by Cherry Adair
He leaned over to take her stubborn chin in his palm so he could draw her attention back to his face. Mistake. Her damp skin was impossibly soft. Insects would love feasting on her, once he was through. Once again, he mentally flinched from the idea of her death, and couldn’t understand why.
“You’re not afraid, and that’s a very bad thing. You were headed for Maza’s camp and you wound up here, and both places are extremely dangerous for anyone—especially a woman—to be right now. And knowing the people residing here, I would venture to say you’re shit out of luck as far as hospitality goes.” He released her, because if he didn’t, he knew he’d drop down on top of her, shove her knees apart, and take her.
Instead, Sin took a step back and pushed his fingers deep into his back pockets to prevent himself from touching her. The scent of her skin, even more so than the sight of her nakedness, made him so horny his back teeth ached. One more touch and he’d be doomed. There’d be no control.
“This is going to be one hell of a crappy day for you, Miss Rimaldi. If I’m not enough to terrify you, wait until you meet Mama. There isn’t a civilized bone in her body. If you won’t tell me what you’ve come here to do for Maza, you’ll give it up to my mother in five seconds flat.”
“She sounds charming, and it’s warming to hear a man speak so affectionately about his mother. Ask her to bring me my clothes when she drops by for that visit.” And the batshit crazy woman closed her eyes.
Sin had to admire her sangfroid. It wouldn’t last, of course, but he enjoyed the moment.
As soon as Sin Diaz left, Riva opened her eyes. Ow, mierda. She felt the pulse of her heartbeat in every bruise and laceration. Everything hurt, from her toes to the back of her head. But she didn’t consider the throbbing pain anything more than a countdown clock warning her she had to get the hell out of there. ASAP.
First she needed at least a minute to get herself centered on the now. Sucking in a shaky breath, she took stock of the situation.
In all her years as a T-FLAC operative, Ria had avoided capture. But swimming slowly back to consciousness, aware at an animal level that she was bound and helpless, had thrown her into the nightmare of the bad old days.
For a few hellacious moments she waited for the slash of that fiery little whip from hell to come down on her back. Joe giving it his all to beat the “crazy” out of her. Nothing sexual there.
For a few seconds she’d been puzzled and repulsed as the man’s mouth crawled over her skin. Then she was neither puzzled, nor, damn her, repulsed.
The latter scared the living shit out of her.
With annoyance and yes, damn it, humiliation, Riva acknowledged she’d been sexually aroused by a tango. Dammit.
Diaz was a big guy. Six three or four at least. Not conventionally handsome, but arresting despite looking as though he was three days past his last shave. Dark brows slashed over dark eyes. Long chocolate-brown hair brushed broad shoulders thick with well-honed muscle. Deeply tanned—he must go half naked a lot—he had a light mat of dark hair on his broad chest which arrowed down chiseled abs she bet she could bounce a coin off. God, she’d lost her ever-loving mind.
His gaze had poured over her like heated quicksilver. His deep voice had stroked her nerve endings like smooth, supple leather, and when he’d bent over her she’d sucked in the smell of his skin and drowned in that fiercely male scent. He was so male it made her blood race through her veins like a schoolgirl with her first crush.
How had a man like that managed to skate under the radar for all these years? He was larger than life. Virile. A force to be reckoned with.
It hadn’t then, but now her heart pounded wildly.
To her immense relief, he’d left. She took in a shuddering breath.
Lying still, she estimated the extent of her wounds as she mentally shook off the burn of bruised muscles and the burning streak of pain down her thigh. All she cared about right now was if she was ambulatory or not.
If she couldn’t walk, she was a dead woman.
She shifted her legs. She’d be able to walk/run/escape. Good enough. The rest would heal.
She breathed carefully into lungs aching from being deflated for so long, gladly taking the aches and pains over the alternative.
Craphelldamn.
First things first-she activated the locator chip in her molar with the tip of her tongue. This scenario had already been discussed in flight from Montana. Intel indicated that radio frequencies in the jungle were jammed. That, coupled with the dense tree cover, made Riva’s ability to communicate with either Control, or her fellow operatives making a base in Santa de Porres, unlikely.
