Gideon

by Cherry Adair

  “Now. You. God. Don’t care if I never.” He thrust deeper. “Remember. Anything. But. This.”

  Nice words.

  She’d learned not to listen to nice words men said while having sex.

  Instead, she focused on the feeling, the sudden fullness that was a perfect fit and managed to steal her breath. What was even more amazing was how powerfully, yet tenderly, he manipulated her body with his arms and legs as he pistoned into her. He held most of her weight with his hands, while the dank wall of the cave gave her stability. All she had to do was lift her legs, hold onto his shoulders, and cross her ankles around his lower back. He did the work, plunging into her again and again, until her moans joined his, until he slowed, until all they were doing was leaning against each other, breathing harshly.

  When she could stand on steady feet, she moved away first, inching along the wall to the side of him. Riva put her foot through the empty pants leg, pulled them up, dropped down to remove her other boot, and started to laugh. “I can’t for the life of me undo these wet laces, and yet—” She indicated the other boot, which had landed six feet away.

  Gideon crouched beside her and deftly undid the laces. While his head was bowed to do the job, her fingers hovered over the crown of his head. In a wild-hair burst of temptation, she wanted to comb her fingers through the chocolaty strands. Uncharacteristic, and not in her wheelhouse to be sentimental or tender. Sex was merely scratching an itch and dear God, he knew how to scratch with precision.

  They both knew the score.

  It was just sex, Rimaldi. Just sex. No cuddling, no romance to follow. Just the way you prefer it. Try to remember that.

  A vision came. Clear and sharp. A hotel room. Sunlight streaming over a wide bed. Air conditioning on high. Sweaty skin, avid mouths. Pulses pounding. The vision of them making love. Lingering. Tasting. Touching. Breathing him in. Riva’s heart raced with the start of what felt like her first panic attack. Dios…

  “Thanks,” she said easily and dropped her hand before he noticed she was about to pet him. Foolish, foolish woman. Get a damn grip.

  Tossing the boot in the general direction of the other one, he pulled off her sock. “These are wet. Have another pair?”

  “I d—” Hand warm and strong, he cupped her foot in his palm. She cleared her throat. “I do. Yeah.”

  Stroking his thumb in a sensuous path along the side of her instep, he met her eyes. Hot hazel. Short, black spiky lashes. Hot intent. “That was just an appetizer,” he murmured, in an intimate, smoky voice.

  Carefully, Riva pulled her foot from the cage of his fingers. She wasn’t touchy-feely. Never had been, but the urge to fling herself into his arms, to feel…safe and cared for was overwhelming. Holy crap. What the hell kind of thought was that? Her insides knotted, and her chest ached. All of which pissed her off.

  Getting to her feet, she curled her toes on the cold, damp rock floor. “Good to know you have some stamina, Stark. I’m absolutely starving. We need to get cracking. Food. Rest. Go.”

  For a few moments he looked up at her, his forearm braced across his knee. “I needed that,” he murmured, not addressing her statement, but on a tangent of his own. Rising, he looked as though he wanted to reach for her. Riva stiffened, but he merely combed back his hair with both hands. “If I’d waited another five minutes it would’ve been too late.”

  “Fortunately, I felt the same way.” Dios, she did not want to analyze what had just happened. Didn’t want to talk about getting and giving, needs met, expectations unmet. “Do you always Monday morning quarterback after sex?” Riva waved the words away with a quick flourish of her hand. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. None of my business.” Rubbing her hands, she went to her pack and unzipped it. “I could drop nose first onto this hard ground. I need real food, what do we have?”

  “MREs.” Gideon went to the small pack he’d secreted in the cave a couple of weeks earlier, watching as she unpacked, not dry clothing or food. No. Her weapons and cleaning cloths for her guns.

  He hid a smile. “Camp stove. Coffee. Chocolate bar.” In the last light of the dying sun, she looked like a pagan goddess sitting there, glossy black hair, a shiny, patent leather rippling waterfall down her back, skin creamy and luminous, cheeks flushed, pale bare feet looking sweetly innocent. Something roused in his chest, a sensation sharply sweet and unfamiliar.

