“Wrap your legs around me, darlin’,” he growled.

She did as he instructed, angling the head of him toward her entrance. He watched, mesmerized, muscles tensed, breath bated as she placed his swollen tip against her most tender flesh. Watched as she rubbed the length of him up her silken channel, pressing the head of him against the throbbing bundles of nerves at the top of her sex, moaning. And then she changed the angle of her hips and he was suddenly pressing into her.

And there, there were the brakes he couldn’t apply earlier. Because in that instant, as he watched his hard length disappear into her, as her watched her body give, watched himself take, everything slowed. Way. Down.

The sensations… Good God, they were incredible, so intensely…something. Sweet, maybe? Decadent, certainly.

“Christ.” He gritted his teeth. “You’re tight.”

“F-four years,” she rasped, then squeaked and bit her lip when he slid an inch further.

Four years? What did that mean? And then it hit him. “You haven’t been with a man in four years?” he asked, his entire body going bowstring tight. His breath caught in his lungs.

She shook her head. “There was the b-bar.” He slid in a bit more. “And then getting my side job as an FA started. Ahhhh.” There was another inch. “And, th-then I met you. Oh, God! Mac!”

Something wonderful and terrifying burst inside him, in the region usually relegated to his heart. She’d waited…for him? He couldn’t fathom it. Didn’t want to acknowledge it, but the truth was shining in her emerald eyes. And then she wiggled, just a little, just enough to elicit a gasp from both of them.

“Am I hurting you?” he managed to ask.

She shook her head, her silky hair brushing against her shoulders, rasping over the red, ripe tips of her up-thrust breasts. “God, no,” she whispered, grabbing him and pulling him to her so she could plant a kiss on his chin. He felt the tip of her tongue dart out to tickle the dimple there. His balls tightened in response. “You feel amazing,” she whispered in his ear, nipping the lobe. “Please don’t stop.”

And just like back in Sander’s bedroom, stopping was the absolute last thing on his mind.

He trailed kisses along her neck, sucking lavishly on her pulse point, rewarded for the effort by her silky walls convulsing around him, squeezing him, milking him. Everything about her, about this, about what they were doing together, was amazing. The sound of her sighs, the feel of her heels hooked together above his ass, the swollen delectation that was her hot, hungry mouth…

When he grabbed her hips to push forward the last two inches, seating himself to the hilt with one final, forceful jab, and his tip pressed tight against the hard entrance to her womb, she speared her fingers into his hair. Sealing their lips, her satiny tongue darted deep. And he was completely awash in the smells and sounds and sensations of sex.

It’d never been this good. Never, never. And that’s when it occurred to him.

“Condom,” he croaked.

“Mary and Joseph,” Delilah groaned, resting her forehead against his.

When her inner walls squeezed around him again, he gasped, “Stop that.”

“Can’t help it,” she husked, biting her lip, each of them holding still. Holding perfectly still. Because one small move, one slick slide, might be all it took to send both of them careening over the edge.

“I-I don’t have—” he began, lamenting the fact that he didn’t carry a spare condom or two in his wallet like the rest of the Knights. What was the point? He wasn’t a horndog like Ozzie or Steady. He didn’t bed everything on two legs. When he had a woman—and he did have a woman on fairly regular occasions despite what some of the boys at BKI might say to the contrary—it was always planned ahead of time. A nice dinner. A movie. And the inevitable fall into bed. Then he came packing. A true-blue Boy Scout to the core. But now? Nada. Zippo. Zilch. How the hell could he have let it go this far? Where was his head?

Oh, right, offline right now because Little Mac was doing all his thinking for him.

Delilah drew back. “I’m on the pill. If you want—”

That’s all she managed because, in the next instant, he pulled himself from the decadent warmth of her body only to slam back home on a stroke that rocked her against the top of the dresser. The pill? That’s all he needed to know. Because the monthly physicals and blood work he was required to undergo working for BKI told him he was clean and free of disease. And four years for her? Yeah. No worries. She squeaked at the force of his thrust. But one look at her face told him everything he needed to know. It wasn’t a squeak of pain; it was a squeak of pleasure. So he repeated the move, over and over. Slipping, sliding, impaling. She met him stroke for stroke. Her hands on his ass, her nails digging into his flesh.

“Yes, Mac!” she moaned against his lips, her breath hot and sweet. “Yes!”

He felt it then. That fist sharp edge of release building in his balls, racing along his shaft. He wanted to stop it. Wanted to keep on taking her forever. It was so good. Too good. But he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t have the strength or willpower. Not this time. Maybe later. But this first time his hips pistoned wildly. This first time, his mouth greedily devoured her lips and tongue, her cries of pleasure.

And then she did it. She threw her head back and screamed his name right before she detonated. Her back arched. Her breasts thrust up at him, the hard, wet tips a temptation for his eyes. The walls of her vagina squeezed him like a hot fist. Lord have mercy! His orgasm answered in kind, bursting through him. And it was the most explosive, heartrending, gut-twisting, delicious, melting, decadent sensation he’d ever experienced.

He had no idea how long his body spasmed as he held himself deep, as he poured himself inside her. It seemed like forever. And all that time she clasped him to her, kissed him, her mouth so unbelievably sexy, so unmistakably greedy.

“Delilah,” he finally groaned, pushing himself deep inside her one last time, reveling in the little tremors of residual pleasure that shot up his shaft.

