Breaking Loose

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Nepal-eight weeks later

“Hey, sugar. How do you want your tea? Hot or cold?”

“You’re hilarious,” Suzi said through chattering teeth.

They were a two days’ trek out of Pokhara, Nepal, staying in a flat-roofed stone house euphemistically described as a “hotel.” Their room had a stone floor with a fire pit in the middle and came inclusive of a set of cooking pots. Miracle of miracles, there was a bed with plenty of blankets. The view in the mornings of the sunlight hitting the Himalayas was breathtaking-literally. By dawn, the room temperature would be hovering in the hypothermia zone, until Dax got up and stoked the fire back into a blaze.

Suzi’s job at that time of day was to keep the bed warm.

She was good at her job, but this morning, the job took more than she had to give in the way of body heat.

Shivering, she watched Dax pour steaming water into two metal mugs.

“I’ll take that as a ‘hot’ request,” he said. “I think you’re getting in a rut.”

“I think I’m going to give Noble Faith two more days to get here with the Paitza of Abd Hasan, and then I’m heading back to Kathmandu and hot running water.”

The Moonrise team of the Defense Intelligence Agency had gotten a line on an ancient artifact of the Golden Horde of the Eurasian Steppes-the Paitza of Abd Hasan, a gold plate from the thirteenth century-not nearly as old as the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III, but in certain circles considered even more powerful. The Paitza purportedly granted life everlasting and untold riches. Suzi’s job, if she had chosen to take it-which she had-was to meet with a man named Tam-cho, Noble Faith, in this godforsaken middle of nowhere, and cut a deal. Rumor had it that the Paitza had been discovered in the ruins of Shekar Dzong, the Shining Crystal Monastery in Tibet, somehow transported there over the centuries from Mongolia.

Dax carefully set her tea on a bedside table, then crawled under the covers with her with his own mug.

Grant had asked her who she wanted on backup for the mission, and she hadn’t thought twice.

“Should we go down to the dining room later and have brown bread and cheese for breakfast?” he asked.

“How about quiche and croissants with a cappuccino?”

“And for lunch, I guess we’ll go back to that little café-”

“Hovel,” she interrupted.

“Café,” he repeated, “and have-”

“Pea soup and rice.”

“Daal bhaat,” he translated.

She took a sip of her tea. With the hot liquid going inside and her hands wrapped around the mug, she was warming up, and for each degree of warmth, her mood improved two degrees.

“Actually, that was pretty good,” she admitted.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

“Do you still have your book to read?” he asked.

“Yes.” There was little else to do, except hike around looking at astounding mountains that she could easily see just by going outside and turning her head in any direction. This was the Mountain Kingdom.

“Or we could hike over to that little stream again.”

He meant the half-frozen, rock-filled trickle that wound its way down the village’s eastern boundary.

“We could,” she agreed, taking another sip of hot tea.

“Or we could do what we did yesterday,” he suggested.

He looked so innocent, sitting there next to her, propped up on the pillows, drinking his tea with one hand while his other was under the covers, sliding up her leg.

She could just see the top of the tattoo running down the side of his hip, Conqueror in Chinese, and she couldn’t help herself-a grin curved her mouth. “We do that an awful lot.”

“Because we’re good at it.” He gave a little shrug. “Stick with your strengths, that’s what I say.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Her grin broadened.

Good Lord, if anyone had ever told her she would wake up in a bed in Nepal with the man of her dreams, she would have told them they were nuts. But here she was, with Dax Killian, who was actually more man than she had dreamed she would find. He was solid, like a rock, emotionally, psychologically, physically, and he shared that strength with her. She trusted him like no person she’d ever known before. It was just there, trust down to the core, and it made her feel so safe, like she’d finally found home base.

A woman would never leave a man who made her feel like that.

“Absolutely. It’s one of my rules to live by.”

“Got any more of those rules?” she asked, looking at him from over the top of her mug.

“Only one,” he admitted.

