Real, not pretend.
Confusing.
Overwhelming…
Touch, sight, smell, hearing, taste: all senses alive…and a horrible sixth sense premonition that her heart was getting involved in this. Which wasn’t at all like her. But then hadn’t O’Dwyer acted like a noble-minded idiot throughout this whole thing? Not in a million years would she have predicted that being a team player and “having his back” would turn out to mean she was the one who’d have to take the lead in their sex show. That even with all her urgings, he’d still used his eyes to check in with her every step of the way, which was just so freaking…sweet.
The squish had returned to her belly, and as she’d feared, it’d gotten in the way of the mission. She’d balked when it came time to screw O’Dwyer in reality, her awakened femininity resisting the idea of paring down the act to only the mechanics: penis-in-vagina, thrust and repeat, thrust and repeat, etcetera and etcetera. She was no stranger to divorcing emotions from sex, and so it should’ve been a piece of cake. You chew through men, Nicole…
The nail in her emotional coffin had been driven in when O’Dwyer’s arms wrapped around her and their naked flesh met. The intimacy of it breached her defenses down to their very foundations. More than their nakedness, it was the way O’Dwyer held her, his strength and care saying that he wouldn’t let her fall. No matter the threat. No matter the obstacle. Never. And in that moment she’d nearly been overwhelmed by a feeling of…such sad regret for him. Because intimacy was an emotion she only handled clumsily. Ruinously.
End result of it all: she experienced an emotional hiccup O’Dwyer had, unfortunately, picked up on. He’d refused to continue their sex show. So now Lieutenant Boy Scout was facing down power-monger Alejandro Carrera, and putting his life on the line. For her. Trashing this operation. For her.
“Did I direct you to stop?” Carrera inquired, his voice calm, flat, and chilled.
The two thugs by the door swiveled their heads toward the dining room table in robotic unison. Not a necessary move; if the erectile bulges in their pants were anything by which to judge, their peripheral vision was in perfect working order.
And gross.
She’d deal with how many men in this room had seen her naked and lusted after her later. Maybe not later. This might be a memory ripe for repression.
“No, sir,” O’Dwyer replied. “I just need to get the condom.” Without waiting for permission, O’Dwyer shuffled over to the sex toy bag and rummaged through it.
Nicole’s skin prickled, and she shivered, feeling cold now O’Dwyer was away from her, and oddly bereft, sitting naked and alone on the edge of the dining room table. Scared and edgy, too, because there wasn’t a condom in the toy bag, not that she knew of.
Carrera’s eyes slowly narrowed on O’Dwyer as the search went on longer than it should have.
O’Dwyer was no doubt giving himself time to formulate an impromptu Plan B.
She drilled a silent message into the side of his head that the plan should not include reaching for a weapon. Their pen guns could only shoot one bullet at a time, and taking down three men with one-at-a-time shots would be impossible, even for a man of O’Dwyer’s superior coordination.
Or maybe O’Dwyer was waiting for the generator to blow, which was a waste of time and hope. She wasn’t one to throw a bunch of I told you so’s in someone’s face, but on the inside, her brain was blaring it. Kyle “Mikey” Hammond was probably laughing himself into a tummy-clutch at this very moment.
“You’ll continue on,” Carrera instructed in an inflexible tone, “without a condom.”
“Oh.” O’Dwyer scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t think we can do that, sir.”
Carrera unfolded himself from his chair, a cruel gaze leveled on O’Dwyer. The kingpin sauntered over, swung up his hand and—Nicole gasped softly when O’Dwyer tensed at the last minute, no doubt fighting the natural instinct to block the blow—delivered O’Dwyer a swift backhand.
She slid off the dining room table, her legs nearly bending beneath her like an antique accordion. Think fast, mija! Turn, punch, run—whatever you need to do, do it!
Carrera’s face was an expressionless mask. “I must have misunderstood you, whore. Did you just defy me?”
“No, sir,” O’Dwyer answered, his fingers twitching at his sides.
