Uh-huh. As a matter of fact they had. Her twenty-years sober uncle liked to repeat that mantra anytime life’s sugar turned to shit.
She stilled in Dan’s embrace, searching his pretty green eyes and saw…pain…and understanding…and other things she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something inside her shifted. Just a little. But it was enough. Because it occurred to her right then and there that she may not be able to crawl inside him and hide away from the world, but there was another way to forget. For a while…
Stepping forward, she pressed herself close, going up on tiptoe to seal their mouths. His lips were so soft and warm, his breath even warmer when it hitched as she forced her tongue between his teeth. He tensed for a second, one tiny second, then he groaned and wrapped his arms around her, spinning her until her back slammed against the door to the bathroom. And, just like that, the unbearable sadness made way for lust. The intolerable hurt moved aside for hunger.
And, hello? This was what she needed. Not tears. Not sorrow and regret and second-guessing. Escape. Physical escape. Mental escape. Emotional escape. If she could just for bit, just for a while, get away from it all, she might be able to wrestle herself back under control. She might be able to do her duty. Do what was right and honorable and worthy of the title of Secret Service agent. Make proud the man who’d taught her how to be a warrior, how to be a champion. Honor the friends she’d lost this day.
“Make love to me,” she whispered against Dan’s neck between a string of hard, biting kisses. She lifted a leg, hooking her heel behind his knee. He was gratifyingly hard when she rubbed herself against him, and her body answered with a swift rush of marvelous liquid heat.
“Brooklyn…Jesus,” he groaned, flattening his wide palm beside her head as she gently bit his earlobe. She loved the nickname he’d given her, loved that he only used it when they were on the brink of intimacy.
With his free hand, he gripped her hip, giving it a squeeze before sliding his hot palm down the length of her thigh until he reached the crook of her knee. Lifting her leg high around his waist, he more fully aligned their bodies. And this time when he stroked forward, rubbing against her, it was as if the material separating their sexes had melted away. She could feel the length of him graze her distended clitoris. The subtle ache that had been building between her thighs exploded into a painful coil of tension.
She reached down to attack the buttons on his jeans, her fingers trembling as first one, then another, and then another popped open. When the front of his fly gaped wide, she shoved her hand inside his black boxer briefs, gripping the heated, rock-hard length of him, remembering how violently red, how hugely swollen and painful his erection had looked right before he slid on the condom.
“Brooklyn,” he gasped, his head falling back on his shoulders, the big veins running on either side of his neck standing out like garden hoses. “We shouldn’t…Holy shit, that feels good.”
“Mmm,” she hummed, keeping one hand inside his pants, pulling, petting, stroking, as she used the other to undo the button on her trousers. Her zipper made a soft scriiiitching sound that was barely audible above their heavy, gasping breaths. Lowering her leg, she toed out of her shoes. It was a pity she had to release the steely length of him in order to grab the waistband of her pants and panties and push them down her thighs. But she was rewarded for that small sacrifice when, after stepping out of the puddle of clothing, she discovered both of Dan’s hands were now planted on the door beside her head. His chest rose and fell in huge, hungry breaths. His eyes glowed with a lust so hot it was like gasoline to the fire already burning in her blood.
“Make love to me,” she said again, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, going up on tiptoe to realign their bodies. “Make me forget just for a little while.”
A frenzied muscled ticked in his jaw, his lips flattening into a thin line. “Brooklyn, you have no idea how much I wanna do exactly that. But I don’t have a condom.”
She shook her head. All this talk was allowing some of that terrible pain to creep back in, some of that spirit-crushing despair to seep into the mortar she’d used to quickly build up a wall around her grief. “Forget about it,” she told him, shoving his jeans and boxers down his thighs until his erection sprang free. “I don’t care…”
* * *
Steady watched Abby scoop some of the goop she’d made from that hemp-plant-that-wasn’t-really-a-hemp-plant off a palm leaf. She mimicked sticking it to her eyes while Yonus translated for the people of the village. “And then, you press this to your face like this and go to sleep for the night. It will make the infection…” She wrinkled her button nose, glancing at Yonus. “Does that translate? The word infection?”
