by Pam Godwin
As she studied his gait, he seemed steady. Strong. He’d taken a helluva beating and was probably in a world of hurt.
“I was so afraid they got you.” Iliana raced toward him and raised her arms, as if to embrace him.
Two steps away, he stopped, flexed his hand. Then he ran the blade of the machete through her stomach and out the back.
Her mouth gaped, eyes wide with shock as she doubled over the hilt.
He twisted it, gave it a hard shove, and yanked it free.
Kate cupped a hand over her mouth to smother a whimper. What the unholy fuck?
When Iliana hit the floor, he wiped the blade on her shirt and jeans until it was clean. That done, he rose and stalked toward Kate.
Her heart pounded as she shuffled back. “Why?”
“She betrayed me.” He strode past her, grabbed her hand, and hauled her with him. “She took you from me.”
“How do you know?”
“Why do you think she tried so hard to get in my bed?” He veered toward a row of motorcycles, his gaze sweeping over each one. “She was feeding information to the cartel.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Money. Protection. Who knows? Maybe they were holding something over her.” He punched something into his phone and pocketed it.
“That’s how they found you in the desert.”
“And how they knew you were important to me.”
Her chest constricted. “You knew she was a traitor all this time?”
“No.” He paused beside the biggest, meanest-looking bike and inserted the key from his pocket. “I’m suspicious in nature. Never trusted her. When she vanished after you were taken, I knew.”
So he killed her.
There was a time, not too long ago, when he would’ve run that blade through Kate.
He removed the backpack from his shoulders, stored the machete in it, and strapped it onto her back.
“Arturo!” he shouted across the garage. “You good?”
“Never been better.” The guard strode toward the open garage door, his face a mask of blood as he took off in the direction of lingering gunfire.
Tiago mounted the motorcycle and fired up the engine. “Hop on.”
“Helmets?”
“Afraid not.”
“Shouldn’t we take one of the sports cars, instead?”
“If we’re chased, this is the best option.” His eyes turned flinty. “I’m getting impatient.”
Grateful he’d brought her a pair of shorts and shoes, she swung a leg over the huge hunk of steel and scooted in behind him.
The handcuff on her wrist caught against his leather jacket as she wrapped her arms around his chest.
He tensed and adjusted her hold to squeeze him lower around his abs. Then he zoomed out of the garage, polluting the air with a hard rev of the engine.
Turning in the opposite direction of the gunfight, he hit the narrow streets at a speed that stole her breath.
Her hair whipped around her head, her body bending with his as he ducked low, his face protected by the small windshield.
She tucked in tight against his back and squinted her eyes away from the blasts of air. The sun sat just over the horizon, the humidity clinging to her pores despite the constant lashing of wind.
He didn’t slow. Not through stop signs or intersections. He raced out of the small, concrete town scattered with sagging buildings and minimal traffic and arrowed into a thick copse of trees.
The winding road snaked through a jungle-like terrain. Twenty minutes in, asphalt turned to dirt, and civilization faded behind her.
Did he know where he was going?
She clenched her arms around his waist, blinking through the windblown tangles of her hair.
Another twenty minutes zipped by, taking them deeper into the tropical wilderness of massive trees and hanging vines.
He’d stopped maintaining a constant speed. The motorcycle slowed, sped up, teetered a little, and thrust forward again.
Why did he feel so rigid in her arms?
Slipping a hand under his zipped jacket, she followed the grooves of his hard stomach to his chest. He felt really cold and sweaty through the shirt. His breaths heaved shallowly, erratically against her palm.
Then her fingers encountered wetness.
She yanked her hand back and held it up.
Blood.
“Tiago!” She grabbed his arm. “Stop the bike.”
“Almost there.”
“How far?” she shouted into the gust.
“Two hours.”
“You’ll be dead by then!”
He hit the gas, refusing to stop. The next mile blurred by. And another. Then the bike wobbled.
She held onto his waist, eyes closed, bracing for impact. But he kept them upright and found a turnoff, veering onto a trail and slowing through overgrown foliage.
Woody branches scratched her bare legs as he eased them to a stop without crashing.
She jumped off and spun in a circle, scanning the surroundings.
Trees. More trees. So much green and buzzing insects and endless nature. They were in a fucking jungle, without doctors or medical supplies.
“What the actual fuck, Tiago?” She whirled on him. “Were you shot? Stabbed?”
He killed the engine, slid off the bike, and walked to a nearby clearing. “Just need to sit for a second.”
His gait was wrong, lacking his usual power and confidence. He stumbled into a lopsided step, and she raced to his side, hooking his arm over her shoulders and lowering him to the ground.
Kneeling before him, she shrugged off the backpack and inspected his face.
Clammy complexion, pained eyes, sinful lips, he looked so damn beautiful, even in agony.
“Where’s your phone?” She patted the front pockets of his jeans. “Need to call Boones.”
“Already sent him an alert. My phone has a tracker. He’ll find us.”
A smidgen of relief loosened her shoulders.
“I have to remove your jacket.” She yanked down the zipper.
