Hero for Hire

by Jill Shalvis

  And then share that man with her.

  “Lie down,” he said, feeling strained. “I can behave myself.”

  “Take off the handcuffs. Please?”

  “And have you take off again? I don’t think so. Now hurry up. I’m tired.”

  She hesitated another very long, painful moment. Finally, she tugged at the hem of her T-shirt and, careful to keep herself covered, gingerly lay on her back next to him, their joined hands between them.

  The silence stretched out.

  Nina’s feet rubbed together, so did her thighs. Her nipples, abraded by the material of her shirt, stood at erect attention.

  And he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Then she shivered.

  With a particularly foul oath, Rick grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and tossed it over them, hoping against hope that if he couldn’t actually see her incredible body, he might be able to forget it.

  Didn’t happen.

  In strained silence, they lay there in the dark, both holding their breath.

  It was a long, long time before Nina finally dozed off.

  And an even longer time for Rick.

  * * *

  THE DOUBT that had taken root deep inside couldn’t be assuaged.

  Terry Monteverde was dead.

  Yes. She was. Dead.

  Dead.

  Repeating it became as necessary as breathing. Terry Monteverde was dead. Dead. Dead. It didn’t help that the body had never been viewed.

  Damn it, why had that been?

  And why hadn’t the thought occurred before now?

  Because a coffin was a coffin, and when you saw it being lowered into the ground, you believed it to be full, that’s why.

  There would be no peace, no relief of this tension, until the coffin had been opened and the body of Terry Monteverde seen. Now.

  It was midnight.

  In the cemetery.

  The stuff nightmares were made of. But that fit. This life had indeed become a nightmare, and the irony of the entire situation did not fail to hit as the dirt and twigs crunched beneath booted feet.

  The walk was long, but the moon was high. Far below, the city of Rio glittered.

  And fed a growing, crawling, frustrated temper.

  That this could happen now, a year and a half later, was beyond imagination. That Terry Monteverde could possibly be alive, walking around with all her wild beauty, stoked an uncontrollable rage.

  The graveyard, on a steep, mostly overgrown hill, caused much cursing and slipping and sliding.

  And more cursing.

  Finally, the right grave...just ahead. She’s dead. Dead!

  She had to be.

  By moonlight and flashlight, the engraved name shimmered in the night.

  Senhorita Terry Monteverde.

  She was right there, long gone and buried.

  She was.

  “You got what you deserved, Terry Monteverde!”

  Still, the niggle of doubt wouldn’t go away. It had grown steadily over the past weeks, even more with that American bounty hunter dogging Nina’s heels the past few days. It made no sense; Nina was a nobody. Something was up, something was wrong, and it had led to this midnight run of the graves.

  Luckily, there was no concrete vault, and the dirt was soft and giving beneath the shovel, and within moments, a good hole was started. The rest took longer than expected. Hours actually, and by the time the coffin was exposed, breathing had become ragged, the lines between nightmare and reality blurred.

  “You are dead. You are!”

  Looking at the coffin wasn’t enough. It had to be opened, which was shockingly easy. Jumping down into the hole, covered in dirt by this time and no longer even caring, opening the lid with shaking hands...

  A scream pierced the night. “No, no, no, no, no!” With another horrible cry, knees hit the dirt. Fists slammed on the wood.

  There was no body inside the coffin.

  Only sandbags.

  A dirt-streaked face was raised to the night sky. “Revenge!” This was a solemn vow. “I will get revenge, Terry Monteverde! I will find you and make you wish you had died in that boat!”

  * * *

  IN HER DREAMS, Nina was cold and afraid.

  Alone.

  Shivering, she tried to escape by turning away, found there was indeed warmth to be had, if she wanted it. All she had to do was roll from her back to her side and there it was.

  All she’d ever wanted, within her reach.

  Going for that incredible heat, she snuggled in, feeling it surround her, sighing with pleasure, and something even more.

  Sleeping had never felt so good.

  There came a low rumble in her ear, a cross between an encouraging groan and a growl, and with that sound an incredibly warm, strong arm slipped around her waist. A hand nudged the small of her back, urging her even closer.

  She felt safe and secure, and because this was a dream—a really great dream—she sighed again and practically crawled up that delicious hard length.

  It felt heavenly.

  Smelled heavenly, too, sort of like a warm, toasty, sleepy male, but that couldn’t be right since she rarely had erotic dreams.

  But it felt so real.

  She couldn’t hold herself back, she had to press her face into his throat and inhale deeply, she had to touch, so she lifted a hand to do just that, anticipating the feel of smooth, hot flesh, but her hand was caught—

  On handcuffs.

  Jerked awake by the horrible reality of her life—being manacled to an American bounty hunter with a sharp mouth and an even sharper desire to get the truth from her—she went stock-still and opened her eyes.

  Skin.

  That was all she saw.

  She was face-to-face, chest to chest, thigh to thigh with a very warm body, looking at a throat... Rick’s throat.

  She’d crawled all over him!