She squeaked again when he wound an arm under her butt, lifting her from the dresser. Making it to the bed took some doing, what with his jeans bunched down around his ankles, but he managed it. When he separated himself from her body to toss her atop the bed, the sudden feeling of loss shocked him with its strength. But he quickly pushed the sensation aside, reaching down to drag off his boots, his ankle holster, his jeans.

She lay on the bed like the incarnation of provocation. Eyes heavy lidded and sparkling. Lips red and swollen. She drove him crazy when she lazily ran a finger back and forth over the tip of one violently puckered breast. Her right knee propped up, allowing him a small peek at the plump, wet flesh between her legs.

“I thought this was a one-shot deal,” she said when he crawled up to her, over her, her eyes darting down to his dick. Little Mac, the boy wonder, had already begun to harden with new life.

“That first one had to be done to take the edge off,” he told her. “Now we’re ready to start the real show.”

Chapter Twenty

Shawnee National Forest

Southern Illinois

“Did you make it to the second location safely?” Haroun asked, and Qasim glanced around the walls of the cave. The kerosene lanterns danced their light, creating shadows that writhed and moved like living entities.

A cave. Qasim had seen his fair share. The difference was that the caves he was used to were arid and dusty. This one…well, this one was cold and damp. The walls glistened with water and moss, the chirp of bats echoed from deep inside. He was unbelievably happy to hear from his second-in-command, and when he pulled in a relieved breath, the smell of damp earth and minerals tunneled up his nose.

“We are here,” he told Haroun. “We had to carry the Marine. I think Jabbar might have broken one of his legs. It made the hike difficult. But, we are here.”

“You did not stop?” Haroun demanded, something in his voice causing Qasim to frown. “You did not refuel? You were not caught on any cameras entering the park?”

“No. Everything went as we planned. What is it?” he asked. That feeling of foreboding was back, settling like a poisoned stone in the pit of his stomach. “Is it your wound? Are you hurt worse than you led me to believe?”

“No, no,” Haroun insisted. “It is not that.”

“Then what is it, brother? What is wrong?”

The poisoned stone of foreboding grew to the size of a boulder as his second-in-command told him of the helicopters, of being forced to abandon the rental vehicle, of the men in black suits with machine guns who sounded less like local law enforcement officials and more like well-trained government agents.

“How is it possible?” he demanded. “How could they have tracked us?”

“I do not know,” Haroun admitted. “Perhaps our papers were not as well-forged as we thought. Perhaps we were caught on camera somewhere and facial recognition software—”

“Enough,” Qasim cut him off. He knew the Americans had ways, unimaginable ways of tracing people, of protecting their precious borders. Now, the question was how Qasim and Haroun should proceed? In this arena, he relied on his second-in-command. Haroun usually knew when the risks outweighed the rewards. “What do you propose we do?”

“Nothing has changed,” Haroun assured him. “I was able to steal a truck from the barn of an old farm. I followed the signal of the cellular phone to a motel. Miss Fairchild is being held inside, guarded by the bikers and two additional men I can only assume are agents. I am hidden in a tree line behind the place. Watching. When the time is right, I will sneak up on the man positioned outside her back window. He is not very attentive. In the last two hours, he has barely glanced up from his phone. Before he knows what has befallen him, I will slit his ugly throat. And then I will climb into Miss Fairchild’s room and take her.”

It seemed dangerous. Too dangerous. Qasim told Haroun as much.

“No, habibi,” Haroun insisted. “This is our chance, our moment. The one we have been waiting for. We must grab it with both hands. I will come to you soon with the woman. Wait for me. And trust in Allah.”

Qasim couldn’t argue with such staunch bravery, such formidable belief. “Very well.”

* * *

Mac was, without a doubt, the sexiest man alive.

His smell, that uniquely Mac smell, was a constant in her nose as she fought to catch her breath. Mac and sex. It was decadent. And as he lay beside her, propped up on one elbow, the breadth of his shoulders overwhelmed her. The hair on his chest delighted her. And the angry red thrust of his once more fully erect penis sent a frisson of awareness zinging across her nerve endings.

She’d just had two unbelievably hard orgasms. But looking at him—at his corrugated stomach muscles, at his long, long legs, at the sweat making the dark hair near his temples curl boyishly—she knew two wasn’t going to be enough. Not nearly enough. Hell, two hundred wouldn’t be enough. Not when it came to this man. The man she…loved…

Her thoughts stopped on a dime. She fancied she could hear the errrrtttt of squealing tires inside her head.

Loved him? She loved him? Was that true?

She searched inside herself, inside her heart, and saw that it was.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! What in the world had she been thinking? Had she really believed that once she had him, she’d stop wanting him? Had she really believed that her heart wasn’t already involved?

She was a fool. A goddamned self-deluding fool! And, oh, holy shit, this was going to hurt.

“What is it?” Mac asked as he ran his thumb along the ridge of her collarbone, gently, studiously, as if he’d never touched a woman there before.

She forcibly smoothed the frown from her brow, swallowed the tears burning at the back of her throat. It was either that or ruin everything. And she wouldn’t do that. If she only had this day, this one brief moment in time to hold the man she loved in her arms, then she was going to revel in it, luxuriate in the opportunity to take pleasure from him and to give pleasure in return. She’d lost too many people she cared about not to treasure each moment for what it was, not to rejoice in those precious, few instances that brought her sheer happiness. Like now.