Crossfire

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He wouldn’t let a coward like Zhukov put an end to his.

Or Elizabeth’s.

The memory flared before he could stop it.

The door to Ambassador Carrington’s richly paneled office opened, and she strolled into his world with a grace and confidence that knocked the breath from his lungs. A black pantsuit sheathed her killer body, but it was her smile that grabbed him, her smile that slayed, wide and knowing, yet at the same time, mysterious. Vulnerable. “You must be Hawk.”

Then, he’d sworn to give his life for hers, to take a bullet if necessary. A knife. An anything. But there was no line of fire to step into now, no attacker to fend off, just a disabled plane carrying them both down.

He wouldn’t let it happen. He wouldn’t let her meet a fiery grave, alone in the remote mountains of Montana. The glide didn’t fool him. Within minutes gravity would take over, and then there’d be nothing gentle at all.

Shoving aside everything but training, he focused on the emergency maneuvers he could rattle off in his sleep.

“Throttle,” he muttered, shoving them all the way back. “Cutoff.” Sweat beaded on his brow. His pulse blasted relentlessly. “Spoilers, gear, flaps, all up. Airstart…” He tried, no go. The engines were cold, dead.

The cemetery was serene, peaceful, row upon row of gently tended graves, shaded by an army of maples. Elizabeth knelt before her sister’s tombstone, a hand to her heart, tears swimming in her eyes.

His gut twisted. No, damn it. No. He was a man who thrived on the unexpected, who believed that’s when the majority of living occurred. But sweet Mary, not like this. Not like this. Clenching his teeth, he switched the fuel system to emergency, refusing to consider that in less than two minutes, he and Elizabeth might be dead, too. Failure was not an option.

The snow-capped mountains dominated his line of vision, closer, larger, with every frenetic riff of his heart.

“Pull up,” the aural warning kept insisting. “Pull up!”

Looking at her was a mistake. He saw her seated next to him, continuing her dialogue with Air Traffic Control, beautiful even in a cheap sweatshirt, but the steely resolve in her gaze barely registered.

A slow light gleamed from her eyes. Her mouth curved into a smile. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

“No, sweetness,” he said. They broke through a bank of clouds and cruised into endless blue. “You’re flying.”

Sable hair, loose around her face, caught on her mouth and fired his blood. “I’ve never felt so alive.”

God. “The best is yet to come.”

Hawk shoved the image aside, searched the rugged terrain for somewhere to put down the plane. They still had options. He was a skilled pilot. Any flat surface would work.

“Come on, come on. There’s gotta be a ski slope somewhere.”

Maybe in the movies, a voice deep inside snarled, but this was real life and smooth landing strips didn’t just appear in the middle of nowhere. Trees cluttered the landscape, taller by the second, thicker. A glistening lake in the distance.

A lake.

“There!” Elizabeth pointed toward the horizon.

Hawk squinted against the glare of sun and saw what she did. Beyond the lake, a valley sprawled against the base of a cruel mountain. If he could hit the grassy area, they had a chance.

If he missed, they went up in flames.

“Make love to me, Wesley.” Long, sable hair tangled around her face but didn’t hide the desire glowing in her eyes. “Make me lose control.”

Adrenaline fueled determination. The plane barreled toward the target destination, gaining speed as they approached. He kept the flaps up as long as possible, releasing them at the last minute to slow the plane down.

“Sweet God,” he said, more in prayer than exclamation. “This is it!” More than anything he wished he could turn to look at her one more time. Touch her. Take away her fear. But knew he couldn’t. The valley, damn it. If he didn’t get the plane down in the next ten seconds, they were going to miss the valley.

And if they missed the valley, they found the mountain.

“Mayday! Mayday!” Elizabeth shouted into the radio. “November Two Three Niner Bravo crash landing—”

He had no choice. None. No option.

Elizabeth grabbed his arm. “Hawk!”

He never had a chance to respond, to look at her, to take her hand. They slammed down hard, the sleek jet cutting through a forest of pine. Christmas filled his line of vision, a brilliant explosion of light. Then nothing at all.

The birds were singing. Elizabeth shifted in her slumber, moving her head to rest in the crook of her arm. She loved listening to birds singing. A family of robins had a nest in the ancient maple outside her window, and when the sun nudged over the horizon, the entire family awoke in song. It wasn’t so bad during the winter months, when the days were short and the sun didn’t awake so early, but during the hot months of summer, when the sun rose long before Elizabeth wanted to, then she wasn’t quite so fond of her little family of robins.

The robins didn’t sing like this. The realization jarred her from her stillness, prompting her to concentrate on the unfamiliar song. The birds almost sounded…anxious.