  He wasn’t moving though, which was strange, so she tipped her head back very slowly, very carefully, as if she’d found herself in the path of a cougar, which of course she had.

  The cougar had the nerve to still be asleep.

  If she’d been a mean-spirited woman, she might have smacked him, but the fact was, she’d curled into him, and she’d pressed her body full length to his, while he’d done just as he’d promised.

  He’d slept.

  The sun was peeking over the horizon, and she could feel the rays slowly climbing through the room and heating it up.

  It would be a warm one today, even up here in the mountains.

  Such banal thoughts momentarily took her away from the fact she’d wrapped herself around this perplexing—albeit gorgeous—man, but not for long, not when every pulse point drummed furiously, not when she felt all liquidy and hot, yet cold as ice all at the same time.

  She was deadly certain she knew what was wrong with her, and the knowing was not comforting.

  She was lusting.

  Lusting!

  After a man holding her against her will, a man she had no idea if she could trust with her secrets, a man who somehow both drew and repelled her.

  Okay, that was a lie.

  He didn’t repel her, not even close.

  The way they were lying, she could see only his face. To tip her head down any further would surely wake him up, but she didn’t need to see the rest, not when she could feel perfectly well, and oh my, what she felt. His one free hand was curled around her waist, the weight of his arm over her hip. He had one leg between hers, and Nina was shocked to find her own thigh muscles tensed, holding him there, as if she had been afraid he’d move that leg away.

  Good thing he was fast asleep, God only knew what he’d think of the way she’d plastered herself to him.

  But how to back off now without waking him?

  Slowly, very slowly, she relaxed her leg muscles, which were sore, as if she’d clung to him all night. Her face flamed at the thought.

  Nina Monteverde never clung!


  Okay, now...she eased her legs back carefully.

  “Mmm,” he said, his eyes still closed, his far too sexy mouth curved ever so slightly. His hand, low on her back, tightened, his fingers playing softly over her bare skin.

  Her bare skin!

  One glance downward assured her that yes, oh yes, her worse nightmare had occurred. The hem of her shirt had risen to her waist, and he indeed had his hand against her spine, just above her panties.

  “Mmm,” he said again, those fingers of his dancing across her now goose-bumped flesh. His mouth, only inches from hers, dipped to her throat. His chest, bare and warm, pressed against hers, while his hips arched just enough that she could feel every inch of him.

  He was fully aroused, just as he’d been last night.

  “Rick,” she said, meaning to sound strong and certain, but really sounding as breathless as if she’d run a marathon. “I think maybe we need to get up.”

  She thought maybe they needed to get up?

  That was a laugh! She needed to run far and fast. She needed a cold shower. She needed a reality check of some kind, and she was smart enough to know they needed to move, before this strange sense of yearning and aching went any further, before he—

  Oh, God.

  Before he did that, exactly that! His mouth opened on her neck in a hot, wet kiss, making her want to purr and stretch like a kitten.

  His thigh once again slipped between hers, gliding high enough to stroke her oh-so-sensitized flesh in such a way that she actually cried out.

  At the sound, he went utterly still for the longest moment in history, before slowly lifting his head to stare down into her face.

  That was all he moved, just his head, so that they were still entwined, but the look on his face, such perfect befuddlement and arousal and heat and frustration, made her let out a high laugh. “I, um, think we shifted somewhat in our sleep.”

  He didn’t answer, just looked at her, his entire body tense.

  “I was just going to get up.” She bit her lip. “But you would have to move, too, you see, and I was not sure how to wake you.”

  Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  And why, oh why, when she was with him, did she want to throw out the good girl image she’d so carefully cultivated all her life and be the real Nina? “Rick?”

  He leaned toward her.

  Or maybe she leaned toward him.

  She managed a little smile. “I think—”

  “You think too much.” His voice was low and husky from sleep.

  She closed her eyes in the echo of that husky voice. It was a strong sound, and a very sexy one. “Yes, but—”

  “You talk too much, too.” He leaned over her, his shoulders blocking out the morning sun, the morning heat, everything but him, and when her body arched up, just a little, he moaned.

  “Okay, maybe I do think and talk too much,” she whispered. “But—”

  “Nina.” That was it, just her name, in that serrated voice that told her he was doing the same slow burn that she was.

  Her body was fitting itself more tightly to his in order to try to quench that burn, and he met her more than halfway.

  “Rick, I—”

  In answer, his mouth covered hers, swallowing anything she might have managed to eke out. It was a fierce kiss, with little to temper it, and she fed the heat by opening her mouth to his. Both of them lifted their hands toward each other at the same time, and both came up against the restraints of the handcuffs.

  Catching her face with his free hand, Rick brought her mouth back to his, using his tongue to bind her to him while he entwined the fingers of their connected hands. The gesture was so unexpectedly sweet, it threw Nina off. Fierceness she could have resisted. Roughness she could have resisted.

  Anything but this tenderness and raw, desperate hunger that went on and on. When he finally pulled back, she could only blink up at him. “That was...” Simply the most soul-searching, heart-wrenching kiss of her life.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t looked pleased.

