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  “Look what the transport dragged in.” The Creole-accented gibe came from the self-described “explosives man—in more ways than one” for the team. To the rest of the guys, he was known as Moonstormer, a call sign derived from a 1700s pirate legend about one of his ancestors. It had taken Zoe five minutes to decide it completely fit. With his jet-black hair and fully-tattooed arms, the only thing Rebel was missing was a real brigantine. Or a Harley.

  “Yo, Moon.” Franzen swapped a fist bump with his man. “You and Double-O finding a crap-ton of trouble to get into?”

  Double-O was the call sign for the man who emerged from behind Rebel. That fit too. Rhett Lange was a stealth-quiet, brilliant-minded, completely hot ginger with biceps that stretched his dark-blue polo to capacity. The shirt matched his eyes to breathtaking perfection, not that the man seemed to care. Rhett focused on his work with such force, it frightened her. Fortunately, his expertise was comm, tech, and intel, which meant his laser beam was mostly directed at the three computer screens in the other room.

  “Hawk just declared he and Zsycho haven’t needed bail dough yet,” Rhett issued. “So I suppose Moonstormer and I will pick up the slack somehow.”

  Garrett lobbed a glower. “Who’re you calling slacker?”

  Rhett eyed a hangnail. “If the shoe fits, man…”

  Zeke cracked his neck again. “Hey, uhhh, Double-O?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I really dig that new Powerpuff Girls screen saver on your phone.”

  “Pfffft. Like you hacked my phone.”

  “Like you unlocked it on the plane so I could earn that Chuzzle trophy for you.”

  Garrett and Zeke high-fived while Rhett dug his phone from his pocket.

  “Fucker!” Rhett jabbed and swiped at the screen.

  Rebel, clearly unable to hold back anymore, surrendered to a soft snicker. “That was righteously cool, Z, but you know payback’s a bitch with Double-O.”

  Zoe dared to move into the fray. If she didn’t do something, Rok’s chichi décor was going to need therapy from the abuse it suffered beneath a bunch of Spec Ops studs in the mood to be puppies. “How about some fajitas?” After all the guys eyed her, instantly conveying one message—fuck, I hope she’s not kidding—she broke a bigger smile. “Roklan was kind enough to take a grocery list from me and then called one of those cool delivery services, telling them he was having a party as a cover. I’m making beans and salad as well, and there’s chocolate cake for dessert. I can make veggie, chicken, pork, or—”

  “Beef!” The round of alpha male enthusiasm made her giggle. It didn’t hurt for drowning out the prayer resounding through her spirit either.

  Please, any saint or espíritu listening, don’t let the first meal I fix him also be his last.

  * * *

  Later, with the clock fast approaching midnight, everyone was stuffed full—and still hard at work. Though the activity through the night had included everything from gun cleaning to mission-pack prep to letters for families “just in case,” everyone on the team now gathered at the dining room table, concentrating on the schematics flashing across the three large computer monitors.

  They’d been able to borrow the screens from the eight Rok had in the house. And the model called this his “winter place”? Zoe’s imagination soared about his summer digs, with the Central Park views and private lap pool, in one of Manhattan’s most exclusive high rises. Not that she didn’t love it here. Cooking in this kitchen was like driving a culinary Cadillac.

  After cleaning up, she reentered the dining room as Franzen directed Rhett to restart the digital mock-up of their logistics plan for the morning. The images, showing grainy shots of the little mining camp Melody had converted for the compound, had clearly been pulled off the internet. There had been no time to gather anything fancier. Even with that shared understanding, the team shared a groan. They were used to working with much more sophisticated intel, making this scenario something that probably felt like walking on tacks after strolling on grass. She was moved and amazed that, though the conditions weren’t optimal, they were all alert and on fire about getting this done—all for two guys who weren’t even on their real team.

  “Okay, let’s run the plan again,” Franzen prompted. “I want to be sure we’re not missing a goddamn thing.”

  “Great idea,” Tait murmured.

  As Rhett reset the simulation program, Franz turned a probing gaze to Tait. “Speaking of great ideas… T-Bomb, we need to talk.”

