The feel of her fingers clutching his hair and tugging at its roots nearly undid him. He couldn’t last much longer. The joyful, mindless thrusts of her bountiful body as she unconsciously played with her breasts and held his face close left him on the knife-edge of desire. Finally her body shattered around him. Her back arched, thrusting her jiggling breasts and stubble-roughened nipples into the air. Her strong legs squeezed his ribs. She pulsed around his finger, milking him so hard his body got confused and he came in great shivering, hip-jerking jolts.
In the boxer briefs he’d made famous on billboards throughout London.
Not in the woman who’d driven him to uncontrollable lust.
Shite.
* * *
He’d fully intended to make it up to her. But after twelve hours at work and another hour exploring her own sexual side, Caitlyn hadn’t been able to do more than blink up at him in doe-eyed, satiated happiness. She didn’t mention his humiliation. Instead, she reached toward his groin. He blocked her, grabbing her wrist before she could figure out he didn’t need taking care of. “I’m okay,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you sure? Because I could—”
“Later. I promise.”
Burrowing into his embrace, she’d yawned and whispered, “Thank you,” before falling into a deep sleep.
Her gratitude rankled. Yes, their deal was that he’d provide a friendly, nonjudgmental body for her to play with. But he hardly got nothing out of the deal. He had two days left to make it up to her. As he wrestled with the sleeping bags and unforgiving ground, he let himself imagine all the ways they’d make each other come this weekend.
He hadn’t thought he could fall asleep with Caitlyn’s lush half-naked body pressed against his, but eventually he blinked himself into groggy consciousness and realized sunlight was pouring through the nylon walls and he was alone.
The rough, grating noise of a zip drew his attention to the door. It flopped open, and Caitlyn crouched there, fully boy-clothed and hiding God knew what delightful panties for him to explore today. She clutched a coffee mug and handed it to him as he sat up.
“This is apology coffee,” she said. For the first time, he noticed her lips frowned.
“Apology for what?” He took a sip. Bitter instant granules nearly choked him.
“I’m really sorry, Spencer, but I have to cut our fun short.”
Fuck.
Only one reason a woman would need to postpone sex. He struggled for a delicate way of asking the obvious. “You off games?”
Her brows drew together. “What?”
Gesturing toward her pelvis, he tried again. “Got the painters and decorators in?”
She tilted her head in confusion. “Do you come with subtitles?”
He chuckled, wondering how American women referred to their periods if those two expressions didn’t translate.
But then Caitlyn destroyed him. “There was an earthquake last night. I have to go to Afghanistan.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Afghanistan? What the fuck!”
Spencer’s horror nearly knocked Caitlyn backward. She’d operated on autopilot since her phone beeped with a message from her manager at sunrise, waking her from the deepest, most satisfying sleep she could remember. But the raw emotion—the fear and shock—pouring off Spencer’s coiled body hit her hard.
She’d forgotten he wasn’t part of her world, where words like
There’s been an earthquake.
I’m going to Afghanistan
would elicit a quick hug and a
Good luck
,
be careful.
She should’ve prepared him better, but how do you work up to dropping a bomb like that?
Thanks for making my whole body explode with joy beyond my wildest fantasies.
Oh
,
by the way
...
“I’m really sorry.”
Really
sorry, especially after last night. If only she’d had the courage to go all the way with him. By asking to go slowly, she’d cost both of them the opportunity. Not only that, but she had only a few hours before her flight, and she needed to get to the office first to meet with her team and pick up her stuff. She didn’t have time to reassure Spencer, but she couldn’t leave him terrified on her behalf.
She crawled into the tent and leaned close enough to rub his nose with hers, stroking his scruffy cheek. “Hey,” she whispered in a tone she hoped was seductively soothing. “This is what I do, remember? I’ve been to equally scary places and come back in one piece.”
His jaw tightened under her fingers. It seemed like a monumental effort when he finally bit words out. “Scary as Afghanistan? No. Just...no.”
Before she could pull back, he chucked the coffee mug out the door, wrapped his arms around her and twisted so he pinned her to the ground. Caitlyn gasped, her heart leaping to her throat at finding herself suddenly and completely at his mercy.
No, not completely. He’d left her arms free, and she crossed them in an
X
over her chest, ready to cover her face. Spencer didn’t seem to notice the defensive move. He glared down at her with rage she hadn’t seen in anyone’s eyes since she’d moved out of her father’s house. The little tent that had seemed like a cozy, private haven last night became a tomb. Her stomach knotted, flexed, prepared for the blows.
They didn’t come. Spencer squeezed his eyes shut and wilted like a flower with a broken stalk. He kept his weight off her but gathered her close and buried his face in her shoulder. “Please don’t go. Sweetheart,
please.
Stay here with me.”
Arms trapped between them, Caitlyn could do nothing but let the adrenaline pound its way through her. He wouldn’t hit her. She’d known that, but for a few white-knuckled seconds there...
