Page 78 of Strangers in Love

My orgasm hit me out of nowhere, and I gasped, every muscle in my body immediately tensing. Before I could catch my next breath, he was there, surging upward with his arms around me, holding me to him, on him. His teeth sank into the soft flesh of my breast, hard enough to send me even higher.

I cried out, my nails digging into his back, and he shoved himself as deep into me as he could possibly go and held there as he came. It wasn’t until after several seconds passed that I realized he was still whispering my name.

Fifty-One

Eoin

The ringtonethat woke me up wasn’t one I automatically recognized, but some part of my brain knew that it was someone I should talk to. Moving more out of instinct than anything else, I picked my phone up from the nightstand. I accepted the call before I’d completely processed the name I’d seen on the screen.

“Sorry to wake you up, but I knew you’d kick my ass if I left you out of this.”

Cain sounded way too awake for whatever hellish hour it was.

“The hell?”

“We’re going back.”

I sat up and shook my head, trying to clear out the last of the cobwebs. “What are you talking about?”

“I heard back from my army contacts.”

Now I caught what I hadn’t before. Cain was pissed and worried. Never a good combination.

“The other prisoners that group was holding, they were gone by the time our guys showed up.”

“Fuck.” Aline didn’t need to hear this. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom.

“It gets worse.”

Since he hadn’t said that bodies had been found, I had a feeling that I knew what he’d say next, though I honestly wasn’t sure which would be worse. Families hearing that their loved ones had been killed or that they’d moved from assets to liabilities.

“They were all sold to a group in Iraq. My guess is, the people who were left decided to cut and run, and they needed money.”

“Makes sense.”

“Anyway, them being in Iraq instead of Iran means the fucking bureaucrats have to go through a whole different set of red tape and shit before they can put boots on the ground.”

I loved my country and was proud to serve in the military, but I hated the politics. I got why we had all the checks and balances in place, especially when there were assholes high up in leadership, but in times like these, it just pissed me off.

“What’s our cover?”

“There’s something else you should know first.” Cain growled low in his throat, and I realized he really didn’t want to have to say whatever was about to come next. “The group that has them, they’re the same ones responsible for the ambush.”

He didn’t need to say what ambush – there was only one that mattered. When I was discharged, intelligence had still been investigating who’d been behind the fight that’d killed Leo and the others. I’d tried to put it out of my mind because there’d been no way for me to get my revenge. Knowing who the bastards were but not having any way to get to them would’ve fucked my head up even more than it already was.

But now…

“When do we leave?”

“Can we still use your family’s plane?”

“Yes, but we’ll need a different pilot. Dave can’t fly that far again so soon.”

Da told me to use the plane to fly home for Thanksgiving, and I knew if I told him I needed it again for something else, he’d tell me to do whatever I needed to do. Except, I wasn’t sure how much of that ‘whatever I needed to do’ would apply if he knew I was going back to Iraq, not just to save a group of people, but to get justice for Leo.

And even if he didn’t come right out and say that I shouldn’t go, I’d still feel guilty for how much he and Mom would worry about me. Now, I could just feel guilty about not telling them anything. It wasn’t a lie, and I could still feel like I did the right thing because I didn’t want them to worry.

“I have a guy,” Cain said. “Get to the airport as soon as you can. I’ll pick up more hardware on my way, and we’ll go over the specifics while we’re in the air. I don’t plan on coming home without the hostages, one way or another, so do whatever you need to do to be gone as long as we need.”

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