by Zoe Dawson
“Mission accomplished. I sent everything to Chris with instructions to alert Stafford.”
Kinley breathed a sigh of relief. “What now?”
“I know where we can go,” Maria said.
Beau and Kinley turned to look at her. They needed a place that was safe, where they could eat and sleep. Tomorrow they would be heading for the extraction point.
“We have a safe house. Miguel again. It’s a bogus name, not far from here.”
“Okay, we’ll go there if you’re sure it’s safe.”
“I’m sure. We’ve never even been there. Miguel hired people to furnish it and paid cash for everything. He was very careful.”
When they pulled up to the safe house, Maria got out of the vehicle and Beau turned to Kinley. “Take over here. After we get the garage open, drive it inside.”
She nodded and Beau caught up to Maria, who was reaching around an exotic plant, presumably for their spare key.
She unlocked the door and rushed to the back of the house and through the kitchen as he followed close behind. She opened a door and punched a switch and the wide door started to lift. As soon as it was possible, Kinley drove the vehicle inside and Maria punched it closed.
“Come inside and I will get you something hot to drink, get cleaned up and into some dry clothes.”
She led the way back into the house and upstairs, where she pulled towels out of the linen closet and drew them into the bedroom.
Kinley was carrying the bag with their changes of clothes.
Maria wasted no time and grabbed clean, dry clothes out of the closet. “Use the shower in here and I will take the one in the hall.”
“That will be fine,” Beau said, unbuttoning and shrugging out of the dirty and muddy black shirt.
Kinley was pulling stuff out of the bag.
“We’re going to have to lay low here until we get close to extraction. It’s too dangerous to be out in the storm. Lucky break for us, as it should keep the cartel buttoned up until the storm passes.”
“After our showers, we’ll go back downstairs. I’ll make us something to hold us over and some good coffee.”
“That sounds heavenly,” Kinley said, heading for the bathroom.
Maria turned to go, and he said, “We’ll be down in just a few minutes.”
She nodded, and then looked to the bathroom door. “Kinley was quite fierce and deadly, but she is also kind and gentle. Thank you both.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “You’re welcome. We’re sorry about your husband.”
She nodded and left.
When he entered the bathroom, Kinley was just standing there at the sink looking at her reflection, but he knew that’s not what she was seeing. When he touched her shoulder, she turned and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“You were amazing,” he said quietly. “A freaking Amazon warrior.”
“Who says so?”
“Maria says so. And…I say so. So you killed a couple of guys, huh?”
“Yes, and it was completely awful. I know that they would have killed me in a heartbeat. I didn’t underestimate them, but they underestimated me. I took their lives to save us both and that was that.”
“Exactly, cher. That is that.”
He really had pushed her hard, he thought, and he admired her resilience.
“I’ll wait until you’re done,” he said, retreating.
When she vacated the bathroom, he ran the water and got in to scrub off the grease paint, the sweat, and the blood.
Kinley was waiting for him when he got out, sitting fully dressed at the foot of the bed. It took everything he had to keep his hands to himself.
She rose and they embraced. “I wish we were alone,” she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. He slid his hand heavily down her spine in a soothing caress.
“Me, too,” he murmured.
Her smile was bone-melting and he swept his palm from her throat to her cheek, molding her flesh, his gaze lingering over her. Her eyes held awareness of her power, her shape like an hourglass, plush and ripe, and wrapping him in her scent and sensation. Beau felt privileged, every moment he’d ever spent with another woman obliterated as if those faceless, nameless women had never existed. She touched his face, slid her thumb over his lips. It was a simple thing, but he wanted more of it. He wanted to connect to her deeply and seal the connection tighter.
He slid his hand up her side, crushing back the need to bury himself inside Kinley. Out of respect for Maria, he reined in this wild hunger for her.
She was more than under his skin. She was inside him. And when she wrapped her arms around his neck, she took him with her, away from danger and isolation, ignoring everything about the mission.
“Beau,” she said, almost choking on his name. “Please, just a kiss—” Her fingertips ran over his face, her breath hot in his ear. “I need you.”
His feelings tumbled over each other.
Kinley sighed when he groaned and drew in air through clenched teeth. A deep, heavy heat coiled through her body as his mouth rolled over hers, drawing her into him. She held him tighter.
“Beau,” she breathed, wanting his heat, his energy, the life of him pulsing through her. Her hands swept over the contours, her fingertips molding to curved muscle and man.
“I’m a mess,” she whispered in his ear, his big hands pushing back her hair.
“So am I,” he growled.
He was an experience—something from the tightly guarded places she’d rarely visited. His kiss alone twisted her up in a net, tying her tight. In knots. She didn’t know if she wanted to keep him as close as possible or turn in the other direction.
She cupped his face, devouring his mouth, thrust her hips a bit, and he grunted and cursed, then nudged her thighs wide and stood between them. She took what he offered, and a million thoughts ran through her mind, nothing sticking long enough to make sense. She felt freed, her need beyond passion, beyond control.
