Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 05]

by Under the Wire

  When she was ready, she drew in a bracing breath, frowned again. “I’m not going to be able to see.”

  “I can hold the light. Just tell me where to point it.”

  She looked skeptical, but in the end, there was little choice. She cupped his hand in hers and positioned the light.

  “Ready?”

  He gave her a clipped nod, removed the ice pack—then swore a litany in his head as she dug right in and worked the needle through his scalp.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and drove the needle into his scalp again.

  “María santo, la madre de Dios,” he gritted out as blinding poker-hot pain had him seeing stars and lightning bolts and clenching his teeth so hard he swore he heard one crack.

  “Okay. I’m done,” she said, sounding breathless and relieved. She repositioned the ice pack on top of the stitches. “It’s not pretty, but it will stem the bleeding.”

  Beneath his wet shirt, he’d broken out in a cold sweat. He hung his head, waited for the pain to subside.

  “Take these.”

  He looked up. She held four capsules in her hand.

  “Antibiotic and ibuprofen. One will cut the pain, the other stave off infection—which is the last thing you need.”

  It was only then, as he took the medication from her hand, that he realized how badly she was shaking.

  “Okay, Doc,” he said, “now it’s your turn. Get into some dry clothes.”

  She shook her head. “I need to check you over first. Take off your shirt.”

  He opened his mouth to protest.

  “You took the brunt of the fall. I need to see if you’ve got any more open wounds. You don’t take chances in a jungle, where infection breeds faster than mosquitoes.”

  Resigned, he started working the buttons. “Were you always this bossy or is this something new?”

  “With age comes attitude. Believe me, I’ve earned it.”

  Just like she’d earned his respect. Manny undid the last button, peeled the sodden shirt off his shoulders, and tossed it to the floor.

  It landed with a soggy slap.

  “I need the…um…flashlight.” Her voice sounded a little breathy and not nearly as bossy as it had a moment ago. “And put that pack back on your head.”

  He handed her the light. Would have wondered at the cause of her sudden tension—if he hadn’t looked up and into her eyes just then. In the translucent light of their underground sanctuary, he read her reaction as clearly as if it had been daylight.

  Awareness. Sexual and stark.

  She swallowed thickly as her gaze trailed over his bare chest. He felt an answering awareness, the same one that had incited an instant hard-on when he’d come to under the blanket and her lush body had been intimately pressed over his.

  And it was happening again. The throbbing in his groin suddenly outdistanced the throbbing in his head as she reached out a hand—cold with wet and shock—and touched his shoulder. His own skin was damp and chilled, yet where she touched him it heated by degrees.

  “Bruised,” she said, her voice husky, the sound of it trailing over his senses like a velvet fog. “Does this…does this hurt?” She probed the round of his shoulder, her fingers expert but gentle, warming his skin to fire.

  He shook his head. Clenched his jaw. No. It didn’t hurt. But something else did. Christ, he wanted to be inside her.

  Not the time. Not the place.

  He stared straight ahead, tried to think about rebel forces and big goddamn guns and how they were going to get out of this.

  But then she moved in front of him, touching him with those soft, cool hands that somehow managed to leave a path of fire in their wake. She explored his upper arm, lingered over the scar Poveda’s men had ripped through his arm.

  The memory sobered him…until she drifted her hands over his ribs, tested another bruise, then moved behind him.

  And the slow, delicious torture began again.

  “Here?” She leaned in close to apply pressure at the base of his spine. “Does it hurt here?”

  Her breath feathered across his back, just below his shoulder blade, inciting a riot of sensual images that outdistanced the pain from any injuries he might have. All he could think about was stripping off his pants and letting her take this little physical exam way, way south of the border.

  He was beyond gone when she pronounced him fit.

  As if. He was far from fit. And that ended right here.

  It may not be the best time, it may not be the perfect place, but he was finished with the wanting and the waiting and the dancing around the need.

