Chance's Rule Page 5

  She cried out softly as he used a finger to find her clitoris. The sudden blast of pleasure loosened her considerably, allowing him further penetration. He was several inches deep now and more than ready to begin his thrusts.

  Withdrawing nearly to the tip, he sank his cock in again. Oh yes, she was ready and so was he. Kinzie made a mewling sound, her fingernails digging into the sheets. Chance exhaled, a groaning sound emanating from deep in his chest. Though he always felt immense pleasure with Kinzie, it was rare for him to let go completely. As a Dominant, it might seem as if he were constantly indulging himself, but in truth, the games they played centered on her. She controlled the pace and the parameters based on her needs as much as, or more than, his.

  “That feels so good, Chance…I never knew,” she marveled.

  He resisted the urge to say “I told you so”. “I’m glad, angel.”

  “Harder…please?”

  Chance grunted, thrusting into virgin territory. He manipulated her clit simultaneously, causing her body to writhe beneath him. Possessively, he sank his teeth into her neck in that tender way that she loved so well.

  “Ch-Chance,” she exclaimed.

  “I know, baby, it’s all right, let it go.”

  She exploded into orgasm. Rearing back, Chance drove himself into her one final time, the white-hot semen exploding into her hot channel. There was so much of it, an endless stream. She moaned and cried, taking it all, her body shaking, the first climax dissolving into a second and a third.

  “Oh god yes,” she screamed. “Chance, oh Chance!”

  He reached around, clamping her breasts with his hands, greedy to take every part of her at once, to hold her so close that nothing could ever come between them—not her duty or his, not even death itself, which waited behind every shadow.

  At last he collapsed on top of her, finally feeling as if they had made a breakthrough.

  It was at that very moment that he heard his phone ring.

  Jesus, not now, not now.

  Kinzie’s belly seized up. She knew what that sound meant. It only ever rang for one reason.

  “Sorry, baby,” he would say after the briefest exchange. “Next time, right?”

  Except there wouldn’t be a next time because she would go through with the transfer and by the time he came around sniffing for action she would be long gone, no forwarding address.

  He could track her down, sure, but it would never be the same. The spell of Africa would be gone. She would be home in the States, in her right mind. Maybe she would find some safe and sensible fellow doctor to marry. They could have children.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Chance whispered, kissing the back of her neck.

  No, you won’t, she thought, her body freezing on contact. You’ll fade to nothing, like the afterglow of the sex. Hell, maybe he never was here in the first place. Maybe the whole thing had all been a dream, a figment devised by an overwrought, sex-starved imagination. And who could blame her, given the desperate need to escape from the brutalities around her.

  She held back the tears as he pulled his flagging cock from her body. The emptiness overwhelmed her. She had never felt so alone in her entire life.

  That’s what I get for breaking my vow, she thought as he took the phone outside to talk. She should have shut him down cold the moment he pulled into town.

  For the cost of a dozen fucking roses he had broken her heart one last time.

  Finding her strength, she rose to her feet. Gathering his shirt and boots, she threw them outside. She would love nothing more than to throw out all the BDSM gear too but that was something private between the two of them.

  Not that there was any “them” anymore.

  She saw him in the shadows. He was standing there, debating with someone on the other end of the line, tense and hushed, as far from free-wheeling as a man could get. Well, that was new and different. Could it be he really didn’t want to go this time?

  That was understandable. He probably wanted another go at her ass.

  And her heart too.

  Chance’s emotions spun on a dime as he heard the message from headquarters.

  “Soup’s on early. Come and get it.”

  What the hell? The move against Matubu was six months to a year away. Why was he being called to attack position now?

  “What about the rest of the ingredients?” he said tersely.

  There was a long sigh at the other end. Clearly the unknown voice did not wish to elaborate. “There was a leak in the pot.”

  Chance felt his stomach drop. The operation had been compromised. The general had gotten wind of the planned International Anti-terrorism Agency coup against him, which meant they had a limited time to act and prevent an all-out bloodbath.

  His first thought was Kinzie. She might not be safe, even as far away as she was from the capital. “I’m bringing a guest to dinner,” he said.

  “That’s a negatory.”

  “I wasn’t asking.”

  “Neither was I,” said the man, promptly ending the call.

  Chance clenched his fist. There was no redialing, no arguing. The number was one way, straight from Washington.

  He could not take Kinzie with him.

  And why the hell would he want to? Did he think the capital would be safer?

  He muttered a curse under his breath. He wasn’t thinking clearly but that’s what happened when things got personal. Kinzie wasn’t his responsibility. He had his mission and that was it.

  Don’t get involved, no personal life. That was the Agency’s credo.

  His trainers hadn’t met Dr. Kinzie Sanders, though.

  Lifting his eyes to the dark, velvet sky, sprinkled with stars, he made an oath.

  I’ll complete the mission and save Kinzie. In the meantime, she is safest here, in this relatively remote village.

  Turning to face Kinzie’s hut again, he wasn’t too surprised to see his boots and shirt tossed into the dust out front. He had that coming.

  It was better this way. No goodbyes—not now, not ever.

