by Cindy Dees
She pulled back from him like she was offended. What was wrong with her? A cool hand touched his forehead and he jumped, startled.
“You’re sweating,” she announced.
“Thanks for that update, Doc.”
She sat up at that. “Give me your wrist. I want to take your pulse.”
“I thought you said you don’t practice medicine.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it.”
“Lie down. I’ll be okay. It was just a rough day.”
“No, it wasn’t. Not for you. It was a hell of a day for me, but you were as cool as a cucumber the whole time. You didn’t show the slightest sign of stress until about two minutes ago.”
“Delayed reaction,” he ground out.
“Not buying it,” she announced blithely. “Gimme your wrist.”
She was one of those women you just knew would get more stubborn the more you dug in your heels with her. Rather than argue all damned night about her taking his pulse, he handed over his wrist and pressed his lips together in irritation. “I suppose you have a blood pressure cuff and a stethoscope in your bag, too.”
“Be quiet,” she ordered.
He rolled his eyes while she counted his pulse for the next week-and-a-half. Finally, she let his wrist go.
“I don’t need a blood pressure cuff or a stethoscope. I’ve had my ear on your chest for the past five minutes, and I heard your heart beating harder and faster the longer I lay there.”
Damn. He bluffed with desperate aplomb, “What can I say? You have that effect on me.”
“Mmm. I like the sound of that. Too bad it’s a lie.”
He stared up at her in the dark. He was an accomplished liar. He was professionally trained to be good at it! And she’d seen through him like he was a freshly washed window.
He didn’t know what to say next. All the usual putoffs he gave doctors-she’d brushed past them like they were pesky gnats. He had no more gambits left. There was always the truth, of course. But if he’d managed for eight months not to spill his guts to shrinks who extracted confessions from special operators for a living, there was no way he was telling this woman after knowing her for two days. She already was looking at him weirdly and he needed her to follow his instructions without hesitation if things got dicey for them again. He didn’t need her thinking he was a complete nutcase and questioning everything he told her to do.
He could make it through the night. Just one night without the sleeping pills. No big deal. He had superhuman self-discipline. Could tolerate vast amounts of fatigue. Had pain tolerances that most people couldn’t even imagine, let alone achieve. He could lie here and grit his teeth for six hours if he had to, no matter how jumpy and desperate he felt.
Thankfully, she lay back down beside him.
“Could you relax your shoulder muscles a little, John? They’re as hard as steel right now and frankly don’t make a very comfortable headrest.”
“Take the duffel bag. It’s full of clothes.”
“No, that’s okay. I like your shoulder. Just less tense.”
He did his best to relax. He really did. He went through all the usual exercises, releasing his muscles one by one, working his way down from his forehead to his toes. But by the time he got to his knees each time, the back of his shoulders were knotted up as badly as ever.
Melina finally sat up again. “Roll over on your stomach.”
“Huh?”
“Roll over. I’m giving you a back rub.”
“I don’t need one. Really.”
She merely knelt, glaring down at him in expectant silence. Damn, that woman was pushy!
He huffed and levered himself over onto his belly, his legs bent at the knees and his heels sticking up in the air. Not exactly dignified, but he forgot all about it when Mel swung her left thigh over his upper legs, straddling him between her soft inner thighs. Hell-o.
Her hands were heaven. She wasn’t afraid to use some force to really knead into the muscles. The pleasure bordered on pain, and couldn’t have been more perfect. Add Swedish caliber masseuse to her long list of assets.
“You keep popping up with talents like this and I’m gonna have to marry you,” he groaned.
Her hands went still on his back. “I beg your pardon?”
He frowned, trying to recapture what he’d just said. Talents…marriage…oh, crap. He tried to sit up, but she was planted squarely on his buttocks at the moment, and unless he threw her against the roof, she wasn’t budging.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just talking smack. You give a hell of a back rub, Mel.”
Her hands went back to kneading below his left shoulder blade. “Thanks. You just startled me. I don’t think of myself in terms of being marriage material.”
He tried to look over his shoulder and only ended up hurting his neck. “Why the hell not? What man wouldn’t want you? Surely you have to fight guys off with a stick.”
“Not so much anymore.”
He snorted. “Is that pharmaceutical firm you work at a nunnery or something?”
She laughed. “Hardly. More like a shark farm.”
“Ahh. The men come on too strong?”
He felt her shrug through her palms. “They’re mostly traditional Hispanic men. I’m an empowered American woman who happens to want something more than being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. We don’t always see eye-to-eye on how a relationship should go.”
He grinned against his forearm. He’d bet not.
“Roll over,” she ordered. She lifted up, partially off of him, but it was clear that she intended to continue her attentions on his front side-still straddling his hips.
His breath caught in his throat. Okay, then. Give the good doctor high marks for distracting him from little plastic bottles of pills. He complied, rolling onto his back awkwardly. His shoulder blades had barely touched the truck bed before her mouth was on his, her breasts mashing against his through their shirts.
