You look like crap!”

“Thanks, asshole.”

Drake wanted a do-over. Too late for that. “Haven’t you slept?”

Nikita just shook her head and plinked a finger against the computer screen.

Keeping it casual, he wandered over to the counter and made a cup of coffee. The morning light was shining into the kitchen-dining area, at least enough of it to not turn on the overhead fluorescents. The original stark-white walls were now covered with posters, so many that they were overlapping. There were the hot helicopter shots, of course, but mostly it was travel posters: China, Russia, Laos, the Philippines, a lot of Central and South America. The common theme was that the 5E had been to every one of those places on the quiet.

No need for any pinup posters or hot-girl calendars, not with the stunning women of the 5E in the residence. There were a couple big group shots of the 5E and one of them with the 5D out on the Nevada Test and Training Range—that was his kind of pinup. Funny, it was only now he noticed that Nikita wasn’t in a single one of them. And the one time they’d caught Altman on film it was only half his face over someone’s shoulder.

The main part of the room was filled with a big U-shaped table set up for meals and meetings. A cluster of chairs and couches faced a big-screen TV that was mainly used with battle-game consoles—some nights the entire company would get online together and duke it out. The other sidewall was a bank of computer workstations, at one of which Nikita sat sagging in her chair.

“You want?” He held up a coffee mug.

She shook her head, so he wandered back to her and looked over her shoulder.

“What’s the issue?”

“The issue is that these GSI contractors kept crap for records. What Titan gave us hardly tells us a thing. I’ve scratched up a couple of names and an amateur-hour contact method that came right out of a bad movie. Nothing about who they might be, how many there are, nor even a location. I tracked a whole lot of money and more than a little not-approved-for-export military hardware, including several helos rigged with serious armament, but I can’t tell where it goes.” She dropped back in her chair with a groan.

“Gaps in the data, or a second set of books?”

“No other records according to their guy Parker, and this work is good enough that he’s probably right.”

Drake set his coffee mug on the table and dug his fingers into her tight shoulders. She sat up straighter and leaned forward enough to give him access around the chair back. Nikita groaned as he dug in. She twisted her neck right and left; he could feel her spine crackling through his fingertips as he eased clenched muscles. He drove a knuckle under her shoulder blade as he pulled her shoulder back with his other hand. Her muscles fought the motion, so he dug harder…and it finally released.

“Oh, yeah,” she groaned softly.

“So,” Rafe, the pilot of Drake’s Black Hawk, came in and hit the coffeepot. “It’s good for her. How is it for you, Duck-man?”

“You make him stop,” Nikita answered before Drake could tell Rafe to go screw himself, “and I will replace that useless piece of jelly you use for a brain with a month-old cabbage.”

Drake took that as an invitation to run his hands down her triceps. Normally his hands could reach right around a woman’s upper arms—not even close on Nikita. He dug into the bound-up muscles there, working back toward her shoulders.

“Hey, I’m next,” Zoe called out as she wandered into the room. She was a cute little whip of a thing: Scandinavian blond with dark roots, bright blue eyes, and a constantly cheery attitude. She looked like she should be in social media marketing, not flying fifteen million dollars of Avenger stealth drone.

Out of the corner of his eye, Drake could see Altman roll in. Nikita’s commander stopped for a long moment and Drake was careful not to look in his direction. Eventually, he crossed behind Drake—without maiming him, which Drake would count as a plus—and hit the kitchen.

By the time half the crew was in, Drake decided he was pushing his luck. With a final squeeze of her shoulders, which she answered with a slight shrug of thanks up against his palms, he let go. His hands tingled with her warmth. He’d have to remember to thank his big sister next time they spoke. Years ago she’d needed a practice subject for her masseuse license and been between boyfriends. Hennie had discussed what she was doing to his muscles aloud, and over the years since, more than a few girlfriends had succumbed with a happy sigh after he applied what he’d learned.

He hadn’t given Nikita the massage with any illusions that it was more than a massage, but he still liked how she felt. Again the contrast of the hidden strength and the beautiful woman. He worked out just as much as the next grunt, but he could feel that she lived at a whole other level of fitness. Maybe he’d start hitting the weights harder.

