by Brynne Asher
Just when I think it will never end, all that remains is the constant horn droning on. My lungs ache—my body begging for oxygen—my brain working hard to catch up. The weight pressing me into the filthy floorboard disappears and, when I peek over my shoulder, Gabe’s attention is focused on the massacre that unfolded. His elusive gun is still aimed out the front of the car. Once he sits upright, he leans forward between both seats and grabs Armando from behind, yanking him off the steering wheel. The silence is deafening as I hear dead weight fall to the side.
“You can get up,” Gabe says in a low, gruff voice.
Shaking, I push off the floor. Without looking at me, he grabs my arm to help pull me to the seat next to him. All I see is Armando, slumped in a bloody mess, sideways over the center console and poor Sergio, dead, collapsed against the passenger door. Sergio has been with us since we landed in Mexico at the beginning of the week. He was sweet and kind and seemed good at his job. He was vigilant with our security—I have no clue what happened today.
I can’t even process, at this moment, why Armando did what he did. I yelp and jerk when I feel a hand on my chin.
“Shhh.” Gabe cups my face and turns me to him. I tense when his other hand comes to my shoulder, sliding down my arm, over my hip, and firmly ends on my bare thigh with a squeeze. He’s lost his aviators and his blue eyes are piercing, following his hands down my body before jumping back up to my face. “You okay? Are you hurt?”
Finally finding the oxygen to survive, my chest heaves but I don’t answer. I feel my face tense and try to turn back to Sergio, but Gabe’s big hand grips me and forces me to look at him where he’s shaking his head. “Don’t. Focus on me. You’re okay. I don’t know what just happened, but you’re gonna have to be okay because we need to get out of here and by the way the car’s smoking, it’s gonna have to be on foot.”
I swallow over the lump in my throat and do everything I can to fight back my tears.
“Lillian?” he calls for me again, using a tone I’ve never heard from him before. It’s not soft—I doubt Gabe has a soft tone—but it’s weirdly reassuring, though it still has a bite to it. “We’ve gotta get out of here. You with me?”
I don’t answer him, but ask, “You have a gun?”
His eyes narrow, but other than that, he doesn’t move a muscle.
I ramble on stupidly. “They were going to kill us, weren’t they?”
Gabe’s brows furrow and he tips his head to study me. At the same time, his hand slides back up to my hip where he gives me a squeeze. “Lillian, stop.”
I feel my body start to tremble as the words jumping around my head fly out my mouth. “Oh. They were going to kill us. Maybe not now, but eventually. Armando set us up. This is like … I don’t know what this is like—”
Gabe’s thumb brushes my lips to shut me up and yanks me toward him where he presses me into his chest. If there was ever a time when someone needed to get their point across swift and fast, now would be at the top of that list. “Stop. Don’t think. We need to get out of this fucking car and off the road before whoever sent these shitheads comes to look for them. That didn’t exactly go down quietly. So, stop. Grab what you can carry and let’s go.”
Held tight to him, his words whip across the side of my face in a minty breath and, if anything has, that gets my attention. His arm is wrapped around my back and he’s holding me close as we sit in this smoking car surrounded by death and blood. I have no other choice, so I nod.
“Good.” On a squeeze, he gives me one more intense gaze and lets me go. “Grab your bag. When we get to civilization and find a signal, we’ll need our laptops, phones, and passports.”
He grabs his messenger bag and climbs out the door. I can’t help myself. I take one more look at Sergio and my heart clenches.
“Lillian.” I look back and Gabe is standing in the open door with his arm outstretched, offering me his hand.
I look at his hand, the one I’ve looked at so many times, even gushed over it in my head, wishing it belonged to someone nice, someone more pleasant, or just someone who didn’t hate me. But it doesn’t. It belongs to my boss’s boss, who’s been walking around with a secret gun on his ankle and who just killed five men, probably saving us from who knows what.
He motions his hand for me to take it again and I can tell he’s losing his patience. “If I have to fucking pick you up and carry you, I will, but we need to get outta here. I can’t leave you in the middle of the rainforest.”
Oh. Yes. We need to get out of here.
Without hesitation, I put my pale hand in his large, tan one. When he wraps his fingers around mine, I grab my tote with my other and let out the breath I’ve been holding. Gabe pulls me out of the car and, even though it’s stifling and hot, I appreciate the fresh air.
That is, until we round the front of the car and I see the results of Gabe protecting us. The four heavily-armed men, dead on the jungle floor.
Gabe throws his messenger bag over his head, hanging it across his body and bends to pick up one of the rifles, along with some extra ammo off one of the dead guys. Slinging all of it over his shoulder, he looks at me in a way he never has before. I feel a little lightheaded and I’m not sure if it’s from all the dead bodies or the way his eyes are raking up and down my thankfully alive one.
Giving his head a little shake, he sighs and mutters, “This is going to be interesting. Let’s go.”
And with that, he turns and disappears into the rainforest. It doesn’t matter how much I liked poor Sergio, I do not want to be left here by myself, so I put one wedged espadrille in front of the other and pray to God I don’t see a snake—reptile or the murderous human variety.
