WILD Card -- A WILD Boys Novella (The Wild Boys of Special Forces Book 9) Read online

  Sam Mackenna. The Highland warrior on generous loan to this century as one of the RAF’s top fighter pilots. Who took her breath away with his mastery of an F-15 as easily as he did walking into her little office every day, turning Air Force Base Nellis into a perfect stand-in for a Camelot courtyard itself. Whose serious gray eyes were usurped by his deep-dimpled grin. Who had enough thick, ginger hair to entice her imagination in a thousand ways—and a body so sinewy and athletic, it stirred a thousand more ideas after that. Ideas that made her knees weak…and her pussy pulse.

  Like it did right now.

  “Holy. Shit.”

  It deserved repeating.

  He was here. Really here.

  And Sofía wasn’t coming to her rescue—though somebody sure laughed somewhere. Giggled, to be exact—with sources as easy to recognize as her fogged breath on the floor. Mattie and Viv Lesange, Tess’s sisters, were a pair as different from each other as Dickens and Dave Barry, unless the task at hand was exploiting someone’s weakness.

  And Sam Mackenna was sure as hell her weakness.

  “Mouse?”

  Hell.

  She knew only one person who pronounced the word like moose—and flipped her heart over in the doing. A tiny glance upward had the damn thing doing handsprings against her ribs. “Sam.” Great. She even squeaked it like a rodent. “Please—” Just go away. Let me die in mortification. Alone.

  “You need a hand?”

  “No.” Especially not when you look good enough to make my damn toe hairs tremble. She’d seen him in civvies before but his normal jeans and T-shirt combo hadn’t prepared her for this: a gray sport coat and white dress shirt tucked into black slacks that sheathed his long legs in all the right ways. Damn. Business casual, meet your poetic perfection. “And don’t call me that.”

  “You like it when I call you that.” He sounded confused, even a little hurt. Right. Like a demi-god needed the validation of a paper pusher like her.

  “Yeah, well…not here and not now.” She pushed to a sitting position, shoving dark strings of hair from her face. She’d gone for sleek sophisticate when pulling up her hair, but Audrey Hepburn she’d never be. “Speaking of here and now—what the hell, Mackenna? How are you here? Why are you here?”

  She didn’t have to elaborate further. Sometimes Sam and she all but finished sentences for each other. The sharp glints in his gaze proved the verbal shorthand hadn’t gone wasted. “John Franzen is a good mate.” He elaborated the point by nodding toward the half-Samoan giant who was standing up as Dan’s best man.

  “You two…served together?” No other explanation made sense. Franzen had been raised on Kaua’i, Sam just outside Edinburgh. One was U.S. Army, the other British RAF.

  Sam grunted. “Camp Bastion. Never underestimate its magical brotherly bonding powers.”

  Despite his sarcasm, Jen didn’t laugh. People rarely did when Bastion was invoked. The Brits’ operating base in Afghanistan was no humorous matter. Located in the lethal Helmand Province, it was a dirty, dangerous compound sitting in the middle of nowhere, making it ideal as an airstrip and very little else. When the Americans joined the party too, the base became an even bigger play toy for the enemy—often with lethal results.

  Jen fought a violent urge—yes, another—to just grab the man, pull him tight, and hold him until all his demons went away. Just looking at his service record—four deployments, to the shittiest parts of the globe—told her the task would take a while. She’d savor every minute.

  But a man like him probably preferred the “comfort” of someone like Mattie Lesange. The woman already prepared for the job, checking her reflection in a compact mirror from where she sat in the third pew, next to the spot Sam had just vacated. As she tucked the case into her purse then stood, Jen swallowed a lump of envy. The term “blonde bombshell” was invented for someone like Mattie. Even her curves had curves and she accentuated them all with finesse, skating to the edge of slutty but never over it. She’d probably already earned herself a cute nickname from Sam too. Something like kitten or princess or sugar bunny.

  Not mouse.

  “Anyhow,” Sam went on, “as you can see, John and Dan are thick as thieves too, so I was dragged along for the festivities.” He shrugged then chuffed, kicking up one side of his mouth in one of Jen’s favorite expressions. “Couple of glaikit bawbags,” he mumbled. “They say I’ve been too reclusive. That I should be ‘gettin’ out for my last few weekends in the states’.”

