Annie looked around the bedroom a languid blonde was showing them. Whatever she’d expected, this wasn’t it. The room was decorated with beautiful antiques and heavy, mahogany furniture. Several small, fringed lamps lit the space artfully, casting shadows across the enormous bed that dominated the room.

“What now?” Annie asked.

She looked on, relieved, as Tom pulled out a wad of Gavronese money, peeled off some bills, and instructed the prostitute who was supposed to entertain them to go away and hide until morning. The blonde seemed more than happy to comply.

“Start a normal conversation,” he murmured.

Normal? In a brothel in the middle of a war zone? Sure. “Honestly, Tom. Did we have to come here tonight? Couldn’t we have waited until this stupid revolution was over to try out this particular gourmet brothel?”

He walked the length of the walls, using a handheld, electronic gadget to search their surfaces for bugs or cameras. He answered over his shoulder, “But it’s the danger that gives it spice. Our customers wouldn’t have paid half as much as they did for this excursion if they hadn’t had to duck bullets to get here.”

The sound of bullets flying past her ears was one Annie would never forget. The ominous zinging of ricocheting lead made her flinch just to think about it.

Tom gestured her to talk more while he inspected the furniture. Someone would no doubt burst in and shoot them if she didn’t keep up the pretense. The panic that had been clawing at her for the past hour blanked her thoughts. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“So who gets to be on top tonight?”

Tom abruptly stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. A predatory grin split his features. “I think it’s your turn.”

That was the same smile he’d flashed briefly at his men after they cut down the soldiers in the alley—the wolf congratulating his pack on a clean kill. Annie shuddered. She could still smell the death there, sharp and metallic, as blood had spurted.

He finished his search. “All clear,” he announced.

Annie exhaled a sigh of relief, but that brought her back to her original question. “So what now? Do we rappel out the window and keep pressing on toward the ocean?”

“Nope. Now we hunker down and get a good night’s sleep.”

Annie stared at him. “You’re kidding, right? I couldn’t sleep if my life depended on it.”

His expression turned serious. “It may. You’ll need your rest before this is over. We’re not clear of this country by a long shot.”

A shudder swept through her. “Great.”

“Have a little faith, angel. We made it this far, and that’s a minor miracle.” He swept a critical look down her body. “In the meantime, you need to get out of those clothes. Unless I miss my mark, you broke a sweat running from that tank and you’re damp.”

The cotton turtleneck was sticking to her body steamily. And then suddenly, she was choking, unable to take a deep breath. A band of terror closed itself more and more tightly around her ribs. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to be out of that shirt. She tore it off over her head, taking the throat mike with it. She kicked off her shoes and socks and peeled off her pants for good measure, too.

Annie scrubbed her hands hard over her skin to remove the cloying, filthy feeling blanketing her.

Tom grabbed her, pulling her against his chest and holding her so tight she could barely breathe. “It’s okay, angel. We made it.”

But not by much, they hadn’t. Annie still felt the tank’s spotlights gaining on them, still tasted the helplessness of knowing she wasn’t strong enough or fast enough to outrun its promise of death. Her heart pounded anew.

Tom’s clothes were rough against her bare skin, his arms iron bands surrounding her. Everywhere she touched him tonight, he was a soldier. From his sculpted shoulders to the ammo pouches on his belt to the bulge of a pistol on his hip, all of it spoke of lethal skill.

This side of him frightened her, but it also fascinated her. It was primitive and wild, barely controlled, and all the more dangerous because it was tightly leashed. When he’d warned her he would be in commando mode tonight, she’d never dreamed this was what he’d meant. Nothing she’d seen of him before had hinted at this.

She suspected any less of a warrior would have failed her tonight. But he hadn’t. They were all safe—for the moment.

The fear and creeping horror of the past several hours finally caught up with Annie, and she began to shake. Adrenaline surged through her veins, making her tremble uncontrollably. She burrowed her face in his shoulder and let the aftershocks run their course.

He murmured comforting sounds into her hair, gradually calming her. Tom’s solid body absorbed her quivering until she finally stilled.

“I thought we were going to die,” she whispered.

“Nah, not us.”

Annie reached up and placed a hand on each of his lean cheeks. “Nobody’s invincible, Tom. Not even you. Promise me you won’t forget that and try something only a superhero could pull off.”

His eyes went dark and hard. “I know my limits. But make no mistake about it. I’m in this to win. We will get out of here alive.”

Annie flinched at the sharp edge in his voice. Restless, she paced the confines of the room, doing laps around the big bed that dominated the center of the space.

When Tom turned out the light and plunged the room into inky blackness, she was forced to halt. She listened, her senses on edge, and just managed to hear him move to the bed and stretch out on it. His voice came out of the darkness, low. “Come to bed, Annie.”