  Gideon didn’t know what drew him to her so viscerally. It wasn’t the sex, good as that was, or her appearance, sexy, strong and badass as she wanted to appear. There was something in her eyes when she watched him. An aching loneliness. A look that said, I’ll hurt your ass before you hurt me. He tried to imagine Riva without her shields up, and couldn’t. But damn, he wanted to see her—really see her.

  For a brief moment, when her eyes had fluttered open, when she was disheveled and vulnerable, he’d seen the naked look there. No wall. No smart come-back. Just honest emotion.

  She’d lowered her gaze and when she looked at him again, it was the same hard-ass Riva staring back at him.

  He started foraging for the coffee and food. When he looked back, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  Spreading out a cloth, Riva laid out a neat row of weapons. Her SIG Sauer P230SL, KA-BAR, .40 S&W Action semiauto sniper rifle, a mini boot knife, and a tactical boot knife. Several boxes of ammo, cloths, and oil.

  Soaking wet, exhausted, she took care of her weapons before she took care of herself. She picked up the SIG first and removed the magazine. Glancing up again, she shook her head. “Coffee? You buried the lead there, Stark.” She removed the tube of lubricant, squeezed some onto a cloth, and started meticulously lubing all the parts. “Let’s have it. I’m so desperate for it I might just eat the grounds dry.”

  Without looking down, she rebuilt the magazine, then reassembled the rest of the SIG. Laying it aside, she reached for the KA-BAR knife. “Want me to do yours for you?”

  Yes, he did want her to do his. Not his weapons. Him. Why the hell was she so prickly? She had no problem enjoying sex, but anything beyond the actual act seemed to make her uncomfortable. Anything remotely playful or a show of affection made her uncomfortable. In fact, once sex was over, she damn well acted like it hadn’t even happened. “I’ll take care of mine.”

  The fact that Riva approached sex as a man did, didn’t sit as well as it should. Less so each time they were intimate. Hell, wasn’t that what he’d thought would be the ideal situation with a woman? The perfect relationship.

  So what the fuck was his problem? Gideon wasn’t a guy who liked to cuddle post sex, he didn’t think. But Jesus, not even a wow? Or a thank you? Or peck on the cheek? She’d barely caught her breath before her clean dismount.

  Wham, bam, thank you, man?

  Good thing he had a healthy fucking ego, because that kind of response was a ballbuster. Another man might think he hadn’t satisfied his lady, but he knew better. He’d seen it in her damn half-unguarded sultry smile when her body was racing to that fucking perfect moment. The corners of her luscious lips eased up ever so slightly right before she came.

  Twice.

  The interior of the cave now glowed a deep maroon as the dying light pierced the veil of water at the entrance. “How about a bath before it gets dark?” He figured they had about half an hour before night fell.

  Yeah, dick, seeing her naked will help your ego no end. Go for it.

  The quick look she shot him was filled with surprise and pleasure. His sulking dick stirred.

  “You have hot and cold running water in here?” Sarcastic shot fired, she returned to what she was doing. After placing the knife on the cloth, she picked up the small boot knife, inspected it, gave it a wipe, and replaced it. Quick and methodical. Clearly she could fieldstrip and clean her weapons quickly and in the dark if necessary.

  “I have a perfectly shaped, smooth as a baby’s butt, bath filled with cool water right there.” He pointed at what looked like a shimmering sheet of gleaming copper just inside the fa
ll of water. The one he’d warned her about when they’d arrived.

  “Four feet deep. Here—” He tossed her a small bar of soap. She caught it overhand. “Soap.”

  Riva uncurled her long legs to get to her feet, and standing on tiptoe, she gave him a quick, sisterly kiss on the cheek. “You’re a freaking prince, Gideon Stark.”

  When she started to step away, he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her against him. “We won’t always have to make love on the fly, you know. There’s a wide bed with clean sheets on it in our future.”

  She didn’t pull away, and while she looked right at him, Gideon knew she was hiding behind those dark, long-lashed eyes. “You must be having different psychic visions than I do.” Reaching back, she unpeeled his fingers from her hip. “I don’t see that at all, Mr. Stark.”