I have a feeling summer camp did nothing to prepare me for this.
I had no idea how right I was.
Chapter 3
Hell
Gabriel Blackburn
Hell.
I’m in fucking hell.
And it has not one thing to do with being set up by our driver and ambushed in the middle of a Nicaraguan rainforest. Though, I can’t lie, that sucked.
Four months ago, my marketing director came to me with a resume of the perfect applicant, who was not only fluent in Spanish, but who also had industry sales experience. I gave him the green light to hire ASAP. I had high hopes of growing our foreign markets, so finding someone to fill both roles in our time frame was a fucking miracle because the rest of us were struggling to communicate with the clients after our last Spanish-speaking rep left. My hell started when I laid eyes on our new Central America rep. I was shocked.
What wasn’t included on her resume was her long, dark blond hair, her fair skin, those deep brown eyes, or lips so perfect I have to force myself to think about my Great Aunt Libby’s cats to get my mind off her. Aunt Libby has as many taxidermied cats as she does live ones. And what tops that freak show off is that my uncle stuffs those cats in their basement—DIY style.
What humans aren’t willing to admit is that their pets are a representation of themselves. Show me a freak-of-nature pet, ten grand says their humans are weird as shit, too.
Case in point, Aunt Libby is a freak show and so are her cats. It’s a weird-ass cat bonanza on steroids that still freaks me out as an adult. And that’s saying something. I was a Ranger in the Army and just took out our driver and four armed guerillas in the jungle, but I still cringe when I think about those damned cats.
Over the last four months, I’ve had to force myself to focus on those feline freaks—stuffed and otherwise—every time Lillian Burkette’s perfect lips curve into a smile so bright, all I can do is wonder what effect those lips would have wrapped around my cock. The way she lights up a room with only her smile, she’d surely send me straight into blowjob utopia, where I’d drift around like a fucking float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
I keep telling myself blowjob utopia doesn’t exist, but I’ll never be in the position to find out since she’s my employee and I don’t shit
where I live. Also, it would suck—metaphorically speaking—to expect the blowjob of all blowjobs, only to be let down by poor suction, no ball stimulation, or—shoot me with my own gun—if she ignored the tip. It’s better to stick to my fantasy than be plagued by bad-blowjob reality.
This is the mantra I’ve chanted to myself for the last four months right after I think of the dead cats decorating the guest room I was forced to sleep in when I had to visit Great Aunt Libby.
I thought, after time, it would get easier being around Lillian and, in some ways, it has. After four months of ignoring her and wearing her down with the surliest demeanor I could muster, I’m pretty sure she’s given up on winning me over. No longer do I get warm smiles, sweet “good mornings,” or offers of home-baked delights that smell so damn good when she brings them into the office, I have to make myself not ravish the whole basket in the same way I’ve dreamed of ravishing her.
It also doesn’t help that everyone loves her because she’s like the sun, floating around the office, drawing everyone into orbit around her warmth and baskets full of sugary pleasures. She’s become everyone’s best friend—offering to water plants when people are out of town or babysitting. Hell, she even threw a retirement party for someone in HR last week.
It’s not just her personality that’s made my associates bring her into the fold like a long-lost child. She’s smart and damn good at her job. She wasn’t lying earlier. She’s grown her territory in huge proportions in her first quarter alone and, from what I’ve seen all week, clients worship her.
She went from just another beautiful face, to a beautiful face with a rocking body that houses the sweetest and smartest woman any man would fight to have in his bed. Don’t even get me started on her voice. So soft, with only a hint of a southern accent that makes everything she says even sweeter.
What’s not to love? She’s perfect.
Which is why I’m in utter, fucking hell.
We left the client at around four o’clock and since the fucking ambush, we’ve been walking for hours. She’s in those sexy sandals that I’ve tried hard not to look at all day because they do amazing things to her bare legs. Those legs in that dress, in turn, do other things to my cock that I’ve had to fight off during client meetings. I slowed my pace for her a bit, but even maneuvering in those shoes throughout the rainforest, she’s keeping up better than I imagined. Nevertheless, listening to her breathe for hours has been torture.
Damn her for needing so much oxygen.
The sun is starting to disappear and I glance back down at the compass on my phone. We’ve been moving on a westerly path since we started and haven’t come in contact with anything. From my calculations, we would’ve had at least another hour-and-a-half drive back to town. Which means, we should eventually hit civilization and be able to get back to our hotel. My only concern is who we’ll run into when we get there. Two Americans in Central America are bound to draw attention. It’s why I hire security and always carry when I’m here, but that wasn’t enough this time.
I swipe the large makeshift machete, that’s really just a stick, through the brush ahead of me and stop abruptly. Lillian stumbles and grabs onto the back of my shirt to balance herself and my muscles tense at her touch.
“Sorry.” She pushes away quickly. “I’ve been watching the ground so I don’t trip.”
When I turn to look at her, I put a finger to my lips and shake my head to shut her up. She’s close, standing a breath away as she frowns up at me before leaning to the side to peer around my shoulder.
Her face lights up and she whispers, “A house.”
