“Doesn’t matter,” she murmured.
He grabbed her arms, forcing her to look at him. She let out a little cry of alarm but he didn’t release her.
“What good are you going to do that little boy if you’re laid up in a hospital somewhere? If you don’t take care of yourself, how can you expect to take care of him?”
She lifted her gaze, her lips tight with anger. “I know you can’t believe me, but I would do anything for him.”
He didn’t believe her, but it wouldn’t help the situation to say it. “Then do what I say.”
The anger dissolved and she nodded, backing away.
“It’s not good for you to wear wet underwear, either. You could have some serious chafing.”
She climbed to her feet. “I have clean underwear.”
She pulled them out of her pack—God help him, white lace ones this time—and stripped off the pink ones. Right in front of him. What the hell? Just when he’d finally got his arousal under control. Jesus Christ.
He couldn’t tear his gaze away, even as she stepped into the panties, pulled them up those gorgeous legs and snapped them in place at her hips.
She reached for her pants and looked down at him, knowledge in her eyes. “Breakfast should be almost ready. Are you coming?”
“I’ll be right there,” he said through his teeth.
Isabella was sitting at the table with her new friend and his family, laughing, eating like a starving person, when Alex joined them. Her smile was bright with mischief when she looked at him.
“Everything all right?” she asked, as if she knew just what he’d been doing.
He grunted in response and sat at the end of the bench when others made room for him.
“We were gone so long, they thought we were having sex.”
He grunted again. She was trying to get a rise from him, and she was, just not one he was going to show her.
“They didn’t have any socks, but they gave me some sandals.” She held up one foot with a simple leather sandal on it.
“You won’t get far in those.”
“That’s the good news. They’ve got a truck.”
That was good news. His mood improved immediately. “How much?”
“Not for sale, but they’ll give us a ride into Tegucigalpa. That’s where we’re heading, right?”
“Right.” There would be a third party there to keep him from doing anything else idiotic.
“We leave after breakfast.” She beamed at him. “Did I do good?”
“Thank you for not leaving me there,” Isabella said softly as she settled in between one of Vicente’s burly sons and Alex on the old Ford’s bench seat. “I know you wanted to leave me.”
“I have orders from the DEA to bring you in,” he said.
She sobered. “Of course. Orders.”
“How long is it to Tegucigalpa?” he asked Vicente’s son.
“Six or seven hours.”
Alex sat back, impatient to have this mission accomplished already. To get Isabella Canales out of his hair.
“At least we won’t be walking,” Isabella said. “You can get some sleep.”
As if he could relax with her all pressed up against him. “Yeah, sleep.”
“I suppose it’s too much to hope this thing has air conditioning,” she continued cheerfully, clueless about what lay ahead. “But I’m going to sleep.”
“Knock yourself out.” Maybe then he’d be less aware of her.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat once Vicente’s son started the engine. She shifted, and shifted again, and again.
Her eyes popped open after just a few minutes. “I can’t sleep. I’m too excited. Tell me a story.”
He snorted, looking out the open window at the passing jungle. “I’m no storyteller.”
“I don’t want you to make up one. I want you to tell me about your girl. What’s her name?”
He turned to look at her. “Rebecca. Why are you so determined to know about her?”
“Because I want to know what kind of woman makes a man like you fall in love.”
“A man like me?”
“A hard man. One who sees things in black and white.”
“Are you insulting me?”
“Are you denying that’s what you do? Is she as righteous as you?”
“Rebecca hasn’t seen the bad things in life like I have. She doesn’t believe people are all bad. She can’t really wrap her mind around why jobs like mine exist.”
“She’s your pure, like Hector is mine. You don’t want this part of your life to touch her.”
“Yeah,” he said, surprised by her insight.
“She wouldn’t judge me.”
“Like you said, I wouldn’t let her see that side of my life.”
She flinched at the words, but she didn’t give up. “How did the two of you meet?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I read romance novels to go to sleep. Do you have a romance novel in your pack?”
“How I met Rebecca is not a romance novel,” he said with a smirk.
“Is it going to have a happily ever after?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, I hope so.”
“Then tell me.”
“All right. It was at the movies. I’d gone with some buddies. She was there, in line in front of me, so pretty. Real old fashioned, you know? Blonde and wholesome. She was even wearing a skirt.” She’d looked like one of those girls out of an old movie, fresh-faced and innocent. She’d been wary of him. His certainty that they belonged together scared her at first. As soon as he knew, he’d backed off, unwilling to risk losing her. His intensity had scared him. He’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted a future with Rebecca. A nice, normal picket-fence future. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her. So I blew off my buddies and went to some chick flick with her.”
He turned to see Isabella’s reaction but she was asleep, her head back against the seat, her mouth open.
Once she was out, he contacted his team to tell them they would meet back at Tegucigalpa. After he’d made contact, he relaxed. Well, as much as he could with the goddess snuggled against him like he was some goddamn pillow.
