by Tara Janzen
But this scene. Oh, yeah, he’d imagined it plenty of times: Nikki and a bunch of half-dressed guys well on their way to being undressed guys.
It was her work, taking naked guys and putting them through the wringer of her cameras and her paint brushes until she got what she wanted, which was always more than the guys ever thought they’d have to give.
She was practically famous now, her paintings showing on both coasts and selling in five figures. Three months ago, she’d done an Esquire magazine cover of Brad Pitt as one of her fallen angels. Kid had seen it in Bogotá, and it had been incredible.
Fucking Brad Pitt. Who would have believed? Nikki’s mentor, Katya Hawkins, was taking her straight to the top of the art world, exactly where she deserved to be. He’d watched Nikki work once—work a guy over—and it had made him sweat and all but turned him inside out. He hadn’t known a girl could be so freakin’ fierce.
Yeah. He’d kept up with her career, with her life. He’d been discreet, but he’d kept up, asked a few questions. Her sister was married to another of the Steele Street operators, Quinn Younger, although Quinn hadn’t gone out on many missions since he and Regan had hooked up.
It was a helluva price to pay for a woman, but under any other circumstances than the ones he’d found himself in last summer, he might have done it for Nikki.
She hadn’t come straight out and asked him to take fewer chances, or even quit his job, but he’d seen it in her eyes every time she’d looked at him. He’d known it every time she’d cried because he was going away. So freakin’ fierce, and yet so fragile.
Hell, she’d probably made the right choice with the basket weaver guy, but yeah, sure, he could have done it, backed off on the job and turned himself into her boy toy, gone back to school, and become . . . something.
Something other than what he was: a highly skilled weapon of the United States government. The months he’d spent with Hawkins and Creed, tracking down and taking out his brother’s killers, had changed him. Superman and the jungle boy had changed him. They’d taken everything the Marine Corps had taught him and honed it all to a razor sharpness.
He wasn’t a bona fide superhero, not like Hawkins, and he wasn’t three-quarters wild like Creed, but he didn’t have to do much more than stand there and look at her to know he was still in love with Nikki McKinney.
God, what lousy news. And it didn’t change a damn thing. It only made things harder.
He was going to have to keep his distance. Be professional. Stay cool. Play it smart. Get her back on a plane ASAP—and for God’s sake not do anything stupid and spontaneous.
Like kiss her.
Or run his tongue up the side of her neck.
Or put his hand on her ass.
He took a breath, ran through the “don’t” list one more time, and was good to go—up until she suddenly turned in her chair, startled like a bird taking flight, feathers flying, sequins shimmering, and looked straight at him. He saw the shock on her face, saw her mouth form his name, and his quickly laid plan started sliding out from under him like beach sand in a riptide.
In combat, “tunneling,” focusing on one thing and losing track of everything else that was going on around you, was a good way to get killed.
Apparently, the same rule applied in love, because he was slain. The transvestites went into a butchered rendition of “La Vida Loca,” and he could barely hear it. The other hundred people were laughing, talking, singing along, their glasses clinking, their sequins shaking, and all they were was a blur. Loose feathers floated in the air, beer spilled, women squealed—and all he could see was Nikki. All he could hear was his heart beating, slow and steady and strong. He knew what he felt, and there were no words for it. Not this.
Her tiara caught the lights and glittered in her wild, dark hair. Pure bed head, pink feathers, and a couple of purple streaks, strands going every which way. It wasn’t an accident. She fixed it like that, moussed it and blow-dried it all into an artful mess. He’d watched her do it, teased her about it, kissed her between the moussing and the blow-drying—and loved every second of it.
She had five earrings in one ear and three in the other, always, and none of them ever matched. She sang in the mornings, and he’d been her first man.
All of that made her his.
He started forward, and she rose from her chair, her cards falling to the table, her hand coming up to her chest—a delicate hand with paint under the nails. There was no Nikki without paint. She painted men. She painted on her photographs. She painted angels and demons. She painted her clothes, and once, for him, she’d painted herself—in chocolate and caramel.