The instant she wrangled it off his arms, her heart plunged to her sneakers.
Multiple stab wounds gouged his shoulder, and it looked like a bullet went through the side of his chest. And the blood… God, she could taste the gravity of it on her tongue.
No wonder he’d moved her arms to his waist when she mounted the bike.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She ripped his t-shirt down the front, carefully removed it from his body, and shredded strips of it to use as bandages.
“The knife wounds are superficial, and the bullet just grazed my side.”
“Why is there so much blood?”
“You were going to run.”
The rapid change of subject stammered her breath, and she dragged her gaze to his. “What?”
“At the warehouse. You started out the garage door. But you came back. You chose me.” His voice broke on the last word, at odds with the smug look in his eyes.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I want my freedom back.” She tore open the backpack and dug through weapons, searching for medical supplies. “Do you have anything in here—?”
The click-click-click of metal yanked her attention to her wrist.
The open end of the handcuffs, which had hung from her arm a moment ago, was now shackled around his.
She pulled, and his hand came with it, snug within the cuff. Locked. “You did not just do that.”
“I’m not letting you go.” His eyes hooded, heavy with pain, but his timbre carried all the weight of a possessive, overbearing man.
“Where’s the key?”
“Don’t have it.”
“What if you die?” Outrage screeched into her voice.
“Not gonna die.”
“You’re bleeding all over the fucking place, and I don’t even know if the bullet is still in you.”
“Check the jacket.” He lowered to his back and dropped his unshackled arm across his for
ehead.
She snatched the pile of leather, swinging his cuffed hand around with hers as she hunted for a bullet hole.
There it was, a tiny tear in the back of the jacket. How had she missed that?
A knife had cut up his shoulder pretty good, but the leather wasn’t torn all to hell. The jacket must’ve been hanging open, which meant he’d zipped it later to hide the wounds from her.
Grinding her teeth, she ripped up the rest of his shirt and stared at the battlefield on his chest. “I don’t know what to do.”
“There’s a first-aid kit at the bottom of the backpack.”
He talked her through how to clean and dress the injuries. There was enough gauze to wrap the wounds, and his instructions were precise and calm. Given the number of scars on his body, he knew his way around an injury.
“How long before Boones arrives?” She wadded up the jacket and propped it under his head.
“Don’t know.” His voice took on an edge of pain. “An hour-ish. Maybe more.”
“What about Arturo?”
“He went to the desert with another guard. Need them there to look after Tate.”
Tiago could’ve just freed Tate and eliminated that complication, but this was neither the time nor place for that argument.
“Can we call someone else?” She used the extra pieces of the shirt to clean his mouth, cheeks, and neck.
“No.” He lay on his back and stared up at her, the look on his face not like a man who lost a lot of blood.
His tongue peeked out, wetting his lips, his gaze alert and watchful. Always watching, staring as if he were seconds from swallowing her whole.
“You must be hurting.” And delirious. She rummaged through the first-aid kit. “Do you have anything to dull the pain?”
“You.”
“Get real.”
“You are going to take the edge off.”
She let out a tight laugh and glanced down. He wasn’t even hard.
His eyes lost focus through a long, slow blink, as if he were fighting to stay awake. “Sit on my cock.”
“You’ve lost your damn mind. How can you think about that right now? You just killed like fifty men, drove an hour on a motorcycle while bleeding and half-dead. Not to mention you don’t even have enough blood in your body to get it up. Oh, and we’re probably surrounded by snakes, spiders, and random other venomous—”
“Shut the fuck up, Kate.” His pale lips failed to form the T in her name.
“Shit.” She reached for the red-soaked gauze on the side of his chest. “You’re still bleeding.”
“Apply pressure.” His voice was weak, reedy. He was fading fast.
Flattening her hands against the wound, she pressed hard and held it. His lashes lowered, hiding the agony in his eyes.
“Tiago.” She didn’t know if his injuries were life-threatening, but keeping him awake seemed important. “Stay with me, dammit.”
His eyes snapped open, sharpened, drilling into hers. “Need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
Her heart skipped. “You’re insane.”
“Love is insanity.”
Desperate to keep him alert and talking, she leaned in and asked, “What do you love about me?”
“First off…” He lifted his unshackled hand to her face. “Everything.”
His eyes fluttered shut, and his arm dropped.
Passed out.
CHAPTER 23
I love you?
Kate blew out a ragged breath.
Maybe those words would’ve meant something if Tiago weren’t caught in the delirium of blood loss, but right now, he didn’t know what he loved.
“Tiago.” Pressing against his wound with one hand, she pried open his eyes with the other. “Wake up.”
Nothing.
Her nerves rioted, quickening her pulse. “Tiago!”
When he didn’t stir, her anxiety burned to anger.
She was shackled in the middle of a jungle in Venezuela. At any moment, she could be ambushed by a rebel group, attacked by a man-eating panther, or strangled by an anaconda.
If he died…
She eyed the machete sticking out of his backpack, recalling how he’d freed her from the last dead body.