  “I’ll be back,” he whispered, blowing her a kiss. “You can bet on it.”

  * * * * *

  Kinzie took her time in the shower, methodically cleaning herself twice over. What was the old song about washing a man out of your hair? To the best of her ability, she filled her mind with the mundane tasks of her profession. She must check on the two patients in the clinic, especially Manaluta, the young mother of three who was suffering from a mild fever. Then she would confirm the med counts with M’Benga if he was still up.

  She would fill out a requisition form too, hopefully her last one. Once her transfer went in, she expected no problems. Her director had already assured her of that. It would just be a matter of finding a replacement. If it came down to it, M’Benga would fill in. He was just a year away from taking his boards and more than qualified to triage things for a while.

  She hated to leave him with a burden though. If at all possible she would stay but she wasn’t any good out here, not anymore. She realized that now. The crying episode she had had with Chance made that abundantly clear. The Kinzie Sanders who had signed on to work in the clinic would never have done such a thing.

  She was the kind of woman who worked around the clock saving lives and who ran into the road to save goats.

  “Damn it, Chance,” she whispered, hugging herself with the towel. “Did you have to be such a stubborn superman?”

  If he had been just a little more human, a little more vulnerable, they might have worked something out, come to a resolution about their future.

  Never mind that she had earned the nickname Super Woman in med school. That was a different situation.

  Chance was the one who played his cards too close to the vest, not her. She was here and available for him 24/7, wasn’t she? Her life was an open book to him.

  Or at least it had been, up to now. What a fool, telling him about her life, sharing the story of Bobby, which she shared with
no one.

  Henceforth she would live alone, married to her work.

  And she would make the people around her behave the same way too, if it killed every poor soul who was stuck working with her.

  Chapter Three

  Chance saw the first signs of trouble about ten kilometers outside the capital. An army checkpoint had been set up on the main road, a dozen or so nervous-looking recruits pointing a worn-out assortment of rifles and machine guns.

  He had his own nine millimeter pistol next to him and a brand new automatic rifle—a special top-secret issue from French intelligence—under the seat. He could probably shoot his way through, as poorly trained as these guys looked, then again they could as easily open fire by accident, killing him and themselves to boot.

  Slowly, very slowly, he put up his hands.

  “Papers,” demanded an officer, shoving a skinny hand in his face, through the open window.

  Chance had his passport and visa in his pocket, falsely identifying him as a Canadian attaché. The man looked at the documents, frowning. Chance wasn’t worried—they were excellent forgeries.

  “Is there a problem, Captain?”

  “The road is closed. You have to turn around.”

  “I have a meeting with the trade minister.”

  The captain narrowed his gaze. Like all the rest of the upper-echelon government officials, the trade minister was a relative of General Matubu and therefore not someone to mess with. “You have appointment documentation?”

  Chance smiled slyly. This was code for a bribe. He took out his wallet and handed over a hundred, triple folded.

  The captain pocketed the money. “You had better be careful. The city is under martial law. Anyone asks, you came by the western road, not this one.”

  “Much obliged.” Chance drove through, thankful for the safe passage and even more so for the information about the city being under martial law.

  Not that the news was good. If Matubu had declared martial law that meant only one thing, he knew about the coup attempt and was planning a counteraction.

  That meant they would have to move fast, without all the key elements in place. Not a good scenario. Reaching down for the automatic rifle, he laid it in his lap. He must be ready for anything from this point forward.

  The road widened after a kilometer or so. The surroundings became more urbanized, the ramshackle huts giving way to low-slung apartment buildings and rows of stores with stands set up out front offering vegetables, fruit and various kinds of cured meat.

  Like most third-world cities, it was a conglomeration of architecture—patchwork tin, brick and steel with little regard for color coordination. He noticed the distinct lack of traffic, pedestrian or auto—another bad sign.

  He tensed as he saw a truck ahead, parked at the side of the street. More soldiers but not the sort of raw recruits he had seen at the checkpoint. These were National Guardsmen, Matubu’s elite force.

  They had one mission and that was to protect the general.

  The fact that they were out of their barracks confirmed his earlier suspicion. A countercoup was under way or about to begin.

  Chance did not flinch as he drove past them, their cold, hard faces sizing him up, their fingers on the triggers of assault rifles nearly as good as his own.

  Behind him he heard the rhythmic wail of a siren, eerie in the near quiet of the usually bustling city. A few blocks down in front of the trade ministry he saw barricades. Police stood guard along with another half dozen of the clueless conscripts.

  Good thing I’m not really going there, he thought.

  His real destination was a travel agency on a narrow side street. He parked the Land Rover a few spaces down. No point hiding the weapons now, he thought, openly brandishing the assault rifle. At this point it was us or them.

  No sooner had one of his fellow agents let him inside and bolted the door shut than they heard the first gunshots outside.

  “It’s going to be a long night,” the agent told Chance.

  “Yeah,” said Chance, though it wasn’t the city he was thinking about.

  If anything happened to Kinzie, he would never forgive himself.