  All of Tait’s features expanded except for his mouth, which flattened. “Ohhhh no, we don’t.”

  “Tait, my boy…”

  “Don’t you ‘my boy’ me, damn it. Don’t you dare do this to me.”

  “You want to hear me out? We have enough guys for the op, okay? If you weren’t—”

  “I don’t report to you anymore! Even if I did, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re operating just a few thousand miles below the radar.” He rose so violently, his chair toppled behind him. “No matter how you slice it, you can’t command me to sit this one out.”

  Franz scooped up the chair and shoved it back under the table before following Tait’s stomping path down the length of the room. “Damn it, Bommer. What do you think your mother is going to tell me if this op trips into the mud like a blind duck, loses its head, and then ends up being foie gras on Homer Adler’s fucking cracker? You think that woman is going to let me keep my balls after learning I led her sons, neither of whom she’s seen in twenty years, into an off-book rescue mission for her ass—that killed them both?” The man’s jaw grinded like he crunched on nails. “You want to know what kind of a padded room that’ll land her in for the rest of her life?”

  That seemed to penetrate Tait’s gray matter—for two seconds. He shook his head, hands on hips, before glaring at Franz again. “She understands the pain of giving yourself for a cause that’s right. She’d… She’d understand.”

  Franzen folded his arms and braced his massive legs. “Good thing you’re not on trial, Bommer. You would’ve just gotten the electric chair.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Ohhh, I’m just getting started.” One of his eyebrows hitched up. “You think I’ve taken out the heavy artillery yet?”

  Tait blinked slowly. When he was done, incensed fire blazed in both his eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “You know me better than that.” Franz widened his stance, settling into the confrontation with confidence. “So let’s talk Hokulani.”

  Tait wheeled away. “Let’s not.”

  “Okay, Dick Tugnuts, you want to spin it like that? You want me to remind you that the only reason I let you or Kell keep sniffing around that girl was because I saw how happy you two make her? You also want me to remind you that she’s just as much a kaikuahine to me as my biological sisters, and if you cause her a single splinter of pain, I’ll hunt your ass down, even if you’re on the other side, and chop your dick into bite-size chunks for hell’s Crock-Pot?”

  Tait growled. “She’ll still have Kellan.”

  “‘She’ll still have Kellan.’ That’s the best you can do, assmunch?”

  “He’s good to her. He’s good with her.”

  “Oh, shut up. You have no damn idea what you mean to her, do you?” When Tait answered with nothing but fuming silence, a surly sound prowled out of Franzen. “You know what two sides of a triangle is?” He narrowed his eyes. “Broken, T. That’s what. So hey, go ahead. You need to feel like you stuck with your brother until the bitter end because he made the big sacrifice for Mom and you didn’t? So are you going to ride with him off the cliff, just to prove you can?”

  Rocks of anxiety weighed Zoe’s gut all night. With Franzen’s rant, that pit turned into a whole quarry. Logistically, she understood his tactic on Tait. Emotionally and spiritually, the man might as well have put her on a stretching rack and started cranking the handle.

  “Stop,” she pleaded in a rasp.

  Franzen didn’t hear h
er. “Which one are you going to be, T? Thelma or Louise?”

  “Stop it. Please.”

  Shay got up, his chair grating the floor with a vicious sound. “Christ, Franz. He gets it. We all do. Now—”

  “Guess it doesn’t matter, right? Because Lani won’t care about getting your remains back. Shit, this won’t affect her at all. She’ll just move right along, like you did after Luna—”

  “Franz!” Shay bellowed. “For fuck’s sake!”

  “Stop.” Zoe screamed it at nearly the same time. Or thought she did. The sound wasn’t like anything she’d ever heard herself make before. It was desperate. Grieving. Pathetic. A world bursting in her heart, needing him—loving him—and no time to express it.

  No more time before he left and risked it all with that madman.

  How could they have no more time? They’d made an art form out of turning minutes into eternities…yet now they were filled with this dread. This pain. This hurt she’d never asked for.