For God’s sake, he’d been an asshole to her. Why did she feel comfortable enough with him to curl up practically in his damn lap? Was she just so comfortable with men? He couldn’t imagine her being as unguarded with Saldana and his men, but maybe he was mistaken.
The other thought that worked its way into his brain was that the other men in her life were even worse assholes than he was. He knew that was the sympathetic side of his brain talking. He couldn’t afford to be sympathetic.
But when he dropped off to sleep, it was Isabella’s laughing brown eyes he dreamed of.
Returning to civilization, even the civilization of the city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, resulted in culture shock after being in the jungle for weeks. Alex could only imagine what it was like for Isabella after four years. He watched her pressed to the grimy glass of the truck windshield, taking in the sights, barely breathing as her attention darted from one thing to another. She was like a little kid. He swore he heard her whimper when they passed a bookstore.
As Vicente’s son Gerardo made his way through traffic, Isabella kept up a running stream of comments, reading signs aloud, chattering about the people and the cars, making the jungle seem downright quiet.
Gerardo knew the way to the embassy, thank God, and dropped them off in front, by the concrete rows of planters. Isabella hobbled for a moment on her bad feet, and Alex caught her elbow. As he guided her into the building, he wondered if his men had made it back to town.
Together they approached the marine standing at the entrance. Alex could feel Isabella’s tension rising with each step. He couldn’t blame her. Hell, this was a whole new world for her, one she hadn’t been in as an adult. She wouldn’t be pampered.
Within minutes of the marine announcing their arrival, DEA agents had swarm
ed them like the bugs in the jungle, surrounding Isabella, separating her from him.
“Wait, wait,” Alex called, trying to get to her. She was scared, he could see it in her wide eyes, the way she sought him. Damn, they were treating her like a criminal, patting her down, cuffing her and dumping out her pack.
One of the agents took the pink vibrator and twisted it open violently. Alex recognized the device that she’d slipped in the battery pack—a portable thumb drive.
“This is everything Eric told me to look for on Santiago’s computer,” she said softly.
Alex couldn’t explain why her words kicked him in the chest. She hadn’t told him she had that information. Okay, just because she had the drive didn’t mean she knew what was on it, but that she didn’t trust him enough to tell him she was carrying something so important.
Hell, what did it matter? He’d done his best to get her back here as quickly as possible. He wouldn’t have done anything differently. But now he was going to have to answer for not knowing.
Still, as the agents pulled her in one direction and him in another for debriefing, he called, “She needs medical attention. For her feet.”
Isabella held his eyes as long as she could—he wasn’t sure what she was trying to tell him—before she disappeared into the building, surrounded by men in suits.
After his own debriefing, Alex walked out of the embassy to the nearby hotel recommended by the staff. He forced himself to stop wondering how Isabella was holding up. She’d probably charmed the entire intelligence agency before they released her and sent her over to the hotel.
One of the marines delivered his mail packet as he exited the conference room, and Alex returned the crisp salute with a halfhearted one of his own before he pawed through the tied-together packet. Four letters from his dad—his foster father—and two from Rebecca. He grinned. In anticipation, he stopped for a six pack, then went to his room and dug in, saving the letters from Rebecca for last.
Now the words blurred in front of him, only partially because of the tequila he’d bought when the store didn’t have any brands of beer he’d heard of. Turned out, he was glad of it. Beer couldn’t get him drunk enough, and he needed to get drunk.
He’d guessed what was coming from one of his dad’s letters.
Keep your head.
Life doesn’t always go as planned.
We love you no matter what.
His dad was an old soldier who wrote newsy letters, not sentimental ones, though Alex could always feel the love underneath the words.
Rebecca must have gone to his folks. That would be something she’d do, a decision she’d agonize over. Not the decision of leaving him, maybe, but the decision of telling him in a letter instead of waiting till he got home.
Better he learns before he gets home and finds you married to someone else, he could imagine his dad saying, and he tossed back another shot.
Better he find out when he’s too far away to do something foolish, like use his training to kill the guy.
He threw the shot glass across the room as hard as he could. It bounced off the wall and onto the carpet without the satisfying shatter.
Dropping to the edge of the bed, he dragged his hands over his head. She’d been too good for him. He’d known that, had hoped she wouldn’t realize it, that he’d be able to make himself worthy of her by the time they married. He didn’t deserve her. He prayed the man she was marrying did.
There was someone he did deserve, the woman who’d been occupying his mind and other parts for days. A woman who was in the hotel room just down the hall.
Chapter Five
Isabella jolted at the pounding on the door. Her nerves were already stretched tight from the endless grilling of the agents wanting to know what she knew about the death of Eric Reyes—or Cortez, as Alex and the soldiers called him. She couldn’t tell them, couldn’t relive that horror, not even for the good of the country, for the relief of his family. That she’d witnessed it was enough punishment.
They’d finally let her go, had escorted her here to the hotel outside the embassy, and she’d had a shower with actual soap for the first time in—had it only been three days since she’d left Santiago’s? Still, she felt more human, more hopeful, after cleaning up. But now they were back for her.
She looked through the peephole, saw the top of a bent head.