“Touching you like that turns me on,” she mumbled against his mouth. “I hope you don’t mind.”
He laughed in actual, physical pain-but not in his back-his reaction to her was so fast and hard. “Touch me some more,” he mumbled back.
They banged their knees and elbows and got tangled up in shirtsleeves and shoelaces, and ended up laughing in each other’s arms, finally mostly naked. He reached up to cup her breasts, to test their weight and resilience, and she arched her back, throwing her head back on a gasp of pleasure. Man. Talk about responsive. He was willing to go slow, to pleasure her the way she’d already pleasured him by putting her hands all over him. But she was having none of it. Her hair swung forward in a curtain around her face as she fumbled between them, and then she was sliding down over him, all slick heat, a tight glove of exquisite sensation that made his buttocks clench harder than steel beneath her.
She gave a patented Melina hip rock and groaned. He matched the sound, then gritted out between clenched teeth, “Do that again.”
She complied. And shuddered around him. He gaped up at her. She was there already? Ho-ly cow. He moved beneath her, and she moaned again. She matched his motion, and they quickly found a rhythm between them.
A loud squeak sounded and Melina froze above him. “What was that?”
He grinned widely. “That, darlin’, was the Land Rover’s shock absorbers. We’re giving this poor old bucket a worse workout than it got in those gullies.”
She giggled, collapsing on his chest in embarrassment and humor. “I’ve never done it in a car,” she confessed.
He shook his head in mock horror. “What was wrong with the boys in your high school? How could they let down the male half of the species like that?”
She sat up once more. “Look! The windows are fogged over and everything!”
He laughed up at her. “Next time we’ll do it in the front seat. You haven’t lived until you’ve had sex with a gearshift jabbing you in the si
de. Everyone should experience it at least once before they die.”
It was as if an arctic wind blew through the air. She froze, and all the joy drained out of her like water pouring from a glass.
“What’s wrong, Mel? Talk to me, sweetheart.”
She shook her head violently and her hair spilled down around her face, a veil he couldn’t see past. He reached up to push it back, to look into her eyes, but she moved determinedly, riding him hard and fast with a desperation that bordered on manic. He wanted to stop. To ask her what in the hell had just happened. But the demands of her body pulling at his, sliding up and down his shaft like a jackhammer, battering against him as if the world were about to end, were too much.
He closed his eyes and allowed her to suck him into the moment, to wipe all thought from his mind, to fill him with a lust so bright and pure and hot it seared away everything but sheer sensation. The world narrowed down to her perspiration-slicked body slamming against his, his equally galvanized body shivering beneath hers, arching up, meeting her thrusts with his own, driving into her with every ounce of his strength.
And then the orgasm started, shimmering outward in ever-expanding circles until it consumed his entire being, building into an explosion that convulsed his entire body into a single giant spasm of release, a shout tearing from his throat at the same moment she keened a long, waivering note of her own release.
He shuddered once. Twice. A third time. And finally, finally, the orgasm released its hold on him. He collapsed back against the hard, cold floor, wrung out to the dregs of his existence. Melina collapsed on his chest, breathing like a spent racehorse. He knew the feeling. Sweat lubricated their entire bodies and she slid easily against him when, a few minutes later, she finally pressed up onto her elbows to stare down at him.
He did push her hair back then, determined to see what was in her oh-so-expressive gaze. She might lie to him with her mouth, but her eyes had never lied to him. She didn’t resist this time when he split the curtain of golden silk and tucked her hair behind her neck, holding it there lightly. He stared up at her, and she stared back at him in the darkness.
And what he saw in her unwillingly, painfully honest gaze made his blood run cold.
It wasn’t fear.
Or desperation.
Or even despair.
It was nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.
It might as well have been a mirror into his own soul, for he was staring into the abyss.
Chapter 7
By the time they caught sight of a village late the next morning, Melina felt like a giant bruise from head to foot from sitting in the car so long. Silently, they drove along the floor of a deep valley between towering twin peaks. There’d been utter silence between them since that devastating moment last night when John gazed into the depth of her soul, and finally recoiled from what he saw.
Not that she blamed him. She’d come out here to die, plain and simple, and he’d seen it clear as day in her gaze. Thankfully, he hadn’t belabored the point with pleas to reconsider or lectures about the preciousness of life. She knew all that. Heck, she didn’t want to die. But the situation was what it was. And she had no more choices left.
She started when John actually broke the silence, speaking emotionlessly. “That’s where we’re going.”
She looked up at the line of peaks soaring at least a thousand feet above them and gulped. This was the place where she was supposed to rendezvous with Huayar’s men and get further instructions. A long series of switchbacks led from the valley floor up one of the mountains to a village perched at its summit. There it was. The point of no return.
She ventured a glance over at John. As it had been since they made love last night, his jaw was set in lines of stone, and his eyes were…dead.
Under normal circumstances it would have scared the hell out of her. But as it was, she knew exactly how he felt. She didn’t know why he felt that way, but she recognized the great void of black despair yawning inside him the same way it did inside of her.
