"Uh—" his Adam's apple bobbed "—you're gonna jump, too, sir?"
"I have done this once or twice before."
"No disrespect meant, sir."
"None taken." Sometimes a commander had to remind his troops he'd been in the same trenches. Walked the same walk. He wasn't doing this to impress some woman.
"Anytime, sir."
"Hoo-uh." Two sets of boots pounded the roof, nearing the edge, flat desert sprawling ahead through hazy heat waves.
Airborne!
Launching himself, he focused on the horizon, on her scarf. And God, but it sure was rose and pretty and called to him like a beacon as he flew through the muggy air, a sensation of freedom as damned incredible as it had been the first time he launched himself over twenty years ago.
He landed, instincts carrying him through the PLF to absorb the shock of impact—balls of the feet, roll to the thigh, the ass, up the arm to the shoulder.
He sprung to his feet. Hoo-uh!
His knees shouted back in response.
Shit, that hurt. He schooled his features and suppressed a wince as the pain shot from his time-battered knees all the way to his teeth.
And then his men gathered around him blocking Yasmine from sight. Smiles and backslaps,
hoo-uhs and grunts jam-packed the air.
Hell, yeah. This is what it was all about, how he liked his life, and he needed to remember that. The camaraderie. Unity. Not about posturing like some young stud on the make for a woman he wasn't even interested in having.
Didn't want?
Damn. All right. He wanted her. But that didn't mean he'd left behind rational thought.
Drew dug in his pocket, found the LifeSavers and thumbed one into his mouth, sucked back a curse and the throbbing in his knees echoed by a far more painful one a few inches north of his knees. He definitely wasn't twenty-five anymore.
And if he were twenty-five now? Newly divorced, with a solid set of knees and a recklessness time hadn't had a chance to beat out of him. What would he think of Yasmine if they'd met then? A damned ridiculous thought since she would have been six, for God's sake.
But what if?
The answer rushed in without hesitation. If they were closer in age, he would already have her scarf off and his hands in her hair, working his way toward persuading her to let his body be inside hers.
The applause faded along with hoo-uhs as his men resumed their training exercise. But Yasmine hadn't moved. Wasn't laughing.
Wasn't talking to her two young escorts anymore.
She stared straight at him, breathing faster in rapid bursts that lifted the gentle curves of br**sts against her dress in a passionate rhythm of arousal. Damned if the ache in his knees didn't fade right that minute and it was all he could do not to climb back on the roof.
And double damned if he didn't feel a little like he was already flying, anyway.
Damn but he wished he were flying.
Parked in a seat at the mobile command center, Jack twitched his boot against the metal underpinnings of the console on a pallet down the belly of the plane. Close-up intelligence gathering from the SEALs for the next couple of days was crucial, though, so he would just have to cool his jets.
His shitty mood from the night before simmered on the back burner. Only completing this mission would clear his mind enough to deal with it. Three screens hummed in front of him, just like at the other eleven stations manned by military representatives from each service in the joint mission, maintaining databases, ensuring comm links remained up and working.
Colonel Cullen sat across from him, slowly drinking from a coffee mug with the words "It's All About the Hoo-Uh'' stenciled across.
Jack's dual flat-screen color monitors contained intel on one side, maps on the other. A smaller six-by-six, black-and-white monitor perched above with continuous feed from the Predator unmanned spy drone.