On Deadly Ground (Devlin Security Force Book 1)

by Susan Vaughan

  “Not much. The salve helped.” It ached but not enough to stop what she longed to happen between them.

  “Nice outfit. Jimena’s?”

  Kate nodded.

  Their gazes locked. All her muscles drew taut. In his dark eyes she saw the same heat that fired her veins.

  “Kate, we can’t head through the jungle in the dark. We have tonight.”

  His words, rasped out, told her what she needed to know. Her heart thundered and desire pulsed lower in her body. “Yes, Max.”

  Even more heat flickered in his dark eyes. He reached for the smock hem and lifted the dress over her head. “If I’d known you were naked under that skimpy dress, I’d have jumped you as soon as I walked in.”

  His burning gaze fastened on her bared breasts before returning to her eyes. His hands skimmed over her nipples and down the slope of her hips. Then he tore off his shirt and kicked away his pants and boots.

  Still on his knees, he pulled her against his bare chest. His mouth came down on hers like lava on snow, the inside hot and wet and earthy, in a hungry and demanding kiss. The friction of his chest hairs against her breasts drew her nipples into tingling points. Her pulse rate skyrocketed as their tongues met. She kissed him back with feverish need, knowing she might never get another chance, knowing this couldn’t last.

  She slipped off her stool and eased her legs apart to straddle him. Clinging to him, she clutched his shoulders, the warm and strong shelves of heavy muscle. Aligning herself with his erection, she rocked against him and her breath hitched in pleasure. She quaked and burned with longing. He hissed in a sharp breath and sucked on her left breast. At the pull of his lips on her nipple, lightning flashed through her and both nipples. She swayed closer, aching to tell him how she felt, but she could manage only the one word: “Max.”

  He lavished attention on each breast before returning to her mouth. His tongue explored hers, claiming her with each thrust. He felt so good, so hard and hot, and she wanted the rest of his body to brand her as his. The first time she’d felt only desire but now she craved him.

  When she reached for him, he stilled her hand.

  “Let’s take it slow so I can savor every moment.” His voice was low and hoarse as he yanked the tent pack closer and laid out one of the sleeping pads. “The Maya get it on in hammocks but that horizontal boogying takes practice.”

  She cast a skeptical glance toward the other side of the hut where two colorful net hammocks hung between poles. Her breath coming in short gasps, she said, “Maybe later.”

  “Hold that thought.” He slid out of his underwear and stretched out on the pad.

  They’d been naked back in Cabo Blanco and again in the cenote, but seeing him lounging there, all power and potency, swabbed dry all the moisture in her mouth. Ropy forearms, pectorals and abs thick with sinew, shoulders with heft—male power exuding sensuality. She caressed the hard muscles of his arms, stroked the hard wall of his chest, and when she trailed a finger down his tight abdomen, he sucked in a breath and rolled her on top of him.

  She kissed him, reveling in the softness of his lips, the light rasp of whiskers against her lips, the slip and slide of their tongues. Shivers cascaded along her spine as his big, rough hands caressed her back and trailed downward. She writhed full length against him, and her heart swelled with love. She couldn’t get enough of touching him.

  She ran fingers over the puckered flesh on his shoulder. “This scar. A gunshot wound?”

  He moaned. “Not now, darlin’.”

  “Yes, now. Before you can weasel out of it.”

  He grinned. “You know me too damn well. Dumb-ass slip-up. A Taliban fighter sneaked up on our patrol. I got him but after he got me.”

  “Where were you?” She continued her exploration down his flanks.

  “I can’t tell you exactly.”

  “Or you’d have to kill me?”

  “But you’d love every minute. I’d make sure of that.” His tongue on one nipple proved his boast.

  She sucked in a breath at the erotic tug but wouldn’t be deterred. “Where in Afghanistan? I know Tora Bora and Kandahar are in the eastern mountains near Pakistan.”

  “Somewhere between them will do.” He gave equal attention to the other nipple.

  She traced the long, jagged scar on his side. She couldn’t imagine the pain these must have caused him. Her chest squeezed. “This longer one isn’t from a bullet.”