  She may be done with him…but he hadn’t even started on her.

  “Your turn,” he said, hearing everything dark and carnal in his voice and knowing she heard it, too.

  A heartbeat passed. Then two.

  In the shadowed temple, her eyes burned like a night fire. “My…turn?”

  He set her medical kit on the floor. Tossed the ice pack and reached for her hand. He drew her around in front of him until she was standing between his spread legs. He didn’t pretend he was on a wound-finding mission when he started to work on the buttons on her shirt.

  Neither, thank God, did she.

  His hands were shaking now. And she was the one whose breath was fractured as if she were getting stitches.

  “Fuck it,” he swore when his fumbling fingers and the wet cloth made unbuttoning her shirt impossible. He knotted either side of the hem in each hand and ripped. Buttons flew. She gasped.

  And then there was nothing between his hands and his mouth and the flesh he wanted to touch but a white cotton bra.

  He gripped her waist. Pulled her close. Pressed his forehead against her midriff and breathed her in. Her essence. Her warm, wet woman scent. Everything that was Lily. Everything he remembered and missed and had dreamed of on those endless nights when he’d hated her. On the infinite nights when he’d loved her.

  She was his. She’d always been his.

  And he was going to have her again. Right now. Right here.

  He turned his face into her flesh. Opened his mouth wide over her skin and fed.

  “Mina.” Mine, he whispered as she sucked in a sharp breath and cupped his face in her hands.

  “Sus senos.” Your breasts, he growled, covering her with his palms, brushing his thumbs over wet cotton, and feeling her nipples harden. “Mina.

  “Su cueropo.” Your body. He lifted his face, drew her breast into his mouth, and tasted her through her bra. “Mina.”

  She groaned and pressed into him as he skimmed his hands up and over her shoulders, knotted his hands in her wet hair.

  “Su boca.” Your mouth, he murmured, claiming her lips with a wet, opened-mouth invasion that possessed and destroyed and tasted like life and passion and everything he’d been missing for so damn long. “Mina.”

  With one hand tangled in her hair, he skimmed the other down her back and worked the clasp of her bra. When he couldn’t get it undone, she reached behind her back, undid it for him.

  “Manolo.” She guided his mouth to her breast. “Manolo.”

  His name eddied out on a sigh as she moved closer, caressed his jaw as he suckled her, giving herself over to anything he wanted. Anything he desired.

  Her acquiescence fueled the flame…in his loins, in his memory. She’d always been like this. Giving. Yet greedy in it. It drove him crazy.

  “Mi mujer.” My woman, he whispered urgently, and found the snap on her trousers.

  She helped him strip them down her hips along with her panties. He filled his hands with her bare ass, then caressed her thighs, urging them open, and wedged his knee between them.

  “Mi mujer,” he repeated on a serrated breath as she straddled his lap and he found her center with his fingers.

  She cried out when he touched her, stiffened when he stroked her, then, bracing her hands on his shoulders, melted around him like butter. His cock swelled and twitched at the liquid heat o
f her, the scent of aroused woman, the need to be inside her.

  Somehow, he managed to one-hand his belt, open his fly, and free himself. She lifted, moved over him like silk, and, gripping him in her hand, guided him to her slick, wet opening.

  “Dios. Cristo Dios.” He sucked in his breath on a rush as, banding his hands around her slim waist, he lowered her onto him and buried himself deep.

  She cried out again, dug her fingers into his shoulders, and let her head fall back, the picture of total abandon. The flashlight had fallen to the floor long ago. It had landed at an angle that caromed light off the walls and onto her incredible body.

  Her lush breasts quivered as she drew in tremulous breaths; her black hair trailed down her back like wet ribbon. And the sounds she made, God, the sounds she made.

  They called to his soul. Called to his heart as he rocked his hips into hers, lifting her, then plunging her down on top of him again and again, cloaking himself deep inside her giving warmth.