“I’m calling it the eyesight stealer.” Yonus shrugged.
Abby nodded. “I like that even better,” she said, before continuing to demonstrate. “So it will keep the eyesight stealer from…well”—she shrugged her shoulders—“stealing your eyesight.”
Steady glanced at the dark faces around him once Yonus had fallen silent in his translation. He didn’t need to speak the language to know the Orang Asli were eager to give Abby’s remedy a try. One man stuck his finger into the goo and lifted it to his nose, inhaling deeply. His expression was intrigued as he offered his finger to the rest of the villagers.
Steady had to roll in his lips to keep from chuckling as a dozen dark heads leaned in to give the paste the ol’ sniff test. But when he looked over at Abby standing in the middle of them, her skin dewed with sweat and her pale green eyes bright with enthusiasm, all his laughter died. Because in that instant everything, everything, suddenly became clear. Cut-glass clear. Mountain rain clear. As if he’d been clocked in the skull with a two-by-four of crystal-clear truth.
He loved her.
“Abby…” Her name was on his lips before he could call it back. He didn’t know why. All he knew was that he needed to say it.
“I know.” She laughed when one of the women of the tribe timidly touched a lock of her hair. “We need to be on our way. I know.”
Sí. They probably did. For many reasons, not the least of which was that he was itching to find a pay phone or a landline or even an electrical outlet with which to juice up his iPhone. He needed to call back to HQ to see if they had a status update on Ozzie. His best friend’s situation had been a constant presence in the back of his mind. But…that wasn’t what he meant. He meant… “Abby…”
And there it was again. Her name. Slipping from between his lips of its own accord. And each time he said it, it rang inside him like a promise…like a prayer. Which made sense since the good Madre Maria knew he was tempted to fall at her feet as a penitent, pledging to worship her forever.
“Okay, Carl—” Her words cut off the instant she looked into his face. No surprise, really. Considering some of what he was feeling had to be plastered there. I mean, he was thunderstruck. Awestruck. Dumbstruck. Every kind of struck you can imagine.
He waited breathlessly for her response to the love in his eyes, to the adoration scrawled across his face as if he’d written it there with a big black Sharpie. But then he realized his expression couldn’t be all that obvious when she said, “Oh, what the hedge cutter’s ass? Are you sick or something? Was it the rambutans?”
Hedge cutter’s ass? Oh, Abby. Sweet, wonderful, hilarious Abby…
And just like that, the laughter was back. This time, he didn’t try to contain it. This time he let loose with it. Let it echo up into the roiling, cloud-filled sky. Let it fill his chest, and warm his heart.
He loved her!
If it wouldn’t have scared the ever-loving crap out of the villagers, he would have shouted it to the world. Roared it through the jungle like a lion. And fuck the fact that he was a maldito bori and she was the president’s daughter. Fuck the right side of the tracks versus the wrong side of the tracks. Fuck everything that had ever kept them apart in the past or threatened to keep them apart in the future. Because he loved her. And, by Dios,
if it took him moving heaven and earth to have her, that’s exactly what he’d do!
As if the universe knew and understood the weight of the pledge he’d made, the boiling clouds chose that second to rip open. Rain surged from the sky in a deafening roar, drenching him in an instant. He continued to laugh, lifting his arms wide as he let the downpour wash away the last remaining vestiges of the hurt he’d felt when Abby rejected him eight years ago. Let it wash away any lingering doubt that she would reject him again.
He was hers. And she was his. And she had to see that. She had to know that.
With one last bellow of unfettered delight, he lowered his arms and his chin. Rain sluiced off his face in sheets, running into his eyes. But he had no trouble seeing the shocked, wary expressions of the villagers. They probably thought he’d lost his mind. Flipped his lid. Gone clean crazy. And, in a way, he had. Because from one second to the next, he’d fallen crazy, head-over-heels in love.
