On Thin Ice (Special Ops) by Capri Montgomery

you.”
     
    “My father sent you?”
     
    “No. I sent myself,” he took her hand in his and helped her stand up. She looked up into his eyes and he could see the appreciation shining in them. “Your father showed up after I was already on a plane heading here. He made some calls to make sure the local police gave me access to their limited information.”
     
    “But you found me.”
     
    “I have friends everywhere. The cops didn’t know about this place, but Henri did. She gave me everything I needed to get up here.”
     
    “She?”
     
    He laughed. “Don’t worry. She’s just a friend.”
     
    “Like me,” she sighed.
     
    “No; not like you.” He let his eyes caress her body, taking in the soft feminine curves from head to toe and back up. “Not like you at all,” he nearly growled; the sexual awareness hitting him so hard it almost knocked him over. “Now let’s get moving.” What he felt for her went beyond friendship. He would make sure she knew that later, but for right now he had to focus on getting them both off that mountain safely.
     

     
    Akira thought maybe her time as captive combined with her desire to have Jet recognize her as a woman in love with him might just have combined to make her delusional. The way he looked at her made her skin tingle with awareness and she thought that maybe his look was laced with his desire for her. She couldn’t be sure. The look she had seen from him before didn’t even compare to this look. He hadn’t looked at her like this before, with his eyes dark and searching her body as if he were thinking about seeing it naked. Maybe she was just hoping. That had to be it. He had told her before that she wasn’t the woman for him; maybe not in those exact words, but he had made it clear. He had called her a kid. He had relegated her feelings to some childlike crush when her feelings were so much more than that. No, Jet didn’t like her. He couldn’t like her. She wasn’t his type. He liked taller women with darker skin and bigger breasts. He liked women like Charlie. Although how would she know that? When she met Jet he was dating Charlie. She had never seen him with anybody else. For all she knew Charlie might have been the woman who went against his norm. Although she doubted it. Jet didn’t seem much like a man who didn’t know what he liked and what he wanted. He didn’t want her; that was for sure. But that didn’t mean she had ever been able to, or would ever be able to, stop wanting him. He had come for her; that would have to be enough.
     
    “Thank you,” she said softly as she walked beside him. “Thank you for coming for me, Jet. I know those men would have killed me.” From the look he gave her she was certain he knew they would have too. She didn’t know what they had wanted, but she knew they would have killed her once they got it. The big guy, the one who seemed to love hitting her and pushing her around, had the look of sheer evil in his eyes. There was no soul inside that man; nothing to move him to compassion even if she did plead for her life. He would have killed her—and he would have relished doing it too.
     
    “Like I told you, Akira, I will always come for you. You don’t need to thank me. No matter where you are, no matter what hell you find yourself locked in, I will come for you—always.” He walked onward, not stopping to look at her. How could he possibly say it wasn’t necessary to thank him? If it weren’t for him she would still be in that place. She felt the need to thank him. She felt the need to buy him some grand gift too. Now she knew how her father felt. Her father had thrown a party at his home—which he rarely did unless it was something special for either her or her mother—and he had thrown that party just to celebrate and honor the man who had saved him. The party wasn’t enough and never would be, and now she knew what her dad had meant by that.
     
    She let out a laugh of relief and he looked