Nicole’s lips trembled from stress overload. If O’Dwyer fell apart, she wasn’t sure she could keep it together on her own.
Carrera returned to his chair, sitting down as casually as if he’d just asked one of them to turn up the lights while they were doing their show.
O’Dwyer walked over to her and set his hands on her hips, his nostrils flared, murder in his green eyes.
Her lips parted. O’Dwyer was enraged. Not falling apart. Furious.
“Got any ideas?” he asked her in low, tight Spanish.
Have sex with me. But they hadn’t brought any condoms, had they? Because who would’ve thought, you know? O’Dwyer wouldn’t screw her without a condom. He wouldn’t screw her, anyway. Not with her absurd vulnerability sitting between them. “Fresh out,” she answered.
“Santiago,” Carrera said mildly, presumably speaking to one of his bodyguards. “If these two don’t start fucking in three seconds, shoot the man.”
A stuttering breath spilled out of her. “Eric…”
The last veneer of humanity fell away from Eric, and Nicole lost her breath again as she glimpsed a darkness inside him, a level of black rage she’d never before seen in another human being. He’s going to start killing people. She didn’t know how, but—
Vroom!
Eric propelled his body into hers, driving her to the floor, her head just missing the edge of the dining room table, as the windows exploded. Splinters of glass flew across the room. They fell together, tangle-legged, as shards bounced off the table and skidded along the carpet, some sharply dinging into them.
She dragged in a breath. The generator has blown!
Shouting erupted from Carrera, a string of rapid-fire Spanish he flung at his men. The three of them charged from the room.
Eric lifted his head and stared down at her. His naked body was on top of her naked body, his hips seated firmly between her spread thighs, the crown of his cock nudging at the side of her opening. He blinked once, very slowly, then said hoarsely in Spanish, “Clothes.” He hauled himself off her. “And watch the glass.” In seconds, he’d pulled on his pants and leather sandals, the sex toy bag slung over his shoulder.
She tugged on her bra and panties while she frowned at the sea of glittering shards. She didn’t have any functional shoes. And where was her dress?
O’Dwyer hiked her up on one hip, cleared the broken glass, then set her back down on her feet. From there, she knew what to do.
She ran.
The Uzi-armed guards in the foyer tried to stop them. “Hey! You two wait in the dining room!”
“Fuck that!” Eric blasted. “We’re not getting caught in the crossfire of the Villanueva cartel.”
One of the guards blanched and exchanged a glance with the other. “Is that who’s attacking Mister Carrera?”
Eric shoved past them and sprinted out the door.
She kept pace at his side, catching sight of huge black clouds billowing into the sky from the east side of the hacienda. The smell of smoke filled her nose along with the stench unique to an electrical fire.
Another “Hey!” was called at their backs, but when she and Eric tore down the road in the direction of the boat dock, they weren’t challenged further. She winced in pain, the pebbles on the dirt road grinding into her bare feet.
When they reached the bend in the road, out of sight of the hacienda, they cut swiftly into the forest and backtracked toward the drug-smuggling submarine. Palm fronds hit her bare body with stinging slaps, and sticks and other forest debris thrashed her feet further.
Suddenly, Eric stopped just inside the forest line and hunkered down beside a tre
e trunk, breathing hard from the run.
She crouched next to him, panting, too, and peered across a stretch of manicured lawn. Birds twittered above them, no doubt put there by the people who published the brochure for this tropical island paradise, which was really no Shangri-La at all. There, sitting in a pool of ocean water at the back side of the hacienda, was a long, olive green submarine moored at a small dock.
“Everyone is over at the wrecked generator right now,” Eric said in English. “It’s now or never.”
“Let’s do it.” Nicole stood and ran, her heart quickening as soon as she was in the open. Cutting across the grass, Eric at her side, she slowed as she came to the dock.
“The hatch near the sail is open,” Eric told her quietly. “Go there.” He jumped with light feet on top of the sub and aimed for the part of the submarine sticking up like a shark’s fin. Squatting next to what looked like an open manhole cover, he held his forefinger to his lips in the universal sign for silence.