  On sobs she couldn’t hold in any longer, she pushed past them all, out of the room. Past the living room, she walked out onto the Italian stone patio, overlooking Rok’s Fantasy Island of a pool area. Five different rock waterfalls cascaded into a curving pool, with the middle waterfall serving as a “curtain” to a swim-up bar connected directly to the wine cave.

  She could use half the cave’s inventory.

  She settled for stumbling across an arching stone bridge, onto a round island that extended into the far end of the pool. It was the perfect retreat, dark and solitary, especially because the majority of the island was a padded bed with a lot of pillows that screamed go ahead, bawl on me. Their only downfall was their colors. Gold, tangerine, red. She blinked hard, wishing for Samantha Stevens’s powers to simply change everything into graveyard grays, browns, and black. Sí. Shitloads of black.

  Forget it. She was almost too blind to care anymore, anyway. Letting the tears blast her senses as hard and fast as they wanted, she fell onto the mattress and instantly hauled three of the pillows close, wrapping her trembling body around them.

  She tried to laugh it off. She tried to tell herself she looked as lame as a fifteen-year-old counting the hours until her boyfriend left for camp. But that washed as long as it took for her to look back through the glass at the living room and view everyone’s rifles lined up against the couch, clean and shiny and ready for action.

  This wasn’t lame. Or adolescent. It was the reality of realizing that she’d fallen in love with the wholeness of a woman’s mind, heart, and soul and now faced the grown-up pain of accepting the more-than-decent chance she’d lose it.

  In less than ten hours.

  She grabbed another pillow and stuffed it against her face, hating the ache that weighed on her chest and the effort of pulling in every breath.

  Nothing changed when long, strong fingers pried that pillow away. Then the one below that. And all the others too, until her arms were empty…but only for a moment. After he tossed the pillows aside, Shay replaced their weight with his. He was everywhere, beautiful and huge and warm and solid, pulling her even closer, tangling their legs into each other. It was impossible not to breathe him in, his forest spice blending with the wildflowers on the desert wind, enticing her even closer…but Zoe froze. Locked down. How could she give any more when he was about to take it all away?

  There was only one answer.

  “I can’t.” Her rasp was a desperate sough into his chest. “I can’t, Shay… I can’t, I can’t… Oh Dios, I can’t…”

  “But you already have.” His declaration was even softer than hers, given as he tracked her tears with his lips before ending at hers and taking her in a kiss that felt like a prayer. “And I already have too, my beautiful, tiny dancer.”

  Her heart skidded to a stop. She jerked her face up to meet his gaze, glowing with molten shadows that confirmed so much without having to say the words. Oh Dios, if he said the actual words, she’d shatter like one of Rok’s Limoges vases. It meant enough—the whole damn world—simply to see it in his eyes. “Shay…”

  “Ssshhh.” He kissed more fervently at the moisture on her face. “Baby girl, listen to me. Franz…he feels like crap. He didn’t mean to freak you out.”

  “You don’t say.” It was working as the go-to sarcasm for the evening.

  “The guy has substance for his weird willies, okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After Luna died, they activated Tait back to the unit prematurely. He fucked up the coordinates on a kill shot—bad. One of our guys almost bought the farm for it.”

  “Ay Dios mio,” she uttered.

  “No shit,” he commiserated. “The whole thing happened on Franz’s watch, so needless to say, he’s a little freaked about Tait tagging on an op that’s going to involve a lot of fluidity—and stress.” His jaw firmed and his eyes warmed. “But I’ve been talking to my brother a lot over the last two days, Zoe. I heard all about the training he endured for this new Sharks program. The H in their acronym, SHRC, is for hostile—and they mean it. He’s gotten smarter and tougher in his training for the team, so he’s ready, in every way, to end this shit with Adler. And so am I.”

  Zoe let her hands flatten against his chest. She could feel his heart thudding through his T-shirt, and she wished she could save every miraculous beat into the pads of her fingers. It made her response even harder to get out. “But at what cost? To perhaps both of you?”

  Shay breathed slowly in. Then out. He dipped his head in order to fully meet her gaze again. Oh, hell. His eyes were brilliant with the solid gold of his inner Dom now. Sure enough, his next words were a quiet but definite command.

