by Dana Marton
Light Walker standing in front of her in a towel, however, ruthlessly drove the point home that lust was a real and nearly omnipotent force.
And then there was the fact that Clara understood him a little better now. Now that she knew his brother’s story, her heart ached for him. Knowing something that personal created a level of intimacy between them that she wasn’t prepared to handle. She was suddenly seeing him as more than an exasperating mercenary, and she was pretty sure that was a move in the wrong direction.
He cleared his throat.
She jumped from the bed without meeting his eyes. “My turn.”
Then she shot out of the room as fast as if she’d been shot from a cannon. She was halfway down the hallway when she remembered that she needed clean underwear and PJs.
She walked back to her room and knocked. “Are you decent?”
“You can come in.”
She opened the door as slowly and carefully as if expecting armed attack.
He stood by the window, the towel still mercifully around his lean hips. His phone lay in pieces on the windowsill in front of him, his attention focused on a small chip he was inserting.
“Giving the phone an upgrade,” he said without looking at her.
Something to allow it to work in the jungle? A signal amplifier? She wasn’t sure how that stuff worked. And she didn’t want to hang around long enough to ask. She hurried to her suitcase, grabbed what she needed, then left the room lickety-split.
Light Walker’s sex appeal was a living, breathing thing. She felt as if it could grab her by the shoulders and draw her to him. She was pretty sure that if she relaxed, if only for a second, she’d find herself plastered to his chest. Maybe with her tongue hanging out, looking for something to lick.
Not going to happen.
She repeated that to herself a couple of times while she took a cold shower. She only lost control once, when she was startled by a stray rooster. The little bandit crowed right behind her.
She screamed, slipped, banged her head on the stall.
The rooster fluffed his feathers, then pranced out, clearly satisfied. His work there was finished.
She was almost in complete control of herself by the time she walked back to her room—hair in a ponytail for sleep—wishing her PJs consisted of more than boy shorts and a tank top. Of course, back when she’d planned her trip to Mexico, she hadn’t anticipated a roommate.
She felt fairly naked. Would he make a comment? If he did, she wasn’t going to react. She wasn’t going to let him get to her.
He was a reprobate. She was a woman blessed with a healthy amount of common sense. Mind over matter.
Then Clara opened the door and found him, eyes closed, in her bed.
The sheet was drawn to an inch or so below his bellybutton. He’d taken the far side, had his arms folded under his head, his splendiferous muscles on full display, as well as his scars and tattoos.
An insidious fog of testosterone and pheromones engulfed her. She closed the door behind herself and leaned against it, her body weak, her mind slowly working up enough annoyance to ask, “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“No.”
He turned his head and looked at her at last. “For most of last week, I’ve been sleeping in mud holes in the jungle with spiders and snakes and leeches. Not to mention scorpions,” he added. “I’m not going to sleep on the floor now when a perfectly good bed is available.”
“No,” she said again and folded her arms across her chest for emphasis.
“I offered you my bed last night,” he pointed out. “Technically, you owe me the same courtesy.”
“No.” She didn’t seem to be able to form any other words. Which was perfect, because no was the most important word she needed tonight when it came to Walker.
But then, with effort, she gathered some remnants of her vocabulary. “Go get your own room.”
“I think it’d be best if we stuck together.”
“There’s no danger here.”
He drew a deep breath, which made his chest rise and expand. “Don’t think all the banditos are dead.”
She pressed her lips together.
“I’m not going to try anything,” he promised.
She believed him. She really did. He had countless waitresses to sit on his lap, and, hello, he lived in a brothel. It wasn’t as if she didn’t trust him not to jump her. The thing was, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself not to jump him. And then she’d have to die of embarrassment.
“I explicitly remember you lecturing me not to trust anyone,” she said. “Especially not you.”
He held her gaze for what seemed several consecutive lifetimes. At the very least, she was certain that seasons passed outside.
“There might be hope for you yet.” He turned back to face the ceiling and closed his eyes again. “You can put your Glock under your pillow if it makes you feel better.”
She couldn’t go to him, but she didn’t know where else to go. It was her room. She stood there, trying to think of what to say.
Her gaze drifted to his trident tattoo. “Did the navy kick you out? I’d like to know the truth.”
She still hadn’t been able to figure out if he was one of the good guys or the bad guys, and her brain craved the proper category. Not being able to pin him down left her off-balance.
Because… Navy SEAL defending the country: good. Mercenary to the drug cartels: bad. Trying to find his brother: good. Vigilante justice: bad. He drove her crazy.
She didn’t understand gray. She liked things black-and-white, needed him to be one thing or the other. She needed to know before she did something stupid.
Two plus two was always four. She liked it that way. She’d chosen accounting as her college major for a reason. Her inability to see moral shades was also the reason why she struggled so hard with her father’s confession. She thought about it a hundred times a day. How could he? Why? She couldn’t understand him.
Walker interrupted that depressing line of thought by saying, “I wasn’t kicked out of the navy. Ben disappeared around the time I was supposed to reenlist. I left the navy to find him.”