She picked up his coffee mug and took a sip, “Ack! Crap, Roman! How much sugar did you put in this?”

“Two packets.” Army coffee, even when he made it instead of one of his teammates who didn’t give a damn, was still the bitterest substance on earth. What it was about Army coffeemakers that always scorched the flavor, he’d never figured out.

“Weenie,” she razzed him loudly enough for anyone to hear. But she offered him a smile and kept drinking it, so it was hard to feel bad.

Breakfast came together fast. Drake almost asked what he could get for Nikita, but decided that would be pushing his luck. Normally a woman would like the solicitousness, but maybe not a SEAL. Also, it would be like singling her out for being a female—which he’d just done with his massage. He tried to picture himself digging into Altman’s shoulder if the SEAL commander had been the one who’d spent all night in the chair. Wasn’t going to happen.

During his indecision, Nikita grabbed a breakfast burrito out of the freezer, tossed it into the microwave, then took it and his coffee over to the table. He went for dumping boiling water over a bowl of instant oatmeal and called it good with a fistful of raisins and a spoon of brown sugar. And a fresh cup of coffee—with two sugar packets, by god—he followed her to the table. But rather than sitting next to her, he went for his normal spot, four seats away from Nikita.

He did it because he wasn’t thinking about her, at least not that way. Not the way he might have after giving her a massage, or lying in the tall grass while she showed surprising patience in teaching him gun handling. It had taken half an hour before she’d even let him fire a round; it was all about positioning his grip and mental attitude.

You gotta think slower, Roman, she’d spoken softly and patiently—the gentle trainer inside the tough soldier. Think slower? Not about Nikita Hayward, he wasn’t.

Nope, he definitely wasn’t thinking about how much he wished he’d noticed what she was doing and stayed up with her last night so that he could at least pretend that her lack-of-sleep tousled look had been his doing. Her hair had lost parts of its habitual ponytail and was now a soft, enticing cloud about her face.

None of that. He didn’t want to get any teasing from the team. More importantly, he didn’t want her to get any.

Rafe kicked Drake’s chair, hard enough that it wasn’t an accident as he sat down in the next seat over. Julian’s elbow as he sat on Drake’s other side was just as “mistakenly” and solidly planted in Drake’s ribs. So much for plan A.

“Hey, I’ve got this tight spot right here,” Rafe pointed at his shoulder.

“I can tell you where the Duck-man’s tight spot is,” Julian squawked at him from the other side, following it with crappy fake-duck sounds.

The two were the pilots of the Black Hawk that he was gunner on and were always carrying on like they were the funniest guys in the entire Night Stalkers regiment.

“Yeah,” he answered Julian. “Maybe I shouldn’t be sitting between you two, because I know right where your tight spot is.”

Rafe punched his arm while Julian groaned and then the three of them laughed together.

Nikita watched the guys messing with Drake. It would have been funny if it hadn’t given her some thinking to do.

Drake hadn’t been like the others. Most of the male crew had come on to her at one point or another, and one of the women as well. Drake had only tried the one cheap pickup line way back at the China mission and then backed off. She wondered if it had been only a joke to protect his reputation. Since then, he’d been a decent guy.

He was too well bred for her taste. She wanted a challenge and Drake was too smooth and slick in his ways—it was obvious what he was: overeducated Yankee far too used to getting his way with women. He even sounded kind of posh, Boston maybe. Nikita rolled her shoulders—they felt seriously better. She’d have protested when he touched her, but his thumbs had landed right on a hard knot from hunching over the keyboard all night. That and the memory of his hand on her thigh last night. He hadn’t asked what was messing her up, he’d just helped her back from that edge. Instead of sliding up her thigh, he’d eventually squeezed once lightly in reassurance and then withdrawn his hand with no one the wiser.

Altman dropped into the seat next to her. “Hayward.” He made it a question even though it sounded like a statement.

“Commander?” She made it a statement even though it sounded like a question.

He eyed her over his fried eggs, toast, and sausage. “Got anything to tell me?”

