By Honor Bound (25 page)

 “My brother Blayne is a good man. Special Forces, just got married and everything, but as a kid he was a terror. He used to lock me in a closet and hold the door closed while I kicked and screamed to get out.”

“All older brothers torture their younger siblings. It’s like a law or something.”

“Yeah, but getting locked in small places bothers me. As long as I can keep moving, I’m okay, but the thought of getting trapped in an elevator makes me hyperventilate.”

“So that’s why you were in the stairwell.”

“Yup, right place, right time.”

She was calmer now. He just had to keep her talking. Mace fiddled with his dog tags and considered the situation. If he insisted she stay in the closet she could freak out and attract attention. If she went with him, she’d be in danger of getting blown up. Hell, so would he, and she was right, she’d be no safer in the closet if it was a bomb anyway.

“All right, you can come.”

“Thank you!” She launched herself into his arms, and suddenly the bomb was the last thing he was thinking about exploding.

Chapter Three

Annie’s body sizzled where it touched Mace. She’d been so relieved he wasn’t going to leave her in the closet by herself that she just jumped into his arms without thinking. Now it was too late for any intelligent thoughts to find their way into her brain. His body was rock-hard and her breasts tingled from the contact.

His mouth lowered to hers, and her breath caught in anticipation. He grazed her lips with his, once, twice, then finally captured her mouth in a mind-numbing kiss. Annie’s eyes closed and she couldn’t help but let out a little moan as desire spiraled through her body. Her pussy was growing and swelling with each second, and when his tongue probed her lips for entrance, she gladly let him in.

Dueling tongues tangled together and Annie wrapped her arms around Mace even tighter. She wanted to climb on top of him, to touch him everywhere, to feel everything he could show her. Mace growled against her mouth and pulled her leg up around his waist, pressing her pussy against his raging cock.

The friction sent her already heightened senses soaring, making her nipples harden into over-sensitized points. Mace moved his lips from her mouth to the column of her throat, nibbling his way to her ear. Annie let her head drop back so he could have better access. Shivers chased their way down her spine, exploding in her soaking wet pussy.

Mace pulled her hips against his, rubbing against her already throbbing center. As he leaned back against the shelves behind him something crashed. Liquid splashed against her leg and broke the spell that had her enthralled.

“Holy shit! What happened?” Mace had jumped back and was in a defensive crouch.

“Spontaneous combustion?”

Annie looked down at the bottle of cleaning solution that was splattered against her leg and spreading all over the floor. She quickly bent down to clean it up, hoping the action would cover her blush. Her body was still humming from the contact with his and she couldn’t find it in herself to regret her actions. Maybe in a rational world when she wasn’t fighting for her life and the lives of every other person in the hospital she wouldn’t try to jump some guy she’d only just met. This obviously wasn’t normal behavior for her, although she’d never been around a man as good-looking as Mace before either.

“It’s just a bottle of glass cleaner,” Annie said, breaking the tension.

“Okay. Let’s check out this bomb, stay behind me.”

“You got it.” She had no desire to be any closer to explosive devices than she had to.

Following Mace out of the closet, Annie did her best not to stare at his tightly muscled ass. What was wrong with her? This was life or death and she was fixating on some guy’s butt. There was something seriously wrong with this picture.

Mace let out a low whistle as he examined the contraption on the door.

“Looks like you were right, this is set to go off in six hours.” Mace looked closely at the bomb, but didn’t touch it.

“Can you defuse it?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? This isn’t fixing a bicycle chain here, either you can or you can’t. There’s not a whole heck of a lot of room for error.”

He shot her a look over his shoulder. “If you’d be quiet and give me a little room to move I could get a better look at it and figure out whether or not I can defuse it safely.”

Annie stepped back and shut up. She tended to shoot off her mouth when she was nervous, and this whole situation had her jumpier than a mouse on espresso beans. Mace looked at the wires from different angles without touching them. Every once in a while he’d mutter something to himself or let out a curse. Annie was dying to ask him if he had any idea what he was doing, but bit her tongue. The last thing she needed was for him to try to play hero and blow them up.

