Touching Midnight

by Fiona Hood-Stewart

  As Quin walked past him, plait swinging down her spine, that long-legged swagger doing bad things to his libido, he held his temper in check.

  He was a whole lot harder than Olivia had ever been, but even so, Quin had gotten what she wanted—and more.

  Now, if she had her way, he would be in her company practically twenty-four seven.

  They reached the mission just before moonset, the night silent except for the hoot of an owl, the buildings looming with a ghostly luminescence.

  Quin climbed the fence and shrugged out of her daypack. With Jay helping, she would get much further, faster, than on her own, and with his engineering skills, it was entirely possible they would succeed and actually gain entry to the temple.

  They reached the split in the covered walkway that ran between the original mission house and Jay’s apartment.

  “Wait.”

  Quin caught a flash of the intention in Jay’s gaze a second before his hand tangled in her plait at the base of her neck, sending a hot bolt of adrenaline through her.

  His head dipped, his breath warm on her cheek. She had a moment to register the scent of soap and clean male skin, the sharper scent of sweat, and then his mouth was on hers. The kiss was short, matter-of-fact—the no-frills variety—but even so, after ten years of anticipation, it sent a hot thrill up her spine that beat to death any other lip contact she could ever recall.

  His head lifted. Her gaze followed the line of his jaw, those sharp, mouthwatering cheekbones and dark eyes, and she fought the instinctive desire to rise up on her toes, wrap her arms around his neck and cling. “That’s it?”

  She might be the last surviving twenty-eight-year-old virgin on the planet, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know what it felt like to be thoroughly kissed.

  A hand landed on the wall behind her, effectively caging her, and she was once again reminded that the only real fact they had about Jay’s past was that it had been obliterated by three bullets, every one of them designed to kill.

  “What did you expect? You threatened to cut off a certain part of Luis’s anatomy if he so much as touched you.”

  This time she met his gaze, and her heart thudded at the way he was watching her. Ten years ago she would have given her eyeteeth to have him look at her like that—but after ten years she should have been immune. The problem was, she was used to city men—men who played by a convoluted set of rules based around their careers and social positions, men she had never particularly wanted. Jay was utterly different—direct and completely male—and the gauntlet she’d just thrown down had been the equivalent of throwing a chunk of raw meat in front of a hungry lion. “Luis is Luis. He nails anything that moves.”

  “That would explain the explosion in the village population, then.”

  She took a breath and let it out slowly, unbearably aware of his hand at her nape, the hold male and possessive. Abruptly, she lost her temper. If she had an Achilles heel, Jay was it. She was tired of telling herself that he didn’t matter—that he hadn’t overshadowed every almost-relationship she’d ever had. “I’ve waited ten years.”

  “And you think I haven’t?”

  His blunt statement was somehow shocking, even though she’d always known the tension between them went both ways.

  The silence stretched, thick enough to cut. She felt the faint tug as he jerked the band from her plait, the faint stirring on her scalp as his fingers sifted through her hair.

  Jay’s gaze locked on hers, and suddenly the night was hot and airless. “Then let’s try that kiss again.”

  She felt herself moved back a half step, the plastered wall cool at her back; then his mouth came down on hers, firm and frankly hungry as his tongue slid into her mouth.

  Quin angled her mouth and stretched as she wound both arms around his neck, and he groaned and shifted, sliding one thigh between hers. His palms slid beneath her T-shirt to settle against the naked skin at the small of her back, and her belly clenched. She wanted more, and, abruptly, he obliged, as his palms shifted, peeling up her T-shirt until his hands found her breasts.

  His mouth lifted from hers, and she sucked in a lungful of air as his teeth closed on the sensitive join of neck and shoulder. The raw tension peaked, shimmering into liquid heat.

  An odd sense of disorientation shivered through her, as if her sense of balance had temporarily gone and nothing was stable or fixed, not even the ground.