A bolt of lightning crashed overhead, cleaving the angry clouds in two and casting the tiny village in harsh, white light. The tart smell of electricity burned through the air, and somewhere in the distance a monkey screeched out a frightened call. Then it was as if a spell had broken. The villagers jumped and scattered, climbing up ladders to run inside their high-built huts. The children screamed with glee as they raced in from the stream’s edge, scampering up the latticework built beneath their bamboo homes to disappear inside. And Abby…well, Abby stood there in the deluge, gaping at him.
And, yes, she, too, probably suspected some of his screws had come loose. And maybe he was proving her right by grabbing her wrist and jerking her forward. Maybe he had gone stark-raving mad. But the truth of the matter was he didn’t give a rat’s…uh…hedge cutter’s ass. Because he loved her. And, hue puta, he wasn’t going to go one more second without letting her know it.
“Carl—”
But that’s all she managed before he threw his arms around her, lifting her feet from the waterlogged ground and dipping his head to hungrily claim her mouth. Since it was already gaping open in a little O of surprise, it made it that much easier to slide his tongue inside. He tasted her, savored her, drank in her surprise and bewilderment, and gave back promises of devotion and tenderness. She was so sweet, so pure. Her breath candied by the lingering juice of the rambutans. And despite the fact that he’d filled his belly, he was ravenous. Starving. So hungry for her that he probably would have laid her down right there in the mud and the muck, showed her with his hands and mouth and body all the things he felt for her, had not an incessant tapping on his shoulder forced him to lift his head.
“What is it?” he growled, a little surprised to see Yonus standing in the rain beside them. He’d completely forgotten the man existed.
“You should take shelter in the ceremonial hut!” Yonus yelled above the violent crack of another bolt of lightning. The rain had drenched the man’s jeans, darkening the material and causing them to hang heavily on his thin frame. He was pointing to the central structure at their backs. “I will go take refuge with the family next door”—he hooked a thumb over his shoulder—“and come for you once the storm has passed! My truck is parked on a logging road about a mile away! I can drive you to a petrol station and then take you back to your motorcycle!”
And suddenly Steady remembered why laying Abby down in the mud and the muck was out of the question. Because it was time for them to be on their way toward the safety of the Thai border. Well past time for them to be on their way.
Flicking a harried look toward the edge of the village where the jungle grew thick and green, blinking away the rain that ran into his eyes, he tried to imagine dragging Abby through the undergrowth in the middle of this torrential downpour. She could do it, he knew. Hell, the wonderful woman had proved she could do almost anything. But was that really their best option?
Lifting his wrist, he checked the time, doing some quick calculations. Afternoon storms here tended to be violent and fleeting. Lasting no more than an hour or two. So, even if he decided to take off and haul Abby through the worst of the drencher, they still wouldn’t be able to make better time than simply staying here, waiting out the storm, and taking Yonus up on his offer of a ride. Though, unbeknownst to the young Orang Asli man, he wouldn’t be carting them back to the Ducati, but rather the remaining ten miles to Thailand.
Glancing down at Abby, he was charmed to discover she looked like a drowned kitten. Her hair was plastered to her head, her eyes blinking against the pouring rain, and her succulent little mouth was back to forming the perfect O. Jesús Cristo! Did she have any idea what a temptation she was? Probably not. But, if things went his way, he was just about to show her.
“It’s a deal!” he yelled to Yonus.
Chapter Fifteen
“What the frickin’ sticks has gotten into you, Carlos?” Abby demanded incredulously, plopping down on the palm-leaf mat spread across the floor of the little ceremonial hut. “Is rain some kind of aphrodisiac for you or something?” she asked while twisting the water out of her sodden hair. “What’s with kissing the bejeezus out of me right there in the center of the village, in the middle of a torrential downpour, with our new buddy Yonus playing the part of the unwitting voyeur?” And FYI, your mouth should come with its own warning label: Caution! These lips have been known to melt ovaries!