Stepping away silently, Annie went to investigate the rest of the hall. She kept Mace in sight at all times. It only made sense for her to keep an eye out for the terrorists that were roaming the building. And if having a little space gave her hormones a chance to calm themselves, well that was just a side benefit, right?

Her shoes made no sound as she walked down the corridor looking in all the offices for any sign of the attackers. What could they want anyway? They spoke English, so it wasn’t a foreign group trying to make headlines. This was a hospital for heaven’s sake!

“Annie!”

“I’m here, I was just doing a recon.”

“Could you let me know if you are going to take off? One minute you’re yammering my ear off, the next I can’t even see you. Did you find anything?”

Annie bit her tongue before she said something she’d regret. They were in this together, and bickering wouldn’t help. “No, I didn’t see any sign of them. I didn’t even see where they had trashed any of the offices other than the one next to Michaels’. They must be concentrating on the wards.”

“That or they figured this little number would take care of anything they didn’t get to. There’s enough C4 here to take out the whole floor.”

“Who do you think is behind this? They’re Americans. Why would anyone want to do this to their own countrymen?” She turned around at the sound of Mace’s voice. She’d gone farther than she realized and was down the other end of the hall. Jogging back she waved to him.

 “Who knows? Maybe they’re extremist wackos, maybe they’re contracted mercenaries. All I know is, they know their way around a bomb.”

“You can’t defuse it?” Annie felt her heart drop to her stomach.

“Nope, not for sure.”

“And if we open the door?”

“Do you want to take that chance? It could have a motion sensor and go off if we open the door.”

“And if we wait?”

“It will go off in six hours.”

* * * * *

Mace watched the expressions chase across Annie’s face. He really wished he could be a hero and defuse the bomb, but he wasn’t certain enough about all the wires to risk it.

“So what do we do now?” Annie asked.

“We can look for another way off this floor, but I have a feeling all the stairways are similarly wired.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Annie slumped against the wall.

Damn, he hated the look of defeat on her face. It pissed him off that he couldn’t deal with the situation. If it was only his life at stake he might chance it, but he couldn’t put Annie in danger too.

“Why don’t we go back to the closet and see if we can pick up any more information on the scanner?” Doing something concrete should help keep her distracted.

“Yeah, I guess we don’t have to worry about running down the batteries now.”

So much for distracting her. Mace knew how he’d
like
to distract her. He was still achingly aware of her nearness. He hadn’t meant to kiss her before, but her body felt so good in his arms, and her lips were so close, he couldn’t help but take a little taste. And one taste led to another until he wanted to eat her whole. If he hadn’t knocked the bottle of cleaning stuff over he’d have probably taken her against the wall right then and there.

His cock reared up to full attention at the thought. Great, just what he needed in these thin pajama bottoms, a raging hard-on.

Annie had turned and headed for the closet, so he followed her. There wasn’t much else they could do. He had to think of a plan, find some way to get them out of this situation. Dying was not an option. There had to be some way out.

Closing the closet door behind him, Mace moved as far away from Annie as he could in the tiny space. He looked anywhere but at her. Who’d have thought pictures of naked, airbrushed women would pale in comparison to a woman in military white scrubs?

Fiddling with the scanner, Mace tried to find the frequency the terrorists were using for their radios. It was a crapshoot as to whether or not he’d be able to pick up their conversations on this tiny scanner, but he didn’t have anything better to do right now.

Annie bent over to look at something on one of the lower shelves, and Mace’s body sprang into full awareness. Her sports bra pressed up her breasts, and he had a delicious view of her deep cleavage. Choking back a groan, he focused on the scanner again. It was too dangerous to be roaming around in the halls or he’d leave the little room and take a breather.

“So what were you doing in the stairwell anyway?” Annie asked him, her blue eyes looking right into his.

