Authors: Paige Tyler
“A little while after his partner quit the DCO.”
He tried to imagine a walking time bomb like Buchanan with a partner. It must have sucked to have
been that guy. “Why’d he quit?”
“It was a woman, and I don’t know why she left. Clayne wouldn’t tell me and no one else at the DCO is
talking. Not even Kendra, who knows everything about everyone. I got back from a mission, and Danica—
his partner—was gone. Clayne won’t admit it, but I got the feeling they were more than just partners.
Which is why I think he got so messed up when she left.”
The woman must be a saint to have put up with Buchanan. “Why isn’t he off training with his new
partner instead of harassing you?”
“Because they can’t find anyone who can work with him.”
Thank God they didn’t pair him up with Buchanan instead of Ivy. He and the asshole shifter would have
killed each other a dozen times over already.
They reached the Orinoco River dividing Colombia and Venezuela an hour before nightfall—way ahead
of schedule. The river was fast moving and they had to walk a ways before they found an area below the
rapids where they could cross. Once on the other side, they quickly moved into the denser part of the jungle
again, checking repeatedly to make sure no one had seen them.
Ivy squeezed the water from her long braid. “That didn’t take as long as we thought. Calballero’s place
is only a couple miles from here.”
“That’ll give us a chance to get some shut-eye if you want. I know I’m beat.”
He and Ivy couldn’t break into Calballero’s until midnight at the earliest, and since neither of them had
slept in close to thirty hours, they might as well take advantage of the downtime. They found a dense
section of jungle well off the beaten path to set up their ponchos, then climbed inside the makeshift tent.
Eager to get out of his soaking wet clothes, Landon started unbuttoning his uniform overshirt, then
hesitated. If he’d been with his Special Forces team, he wouldn’t give stripping down a second thought, but
he was in a tiny makeshift tent with a beautiful woman. Did the same rules apply?
Only one way to find out. He looked at Ivy.
“I was going to get out of these wet clothes, but if you’re uncomfortable with me sleeping in my T-shirt
and underwear, I’ll keep them on.”
Her eyes glinted green as she blinked at him. “Um, no. I mean, go ahead. There’s no way you’d get any
sleep in wet clothes, and it’ll give them a chance to dry. I was going to take off mine, too.”
Landon tried not to look as Ivy got undressed, but as she stripped off her pants to reveal shapely thighs,
it was impossible not to take a quick peek. Those were some long, gorgeous legs. He could just imagine
them wrapped around him while he drove himself deep inside her until neither one of them could
remember their own name.
His cock went hard as a rock in his boxer briefs, and he was glad it was dark so Ivy couldn’t see. Then
he remembered her outstanding night vision, and hurriedly rolled over onto his side so he faced away from
her.
That was enough of those kinds of thoughts. Workplace romances didn’t work, he reminded himself.
Just
remember
what
happened
with
Erica
, he chanted like a mantra. It seemed to work.
Until Ivy lay down beside him and their bodies were touching. Then his mind was once again going to
places it shouldn’t. He closed his eyes, trying to think of something—anything—other than his partner’s
half-naked body pressed up against his. Field stripping an M4 carbine in his head worked for a while, but
then she squirmed—probably to get more comfortable—and her ass brushed his, and he was back in
fantasyland, having erotic visions. They played in his head like scenes from a porn movie—her on her
hands and knees in front of him, his hand wrapped in her long hair while he took her from behind; her
riding cowgirl, his hands cupping that perfect ass; her up against the wall, him pounding into her.
Landon stifled a groan. He shouldn’t be having thoughts like this about his partner, especially after the
grueling hike they’d just had, not to mention the potentially deadly mission in front of them. But he
couldn’t help himself. Even after humping through the jungle all day and night, her face smudged with
sweat and river mud, Ivy was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The fact that she was so damn
capable at her job made her even more attractive. He’d always found confidence and competence to be very
sexy qualities in a woman. Ivy had those—and a lot more.
But no matter how much he wanted her, he was never going to act on it. She’d been burned by previous
partners who thought working with her automatically got them a free ticket on the carnival ride. He wasn’t
going to be that guy.
***
known they’d accidently paired her up with a guy who smelled so delicious it was almost torture to be this
close to him. Touching him like this, she could taste him on her tongue—which was why she was lying here
in the dark with her mouth hanging open, softly panting.
She squeezed her nails into her palms as she drew in the scent of him. Sweat, river water, mud—none
of it masked his pheromones. And she was getting more and more aroused by the second.
She squirmed, trying to ease the ache between her thighs, and ended up rubbing her ass against
Landon’s butt. Which only made her more aware of her partner—and her response to him. She froze,
forcing herself to stay still. Landon was beat and needed to get some rest before they started the final phase
of the operation. He couldn’t do that with her wiggling around.
It would be so easy to roll over and straddle him. First, she’d kiss and nibble her way up his broad
chest, then along his chiseled jaw until she came to that sinfully sexy mouth. And while she did that, she’d
tease him—and herself—by rubbing against his erection. Then, when neither one of them could take it
anymore, she’d slowly sink down on his cock, sheathing him all the way inside her.
It was all she could do not to reach down and slip her fingers under her panties. Where the heck was
this coming from? It was like she was in heat. But that wasn’t possible. Was it?
It wasn’t like there was a handbook that came with the shifter gene. The only other shifters in her family
were her maternal grandmother, who passed away when Ivy was in high school, and her younger sister,
Layla. Her sister had never mentioned reacting to a guy like this. And unfortunately, Ivy couldn’t just pull
out the satellite phone to call and ask.