  Jen’s return smile came easily—as she fought the craving to explore the new dimple he’d revealed. “You are too reclusive.”

  “Hey! You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “I am.” She backhanded his shoulder. “Recluse.”

  “Mmmph. Next I know, bastards’ll be draggin’ me off to Disneyland.”

  His Scottish moodiness was contagious. While Jen kept her smile plastered on, she couldn’t help the inevitable direction he’d steered her thoughts. Another week, and his remaining days in the states would be down to single digits.

  Ugh.

  How the hell had nine months gone by already? Wasn’t it yesterday that the man had first entered her office with the command of a laird taking over his new castle, his long legs and proud shoulders making even his puke green flight suit look like a nobleman’s vestments? Hadn’t it been a moment ago that he’d laid the paperwork down to validate that he and his eleven squad mates were officially supposed to be at Nellis, on loan from Lakenheath for some U.S./U.K. cross-training over terrain that emulated most of the Middle East?

  She didn’t want to think about that now.

  She especially didn’t want to think about the moment she’d hand those papers back—and tell him goodbye.

  Sarcasm to the rescue. “What? You really don’t want to get a pair of plastic mouse ears before queen and country call you home?”

  Sam chuckled. For a moment. As his face sobered, his eyes gained a new gleam. Jen swallowed past a sudden cotton mouth. Fought against getting sucked into that stare of his, so sizzling and brilliant…

  Hopeless cause.

  Especially as he leaned over, both hands raised, knuckles brushing her cheeks…

  Before yanking on her earlobes and cracking a broad smirk. “Don’t think the plastic ones will compete with these beauties.”

  She spurted a laugh. Good thing. It disguised the quiver conquering the rest of her body…then the heat in the crux of her thighs. Hell. It had only been a couple of playful tugs…on her ears.

  Was she that starved to be touched by a man again?

  Yes. And no.

  Celibacy had never been an issue after Diego, then Flynn. Paying one’s way through college was always more glamorous in the movies than real life, meaning the time and energy to date was pushed onto a distant back burner, and Mr. Pleasure Bullet was adequate entertainment for most of her Saturday nights. Besides—surprise, surprise—it was amazing what a girl could get done without snoring in her ear, drool on her pillow, and a hairy arm smashing her boobs.

  But that arm had never belonged to Sam.

  What if it had?

  Danger zone, girl. You are way, way behind the boundaries of proper thoughts for this man. Back on track. Now.

  First that direction was lifting her gaze back toward him with new determination. Then ignoring how he’d never stopped studying her. Watching her with the intensity of a great, gorgeous wolf…

  Focus.

  “Captain Mackenna?” she finally murmured.

  He lifted a new smile. “Yes, Miss Thorne?”

  “You’re so full of shit.”

  He dropped his hands. Chortled harder. Making him laugh shouldn’t have felt so damn good…

  “Well played, a leanbh. Well fuckin’ played.”

  But it did—in the exact same way his comeback made her belly tingle, her heart race, and her libido gallop.

  A leanbh.

  Dear one.

  “Damn it.”

  She glo
wered. Sam smirked. The bastard was deliberately buttering her up with the traditional Gaelic endearment—but who did she really have to blame? She’d begged him to teach her phrases in the romantic old language. Sam had been an outsider in a strange land, eager to share his culture.

  Jen had always been just an outsider. And always would be.

  Besides, the flattery was so casual, it could’ve applied to a six-year-old kid as much as her. It was a damn good thing to remember, especially as Mattie sauntered over and wrapped a hand to Sam’s shoulder. Her nails, painted in a trendy reverse French, tightened on his broad muscle with their shiny ebony tips. In a voice as smooth and glossy, she crooned, “Everything all right here, thorny boo?”

  “Sure.” Except for the ride back to the worst parts of sixth grade. Thanks so much, Mat.

  Mattie’s laugh was as perfect—and fake—as Marilyn Monroe’s on a press junket. “Oh sweetie, don’t pout. It brings out yucky lines in your face. Besides, I kind of like all those cute memories.”

  “Memories?”

  Jen barely reined in the urge to smack Sam again. But he was just being polite. He had no idea that his inquisition cranked the dredge deeper into her humiliating past.

