Page 43 of Dangerous Devotion

He gripped the phone harder, but all of his attention was on May, and Con was a faraway thought in his mind. “You’re the smartest person in the room, May, but I would still hold your hand crossing the street.”

She squared up to him, her jaw tipped in a challenging manner. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means you’re missing the commonsense component.”

“Name one instance.”

“The dress.”

She scowled. “Okay, well, name two.”

“Not telling me about the major general.”

“Ugh.”

Con chuckled, snapping Henner’s attention to the fact that his CO heard every word of their push and pull. “Look, I love the banter, but can we move this along? You need to figure this out. I unlocked the door for you. Get on that base and do what you’re there to do.”

The line went dead, and Henner tossed the device onto the mattress a few feet away. He yanked on his boxer briefs over his unrelentingly stiff cock. He wanted to both throttle the woman in front of him and simultaneously rip off her towel and bend her over the bed so he could sink his cock inside her.

“Get dressed.”

“I’m not going to the base smelling like…”

He tossed her a look. “Like sex? Like me?”

“Um.” Her cheeks heated pink.

He curled his fingers into the cloth in his grip and battled his urges. “Get your shower, May. Make it quick.”

He didn’t glance up as May rushed into the bathroom. His mind was already working, flipping over every stone to find a way to get on to that base with her. If he pulled this off, he’d be a ghost walking among the living at Fort Leonard Wood.

Because there was no way he was letting May out of his sight.

* * * * *

AJ leaned against the steering wheel. His long fingers pressed into the twin lines of concentration between his brows that grew deeper as the day wore on.

“What’s taking so long? The training is supposed to start in an hour.”

In the passenger seat, May was just as on edge, but not because she was worried about the training. AJ’s irritation and anxiety were starting to rub off on her.

“You said Kit’s on maternity leave. Maybe something came up and she’s taking longer to alter the file.”

Since ending the call with Con that morning, she and AJ had volleyed ideas for the plan back and forth. The only thing they could agree on was that since AJ flat-out refused to let her go to Fort Leonard Wood alone, he had no choice but to take the risk of being recognized.

Due to Blackout needing to walk among the living at times, they had many fake credentials just for this, but the risk of being recognized was always there.

So far, the phone hadn’t gone off once with a text or a phone call. The car began to feel claustrophobic, the sun too hot on the side of May’s face. She lowered the window to catch the cool Missouri breeze.

“Dammit. Why don’t we have more support personnel in Blackout? Charlie needs our own people in place.”

“Blackout hasn’t worked out all the bugs yet.”

He gave her a dry look. “You would think that after what happened to Echo that they would have figured it all out quick.”

She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. After all, she had been working in this business for a long time.

“What happened to Echo was a tragedy—”

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