She knew how that had ended.
“I would give anything to be able to turn back the clock so I could rescue him,” he said.
She could feel her stupid heart soften all over again. She wanted him to be one of the good guys. At the beginning, before she knew him, since he’d been assigned as her facilitator, she’d assumed he was. Then he’d gutted Pedro, and her opinion of him had gotten revised in a hurry.
But now that she was beginning to understand his motivation behind his actions… He’d clearly loved his brother very much. He just as clearly carried a world of hurt he refused to acknowledge. He’d steeped himself in revenge so there wouldn’t be room for emotions that hurt, like grief.
Blaming him would be pure hypocrisy. She’d immersed herself in finding Rosita so she wouldn’t have to face emotions such as the overwhelming sense of betrayal and the anger that boiled inside her, and the guilt over the anger.
And, of course, above all that, the grief over her father’s diagnosis, which half the time she pretended wasn’t real, was a mistake, because she definitely couldn’t face losing the person she loved most on this earth.
She could not think about that.
Even thinking about Walker was safer.
She watched him.
He was the archetypal wounded hero, irresistible to women, according to millions of movies and romance novels. And she felt the pull, even while her logical brain said giving in to the attraction would be the worst idea ever. She could resist, she told herself. She was a sensible, strong woman.
She walked to the bed and sat gingerly on the edge, with her back to him. She didn’t want to be looking at him as she asked. “Are you naked?”
She was proud of herself for getting the words out without choking.
“
I have the towel on,” he said. “It’s tied.”
He was mostly a good guy—probably not irredeemable—she told herself, and lay down on the top of the covers next to him. She was paying for the room; she wasn’t going to sleep on the floor with the bugs and the lizards.
The window was open, and a light breeze blew in through the screen, but it was just as hot as the air inside the room, improving nothing. She didn’t mind sleeping on top of the sheets. She didn’t need a cover. She suspected that he wasn’t cold either, but covered himself for her sake.
If he tried anything, she had the skills to subdue him… Probably. Maybe. Okay, not really. She couldn’t wrestle down an ex-Navy SEAL. But she did have enough skills to slow him down.
Not that she thought he’d try anything. He was a muscle-itious stud muffin and, let’s face it, she was a recovering accountant and looked it.
But also, as she’d told him before, she was pretty sure there existed some distinct lines—however few—that Walker wouldn’t cross, and pushing a woman into something she didn’t want was one of them.
She comforted herself with that thought, and the secure knowledge that her Glock was in her boot, right next to her by the side of the bed. Her father didn’t raise wimps, and her mother didn’t raise fools. Light Walker could take that to the bank.
Chapter Fourteen
Clara woke at dawn to an army of roosters crowing, inspiring murderous thoughts of chicken fajitas, which instantly vaporized when she realized that she was half sprawled over Walker.
She’d climbed him in her sleep. For some reason her Glock was trapped between her thigh and his body. She tried to remember how that had happened.
Her eyes flew wide-open when she realized it wasn’t the barrel of her gun that she was feeling.
Her head rested on his sculpted chest. She stared at the smattering of golden chest hair and froze. Any sudden movement might wake him.
He had thrown a beautifully muscled arm around her shoulder, holding her to him, his fingertips dangerously close to the side of one breast. In fact, when she drew a deep breath, the very tip of his middle finger softly touched against her.
She did her best to keep her breathing as shallow as possible.
She needed to extricate herself slowly and carefully. She prepared herself for ninja-like stealth and bomb-squad-like care. But before she could make her move, he said above her head, “Good morning, Detective Cupcake.”
Her gaze snapped up to his. His arm tightened around her, and then she couldn’t breathe at all. Because from the corner of her eye, she could see his towel on the floor next to the bed.
It must have slipped off while he’d slept.
Which meant that there was nothing between his morning hard-on and her naked thigh but a very flimsy sheet.
* * *
He wanted her. Now. Hard and fast, no preamble.
He wanted her to smile at him, and say, “Yes,” giving a clear go-ahead.
Walker wanted to roll her under him, bring her hands up, and trap them over her head. He wanted to see her eyes grow heavy-lidded with passion as he wrapped her lean thighs around his hips. He wanted her moaning his name as his body sank into hers.
Jeezus. He was so hard, he could have cracked nuts with his dick.
But instead of pushing for what his body demanded—for the past hour—he’d simply enjoyed lying with her like this.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up with a woman in his bed. He looked in on Margarita now and then when he was in town. But neither of them expected anything from the other. If he never saw her again, he wouldn’t think much about it, and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t waste much time crying over him.
He’d never been the relationship type. Sure, if a beautiful woman threw herself at him, he took what was offered. But he avoided staying the night. He couldn’t see himself chitchatting over breakfast. What would he say? Even back when he’d been legitimately employed, he couldn’t talk about his work.
Yet he enjoyed waking up with Clara more than he felt comfortable with.
“We should probably get something to eat, then head out,” he said while rubbing slow patterns on her arm, fantasizing about her sitting up and straddling him.