  “Knife blade. Same skirmish. Different fighter. Came at me with a wicked-looking dagger. I got him too. Now where were we before you distracted me? Ah, I know.”

  When his fingers found her, shock waves vibrated outward from where he caressed and circled. She shuddered as he ignited sparks with every stroke. Her mind turned to mush and her body to flame.

  He turned her onto her back. Tasting his way down her body, he stroked and sampled until his tongue found her most sensitive spot. A raw jolt of electricity shot to the place he pleasured, eliciting incoherent murmurs. Tension coiled inside until her body clenched and pulsed. “Oh, Max.”

  He surged upward and grasped her hands, lacing their fingers together beside her head. She wrapped her legs around his waist and urged him to fill her. When he slid home, she shuddered with pleasure and felt him do the same. He held utterly still for a long moment.

  Her inner muscles flexed around him in reaction until she could bear the torture no longer. She wanted the feel of him moving within her, the friction of flesh against flesh, the fierce abandon she needed, the conflagration she wanted for him. “Don’t stop now.”

  “Not a chance.”

  She freed her hands and dug her nails into his back muscles, arching her hips as he rocked against her. They strained together as he surged and thrust and she panted and shuddered. Tension built, climbing and climbing until she fell over the edge in a huge shock wave of liquid flames that curled her toes. Her inner muscles convulsed around him and she cried out.

  “Mi querida!” He thrust one last time, shaking as his climax took him.

  After a long while, Max lay back, holding Kate as she cuddled against him. Amazing, after the me-Tarzan way he’d jumped her bones. Seeing her in the grip of that fucking bastard drug smuggler had struck terror in his soul. He needed the reassurance she was whole and safe.

  Need. No finesse. Only desperate, ball-burning need.

  A need he thought would be slaked after this time. Not even close. Far from it. She’d sneaked over his walls. Hell, she blew them up with a mortar round. He was the poster child for no-strings flings. A soldier of fortune who lived on the road most of the time. She was a wealthy, well-bred socialite, a museum director, for God’s sake.

  He couldn’t keep her. Couldn’t let her go.

  He felt her roll away and started to tug her back, but she made a throat-clearing noise to get his attention. When he looked up, she sat cross-legged and dressed.

  “You covered up the good stuff.” He leaned up on his elbows.

  “We need to talk.”

  Her serious expression wilted his most eager part. He met her gaze squarely. “Look, Kate, you wanted—”

  Her soft hand on his lips silenced him. “Not about that. Yes, I wanted to make love as much as you did. It was wonderful. You were wonderful.”

  The warmth in her voice and in her eyes curled inside his chest. “Then what?”

  Tears glittered in her beautiful eyes. “What if we don’t make it to K’eq Xlapak in time? And Doug—”

  When he pulled her into his arms, she didn’t resist. She felt delicate and feminine but he knew the steel in her spine. “Hey, we have Kizin. We’re safe. We’ll make it. And Del Rio will find Doug.”

  “We have just three days to make it to the temple. If there’s a major earthquake, we could be in more danger.”

  He looked up to the thatched roof, trying not to picture the devastation and death in the worst-case scenario, but the rain’s patter seemed to tick off their time together. “What if we make it in time an
d there’s an earthquake anyway?”

  She stared at him as if a vine snake was taking a short cut through his ears. “I don’t know. I can’t think that way. I have to save my brother. I have to return Kizin. I have to keep my promises.” She made a choking sound as if she hadn’t meant to say all that.

  He kissed her forehead. “You can’t control everything, Kate.”

  She looked at him with such trust that he felt guilty for keeping secrets from her.

  “You’ve made me think about a lot of things I never have before.”

  “I did? Dr. Rivera at your service.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if control is all that important after all.” She sat up again, but he kept hold of her hand.

  He propped himself up with one elbow and rubbed his thumb over the soft skin of her inner wrist. “But commitments—promises—are.”

  “Dad impressed the importance of keeping a promise when I was a kid.”

  “Ah, and that’s what this is about? Do you want to tell me?”