  “We all grew up together,” Mattie explained. “Jen was always the most adorable thing with her pratfalls. Then when her auntie came to pick her up from school, the woman would kiss all over her ‘boos’. After a while…”

  You and Viv turned it into the nickname I hated more than any other.

  Sam’s brows tightened more. Jen looked away. He might be the most beautiful man she’d ever known but she knew the start of pity when she saw it, and no way could she bear it on his face. Not even when he growled, sounding wrathful and protective, “Mattie.”

  “Hmmm?” The woman didn’t flinch at a note of his tone. She was either really clueless or had the biggest pair of girl balls Jen had ever encountered.

  “Cool it.”

  “Oh, please. Jen doesn’t mind. If anything, her little stumbles made us all adore her more. She used to send us all into fits, always walking around with her nose in some book. We often joked that the aliens could fly right over from Area Fifty-One, land in the school’s quad, and thorny boo would barely notice—until she took a header into the bushes. Or the wall. Or down the stairs. Even the teachers excused her from being tardy all the time, because—”

  “Mattie.” Jen hoped that a hefty loan of Sam’s tone earned her some credence. But when she glanced at him for confirmation, all he returned was the deepened furrow in his forehead. Heavy breaths flared his nostrils. Hell. He was even a little…scary.

  In all the right ways.

  All the arousing ways…

  She couldn’t go there. She wouldn’t. Her stuttered breath, racing pulse rate, and electrified nerve endings had much different ideas. It was insane. It was incredible.

  “Honey! Is everything okay?”

  Tess to the rescue. Thank God.

  Jen beamed her a grin conveying exactly that message. “I’m fine, babe. Really.”

  Her friend grabbed her hand and smiled back. Tess looked gorgeous in a red sleeveless sheath that perfectly showed off her shoulder-to-elbow tattoos. Tess’s latest ink, a heart emblazoned on the middle of her chest with Dan’s initials in the middle, peeked from the dress’s sweetheart neckline. Everyone would be able to see the full ink tomorrow, thanks to the breathtaking cut of the cream-colored gown Tess had selected to become Mrs. Dan Colton in.

  Mrs. Dan Colton.

  Wow.

  It hardly seemed real, but couldn’t have been more perfect. Tess was the chick in the Lesange nest always causing folks to wonder who’d messed with the family’s DNA strand. Though Tess shared her sisters’ button nose, heart-shaped chin, and huge green eyes, she’d been gifted with fuller lips and brilliant red hair, helped by vivid color washes. For the wedding, Tess had chosen a rose red hue, undoubtedly to match the wedding’s color theme. It gleamed beneath the salon’s lights as her friend cocked a skeptical stare and accused, “Why do I not believe you?”

  “Because you’re a dork,” Jen teased, though quickly sobered. “Really, Tess. Chill. I just need to practice a bit more in these heels.” And face the grim truth that Sam will be here to catch every wobbling moment tomorrow, too.

  “Well.” Mattie’s matter-of-fact tone was likely the closest she’d come to comfort. “At least nothing valuable seems broken.”

  “Of course not.” The rejoinder came from Viv Lesange, who’d slipped in next to her sister. She clearly didn’t have the same designs on Sam as Mattie, being the girl who gravitated toward pretty boys who had twelve opinions on every trending Twitter tag—with a matching number of piercings. “Our thorny boo is made of Teflon.”

  Jen didn’t bother with a glare. Tess flung one good enough for them both. Mattie and Viv blinked back, clueless as chalk sticks, before Mattie offered, “Maybe it’s best that she rests. I’m more than happy to walk the aisle again, so she can get how the heels are handled.”

  “No.” Jen borrowed more of Sam’s growl. Owing a “favor” to Mattie Lesange, however small, would’ve been equal to jabbing a spike into her brain. “I’ll get it right,” she insisted, using a pew to herself rise. “I just need to—”

  And right on schedule, her ankles protested the Louboutins again. Just two seconds, and she teetered precariously—

  Directly into Sam.

  Oh, God.

  And oh, wow.

  His body really was as hard as it looked—and the fulfillment of her wildest fantasies. As she grabbed on, truly not wanting to fall again, she wrapped hands around biceps that felt like bocci balls from the grass court on the ground floor. Her thighs hit a couple of pillars that were his legs. Her breasts smashed into a brick wall of a chest—except for the heartbeat that pounded relentlessly from between his ribs. Or was that hers?

