“I’m going to ask something of you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Comfort me now, Paxon.”
I drew her into my arms and ran my hands up and down her back. She raised her face and kissed me.
“I want more,” she whispered.
I didn’t need to ask what she meant. It was obvious by the way she moved against me. Her body responded instinctively, but that didn’t mean either one of us was ready for more.
“Paxon?”
I put my hands on either side of her face and looked into her eyes. “As much as I want to feel your bare skin against mine, I don’t want to rush this. You mean something to me, Flynn. When the time is right, for both of us, there will be more.”
Her cheeks were bright red, and she tried to look away.
“Flynn, please. I want to do the right thing.”
She wrapped her fingers around my wrist and brought my right hand to rest on her breast.
I shuddered, feeling the pebbled nipple against my palm. My cock throbbed with want, but my mind had to prevail.
“Just this,” she whispered, unfastening the buttons on her blouse. “When you leave, I want to remember your touch. Give me that, Paxon.”
I shifted my body and sat up. When Flynn did the same, I reached around and unfastened her bra. She let it and her blouse slide off her body.
“Just this,” I said, taking my time learning the curves of the upper half of her body. I didn’t stop with her breasts; I kissed her mouth, the side of her neck, the soft skin on the inside of her elbow.
Flynn whimpered and mewled; they were the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard. I’d give anything to remove the clothes—hers and mine—that were a barrier between us. Anything except the hurt and confusion I knew she’d feel when I had to leave before dawn.
Our kisses were harder, deeper, softer, sweeter, more impassioned than any I’d experienced in my life.
“There’s something I need to say, and it won’t be easy.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry, Flynn, but I must say it.”
“It’s okay.”
I held her tight to me. “If I don’t come back, I want you to know that this has been the most important night of my life. I’ve never known how it felt to be so torn about leaving. I never knew how hard it was to leave a loved one behind when called for a mission. I couldn’t empathize with the men and women I worked with, because I’d never felt it for myself. As important as this mission is to me, as much as I’ve sacrificed in my life to see it through, I do not want to leave you. It’s tearing me up inside.”
“I will be here when you get back, Paxon. Every time, I’ll be waiting for you.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I will treasure the gifts you’ve given me. I’ll remember your hands on my body and so much more than that. How it felt when you first held me and we danced. The look on your face when you told me how pretty I looked. The desire I see in your eyes right now. I’ll remember it all for the rest of my life.”
When she put her hands on the hem of my shirt, I pulled it over my head. We slept on and off that way. Both of us naked from the waist up. When she turned her back to my front, I rested both hands on her breasts. Like her, I wanted to remember how it felt once I was gone.
It felt as though only minutes had passed when the alarm on my phone signaled it was time for me to get ready to leave.
“Is it okay if I stay here awhile?” she asked.
How I wanted to ask her not to leave until I returned—to be waiting for me in the bed we shared.
I wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and walked to the front door of the cabin with her by my side.
“You mean so much to me. I hope you know that, Flynn.”
“I more than know it, Paxon. I feel it.”
“I feel it too.”
She was on my mind during the flight to California, even while Decker and Gunner outlined each carefully planned step of the op during which we’d extract William “Xander” Harris from the black jail cottage where Decker was certain he was being kept.
I thought about her as we walked into Doc’s Montecito home, just outside Santa Barbara, where we picked up tactical gear and the weapons that would be necessary to execute this phase of the mission that had been part of my life for so long that there were times I couldn’t remember what it had felt like before. Except when I was with Flynn. Then, I remembered.
More, I longed for it to be over. Once it was, I had no idea what I’d do with my life other than spend as much of it with her as she’d let me.
When we left for the airfield, Decker accompanied us. Instead of getting on the plane we’d be taking to Taiwan, he boarded a smaller aircraft that would transport him to Texas.
“Godspeed,” he said, shaking each of our hands. I was last and he embraced me. “Let’s end this, Irish. Once and for all.”
My eyes met Saint’s when right before he boarded, he gave me a head nod. While they’d said it was my decision, I made certain Doc was comfortable with the former MI6 agent accompanying him, Razor, Gunner, Lynx, and I on this side of the mission.
Those remaining at Roaring Fork Ranch would be working with Money to develop a new offer for former Director Fisk in the hope that whatever information we couldn’t get out of Harris, we’d get from him.
I slept as much as my brain would allow me during the thirteen-hour flight, knowing I would need to be well rested for what came after we landed.
When I couldn’t sleep, I reviewed each step we were about to take as they were outlined. I looked up when Gunner sat beside me. It had changed since Decker initially talked about it. He and Gunner had modified the original plan to eliminate travel on land as much as possible.
“We get in, we get out, and we bring everyone home with us. While this may be your first extraction, it isn’t the first time you’ve relied on your gut to get you through a mission.”
“Copy that.”
“I have a question for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“How badly do you want this fucker brought back alive?”
“I can’t answer that. I’ve been weighing that question over and over in my own mind. Knowing what he’s been responsible for facilitating, it will be difficult for me not to kill him myself. What we need from him, though, if we can get him to give it to us, is crucial to us ending this—once and for all.”
“Roger that. I’ll do my best not to get trigger-happy, but it ain’t gonna be easy.”
42
Irish
With any op, we planned for success but were prepared for what to do when the worst happened. Even in the midst of it, I felt like I was outside my body, watching its execution being carried out by someone else.
Once we were in the seaplane, I looked down at the East China Sea, mesmerized by the way the water ebbed and flowed, even so far from a shoreline.
We landed in the river off Zhoushan, under the cover of the night sky, and loaded onto the boats that would take us from there, up the Yangtze to the Huangpu River. I looked out at the shoreline of the country that I’d seen for so long as the land of my enemy. I’d stopped seeing it as a place of homes and families. A place where generations of people lived and worked, from birth to death, most never believing an entire nation could be their enemy. Even their own.