  For the first time in his career, Chance considered the unthinkable, namely abandoning his post.

  * * * * *

  M’Benga was staring at Kinzie with those big soulful eyes of his and it was beginning to piss her off.

  “Damn it, M’Benga,” she snapped. “If you have something to say, just say it.”

  The tall, delicately featured man smiled sadly. “I think it is you who has much to say but not to me.”

  Kinzie continued to rummage in the syringe drawer, pretending to look for something. “If you mean Chance, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “I assume that’s an American idiom? Regardless, I do not think you have resolved things where he is concerned and the more upset you become, the more I am confirmed in my belief.”

  “Well, you can be as confirmed as you like. No matter what you say, I am leaving for my own reasons. I have made my peace, achieved closure and all that other nonsense.”

  “You love him, don’t you?”

  His words were like a scalpel administered with lightning precision. In one fell swoop, her carefully knitted cocoon was laid bare. “What did you say?”

  M’Benga laughed. It sounded like music, like one of the village chants. “Surely you are the last to know. Even the animals speak of it in their songs—the elephants, gazelles, cheetahs, why the very sky proclaims it.”

  “You’re a sentimentalist,” she dismissed.

  “And you are too afraid to feel,” he replied.

  Afraid to feel? If he only knew. Every moment since Chance’s departure she had been feeling, emotions swirling, choking her. A part of her felt guilty that she had sent him off without so much as a kiss. Whatever he did to make his money, it had to be dangerous and he couldn’t afford to be unhappy or distracted.

  If she were to be the cause of him being hurt or killed, she would never survive it. At the same time she was so furious with him. He could have come back into the hut and kissed her. Where was all his vaunted male dominance then?

  Why hadn’t he marched back in there and laid down the law, forbid her to leave, warn her of how he would take it out on her ass if she weren’t waiting for him when he returned the next time?

  It had been his chance to convince her, to really let her see how much he wanted her. And instead he had managed to disappoint, the biggest letdown ever.

  “You don’t understand,” she said to M’Benga, having no one else to open up to. “You can’t know what it’s like to be abandoned by a man over and over.”

  M’Benga made a clicking noise in the back of his throat. “And that is all you see of him? The man has moved heaven and Earth to show you he loves you.”

  Kinzie had heard enough. “How? By confusing the crap out of me? Sweeping me off my feet and overprotecting me one minute and waltzing off into the bush the next?”

  “That’s his way.”

  “Well, it doesn’t work for me.”

  That wasn’t entirely true though, was it? Chance was a lion and she had a thing for the king of beasts—noble, completely stubborn and impossible to fully domesticate.

  M’Benga shrugged. “Have you asked for something different from him?”

  “I most certainly have. And it’s pretty simple. Some consistency, an e-mail address,” she said, rattling off the basics.

  “And what are you offering in return, other than what you give now?”

  “Plenty.” She tried to offer a list and promptly drew a blank. “Well, if I haven’t said anything specific,” she said defensively, “it’s only because I know it’s a lost cause.”

  M’Benga pursed his lips, wise beyond his years. “So you are saying Chance was doomed no matter what he did?”

  “What? No, of course I’m not saying that. Look, I am tired of this conversation.”

  As if on cue the fac
e of Uluze, a ten-year-old boy with haunting amber eyes, appeared in the doorway. Over and over he shouted the Luzumbian word for blood.

  Kinzie went outside with M’Benga. The small party of refugees was riding in a farm truck. They were weaving wildly in the road, the driver slumped over the wheel. Men from the village ran ahead to bring them in. Kinzie and M’Benga worked quickly, preparing for triage.

  “Are they from the north?” Kinzie asked as the first stretcher arrived.

  “No,” said one of the village men. “They are from the capital.”

  A chill went down Kinzie’s spine. Chance spent time there, she knew he did. Fighting back her fears, she forced herself to examine the first patient—a gunshot wound to the thigh with heavy bleeding.

  The next had a bullet in the chest, which was far more serious. Reality blurred as she went through the motions—quick, mechanical, lifesaving.

  She would give anything to be helping Chance instead. Was he wounded too?

  She had to know. Until then, she feared she would not take another full breath.

  So, said a voice somewhere back in her head, sadistically, almost gleeful. This is what it’s like to be in love. Sure sucks out loud, doesn’t it?

  * * * * *

  Things were going from bad to worse for Chance’s team. After suiting up they had hightailed it to the parliament building to find the missing senators who were slated to head the interim government after Matubu’s arrest.

  The general’s men had beaten them there by a half hour, setting the entire complex on fire. Meanwhile they had gotten word that one of the other teams had been ambushed a block from the presidential palace. Skilled as they were, the Agency’s commandos did not have the firepower to counter fifty-caliber machine guns.

  At this rate the operation was going to fail outright. It was time for him to make his move, Chance decided as he crouched behind the shell of a delivery van to avoid the steady machine-gun fire.

  His own weapon was hot in his hands. He felt so goddamn helpless, knowing that Kinzie was on her own. He would do anything to save her, damn the consequences.

  Yes, it was time to act, time for a gambit, win all around or else disaster.