  “Shit. Sorry.” It spilled out as breath more than volume—zapped that way by the energy arcing between their bodies, hot and electric…and wonderful. It sizzled through her nerves, bubbled in her blood, invaded places that made her pulse and throb and need…

  “Why?”

  Her head jerked up. Her eyes locked with his.

  His eyes. The voltage was on full blast in them too. Their silver brilliance almost didn’t let his voice register in her brain, let alone his meaning.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “I…what?”

  Sam swallowed hard. Suddenly glanced around. Only then did Jen realize what a spectacle she’d made of herself—and him.

  “Hmmm.” Once again, Tess intervened with ideal timing. “Isn’t this interesting…”

  “Isn’t what interesting?” Dan, walking up behind his fiancé, issued it with knowing suspicion. Apparently, isn’t this interesting carried the same meaning for him as let’s go shopping. If Tess knew it too, she didn’t let on.

  “I think I have an idea about how we can—”

  “No.” Dan moved around, swinging down a sharp look. “No more ‘ideas’, rose.”

  “But—”

  “Uh-uh.” His hand, now at her nape, tugged back sharply. Nobody noticed the action except Jen, who forced her eyes not to widen at the telling gasp that spilled from Tess. “No more ‘buts’. No more ‘ideas’. You’ve worked for weeks on this ceremony, baby. It’s going to be fantastic—just the way it is.” He didn’t raise his voice above a murmur though Tess swallowed like he’d bellowed a command. She did it again as he trailed his lips to her ear. “Right now, it’s time for my little ruby to relax and have some fun.”

  Tess’s eyes drifted shut, soft as her assenting whisper. “Yes, Sir.”

  Jen looked down. She suddenly felt like the kid who’d caught her parents making out. Nobody noticed her flush, thanks to the hotel staffers pulling open a pair of double French doors on the other side of the salon. Just beyond was a spacious terrace awash in the dark amber rays of the late afternoon sun. In the center of the
space was an elegant dining table, positioned beneath towering palms wrapped in white twinkle lights. The table itself glowed as well, no doubt due to the LED lights embedded beneath its surface. Red and gold roses floated on a miniature reflecting pool extending the length of the table. Nearby, waiters in tuxedoes stood at the ready with trays of filled champagne flutes. Sixty stories below, the city’s iconic Strip blazed to life as night approached, lights flickering and traffic bustling.

  “Oh, my.”

  Tess’s cute little blurt was the perfect slogan for what they all felt—but it also betrayed how the movie-perfect setup was an equal surprise to her. Her reaction worked a similar transformation over Dan. His growly-scary side was instantly conquered by a boyish expression. “Do you like it?”

  Tess didn’t utter a word. But her teary gaze spoke a thousand on her behalf. When she finished it off by raising on tiptoes to give him a soft kiss, her “yes” was understood by everyone.

  But just as the women sighed and the men groaned, a stranger stepped into their midst, prompting new silence. Tall and rugged but beautiful enough to grace an haute couture runway, the man wore a charcoal, three-piece bespoke suit, accented by a luxurious silver tie. His thick, dark hair and beard were elegantly coifed, perfect foils for piercing blue eyes that took in every detail of the room.

  Was this the enigmatic Mr. Nyte? Rumor said the hotel’s owner was secretive but all-seeing, like an upscale Santa Claus…who rewarded naughty instead of nice. From the thoroughly sensual way he eyed both Viv and Mattie, the theory was proved truer.

  “Good evening to you all.” His greeting was silken and smooth, accented as if he were raised in Buckingham Palace itself. “Welcome to the Nyte. I’m Laird Beckett, the resort’s general manager. Just stopping in to ensure your service and facilities are exceeding expectations.”

  So the elusive Mr. Nyte still remained a mystery. Jen wanted to be disappointed but couldn’t hide her amusement when Beckett sidled closer to Tess, all urbane charm and British silkiness, only to be glared down by a none-too-subtle Dan. Or not? Mirth glowed in Dan’s eyes, betraying the gruff familiarity of old friendship. “Yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine, fancy pants. Now get your charming paws off my subm—my fiancé.”