Oh, yeah. He was in way over his head.
Seven months without her, without her kiss, without her wrapped around him—by all rights, he should be dead.
He passed the last barrier of drunken dancers and found himself suddenly standing in front of her—with absolutely nothing to say. Geezus. All he could do was look at her. She was so beautiful. She’d knocked him senseless the first time he’d seen her, and he’d never really recovered—the wild color of her hair, the dark wings of her eyebrows, the shape of her face, the clear, sun-shot gray of her eyes. Her mouth. God, what she’d done to him with her mouth.
“I . . . I didn’t expect . . .” she started, her voice trailing off breathlessly. Her cheeks were flushed. “Not tonight.”
“Neither did I.” It was the God’s truth. She was the last thing he’d expected in this place.
“Kid!” Rico shouted a greeting above the party noise, above the singing and the music and all the chatter.
“¡Chico!” Luis put a beer in his hand.
“¡Chuleta!” someone else said, and tossed down their cards, laughing. “La hermosa paloma tiene una flor y una escalerilla.” The beautiful bird has a straight flush.
“Nueve alto,” Rico called out. Nine high. “Roberto! Take something off.”
The conversation flowed around them in Spanish and English, the latter, he knew, in deference to Nikki. The Sandoval brothers were very inclusive, especially of beautiful women. They wanted to keep her in the game.
But she’d already left with him. They just didn’t know it yet.
He took a short swallow of the beer, set the bottle aside, and reached for her hand.
There was absolutely nothing to say—not after she put her hand in his.
He needed to kiss her. He was going to kiss her, but not here at the party. He was taking her home.
Keeping her close to his side, he threaded a way through the wildly dancing crowd, heading back toward the gate in the wall. Catcalls sounded behind them, with Rico and Luis accusing him of all sorts of felonious kidnapping of beautiful gringas. He wasn’t offended. They were laughing and cheering him on, and none of it made a damn bit of difference. There was nothing but Nikki, her hand in his, so small and strong, her skin not so soft, not on her hands. Too much paint, too much paint cleaning, too many hours in the darkroom, processing film to her exacting standards. Her hands were always rough, always nicked up.
But the rest of her was soft, ungodly soft.
He opened the gate and, once on the other side, shoved the bolt home, locking out the rest of the world. He wasn’t worried about the Ramones. The traffic was usually one-way from the Sandovals’. By the time people ended up at the Ramones’, they were done for the night.
No, all his attention was focused right here, right now, right where he stood.
His heart was pounding.
It was dark on his side of the wall, dark and sweet with the smell of flowers, with just the light from the party filtering in through the trees and across the tops of the climbing vines.
“Kid,” she said, her voice still so softly breathless. “You’re here. I hoped, but . . . my God, it’s like I dreamed you.”
Her face was turned up toward his, her hand touching his arm.
“Nikki . . . I—” he started, then gave up and simply lowered his mouth to hers. There was nothing to
say, not right now, not when all he wanted, all he needed was to touch her, to slide his tongue in her mouth and taste her, to fill himself up with her.
Their lips met, hers parted, and a hundred emotions flooded through him. He’d expected the pleasure, electrifying pleasure—but he also got relief, bone deep. This was home, being with Nikki, their bodies touching. She came up on tiptoe, her mouth on his, her arms going around his neck, and he slid his hand down her back.
Then farther.
Two rules down in under thirty seconds. He was kissing her and had his hand on her ass—and it was incredible.
This was going to get crazy, fast. Real fast. He could tell. The kiss had gone from “home sweet home” to hot and deep instantly. He tried not to stick his tongue halfway down her throat, tried not to devour her, but she was already there, and he was drowning in the love he felt—in the edge of desperation pulling him under, the heat of her skin, in the all-consuming soft wetness of her mouth.
This was going to be more than crazy. It was going to be crazy hot sex, sweet and dirty up against the garden wall in less than five minutes. Geezus. He’d been so in love with her, was so in love with her. How had he ever thought he could live without this?
