by Cherry Adair
He gave Mama a steely look. “That’s enough. She is my business. Not yours. She’s going to town, if I have to take her myself.”
“At such a crucial time? No. Ask her what she is here to do.” Mama fondled the stock of her gun with stubby fingers, nails bitten to the quick. “It will give us an advantage over the Pijo.”
The “prick” was Escobar Maza.
Hell. Sin knew that look. Mama was digging in her heels. Her instinct wasn’t wrong. It rarely was. She knew it and the men at her side knew it. No matter how much he preferred it otherwise. He’d known the second he’d found her that the woman was going to be trouble. “I already—”
“Ask.“
He half turned to Riva. Her cheeks were flushed, not, he suspected, by embarrassment, but by anger. She stared up at him with furious eyes and a raw mouth, and the look she gave him was a promise of retribution. Jesus. She was all but naked, surrounded by danger on every side, and she was still defiant.
“Mama wants to know what you’re here to do for Escobar Maza,” he said harshly in English.
She gave him a blank look. “I told you. I have no idea who that is.”
Seeing Mama raise her hand to strike out of the corner of his eye, Sin spun around. Riva hastily backed up. He stepped into her. “Gonna hit you,” he said under his breath, keeping his eyes locked on hers as he drew his fist back. “Drop.“
“Fuck you,” she said just as softly. Chin raised, eyes shooting sparks at him, she planted her bare feet in the spongy ground and stood like a rock.
Sin punched her on the jaw, expecting her to anticipate the blow, and to fall backward. Instead she took the full force of the punch, and even though he’d held back, it was still hard enough to knock her back several staggering steps.
He walked over, grabbed her upper arm to prevent her from crashing to the ground, and hissed, “You don’t follow instructions worth a damn, lady.”
“Get out of the way.” Mama grabbed the back of his flak vest and yanked.
No. Fuck no. Furious, he spun around and knocked her hand away. “She’s mine to do with as I please. I please not to have my property broken by you before I’m finished with her. I’ll do what’s necessary without your interference.”
Mama’s cigarette, smoked down to almost nothing, glowed as she sucked in a breath, holding the smoke in her lungs as if it were a joint. “You challenge my authority?” She exhaled in two jerky huffs as she fieldstripped the burning nub.
“Your authority? You forget your place, woman. Soy jefe. There is no room for two of us. Make a choice.” It was a battle of wills he’d win. Perhaps he’d been physically impaired and disoriented by his injuries and she’d had to be his representative with his men for a few months. But he was well now, stronger than she could ever hope to be, and he’d brook no interference with this business, especially from his mother.
“Get the information. If you can’t, I will. You have one hour.”
“It’s not for you to give me an ultimatum. Challenge me again on this and your punishment will be swift. Do I make myself clear?”
Her black eyes flashed anger before she backed up, head bowed. “Sí, Jefe.“
In the second before Mama turned away, he saw a glance filled with hard, pure evil. Her compliance was a sham. Mama was plotting against him. She’d have watchers on him from here on out, men who would be reporting his every move to her. Great. He’d have enemies within and enemies without. He had no idea why he’d chosen this morning to draw the line in the sand with Mama, but he had.
He glanced at Riva Rimaldi, into the fire that burned deep within those angry brown eyes. Something told him she was worth it. Why? He had no fucking clue.
Agitated, furious, and yeah-scared, Riva breathed hard. Thank God the missing hostages and dead guards hadn’t been discovered. Yet. It was only a matter of time, however. She was sick of being manhandled, and damn sick of being practically naked. All she wore was his—thankfully too big—T-shirt. Being this close to naked, and aware of the high adrenaline and testosterone pumping through Sin Diaz’s veins, made Riva acutely conscious of her vulnerability. She wasn’t sure which need was more critical: underwear or a weapon.
She tried to jerk free as Sin shoved her ahead of him across the clearing, his iron-hard fingers like manacles around her upper arm. She tried, “You’re hurting me,” pretty sure it wouldn’t work.
It didn’t.
“What’s your point?” He gave her a little shove to reactivate her feet, which she’d dug into the mush. “Shut the fuck up and keep walking.”