She fumbled her way to the bed and climbed between the crisp coolness of satin sheets. Reaching for Tom, she was surprised to discover he was still fully clothed. “Expecting to make a quick departure?”

“Nope. Just a precaution.”

Her hands found his chest and roamed across its delicious expanse. “A precaution against what?” she asked.

“You.”

“Me?” She propped herself up on one elbow and explored Tom’s chest in the dark.

His response was stoic. “Yup.” He held himself rigid, refusing to respond to her touch.

“I don’t understand, Tom.”

“I do. You’re wired tighter than a two-minute bomb. All that tension is going to turn to lust any minute. I know the signs.”

Now that he mentioned it, she was feeling a certain tightly coiled need deep in her belly. “So what’s the problem?” She threw a leg across his, rubbing the arch of her foot against the cool fabric of his pants. “Are you too tired to, uh, rise to the occasion?”

A noise that sounded like half snort and half laughter came from his side of the bed.

“Let’s just say the combination of your adrenaline and mine could be a bad thing.”

She rolled over until she lay partially on top of him. A bad thing? What was he talking about? He felt pretty darn good to her right about now, all bulging steel muscles and masculine appeal. Sexual vibes poured off him like steam from a sauna.

She was alive. He was alive. That was what mattered. They’d barely escaped with their necks, but they’d done it. The rush of having avoided death surged through her veins. He felt it, too. She knew it in the way he went stiff beneath her.

“How can this be a bad thing?” she murmured as her hands roamed over his shoulders and arms. The soft cotton of his turtleneck belied the power beneath.

Tom’s hands gripped hers painfully tight, stilling them against his chest. “Sex can get a little…intense…after a brush with death. Trust me. You don’t want this.”

Heat flared in her at the violence in his voice. Something restless and wild was loose inside her tonight, and it was in dire need of taming. There was no doubt about it. She most certainly did want this.

Her thigh moved across his, and she writhed sinuously against him. The way his clothes rubbed against her naked skin was maddening. She was Woman, and he was Man. Why was he holding back?

He lay rigid beneath her, breathing heavily, his heart thudding beneath her ear.

“Come on, Tom. Let it go.”

He gritted out a single word from between clenched teeth. “No.”

She rolled fully on top of him, demanding that he acknowledge her, demanding that he feel her desire. She rubbed shamelessly against the hard bulge in his trousers, knowing she could make him give in to her, needing him to give in. “I want you.”

“You don’t know what you’d be getting into.”

“Show me.”

Abruptly he surged beneath her, reversing their positions in an instant. His leg lay across hers, his foot hooked around her far calf as he pinned her to the bed. He yanked her roaming hands away from him and thrust them up over her head. “I just came off a mission. It takes me a while to wind down. Tonight I’d play rough.”

Her voice dripped with challenge. “And?”

His voice was a low growl. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You think I can’t handle it? Is that it? Didn’t it occur to you I might feel the same way?”

He went still against her. There was a long pause. She could all but hear him wrestling with himself. “Are you sure, angel? I can’t promise to be gentle….”

She cut him off, kissing him wildly, with her whole body. She wrapped her arms and legs around him and surged up into him, searching for the release she knew he could give her.

He pulled back, disentangling himself for a brief moment. His voice came to her out of the velvet blackness of the night, taut and edgy. “You do like to live dangerously, don’t you?”

The dark tone of his words sent a thrill down her spine. He was part of the night. He enveloped her in his arms, his demanding weight pinning her in place. His callused hands roamed over her naked flesh just shy of painfully, taking pleasure where they willed. The night’s desperation broke over her, and she returned his caresses. She tore at his clothing, maddened by a need to feel his naked skin against hers.

“Slow down, sweetheart,” he murmured. “We can’t afford to lose any of this equipment.”

He snagged her wrists and dragged them upward. He wrapped her fingers around two spindles of the headboard. “Don’t let go,” he ordered.

He rolled away and his weight left the bed.

She waited impatiently while he shed his throat microphone, his ear piece, binoculars, pouches and pocketfuls of bits and pieces of explosives, assorted knives and his spare pistol that he had apparently not turned over to Senora Armando. Annie noted that the pistol went under his pillow.

Finally she heard the whisper of clothes hitting the floor, and the mattress moved beneath her. Then his mouth captured hers. He kissed her rapaciously, biting her lower lip, plunging his tongue inside her mouth aggressively, burning her cheeks and chin with his beard.

His hands trailed down her arms until they encountered her bra. He all but tore the garment off her body, baring her to his greedy mouth. He twirled and flicked her nipples with his thumbs, sending her surging up off the mattress into the almost painful pleasure that seared through her.