She knelt across from him and nodded.
With a quick, darting motion of his head, he peeked down the hatch. Clear, he mouthed to her.
She nodded again but felt her pulse quicken. It remained to be seen if they would continue unmolested once they dropped down into the sub. They had no way of knowing if any of Carrera’s thugs were in this metal tube.
Eric paused to dig into the sex toy bag, pulling out the rubber dildo she’d used earlier to entice their way inside Carrera’s hacienda: another memory best consigned to repression. Opening it, he dumped out two long stainless steel objects that resembled exactly what they were supposed to: writing pens. Each was loaded with a single .25-caliber bullet. Inside the dildo there were four extra bullets, and Eric stuck those in his pants pocket. If they got bum-rushed, six bullets weren’t a lot, but better than nothing.
Eric slung the sex toy bag over his shoulder again and tucked the pen gun into the waistband of his pants. “Vámonos,” he whispered, and slipped down the hatch.
Chapter Thirteen
With her throat clenching and unclenching, Nicole climbed down the metal ladder and dropped silently to the floor.
Eric already had the prosthetic fist out and opened. He upended the contents into his hand. A pair of tracking devices rolled out. She plucked one off his palm—they’d decided to hedge their bets and plant two. He chopped his hand toward the front of the sub, indicating she should go in that direction. He turned and went the other way.
She padded down a low-ceilinged, narrow corridor, trying her best to be quiet, but everything echoed inside this coffee can, her footsteps and breathing creating a strange, muffled metallic feedback around her. Sunlight from the open hatch quickly faded behind her, and she was soon immersed in a gloom broken only by occasional dull yellow security lighting. A shudder raced up her arms, along her shoulders, and dropped down her spine.
She ducked through a low portal into a control room of sorts, screens, indicators, and knobs looking like nothing but shadowy facsimiles of the real thing. The place had a ghostly, abandoned feel to it, like in an episode of Firefly—a TV space western—when a lost spaceship had been found adrift in the galaxy, the entire crew eaten by subhuman creatures called Reavers. Another shiver prickled along Nicole’s flesh. In no mood to loiter, she darted beneath the nearest desk. Crawling to where the joint met the wall, she—
Metal groaned.
She froze, her heart hammering. Footsteps?
She waited, motionless, adrenaline dumping into her veins in wave after wave. She shallowed her breathing into near silence and listened. It felt like her spine was shrinking. She heard it again, and allowed a slow tide of air to pass her lips. As dusk descended outside, the structure of the submarine was reacting to the change in temperature. She’d only heard metal shifting.
She finished the job. Working mostly by feel, she planted the device in an invisible spot near the joint, then crept forward and peered out from under the desk, confirming she was still alone. Hopping to her feet, she whizzed back the way she came, her breathing cramped in her throat. She wanted off this sub more than she wanted female mud wrestling competitions to be outlawed.
Eric was already waiting by the ladder. He waved her ahead of him.
She climbed up.
He came up right behind her, his nose practically touching her ass—an area covered only by a skimpy lavender thong that he’d seen without any panties whatsoever a short time ago. How she was supposed to feel about it was…still undetermined. Put it away, mija. Some things you just don’t think about. She clambered onto the top of the sub.
The lawn near the submarine remained clear, commotion still coming from the direction of the generator. With luck, they’d be able to slip unnoticed back to the helicopter and fly off without incident. Isla Gorgona’s aerial radar would pick them up by now, but it was hoped that Carrera’s people would think the Navy helicopter had just cut too close to the island’s radar while passing by, and so no RPGs would be employed. They were due for some good luck on this mission.
She and Eric raced into the forest, and she gritted her teeth as, once again, she fell behind. Her feet were now on the verge of complete destruction.
Eric navigated the way back to their starting point at the eight-foot-tall bushes, where luck, as it turned out, decided to flip them the bird.