  Jay lifted his head, the movement reluctant, as if he wanted to sink back down and go for a repeat performance. “The earth did just move,” he murmured, his gaze unreadable in the moonlight, “but it wasn’t the kiss—it’s another quake. Looks like Valle del Sol’s on the move again.”

  Twenty-One

  Quin and Jay breached the barrier of rock in the tunnel just before lunch. They’d systematically excavated near the ceiling, on the simple logic that up high, the rock pile narrowed, so there was less to dig through.

  Jay disappeared through the hole. “Don’t come after me until I call you.”

  Interminable minutes later, he appeared and held out his hand, and Quin scrambled through.

  This part of the tunnel, she discovered, was exactly the same as the entrance, straight and featureless, and sloping ever so slightly downhill. As they walked, splashing through puddles and casting their flashlight beams over walls that were seeping and encrusted with mineral deposits, the tunnel gradually broadened and flattened out, and the trickling stream that had developed dropped beneath a deep fissure in the floor.

  Jay stepped over the yawning split and held out his hand. “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

  Quin accepted his grip, a tingling jolt traveling up her arm at the contact, and stepped across. He let her go almost immediately, but the awareness that brief touch had engendered remained.

  They rounded a corner, the first bend they’d encountered, and were stopped by another wall of rubble.

  Jay played his light over the jagged seam where shattered granite met the smoothly cut ceiling and swore softly.

  Quin stared at the rock fall, counted to ten and resolutely began shifting stones.

  Half an hour later, they were still shifting rubble without any discernible change to the wall.

  “Take a break, you’re tired.”

  Quin gripped a chunk of granite and hauled, her back aching. Abruptly, the rock gave and she staggered back into Jay’s chest.

  Leather-gloved hands gripped her arms, steadying her. “I said take a break. What’s your hurry?”

  She dropped the rock, temper flashing. She was tired and filthy, her boots and the bottom half of her jeans soaked from wading through water, her tank top glued to her skin with a mixture of sweat and stone dust. She had no way of explaining her hurry without sounding like a madwoman. All she knew was that she had to get into the temple, and she had to find whatever had gotten left behind before Cain got his filthy hands on it. “You said it yourself, this place could come down any time.”

  “Then maybe I should haul your ass out of here right now.”

  Quin regarded him narrowly. He was tough enough to do it, but she wouldn’t go quietly. “Don’t even try it.”

  “Or what?”

  Her teeth snapped together. Good question. They’d been warily circling each other since that intimate little episode last night, but there hadn’t been time for anything personal. The aftershock itself, registering four point five on the Richter scale, had broken windows and brought down roof tiles. It had also collapsed a section of the tunnel that Cain had excavated but not braced, and claimed a third life: one of the security personnel who had apparently decided to take a nap inside the maze.

  “This.” Quin’s hand landed in the center of his chest. She shoved him back a step and kept shoving until his back hit the wall. She could feel his heart slamming against her palm, smell the scent of his skin. His gaze locked with hers.

  She stripped off her gloves, then reached up and pulled his head down. He came without restraint, mouth
sinking onto hers, the kiss even hotter and hungrier than it had been last night.

  When he finally lifted his head, she let out a breath. “You should have kissed me like that years ago.”

  “And wrecked your life?” He peeled off his gloves and let them drop to the floor. “The last thing either of us needed was a relationship.”

  She studied the pulse at his throat, cupped the hard line of his jaw. “And now?”

  “Now,” he said, sliding the band from her hair, “we see where it takes us.”

  His mouth feathered her neck, and her eyes drifted closed, a shiver running through her as he peeled her tank top over her head and unclipped her bra. “This is no place to make love.”

  “It’s the only place.”

  She caught the edge of his grin and found her mouth twitching in response, despite the intense emotion. With Cain at one end of the valley, Olivia and Hannah at the other, and who knew how many news crews, sightseers and looters roaming the hills in between, he was right. In Valle del Sol, there was no privacy.

