Yeah, his brain had checked out.
Except the thought kept rattling around. I want to kiss her lips. Drop on her like a battalion of Marines and hold her down and kiss her.
“Right, and I already know about your sniper brother, Rock. He was the black sheep of the family, huh?” She looked up at him, her eyes behind the mesh hard to read, but he caught the glimpse of amber. He didn’t have to see her to know the delicate bone structure of her face.
“Yeah, he chose the Marines over the Navy. He’s a pain in the butt. But I wouldn’t trade him for anyone.” He tried not to let the horrific landscape of dead men distract him, but he closed his eyes, trying to think around his dancing brain. Kiss me.
His eyes popped open and he tried to clear his head. Had he said that out loud? He studied her for a moment and realized that it had all been in his hot, horny head. “What about you? Ty hasn’t really talked much about his family.”
“Well, if war is in your blood, politics are in mine. I was born into a political family.”
“Right, that’s why we call Ty ‘Kennedy.’ Your family on that level?”
“Yes, my father, uncle and husband were all senators. My uncle, William Prescott, works for the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security. He was former CIA, but he’d never admit to that. You already know my brother Edward is a DS special agent.”
“I’m surprised Edward didn’t come to Afghanistan instead of you. He’s a badass, I hear. A bit of a rogue who has to be reined in from time to time.”
“He has less flexibility than I do, and all that’s true.”
Dex squinted his eyes. Was that a…a snowstorm in the middle of the Afghan desert in July? He shivered, getting colder. Sweat was running down his face, down his body, and it was all he could do to keep from keeling over.
“He’s…unconventional and overprotective, often circumvents protocol while he’s negotiating domestically and globally, and he’s so damn shrewd.” She tightened her hold on him, feeling his shivering, no doubt.
“A regular smarty pants.”
The bodies were starting to pile around his feet. Every time he took a step, he’d trip over one and that would jar his side, sending more pain lashing at him. He gritted his teeth. In the distance he could see the tan, sandblasted walls of the village of Safid Darreh. Afsana and rest were there.
How could he be so cold? Now the bodies were covered in snow and frozen. It was like trying to walk through boulders.
“Through my uncle, Edward’s the one who pulled the strings to get me here.”
He stumbled badly, but Piper caught him and held on to him. “You should have stayed in DC,” he growled.
“But you couldn’t have saved me in DC,” she said, stopping as Dex drooped, his legs buckling.
“Dex!”
He fell to his knees. Damn, he couldn’t remember ever hurting like this. That wasn’t so good, but the blood…yeah, the blood was a problem. He’d lost too much. The quick patch he’d done was soaked through. He hadn’t dared stop long enough to really bind himself up, not with unknown armed men on their asses. He wanted to get up, but there were just so many bodies in his way.
“Get up. If I have to haul your ass the rest of the way, this could get ugly. You’d have to explain to your buddies why you got carried by a girl.”
He went to all fours, and even as he felt as if he was being swallowed whole, still shivering, aching like a son of a bitch, he burst into laughter.
Breathing hard, his brain ping-ponging around in his head, he turned to look at her.
She looked like a commando, even through the mesh.
“That’s the best you got? Trash talk.”
“It’s not trash talk if I say I carried you. Who’s to say I didn’t? You’re delirious and there are no witnesses… I see a book out of this, and with my political clout, I’m sure I could get six figures. I can see the title now. How a Girl Saved a Navy SEAL―you do the math.”
That made him laugh again. “I bet you’re dynamite on the Hill, lady.”
“Can I sweet talk with the best of them? Damn straight I can. Now on your feet, sailor, before I start to babble in terror. I might be a senator, but I’m leaving no man behind.”
“Give me a minute,” he rasped between groaning in pain and laughter. He was going to have to dig deep here. Deeper than he’d ever gone, deeper than that exhausting hell week during training. The week that had prepared him for this. He was past empty, past the fumes. He was running on sheer mental energy and guts. And he still wanted to kiss her, even more now.
“Let me at least put another bandage on your wound.”
“We can’t spare the time,” he said, not sure he wouldn’t pass out, and unlike the snow and the dead bodies, that was real. As real as dying here. If that happened, Piper might survive, but her odds were better with him than without him. And just for the record, he wasn’t ready to check out anytime soon. He was directing this shindig. Putting distance between them and their pursuers actually put them in charge of distance and with that came the next rule of combat. Their pursuers were reacting to them and their choices. Everything in Dex wanted to go on the offense, take these mothers down, but he wasn’t in any shape to do that, so it was lay low, heal up, fight another day.
Another one of his edicts: stand tall in the face of adversity.
He stood only with her help, but it cost him some more energy and the fever addling his brain made it difficult to think, to reason. “If I pass out, the name of the woman you’re looking for is Afsana Jamal. Her house is located in the courtyard beyond the side gate where we’re headed.”
“We can trust her?”
“With our lives. We’re halfway there,” he said. “You’re doing great.” That was a lie. She looked shell-shocked. He could imagine what was running through her mind, and none of it was good.
She held his gaze, and right before his eyes he watched her pull herself together. She nodded and with a monumental effort, a lot of grunting and pain, he got to his feet. Piper was right there to support him every agonizing step of the way. They started off again, the village now in view and closer with each step. As they approached the wall, the bodies were getting waist-high in his vision and dragging at his energy, and finally when they reached the closed side door, he felt his edges get a little blurry and start to turn black. Bodies began to pile up on him, and even though he fought, he couldn’t push them all off. He tried to remember to keep breathing…and forgot as the suffocating darkness engulfed him.
When Dex went down, he pulled her with him, and she landed on the hard earth.
“Dex?” she whispered in his ear.
No movement.
She shook him.
Still nothing.
“Oh, God,” she huffed out.
She rolled him off her and put two fingers to his carotid artery on his neck. For a split second, she didn’t feel anything, then the steady beat of his heart.
Her breath rushed out of her. She’d been holding it and she deflated like a balloon. The relief was so intense tears clouded her eyes, but that was as far as they got. She didn’t have time for losing her cool. She rose and looked around. There was absolutely no one to help them. She would have to leave him here and go on alone. Afsana Jamal.