Hating Sin Diaz’s guts, she resumed walking. Killing him would be her pleasure. Riva’s jaw throbbed, and she’d bitten her tongue when he’d slugged her. Bastard. It wasn’t the first time she’d been hit, and in her line of work it wouldn’t be the last, but for some annoying reason, she considered this man striking her as personal.
Tilting up her chin, which she hoped was already turning black and blue so he’d feel guilty as hell for hitting what he thought was a defenseless woman, Riva fixed him with what she was certain was the most speaking look she’d ever given anyone in her life. Projecting vulnerable, hurt, and wobbly on her feet, she said with fake bravado and a faint quiver in her voice, “Nice to know I’m not singled out.”
Mud oozed between her bare toes, and when something large and slimy landed with a faint wet plop on her thigh, she let out a little, very girly shriek. She swiped at it with her free hand. “You even bully your mother.”
His mother and her goons had shown up and he’d gone from mocking to absolutely furious. Cold, calculated, and vicious. She didn’t need her training to read those expressions, and they were far from micro.
Mother and son hated one another. The mother hated that the son was stronger. She didn’t respect him and didn’t like stepping back from the confrontation. She considered herself stronger, more powerful. In charge.
So did he.
Interesting.
If necessary, she’d use their hatred of each other to get the upper hand. A cheerful thought when she was practically being dragged down the narrow street back to his hovel.
In her line of work, she’d seen man’s inhumanity to man, and Diaz was no exception. The things he’d done in his checkered past made her blood congeal. She was lucky he’d only punched her. But the day was still young.
At least the missing prisoners hadn’t been discovered yet. More time for them to disappear into the jungle without being caught. How far had they run? She got a brief flash of them in her mind’s eye. Not far enough. She’d done all she could. The rest was up to them.
She cast a quick glance at Diaz’s face. Jaw tight, eyes intense. Royally pissed. Too freaking bad. She’d pit his anger against her righteous indignation any day. “Give me back my clothes, and I’ll get out of your way. I hate to come between a loving son and his mommy.”
Hard fingers clamped more tightly around her upper arm as he shoved her ahead of him. “I said, shut up and keep walking.”
“Or what? You’ll hit me again?” He’d mumbled something under his breath before hitting her, but Riva had been too busy watching the interplay between Sin and his equally scary mother to listen.
“That was a tap.”
“I’ve been tapped harder.” She’d mitigated the blow slightly by staggering backward just in time, but his fist had still made contact, and her jaw throbbed. Her fury was white-hot. Riva knew she had to get a grip on that anger, and fast. Her mouth had always gotten her into trouble. She knew better. Being a smart-ass was not in her best interest. It never had been. And now was no exception. She was freaking aware, damn it, but sometimes her smart-ass-ness just got away from her. A coping mechanism brought out by her stepfather’s abuse. Usually, her rigorous training and some serious psych counseling kicked in in time for her to rein it in.
Zip it.
No missteps. No flying off the handle. Control and guile were the names of this game. In fact, she had no idea why she was so pisse
d. She’d had a lot worse, and lot more unexpectedly.
It seemed as if she’d anticipated physical violence from the time her flighty mother married Joe when she was five. And she certainly anticipated it every day when she was in the field. The jungles of Cosio and the charming Diazes were no exception.
The lessons Joe had inadvertently taught her had stood her in good stead for her work as a T-FLAC operative. Bones eventually healed, but stupidity could get one killed. Keep cool. Stay focused. Remember the mission. And don’t let your emotions rule your actions.
Now that he’d caught her escaping, he wouldn’t give her another chance. He’d secure her better the next time. There couldn’t be a next time. Next time he’d kill her. Her only hope was to kill him before he got her back to his hut.
She had to back up. Act afraid. Act hurt.
She gritted her teeth and said sweetly, “I hope you and your mother weren’t fighting over me.”
“I should’ve let you keep running,” he said sourly. Oh yeah. He was truly pissed. Like she gave a damn. His fingers bit into her upper arm as he gave her another shove. “The hungry animals would have saved me the hassle, not to mention the time.”