  Jay brought her hands to the fastening of his jeans. “Do the honors, I’m busy.”

  His mouth settled on hers as she unfastened and unzipped, and he groaned, abandoning the niceties and yanking at her zipper.

  “Damn, I hate jeans.”

  She braced herself against his shoulders as he peeled down her jeans and panties, then slipped them off with her boots. “Too bad. Get used to them.”

  “Are you telling me you don’t own a dress?”

  “The closest I’ve got is my graduation gown.”

  His teeth gleamed as he toed off his own boots and stepped out of his jeans. “I must be a masochist,” he muttered, but she was too busy taking in the real estate as he made a crude bed out of their clothing to argue that point.

  He held out his hand and pulled her down with him. “I won’t argue—as long as you don’t wear pants and boots to bed.”

  Her legs tangled with his, and her heart caught in her throat as he moved her beneath him, the weight of him heavy and male and shatteringly intimate. This was new—she was more used to fighting than acquiescing. “No pants. I can’t promise about the boots.”

  His hands framed her face. “I won’t hurt you.”

  His gaze fastened on hers, soft as warm chocolate, and, as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, she understood. “You know I’m a virgin.”

  For a moment his gaze was unreadable. “I heard.”

  His mouth touched hers, and he slid into her, the movement slow and complete, the fit perfect. Then there was no time for thinking, just the rise and fall of their breathing, the heat and the rhythm building like slow, hot honey, until the intensity coiled tight, then broke. For a shimmering moment the murky dimness of the tunnel was pushed back, and the hard chill of the stone beneath, the oppressive weight of the earth above—even time itself—dissolved.

  For an indeterminate period Quin floated, hazily exploring the intimate fit of their bodies, the pure tactile pleasure of skin on skin, the almost imperceptible touch of his mind, and she knew him—knew that he was stubborn and ruthless and uncompromising, knew that beneath all the strength and steel there was a core of softness, knew that on this level—the man/woman level—she didn’t have to fight.

  She lifted her head from his shoulder and risked breaking the calm. “Have you ever explored the fact that you’re telepathic?”

  A lazy hand trailed down her back. He gave her an “Are you crazy?” look, and she had to remind herself that he was close to being another species: male, loaded down with testosterone and a whole other chromosome that she didn’t possess.

  “Something does happen between us,” he admitted, gliding to his feet and pulling her with him.

  Quin began searching for her clothes. “It’s called mental telepathy.”

  “I can see that it’s got its uses.”

  Uh-huh. It had gotten her into bed—even if the bed had literally been hard as rock.

  After a makeshift attempt at a sponge bath with tissues from her pack, she stepped into her underwear and pulled on her tank top and pants, grimacing at their dampness and trying to ignore the filth. “You can fight it all you want, but to a greater or lesser degree, you’re psychic.”

  His hands closed on her waist, and she found herself pulled into a loose embrace. His forehead touched hers. “Define psychic for me, and then I’ll decide whether I’m happy or unhappy. Right now, I’m trying not to think about it.”

  Twenty-Two

  A second body was discovered in the ruin late in the afternoon, bringing the number of lives the Lost City of the Sun had claimed to four.

  As soon as the body had been discovered by one of Cain’s students, Jay had moved to take over the ruin—confiscating the automatic weapons, and ejecting Cain and his people from the site. There had been initial resistance, but when Cain and his security team had measured their chances against the nine-millimeter Glock in Jay’s hand, the Remington rifles clasped by three ex-military personnel from the mission’s engineering workshop and the sniper positioned in the hills, they’d backed down.

  Cain hadn’t been happy. His men had automatic weapons, but Jay had a trained and well-armed combat force. While the Skorpions might look impressive, they were a piece of shit in anything but close quarters combat, and Cain’s men knew it. They had been paid well, but not that well.