NIKKI opened her mouth wider, took him deeper, and it still wasn’t enough—not even close.
She was doomed. Nothing should be this hot, this fast, and nothing ever had been, not in her whole life, except Kid Chaos. She’d come to Panama needing to see him. Her friend Skeeter had said he’d finished up a mission and would be returning to his house in Panama City, and Nikki had known she had to come. She needed to tie up loose ends, close the books, get him out of her system so she could move on.
She had not come to kiss him.
She had not come for this. She swore it, but between one placed bet and the next, she’d known he was here, and her heart still hadn’t stopped racing. It was crazy. She knew it—but, God, it was Kid, and everything she’d ever felt about him, everything he’d ever made her feel had washed through her and nearly dropped her to her knees.
She’d thought she’d gotten past him, but she’d gotten past nothing, not from his first kiss to his last, to this one. The way he felt, the way he smelled, the angle of his jaw, the nape of his neck, the way he held her in his arms, his strength—with his mouth on hers and his arms around her, she never wanted to let him go.
And damn, it wasn’t supposed to be this way.
He’d left her, twice, the last time without a word for seven long months. No letter. No phone call. No e-mail. She’d missed him until she thought she’d die, been angry with him, longed for him. God, how she’d longed for him, all six feet of warm, smooth skin and ironbound muscle. He was so beautiful, a warrior with dark brown hair and hazel eyes, and a face stripped of all artifice. He was what he was, and he was the first man she’d ever given herself to—and God help her, she was about to do it again. The need was building in her, totally irresistible, damnably inevitable.
Doomed.
She held his face in her hands, covering him with kisses, and he slid his hand under her skirt—and all she could think was Yes . . . yes. Please, Kid. It had been so long since she’d had him, since he’d been hers, and it was so easy to fall for him again, to get just a little more naked with every passing minute. He pushed off her panties. She unzipped his pants. Her top came untied. She opened his shirt.
“You’ve been hurt,” she whispered against his lips, her fingers gently touching an edge of gauze.
“No,” he assured her, then backtracked a bit. “Well, just a little . . . maybe.”
Probably more than a little, considering the size of the bandage, but his heart was beating strongly beneath her hand, his skin was warm, and his mouth was all over her, telling her how much he wanted her.
It was all she needed to know. For this moment, for now, it was everything.
IN the back of his mind, Kid knew the bedroom was only fifty feet away from the garden gate. He also knew they weren’t going to make it that far, not the first time, not when she was soft and wet and his pants were half off, not when her hand was between his legs and he could hardly breathe for what she was doing to him.
“Geezus, Nikki.” He rocked against her, then lifted her in his arms and pressed her back against the wall. “Wrap your legs around me.”
She did, helping him out, helping herself, and then he was pushing up inside her—and everything slowed down, way down.
It was so incredible, the sensations so intensely sweet, the rush of emotion overwhelming.
He swore softly. She felt so amazingly good. He nuzzled her neck, thrusting into her, and felt himself die a little from the pleasure—and the pain. His leg was killing him, and his side hurt like hell from lifting her, but God, there was no way on earth for him to stop.
With his arms under hers, he had one hand wrapped around a fistful of vines, holding them against the wall, and the other threaded through her hair, flowers crushed in his fingers. The whole thing was amazing, the heat, the smell, the softness—Nikki, taking him again and again. It had been so long. It had been forever since he’d been inside a woman, and this was her. All she had to do was breathe to make him hot.
But she did more, sealing her mouth over his and sucking on his tongue and just flat-out filling his whole body with the sensation of sex, from the top of his head on down. Everything. Consuming him. It was all sex and love and heat and Nikki.
He moved one arm down around under her bottom, holding her tighter, lifting her, pushing deeper—and then he came. He felt the warning signals, felt that first sweet edge of release and was helpless to stop it. He didn’t have the strength. He didn’t have the will. Not this time.
