Excerpt
Carnage.

There was no other way to describe what surrounded MacIntyre as he came into the clearing that had slowly gone quiet in a storm of noise. Bodies lay everywhere, his force decimated by the precision and skill of Stone’s elite unit of commandos. He’d thought his men were ready to face the other team, and had paid dearly for the worst miscalculation of his long career. Now there was only one man left to face. Randall Stone.

“I’m coming in, Stone,” MacIntyre shouted. “I’m alone.”

“Where is she, Mac?”

“Not until we talk, Rand.”

“Slowly.”

MacIntyre obeyed the curt order and he approached them cautiously, hands spread open and held up. In the few seconds he had to assess the situation, he realized Stone had not been as bullet-proof as he’d thought a few minutes earlier. He was injured, albeit not seriously, and he was visibly tired. Mac’s confidence reasserted itself, and he inclined his head in a mock bow of respect.

“We’re gonna finish this, Stone,” MacIntyre decreed. “You and me.”

Stone eyed him coldly, then nodded.

Mac smiled in pure, macabre pleasure.

The first knife flew past Stone’s ear, and he dove for cover. He was on his feet again in a heartbeat. “Everyone stay back!” he shouted.

Mac could see that Stone’s team was on the verge of disobeying his order out of concern for his safety. But this fight wasn’t about a mission or a threat to his friends. It was personal. It was about the past, and the future.

MacIntyre laughed at the rage in his old friend’s eyes. Even staggering with exhaustion and pain, Rand Stone was the consummate soldier. Mac tackled him again before Rand could regain his breath. They went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs, MacIntyre pummeling his weakened opponent unmercifully. He’d had plenty of time to watch and wait for Stone and his mercenaries to reach him; he was ready for this battle.

After eternal minutes of frenzied fighting, MacIntyre finally had Rand pinned to the ground, and was raising a large rock over his head, fully intent on smashing Stone’s skull.

The action was interrupted by a scream that had nothing to do with fear, and everything to do with absolute, mindless rage…

To the shock of everyone present, Robin Bourne launched out of the trees.

Robin flung herself at MacIntyre, knocking him clear of Rand’s prone body. Rand’s knife was on the ground, and she scooped it up as they rolled away from him. She was running on adrenaline now, and memory. The knife spun in her hand, a trick Lucky had taught her a lifetime in the past. She slammed it into MacIntyre’s chest, hilt end landing squarely in the solar plexus. He gasped and dropped like a dead weight, his breath constricted for precious seconds. The knife spun again, and she smiled as she prepared to plunge the serrated blade into his chest.

A vise-like grip on her wrist prevented the action, and she tore her gaze away from the man she hated to look into the face of the man she adored.

“Let go, honey,” he whispered, his fingers unrelenting in their hold on her arm.

“Randall?” There were tears in the single word, and she stared at him, just beyond comprehending that he was, in fact, real.

Rand slid his grip lower, slowly loosening her fingers from the knife hilt.

Robin stared at him, disbelief still making her doubt what she was seeing. He was dirt-streaked and gleaming with sweat, but it was Randall. Movement around them lifted his eyes from her for the briefest of instants. She heard quiet orders being given, then he was looking at her again, expectation and uncertainty wavering on his handsome features.

She watched him slide the knife into the sheath at his thigh, then he reached over to touch her cheek, the ball of his thumb brushing over the sloping curve of her cheekbone. The moisture in her eyes spilled out and she was blinded for several moments. Her breath came in a rasp of relief, and she groped, relaxing as she was engulfed in the strong, desperate hold of Rand’s arms.

When he didn’t vanish into another wishful fantasy, Robin opened her eyes and lifted her head from his shoulder, staring at him in wonderment. She touched his mouth, tracing the well-known curve of his lips with fingers that shook. She placed her lips to his, then shuddered and sighed softly when Rand’s hands held her head and he turned the experimental caress into something deep and evocative. Every part of her woke to the passion in his kiss, and the trembling that assailed her found a like response in his body. She wound her arms around his neck, pressed herself against him, and savored the taste of his tongue as it probed into her mouth, stroking and stirring desire to mindless need.

Time hung suspended as she fell in love with Randall Stone again, as quickly and completely as she had the night she’d met him. The pain, terror, and humiliation of the past weeks were suddenly distant as she clung to him, the lifeline to her sanity. She pressed closer, felt the steamy tropical heat recede against the storm of an even hotter inferno.

“God, Randall…” She was hardly aware of having spoken, and left the sweetness of his mouth to trail fevered kisses along his neck, tasting the tang of sweat and dirt, uncaring of anything but the feel of him. She claimed his mouth again, and buried her fingers in the damp silk of his hair, her hips pushing into him, asking…demanding…needing him with a desperation that made nothing else matter.

With an effort that was sheer discipline, Rand came up for air, dimly aware of the movement of his team around them. Robin stared at him. Panic widened her large brown eyes, then a shutter fell into place, a curtain of coldness that extinguished the fire that had been burning between them.

Rand wanted to hold her again, to thaw that impenetrable ice before it hardened into permanence. Her focus shifted, and he watched as a flicker of genuinely lethal hatred crossed her features when she spotted MacIntyre.