  She smiled. “Are you indulging me because you’re sated?”

  “Mellowed maybe. Not sated.” The dress had inched up, revealing the blond curls at the top of her thighs. He dragged his gaze upward. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  Her breath hitched. “I was probably fourteen and Doug eleven. He was on restriction because he and two buddies wrote their names in a neighbor’s freshly poured cement driveway.”

  “Yeah, real anonymous. Sounds like a stupid prank I pulled when I was his age.” And worse. “Go on.”

  Her grin was nostalgic. “I promised Mom and Dad I’d walk him home after school, but I hung around school too long yakking with my girlfriends.”

  “Let me guess. Doug was gone.”

  “No one was outside, and the building was locked. I hoped he’d just gone home but no joy. My parents had received a call he’d been injured. A broken arm.” She drew a deep breath. “He’d gone off with some guys to the skateboard park and took a bad spill. Dad had ‘The Talk’ with me about keeping promises. Disappointing him was the worst part of it.”

  Clearly something she’d never gotten over. Even if she’d been on time, dollars to pesos Doug had already left. The skateboard spill wasn’t her fault. But no point in upsetting her by spouting more doubts about her brother. “I reckon that wasn’t the end of it.”

  She shook her head. “A few months later, Dad promised to come to my first gymnastics meet. Then a colleague asked him to sub for a symposium speaker in New York that same day.”

  “That had to bite. When somebody doesn’t show when it counts, it hurts.” Like being kicked in the gut by a mule. But he wasn’t going there.

  “I was crushed. Mom kept saying Dad would show up. But when it was my turn on the balance beam, no Dad in the bleachers.”

  “How’d you do?”

  Her grin was rueful. “It was my first time in front of an audience. The best I can say about my performance is I didn’t fall. On the dismount, I spotted Dad in the gym doorway. He saw the whole thing. He’d persuaded the symposium organizers to let him speak early.”

  “So keeping your commitments is because of your dad. That includes here in Costa Verde?”

  “As he lay dying in the hospice, he asked me to protect my brother and return Kizin to K’eq Xlapak if I could find the statue. So far I’ve failed at both promises. Doug has gotten in deep trouble, and Kizin may not get home.” Her chin wobbled, then firmed.

  “Doug is a grown-up,” he began. Shit, in years, if not in maturity. “I’m betting your dad meant you should advise your brother, not be his keeper. Doug’s the one who drank too much that night in London. He’s the one who didn’t put the statue in the hotel safe.”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Your dad trusted you, but unless he was clairvoyant, he had no idea what you’d have to face to keep the commitments he asked of you. Right now he’d be damned proud of you. My commitment is to help you keep both. Hold onto that.”

  He could think of nothing else he should, or could say, so he pulled her back into his arms. The rain on the thatch pattered in the same slow rhythm as his heart. Soothing, comforting. Surprisingly, as ready as he was for her again, just holding her made him feel good, worthy, as if he could actually get her to K’eq Xlapak before the deadline.

  They’d used two days tracking the bandits. Slogging through the jungle for forty more miles would take longer than two days.

  Kate peered at him with a level gaze. “I’ve whined about my parents too much. You never knew your dad but you’ve never said much about your mom. Mami, in Spanish, isn’t it? Where is she?”

  Mami. He hadn’t let himself think that word for twenty-five years. Kate meant to be kind. Hell, she was innately kind, beautiful inside and out. And something about her reached places inside him he’d never let anyone touch.

  He stared at the flickering lantern. “She left.”

  “Left you? A mother doesn’t just leave her child. What do you mean?”

  She had no fucking idea. “We lived in inner-city Houston, the barrio, in a two-room dump. She kept it clean, kept me clean, and kept me hitting the books.” Memory took him back. He shifted his voice into neutral, like a mission report to a superior officer. “She rarely worked the same job from one week to the next. Bussing tables, sorting laundry, cleaning buildings. Whatever she could get.”

  “No-skill jobs. That must’ve been tough.”

