Wolf Under Fire, page 13
Jes wasn’t so sure of that. Even if he could manage it, there was no way he’d get all the wood chips out. And the thought of him having trouble breathing because pieces of wood were still in there was something she didn’t want to think about.
“I’ll do it.” She dragged her gaze away from his and reached for the first-aid kit with hands that shook a little. She took a deep breath and forced herself to get a grip. “Tell me exactly what to do.”
Giving her a nod, he rolled over onto his stomach, his hip brushing hers. It occurred to her for the first time that she was actually in bed with Jake. Although this was definitely not what she’d pictured when she imagined that scenario.
Where the heck had that come from?
Pushing that confusing thought aside, Jes focused on Jake’s muscular back, cringing when she saw that the wound looked even worse from this side. She second-guessed herself about a dozen times as she dug through the first-aid kit and came out with a set of twelve-inch-long forceps wrapped in plastic. Maybe she was in over her head on this.
“Don’t I need to sterilize these or something?” she asked, suddenly wanting to put off digging around inside Jake’s body for as long as possible.
He chuckled, the raspy sound reminding her how difficult it must be for him to get his breath. “I’m pretty sure the tree limb wasn’t sterile before it went in. I think the forceps are clean enough right out of the package.”
She used one of the wet washcloths to wipe away as much of the blood from the wound as she could, then took a deep breath. “Okay, what do I do?”
“Slip the tip of the forceps into the wound and move them around slowly,” Jake said, lifting his head from where it’d been resting on his hands and looking at her over his shoulder. “I can feel the pieces in there, so I should be able to guide you to where they are without too much trouble.”
The thought of sticking the forceps in Jake and searching around made her a little light-headed. She really didn’t want to do this. But she had to.
Pulling on a pair of rubber gloves from the first-aid kit—because it seemed like she should—she picked up the stainless-steel forceps and slipped them into the gooey mess that was the entry hole in Jake’s back before she could change her mind.
“By the way,” he added lightly, as if he didn’t even feel what she was doing, “there might be a few bone chips floating around along with the wood chips. If so, you can go ahead and take them out, too.”
The image of digging out pieces of Jake’s bone with the forceps was more than she could handle right then, and she felt her stomach start to twitch.
“You need to start talking and distract me, so I can think of something other than what I’m doing right now, or I’m going to be sick,” she said.
Jes expected him to ask what she wanted to talk about, but instead he flashed her a smile over his shoulder that almost calmed her frazzled nerves all by itself.
“I can do that,” he said, turning back around. “Tell me about your family. Do they know that you work for STAT?”
“Um…” She paused, surprised at the question. She’d expected him to talk about the mission. Maybe he realized that subject really wouldn’t take her mind off what she was doing. “Actually, I’ve never given them any reason to think I’m not still in the CIA.” She let her hands function on autopilot while she concentrated on his question. “I don’t think I could ever tell them about STAT. My family is cool, but like yours, they aren’t ready to know about what goes bump in the night. Fortunately, they aren’t the kind to pry for a lot of information, which makes it easier.”
“Tell me about them,” he said before softly instructing her to move the forceps a little to the right.
She smiled a little. Her family was her favorite thing to talk about. “Dad just retired from the Army National Guard and Mom is a writer.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
“Three older brothers. Two of them are twins, which is kind of cool. They’re all married, and the twins have kids of their own, which is fun. They think I rock, though to be honest, both of my nieces are barely a year old, so I’m not sure how much we can trust their opinion.”
Jake chuckled again, throwing her another glance over his shoulder. “Oh, I don’t know. From what I’ve seen over the past few days, I think your nieces might be onto something.”
Jes knew Jake was messing with her, but she had to admit she liked it all the same. The way he was looking at her, his expression somewhere between amusement and smoldering, completely worked for her.
Forcing herself to think about something other than Jake’s dark eyes—and what she was doing with her hands—Jes told him about her nieces and how adorable they were. She was so focused on talking about her family she didn’t even notice the tree chunks piling up on the towel on the nightstand, along with a smaller stack of something sharp, white, and tinged with blood, which she refused to give a name to.
“I think you’ve gotten as much out of me from back there as you’re going to,” he said after she dropped another small piece of wood on the towel.
Jake started to roll onto his back, and Jes slid over on the bed a little, giving him more room. As he got settled, she realized cleaning out the wound was going to be much more difficult from this direction, since she’d be able to see every little flinch and grimace he made as she worked.
She braced herself, but when she slipped the bloody forceps into the wound to the side of his heart, he didn’t react at all. Once again, it was like he didn’t feel anything. She knew that couldn’t possibly be true, but she kept going, following his softly spoken orders about what to do and where to move.
“When we were at Darby’s place last night, you mentioned you took theater classes in college,” he said as if somehow knowing she needed another distraction at that exact moment. “How did you end up in the CIA instead of Hollywood?”