He had no accent when he spoke English. Damn good English. “Do you pull wings off innocent butterflies, too?” Shut the hell up Riva. Shut. Up. Do. Not. Engage. The enemy.
His cinder block shack was about three hundred feet ahead. Once there, he’d tie her up. And this time he wouldn’t underestimate her and leave her alone.
The fact that she was all but naked, and barefoot, wouldn’t deter her. She had to put him out of action, make a run for it, and find Maza. Had. To. Now.
Riva slowed her steps and he bumped into her. The contact jolted her from the top of her head to her muddy toes as if she’d been given a powerful electrical shock. His body was rock-hard, and hot.
He gave her the evil eye. Those eyes weren’t the black pits of hell like his mother’s, but a deep, stormy hazel green. “Want me to knock you out and carry your sorry ass?”
She’d take care of his sorry ass and enjoy doing it. But first… Putting a hand to her face, she sagged a little in his hold. “I don’t feel so h—” Rolling back her eyes, she let her legs fold.
Without missing a beat, Sin scooped her up against his broad chest, arms like two steel bands pinning her there. The same vision—their naked, sweating bodies twined in shockingly intimate embrace—flashed through her mind. Riva remained limp, fighting the sudden, inexplicable urge to curl into him.
Her head flopped onto his hard chest. He smelled faintly of soap and delectable sweaty male. Arousal swamped her in a shocking flood of inappropriate and unwanted need. A new sensation. It baffled Riva and yes, dammit, frightened her.
This was something new, something she had no time to analyze as the images slammed into her brain in three-dimensional technicolor. She fought to bring up an image of the just-released captives instead, but his stimulating smell surrounded her, making it hard to pull up the other vision. Closing her eyes, something she normally didn’t have to do, she tried again.
Her life depended on keeping a cool head, and trying to figure out why Sin Diaz turned her on so powerfully was far too distracting.
He adjusted her dead weight, supporting her back with one arm while he draped her legs over the other. When she sagged between the two, he shifted one large, splayed hand to cup her bare butt, holding her up as he walked. It annoyed the living bejesus out of her that, despite the rope burns, her sore jaw from his punch, her lacerated lips, and her additional scrapes, she liked the feel of his rough hand on her skin. Since she couldn’t talk, being unconscious and all, she kept her thoughts to herself as she called herself all kinds of fool.
It was too damn early for Stockholm Syndrome to set in. Whatever this was about, it was something else. She wished to hell she could block out the image of the two of them, naked and sweaty, her knees bent over his shoulders as he pounded into her. They were in a…tent? A tent for godsake! and she was screaming while having a violent orgasm.
Dammit, she was never that creative in her lovemaking, and no one had ever made her scream like that. Damn him.
Not a prediction. The images had nothing—absolutely not a damn thing—to do with her psychic ability. What woman wouldn’t have thoughts of hot sweaty sex when three quarters naked and in close proximity to a virile specimen like Sin Diaz? His hand was cupping her naked butt for God’s sake, his fingers almost in her mound. Sex? No wonder. She could just as easily picture shooting the son of a bitch between the eyes. Except that wasn’t the visceral image she was seeing in her mind’s eye as he cradled her against the hard wall of his chest and carried her rapidly toward his home.
“Little fool,” he snarled as he kicked open the door, stepping from dirt onto concrete. “Fucking hell. I do not have time for this complication.”
No shit, Sherlock.
Conflicted as hell, Sin kicked open the door and carried her inside his hut. Fucking, fucking, fucking hell. Goddamn pequeña hembra was more trouble than she was worth.
He didn’t hit women, a weird code of ethics considering everything else he did do. He’d held back as much as possible to mitigate the blow. Stubborn little witch had stood her ground, eyes glaring death and dismemberment until he’d practically knocked her on her ass.
She hadn’t passed out from that punch, he didn’t think. What he did think was maybe internal injuries from the crash. Dios. There wasn’t a hospital, or even a clinic, in hundreds of jungle miles. Because of Maza, Sin had a moratorium on taking up the Hummingbird, which was kept hidden and well-camouflaged deep in the jungle.
