him.”
“Slade is dead.” Sydney’s voice was hushed.
Logan’s gaze drifted to her. “No, he’s not.”
“We buried him.”
Gunner felt like ice was wrapping around him. “We put a tombstone over an empty grave.” He stepped toward Logan. “I saw him die. I was there.” This couldn’t be happening. “There was no pulse,” he growled out the words. “I checked. There was no surviving the hits that Slade had taken. With that much blood loss...”
He’d been dead.
Because Gunner never would have left him if he thought his brother had still been alive.
“I saw him, Gunner. I. Saw. Him.” Now Logan raked a hand through his hair, and Gunner realized just how agitated the team leader was. “The features are the same. Hell, I’m not one hundred percent on this...we’d need DNA for that...but the intel Mercer has...what I just saw...it looks like him.”
“G-Gunner?” Sydney sounded shocked. Lost.
He couldn’t look at her right then. Because he was afraid of what he might see in her eyes.
He’d had her beneath him on that bed, been inside her...
While his brother had been held captive in a camp.
Slade’s fiancée.
“We’re going to do more recon tonight. We don’t have time to waste. We need to use the darkness while we can
,” Logan said. His voice was stiff. “Syd, I’ll need you to get working on the satellite imagery. We’ll all go in to sweep the area. Then we’ll plan for extraction at 0600.”
Extraction.
His brother’s extraction.
The silence in the room was too heavy.
“Gunner, I want to talk to you alone.” Logan’s words held the snap of command.
And Gunner realized he was staring at Logan, but seeing nothing.
But he gave a rough nod and turned toward the room’s door. He brushed by Sydney—can’t look at her yet, can’t—because he didn’t want to see the regret in her eyes.
She loved Slade, not him, and to find out that he might still be alive, after everything, had to be tearing her apart.
Logan shut the door after them. They were in the hallway. Alone. There was no sound from the room behind him.
Nothing at all.
“You gonna be able to handle this?” Logan whispered.
This? Finding my brother? Losing Sydney? Gunner nodded. “I’ll get the mission done.”
Logan grabbed his arm. “I saw the way you looked at her. I know you were with her in Baton Rouge.” His voice was a bare whisper of sound. “Man, I’m so damn sorry.”
Sorry that Slade was alive? They should be celebrating that miracle. Sydney would be celebrating.
And Gunner was glad. His brother’s death had weighed on him for two years. They’d fought just before Slade’s plane went down. Fought because...Slade knew how Gunner felt for Sydney.
Gunner had known that Slade didn’t deserve her. He’d caught his brother cheating on Sydney, twice. He’d threatened to tell her the truth.
“You don’t deserve her.” That had been his snarl to Slade. But the truth was...
Neither of us deserved her.
But it looked as if one of them would still get her.
“Mercer wanted you on this mission because Slade’s your blood, but the boss didn’t know about you and Sydney—”
“There is no me and Sydney.” He forced himself to say the words. There couldn’t be a he and Sydney. Not now. Maybe after the mission, maybe after—
Stop lying to yourself.
His dream had ended, just as he’d known it would. But he’d just wanted more time with her.
More.
“Gunner...”
He shrugged away from Logan’s hold. “We’ll do the mission. We’ll get him out—if he’s Slade, if he’s someone else...we’ll get him out, either way.” Because that was what they did.
The mission.
Always.
He hated the pity in Logan’s eyes. He’d rather have seen the guarded mask come back.
“She wants you,” Logan said.
Gunner stiffened. “She wanted to marry him.”
Maybe it’s not him. But Logan wouldn’t have said that he thought it was, not unless the evidence he had was compelling.
Logan exhaled on a rough sigh. “We go out in an hour.”
Gunner’s head jerked in a nod.
“Gunner—”
He held up his hand. “Let’s just get him free.” That was all he could think right now. Do the mission. Save the hostage.
Let everything else go to hell.
“Okay.” Logan’s sigh was rough. “But you’re to stand back on the actual extraction, got it? You’ll provide the cover for the team.”
The way he always did. Shooting, killing, from a distance.
“I’ll need you and Syd to survey the area more. When I left, it looked like they were bringing in more men.” He paused. “Are you going to stay in control?”
Sydney was the only one who could make him lose control. Sydney...who wasn’t his.
“Yes.” He didn’t want the word to be a lie.
And maybe it wouldn’t be.
He didn’t walk back into the room with Sydney then. He walked down the hallway, went outside.
I shouldn’t have touched her. I should have stayed away.
Because now—now he knew what he’d be losing.
What he’d lose, even as he found his brother again.
I’m sorry, Slade. Because he’d just taken the one thing that his brother loved most.
* * *
HER EAR WAS pressed to the door. The resort might be fancy, but the room doors were thin, and Sydney could hear every word that Gunner and Logan said.