  She came with a strangled cry, a series of breathless little hitches that bowed her back and thrust her naked breasts up to his waiting mouth. He buried his face between them, drove into her once, twice…three times more and shot into her like a cannon.

  “Mi corazón. Mi alma. Son tuyos.” My heart. My soul. They are yours, he whispered against the generous curve of her breast as a million sensations, all of them hot, all of them rich, all of them straddling the razor-sharp edge of pain, ripped through his loins like a flash fire and stripped him of everything but consciousness.

  “Tuyo. Todo que tengo es tuyo.” Yours. Everything I have is yours.

  CHAPTER 19

  The chair was hard. The wooden bed was even harder, though Manny had made a makeshift mattress out of his extra clothes and hers.

  Even so, Lily had never felt so relaxed. Her body had taken on the consistency of that stuff kids liked to play with. Silly Putty, she thought, and nestled closer to Manny’s side. No form. No bones. Just pliable flesh and blood that warmed in his hands and molded into anything he wanted her to become.

  She was in the moment now. Wanted to stay there. Loved. Loving. Wasted on amazing sex and the drugging power of pheromones.

  So she let herself. Just for a few more moments, she let herself languish in the cocoon of safety where nothing and no one existed outside of these stone walls. Just a few moments longer…

  But then Manny’s voice, soft, deep, and drifting on the downside of the love they’d made, ended the illusion with one long-anticipated question.

  “What’s he like? Our son.”

  Our son.

  Lily resisted the urge to read any more into Manny’s quiet question than curiosity, at least where the two of them were concerned. But his hesitance told her much about his own uncertainty. And his longing.

  She ached for him. For Adam. And yes, even for herself and all the years she and Manny had missed.

  “He’s amazing,” she said, her eyes filling with the tears she sometimes couldn’t control when she thought of her son. “Smart. Even a little musically inclined. I’m not sure where he gets that from. But he has a guitar. Acoustic—so far he hasn’t asked for electric, something I thank God for every day,” she said around the lump that had lodged in her throat.

  She felt more tears form at the thought of never standing in his open doorway again and watching as he painstakingly practiced a difficult chord. With a bracing breath, she fought them back. She would see him again. She would hold him again. His life was too precious, too vital, to be lost before he made his mark on the world.

  Beside her, Manny’s silence spoke for him. He wanted to know more.

  “He loves soccer,” she continued. “And the girls—well, the phone rings a lot. A lot,” she repeated with a soft smile. “He doesn’t have much time for them, though. At least not yet.

  “His smile,” she began, then swallowed back another thick lump, “it lights rooms. Dazzles.” Just like his father’s, she thought, and sent a plea to the powers that be that Manny would get to see for himself.

  “And he’s strong. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically, too, although right now he’s got more angles and elbows than muscle groups. God, he’s growing up so fast.”

  “Does he know about me?”

  Manny’s question came out of a silence in which they’d both absorbed and clung to thoughts about their son.

  “Yes. He knows who you are. What you believe in. What you fought for. What I thought you’d…died for.” Her throat ached from the strain of holding back tears.

  And even though his hard, warm body didn’t stiffen, didn’t pull away, she knew what he was thinking.

  “I couldn’t tell him you were alive, Manny. When I found out…I couldn’t risk it. Not until I faced you,” she continued, taking heart from the fact that he hadn’t pushed her away. “Not until I knew if you wanted to know him. I couldn’t give him his father if you didn’t want to be a part of his life.”

  “You think I would turn my back on my own flesh and blood?”

  His voice was neutral, but his breathing had quickened ever so slightly.

  Lily pushed up on an elbow. The flashlight power had wound down long ago. Its light was faint, a pale bluish white beam that cast more shadows than light. She could barely make out his face in the dark, but the hard set of his jaw was unmistakable.

  She lifted her hand from his bare chest, pressed her fingers to his cheek, and turned his head to face her.