If her injuries were serious, she’d die right here in his camp. While that would solve the problem her presence presented, the thought was supremely unappealing. “Besides, you’re just too damn pretty to die,” he told her, not realizing he’d said it out loud. And the millisecond he thought that illogical sentiment, he remembered he didn’t do soft.
No. Not unappealing. “Inconvenient. If I’m going to know what the hell Maza’s got up his sleeve, you have to tell me what the fuck you’re doing here.” If she died, he wasn’t going to get a damn thing.
Laying her carefully on the bed, Sin swept aside strands of telltale bloodstained rope. “You chewed your way free? Christ, woman…” He gritted his teeth with fury. The corners of her mouth were bloody and raw from gnawing through her bindings, her lush lips, slightly parted, were swollen and red. She didn’t move. Eyes closed, she looked serene and dick-pulsingly beautiful.
Sin pulled down the T-shirt to cover her exposed lower body. Everything about her turned him on. The creamy tawniness of her smooth skin, the long sweep of her lashes, the swell of her breasts, and the long delectable lines of her smooth legs. He wanted it all.
He was damned sick of being turned on by a comatose woman.
He made a decision as he curved his fingers over the warm skin of her thigh. If she didn’t die, he’d walk her into Santa de Porres himself. Kill several birds with one stone as it were. Get the sedating, brain-deadening brew analyzed, then go and look up Luisa, an accommodating young widow he had a loose arrangement with in town. And if she did die? Fuck. He couldn’t let that happen. Because what took precedence over all of the above was discovering what Maza had up his sleeve for him, and she was the key to that.
The ANLF had to take action before the SYP struck.
So, no time for dicking around. No time for sex…
Pushing aside the thought of sex—because God only knew, it wasn’t the buxom Luisa he was visualizing—Sin went to his locker to find the first-aid kit he kept well stocked with everything he could possibly need up here, so far from help. It was in a secret section at the foot of the locker, under his folded pants.
He had her SIG there, as well as a compact, lightweight 4.6mm MP7A1 submachine gun. Sin was well aware that someone, or someone’s flunky, periodically went through his shit when he was away. He’d made the locker himself to hide cra
p he wanted quick to hand, and to have somewhere to hang what few clothes he retained in camp. He’d already decided, before this clusterfuck, that he’d get to the city this week. See what he could piece together from this mismatched patchwork that was his memory. Or lack thereof.
He went back to the bed, put the metal box on the floor, then picked up her wrist to check her pulse. Seemed to be fine. Sin wasn’t a doctor, but he knew she’d shown no signs of weakness, or confusion; just the opposite in fact. Instead of a faint, this could be a coma, in which case she was shit out of luck, because he had no idea what to do to fix that scenario. Hopefully, not a cranial bleed.
Fainting could be a sign of internal bleeding. The good news was that she hadn’t puked. Blood or otherwise. Her chest rose and fell with smooth, slow, easy movements. She wasn’t short of breath. He ran down as many symptoms as he could think of that would cause her to be unconscious, and, more worrisome, for this length of time.
The other very real possibility for her losing consciousness was some kind of poisonous bite. God only knew his backyard was filled with any number of snakes, spiders, and other venomous denizens of the jungle. Barefoot, and all but naked, she was a walking target.
Sin brushed his thumb across her full lower lip, careful to avoid the abrasions at the corners. If they’d been in a different time and place… But they weren’t. No matter who she was, or what her purpose was with Maza, she was his enemy. The ANLF’s enemy. Her presence was dangerous to all of them.
She was also a very real danger to his tenuous status quo with Mama.
Of course, if she died, that would no longer be an issue. And if she lived, he had to make the decision of what to do with her. Because Mama didn’t give a flying fuck that she was soft, and beautiful, and fascinating. If Mama didn’t get the answers she wanted, when she wanted them, she’d kill Riva slowly and painfully just for sport and to fuck with Maza or himself.
“What the hell am I going to do with you, mi misterio?” Mystery was an understatement. The fans of her lashes cast shadows on her cheeks, the pulse at her temple and the base of her damp throat throbbed, indicating she was alive.