There is no me and Sydney.
The words hurt her, pounding through the numbness that had surrounded her ever since Logan had said that Slade might be alive.
Alive? How was that even possible? Gunner had been so sure that he was dead, and she’d seen Slade’s injuries. Too many injuries. Too much blood.
Slade had been dead. She’d been sure of it. If he hadn’t been...
We left him alone? For two years?
A tear trekked down her cheek, and once more, she heard Gunner’s gruff words echo through her mind.
There is no me and Sydney.
Chapter Three
Gunner wouldn’t look at her. Sydney crept quietly through the jungle, stepping so that she wouldn’t so much as snap a twig, and she was too aware of the silence that came from the man behind her.
Cale and Logan were scouting on the west side of the area. She and Gunner were alone on the east side. The chirps and calls from the insects and creatures in the dark jungle drifted in the air.
And no sound came from Gunner.
She stopped. Took a deep breath, and turned to face him. “Say something.”
The moon shone down on him, but she couldn’t read his expression. Like Logan, Gunner was too skilled at hiding what he felt.
“Are you happy? Stunned? Talk to me!” Didn’t he realize that he was her best friend? When she had a secret to share with someone, she always went to him.
He was her rock.
Her...lover.
Slade’s alive.
“It was a mistake,” Gunner told her.
Her heart slammed into her chest. “You don’t think it’s Slade?” Her voice was quiet, so she stepped closer to him. So close that she could feel the seductive warmth of his body. “Logan’s wrong and—”
“We were a mistake.”
Her body trembled, but she kept her chin up. She kept her eyes on him only because she wouldn’t break there, not in the jungle. Not in front of him. “Is that really how you feel?”
She didn’t feel that way. Being with him had been the only thing that seemed right in her world.
Something that felt so amazing, no, it couldn’t be a mistake.
“It won’t happen again. We won’t be together again.”
A bullet wound would probably hurt less. Actually, she knew from personal experience that it would. “It might not even be him.” Her hoarse voice. But it was true. She’d given up on Slade, put him to rest and moved on.
“And if it is?” Now Gunner was the one to take a step toward her. “I left him. I thought he was dead. If he was alive, for all this time, do you know the hell he would have been put through by his captors?”
She didn’t want to think too much about that. She couldn’t think about it now.
“I’m his older brother. I was supposed to keep him safe.” Disgust tightened his mouth. “Not screw his fiancée.”
Pinpricks of heat shot across her cheeks. “Is that what you did? Because I thought we’d been making love.”
Her mistake.
“We need to finish scouting so we can secure the area. “Now isn’t the time to talk about this.”
Right. Of course. But would there ever be a time when he wanted to talk? “It was more to me,” she said, and turned away.
That was when she realized...all of the chirps and calls had stopped. The jungle was eerily silent around them, and clouds were starting to drift across the surface of the moon, making the shadows even darker.
Sydney brought up her weapon, and she knew Gunner was doing the same. She stepped forward, her body tensing now. Something had changed in the jungle.
Shifted.
She and Gunner had been hunting before, but now she had the feeling that they were the prey.
The rebel camp should have been about a mile away. No one should be in their immediate area.
But the brush was so thick and heavy.
Sweat coated Sydney’s back and slicked her fingers as she held her weapon.
Then she heard it. The snap of a twig. Twenty feet to the left. She swung around with her gun.
Another twig snapped.
That snapping came from thirty feet to the right.
Trouble.
She felt, rather than saw, Gunner’s movements as he swung to the right. One word whispered through her mind: surrounded.
Her breath barely left her lungs. She reached up with her left hand and tapped the communicator near her ear. “Alpha One...” Her words were a whisper as she signaled Logan. “We’ve got movement in our perimeter. There’s—”
Footsteps thundered toward them, coming fast and hard. She took aim, ready to shoot, but then she saw the hostage. A man who was being pushed through the jungle, with some kind of brown sack over his head. His hands were bound in front of him, and a gun was pressed to the top right side of that sack, just where his temple would be. A flashlight was held on the man, the better for them to see just what trump card the captors held.
“Deje caer sus armas!” The shout came from the man who held the gun. Drop your weapons.
Sydney took aim at him. “Deje caer sus armas!” She snarled right back at him.
He wasn’t alone. There was another armed man who’d come out from the right side. Sydney had heard his rushing footsteps. Gunner hadn’t fired on him, because, like her, he had to be worried about the hostage.
An innocent getting injured in a firefight wasn’t on the agenda.
But neither was getting captured.
A radio crackled behind her. The other man was calling for backup. If they didn’t do something, soon, this mission was about to go bad.
I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. This is my fault. I should have kept walking, kept searching the area. But I was too caught up in Gunner.
Now they were both in trouble.
The man near the hostage laughed and shook his head. “Voy a disparar contra él.”