Jes placed her left hand on the warm, smooth skin of his chest to steady herself as she pulled another piece of tree bark out of him. “I went to the University of Pittsburgh as a theater major and thought for sure I’d end up in movies or on TV, but then I started crushing on this hot guy my sophomore year.”
Jake snorted. “There’s always a guy, isn’t there?”
She laughed. “I don’t even remember his name now, but at the time I thought he was all that. He was a senior, from a wealthy family with connections on Wall Street, and didn’t even know I existed. So in a desperate ploy to get his attention, I signed up for a class he was in, figuring I’d sit near him and ask him for help with my homework.”
“That was devious of you,” Jake pointed out, mouth twitching. “What class did you sign up for?”
“Some political science elective.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I didn’t know what the hell political science even was. I simply signed up for the class and bought the stupid textbook. Unfortunately, within a week, I figured out the guy I’d been chasing was an asshat. Of course, by then it was too late to drop the class. Turned out, it all worked in the end. Taking that class was the best mistake I ever made. I changed majors before the next semester started.”
Jake rested his head on his forearm. “O-kay. Theater to political science. So where does the CIA come into the picture?”
Jes took a few moments to collect her thoughts, gliding the fingers of her free hand back and forth across Jake’s muscular chest. He really had spectacular pecs, even with a hole currently in the middle of them. In fact, she could have happily sat here all night touching him like this. She could have done without the nasty wound and forceps part of the equation, of course, but as far as excuses went, it was certainly good justification to keep her hands on him.
Jake didn’t seem to mind. If anything, the more she touched him, the more he seemed to relax on the bed.
“During one of his many deployments to Iraq, my dad worked at the U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone, where he met and ended up becoming good friends with a guy named Ken Alexander. Ken was supposedly working there as a liaison with the Iraqi government, but in reality, he was CIA.”
“Ah, the plot thickens,” Jake murmured. “So Ken Alexander’s friendship with your dad was instead a thinly veiled plot to recruit you?”
“How’d you know?” She grinned. “Ken and the CIA tracked down my dad in Iraq and became friends with him while I was still in middle school because they knew they’d want to recruit me like fifteen years later.”
His mouth quirked. “I wouldn’t put it past them. Those spooks you used to work for are known to be tricky.”
“True,” she admitted, still working the forceps. “But in this case, it was merely random chance. Ken was visiting my mom and dad when I came home during spring break my senior year in college. During dinner, we started talking world politics, and he gave me insight into the stuff really going on in the world, a perspective I couldn’t get in the classroom. Once he told me stories about some of the places he’d seen and the work he’d done, I was hooked, and after I graduated, the CIA was the one and only place I went looking for work. Ken helped me get an interview, and everything else is history.”
Jake was silent as she continued pulling crud out of the wound in his chest. As she worked, those warm, dark eyes studied her so intently, Jes could almost feel the heat of his gaze against her skin.
The moment she got the last piece of tree bark out of the wound, the bleeding stopped completely, and the edges of the opening immediately began to close up. Even though Jes knew she was done, she found herself continuing to touch him after she placed the forceps on the nightstand, carefully gliding a moist towel across his skin, cleaning away every trace of blood and patting the edges of the slowly closing injury as if her fingers were the thing making it happen.
Jes didn’t understand this crazy need to touch him. She’d been in relationships with men she thought might have long-term potential and had never felt this way. Right now, she had an almost uncontrollable urge to lean forward and press her lips to every single one of his cuts, scrapes, and bruises, and kiss it all better. Hell, she was already leaning over his chest a little, so bending to trace her lips over his skin wouldn’t have taken much effort.
She resisted the urge—barely.
“It’s not all history,” he said suddenly, his hand coming up to cover one of hers where it rested on his chest. “You still haven’t told me why you joined STAT.”
No one knew the reason she’d joined STAT except McKay. She hadn’t ever wanted to share the story. Until now.
“Two years ago, I was in Rome with a counterintelligence team doing a sting operation against a small group of former East German Stasi operatives who’d stolen a hard drive full of missile designs from the Department of Defense. Everything we had on these guys implied they were amateurs and that it should have been an easy recovery mission.”
“But?” he prompted when she’d fallen silent, lost in her memories.
She sighed. “But everything went sideways when we discovered the group had somehow gained possession of a supernatural. I didn’t know what the creature was back then, of course, because none of us knew about crap like that back then.”
“What was it?” he asked.
Jes settled over onto one hip, leaning forward until she was resting her forearms on his chest, watching in awe as the wound on his chest continued to seal itself. She glanced at the lacerations on his arms and was stunned to see that they looked days old. Incredible.
She met his gaze again. “To this day I still don’t know. When the thing showed up in the midst of the shoot-out, I thought it was a baboon or mandrill. It was nighttime and the warehouse where the exchange had been set up was dark, so it was hard to see anything.”
Jake’s hand moved up her forearm, then back down, causing little goose bumps to chase their way here and there.