  She licked her lips, unable to believe how much she wanted, ached, needed. This had never happened to her, never, and she had to have more to see if it could happen again. To see if it could get even better, though she couldn’t imagine it. “Maybe we could try that just one more time, just to see if...”

  He let out a short laugh, but in his eyes was a grim determination that scared her.

  He’d already pulled away.

  He was going to get up, wasn’t going to give her one more kiss to treasure.

  How could this have happened? How could she find herself attracted to the most ill-mannered, bad-tempered, dangerous, sexy man she’d ever met?

  Okay, the attraction she understood. It wasn’t her fault, or even his, it was simply chemical.

  But there was more. He made her yearn for everything that had been missing in her life. For a moment she imagined how this would be if they actually liked each other, if they lived in a different place and time where they could trust each other. But those thoughts terrified her. He made her wonder about things better left alone, such as what it would be like to be made love to by such an intense, driven man.

  “Please,” she whispered, horrifying herself with the plea. “One more.”

  “Nina.” There was a warning in his voice. A warning, and a plea as well.

  He wasn’t going to do it.

  So for once in her life, she made the first move. She fisted her free hand in his hair, pulled his head to hers and planted her mouth on his.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ONE OF RICK’S favorite qualities in a woman was sexual aggression. He appreciated someone who knew what she wanted and wasn’t shy about getting it, but in his head, Nina wasn’t one of those women. She was sweet and refined and didn’t have a horny bone in her body.

  Not a woman for him, in other words.

  But his body wasn’t getting the message, not faced with her fumbling determination and that hot little bod arching closer to his. With the shirt twisted around her waist, he got another good long look at those nice white panties, and all the treasures they barely covered. “Nina—” His mouth watered. “Wait—”

  “Shh. You talk too much,” she said, throwing his words back in his face.

  “Very funny. But you’ve got to hold on—”

  “No.” In her hurry to kiss him, she bumped her nose to his. She ground her tooth into his bottom lip. She slanted her head all wrong.

  Then whimpered in frustration.

  At the sound, at her obvious—but arousing as hell—attempts to attack him, something happened. Some sort of gentleness came over him that he never ordinarily felt.

  And that devastated him, because damn it, he was feeling, and he didn’t want to! Warning bells started blaring—a little damn late now.

  Still making those incredibly erotic, needy sounds in her throat, Nina once again crawled up his body, practically straddling him, her hips thrusting against his, which nearly, very nearly, made his entire body her slave forever. He quivered, and then, when she slid the neediest part of her over the neediest part of him, the quiver turned to a full body shudder. “Nina—”

  She simply pressed her mouth harder to his, then reached up, probably to fist her other hand in his hair—and cried out.

  The handcuffs, he thought with a vicious oath. And now she’d hurt herself, damn it. “Let me—”

  She didn’t slow down, she was still coming at him with that mouth that was going to headline his fantasies for many nights to come. “Nina. Stop.” He reached for her wrist, but she pulled it away, shaking her head, going for yet another kiss and missing, planting her mouth on the side of his. Her breasts were smashed against his chest, the thin T-shirt she wore no protection at all. The touch of her nipples against his skin made him groan, but still he tried to shake it off. “Let me see your wrist—”

  “I’m fine!”

  She was more than fine. Rumpled, sleepy-eyed, lips wet and full from his mout
h, she looked incredible.

  And vulnerable.

  Hell. He wanted her.

  Yet she was holding back on him in a big way. She’d lied about Terry, and anyone who’d lied couldn’t be trusted. Hell, in his life, no one could be trusted.

  Period.

  He needed to remember that, no matter how sweet her warm, lush body felt against his. Pushing her away, he sat up. “So much for you being worried about me taking advantage.”

  She blushed, but didn’t say a word.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small key. Grabbing her arm, holding it still, he unlocked the cuffs and let them fall.

  When she would have tugged free, he held on, turned her hand over, palm up. Across the inside of her wrist was a nasty-looking bruise.

  Guilt twisted inside him, and he ran a gentle finger over the swelling. I’m sorry seemed stupid and pathetic, not to mention most likely entirely unwelcome, since he’d been the one to purposely lock them together.

  He hadn’t been sorry when he’d done it, not when her eyes had flashed both heat and hatred. He certainly hadn’t been sorry when they’d woken up wrapped tighter than a pretzel. Hell, he could still feel her nice, curvy body against his.

  And that kiss...his body was still humming. Nope, he hadn’t been sorry then either, wasn’t capable of being sorry because his every brain cell had been on full lust alert.

  But he was sorry now.

  And judging by the look on her face, she knew it too. “If you tell me you regret that you kissed me—”

  “Whoa,” he said. “You kissed me.”

  “I kissed you back, but you kissed me first.”

  “Because I woke up with you all over me like bees on honey. Remember that part?”

  “Rick...” She let out a breath and lifted her hands. “What are we doing?”

  “I don’t know about you. Me, I’m finding Terry.”

  “Because Mitch wants her.”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  He looked into her earnest face and knew this was the time to tell her about the baby.