He did tear off her underwear, and then his knee intruded between hers, opening her for his invasion. It came first from his hand, his fingers plucking mercilessly at the very core of her until she thought she’d scream in pleasure and frustration. He followed with an assault by mouth and tongue, driving her beyond thought, beyond anything but an all-consuming need to have him inside of her.

He made her beg until she nearly wept for him, and then he rose over her, lifting her hips to him. He filled her with a single violent stroke that brought her to an immediate, shattering release.

Tom gave her no quarter. And she asked for none.

While she was still shuddering around his burning heat, he began to ride her, plunging again and again into her, stoking the fires of her desire, demanding more and yet more from her.

She could no more deny him than she could deny her unfettered exultation at being alive.

Again and then again she scaled the heights of ecstasy, while Tom dragged her ever higher until she could no longer breathe, overcome by such an excess of rapture, she thought she’d die from it. She twined her legs around his waist, urging him wordlessly to take every last bit of her.

He wrapped his hands over hers where she gripped the headboard, his vise-like grasp barely noticeable as he pounded into her. At the last second before she screamed aloud with the glory of it, his mouth closed over hers, drinking in her cries as if he would suck the very life from her.

For a single, endless second, she and Tom became one. They breathed and felt as one in a union of bodies. Everything else ceased to exist as they experienced a moment of pure sensation, an instant of quintessential perfection. It was then that Annie knew exactly what it felt like to be truly alive, down to the very last fiber of her being.

If there had been any doubt in her mind about whether or not they’d really made it through the night’s perils, that doubt was erased as Tom’s perspiration-slicked body pressed intimately against hers.

And then he rolled away, taking her with him and tucking her under his shoulder.

His whisper was rough, yet infinitely tender. “Are you all right, angel?”

Shuddering pleasure still rippled through her body. With effort she found the strength to answer. “All right doesn’t quite capture how I’m doing.”

Concern laced his voice. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She snuggled closer to him, smiling against his chest. “Do I seem hurt to you?”

He answered with a low chuckle. “I guess not. If anything, you seem…well pleasured.”

“And you? Are you all right?”

“I’m better than all right. Although, I’ve got to tell you—I can’t imagine there will ever be another egress to top this. I’m never going to live it down. This is one for the record books.”

* * *

A dull flash of steel glinted off a bloody knife as it descended toward her. A rebel soldier with skeleton face and a gaping, bloody hole in his chest wielded it. She turned to flee from him and ran out into a street where a tank was waiting to cut her down. She ran and ran, but she couldn’t find Tom anywhere. A dark mist closed in around her and she was trapped, unable to see her way out of the maze.

Annie became aware of a hand on her shoulder shaking her. An urgent voice murmured, “Wake up, Annie. Wake up!”

She lurched awake abruptly. It was dark. She was in a strange bed, and she was not alone.

Tom was with her. The nightmare loosened its grip as she came fully awake. Tanks and knives and crumpled bodies began to jumble together in her head in a grisly tableau. She moaned under her breath.

Instantly Tom’s arms were around her. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

She huddled against him, grateful for his solid comfort. Her body felt bruised and sore, not only from their love-making, but also from that frantic sprint for their lives. The thought of it still made her shudder. Were it not for the last second help by Tom’s men, she’d have died out there in the street.

Savoring the slow, steady beat of Tom’s heart beneath her ear, she whispered, “I had a nightmare.”

“So I gather. I was expecting it.”

She pulled back enough to look at his darkly shadowed face. “You were?”

“I do this for a living, remember? I’ve rescued a few civilians in my time.”

She turned her head away from him, ashamed. “But I’m not a civilian. I’m a military officer.”

“Who’s never seen combat, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“I’ve been shot at before.” Her tone was defensive.

She felt his smile against her forehead.

“Oh, yeah? When?”

When she nearly got him killed, that’s when. She changed the subject and prayed he wouldn’t become suspicious. “I hope you’re not mad at me for bringing you and your team to a brothel. It was all I could think of in the heat of the moment.”

“We’re alive. How could I possibly be mad at you for that?” Humor crept into his voice. “Besides, it’s a rare mission where we get to spend the night in a comfortable, safe bed.”

“Not to mention the hookers provided for all your men.”

Silent laughter shook him. “I’ll never the end of that. Try to get some sleep. Tomorrow will probably be worse than today.”

She stiffened, lifting her head in a futile attempt to see his face in the darkness. “Why?”

“We’re going to have to get past whoever wins tonight’s fight.”

“Oh.” She already felt naked and exposed just thinking about it.

“Don’t think about tomorrow, Annie. It’ll take care of itself. Sleep now.”

She shook her head. “I’m too wired to sleep.”

Tom sighed. “I know the feeling.”

They lay comfortably entwined for several minutes. He remarked quietly, “You did good tonight. That was a nice run you made.”

“I almost didn’t make it.”

He tightened his arms around her. “But you did make it. You gutted it out. I’m proud of you.”

