Chapter 17 #2
She kissed the hard line of his abdomen, felt the tremor beneath his skin. He was already half-hard again, not from demand, but from the quiet charge in the air like the earth itself was holding its breath.
When she took him into her mouth, it was slow. Purposeful. She didn’t tease. Didn’t perform. She received him. Let him feel her devotion in the warm slide of her tongue, the sure press of her lips, the hollow of her cheeks.
He groaned low, one hand fisting in the sheets, the other drifting to her shoulder, not to guide her. Just to touch. To anchor.
She closed her eyes, letting every movement speak for her.
You’re safe here.
You’re worthy.
You don’t have to give. Just receive.
She sucked him deeper, steady and strong, until his breath fractured. Until his hips jerked and his mouth finally cracked open on her name, half gasp, half prayer. “Bailee…”
The sound wrecked her. It was the first time he’d said her name like that, full of awe, and pain, and need.
She held him in her mouth, her jaw working, her tongue tracing every inch of him with silent reverence. This wasn’t power. It wasn’t surrender.
It was belonging.
When he finally spilled into her, his whole body bowed up, a shudder tearing through him like lightning through bone. She drank him in, slow, like she was tasting the center of his soul.
He finally sagged back, and, trembling, she rose. She didn’t speak. Just slid heavily back up his body, reveling in the feel of his damp, delicious skin, kissed the center of his chest, and lay her head there.
His heart was pounding. Wild and alive.
Bailee lay against him, her face snuggled into the curve of his throat, her breath shallow, her thoughts anything but still.
She’d given him everything, her body, her truth, her tears. But one thing still pressed against her ribs like a blade.
She swallowed hard, then said into the quiet, “I love what I do with you guys. The intelligence, the support, the takedowns. It’s everything I thought the CIA would be, but I didn’t join for this.”
Bear shifted beneath her, met her gaze as she looked up. “We all have our reasons for what we do,” he said. “Doesn’t make it shameful, Bailee.” His hand found hers beneath the sheet and laced their fingers together.
“I mentioned my cousin, Taryn. You also know she disappeared, but you don’t know that I was devastated, the voices of the ancestors were silent, not only in my medicine woman path, but in my cousin’s abduction.
She was only fifteen. Beautiful, stubborn.
Wild spirit. When she vanished, no one outside Cheyenne River even blinked.
The police filled out a form, and that was pretty much it. ”
Bear exhaled through his nose, a sound weighted with understanding. She knew it stirred something in him, his own ache over Ayla, but she needed him to know all of it now. She couldn’t hold anything back.
“I thought…if I could get inside the system, I could find her. I used their resources, every connection I forged, and every clue I could find, and pushed.” He reached up, cupped her face in his warm palm, tilting her chin so her eyes met his.
There was nothing but compassion in his gaze.
That, and the shadow of his own pain. “Her trail ends across the border in Cordillera Verde. The CIA classified this territory years ago because it sits over a labyrinthine cave system, ideal for trafficking routes, ritual sites, and covert installations.”
Bear’s dark eyes stayed locked on hers in the hush between them.
Bailee let the silence stretch between them for a breath. Then another.
“I wish I could make a difference.”
“You’re making a difference. You’ve given us some powerful target packages, and we’ve taken them down.”
She looked away. “I know. That is satisfying, but I can’t help but wonder what kind of impact I could make if I used my voice differently.”
The words lingered. Heavy. Hopeful. An answer in a storm of questions.
She breathed in, slow and deep, the shape of a new truth forming.
“I’ve thought about the MMIWG task force,” she whispered. “About what it might mean to be part of something that doesn’t forget their names.”
Bear didn’t speak right away. Just brushed his thumb across her cheekbone, reverent. “There’s merit in choosing your path, Bailee, and power in knowing when it’s time.”
She blinked back fresh tears. Then nodded. The idea of change no longer felt like betrayal. It felt like coming home to something she’d always known.
He pulled her higher, kissed her softly. “Now tell me again,” he murmured. “That you love me.”
Tears welled again, but this time she let them fall.
No hiding.
No shame.
She curled into him, their foreheads pressed together, his body steady against hers like a prayer not meant for answers, only for witnessing.
“I don’t want you to get a big head,” she whispered.
