had been gifted with three years earlier.
Her breath caught in her throat. Of its own volition, her body went still. She should be making a break for one of the other boats in the harbor, stealing it and racing after Rory, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t think beyond the one thought repeating in her head. No. It couldn’t be him.
He lay flat on his belly against the dock, the rifle butt against his shoulder, its stabilizing legs extended to the floor. He ripped off his helmet, revealing tousled, dark blond hair. No.
Her gaze roved over his body. That strong, broad back, narrow waist, perfect backside. Just as she remembered it. His eye was glued to the scope. He pulled the trigger. The rifle quivered as the boom ripped through the harbor. Rory ducked. The speedboat faltered, its glass windshield shattering.
“Damn it,” he muttered, dropping his head.
His voice sent shivers over her skin. How could it be, after so many months, that he still had that effect on her?
He’d appeared out of nowhere and, whether he meant to or not, he’d helped Rory escape. And yet, she couldn’t get her mouth to close. She couldn’t catch her breath or convince her body to move. She couldn’t even find the will to tell him off for ruining everything. Again.
Bringing the rifle with him, he pushed into a squat then stood. The jeans hung low on his hips but snug around his quads. She’d forgotten this part—the perfection of him—and she hadn’t even gathered the courage to look at his face yet.
Rory’s boat was a blip on the horizon now, headed south in a direct path to St. Croix. She afforded the boat only a glance because she couldn’t, for the life of her, stop staring at the man before her, absorbing his nearness and heat, the raw power radiating from his every cell.
She could feel him watching her and forced her gaze to meet his smoky-blue eyes.
They were angry, colder than she’d ever seen them. He might have the body of the man she’d once called her lover, but she could see it in his face that he was a changed person. Harder, humorless. She wanted to slap him for what he’d done to her, slap him because she’d almost shot him in the back just now and she would’ve never forgiven herself for it. Most of all, though, she wanted to throw her arms around him and hang on forever. Like a fool in love.
“John,” she croaked.
“In the flesh.”
A tingle swept over her body. In the flesh was right. But it didn’t matter how powerful her unexpected shock of awareness of him was, because Alicia refused to yield her power to a man, especially one who’d betrayed her. It didn’t matter how he made her feel in the innermost, darkest places of her heart; she knew better now. His sudden appearance might’ve stripped her bare, but so what? The only defense against the pervading sense of vulnerability she always felt in his presence was to get mad.
She stomped over the dock toward him, not that he seemed to notice while he ran a check of the Remington for unspent ammo, so she got right up in his face. “You helped him escape.”
He huffed and shook his head as though she’d told a joke that was in poor taste. “Is that it, huh? You think that’s what this Remington’s for—to help him escape?” He turned away and shoved the rifle in his bag, then took his HK45 out of the back of his pants.
The ache of longing in hearing that growl of a voice that had haunted her dreams for twenty long months was so powerful that she hardly knew what to think anymore. She forced her anger back up to the surface. “Of course you helped him escape. You’re the Robin to his Batman. Always the sidekick, never the alpha. You’re not capable of being the alpha dog. Never were.”
As far as insults went, she knew that one had to hurt, especially to an elite soldier like John. It was an old nerve of his, one she’d learned when they were lovers. She felt like a sore loser exploiting the intimate details of their time together—God knew she had as many secret flaws and faults as he did—but she was desperate to regain the power she’d lost in his presence.
And maybe, if she were being honest with herself, she was a bit desperate to see if she could spark a fire in his eyes again. Anything but the ice-cold steel that they were now.
Rather than show fire, though, his eyes got colder. He ran his tongue over his lower lip, then gave her body a dispassionate once-over. Jaw tight and eyes frosty, he swaggered the few steps to her and leaned his face in. She held her breath, held perfectly still, as his lips brushed her temple, then grazed her hair. “You won’t believe what I’m capable of, Phoenix.”
She wanted to touch him so badly the need ached inside her like a hollow, brittle thing. She balled her hands into fists. Show me, she almost said. “I’m not Phoenix anymore. At least not to you.”
He backed his face up. Rubbing his jaw, he nodded. “I’m going to get to him first, you know.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“I can’t let you stop me,” he countered.
With any other person, if she wanted to stop him, she’d shoot him in the leg or wrestle him to the ground, then bind his hands and legs. With John, she could get away with neither. He had his gun in hand already and, besides, he was a faster shot than she. To top that off, he knew all her close-combat moves, which eliminated the element of surprise—her only advantage when trying to physically dominate a man nearly twice her size.
Back to basics. The police were going to descend on the harbor at any moment, the U.S. military, too, as they searched for Rory. She swiveled, gun extended, and shot out the tires of the motorcycle. At least now he couldn’t speed past her to steal the next fastest boat in the harbor.
He raised his brows, bemused but unimpressed. Then he lifted his gun and aimed past her, to the street beyond the boardwalk. With a casual squeeze of the trigger that belied the complicated nature of the shot, he took out the front windshield of her rental car at least a hundred meters away. Guess he’d seen her drive up earlier. That meant he’d seen her interaction with those kids, too. The realization brought a sudden flush of heat to her cheeks. Not cool.
He flicked a lock of her hair off her shoulder. “Are you going to shoot me next? Because I’m not really keen on reciprocating that one.”
She flipped the rest of her hair behind her and gave him her best scowl. “I’ve been shot enough to last a lifetime, thank you very much.”
The allusion to her injury at Rory’s hand hung in the air between them. John’s jaw went stiff and the ice in his eyes seemed to spread to the rest of his body. The peal of police sirens cut through the tension.
John stared out over the water. Alicia followed his gaze. Rory had shot straight out of the bay and was heading south toward St. Croix. John hitched his canvas bag higher on his shoulder and walked past her. “Those sirens are my cue to beat it. See ya around, Phoenix.”
“He’s mine to kill, John.”
He didn’t even bother turning around to answer. “Maybe so, but I have other plans for him.” He gave her a little salute before breaking into a run to the right, moving southwest along the boardwalk.
Alicia shook some clarity into herself, shoved away the overwhelming flood of emotions John had evoked and concealed her gun. Then she took off left in search of something—anything—that would get her to St. Croix faster than either