“I had been waiting in the emergency room for one of my buddies to come and get me. The doctors wouldn’t release me without someone there to sign for me.”

“That’s standard procedure; they don’t want you getting into an accident or something after you’ve been given anesthetic.”

“I guess so. Anyway, I was waiting for one of the nurses to give me my clothes so I could wait in the lobby when a bunch of guys in ski masks crashed the ER and started firing at anything that moved.”

“How’d you get away?”

Mace felt embarrassment curl in his belly. “I was in the john, they missed me so I slipped into the stairway while they were ushering everyone out of the room.” He turned his head, unable to look her in the eye.

“Some hero I am. Gunmen are shooting at innocent people and I’m taking a leak.”

“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. It wasn’t like you planned on being in the bathroom when they came in, it just happened that way.” She laid her hand on his arm, and the gentle contact traveled straight to his gut.

“At least you were smart enough to get away when the opportunity presented itself instead of trying to take on a bunch of armed psychos.”

“I still feel like there was something I could have done differently.”

“Like get shot? I’m glad you escaped; you probably saved my life. I was in shock when I saw what was going on. I would have stood there like an idiot all night if you hadn’t grabbed me when you did.”

Mace thought about it for a minute. Maybe she was right, there wasn’t a whole lot he could have done against a bunch of lunatics wielding automatic rifles then. And she had been standing there like she was frozen in time. That reminded him.

“What was that all about anyway? Shock?”

 “Flashbacks.” Her face suddenly closed off and she looked away. “I was in a field unit in Iraq. The last week of my assignment, a group of extremists attacked the place.”

“What happened?” The medical units were usually kept away from the action and well protected.

“Not a whole lot actually, it was over pretty fast. There weren’t that many of them, and their weapons were ancient. They lobbed a few homemade grenades at us that did some damage to the mess tent and the triage area. A few of them got close enough to attack, but the guards got them before anyone was seriously hurt.”

“It’s still scary getting shot at.” It was his turn to comfort her, and he laid his hand along her cheek.

“Tell me about it. I thought I was over the worst of it, but seeing the car on fire and the men with guns screaming at people brought it all back.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

Mace hated the lost look on her angelic face. He pulled her into the circle of his arms and held her against him. It was meant to be comforting, but he had to angle his lower body away from her to keep from rubbing his erection against her.

Annie shook her head and looked up at him. “You know the worst part? The reason they attacked us wasn’t because we were treating American soldiers, it was because we were treating the locals too. Whatever faction had the guns that day didn’t want us keeping their enemies alive. I just don’t get it. We’d have treated them too if they asked, but instead of taking advantage of the medical care, they’d rather kill everyone.”

She buried her head in his chest, and he felt her shoulders shake with silent tears.

“We can’t understand everything about them. Their culture is so different than ours. All we can do is offer the help; we can’t force them to take it.”

Sniffing a little, Annie looked back up at him and gave him a watery smile. “It’s the old you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink dilemma?”

Mace laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. People have to make their own decisions, you can only offer to help them, it’s up to them to decide if they want it or not.”

She sighed and stepped away from him, he suddenly felt empty and cold without her next to him.

“You’re right. It just seems like such a waste some times. I was doing better with it after I came home. Working twelve-hour shifts has a way of keeping your mind off things.”

“I’m sure.” Mace watched her pull herself together, and admired the way she handled herself under pressure. Except for that one lapse, she’d taken the events of the last few hours in stride.

“Have you been able to get anything on the scanner?”

He looked down at the forgotten scanner in his hand. “No, either they aren’t talking or I can’t pick it up. I’ll try again in a little bit.”

Annie looked at her watch. “It’s close to three in the morning. I should be tired, but I’m wide awake.”

“It’s the adrenaline; it’ll keep you hyped up for a while yet. I’d tell you to try and take a nap, but it’s useless. When the adrenaline wears off, you’ll crash whether you’ve had enough sleep or not.”