know.” It might have been a trick of the light, but the rose in her face and throat seemed to deepen as she looked anywhere but at him. “It doesn’t have to be awkward, does it? We…we’ve slept together before.”
He chuckled. “Slept being the operative word, Mary-Anne. We were kids. We haven’t slept together since that night we camped by the billabong when I was sixteen—and I never touched you.”
“I know that,” she said—too quiet—and he wondered what was going on beneath the surface. Gentle, smiling, cool and calm one minute—erupting with mini explosions of passionate emotion the next. It was like playing Blind Man’s Bluff or Murder in the Dark. “We didn’t touch then, we won’t now.”
He wheeled around to look at the half-dark hangar wall, watching shadows of waving palms chasing each other through the window’s early morning light. “You might be able to control your passion for me, sweetness, but you’d better ask before you assume the same for me. I’m a man now, even if I don’t look like much of one—and I’ve still got a man’s needs.”
“I heard about your needs.” He jerked his head around to look at her. A flash of ancient pain, the sense of a wound too deep and raw to touch, crossed the banked fire in her eyes. Yet she met his gaze without flinching or apology. “Ginny made sure I knew all about those needs of yours. She gave me every detail.”
A helpless curse ripped from his throat, strangled fury that had nowhere to release. “Mary-Anne—”
“There’s no need.” Another careless shrug: a flimsy defense against this too intense conversation in a hangar that was way too hot, humid with diesel fuel, morning mist and late summer sun. She was all rosy now, flushed and damp, as if they’d spent the past hour— Oh, man, was he trying to kill himself? Why keep fantasizing about what he’d never have?
“What matters is stopping Darren Burstall and his rogue from taking down the Nighthawks one by one.”
He went totally still. Something cold and slimy touched him, slithering into his soul like hideous poison. “Burstall?”
She licked her upper lip, taking the sweat beading it, he noted absently. “Yes.”
“You’re telling me he’s not dead?” he muttered through stiff lips. “Anson left Burstall alive—and he didn’t tell me?”
“They chased him, but they had to save you, then he shot some villagers. They couldn’t leave innocent people there to die. Then Burstall hooked up with the rebels in Tumah-ra,” she sighed. “It seems he’s made interesting connections, rendering him useful to people Interpol would like to take down—people with billions in offshore accounts and vested interests in the oil off Tumah-ra’s shore. Too many reasons to keep those dumb rebel kids on the island rigged with weapons and stop the UN taking control.”
He barely heard her. Burstall was alive. Anson didn’t get him! Burstall was alive—the insane bastard lived and breathed, killing and maiming innocent people to feed his mania—and Tal’s rage, cold and flippant for so long, boiled over.
“Anson’s a noble, interfering, self-righteous jerk!” His fists slammed into the hot steel wall so hard it buckled outward and his knuckles scraped raw and bleeding. “Why the hell didn’t Anson tell me all this? Didn’t he know I’d want to go after him myself—and not just for me, but for what he did to Skydancer, Countrygirl and all the poor villagers he shot in Tumah-ra?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.” With folded arms, she watched him destroy the hangar wall, her high-lipped rose mouth rimmed with a touch of fastidious distaste.
“So the Iceberg’s wondering what sort of husband she’s got after the sainted Gilbert?” he sneered, baiting her. “Well, look on the bright side, sweetness—it’s all a game of pretend. You can dump me at the end of the mission, guilt-free.”
She didn’t bother to answer his taunts. Instead her lips curved in a slow smile. “I’ve got something more constructive for you to do than breaking walls, Tal,” she breathed, “and I think you’ll agree that it’s a lot more fun.”
She moved a step closer, her eyes dark and slumberous, her body radiant, as if in the afterglow of hours of scorching-hot lovemaking. “It’s something I want—something I wanted so badly for years—but I never found the courage to go after.”
Rage took wings as he watched her move toward him, her eyes alight, her mouth curved in promise. His heart slammed against his ribs. His head spun with the hope his body wouldn’t let him ignore. What was she saying—that for all those years, she wanted him…that even now, looking like he did, she’d—
Uh-huh. He got real turned on looking at himself in the mirror every day. Why wouldn’t she?
But the cynicism wouldn’t take hold. His man’s need, hot and hard and urgent, kept hammering at him, Do it, do it, do it. Ask her. Touch her. Take her. So many years wanting her, needing her, and she’s so close…so damn beautiful it hurts. Do it!
It almost killed him to speak, but he managed to say, “Well?” in a strangled croak.
She moved to him, step by slow, sultry step. She lifted her mouth to his ear and whispered, in the gentlest, most seductive of tones, “Revenge…”
Chapter 3
“I’m on. I’ll take Burstall down—for Linebacker’s sake, if nothing else.”
Mary-Anne—for though the rest of the world saw her as icy Verity West, she never had, could never think of herself as anything but plain old farm girl Mary-Anne—sighed in quiet relief at his words. She’d been pretty sure he was hooked even before she spoke Darren Burstall’s name—but it was hard, so hard, proposing this mission to Tal.
She couldn’t show him how she ached for him, that she had all the empathy in the world for his suffering. Growing up different, plain and overweight but with extraordinary talent, gave her some insight into how he must feel about his injuries. Golden-haired, olive-skinned Tal, handsome, athletic and brilliant, Cowinda’s pride and joy, must be chafing so hard against the physical restrictions he couldn’t change.
But the harsh, dark-souled man in front of her, so unlike the sweet, caring, tongue-tied boy he’d been, could still fire her rebellious body’s response to him like fast-melting honey…
With the exception of her poignant four years with Gil, she’d only ever wanted one man to be her lover—and if anything, his scars made her want Tal more. If he was less of an angel now, he was all male—all strong, dark, tense man. The brooding depth gave him a raw, pulsing sexuality that left her screaming for fulfillment. Tal was her sweetest taboo, the forbidden fruit: her best friend, confidant and rescuer too many times to count, pain and rejection and dark, hot temptation rolled into one man. Fantasy and reality in blue jeans and black T-shirt, his muscles bunching in riveting, superb maleness as he buckled the hangar walls with a punch.
How could she tame her heart or stop the midnight call of her body? Within a year of Gil’s death, the dreams she’d had of Tal all through her teen years started again—and all the guilt in the world couldn’t kill off the wanting. And five years later, Gil was a faint, sweet memory…and she called another name when she woke up at night in a sweat of fevered, aching need, after white-hot erotic dreams of the man she could never have.
“Okay, let’s get out of this sauna and make arrangements. I have the license. Nick faxed it to me last night,” she said crisply to hide her pounding heart and sweating palms.
“He always counts on getting his way,” was all he said. Then he gave her a curious look. “Nick? That’s…unusual. He’s always Ghost or Boss to the rest of us—or sir.”
She shrugged. “We have an unusual relationship, because of my fame. I call him Ghost or sir on missions, of course.”
But he merely shrugged. “Who’s our backup?”
“Ghost is