She jumped, choking back a scream when he pounded again.
“Open up, Goddess.”
Shepard.
Still shaking, she unlatched the door and turned the knob. Shepard swayed in the doorway, clearly drunk, but when he lifted his eyes to hers, she recognized his vulnerability in his sad eyes, downturned mouth.
“Shepard, what is it?”
But he didn’t speak, just stepped inside the room, closing the door behind him. He slid a hand under her hair, bending to kiss her in the same movement.
She’d longed to know how he would taste, but tequila had had no part in her imagination. Not like this. When she pushed at his shoulders, he eased back to look at her, his eyes heavy lidded and filled with pain.
Then he whispered, “Isabella. I need you.”
She didn’t want his words to mean anything. She’d heard them before from men who didn’t even know her name. She had dreamed of Shepard being different, that he might actually love her, would take care of her the way he loved and cared for Rebecca. But she was scared to hope.
Still, hope had her curling her fingers around his neck, pulling his mouth to hers.
His mouth was hard, like the rest of him, hot, commanding. His stubble rasped her tender lips as he closed his hands around her waist, his calluses snagging the silky fabric of her robe.
Then he pulled it apart.
She grasped his wrists. “Rebecca.” She wouldn’t betray another woman.
He frowned. “It’s over.”
The hope flared brighter and she was ashamed of herself for a moment. Shepard was hurting, Rebecca too, and she was taking advantage of it. He wouldn’t like her any better in the morning than he had twelve hours ago but she didn’t care. If it was all she could have, she was fine with that. She wanted to know what it was to be with someone who made her feel safe.
His tongue in her mouth was skilled, daring, moving in strokes and sweeps that had her toes curling into the plush carpet. When he parted the robe a little more, the roughness of his clothes rasped her skin.
She wanted more.
He backed her up until her hips bumped the edge of the dresser, and she reached to balance herself. His fingers tangled her hair and he tugged her head back, releasing her mouth and following the line of her throat with his lips.
She moaned and felt him smile against her skin.
Then he went lower, tracing that bared strip of skin between her breasts, pausing only long enough to release the robe’s tie, then down her belly.
His hot breath sent shivers over her skin. He parted her legs and his mouth was on her with the same manner of command as he’d kissed her, his lips drawing, his tongue darting, stroking her swollen flesh with amazing accuracy.
The orgasm hit her hard. She came with a keening cry, arching backwards, gripping the dresser, but he didn’t stop, draining every bit of pleasure from her, adding his fingers, alternately stroking and penetrating her until she came harder, the room spinning, the only solid thing holding her up was Shepard.
As casually as if he hadn’t destroyed her, he stood, watching as she sprawled helplessly in front of him, boneless. He kissed her again, his mouth wet with her, peeling her robe away, sharpening her desire. She clutched at him, sliding her hands up under his T-shirt to feel the ridges of muscle, to urge him to undress.
He stripped off his shirt and she reached for him, wanting to touch, feel, claim, but he moved back, shucking off his pants too. The erection she’d seen at the waterfall was just as magnificent, but he’d sheathed himself before she could touch him.
“Turn around,” he said, and she did, on shaky legs.
He pressed a hand between her shoulder blades, bending her over the dresser so she was face to face with her own reflection in the mirror. Then he parted her legs and entered her with a powerful thrust.
Humiliation warred with arousal as she watched his face in the mirror, watched him moving, feeling the corresponding strokes. It was sexy as hell, but their first time should be face to face, looking into each other’s eyes. Romantic, not sexual acrobatics.
She’d exercised her body, trained her muscles to make a man come quickly, but now she pushed the numbness aside, opened herself to the sensations and the emotions. Instead of fake words of praise for her lover, she centered on her own pleasure, wanted to draw the sensation out, to feel the pleasure he could give her.
Bracing her weight on her palms instead of her elbows, she rose up, making him work just a little harder to stay inside her. Making him need to stay inside her. She hadn’t turned to her old tricks. Instead of letting her mind shut off, she reveled in the feelings he worked to give her.
“Christ, Isabella,” he grunted, making shallow thrusts to find his way back to the same depth, sending tingles of pleasure through her.
Keeping him at the same angle, she backed against him, frustrating him, pleasing herself.
She took one of his hands, guided it to cover her, guided one finger down to stroke her, and she came. Hard. Out of control.
He unhooked her arm from around his neck and bent her over the dresser again, pounding into her, drawing out her pleasure till he came too, collapsing breathless and sweaty across her back.
She shouldn’t have been surprised or hurt when he didn’t cuddle her. Instead, he withdrew almost immediately to deal with the condom, then closed his hand around hers, almost a tender gesture.
“Let’s go shower.”
As she followed him to the bathroom, she got a good look at his streamlined body, no fat anywhere. She watched him lean in to adjust the water temperature, then he stepped in first and reached for her.
“I want to touch you everywhere,” he said, backing under the spray to shield her.
“I think you did,” she murmured shyly, not sure whether to face him after he’d seen what he could do to her, how he could make her lose control.
Breaking Daylight Page 6