Kinley stared up at him, had never expected to see this man humbled to anything. Yet he was—she could see it in his eyes, his expression, as if he was questioning everything he knew, and her throat tightened. For the world, the enemy, they saw strength and deadly skill. Kinley saw need and an unguarded man. She loved the exquisite intensity of his gaze trapped in hers.
His breath shuddered, almost gasping. “You have no idea what this is doing to me, do you?”
“How can I not?” she said, brushing her fingers across his hair, caressing down the side of his face. Gently, she laid her mouth over his, licking the line of his lips slowly before sliding her tongue between them and making them both crazy.
Her whispers mingling with the sound of the rain, their secrets bared and unspoken drifted between them.
“Coffee’s ready,” Maria called.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her, and she clung to him. Tomorrow was going to be precarious, dangerous, and may just take their lives. But she had found something here that had changed her, changed her so profoundly, and she hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface. It also frightened her more than going into battle, more than losing her life. It scared her down to her soul, to the core of her heart where she had loved so unconditionally that she hadn’t been able to get over it. Now there was another man, a man that meant as much to her. How could she open herself to that again? How could she take it and feel completely sure that she wouldn’t go through the same kind of agony?
When they left the room, Kinley saw that Maria had pulled out the photograph of her and Miguel smiling, with their arms around each other. Her heart broke for the woman who had obviously loved the man who had been taken from her. Kinley couldn’t stop that fear again. It was raw and real and scored her insides.
“I suggest we all sleep in the same room, close to an exit. I like the family room. Two couches and a chair, sliding-glass door and closer to the garage.” Beau said.
Beau followed Maria into the kitchen, where she poured the coffee. She then st
arted pulling things out of the refrigerator. As she started assembling a meal, she said, “This asylum. Am I able to keep my belongings and my assets?”
“Yes, asylum just means the US is accepting you as a refugee. We don’t strip people who are already displaced. Do you have family here?”
“No. My family is gone. I only had Miguel. As I am sure you are aware, I am much younger than my husband. We’ve only been married for a year. I met him when he was called to the hospital where I worked in Emergency. He performed an operation on a victim of a terrible accident and what would have been a disfigurement. Miguel is…was a genius, so talented.” She wiped away her tears. “We planned on having children…”
Kinley came around the counter and wrapped her arms around Maria as she started sobbing.
“I’m so sorry. I can only hope we got the bastard who killed him.”
She raised her head. “You did. He was my guard. The man you killed. So if you feel any regret for your actions, you can rest at ease. Thank you, again.” Maria put the cover on the skillet and said, “Excuse me for a moment.”
When she left the kitchen, Kinley turned to Beau. She just stood there, her heart broken and bleeding for Maria. She’d had a terrible, horrible loss and it was devastating her from the inside.
Kinley trembled when she looked at Beau, feeling vulnerable and crushed. His hair was a mess after the shower, curling around his face, his bangs heavy on his forehead. His midnight-blue eyes a deep well in which she could fall and never find her way out. His sympathy for Maria was there, too, in those eyes that were so expressive, sometimes full of steel and at other times full of her, as if he was a mirror that reflected her image so that she could feel completely whole.
And the fear she’d been pushing at with both hands since their recent lovemaking rolled over her, swamping her, jumbling up her emotions. She felt like she was in that fog again, waiting for the moment she’d heard those shots and knew with certainty that her father had just died. Feeling it as the life left his body. She’d never felt safe again…
Not until now.
Maria’s situation had reminded her of what happened when love was lost suddenly, a hollow gulf so wide there was nothing to bridge it, so deep it ripped out whatever made you whole. And when it went, when the person you loved went and you were left behind…it hurt. A can’t-catch-your-breath, I-think-I’m-going-to-die agony.
Beau was like a force of nature, like the energy of atoms splitting, cosmic and unexplainable, and they connected just like that sexy chain around his biceps with the empty link.
Getting into his orbit was dangerous, but she couldn’t fight it. She closed her eyes when he cupped her face and drew her against him, murmured to her that it was going to be okay. But she knew it wasn’t and knew he was also lying to himself.
He would understand why she walked away.
He would understand why she couldn’t stay with him. Because he’d been burned. He’d felt that same loss. And decided that he was better off without it.
And she understood herself so much better. Understood why she’d always kept herself behind that protective fog, a barrier between her and any man she thought she could love. The main reason she couldn’t give him everything. The fear of loss.
Even as she buried her face into his throat and slipped her arms around his broad shoulders, she knew this was the beginning of saying goodbye.
And Beau would let her go.
He’d let her walk away because his fears were just as powerful as hers.
Wouldn’t he?
Chapter Seventeen
After the food was consumed, Maria set them up with blankets and pillows and they settled into the family room. Maria took one couch and Kinley took the other. He took the chair with the perfect tactical view of the entrance to the street and a panoramic view of the backyard. Staying vigilant, he’d been trained to go without sleep, and he had no intention of being caught off guard. They had fulfilled their mission and he was getting them out of here in one piece. The storm still lashed the vegetation surrounding the house, the wind making a keening sound in the rafters. Sometime in the night, Kinley settled against him. She curled up to him, exhaled long and low and, in moments, fell asleep with her hand on his chest. Beau set his weapon on the table, the safety engaged, and settled next to her. He sent his hand into her mass of hair, burnished in the dancing ambient glow from the security light burning in the backyard.