There was a chance—a slim one—that T-FLAC’s satellites could penetrate the tree cover, override the block, and find her position through the locator chip. Certainly they’d send in drones to search for her when the chopper disappeared from their readings. If they thought she’d died in the crash, her team would come to retrieve her body. Or parts thereof.
Didn’t matter. Right now she was here, alone, definitely not dead, and the more chances she gave someone to find her, the better.
Each operative carried a booster to enhance a wireless connection. Either to the satellite, or phone and computer connections. If there was any juice available, the booster would grab it and intensify the link to T-FLAC’s satellite. But since she was naked, and hadn’t seen her clothes, or her go-bag, she was screwed there. And talk about being screwed—
Mio Dios, Sin Diaz? The Ghost? The man people believed was part human, part demon, because so few had ever seen him, yet half the world knew his name? Whose exploits were legend across not only South America, but North America and Europe as well?
Wrong damned terrorist, Rimaldi!
This was bad. Really, really bad.
When she’d realized who had her, it had taken every bit of her training to keep her heartbeat even, and not to break out in a nervous sweat. He didn’t scare her—well, yeah—of course he scared the hell out of her. He was Sin Diaz, for crapsake.
It was her own reaction to him that terrified her. Turned on by a tango? Should be the lyrics of an obscene rap song, not the anthem for this damned op. She’d better shake off the fell-on-her-head-lust and unscramble her brain. No slipups. No wrong moves. No showing her hand.
No being turned on by the tango.
Mama was, of course, Angélica Diaz, known as Angel de la Muerte. Angel of Death. Mother and son were both in the same criminal hall of fame as Escobar Maza. All of them evil, corrupt, and dangerous as hell. Terrorists on the top of every agency’s watch lists. Including T-FLAC’s.
When the Sangre Y Puño had swooped in out of nowhere five months earlier, the ANLF had gone from king of the jungle to feral underdog. Diaz and his people were in a fight for their lives as they struggled to maintain supremacy in Cosio, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, their stronghold on the European drug markets, and control of the region’s emerald mines.
Had the Sangre Y Puño arrived in Cosio because this was the seat of Abadinista National Liberation Front’s enormous power? Was the SYP here to wrest the power from the ANLF?
Was that what Escobar Maza needed Graciela to tell him? Nothing to do with the BRICS Summit being held in nine days, but instead the right timing to take control of the ANLF?
Made sense. Two dogs, one lucrative bone.
Nobody had known the location of ANLF’s seat of operations. Thousands of miles of dense, mountainous jungle hid them more effectively than any stealth technology available. Now she knew. Not that she knew exactly where the hell she was, between the crash and being transported to this room. Judging by the darkness, several hours had passed; she could be anywhere.
Still, T-FLAC would know where the chopper went down, and if she was able to contact them, they’d at least be able to narrow down the search for the ANLF camp. She could only have gone so far in the dense jungle in that limited period of time. Every bit of information was valuable.
With two fighting groups o
f tangos vying for supremacy, and the astronomical amounts of money funneling through the tiny country, Cosio was a powder keg of instability just waiting to explode and light the world on fire.
Wrong damn place, wrong damned time. Her situation in Cosio was dangerous in and of itself. But if the Diazes discovered her value to Maza, her life wouldn’t be worth shit.
She hadn’t been tasked with killing the Diazes. But she added their deaths to her rapidly growing to-do list. She was here, why not? Weren’t her superiors at T-FLAC always preaching about the importance of operatives being flexible and opportunistic?
There was a possibility that Maza and his men would search the wreckage for survivors, and when they found her body missing, come after Diaz. The ensuing bloodbath might make that possibility more attractive if she wasn’t damned sure that Diaz and his scary mommy would tear her limb from limb just to piss off Maza even more. Ensuring that if one side couldn’t have her, neither could the other.