A warm glow spread through her until she remembered the tightness in her chest, the heaviness of her feet, the awful certainty of failure. She willed away encroaching memories of the narrowness of their escape. “I’d have died without your guys’ help.”

His voice was velvety soft, soothing. She focused on it. “That’s what teamwork is all about. They helped you run a little faster, and you found us a safe place to stay.”

“Well, for tonight at any rate.” She paused. She truly didn’t want to hear the answer to her next question. “What’s next?”

He sighed, his voice shifting into a tone of military command. “Tomorrow we’ll scout the area and find a way past whatever army ends up controlling this sector.”

Hating herself for asking, but needing to nonetheless, she said, “I’m going to be in the way again, aren’t I?”

“Of course not!”

“I nearly got you guys killed tonight.”

“No, you didn’t. I nearly got us killed. I’m the one who decided to stick around and wait for Tex.”

She could hear the self-recrimination in his voice. “You’d have left if I hadn’t made you stay, though.”

He shook his head, his chin brushing lightly against her brow. “I was in command, and I’m responsible for what happened. We waited for Tex, he got the information we needed, and we all made it out. That’s what matters.”

Annie listened to the steady beat of Tom’s heart beneath her ear. He’d made the courageous decision that she hadn’t when she’d been faced with the same dilemma over the jungle. He’d understood the value of saving one person, even if it meant risking the whole team to do it.

And yet, he’d been willing to turn his back on Tex for her. He’d been willing to abandon that very sense of teamwork that was the glue holding them all together. She might be a noncombatant, but she knew exactly what had happened in that alley. He’d been about to destroy his team for her.

“Tom?”

“Hmm?” He sounded relaxed, on the verge of sleep.

“Why were you going to choose my safety over keeping your team together?”

He was silent a very long time. So long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But finally he spoke. His words sounded ripped from the depths of his being. “Do you really have to ask why I chose you?”

Annie squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe that was the difference. Maybe if she’d known Tom before she decided to sacrifice him by dragging him through the jungle, maybe if she’d loved him then, she’d have had the courage to risk herself and all his men for him.

But maybe she wouldn’t have.

“I don’t deserve you, Tom.”

Abruptly, he rolled her on her back. She felt him looming over her, his presence forbidding. “And why not?”

She bit her lip, knowing he’d make her say it out loud. “I’m not a good enough person for you.”

He settled back to the bed, pulling her into the crook of his arm. A sigh lifted his chest beneath her ear. “Then answer me this, angel. Why did you insist on waiting for Tex?”

“You guys are a family. He’s like a brother to you. I couldn’t ask you to sacrifice Tex and to break your most solemn vow to the others for me. You’d never have forgiven me if I cost you their trust, not to mention if something bad had happened to Tex.”

His tone was matter of fact. “They’d have understood.”

“But you could never have lived with it.”

“What are you talking about?”

She knew well enough by now that brutal honesty was usually the best approach with him. “Running from war to war until you get yourself killed is no way to make up for Simon Pettigrew’s death.”

Utter silence was his only reply.

Finally she broke the ominous stillness. “I’m sorry if that makes you mad to hear, but it’s the truth. Somebody needed to say it to you. You don’t have to die to make amends for one death. Your guy signed up for this. He knew the risks. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A mission went bad, and a bullet with his name on it found him.”

Tom ground out, “The mission went wrong because I screwed up.”

“Since when are you held to a higher standard of perfection than the rest of us? Everybody makes mistakes. You’ve got to let go of this guilt you’ve been hauling around. It’s going to get you killed.”

His next question startled her. “Why do you care if I kill myself with a guilt complex?”

Why indeed? She could run from the answer as she had from the tank, but in the end it would catch up with her. Resigned, she finally admitted the truth to herself. She loved Tom.

He stirred beside her. No doubt he was waiting for an answer.

She whispered, “Do you really need to ask?” She turned to him, needing to say it once out loud. “I lo—”

His mouth closed over hers, stopping the words before she could say them. Grief speared through her. Even now, when they’d nearly died together, he wouldn’t acknowledge what was happening between them. His defenses were so entrenched, she would never get through to him.

He might not let her say it aloud, but that didn’t change anything. She’d known it deep down in her heart for a while, but she’d fought admitting it until now.

Tonight she was too raw, too exposed from the terror of the night’s events to hide from it any longer.

Her arms closed around the strong column of his neck, drawing him down to her. Tonight, with a war raging outside, his presence was vastly reassuring. There was, indeed, a time and a place for men who could and would kill on an instant’s notice.

The room was warm, but a chill of anticipation raced across her skin. Once more, her warrior-lover came to her and taught her the exhilaration of cheating death.

He might refuse to say the words, but there was no doubt as he chased away her nightmares about how he really felt about her.