Fucking hell, she didn’t have the stomach for that.
“Wake up!” she shouted in his face.
Was he even breathing? Her heart raced as she scanned him for signs of life.
“Damn you, Tiago. Nothing says I love you like handcuffing me to your dead body.” She pressed shaky fingers against the pulse point on his throat, panicking. “This is sick and fucking twisted, even for you.”
A breath huffed past his lips, and he cracked open an eye.
“I’m not dead.” He shifted, groaning in pain. “Would drag my ball sac through ten miles of broken glass for another chance to be inside you.”
“Oh my God.” She groaned with a mix of relief and annoyance.
“You’re so beautiful.” His eyes glossed over and faded beneath the descent of thick lashes.
“No, no, no. You need to stay awake.”
“Did you fuck me unconscious?” The corner of his mouth crooked, but his eyes remained closed.
“You wish. Where’s your phone?”
“Boones will come.” A slurring whisper.
“Before or after you die?”
No answer.
She gripped his square jaw. Too slack. Too cold.
Too unconscious.
Fuck.
If he survived this, she was going to kill him.
She eased the leather jacket from beneath his lolling head and located his phone in the pocket. It was locked, of course, with a passcode she couldn’t hack. She couldn’t even tell if there was a signal.
What if they were in a dead zone? Was cell service required for tracking?
She checked the bullet wound, and it appeared to stop bleeding. Turning her attention to the backpack, she removed all the knives and tried each one on the handcuffs. None of them made a dent in the chain. Not even the machete.
She tried to pick the lock. That only ended in cursing, screaming hysterics.
Her mouth felt like stale toast, despite the mugginess in the air. There was no water, no way to hydrate. She hadn’t had anything to drink since last night.
Out of options, she turned her anger to the unconscious man at her side. “I hate you.”
The words tasted sour and made her stomach hurt.
She needed to hate him, but she couldn’t. She needed him to live, because if he didn’t, she would feel that loss in ways she didn’t want to examine.
An ache burned the backs of her eyes, and her chest caved beneath the constriction of fear.
“Don’t die.” She stretched out beside him and snuggled in under his uninjured shoulder, pressing herself so tightly against him she felt the slow thud of his heartbeat.
“Don’t you dare give up.” She buried her face into his neck and let the tears fall.
With her free hand clinging to the hilt of the machete, she forced herself to stay awake, her awareness heightened with every rustle and buzz in the jungle.
As the residual effects of adrenaline abandoned her, exhaustion barreled in. She fought the overpowering need to close her eyes, perking her ears, watching the trail, waiting.
When the rumble of a distant engine broke the silence, she shot to her feet and heaved the machete out in front of her.
Her pulse exploded as the vehicle approached. It could be anyone. Someone more interested in killing Tiago than saving his life.
A van emerged through the trees, slowing on the road at the entrance of the trail. Twenty feet away.
Only the front of the vehicle had windows, and through the glass, she made out two faces.
Faces she didn’t recognize.
Her hands shook as she planted her feet on either side of his body, crouching over him and holding out the machete.
The a
rm connected to hers limited her range of motion, but she had a weapon. Multiple knives. They would have to go through her to get to him.
The doors opened and shut. Her muscles trembled with enough force to stop her heart.
“Don’t come any closer!” She adjusted her grip on the hilt and bit down on her cheek, sawing through tender tissues.
Footsteps approached. Big men, wearing sunglasses, heavy boots, and armed to the gills with holstered guns and knives.
They didn’t run at her. Didn’t free their weapons and start shooting.
“Who are you?” she shouted. “What do you want?”
A creak sounded near the van. The back door closed, and a tall, gray-headed, black man emerged on the trail.
The warm, familiar face swarmed her with overwhelming emotion. The surge crashed through her so violently she nearly fell beneath the weight of it.
The machete tumbled into the foliage, and she buckled over, giving into the sobs that piled in her throat.
Boones reached her side and gripped the handcuffs on her wrist, staring at the link to Tiago’s arm. She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t the laughter that burst from his chest.
The comforting sound of it combined with the gentle squeeze of his fingers around hers reduced her to a hot mess of sobbing, laughing, maniacal hiccups.
“He’s lost so much blood.” She sobered and quickly walked him through the gruesome points of Tiago’s injuries.
The other two men gathered the backpack and weapons, and two minutes later, they had Tiago in their arms, up the trail, and laid out on his back in the rear of the van.
The handcuffs pulled her along. Boones joined her in the cargo space, which was loaded with multiple medical bags and equipment.
As much as she wanted the damn manacle off her wrist, she didn’t mention it as Boones went to work on Tiago’s wounds.
The light in the roof illuminated his steady scalpel and meticulous stitches, his face aglow with remarkable concentration.
She found a case of water amid the supplies and guzzled three bottles. She used another to wet Tiago’s lips and clean the blood from his body.
As Boones taped on the bandages, she filled him in on the events at the warehouse, explaining how things ended with Iliana.
He caught her up on what happened during the attack at the house. The news that Arturo was the only surviving guard hit her harder than she expected.