Ivy clenched her jaw to keep from growling. She hoped the hours passed quickly. She needed
something to take her mind off her sex drive or she was going to explode.
Chapter 6
Ivy didn’t explode. She controlled herself remarkably well and even managed to get a few hours of
sleep. Landon, on the other hand, looked like crap.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Not really. I’m beat.”
“I’m not surprised. An hour or two nap doesn’t make up for days of missed sleep. You looked
exhausted yesterday morning at the DCO offices, too. Not much sleep that night either, huh?”
He shook his head.
“Okay, I gotta ask. You just got to DC. How the heck did you meet a woman so fast?”
He looked taken aback. “What?”
“Well, I mean you told me you weren’t from around here, but you go out the very first night in town? I
put two and two together and came up with the obvious. What’s the deal? Did you meet her on the plane or
something?”
“I didn’t go to see a girl. It was a guy.”
It was Ivy’s turn to be stunned and she stopped hiking to face him. “Oh. Oh! I mean…Right…A…
guy…Of course you have every right to…you know…”
She stuttered to a halt. Landon was gay. She was okay with that, really. Even if it was a crime against
women everywhere for a guy that hot to be gay.
He chuckled. “If you could see your face right now. Man, I wish I had a camera.”
She flushed. “It’s not that. I mean I have a lot of gay friends.” Okay, a few. “It’s just that you don’t look
gay.” She cringed. Had she just said that out loud? “I mean… I’ll stop talking now.”
He laughed again, louder this time. “Ivy, I’m not gay.”
“It’s okay if you are. I understand…”
“Ivy, I’m not gay. Really.”
She studied his face. He didn’t sound like he was lying. “Oh. Where did you disappear to then?” She
held up her hand. “I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You’re not prying.” He nudged her into moving again. “One of my teammates—my assistant
A-team commander—got injured in Afghanistan and is now over at the Wounded Warrior Barracks in
Bethesda. I like to visit him when I can.”
Now, she felt like even more of an idiot. She’d been jealous about a wounded soldier. One who must
have been seriously injured if he was at Walter Reed.
“How badly was your friend hurt?”
“Pretty bad. He got a lot of shrapnel in his back. It really messed him up. He’s not confined to a
wheelchair or anything. Not yet, anyway. But he will be if he doesn’t do physical therapy, and right now, he
doesn’t see the point since the army is chaptering him out.” He gave her a rueful smile. “There aren’t many
jobs in the military for a guy who’ll have to use a cane for the rest of his life.”
“That must be hard.”
“It is.”
It seemed like it was hard on Landon, too. She still had issues with what happened to Dave, and they’d
been anything but close. “What happened over there?”
Landon was silent.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”
He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “We got some intel that the Taliban had been strong-arming the
local police force in a small town outside of Kabul. The cops were looking for some help, so my team was
assigned to go in and spend a couple weeks training them on how to stop the Taliban attacks. It wasn’t
supposed to be a direct action operation—we weren’t expected to have to do anything more than advise and
assist.”
“I take it things didn’t go as planned?”
He shook his head. “No. A few hours after we arrived, the head of the local police told us they found a
cache of weapons in a farmhouse about a mile outside of town. He asked if I could send some of my men
out with his officers to confiscate them.”
“And?” she prodded.
“I should have known better. It was just too easy, too smooth. We roll into town and within a couple
hours, I’m splitting my team. I should have known it was a trap.”
“How could you have known?” He didn’t answer. “So, you sent Jayson out with the local cops to help
confiscate the weapons?”
“Yeah. Him and four other guys.” He shook his head. “I was going to go, but Jayson wanted to handle
it. He pulled me aside and told me to stop coddling him all the time, that he was an operator, too.”
“Was he right? Did you coddle him?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe.” Landon shrugged. “A little, I guess. But he was inexperienced. Hell, he was
barely out of West Point. I shouldn’t have let him talk me into sending him.”
“What happened?”
“It was an ambush. One second the cops were guiding them through the makeshift corrals of a goat
farm, and the next, they were getting lit up.”
Her eyes went wide. “The police chief set you up?”
Landon nodded. “Yeah. The Taliban had grabbed his wife and daughter, and forced him to betray us. He
didn’t have a choice. He screwed us good. We didn’t know anything had even happened until the radio
started squawking.”
“What did you do?”
He took a deep breath. “The rest of the team and I hauled ass to the farmhouse. By the time we got
there, Jayson had already taken a load of shrapnel from an RPG round right into his back. Luckily, his flak
jacket had absorbed most of the blast and frag or he would have died on the spot. The insurgents probably
thought the explosion from the RPG would stun my guys and they’d be easy pickings. But they weren’t. He
might have been wounded, but Jayson got the team into a defensive position. He was shouting orders from
flat on his stomach when the rest of us got there. He was pretty amazing.”
There was pride in Landon’s voice. And a lot of pain. So much of it that Ivy almost reached out and
took his hand. She grabbed her canteen and took a sip of water instead.
“Were any other members of your team injured?” she asked.
“None of them were as bad as Jayson. They were all treated at the hospital at Bagram and back with us
within a week. Jayson was so bad we didn’t know if he’d live until the medevac bird got there. Even then,
we didn’t exhale until we got word through command channels he’d survived the trip to Germany and was
recovering at Landstuhl.”
“Whatever happened to the chief of police? Did you…I don’t know…arrest him?”
“We would have. At first, it took everything I had to keep my team from shooting him where he stood.