  He smiled. “God, you’re a hard nut. Yeah, you see exactly that, Miss Counterterrorist Operative. I saw it in your face over there.”

  “The only vision I see is me not getting that hot cup of coffee you promised me in the next ten minutes.” Bending, she gathered her weapons and put them away, the cloth folded and neatly tucked beside them.

  Gideon pulled out the sleeping bag and supplies from the waterproof backpack he’d left there weeks earlier, while she went to the back of the cave to retrieve her boots.

  Returning to her pack, she removed the dry clothes she’d need. She moved with the grace and speed of a dancer, and he couldn’t tear his eyes off of her. Economical, no movement wasted. “Coffee brewing, food out—what a good little camper you are. Let’s lay out clean clothes and the sleeping bag, and save water.”

  “You’re that disciplined? I’m impressed.”

  “It’ll take a few minutes. I don’t know about you, but right now that water looks inviting as hell, I’m starving, and I’m exhausted. Let’s get our priorities in order, because if not, we’ll both still be hungry and dirty two hours from now when we wake up half naked on the dirt floor.”

  “We don’t want any light in here once it gets dark, right? It’ll show through the water and let everyone know exactly where we are.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Gideon turned the small stove down so the flame barely showed, just enough to keep the coffee and food warm. Stripping he sat on the edge of the pool. She was a spectator sport as she wound her hair up on top of her head, then stuck a pen she pulled from her pack through the heavy mass to secure it. It left her long neck and the elegant slope of her shoulders for him to admire. “Planning on bathing fully dressed?”

  Holding his gaze in the semidarkness, Riva pulled her T-shirt and bra over her head. Wearing nothing but her khaki pants, unbuttoned, she placed her hands on her hips. A nerve throbbed at the base of her throat as she tilted her chin. “Happy?”

  Hell yes. Her breasts were firm and round, beaded with droplets of spray. The tips hard little points. Holding his gaze, she shimmied out of the pants.

  “Happier.” He held up his hand to assist her in. After a moment she placed her hand in his and sat on the edge to swing her legs over into the water. “One of these days,” he said as she eased into the chilly water. “I’m going to strip you slowly, and look at every inch of your body.”

  “You can see every inch right now.” Standing, the water hit her mid chest. “Yow!”

  “You’ll get used to it. Want me to wash your back?”

  “I can do it.”

  “I know you can, but I’d enjoy doing it. Hand me the soap, and turn around.”

  “I-“ Clearly thinking better of arguing, she handed him the soap, then turned around and looked at the falling water beyond.

  “Holy Mother of God.” Her slender back was crisscrossed with long thin scars, white and shiny against her pale olive skin. Fucking hell. How had he not seen them before now?

  Because she’d been naked, but tied to his fucking bed. Because they’d made love in the dark. Because he’d been blind?

  Gideon had witnessed beatings, he’d seen the result of abuse. But this was more than whippings. This had been premediated torture. Fuck. Fuck.

  The silver scars, unevenly spaced, ten-to- twelve-inch length, and razor-thin, spread from her shoulders to below her waist. Gideon had to gather saliva in his mouth before he was able to push out the words. “This the work of that fucked-up, low-life step-father?”

  “I have no idea if they ever married or not. But he took his paternal duty seriously.” She shrugged. “Took up where my mother left off. Stronger wrist. More upper body strength. Excellent stamina. He could go on tirelessly for hours.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Are you going to wash my back, Stark, or do I have to—”

  “What the fuck were they trying to do? Beat the visions out of you?” She’d told him as much, but seeing the marks— Fucking hell.

  “Didn’t work.” She frowned. “Give me the damn soap.”

  Jesus. Cupping her slender shoulders, Gideon turned her around to face him. Aw, shit. He wished the bastard was still alive. He wanted to eviscerate him. Empathy knotted thickly in his throat. He wanted to soothe and comfort, but seeing the gleam of the dying rays of the sun on her wet body made keeping his hands off her sexually damn near impossible. He resisted making an overture with every damn thing in him.