I frown and turn to the side, pulling her behind a patch of thick trees and brush. Ever since I laid my hands on her body in the car after the shooting, I’ve thought of nothing besides touching her again.
Okay. I’ve also thought about how to get us out of here, dead cats, and touching her again.
“Shh,” I whisper. “It’s nothing but a lean-to and we have no idea if anyone’s in it.”
“Well, it might not be a house, but it’s definitely someone’s home. There’s a stool out front and some tools—even a pot by the little fire pit. Maybe someone can tell us how to get out of here.”
We’ve barely spoken to one another since we started hiking, so to hear her speak, especially with her words brushing my skin, is fascinating and I have to make myself focus on her deep-brown eyes rather than her lips. She’s pulled her hair out of her face and tied it high on her head, with strands that didn’t feel like cooperating glued to her fair skin with perspiration.
I do my best to think about the issue at hand and not be jealous of her unruly locks. “Have you forgotten that not everyone out here is our friend? We can’t assume someone’s just going to welcome us in for dinner.”
Her face falls as if I just killed all hope she creatively concocted in her head. But what almost does me in is her fidgeting back and forth on her feet, rubbing her body from her tits to her knees against me. “It’s just … well … I was hoping we could take a break. I hate to complain, but my feet hurt and I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve slowed down even more.”
She lifts a shoulder, causing her tit to rub against me. If I don’t let go of her soon and get my mind on something else, I’ll be forced to steal a cat from Aunt Libby and carry it around with me at all times. It’ll be my very own cock-softening, taxidermied pussy. I’ll name it Limp Dick. Even it might not do the trick because right now—I’m waging a war against my cock and the more she moves, the harder it is to not become … well … harder.
As if she could read my mind, she puts her hands to my chest and pushes, stepping away from me so I’m forced to let her go. “I knew we needed to get to wherever we were going fast and you were on a mission. Plus, moving at a good clip meant there’s a better chance I wouldn’t see a snake and, at this point in the day, I think a snake might do me in. You seem to know where you’re going, right?”
I narrow my eyes. “Generally.”
“Oh.” She looks to the side and hitches her bag up her shoulder and I notice how dirty she is—we both are, really—from walking through the jungle. Her dress is ripped over her thigh and she’s got cuts and scrapes all over her arms and legs from the brush. She slaps a bug on her arm when she goes on. “I guess generally is better than being lost, but the sun is going down. Do you have any idea how much farther we’ll have to walk?”
I sigh and shake my head, not wanting to admit it out loud. But with no signal, the best I can do is keep us on a straight trek so we’re not circling ourselves.
“Okay.” Her voice is small and not only does she look worried, but also tired.
“Stay here,” I say and her eyes go big. There’s nothing around that I can tell—not even an old road leading up to it but I need to make sure it’s safe. “I’m going to check out the shack. Maybe we can stay there for the night if it’s abandoned. Stay put. You’ll be able to see me the whole time.”
She nods and I move, making my way to the back of the lean-to. There aren’t any windows, but I don’t hear anything and, when I get around to the front, it seems deserted. Weeds and brush are growing up through the old fire pit and everything is rusted to the point of falling apart. I step inside carefully and the boards creek under my feet, but nothing seems like it will give way. There are some rags lying around that look like they once might have been blankets along with trash and enough cobwebs to trap Sasquatch.
I step back out and look where Lillian is waiting. “It’s all clear. We can settle here for the night.”
I watch her move through the last of the brush and walk gingerly to me.
A night with Lillian Burkette.
I had no idea I could fall deeper into hell, but here I am.
Chapter 4
Supercalifragilistic
Lillian Burkett
Gabe took off into the jungle like it was his playground and had navigated it a million times. I’m
not terrible with directions, but when dropped in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country, I’d have no clue where to go. I was only too happy to follow. Even if my feet had daggers shooting through them from my shoes, I wasn’t about to complain or ask to stop.
But, my feet are killing me and I didn’t lie—I’m about to pee my pants.
When I walk through the opening of the little house, Gabe is using a branch with leaves on it to clear out the cobwebs and sweep out as much trash and dirt as he can.
Hmm. Gabe Blackburn does housework and, from the looks of it, he’s not half-bad at floors.
I make my way across the small room and dig through my big tote bag until I find my travel packet of tissues. Setting my bag on the floor, I turn to my boss and do my absolute best to keep this professional, which is next to impossible. “I need a moment of privacy. As freaked out as I am about what happened earlier, not to mention my fear of snakes, I would appreciate it if you could stay here and only come out if I scream bloody murder.”
Gabe looks up from his makeshift broom and after dragging his eyes over me, raises a brow. “Watch out for poison ivy. That would suck.”
I expel all the air in my lungs. Yes, squatting on a patch of poison ivy would suck, but he didn’t need to say that out loud. I try to even my voice. “I’ll be right back.”
I walk around the back of our little shelter and do everything I can to ignore the pain from my shoes. I try to peer into the shack to make sure he can’t see me through the aged boards. Thinking I’m safe and not wanting to wander too far, I take care of my business and hurry back. I’m not looking forward to spending time alone with the big boss, let alone all night in an abandoned house with him.