Drawing in a shaky breath, she tilted her face to rub against his cheek, reassuring herself as much as him. “I have to. And I have to go now. But I’ll be okay, Spencer. I promise.”
He held her for several silent moments, seeming to content himself with rubbing her curls between his fingertips and stroking the apples of her cheekbones. Then, as if he finally resigned himself to the inevitable, he shuddered, straightened up and helped her sit. “You’ll have an army escort?”
Oh, shit, this was just getting harder. “No. That would make me a target.”
More
of a target. As apolitical as aid workers tried to be, many still saw them as agents for enemy governments. Plus, they guarded millions of dollars’ worth of lifesaving stock with nothing more than their bodies. But now was not the time to tell Spencer those things.
“You’ll have a gun, though, right? An armed guard?”
She shook her head. “No weapons.”
“What the
fuck?
Nothing? How do you protect yourself?”
“Diplomacy and negotiation.”
His mouth opened as if to say something but all that came out was a strangled groan. A few furious breaths later, he said, “Negotiation with...?”
“Anyone who governs the disaster area.”
Yes
,
I
might have to talk with local Taliban leaders.
Please don’t make me say it.
He didn’t. Maybe he figured it out. Maybe he didn’t want to know. He pressed his lips together, squeezing his eyes shut again as he disappeared inside himself. She gave him a few moments. When he blinked down at her, his face looked resigned. “When will you come back?”
Damn it, she hadn’t wanted to break this part to him until he’d fully absorbed the shock of her leaving. She stroked his triceps in what she hoped was a soothing gesture. “In two months.”
His whole body flexed, as if he’d taken a hit. “Two months.”
“Yes.” It was more than the time they had left to fulfill their bargain. He’d be deep into his rugby season by the time she returned.
They wouldn’t be having sex. At all. Ever.
The loss crashed over her like a frigid Pacific-Northwest wave. Their time together had primed not just her body to join with his. Her spirit ached at the thought of ending their intimacy here. Sure, they could still be friends when she returned home, but he’d made it clear he sacrificed sex and relationships for the sake of his career during the season. And she’d be gone for good in December, well before the season ended.
Better to get this over with, like ripping off the Band-Aid they’d once joked about. “I really have to go now, Spencer. I packed away the rest of the camp, but we need to break down the tent.”
Spencer didn’t need instructions on how to take apart the tent that was supposed to be her gift to him so they worked silently. The tension only grew as they got in the car. She flipped on a morning news program, partly for the latest update but mostly to smother the seething silence. A woman’s impossibly calm voice filled the car.
“
Tens of thousands of people are feared to be buried under rubble after Afghanistan’s worst earthquake for decades.
The earthquake
,
which measured seven-point-five on the Richter scale
,
hit the remote Afghanistan-Tajikistan border region just after 10:00 a.m.
local time.
The Taliban stronghold is notoriously dangerous for news crews
,
but our reporter Damen Stone has sent this report from Kabul.
”
Fantastic—just what she’d needed Spencer not to hear. His whole body flexed. He looked like he would shatter if she flicked him.
She knew he couldn’t possibly imagine the devastation, the heartbreak those families felt. To have everything taken from them in an instant. To kiss their children goodbye in the morning and never see them again. But Caitlyn could picture it all too well, and she wouldn’t have stayed home even if she weren’t obligated to fly over.
She couldn’t watch the mass destruction on TV when she had the skills and power to make one tiny part of survivors’ lives better.
She called Emma, who shot straight to conversation without saying hello. “I was just about to call you. I’m at home. I’ll bring your bag to the office, but is there anything you want me to add to it?”
Being on call this month, she had a big backpack filled with essentials stashed under her bed. All she had to do was add climate-appropriate clothes. “Yes, please. In my closet, I have a few salwar kameez and some headscarves. And in the bathroom cabinet, there’s, um, an extra packet of birth control pills.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Spencer’s knuckles tighten across the steering wheel. He probably wondered why she’d need to keep taking the pill if he wasn’t going to have sex with her. She’d been on the pill for years, though, to protect herself against pregnancy if she were assaulted—obviously the last thing he would want to hear.
“Got ’em. I’ll be at the office in thirty. What’s your ETA?”
She glanced at the speedometer. “There’s no traffic, so an hour and a half?”
They spoke about logistics and agreed on wording for a statement that should hold the press off until Caitlyn could see the situation firsthand. Spencer remained silent for a long time after she hung up.
When he broke the silence, his voice was rough as gravel. “What will you do when you get there?”
Maybe he would take comfort in the details, in believing this was a routine operation and everything had been thought through. “We’ve chartered a plane and it’s being filled with supplies as we speak. We’ll land as close to the earthquake zone as possible and then drive the rest of the way. The UN will be getting there soon and setting up camps, so we’ll work alongside them.”
“And why does it have to be you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You told me you dig toilets. No offense, but anyone with a bit of upper body strength can build toilets. Surely the army would be better placed to do it.”