Oh, God. It was soul-wrenching, a melting orgasm that started at the back of his skull and the base of his groin and just flowed out of him, taking him deep inside himself, deep inside her. It was timeless sensation, and it lasted forever, and all the while she kissed him, holding him, her mouth on his so hot and sweet.
“Nikki . . .” he groaned, pushing himself deeper, his body shuddering. He’d needed her for so long—only her.
THE Learjet glided to a stop on the private airstrip south of the city. Inside, two well-dressed men commandeered the forward cabin, one thin and ascetic, his clothes austerely black, the other younger, more solidly built, with broad shoulders and an elegant, aristocratic face. The white shirt beneath his expensive gray suit jacket was open to reveal a diamond-encrusted gold cross. Both men wore large gold rings engraved with the letter C in the shape of a fer-de-lance, the deadliest snake in tropical America. Its mouth was open, ready to strike, its fangs showing. The C stood for Conseco, and the snake epitomized Juan Conseco’s rise to the top of the drug cartel’s ladder, a rise punctuated by a series of sudden, lethal strikes against his competitors, until he’d had none left.
Now he only had enemies, and they treated him with all the care and consideration they would have given any poisonous serpent in their midst.
“This is not wise, Juan,” the older man said. “I cannot protect you in Panama the way I can at home.”
“The way you protected Ruperto and Diego, Uncle Drago?” It was a cruel question, but Juan Conseco was a cruel man, and vengeful. Ruperto had been his cousin, blood of his blood, Drago’s oldest son, and he’d been murdered a month ago at his breakfast table by an assassin’s bullet—by el asesino fantasma. Diego had died the same day, outside Juan’s own home, with twenty armed men guarding the walls. None of them had seen anything except Diego falling to the ground with a bullet between his eyes.
It was a signature shot, el asesino fantasma laughing in Juan’s face, baiting the snake. Losing two of his lieutenants, two cousins, in one day had been a terrible blow to his family’s heart, and a blow to his family’s pride. The theft at the airstrip on the Putumayo four days ago had been one more blow, the worst in a series of recent hits on the Consecos, all of them making him look weak to his enemies—until, by the grace of God and a night
nurse at the Bogotá hospital, Juan’s prayers had been answered. The gringo who had been shot in Banco Nuevo, who had flown out of Santa María, had a name: Peter Alexander Chronopolous. It was a name Juan knew only too well, and it had lifted the mystery of el asesino fantasma. Finally, Juan understood the fierce ruthlessness that had driven the ghost killer the length of Colombia and into Peru, and brought him back again: revenge, hot with the same blood lust that drove Juan.
For what had been done to his brother, el asesino must desire to kill every guerrilla and pistolero in all of Colombia. Juan would, if J.T. Chronopolous had been his hermano.
He admired ruthless men, but the ghost killer, the gringo devil who dared to interfere with Juan Conseco’s affairs, needed to die, an eye for an eye. When Peter Chronopolous had gotten on a plane to Panama earlier this afternoon, Juan and Drago had not been far behind.
Juan looked down the length of the cabin, at the other men he’d brought with him, two assassins of his own, men skilled in all manner of death, and four soldiers from his private guard. They would hunt this Chronopolous down and kill him like a dog.
CHAPTER
2
NIKKI WASN’T DRUNK.
Not even she could get drunk on half a rum-and-Coke. So that was no excuse.
Craziness might work, the old “sex by reason of insanity” defense. Loneliness was a definite contender. She’d never really known what loneliness was until Kid Chaos had loved her and left her.
“Damn,” she swore quietly, watching the ceiling fan go around and around above the bed. She wasn’t going to think about loneliness. She’d given it up months ago, given it up for good. She wasn’t going to miss him ever again, especially when he was lying right next to her, sound asleep, not going anywhere for at least a few more hours. She wouldn’t count on more than that. She knew the kind of life he led, and it did not include room for a woman.
At least it hadn’t included room for her, but she wasn’t going to think about that, either.