If Diaz knew she was here at Maza’s request, he would use her in any way to his advantage. Knowing who and what he was, that way would consist of mental and physical torture.
She’d resisted both before. But never had there been this added layer of inappropriate and intense physical attraction to one of her captors.
Had the Diazes given her something while she was unconscious? One of their designer drugs to make her more complacent? The thought would scare the shit out of her if that was the case. But Riva was a realist. They hadn’t given her anything, she was pretty sure. In a way she wished they had, because a drug wore off. Her intense physical reaction might not, and that was a problem.
Fortunately, she was about to put a jungle between them.
Get to Escobar Maza. He’d be her protection against Diaz. Until she killed him. Then she’d be on her own until she could make it back to civilization and the rest of the team waiting in Santa de Porres, or figure out a way to make contact for exfil.
She either needed to kill both Diazes or get the hell out of there ASAP. If she had time, she’d do both.
Diaz’s eyes had glittered in the semidarkness, and there was a moment there when she was damn sure he was contemplating snapping her neck to save himself the aggravation of questioning her.
She’d fallen from the frying pan into an active volcano. Fire didn’t seem to cover the kind of shitstorm that was brewing deep in the jungles of Cosio.
She’d come to, knowing she was being watched, but needing a few minutes to assess just how much danger she was in. She’d thought she’d been retrieved by Sangre Y Puño. Felt relatively sure the guy wouldn’t harm her knowing she was under Maza’s protection.
Sneaky bastard feeling her up. She didn’t like being touched, had never developed a need for it. There’d been no one to touch her with love growing up, and she’d learned she didn’t need to be soothed and told she was safe by anyone other than herself. The lie would be nothing but an illusion. Touching meant pain, shame, guilt, and blame. So while his hands explored her, Riva hid inside her mind until he stepped away.
Too late.
She didn’t like that she’d liked his touch. Didn’t damn-well like it at all. Erotic images of their bodies entwined, hands exploring, mouths wet and avid, provided a sensual pulse she didn’t want or need right now. It was not a physic vision, but purely an aberration brought on by the stress of capture.
God Almighty, Sin Diaz was a potent package. She wished he hadn’t touched her. Having his attention on her when she was vulnerable and naked was bad enough. The feel of his calloused fingers on her body had—
Nothing. She’d felt nothing. Just a toxic cocktail of endorphins mixed with adrenaline, that was all.
Riva liked sex just fine, she just didn’t internalize it. And the last person she wanted scratching her itch was Sin Diaz.
Diaz was bigger than she’d been led to believe, but then no one had a clear picture of him. No pictures, and the physical descriptions varied wildly. He was a ghost. A dangerous, predatory, evil urban legend. Seeing him up close and personal made her wonder why no one had ever gotten a picture of him.
He’d watched her from dark, cynical eyes, with the intention of intimidating her, but holy crap! His killer good looks were a minus as far as she was concerned. And damn, his toned, ripped, half-naked body made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth.
Snap the hell out of your sensual haze, operative!
The bastard had taken the lamp with him. Being in the dark, naked, was the least of Riva’s problems. The lamp hadn’t shown her much, other than the width of his broad shoulders, the solid chiseled steps of his abs, and the crisp dark hair on his chest arrowing down his belly to disappear into the low-slung band of his camo pants.
Groping her had turned him on, as indicated by the sizable bulge in those pants. His long dark hair had brushed her face as he’d leaned over her, causing her nerve endings to send out mixed signals she had no intention of analyzing. The smell of his musky skin was part animal, part virile male, and her body had reacted to the stimulus whether she liked it or not.
Big frigging mistake to meet the intensity of his potent, focused stare, especially at such close quarters. She’d lowered her lashes and gotten her shit together before looking at him again.
Scared woman. That might keep her alive a little while longer if she tried using that approach. If and when that didn’t work, she’d go back into her bag of tricks. Even without a weapon, she wasn’t weaponless.
Riva had to sip air slowly into the painful clench in her lungs for several minutes.