She smiled. “I know I said that, but my job’s a little more complicated than that. I’m actually a water and sanitation engineer. I specialize in planning and building mass sanitation systems for thousands of people in camps and improving sanitation in villages. Since IDEA works with women after disasters, I advise camp managers on gender issues, and I teach women in the camps how to train their friends and sisters in good hygiene practices.”
His lips formed a tight line, and he breathed heavily through flared nostrils. “I had no idea.”
“I don’t tend to read people my résumé when I meet them.” Plus, she rarely met people outside work.
I
build toilets in camps
was usually good-enough code for
I’m a WATSAN specialist.
“Caitlyn...” He shook his head a little, like he was unsure how to word this. “Surely someone else can go this one time.”
“If you’re asking whether other people can do what I do—and possibly better—then yes, you’re right. But I’m the one on call this month, and I’ve been asked to go.” She’d never had to work so hard to justify her own career. But then, she’d never left anyone behind who cared enough to worry about her. And she’d never been forced to choose between a relationship and a mission.
She had to find a way to show Spencer that she wouldn’t be sacrificing him if it weren’t truly necessary. She rubbed at the headache that had gathered behind her eyeballs, and kept her voice calm. “Spencer, I want you to picture your granny in Wapping. Picture her neighborhood exploding overnight. She loses everything—her home, maybe family members, friends. Everything’s chaos. Can you imagine it?”
His head jerked.
“Now she has to go to the bathroom. Really bad. She’s been holding it in because where can she go? I know it seems like a silly thing to worry about when you’ve just lost everything, but the very last thing a survivor wants to lose is their dignity. They cling to it because it’s all they have left that’s theirs. Once they lose it, the fight’s over. But there’s no privacy. Everything’s rubble and flames, so there’s nowhere safe, either. She holds it in until her stomach feels like it’s going to erupt.”
She took a breath, unsure whether to continue. He blinked—long, slow blinks that told her his eyes stung. Her words affected him, but maybe not enough.
“Now—and forgive me for bringing it up, I know it’s not a comfortable subject for a man—but now imagine she gets her period. Where does she get sanitary products? Does she just bleed down her leg? Use any rags she can find? How does she dispose of them or clean them? Picture thousands of women like your granny, Spencer. If they don’t have safe places where they feel comfortable going to the bathroom, they end up going in places that threaten any water supply they might have. That means if they wash their hands before they eat, wash their food or wash their babies, they’re covering everything in polluted water, risking cholera, typhoid. Believe me, if you eat shit you end up leaking shit. And that’s the most miserable way to die.”
He didn’t say anything—for an hour. Eventually, Caitlyn took her mini notepad out of her backpack and jotted down the thousand tasks she should really be focusing on, but she stayed hyperaware of Spencer. Every once in a while he cleared his throat, scratched his stubble or rubbed his hand over his mouth. Maybe he fought for something to say. Maybe she’d said too much.
When they finally pulled up to IDEA’s office, Spencer threw the car into park and bit out one terse command. “Get out of the car.”
“What?” She was breathless as a punched stomach.
He had already thrown his door open and stepped onto the street. “Get out, Caitlyn.”
He slammed his door and walked around the hood, jerking her door open before she could react. He reached across her and undid the seat belt before hauling her out and wrapping her in his arms. His chest shuddered with a deep breath, as if he hadn’t been able to catch it for hours. He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head while his hands stroked her, molded her to him, like he was memorizing the shape of her, the feel of her body against his.
This embrace completely differed from their others. Lust didn’t snap their hormones into a frenzy. She could nearly smell his fear; it oozed from his taut muscles. She tried to combat it with her calmness.
“Spencer, I’ve been well trained for this. Not just in how to dig toilets.” She smiled up at him, thrilled to see his lips twist upward, even if he seemed to give in to the grin reluctantly. “But also in how to take care of myself in unstable environments. I’ll be okay.”
He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Saying I’m proud of you sounds patronizing. I’m...astounded.” He lowered his head and kissed her, murmuring. “Amazed.” His tongue flicked against her lips. “Honored.”
She shivered and he deepened the kiss, stroking her with deep, rhythmic caresses that reminded her of the passion he’d stoked last night. When he finally pulled back, she shuddered as need rocked her.
“Can you stand?” he whispered against her ear.
“Hmm?” Her eyelids fluttered open. He grinned down at her, and she realized his strong arms held her up. “Oh.”
When she stood steady again, she thought of something that might help reassure him. She dug through her bag until she found a generic IDEA business card like the one she’d given the paramedic a few weeks ago. She scrolled through the numbers on her phone and scribbled a couple on the back. Handing it to him, she explained, “I’ll probably only have a satellite phone, which is too expensive to use for personal calls, so I won’t be able to talk to you from the field. But this is my friend Emma’s number. She’s a press officer here, and she’s my flatmate.”