And as if all those things she mentioned weren’t odd enough by themselves, there was the nutty way he’d thrown his head back, laughing up at the rain like he was…well…Gene frickin’ Kelly or something. Seriously, had there been a lamppost nearby, she wouldn’t have been all that surprised to see him gaily swinging himself around it. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d contracted some sort of weird, psychedelic jungle fever.
She eyed him askance when he dropped down beside her, running his big hands over his face, sluicing the water from the black stubble darkening his jaw. He lowered his fingers, and she wasn’t all that surprised to find him grinning at her. Obviously, whatever jungle fever he’d contracted wasn’t the sweating/chills/vomiting kind, but the deliriously happy/laughing manically kind.
And then there was the stupid, adorable, tempting dimple.
“Don’t you know by now, mi vida,” he chuckled, the low sound reverberating inside her chest—Was it her imagination, or had his voice dropped an octave while his accent thickened into patented Latin Lover mode?—“that everything, given the right context, is an aphrodisiac to a man?”
Yep. So it wasn’t her imagination. Rolling her eyes—and trying with all her might to ignore the sudden burst of flames that ignited low in her belly—she opened her mouth to remind him that now was not the time and this was definitely not the place, when another flash of lightning blazed overhead. It created a strobe effect through the paper-thin spaces between the poles of bamboo that made up the walls of the hut. And a second later, the accompanying crash of thunder rattled the entire structure. The rain hammering against the leafy roof reminded her of the time her father had taken the family on a trip to see Yosemite Falls. And all of it combined seemed to highlight the fact that this little hut had become their island in the storm, a private oasis cutting them off from the rest of the world.
Emphasis on the word private.
And given the hot look in his eyes right now, that could prove to be very dangerous. She may have managed to resist him and his damned dimple and his pretty penis once, but she didn’t trust herself to be able to do it again.
Not the time or the place, remember? Yep. She did remember. But did he? Once again, she tried to remind him of the fact. But this time she was thwarted not by the lightning, but by Carlos himself. He suddenly leaned over, lifting her damp hair off her neck.
“You have a tattoo,” he said like it was an accusation.
Jesus, Mary, and Joe Cocker! She hadn’t been thinking when she’d wrung out her hair. The deep-red rose inked near her hairline was something she’d never meant him to see.
Thinking fast, she said the
first thing to pop into her head. “Well, so do you. A lot of tattoos. And I’ve been meaning to ask you what they say.”
When he dropped her hair to hold out his wide hands, palms up so that the intricate black scroll on the insides of his flexing forearms was visible, she heaved a sigh of relief. She’d distracted him from asking her about the symbolism of her tattoo. And that was good. Just as now was not the time or place for kisses and hot Latin looks, neither was it the time or place for her confession. When they were home, when they were safe, when he could walk away from her and never look back, that’s when she’d tell him.
And forget the fact that her stomach hollowed out at the mere thought.
“This one”—he pointed to the words in Spanish sketched into his right arm—“says, ‘Mess with the best.’”
“Mess with the best?” She lifted an intrigued eyebrow.
“Sí.” He nodded, his dark, wet hair curling across his forehead. A drop of crystalline water glinted near his temple, and she was tempted to reach up and brush it away. “And this one says, ‘Die like the rest.’”
Mess with the best, die like the rest…
Her jaw unhinged as a shiver of awareness and…wariness…skittered across her nerve endings. When she looked into his eyes, into those deep, black eyes fringed by those thick, dark lashes, she didn’t see the handsome, happy-go-lucky medical student she’d known back in college. Instead she saw the man he’d grown into. The hardened soldier, the…take-no-prisoners, no-guts-no-glory warrior who’d taken his place. And not for the first time since he dropped back into her life, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of remorse. Because he never would have become this man, this hard-assed, battle-scarred man, if not for—
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