Not about the shit going on in her head. “When the team is all sitting down.” Nothing personal going on here. Just business.

He eyed her for a long moment before accepting her evasion with a nod. The rest of the crew trickled in. They were on no hard schedule today, but it was just 0600 and the whole crew was up. It actually made sense. They’d been in the Philippine jungle for three weeks, always flying at night and sleeping during the day. Philippines to Mother Rucker, Alabama, was twelve hours time difference. Staying awake all night, she was the only one now out of sync with the clock. Usually they all were out of sync, because the Night Stalkers weren’t called that for flying in the sunshine.

As the last of them were settling, she grabbed her laptop and turned on the projection screen.

“Target is Honduras.”

“A new poster!” Drake chimed in.

“A new…?” She must be more exhausted than she’d thought if she missed the reference. There was no Honduras travel poster on the walls of the 5E common room.

Others were looking around the room double-checking as if they couldn’t remember all of the places they’d fought over the last year. Actually, the 5E’s operational tempo was high enough, maybe they couldn’t.

She turned back to her report.

“Last year a team of heli-aviation wildland firefighters from Mount Hood Aviation received a contract to fight fires in the Honduran countryside. In the midst of their contract, they were shanghaied by an unknown group of men. One of Mount Hood Aviation’s Firehawk helicopters—civilian version of a Black Hawk—became instrumental in halting a coup staged against the duly elected president.”

“Duly elected,” Drake cut in, again breaking her rhythm, “is a tenuous term for Honduran politics. They’ve had presidents who were polling below twenty percent win elections, perhaps because they were vocal supporters of the army and the military police who were the ones manning the polls.” He was right and she could see that many didn’t know about the mess that Honduras called leadership.

“That was a prior president. This one was duly elected, with only minor complaints from UN observers and very few riots during the voting process. It’s no longer our concern.”

Drake nodded his concession on that point. She didn’t know what to think of him. Was he trying to be helpful or… She was too tired to think about it now. Focus on the briefing.

“Honduras is also the murder capital of the world. This is not a happy country, nor has it been for a long time—again outside the scope of our rules of engagement. It is estimated that thirty members of the coup attempt died that night. How the civilian team in an unarmed Firehawk did this is unclear, and command has the who and the how marked as need-to-know. By their methodology, I expect it was a Delta Force action.”

That earned her everyone’s full attention. If she had said that back at DEVGRU command on Naval Air Station Oceana, it would have incurred a buttload of comments about the SEALs now having to clean up Delta’s mess because they couldn’t finish a job or some such crap. Ever since DEVGRU’s founder Richard Marcinko had declared that if there was water in his canteen, that was close enough to the ocean for a SEAL, ST6 and Delta had coexisted uncomfortably on the same tactical turf of elite counter-terrorism.

“Maybe they used fire,” Rafe waved a piece of pancake at the screen.

“That’s another way to bring the heat,” Julian made finger-

flexing motions like an air massage, “or you could—”

“Shut the hell up and let Nikita speak!” Drake took advantage of his position sitting between the two and smacked both of his teammates on the back of the head.

They turned to retaliate and Nikita sighed at the unavoidable interruption. She was never going to get this briefing done and it was pissing her off.

Major Pete Napier spoke for the first time, “You two don’t shut up, I’m giving you latrine duty.”

“No way, Pete. Who would fly our helicopter?”

“The goddamn base janitors for all I care! Now close your yaps and listen.”

They shut up.

Drake thought everyone knew not to antagonize Major Pete Napier before he’d finished his morning coffee, or ever, for that matter. Drake had been planning on getting the guys back for what they’d said about Nikita being his tight spot. Even better? Having the company commander shutting them down.

He smacked them both on the backs of their heads again, just because it felt good. And they wouldn’t dare retaliate after Pete tromped all over them.

He exchanged a look with Nikita. There was a deep chill in her eyes, practically Arctic despite their brown color. Okay, maybe he shouldn’t have so enjoyed smacking his two teammates. Or maybe that was simply how much she disliked anything that wasn’t squared away military.

She returned to her briefing while Drake resisted the urge to cower under the table.