And then she remembered.

Her heart slammed hard. She opened her eyes and stared at the remains of the cockpit. Amber lights still flashed, but the manic voice had stopped warning them to pull up.

Hawk.

The blast of cold robbed her of breath. Everything came crashing back, sharp, punishing, ramming into her with the force of the plane hitting the floor of the valley. The sudden loss of both engines. Wesley’s unwavering determination to retain control. The mountains rushing up to greet them. The incredible skill with which he’d put the plane down in the valley and not against the side of the mountain. It was nothing short of a miracle that they’d survived—

Violently she swung to her left and saw him. Hawk. Slumped against the instrument panel. Still. Completely unmoving.

“Hawk!” she tried, but his name scraped against her vocal chords. “Wesley!”

Nothing. He didn’t turn to her, didn’t flash that carnal grin, didn’t so much as move his shoulders in breath.

Horror screamed through her. Hawk Monroe was a man of action. He was always in motion, pacing, touching things, assessing a situation. That’s what made him such a competent bodyguard. But now he lay hideously still against the panel of flashing amber lights and shattered glass, dark blond hair matted with blood and falling against his face.

And something inside her started to bleed.

“No!” She lunged toward him, cried out when the safety belt cut into the flesh of her stomach and chest. Viciously she fumbled with the clasp, lunging across the small cockpit the second it opened.

His body was big and hard and warm, the cotton of his shirt drenched from perspiration. And blood. “Wesley?”

Nothing.

Dread jabbed into her throat. They were in the middle of nowhere. The Lear had a first-aid kit, but she was no paramedic. If the worst came to pass—

No, she wouldn’t think it. Instead she muttered a silent prayer and slid a hand along the warm, clammy flesh of his neck, using two fingers to search for a pulse. “Wesley?”

Nothing.

The composure she’d been grappling for crumbled. “Don’t do this to me, damn it!” she shouted, running a hand along his back. Her fingers fisted in the hair loose at his shoulders. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be!”

There. She felt it. A fluttering beneath her index finger. Faint at first, then stronger.

Hope surged. “Wesley. Can you hear me?”

There. She heard it. A low sound breaking from his throat. “What?”

“Quit…pulling my hair.”

The words were slurred, but they rushed through her like the cool wind whipping through the plane. “Come again?”

His big body shifted, turning toward her to reveal eyes burning overly bright. “I’m not goin’ anywhere, sweetness—you don’t need to hold on so tight.”

His breath rushed against her neck, warm and strong and vital. She went very still, staring at the swirling butterscotch of his eyes, the dilated pupils and gleam that warned of shock. Cuts streaked across his face, a tiny piece of glass embedded at the base of his right cheekbone. But he never blinked, never looked away. Very slowly she looked from his face to the back of his head, where her fingers clenched his hair like a lifeline.

Reality punched hard. Her lungs refused the oxygen she tried to deliver. “I got you awake, didn’t I?” she asked with a simple logic she didn’t come close to feeling. Fear and relief crashed inside her. She wanted to dive against him, feel the warmth and strength of his body, assure herself he was all right. Instead she forced her fingers to uncurl.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she said. “Isn’t that what you always say?”

The corner of his bloodied mouth lifted. “Since when have you listened to a damn thing I’ve told you?”

Only once, and the fallout had destroyed. “I didn’t have a choice this time,” she said, sidestepping. The more lucid he became, the more the heat of his body soaked into hers. She still had a hand at the base of his neck, could feel his pulse thumping more strongly every second. “You were out cold—”

“I’m fine.” The flash of his eyes was the only warning she got. He came to life almost violently, pushing from the trashed instrument panel and discarding the safety belt that hemmed him in. And then, just like the night before, he had his hands on her body. They were big and warm, his callused palms surprisingly gentle, and everywhere he skimmed, she burned. He ran them along her sides and her arms, up her neck to her face.

The abrupt transition from out cold to in command jump-started her heart.

“I’m okay, Wesley,” she said, wanting—needing—his hands off her body. “Really.”

He skimmed a finger along her cheekbone, drawing her attention to moisture she’d not noticed. “The hell you are you.”

Wincing, she lifted a hand to her face, feeling the warmth of his fingers and the stickiness of blood. “Just a cut.” So much less than what could have happened. “There’s glass—”

He didn’t let her finish. He had her against his body before her heart could beat, his mouth on hers before she could pull away. The kiss was hot and hard and demanding, completely without finesse. He had one hand against the small of her back, the other tangled in her hair. Whiskers scraped her jaw.