  Jay lifted off the tarpaulin that protected the body from the flies. “There’s congealed blood all down his front, which means he didn’t die in the tunnel—he was killed elsewhere and placed here, probably until the body could be moved out of the valley. Whoever the killer is, this time he didn’t bother trusting to poison.”

  Quin stared at the body, holding her nose against the sickening stench. Aside from multiple contusions dappling his face and chest, the entire base of the man’s skull was caved in, making his face look oddly misshapen.

  Jay rose to his feet as Luis and Jorge arrived with the stretcher. “He’s been dead at least twenty-four hours. By the bloating and rigor, I’d say even longer.”

  Luis directed Jorge to take the man’s feet. As they shifted the corpse, Luis’s expression darkened. “I know him. Pedro Chavez. He’s been shacked up with Juana down at the village.” He swore softly in Spanish, bent and smoothly retrieved an item from the body; a moment later he straightened, a gun in his hand, his expression incredulous. “You can’t blame this one on the curse or Shining Path. Pedro is related to Ramirez; I hear he works for him sometimes. Looks like, this time, he got a little too greedy.”

  Quin recognized the distinctive scratch on the Browning’s handgrip, and an image of the man she’d seen leaving the ruin the previous night popped into her mind: the strong profile and the graceful way he’d vaulted down a level, the glint of metal in his hand. Ramirez. “What on earth is he doing here?”

  Jay dropped the tarp back over the body. “He wants the same thing all the other vultures want. Money.” He uttered a curt order in Spanish, and his men began dispersing the small crowd of reporters and sightseers that had gathered.

  Ramon, the sniper, appeared at the top of the slip, rifle held in one hand, pushing a tall, thin man in front of him with the other. “Look what I found hiding in the jungle.”

  Jay studied the intruder as the man delivered an explanation as to why he’d been crouching in a hide constructed from woven branches, just above the entrance to the temple. He was English, a bird-watcher on a hiking holiday, and while he was in Peru, he’d decided to combine bird-watching with taking a look at the newly discovered ruin. The man’s face and arms were burned bright pink, which bore out that part of his story. Whoever he was and whatever he was doing, he hadn’t had time to acclimatize to the sun. He was also dressed for hiking, wearing boots, tough, khaki drill trousers and a sand-colored drill shirt, but the colors were too much like DPM—disruptive pattern material—for Jay. It was possible he was another reporter, but Jay didn’t think so—if a story was all he wanted, he would h
ave been down here with the rest of the vultures, getting a close-up of the latest body. “Who did you say you were?”

  The man’s gaze darted beyond Jay. “Sanderson. Hogarth Sanderson.”

  The voice was clipped and English: South London. Jay moved, deliberately blocking Sanderson’s view of Quin. He didn’t believe the man’s explanation; it was too smooth, too practiced. He also didn’t like the way Sanderson watched Quin. He issued a curt order in Spanish.

  Sanderson’s face turned even pinker. “Hey! What are you doing?”

  Ramon took his pack and began searching it. He came up with a camera. “No weapons.”

  With a nod, Jay indicated that Ramon should replace the items and return the pack. There was no point in confiscating the film, when every part of the valley had been photographed and televised for the past three weeks, but even so, he was tempted. As bland and harmless as Sanderson seemed, he was a liar.

  He met Sanderson’s light gray gaze, his own cold. “Leave.”

  As Ramon escorted Sanderson away from the ruin, a smoothly coiffed television reporter, with a salon tan and just the right shade of bronze lipstick to go with her military-style shirt and trousers, ducked beneath Jorge’s arm, resisting the order to vacate the ruin. Her expression was unruffled as she took in the tarpaulin-covered body. “What’s happening?”

  Jay’s expression was shuttered. “The site’s closed.”

  Her cameraman crowded in close beside her, sensing more interesting footage.

  She lifted a mike. “By whose authority?”

  Jake shifted the television camera out of his face and confiscated the mike. “Mine.”