Page 11 of Delta Force Defender

The look he aimed at her was feral enough to raise every hair on her body. And she hated that even here, her body reacted to him the way it always did.

Isaac Gentry was a spectacular betrayal of herself in male form, and her curse was, that form was beautiful. More than simply beautiful—he was a perfectly honed, marvelously constructed specimen. She knew, and had soundly mocked, his dedication to keeping himself in peak physical condition, but the woman in her wanted to cheer every time she saw what a T-shirt like the one he was wearing now did to those pectoral muscles of his. To say nothing of that mouthwateringly ridged abdomen.

He had been her doom from the start. She’d known it, and she’d done it all anyway, like a moth on a kamikaze trip straight into the bluest part of the flame.

“When did you pick up my trail?” she asked, studying his grim, gorgeous face.

He had always been a threat, and she’d always understood that, but this was different. This wasn’t their usual tug-of-war in Grizzly Harbor. They were on the other side of a very large continent.

He must have followed her.

She knew this was the kind of thing he and his commando buddies did for a living, but that didn’t make the panic clawing at her subside any. It almost made it worse.

“I thought you were dead,” Isaac gritted out, and he no longer sounded remotely pleasant.

He moved closer in that way of his that was almost as if he weren’t moving. As if he were a part of the shadows, not a man at all, except she knew perfectly well that he was flesh and blood.

She knew it far too well.

“When, Gentry? Spokane?”

He moved closer, and her eyes were fully adjusted now. She could see that wild thing in his gaze. That furious glitter.

“I thought you weredead,” he said again, emphasizing each word in a guttural sort of way that she could feel, like separate kicks.

Each one hurt, whether she admitted it or not. Especially the last.

“Obviously not,” she threw back at him, because what she knew how to do was fight. On and on and on, as long as it took, because it was all she had. “And you couldn’t have thought I was dead very long, or you’d be back in Alaska planning my funeral. Not lurking in hotel rooms in Maine.”

“I got a call.” His voice was... terrible. As furious as that half-wild glittering thing in his eyes, but there was something much, much worse than simplyfuriousabout it. Caradine shuddered. “There was a fire.In yourhome. Where I had every reason to believe you were.”

“When did you pick up my trail?” she bit out, because he wasn’t the only one who could use anger like a tool.

“I never lost your trail.” He was too close now. Right there on the other side of her gun. She refused to waver. But then, she doubted he knew the meaning of that word.“I watched you board the ferry to Juneau. And I watched you get off the ferry in Bellingham.”

The smirk toppled off her face, and she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. She compensated by keeping her gun trained on him, aimed directly at his heart.

“You really shouldn’t have done that.” She hated the weakness in her. The catch in her throat, the humming thing low in her belly. The ache that had been there from the start. “I know this is what you do for a living, but I didn’t hire you, Isaac. I don’t need you to save me. You need to let me go.”

“I thought you were dead, Caradine.”

She let out a sound she hoped was scornful and not a sob. “That’s not even my name.”

“It is when you’re with me,” Isaac growled.

Then he did two things so fast she didn’t see either one. She couldn’t react. She couldn’tresist.

He took the gun from her like she hadn’t been gripping it in the first place. As if he’d plucked it from the air.

And with his other hand he hooked her around the neck, yanked her close, and slammed his mouth to hers.

Three

Isaac had spent the last week assuring himself that what he wanted from her was a frank conversation, for a change. That a conversation was all he wanted.

But nothing with Caradine ever went as planned.

The familiar taste of her exploded through him, messing him up like a sucker punch.

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