Her eyes turned the color of melting silver. Her breasts pressed against his chest. They were small but perfect. What idiot would ever think they weren’t? A new wave of lust shot through him.
He cleared his throat. “We should probably get up before I do something you might regret later.”
His words seemed to galvanize her, and she shot out of bed, leaving his arms empty. Was he stupid or was he stupid? Hell, he didn’t know what he was. His brain turned to mush around her.
“Bathroom,” she croaked, and was out the door the next second.
He looked after her and felt a smile tug up the corner of his lips. She did have some self-preservation instincts.
He got up, tied the towel back around his waist to disguise his hard-on as best he could, and went to take a morning shower in the other bathroom to cool himself off. The cold water got him halfway there. Thinking about taking Clara into the Tamchén camp tonight completed the job.
He wasn’t the type for having second thoughts. Once he committed to a course of action, he saw it through. Yet now he was second-guessing himself, at the most crucial part of the game.
He had three days left to stop the Xibalba from launching the full-scale production of their super pills that would be shipped north by the truckload every night. At that scale, some would reach the competition within days. The pills would be analyzed by rival labs. Then, within a month or two, the new drug would be produced by a hundred outfits instead of one. The cat would be out of the bag, and nobody could stuff it back in again.
Those new drugs were going to be big business. Messing with them was a dangerous proposition.
He found that he hated the idea of Clara in danger.
Part of him still wanted to send her away. Another part reminded him that he needed her here. He would just have to protect her. Under no circumstances was he going to let her get hurt.
He toweled himself off, then dressed. The clothes that he’d washed out the night before and left in the washroom to dry were ready. He zipped up his fly, then returned to the room. She wasn’t there.
He found her downstairs in the dining room, hanging up the wall phone just as he came down the stairs. She sat at the nearest table, and he went to sit with her.
Consuela was the only one behind the counter, soaking corn, probably for masa de maíz, dough made from fresh hominy. Maybe the rest of the family was at the market.
Walker’s gaze slid back to Clara.
She was studying the tablecloth—striped, locally woven, all bright colors. She seemed distracted, her mind someplace else completely—probably on her phone call.
The dappled sunlight coming through the equally bright curtains painted her in a soft glow. At a distance of three feet—the width of the table between them—her eyes looked gunmetal gray, but now he knew that sometimes they turned the color of melting silver. He definitely wanted to see that again up close.
Her hair was back in its tortured bun, but now he knew the locks were silky soft. At night and this morning those locks had been spread over his shoulder.
She was dressed like a tourist in baggy khaki shorts and a flowery tank top that molded to breasts that had been pressed against him not that long ago.
He grabbed his glass of ice water and drank it down. Then he nodded toward the phone. “Anything important? Were you talking to Rosita’s boyfriend?”
She frowned as she looked up. “I really don’t think it was like that.” She drew a slow breath. “I was talking to my father.”
Consuela brought their plates and set them on the table with a smile, then pulled a bottle of hot sauce from under her arm and plopped it in the middle. “El desayuno.” Breakfast.
“Gracias, Consuela.” Clara smiled at her.
She had
a good smile. Made a person feel like she meant it.
Walker nodded his thanks, his gaze still on Clara’s lips. “Tell me about your father,” he said, because he needed something else to focus on beyond the way she’d felt in his arms this morning, or his rearing dick would soon be lifting the tabletop.
Caution flared in her eyes. “Why?”
“I think in your world it’s customary for people to have some sort of a conversation when sharing a meal.” He dug into his breakfast burritos that were spicy and colorful, representing the essence of the country.
“And in yours?”
In his world? “People shoot each other over breakfast.”
She gave a ghost of a smile that quickly disappeared. She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the handle of her fork. Her voice was a low whisper when she said, “My father has cancer. Prostate.”
Okay, that sucked. He went still. “How bad?”
“He had it before, and he beat it. But now it’s back.” Her voice cracked. “The doctors say that this time…”
Since she couldn’t finish the sentence, he was pretty sure he knew what the doctors said.
He didn’t like the dejected set of her shoulders. The haunted look in her eyes squeezed something in his chest, although what, he couldn’t fathom. He’d had nothing but emptiness in there for years.
Walker kept eating, but the food that should have felt like the flavors were dancing jarabe tapatío, the Mexican hat dance, on his tongue, felt tasteless. He watched Clara’s clouded expression. “I take it you two are close.”
She nodded.
And he asked, “Siblings?”
“None.”
“How about your mother?”
“She’s taking it hard.”
Her mother would take it even harder if something happened to Clara down here and she didn’t return home, Walker was willing to bet. With every passing hour, he hated the idea of her here more and more, and he hadn’t liked it all that much at the beginning.
Clara said, “My grandmother has Alzheimer’s, so that adds to things.”
Oh hell.
He was beginning to understand her need for control and order. She’d been an army brat for starters, probably spent her childhood moving from base to base. And she’d spent the last couple of years with her father’s possible death hanging over her head. While her grandmother was fading away… Walker was a man of action. He hated problems he could do nothing about.