  “Listen to me well, baby girl. I’m not going to die. Neither is Tait. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Sir,” she whispered.

  “Then look at me again, so I know.”

  Zoe slipped her hands up to frame the sides of his face. They were set in such determination, her thumbs and forefingers formed ninety-degree angles. “You take my breath away, Shay Bommer.”

  A slow grin, full of a devil’s mirth and a satyr’s sensuality, curled the edges of his lips. “Well, not yet, tiny dancer.”

  She let him lean in, settling his mouth over hers in a tender yet carnal exploration, filled with teasing stabs of his tongue that soon had her sighing into him, wordlessly begging for more. She raised her hands and pushed them into his thick hair, savoring the honeysuckle on the wind that sifted through the strands along with her fingers.

  Shay groaned as she pushed her hips up against his, parting her legs at the same time. He roamed his hands over her breasts, pulling at her nipples through her bra, as they opened their mouths and mated tongues in unbridled passion.

  “I need you.” She finally dragged her mouth away long enough to plead it. “Being with me…merging with me…”

  “Yeah.” He filled it in, again taking the pressure of the words away from her. “Yeah, baby girl.” After fitting his mouth even harder over hers, he reared up on his knees, trailing a hand over the simple bathing suit cover-up in which she’d left the Vdara. “Let me see you, dancer. All of you.”

  By the time she was fully nude, he was too. Zoe lowered back down, making sure there were pillows behind her head so she could simply gawk at him in a long moment of greedy delight. His shoulders were as broad as a linebacker’s and sculpted with equal care, sloping flawlessly down into his biceps and triceps. His pecs, the part of him her fingers always craved to explore the most, were a matched set of gleaming, oh-my-God perfection. Two more rippled rows defined his abdomen, but they were no decent preparation for the molded steel of his thighs—and the shaft that extended, massive and equally muscled, from their juncture.

  Her breath snagged, and she was certain he’d heard it. She was also certain she saw the edgy tic fire away in his jaw.

  “Shay?” she prodded.

  He smiled a little, but the look seemed forced. “Yeah, baby girl?”

  She
sat up, deliberately taking him by the balls with one hand and his dark-purple crown with the other. As she moved her hands toward each other, exploring every ridge and vein in his glorious cock as she did, she told him, “I don’t give a shit if you got shafted by a gamma ray, or gnawed by a spider, or probed by an alien to make you this way. I’m just damn glad you are.”

  Looking like the cat who’d just devoured the canary, Shay impaled her with a heated stare and pushed her back into the bed. This time, his knees shunted hers apart—landing the pulsing head of his sex at the needy wet lips of hers.

  “Probed by an alien?” He hunkered his brows while giving her lips a couple of fierce bites. “I should probe you brutally for that, earth female.”

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled and kissed him back. “You definitely should.”

  As Shay lunged his length all the way into her pulsing core, Zoe cried out in a perfect mix of pain and pleasure. Her heart tumbled end over end. She let her head fall back, giving in to the heaven of letting this man fill her, fuck her…love her.

  She was fifteen again. Alive only for the moment again. Desperately seizing every second that passed, working with Shay to stretch it into an eternity for the ages, filed under the heading of Magic.

  They’d make it count—because they had to. Because they always did.

  Because they always would.

  Please God…because they always would.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Be safe.”

  “Or die trying.”

  Shay allowed himself a thin smile as Hawk and Zsycho uttered the final words before the team went radio silent. He wove the gritted comfort of them into his muscles, using the strength to maintain his stance in the middle of what seemed an abandoned mining camp. Fast glances, using only his periphery, confirmed the intel that Double-O was able to knit up about this place. Four buildings from the mid-1800s. One freshly built structure, which Ghid confirmed as Mom’s sterile lab and a quarantine room if they ever needed it. There also seemed to be a newly seeded athletic field and a picnic pavilion under construction. Ghid had told them about all that too. Many of the guys hadn’t been outside in years. The chance to work in the sunshine—or even the rain and the snow—was paradise to them.