  “One day,” he said tightly, cupping her cheek because he was afraid to touch her anywhere else. His thumb skimmed the plump curve of her bottom lip. He wanted to cover her face in tender kisses until she was convinced of how special, good, and lovable she really was. Hell, what he wanted was the impossible: to change her past.

  “We’ll lie in the sunlight and you’ll tell me everything this fucking prick did to you. Then I want to hear, in detail, everything you did to kill the bastard. I only wish you hadn’t already done it, because it would give me great pleasure to rip him apart slowly, and over a very, very, very long time.”

  “I don’t think about them.” She swayed toward him, tight nipples brushing the hair on his chest. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she dropped her forehead to his chest. “The scars are just a part of me.”

  Fuck yeah, they certainly were. The scars were the pain he saw in her eyes when she couldn’t hide it fast enough. They were her refusal to get close. The people who were supposed to love and accept her unconditionally were the ones who had betrayed her with hatred and violence. Damn it. It was no wonder she had closed down emotionally.

  Was that what she’d learned to do from her shit-for-brains mother and dickhead stepfather, as a result of them taking a whip to her back? Had they beat her into believing that crap she said about being unlovable? Because that was the goddamn expression he saw in her eyes. That’s what she thought of herself.

  Unlovable. Fuck that.

  “Scars only show us where we’ve been.” Her voice was muffled, her breath warm against his skin. “Not where we’re going. Unless, of course, you focus on them. They’ve got nothing to do with the woman I’ve become.”

  Gideon called bullshit.

  The smell of stale sweat permeated the air, mixing unpleasantly with the still lingering fragrance of coffee and piney soap. Fuck. He knew that smell. Andrés.

  “Where’s the bitch?”

  Good question. Where the hell was Riva in the dead of night, in the pitch-darkness? What stunned Gideon was that he hadn’t stirred when she left. How long ago? Christ, was she so determined to reach Maza that she’d attempt to go to him alone at night, through unknown territory? Without her go-bag, which they’d used as a pillow and which was still under his head?

  Ah, shit. Had revealing herself to him willingly scared her enough to make her run? The thought made him ache for her. But right now he had a more immediate problem. Sliding his hand along the outside edge of the sleeping bag, he closed his fingers around the grip of his Glock. Beside it was the MP7A1. Both loaded before they’d fallen asleep.

  “Come to finish me off mano a mano, amigo?” he yelled over the sound of the falls. A dime-sized, blurred circle of
white indicated a moon, but the light didn’t penetrate inside. It was so dark he couldn’t see a damned thing, except Andrés, barely backlit by the water-filtered moonlight. Which meant that unless he wore NVGs, Andrés couldn’t see him either. From the direction of the other man’s voice, he stood just inside the wall of water and about ten feet away.

  “Can I at least have a minute to put on my pants so I can die with some dignity?” He was fully dressed and shifted on the bag as if searching for his clothes.

  Andrés shifted, boots scraping across the rocky floor. “I told her it wouldn’t work.”

  Since the other man made no comment about his state of dress or undress, Gideon figured he wasn’t wearing NVGs. Good. And the switch of subject gave tacit agreement for more time. “Yeah? Why was that?” he responded.

  The more Andrés talked, the better. Gideon rose to a crouch, Glock in one hand. He slowly reached over to feel for Riva’s KA-BAR. It was right where she’d left it. The tactical knife’s handle fit comfortably in his hand, perfectly weighted. Its large finger guard allowed him to wield it comfortably. He adjusted his grip as he started to slowly rise to his feet, then thought better of it. In the same way he could tell that Andrés stood instead of sat, the other man would be able to know where he was situated, too.

  On his haunches, Gideon moved another foot to his left.

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe you were Sin.” Andrés’s voice held a note of righteousness. “I warned Mama that your memory would come back, and that you’d do everything in your power to extract retribution from her. Just so you know, amigo, we all lied to you.”

  “No shit,” Gideon said grimly, lowering his voice so that he could barely be heard as he edged another six inches to his left. The knife would work better in the close confines of the cave. Bullets had a nasty tendency to ricochet in confined spaces. His fingers tightened reflexively around the hilt of the KA-BAR.

  “When did you figure out who you were?”