“And that is?” She was curious. From what she’d been able to find out, he didn’t have many rules, and even fewer that he hadn’t broken at one time or another.

“If you ever find yourself lying in bed with a woman in Nepal drinking hot tea at dawn, you should marry the woman.”

She just looked at him, completely nonplussed.

“It’s not a rule that gets invoked very often,” he admitted, taking another sip of his tea before setting his mug on the bedside table. “But every time I’ve done it, it’s worked out real well for me.”

“Uh…every time?” She finally got a few words out. “How many times have you invoked that rule?”

“Only once,” he said. “This is actually the first time, but I’ve got high hopes on it working out.”

“Because?” she prompted him, truly out in left field. Dax Killian, unlike herself, had never been married. She would have thought “proposal rules” would have been nonexistent in his life.

“Because the woman I’m drinking tea with in bed in Nepal is crazy in love with me.” He reached over and took her mug out of her hand and set it next to his on the table.

“Oh.” She couldn’t deny it.

“And because I can’t imagine going about my life without her in it, not anymore.” He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her down into the bed with him, deeper under the pile of blankets.

“Oh,” she said, loving the feel of him so close, his legs tangled up with hers, his smile meant for her alone.

“And I think we make a helluva team.” He leaned down and kissed her, and it was exactly like coming home-except hotter, the kind of heat that made a girl melt in bed.

“Umm…Dax.” She opened her mouth wider and let the kiss just take them away. She didn’t really mean to let it take them so far away that they got off the subject of his tea-drinking proposal, but she didn’t mind, not really, not when he was so ready for her, and not when he made sweet, endless love to her, his mouth and his hands all over her, his body weighing her down in the bed, hot and heavy and hard, filling her again and again, the warm, male scent of him soothing her even as he pushed her closer and closer to the edge of release.

He was so strong in her arms, the sleek power of him driving her higher and higher. She strained against him. Her body was wild for the taste and the feel of him…until she just let go, losing herself in pleasure so searing, so sweet, so incredibly binding. It tied her to him, the way every moment she’d been with him from the very first one tied her to him.

“I love you,” she whispered against his mouth. “I love you, Dax.”

He was going to take that as a yes, one hundred percent, and that was match point, and game. Hooyah. Suzanna Royale Toussi was his. Wife. The big “W.”

He kissed her mouth and held her close. Yeah, she was his, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, the one who’d thrown him down hard and made him work for it.

She was tough, a hard girl, and he loved that about her. She could work him from here to eternity. He was a hard guy. He could take it. He could hold her in line, and he could hold her to him-and he could kiss her for-frickin-ever, because he’d never had a woman turn him so inside out.

He decided then and there that he liked Nepal. It was a lot like Afghanistan, except without the mortar fire-which was a huge improvement. He especially liked Nepal from under half a dozen blankets, wrapped up with the woman he loved. He loved it and was wondering maybe what he could do about it, when a knock sounded at the door.

“O baabu,” a small voice said, and Dax figured that was the youngest son of the woman who’d rented them the room. The boy said a few more words, none of which Dax particularly understood, except for one-”Tam-cho.”

The trader was here.

“Haas,” he said loud enough to be heard through the door, okay, and that just about used up all of his Nepali.

“Noble Faith?” Suzi asked from beneath him, using the translation of Tam-cho.

Dax nodded. “Yeah, Noble Faith. If he’s got our Paitza, we could be…well, we could be anywhere by this time tomorrow. Where would you like to get married?”

A grin teased her mouth.

“Short engagement?” she asked.

“Twenty-four hours, max. Where do you want to do the deed?”

“Rome.”

Rome. He liked it.

“So are you ready for Noble Faith, and the Paitza of untold wealth, and life everlasting?”

She smiled up at him, her eyes all dreamy, her body so soft, and willing, and welcoming. “I think I’ve already got all that, Dax. All of it-the faith, and the riches, and the feeling like I could live forever, as long as I’m living with you.”

Yeah. He lowered his mouth to hers for a kiss. Oh, yeah, he felt it, too, like they could live forever.