Right as Eric broke out of the trees onto the hidden dirt path, one of Carrera’s men charged through the sparse area of the bush, where she and Eric had launched their initial attack on the real whores. The Colombian man crashed into Eric. The collision threw Eric back, his pen gun flipping out of his waistband. With hardly a stalled breath, Eric reversed his direction, lunging forward and landing a brutal punch to the underside of the Colombian’s chin. The guy parted company with his shoes and hurtled backward several paces into another clump of bushes.
Mierda. Was she jealous or impressed by that? No time to consider either.
More bad luck was in the process of unraveling their situation further.
The tied-up female whore had somehow rid herself of her gag and was screaming with that shrill voice of hers. “¡Ellos están aquí, auxilio!” They’re here! Help!
“Let’s go!” Eric scooped up the pen gun and took off up the road for the helicopter.
She grabbed the Colombian’s vacated shoes and shoved her right foot into one. Her toes crammed at the end. She made a guttural sound in her throat. What man on earth had smaller feet than she did?
Bootsteps thundered on the other side of the bushes, coming from the direction of the hacienda.
She took off barefoot after Eric, limping and grimacing.
About twenty feet up the hill, Eric stopped abruptly and whirled around, cursing roundly when he saw her tender-footing her way along the path. He raced back to her. “Pony up,” he told her. “Now!”
She jumped onto his back, gripping his waist with her thighs and looping her arms around his neck.
“Would it kill you to ask for help?” He took off up the path again, his hands clutching the underside of her knees.
Gunfire cracked and dirt smoked up in a line at Eric’s feet. “Fuck,” he snarled.
Somebody was very close behind them.
Yanking her own pen gun out of her bra, she twisted around, aimed, then pressed down on the head of the pen, expending her single bullet.
Red spurted from their pursuer’s knee, and with a shout, the Colombian flopped to the ground.
She turned back around. “Knee,” she said into Eric’s ear.
“Good girl.”
It was such a silly way to compliment her, but she warmed from it nonetheless.
Eric careened around a bend in the road, and—“Holy shit!” he hissed.
She peered around him, seeing what he saw: Hammond on the road ahead of them, hobbling along, occasionally using his sniper rifle as a cane.
What the—?
Eric drew even with Hammond and, without slowing, reached out and grabbed his copilot by the
scruff of the flight suit, hauling him up the hill alongside them.
Down the path, shouts grew louder. “¡Los veo! ¡Apúrense!”
I see them! Hurry!
Ice rolled down Nicole’s spine. It suddenly sounded like an entire army of Colombians was rampaging after them.
Eric never wavered. She didn’t know how he managed to keep going without losing even a notch of speed, hauling her and now Hammond, too, wearing shitty Colombian sandals. His lungs labored more forcefully but otherwise, he pumped up the hill, hardly fazed.
She pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades, her heart sitting like a twisted knot in her chest. This was one of those moments in her life she knew she’d never forget.
When Eric finally slowed, she looked up. They’d just crested the hill, the helicopter straight ahead of them…
“What the fuck, Bomber!?” Eric yelled. “What did you do to my bird?!”
Bomber was seated at the swivel-mounted machine gun. He’d been tasked with keeping the aircraft safe from insurgency, authorized to use deadly force if necessary. He let go of the gun now, long enough to throw out his hands. “You were gone too long, boss, and we were getting close to bingo28 on fuel. I had to shut down.”
Nicole noticed it, then—the rotor blades weren’t spinning and the engine was quiet. Her belly tightened. How long did it take to re-start a helicopter?
More gunfire ripped through the air.
“Incoming!” Eric flew toward the helicopter.
Chapter Fourteen
Eric shoved Mikey toward the right side cockpit door, then tossed Gamboa inside the helo, none too gently, and, shit, sorry! but their world was in the middle of coming apart. Eric started to run around to the left side, then skidded to a stop. Mikey still wasn’t inside the aircraft. His friend had grabbed onto the upper frame of the helo, but even as Eric watched, the boot Mikey had placed on the foot step slipped off. Mikey lurched forward woozily. He tried to put his boot up again and missed.
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