  He nodded, aware of the distance between them, as wide as the Gulf of Mexico. “Brought home men she picked up in bars. She was a dreamer, always hoping to find the one man who’d rescue her and give us a real home. Usually an Anglo like the son-of-a-bitch who impregnated her with me. Sometimes they beat her, took her money. Our money.”

  “Looking for Prince Charming. An old story. Usually a fairy tale.”

  “My school ran an after-school program. I took it for granted then, but it must’ve been subsidized for kids whose working parents couldn’t afford day-care. One day she didn’t show to pick me up. I never saw her again. I was ten.”

  “Ten years old? What happened?” Tears laced the shock in her voice.

  He managed a shrug. “Social services scooped me up. They looked for her. No trace. After a series of foster homes and a group home, I lit out. You know the rest.”

  “You must’ve looked for your mom since?”

  “Before I went in the army, yeah, but I got nowhere.”

  “But now you’d have Devlin’s resources. You could—”

  “The bitch dumped me.” He shook his head, working his jaw to loosen the muscles. “Why would I want to find her? I never want to see her again.”

  “But—”

  “No. Let it go. I have.” He gestured a stop sign.

  She kissed his palm and lowered his hand. “You haven’t let it go. It festers inside you. No wonder you have trouble trusting people. No wonder it bugged you when you thought I didn’t trust you to stick to this commitment.”

  “That way works for me.”

  “But it’s lonely.” Before he could rebut that, she continued, “If she left you, then she’s the unworthy one, not you. Still, the truth might be better than all the dire scenarios you’ve conjured since you were ten.”

  She rose to her knees and kissed him, gently and tenderly at first, then with thoroughness and focused attention. She was magical and seductive, and a deep ache welled up within him, the urge to absorb every molecule of her. She kissed him with her tongue, her soft lips, her tender soul, until he was aflame and thrumming with need.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Not unworthy, you say. Reckon I wasn’t unworthy a little while ago, huh, darlin’?”

  “Anyone can be potent once.” Her bluebonnet eyes danced with enticement and humor as she slipped the dress from her luscious body.

  “That sounds like a challenge.” He dumped a handful of condoms from his toiletry kit.

  Frowning, Kate picked up a foil packet and w
aved it in front of his face.

  “My logical side is relieved you use protection. I obviously wasn’t thinking about it earlier. You packed these for the trip. You counted on sex?”

  He turned to face her. She did indignation like a pro, with that snotty-princess tilt to her chin. Even naked she didn’t flinch.

  He took his time browsing her so-fine curves. When he saw the flush climb her cheeks, he said, “Ease up, Kate. Condoms offer more than one kind of protection.”

  “Such as?”

  “From parasites. In some waters down here there are nasty little critters that like to swim up inside a guy and lay their eggs.”

  Her lips pursed in disgust. “Eeuw. Wait a minute. What about women? Me?”

  He grinned. “Not necessary. These parasites are females.”

  “Comedian.” He could see her sharp mind working on the truth of his words. And when she remembered their bath. “That’s why you already wore the condom in the cenote.”

  “Dual purpose in that case. Only I didn’t get to make the more pleasurable use of it.” He reached for her and pulled her to him. “What say we go again? I promised slow before, but everything got away from us. Now we have the edge off, we can take our time.”

  Her sultry smile was the sun pushing away a black cloud. “In a hammock?”

  ***

  Sitting on a low stool in the village leader’s hut the next morning, Max drank a mug of strong coffee. In what little Mayan he knew, he thanked the stoop-shouldered leader for his hospitality and for the meat, rice, and tortillas the villagers supplied. For the heroes of his village, the man had said.

  Little Tomás knelt beside him, dark features solemn and eyes darting between the two men. His scrawny chest was puffed out with the importance of his translating job. He rattled off Max’s words.

  The leader rose to his feet, bringing their meeting to an end.

  Max’s shoulders felt as stooped as the older man’s, with the weight of what he’d learned. He thanked his host, but the other man couldn’t know that it didn’t matter. They couldn’t reach the temple site in time. If they arrived at all. Hell, he was starting to believe in the earthquake curse. How would he tell Kate?