Soldier's Christmas (Wingmen Warriors 8)

"Good." He kept his eyes closed. "Then you'll know it's better not to mess with me right now. Climb in and go to sleep before you turn into a Popsicle."

More like a Dreamsicle, with all that creamy skin he didn't have to see to envision, and, yeah, he wanted to lick every inch of her.

Covers rustled and shuffled with the intrusion of another body—her body and heat. Fifty degrees felt like a furnace now.

She shifted, settled, then rolled right up against his side. Well, damn. There she went surprising him again.

Sure, she was only doing the practical thing, but practical wasn't always easy as he could tell too well from her rigid muscles.

He slipped his arm out from under his head, working not to elbow her in the minimal-maneuver room. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, drew her closer. Her sigh warmed over his chest as she melted against his side in cuddle mode.

Day by day, he forgot how small she was, the force of her personality, her confidence and expertise in the plane surpassing anything to do with height and frame. Right now, she felt very mortal against him, at the mercy of the elements outside and some faceless threat likely on their tail.

The clean scent of soap and the warm softness of her skin saturated his senses. He might not be able to fight the demons in her past, but he would damned well stand down any and every one in her present. He didn't even bother trying to ignore the primal need to protect. He just let it all seep into him while his body succumbed to exhaustion, sleep demanding he surrender his hold on logic and let dreams take command....

God, he respected this woman's no-surrender attitude in the air. Just what he needed in combat from a front-seater in his F-15.

Sky streaked past his windscreen, jungle below blooming with secondary explosions. He didn't doubt for a minute he could nail those narrow-margin bomb targets and hold off the enemy until rescue came for the pinned-down Rangers. As long as his pilot didn't blink.

He'd expected to walk her through the rough stuff on her first mission in Cantou, play the senior officer role. But she was holding up her end of the team spirit with twenty Rangers on the ground counting on them.

He'd been paired with her because of his experience in the cockpit. Her two-star daddy kept his eye on his kids — even when they didn't need it. And Vogue definitely didn't need slack. Her even breaths echoed in his helmet at a steady pace with his own.

She had plenty of stick time and skill, but the true test didn't come until that first hairy combat mission.

This one more than qualified and she was hanging tough, leaving him free to concentrate on his job.

Laser squirt. Target set. He launched his last GBU. Shack.

The victory was short lived since now their bombs had been depleted. "We're Winchester bombs," he announced, clipping updates to the commander on the ground. "All we've got left is about four passes of a twenty mike-mike." A twenty-millimeter mounted for a strafing run — a low level run with the pilot shooting the Gatling gun cannon at targets. Definitely hairy flying, especially while shooting.

Time to put Vogue's feet to the fire.

His headset crackled with the response from the ground. "Roger that," the Ranger commander answered, machine guns rat-tat-tatting in the distance. "We're taking a lot of fire from the north-south tree line.

Three hundred meters west of our position."

"Copy. Help on the way. Descending now." In concert with his call, Vogue dipped the nose of the F-15, catapulting them into the same fire that had downed the helicopter full of Rangers.

Bullets spit from their F-15 toward the ground. An enemy vehicle exploded. They were so damned close he could see a vehicle door fly to the side and slap the ground.

The plane slowed, swooped, turned inward into the spiral to reverse the negative G-forces into a more manageable positive level. Josh felt his G-suit compression pants inflate along his legs, pushing blood back up to his head so he wouldn't lose consciousness.

His fingers flew over his control panel, eyes scanning the sky, all the while he snapped updates through the headset, filtered information from the ground to Alicia—Vogue. Not Alicia. Damn, where was his head?

The pressure of G-forces increased. He fought against the fog, worked the blood back up to his head.

Vogue's voice popped requests and questions between labored breaths. Slowly the figures in mottled cammo morphed, transforming into jeans-clad students at desks.

In the middle of the jungle?

That didn't make sense. They'd saved those Rangers and been awarded a Silver Star for the mission.

Except when had dreams ever made sense or allowed their victims control?

Josh grappled for consciousness even while the nightmare sucked him deeper into a past with guns blazing in a time when no amount of confidence or training could save anyone. Except he took Alicia with him, and now there was plenty of blood everywhere.

Bullets tore into the ground. Faster, in circles. Faster still. Cycloning mud and blood up. Spiraling toward Alicia. And there wasn't a damned thing he could do to save her.