“But it wasn’t any animal like that,” she added, amazed at how relaxing his touch was, especially in the midst of such a painful memory. “It was about three feet tall, though that was difficult to judge because it tended to stay hunched over as it moved, sometimes using its hands to help propel it, like a monkey.”
Her breathing came quicker, and her heart began to race as she thought about the creature she’d fought in that warehouse. She’d spent a lot of sleepless nights battling the images that sometimes plagued her mind, and here she was recalling them on purpose.
“The thing was almost completely hairless except for a few wisps along its chest and belly and was very muscular, with fangs and claws that were longer even than yours.” She reached up with her free hand to push her long hair behind her ear. “Before the creature got there, my team and I had nearly gained control of the situation, but that all changed when it attacked. It was so fast and vicious. I’ve never seen anything like it. One second, my teammates were there, and the next second, they were dead, torn apart by that thing right in front of me.”
Jake slid both hands up to her shoulders, massaging lightly and relaxing the tense muscles there. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to make you have to relive something like that.”
Jes crossed her arms over her chest and cupped his hands with hers, keeping them exactly where they were. She’d never experienced anything close to the warmth and comfort they gave her.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I still don’t know how I survived. I was beat up, but I injured the thing badly enough for it to run away. The former Stasi operatives were all dead, and I somehow remembered to retrieve the hard drive. When my CIA backup arrived, they took one look at me and quarantined the entire site. They put me on a jet without a debrief and took me to a private hospital near Langley. I was put on total lockdown to give me time to recover.”
“Is that when McKay came to talk to you?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He showed up one morning in my room and said he was putting together a special team to handle the kinds of things I’d just fought. He told me that if I worked for him, I might get a chance to find out what killed my teammates. I agreed on the spot and never regretted the decision, though I’ve never come close to finding the damn thing.”
Jake’s fingers caressed her shoulders through her blouse. “I think I understand now why you were so worried about working with us. After what happened in Rome, then here in London with Jaime and Neal, I don’t blame you for not knowing whether to trust a pack of werewolves.”
Jes was tempted to deny it, but that was difficult to do when it was true…at least to some degree. There was more to it than that though, and for some crazy reason, she wanted Jake to understand.
“I guess part of me was nervous about working with you, Harley, and Caleb, especially since I thought a werewolf had killed Jaime and Neal.” She gave him a small half smile. “But if we’re being honest, that wasn’t the only reason.”
Jake lifted a brow. “What was the other reason?”
She relaxed against him until her upper body was practically draped across his broad chest, her face close to his. “After Rome, I mostly worked on my own, only working with other agents when I absolutely had to. Losing my CIA team was hard, and I didn’t want to go through that again. I know it’s stupid, but when it happened again here, I thought that maybe I was cursed or something. I didn’t want what happened to Jaime and Neal to happen to you guys. Like I said, it’s stupid. All I can say is that I’m sorry.”
Jake’s arms slipped around her, pulling her tighter to his chest. This close, she could feel the warmth of his breath on her lips.
“It’s not stupid and you don’t have to apologize,” he said huskily, his words vibrating through her whole body as he spoke. “As the only member of my SEAL team to make it off that mountain in Afghanistan, I understand what it’s like to lose people you’ve fought alongside and care about. But I know for a fact that what happened in Rome and here in London isn’t your fault. All you did was survive, and that’s never something you have to apologize for.”
Closing her eyes, she leaned forward until her forehead was resting against his, not sure why she was doing it, but knowing it felt right.
“But what if it happens again?” she whispered. “What if these creatures we fought tonight hurt you and everyone else?”
“They won’t,” he said firmly, his lips brushing hers. “We won’t let it.”
Jes stopped thinking about how foolish it was to be doing this and instead simply kissed him back. She’d kissed men before, of course, but it had never felt like this. She felt like she wanted to melt into Jake’s arms and spend the rest of her life there.
His tongue teased against her lips until she opened up to grant him entry. He tasted so damn good that her tongue couldn’t help chasing after his, reveling in the flavor. Tingles ran all over her body as she heard the low growl rumble through his chest. She liked knowing she could get to him like this.
Jake wrapped his big hands around her hips, dragging her up like she weighed no more than a feather until she was straddling his waist, planting her on top of the bulge in his dress pants. While she enjoyed grinding against his hard-on, Jes couldn’t deny experiencing how strong he was definitely worked for her.
She hadn’t realized she had a thing for strong guys.
Or maybe she simply had a thing for this one strong guy.
Jake kept one hand on her hip, holding her firmly in place, while the other slid up her back and found its way into her long hair. His fingers lightly massaged her scalp, creating a whole new set of tingling shivers across her body before he tightened his grip in her tresses and tugged her head this way and that as he deepened the kiss.
And yeah, the tugging worked for her, too.
The connection she felt with Jake was unreal, so it wasn’t a surprise to feel heat pooling between her legs. She wanted Jake in the worst way right now.