Had the fall done more damage than she realized? She’d fallen out of the sky, for God’s sake. Concussion at the least. How would she know until she dropped dead? A decent night’s sleep and some damned water would’ve been nice, and she’d be back to running on all cylinders again. She hoped.
She tried to summons a vision. Of course, that had never worked for herself before, but she gave it a shot anyway. Of course nothing came. Her damned life was a closed book to her. Closed and locked. Unless she saw her future through someone else’s eyes. Still, the absence of a vision—anybody’s damn future—made her feel a shitload more vulnerable than lying here naked. It had defined her for her entire life. It gave her an edge most other T-FLAC operatives didn’t have. She needed that damned edge now.
Bright lights burned into Sin’s skull, sharpening his ever-present headache. Mama was circling the room, puffing away on one of the Russian cigarettes she favored. The noxious cloud of smoke only exacerbated the pain.
Generator-powered lights turned the inside of the armory bright as day, even at night. The small metal building had no windows, and a heavy steel door. Weapons of every description were piled on shelves and gun racks, in drawers, and layered inside heavy wooden boxes. Mama knew to the last box of bullets how many of everything was in inventory. She kept a tally in her head. No one came in or out without her.
She’d taken her job of stand-in jefe seriously when Sin had been injured. But he was well now, and wrestling control back from her was proving to be a pain in his ass. She gave him nothing but lip service and aggravation.
She pretty much ruled everyone by the short and curlies, minus the velvet glove. It wasn’t his imagination. Her deference to him seemed to be eroding daily. That had to be nipped in the bud. If his men thought him pussy-whipped, he might as well sign his own death warrant.
Dressed head to toe in camo, wearing heavy combat boots, and a scowl, Mama, was, to put it mildly, not an attractive woman. Her lined face looked as parched as untreated leather. A pugnacious, jutting jaw and thin mouth, perpetually turned downward, made her appear permanently angry and about to erupt. Not far from the truth.
She had an irrational, hair-trigger temper and a psychopathic mean streak a mile wide. Stocky and solid, she was barely five feet tall, so that at six three, Sin towered over her. Occasionally she cut her chin-length, harsh black hair with what she called her “Rambo knife"—the Aitor Jungle King she kept
in her boot.
Blunt, cruel, and impatient; those were some of her good qualities. Everyone in camp was shit-scared of Mama, even more so than they feared him. And they all had a healthy fear of Sin, because he brooked no bullshit and meted out punishment accordingly.
Mama didn’t work on logic. She’d sliced a man’s throat because he looked at her with disrespect.
Sin felt disassociated from her. Ever since he’d woken from his coma months ago, he’d felt no connection with his mother. And since everyone in camp called Angélica Diaz “Mama,” that’s what he called her, too. Imagining the woman cradling an infant was impossible. There wasn’t a warm or nurturing bone in her body.
He might’ve been flat on his back and recuperating for months, but he was in top form now. She needed to step the hell back and let him do his job. “All I’m saying is we need to utilize social media,” Sin told her tightly, checking his weapon and grabbing an extra clip for another trip up the mountain.
“Facebook, Twitter. Instagram. It’s the quickest way to recruit more followers, as well as supporters, not to mention getting our product out to new customers and forming alliances worldwide, not just in the markets we have now.”
Shit. Same argument, just a different day. He needed to get the hell away from camp; that’s why he was joining the dawn patrol for a few hours. At the same time, he’d go back to the crash site to make sure every weapon and box of ammo had been taken. And yeah, a small skirmish with a few members of the SYP would go a long way in mitigating his lust for the woman who was staked and naked on his bed.
“Social media? Ridiculous.” Mama’s black eyes tracked him as he moved about. Folding her arms over her chest, she narrowed her eyes. “Your father had no need of this rubbish.”
Sin had absolutely no memory of his father. He must’ve been a saint or the very devil himself to have put up with Mama. “He died before social media became as massive and powerful as it is now. These are new times. Drastic measures must be taken. The SYP has a strong social media presence. They’re on the Dark Web, taking payment in bitcoin.”