He stretched his legs out and snuggled her more comfortably. It felt good, her compact body wrapped around his. He was pretty shocked how good. But he cared deeply for her. He wasn’t sure how it would work between them.
He recognized the look in her eyes so well. He used to get it with women after one night, and that was all it would take. He was either gone the next day or trying to get gone. But he was thinking things he hadn’t thought since Jennifer.
Settling down.
He wanted that with Kinley.
Kinley’s barriers had fallen right along with his, revealing something surprisingly vulnerable and open when she’d given herself to him. Now, even as she got close to him again, her barriers were there, wholly back in place, and they’d been reinforced.
That left him hanging on the edge of a cliff. He’d committed with Jennifer. He’d been all in. He’d tried to be patient and understanding. He’d tried to talk to her and make her understand how much he loved her, but in the end, she’d simply left. He’d come home to an empty apartment, his belongings piled into the corner and everything else…gone.
He wanted to hold fast to the knowledge that while Kinley might now be busy backing off and constructing walls, in that moment when she’d looked into his eyes, there had been confusion and longing plainly there for him to see. And that said otherwise. There was something else going on here, whether or not she could tell him, whether or not she’d even admitted it to herself.
He wanted to figure it out.
He wanted to be all in with Kinley.
But the remembered pain of being abandoned as Jennifer had simply cut him out of her life was still there. He wasn’t sure pushing Kinley or getting her to try to understand how he felt about her would do any good.
The conclusion: the all in had to come from her, and if it didn’t, it would be best if he just let her go. Let her walk away. Less pain now, no more empty apartments and emptiness he tried to fill with shallow women who responded to his charm and his looks. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hand deeper into her hair.
Suddenly, a snippet of conversation came to him from his partner at NCIS, Amber Dalton. One of these days, Beau, a woman is going to come along and knock that Cajun charm of yours right on its ass. When that happens, you’re going to be humbled by actual feelings. I want popcorn and a front-row seat for that.
Aw, hell, Kinley filled that emptiness with a genuineness that he couldn’t deny.
Her hand shifted to his stomach and Beau felt his muscles instantly flex. He moved her hand away from the danger zone.
The dark night transformed into a gray, rain-washed day, but to Beau it was their wake-up call. The chopper that was going to take them out of Cuba would be at the rendezvous at 0800. Kinley woke slowly, and he loved watching her face as it crinkled. She stretched a little, then opened her sleepy green eyes.
She looked up at him with parted lips, looking like she was still caught in a dream, and all that bull he was thinking last night tugged at his heart.
They had to get moving. That chopper wasn’t going to wait for them. Maria made a quick breakfast and they packed up the green bag, leaving everything else behind except Maria’s meager possessions.
“Mind if we take that Lexus sedan in the garage? Would be best to keep the Mercedes out of sight,” Beau asked as they prepared to leave.
Maria shook her head. “No, I don’t mind. Miguel gave it to me as a birthday present.”
Suddenly, the sound of a vehicle motoring into this quiet section of the neighborhood had Beau striding to the window.
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“Ah hell!” he muttered as two jeeps filled with more cartel goons pulled up to the front of the house. It was easy to see the tattoos.
“I don’t know how they found us, but these guys are really not going to give up Montoya. Time to bug out, ladies.”
They raced to the garage and Beau settled behind the wheel, handing the bag back to Maria as she settled into the backseat. Kinley shot him a look as she softly closed the passenger-side door.
“Buckle up.”
“I take it we’re not going to raise the door.”
He started the car and twisted his body around. Giving her a grim smile, he said, “You locked and loaded, cher?”
“Hooyah,” she said.
“Watch your six.” He gunned the engine and hit the gas.
The Lexus punched through the garage door like it was tissue paper. Gotta love a car that drove like a dream but was as indestructible as a tank. The cartel contingent was already out of the jeeps and just starting to surround the house as Beau flipped the car into first and pealed out, burning rubber.
As he shifted to second, Kinley already had her window down and she sent a burst of rapid fire across the lawn, cutting down some while others dove out of the way of her hot lead.
Beau sped through the street, swerving around traffic and heading for the main road, where he could open the vehicle up and leave those tangos in the dust. He banked the turn, downshifting to check his speed, then the tires of the car hit the asphalt.
Kinley kept her eyes on the side-view mirror, the submachine gun in her hands at the ready. When the Lexus growled and Beau shifted, she swung her eyes to him. He drove like a freaking race-car driver. She was still awed at the maneuver he’d pulled yesterday to get them away. He handled the vehicles like he handled everything else—with hot, sexy, mad skills.
He shifted into second gear. Third, fourth and fifth in rapid succession, each gear forcing a quantum leap in their acceleration. Her heart jamming in her throat, she watched the speedometer climb.