“The people killed were identified as primarily military: shooters and a general, along with a key member of the opposition party. However, based on what minimal information GSI kept, it appears there was a much broader operation in process than merely a military coup toppling a president. I found traces of smuggling: gold, drugs, weapons, people, you name it. Money laundering is probably part of it too, but there is something much broader going on. The Honduran government is helpless in this. And believe it or not, that’s all we have to go on.”

“And the US government gave it to us, that means small and quiet. We need an intel team on the ground,” Altman declared. “Scout detail: me, Nikita, Drake…who else speaks Spanish?”

A couple hands went up around the table.

“No pilots,” all of the hands went back down. None of the other three gunners.

“I need another woman. Zoe,” Altman pointed to the drone’s copilot, whose hand had been among those initially raised, “you’re in.”

Drake raised a hand.

“What is it, Sergeant Roman?”

“I don’t speak Spanish. My languages are Japanese and German.”

Altman scowled at him, “Then why do you know about Honduran politics?”

Drake shrugged, “Just one of those things. I followed a rabbit down an Internet hole and emerged days later. Their politics are among the wildest of any country; it makes for great reading.”

“You still current on what’s happening down there?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’re in because who knows what knowledge we’ll need. Just don’t speak when we’re in-country. You and Zoe, me and Nikita. We’ll look like vacationing couples and see what we can find out.”

Drake wasn’t real thrilled with the team pairing, but he was glad to be along for the ride. And he supposed it made sense. The massive SEAL commander and the little slip of a drone pilot would definitely make an odd couple.

“Pete,” Altman was moving on. “Find a way to get your team quietly into place. Costa Rica, offshore, something. That’s why I’m not taking any pilots. Nikita, hand off your research to Mr. Honduras there and get some sleep. Drake, you find us a way in and where to start.”

Pete nodded, “Everyone make sure that your gear, weapons, and aircraft are fully serviced and restocked. By nightfall, we’re ready on zero notice. Sophia, grab a senior instructor with top clearance to cover for Zoe on your Avenger drone. Everyone clear?” No one would dare to do more than nod in agreement when Pete Napier used that tone.

Breakfast was cleaned up and everyone had left for the hangar in under five minutes.

Nikita simply sat at the table, staring down at her plate and half-empty mug long gone cold.

Drake cleared it for her.

By the time he turned around, they were alone and she was asleep with her arms sprawled on the table and her head cricked sideways between them.

“Come along, you,” he coaxed her back to her feet.

“Didn’t sleep on the damned flight back either,” she mumbled. Which meant she’d been awake for at least three straight days, maybe four. The last couple days in the Philippines hadn’t exactly been conducive to rest and relaxation.

When she almost face-planted over her chair, he slipped a hand around her waist. She did the same and suddenly they were as close as a couple of teenagers walking along hip to hip. Now he was the one who wanted to stumble.

Thankfully her room was on the main floor, though at the far end of the hall. No stairs to navigate.

“Is there anything special I need to know about the files?” He needed something to think about other than Nikita draped against him. His palm had landed on the curve of her hip where it dipped upward to the soft valley of her waist. It wasn’t decent behavior, but he wanted to pull her in closer. Taking advantage of her current state, he did. For just a moment he could pretend.

Then she slipped her hand into his back jeans pocket, raising his blood pressure about a jillion points.

“You’ve got a nice ass, Roman.”

He managed to guide her through the door between the common room and the residence without breaking their connection. Unlike the poster-plastered décor behind them, the hall was standard, unremitting, military-base beige with gray carpet, best practices posters that no one had ever read, and a couple too few lights. The place would pass well as a cheap motel anywhere in the country. It wouldn’t normally be wide enough to walk side by side, except for their current sideways clench.

“Look who’s talking about having a nice ass. I assume that’s the main qualification to become a DEVGRU SEAL.” He’d certainly noticed hers, he just never thought he’d get a chance to be talking about it.

“Helps if you can swim. You know, SEAL and all. Sea, air, and land is what we are. Can you swim, Duck-man?”

“Only when I’m trying not to drown.”