With every mile behind them, the darkness consumed a little more of her. In another few minutes, John would hand her over to Huayar’s men and leave her. The oppressive weight of her looming fate made breathing difficult. John would say it was just the altitude getting to her, but she knew better. She would be well and truly lost.
John guided the Land Rover around the first switchback.
She knew the source of her despair. It had come upon her the moment she’d made her decision. When the ransom letter arrived from Huayar demanding that she hand herself over to him in return for the lives of her brother Mike, and her parents, it had taken her about thirty seconds to absorb the implications of her choice and about another two seconds to decide that she was willing to sacrifice herself to save her family.
John downshifted and went around another switchback.
Nope, not a difficult decision at all. Just an incredibly painful one. Thing was, she liked living. Not that her life was any great shakes. She spent most of her waking hours locked in her lab, experimenting with common over-the-counter chemicals, trying to find a formula to replace methamphetamine as the next designer drug of the new millennium. Not with the intent to market it, of course, but rather to help governments and pharmaceutical firms anticipate which common chemicals and medications needed to be regulated and controlled. And if she was lucky, to find a way to counteract its negative effects.
Still, she enjoyed the little things in life-sunlight on her face. The feel of the ocean on her feet. The song sparrow who serenaded her faithfully every morning outside her bedroom window. Old movies and pizza with double pepperoni and pajamas warm out of the dryer.
Another switchback.
The choice was simple. Her life or the lives of the three people she loved most in the world. It was no choice at all. And in the moment when she’d come to understand that, darkness had claimed her soul.
The Land Rover groaned a little as the road grew steeper and spiraled around another hairpin curve. John downshifted again.
She didn’t want to die, dammit!
And then there was John himself. In his arms she’d found a joy she’d never dreamed existed, let alone was possible for her. He made love to her with his entire being, like she was the only other person on Earth. It was extraordinary. It completely consumed her, and she thought maybe he felt the same way. And for just an instant-long enough to remember what it felt like to breathe-making love with him held back the darkness.
“Stop the car, John,” she said abruptly.
He did so with alacrity. “What’s up?”
“I need you to promise me something.”
“What?” In a single word, his curiosity was replaced by caution.
“Please don’t mess this up for me. I’m making a deal with these guys, and at all costs, I need that deal to happen. No matter what you think of it, you have to promise not to interfere or screw it up.”
That sent both of his eyebrows sailing upward. But then that mask of his that showed absolutely nothing of his thoughts settled back into place. “And if I don’t promise?”
“Then I’m firing you, getting out of this car, and walking the rest of the way up the mountain by myself. I am going to go through with this deal.”
He nodded grimly to himself as if in confirmation. “It is blackmail, then. What do you have to sell, and what are they offering you?”
Her lips thinned into a tight, white line.
He threw up a hand in surrender. “All right. Fine. Don’t tell me. I’m your greatest asset, but if you refuse to take advantage of what I can do for you, there’s nothing I can do about it. I promise not to block your deal.”
“You swear?” she asked nervously.
His brows slammed down hard. “Honey, I may not be a lot of things, but I am a man of my word. If I say I will or won’t do something, you can bet your life on it.”
And that was exactly what she was doing. She was betting her life and her family’s life
on him keeping his word. It had been a huge risk to bring anyone along with her on this journey at all, let alone a big, strong, capable guy like him. She could only pray his presence didn’t tick off Huayar so badly that the crime lord backed out of the deal. But she’d simply been too scared-too weak-to do this by herself.
“Are we ready to proceed?” John asked tersely. “The lookouts are no doubt beginning to wonder what the hell we’re doing, just sitting here like this. And believe me, you don’t want to make these guys suspicious. They’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
“How do you know who these people are?” she shot back.
This time a single eyebrow arched sardonically. “I already told you. I’ve run around in this part of the world before. I know where I am, and I know whose turf I’m operating on.”
She sighed. He was entirely too smart for his own good. Thank goodness he’d promised to behave himself. “Let’s go.”
His jaw muscles rippling, he threw the Land Rover into gear and it lurched into motion.
Here went nothing.
The village looked much like the last one, except the houses clung precariously to the side of the mountain in terraced rows with narrow, stone streets between them. It was dusty and poor and strangely devoid of pedestrians, just like the last village.
“Where is everybody?” she murmured.
“Hiding. When a stranger comes to town, they don’t want to get caught in the cross fire.”
“You make it sound like gunslingers duel in the streets around here.”
“They do.”
“But…that’s barbaric!”
He asked sharply, “Where did you get the crazy idea that this was a civilized corner of the world?”
“Point taken. Thank goodness I brought along a hired gun of my own, eh?” She was trying to lighten the mood, but his grim nod of agreement wrecked the attempt.
“I tremble to think what would happen to you if I weren’t here,” he grumbled under his breath.
She reached across the vehicle to squeeze his knee in gratitude. “I’m glad you’re here, too, John. I couldn’t do this without you.”