  “Manny, you weren’t the only one who struggled with the idea of betrayal. For seventeen years, I thought you were dead. Then eight months ago…when I saw you in that Special Forces documentary…well. I was…stunned. And so gloriously happy that you were alive. But then…then I wondered. Had you faked your death? Had you done it because you wanted to leave me?”

  “Leave you?” He uttered the words on a disbelieving breath. “I loved you.”

  I loved you.

  It was impossible to ignore the past tense of the word.

  Just as it was impossible to ignore the irony.

  And the sadness both brought to her heart.

  “So,” she said after a long moment, “we both made wrong conclusions.”

  He said nothing. Did nothing. Not for a very long time.

  Her heart beat with anticipation when he reached for her hand, brought it to his mouth, and lingeringly kissed her palm.

  “We are a pair, eh, Liliana?”

  She smiled, slow and sad. “Yes. We are a pair.”

  He lowered her hand to his chest. She felt his heart beat steady and hard, felt his body tense as, with his hand still covering hers, he guided it slowly down his body. Over his ribs, across the rock-hard muscles of his abdomen, and lower to his penis, erect and hot and pulsing with need.

  “We must go soon,” he whispered, arching his hips against her hand as she boldly caressed him.

  “Soon,” she agreed with barely a sound, and rose above him. Watching his eyes over her shoulder, she swung her leg over his hips until her knees were planted on either side of his ribs, her bare toes tucked under his armpits.

  He groaned and caressed her buttocks as she lowered her weight to her forearms and took him into her mouth.

  All of him. The pulsing and hot length of him. The hard and yearning core of him. Lily closed her eyes, wanting to give. Needing to give. Aching to give. Yearning to connect, to mend, to bridge chasms and erase years of loss.

  His labored breaths told her she was taking him deep into sensation, desperately into desire. And right now, it was enough. Giving him this, after all he’d lost, was everything she needed—until he gripped her hips and lowered her to his mouth.

  She gasped and arched into his hot, wet seduction. Her breath caught, her heart shattered, as he held her firm against his tongue, laving and stroking and drinking her in like he lived for the taste and the swollen lushness of her body.

  Her orgasm ripped through her. A rich, wild rush of white-hot pleasure. A head-spinning rocket of a ride th
at destroyed her. The sensations were so intense and strong they possessed her. Lasted so long they consumed her.

  “Manny,” she wept his name, and collapsed on top of him, pressing his jutting erection between her cheek and his abdomen. “Manny,” she murmured again, and rode the current of pleasure and delicious pain that hurt…so good.

  He held her at the peak forever…and not nearly long enough. She half-laughed, half-cried, when he kissed her there, one last time, then urged her to turn around.

  “Inside you, querida.” His whisper was as coarse as her breathing when he positioned her above him, then drove deep. “I need to be inside you.”

  And then sensation began again as she braced her palms on his chest and he took her for another wild, reckless ride.

  “Liliana,” he sighed her name, and, clutching her hips in his hands, pumped one last time. “Lili-ana.”

  He came with a high arch of his hips and a groan that could have been anguish or ecstasy. His chest rose and fell with his erratic breath as he dragged her down against him, wrapped her so tightly in his arms it felt like he wanted to absorb her into his body.

  Panting, deliriously wasted, she liquefied against him, damp with sweat, limp with languor.

  “Mina,” he whispered, and, knotting a hand in her hair, tipped her head back and kissed her fiercely. “Sleep now,” he said against her mouth. “You need to sleep.”

  She should argue. But she couldn’t. She was physically exhausted, emotionally drained. During the past few days she’d run the gauntlet from the height of anxiety to the depth of despair. Making love with Manny had been inevitable. She accepted that. The desire that had been building between them was the only emotion with a viable outlet.

  As she drifted off, she had no choice but to face the truth. She was still in love with him. And though he desired her, though he would protect her with his life, the one thing he could not give her was his trust. And without trust, love would never be enough.

  “Lily. Wake up, querida. We need to go now.”