“You’re a sad case, Duck-man.”

“How’s that?” They reached her door, but she didn’t seem to be reaching for her keys. Taking a deep breath, he began checking her pockets because if he didn’t get away from her soon he didn’t know what was going to happen. A few hand brushes, which he did his best not to enjoy (but failed miserably at), located them in her back left pocket.

“You shoot like a heli-weenie. You’ve got the hots for busty babes in leather. And you barely swim.” She appeared to be talking to a poster on how to recognize athlete’s foot.

He slipped his hand into her back left pocket and earned no complaints. By the time he had her keys extracted, he knew for a fact that DEVGRU women absolutely did have the best asses in the military—even if Nikita was the only one.

“So damn much I gotta teach you if you’re going to be a decent man.”

“Like what?” he unlocked the door and guided her into her room. Just like his: double bed, small desk, a hand sink, and a dresser. The difference was that she had five rifle cases stacked in a corner and three field packs that he knew from past experience were armor, ammo, and tons of the tech gizmos that SEALs always seemed to have. Her clothes wouldn’t fill a daypack.

“Like,” she grabbed him by the belt, spun him around, and shoved him back against the door—slamming it shut, hard. “Like I’m tired, not drunk. You want to cop a feel, you better do it right.” She reached around his hips and double-grabbed his butt, then she leaned in and kissed him hard when his mouth opened in surprise.

He certainly wasn’t going to argue and leaned in to the kiss. Her mouth was spicy with her breakfast and sweet with a taste that must be her own.

Drake went to slide his hand down her spine. A dip of back muscle made her belt span the gap and his hand slid inside her pants instead of outside. He was rewarded with a handful of delightful, cotton-clad muscle.

She hummed with pleasure for a moment. Long before he was ready to stop, she tipped her head sideways onto his shoulder.

“You’re a good kisser, Duck-man. At least I won’t have to teach you that,” each word tapered softer and softer.

The last one never got its final consonant.

“Oh,” she roused for a moment, “the password on the file is ‘Sweet Cheeks’. Figured you’d appreciate my using Sugar’s nickname for you.” Then she was out.

“You’re not drunk, but you’re not conscious either.”

She didn’t answer. Her body slowly went limp until she was a deadweight leaning into him and pinning him against the door.

“And here I am with my hand down your pants.”

No reaction.

“And talking to myself.”

Extracting his hand, he pulled her tightly against his chest to keep her from slipping directly to the floor. Doing his best not to enjoy the moment, Drake slowly walked her backward toward her bed. He had to nudge her legs along with his own. They were in the closest contact possible while still clothed, from toes to her chest pressing against his to her hair brushing against the side of his neck. He wanted to twist around and sit back on the bed, pulling her the rest of the way into his lap.

Controlling himself, he lowered her onto the bed. There was no way in hell he was going to be undressing her. It was September in Alabama; she wasn’t going to freeze on top of the covers. He undid her boots, then did his best to arrange her so that she wouldn’t wake up a dozen hours from now with an intolerable kink.

Drake studied her for a long moment. He didn’t feel like a cad doing so, despite her butt-warmth still very real on his palm. Instead, he looked at her just in case he never had the chance to hold her again—he wanted to remember this moment. He brushed her hair out of her face and resisted running his hand down her lovely neck.

Get out while you still can, Duck-man. It was good advice, which meant that normally he wouldn’t follow it, but this time he did.

He was back at Nikita’s laptop with a fresh cup of coffee a minute later.

When Altman checked in on him shortly after, he was past blushing about the “Sweet Cheeks” password and deep into the file, enough to have a feel for it.

“Nikita did a lot of good prep here,” Drake said without turning. “Give me a couple of hours and I should have a handle on it.”

Altman thumped him on the shoulder, a lot harder than would be appropriate for a “well done,” but Drake wasn’t going to point that out.

He’d sometimes wondered if Luke Altman and Nikita were paired off. They communicated on some other level. It might just be a SEAL thing, but he couldn’t be sure.

Then he thought about her kiss and was glad that he was facing away from Altman because he couldn’t stop his own smile.