“Too late,” he murmured. “I already did, and you took care of that in the most amazing way.” His voice was low, teasing, rich with meaning. “Don’t play with me.”
Outside, the rain whispered softly against the windows. Inside, two warriors lay wrapped in quiet, tangled limbs and the slow exhalation of shared purpose.
Not quite healed.
But hope settled in her like dawn on still water.
They were finally getting proactive about getting into the region where Taryn’s trail went cold.
She was in a unique position to bring her cousin home.
That would allow her to give closure not only to her whole family but maybe take her on a different path.
She smiled faintly. “I love you, Dakota Locklear, and I think you know that very well.”
The briefing room sat deep in the secure wing of the DEA’s Rio steel-lined, chilled, windowless annex.
The kind of place designed to hold facts, not feelings.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, throwing pale light across the long conference table and the wall-mounted board where the mission was already mapped in tactical layers of satellite overlays, recon feeds, field notes in red.
Bear sat in the first chair, Flint silent at his side like a shadow forged in black.
Joker, Gator, Professor, Blitz, Buck, D-Day, and Zorro filtered in behind him.
Familiar weight. Familiar rhythm. Eyes steady, focus strong with sharpened, pre-mission tension that hummed in their bones.
Everyone moved with discipline. No one joked.
Only one man in the room didn’t belong.
The FBI liaison, Vincent Sayers, dark hair, smooth suit, vowels polished by East Coast schools. He looked like he should be behind a desk, not stepping foot into the Verde.
Bear knew appearances could be deceiving. He would hold his judgment until he saw how the guy covered their backs.
His attention drifted.
Not to the map. Not to the mission.
To her.
Bailee stood at the head of the room, already locked in, her black field gear sleek and functional, hair pulled back, eyes on the data, and so aware of him it thrummed in his bones. The screen’s glow silvered the edges of her hair, casting her in light she didn’t even seem to notice.
Fuck she was beautiful, this woman who had been leading them for some time, and there had always been that sense that she would be important to him if he could get past the silence that kept him mute in everything that was personal to him.
Finding his voice, that had been her gift, one that she hadn’t even consciously demanded.
No, she had become much too important for silence.
When she glanced at him, her gaze caught, just for a second, and his chest tightened with everything that he felt for her.
That second was enough.
It gutted him. The memory of her words, and the way she had taken him, but this time with her sweet mouth, a homage to him, honoring him with strokes and suction.
It was the best head of his life, not because of the fucking intense pleasure, but because it was her way of showing him that her words weren’t just sound.
She’d said I love you this morning. Whispered it into his mouth like a vow, not a plea. No expectations. No pressure. Just truth, stripped bare and given to him like a gift he didn’t deserve.
He hadn’t said it back. Not because he didn’t feel it. Great Spirit, he felt it.
But he’d wanted to hold it. To savor it.
Not echo it like a reflex. Not throw it back in the air like it was just another phrase passed between people who hadn’t bled for each other.
This time, he gave into his selfish need.
He wanted to mean it in the way his people meant things with presence, with gravity, with the silence that wrapped around something sacred.
He wanted her to know it was real. He would say it. He would carve it into time when he found the moment it was right.
Now the bones of the past were rising again. They were walking into danger to recover not just their own, but the women who had been taken, silenced, buried. Bones that belonged to more than victims. They belonged to tribes. To names. To unanswered prayers.
Bailee turned back to the screen, and her voice cut clean through the quiet.
“We’ve got two confirmed missing Americans.
FBI Forensic Examiner Ethan Voss who was embedded in Bolivia with special clearance to examine skeletal remains discovered after my helo crash.
Mara Duran, CIA contractor, former agency colleague, traveling with him off-book in a dual capacity as intelligence gatherer and asset protection. ”
Bear frowned. He’d heard Mara’s name before. Sharp. Off-grid. The kind of operative who didn’t exist unless the mission went sideways.
“There’s something strange going on in that jungle. Local informants and recovered drone footage show something else.” She changed the feed.
Tree trunks, carved. The ground etched with spirals, blood-colored markings, almost tribal but not. “These markings were found along a remote perimeter near the site. Repeated. Geometric. Not tagged by any known cartel or insurgent group.”