Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,8

His swim trunks were now on the floor, and he was on his way to being a happy man. At least, on his way to being happier. That swim had done him in. His energy flagged. So had everything else.

As stern and unyielding as this woman had seemed at first, she was everything but that now. Persia got him on some intrinsic level he’d never experienced before. Maybe her losing track of that handgun had something to do with what was happening now. She obviously understood him. That was why she’d challenged him about his gear. They were cut from the same cloth, both working for Uncle Sam. Both career operators in their own ways. It was as if their souls had recognized each other at first sight. The only problem was she didn’t have to leave, but Walker did. And he would. As soon as the time was right.

Her hips bumped up off the bed into his, drawing his mind back to the enticing task at hand. Oh, yeah. He definitely intended to make her scream again. And smile. The exotic woman beneath him was utterly beautiful when she smiled. But those deep-brown almond eyes fringed with thick black lashes, and the rich, warm caramel of her skin? The way she blinked and her breath hitched when he’d first touched her? The tip of her delicious tongue when she’d moistened those rose-red lips? Downright intoxicating. Alluring.

One of her parents or grandparents must’ve hailed from some Mideastern country he couldn’t name with complete confidence. Iraq maybe? Iran? Saudi Arabia? India? Not like her ethnicity mattered. He’d met many exotic beauties during his travels across the world, but he’d never loved one. Not like this. If this were love. Which it wasn’t. Couldn’t be. Not this soon and not this fast. Hell, he didn’t even really know her. That had always been his problem. He gave his heart away too quickly. Not this time.

At the end of the day, love didn’t matter anyway, because convicted Navy SEALs didn’t have time to get that kind of lucky. As he’d already learned the hard way, they had to keep one step ahead of the hounds snapping at their heels. He’d just fled a firefight on a tiny sandbar that the last hurricane had choked up east of northern Brazil. Like Cuba, he’d swum away from that one, too. Then, he’d wandered the eastern coast of South America, traveling north from town to town. Keeping to the shadows and shallows. Stealing a fishing boat or canoe here and there.

Like a moron, he’d always left a few American twenties to pay for his thefts. The way he saw it, they weren’t really thefts, more like long-term borrows. But the poor fisherman left without anything to fish in at the start of their day, were better off come sunset. Hotrod made sure they had enough American dollars to live on for months, maybe years. He knew the cost of poverty, and many of the people he’d encountered had been unbearably kind, despite their lack of reais and centavos. American dollars would make them rich—for a little while.

Persia’s naked body writhed beneath him. Her hips lifted and she ground herself into him, inciting his need to mark her. To possess her. She was a beauty like no other, a sinuous combination of dark and milk chocolates. Her hair, once loosely braided behind her back, had come undone. It lay like a shimmering ebony fan on her cream-colored pillow. It was as if her entire bungalow had been decorated to enhance her exquisite beauty. The whole place was working together, pulling him in like a moth to her sensual flame.

Yet Walker held back from sucking raspberries up her neck. She didn’t need his brand or his mark. She wasn’t a cow, not this smart, savvy, willing woman coming undone again in his hands. He dipped down and took her open mouth just as she’d stiffened her legs straight and hard. She was so responsive and wet. For him.

And yet, damn. His body struggled. Getting nowhere fast, while, with a hiss and a growl, she exploded in his arms again. That should have made him crow. The aftershocks rippling through her should’ve made him damned proud he was a man.

Instead, a tear glimmered at the corner of his eye, reminding him that he was nothing in this great land of liberty. The rush of his much anticipated, but not going to happen release, died in the awfulness of that