He wasn’t built like Chad, who could be used as a human tank in a pinch, but still he was powerfully built. His back was better than most of the cover models on her mother’s romances—which she’d hijacked plenty of as a teen.
And, as Nana had noted, Duane was impossibly real.
His skin was warm beneath her touch, and much more marked than she’d expected. Duane always gave the impression of being impregnable. He was just this guy showing up to do his day job—which happened to be as a Unit operator. Which meant, by definition, that he worked in the worst places in the world.
She slid a single finger down a long slice over one shoulder blade that must have taken dozens of stitches to close.
“I always was crap at climbing trees as a kid,” his voice was rough.
Sofia traced a line of three bullet wounds low on his back.
“You know what they say about playing with pointy sticks.”
She leaned against him, sliding her arms around his waist, and holding on. He stroked his hands along her arms. Duane was built of earth, of stone, of the hyper-compressed core of the planet. With her cheek against his back and her ear on his shoulder, she could hear his heartbeat. Through her arms, his breath.
She could hide here. Right here. Bury her face and forget about her mother the bitch. Her smug brother, who she’d had to teach the hard way to leave her alone in the quiet nights. And most of all forget Nana’s transformation over the last year. She seemed to have shrunk inches, bent over her cane as if she could barely stand upright.
When she sniffled too loudly, Duane turned in her arms and in moments she lay against his chest and he was the one holding her.
“Whoa!”
She turned to plant her nose directly against his breastbone and hung on tighter. Sofia didn’t need anyone, but she needed Nana. One of the pillars of her life was teetering and for the first time ever, she was truly afraid. She’d thought that Duane might teach her fear—even if she didn’t believe in it. Now, suddenly, he was the only thing holding it at bay.
Rather than pushing her away, he held her. Stroking a hand down over her hair, down her back.
She sniffled again, but it was for a different reason.
She was afraid, despite not believing in fear.
And she also felt safe, perfectly safe in Duane’s arms.
It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in feeling safe—it was that she’d never felt it before.
Duane knew that throwing Sofia over his shoulder and tossing her down on the bed wasn’t the right answer at the moment, but he needed to do it soon. To see what she had become from the sweet girl with her pony, her smile, and her prize ribbons was like a supercharged lightning bolt to the libido. How such a magnificent woman came from such an innocent was beyond impossible. Having that beautiful woman curled up against him despite all she’d seen and done, made her even more incredible.
He buried his face in her thick dark hair and breathed her in.
Maybe this wasn’t the time for self-restraint.
He inhaled deeply, stretching her embrace, then exhaled abruptly and squatted down before she could compensate.
Shoulder into her gut.
Arm around the backs of her knees.
Stand.
She was so damn light. Such a substantial presence as Sofia Forteza should not weigh so little.
Three steps, lean forward, and shrug.
Sofia flopped from his shoulder-carry onto the bed with a squeak of surprise.
She let out a half laugh as he finished the work he’d begun in the helicopter—with a single grab and yank, her blouse was torn open as several buttons pinged away as fast as bullets.
And he stopped. “Your skin,” he could barely speak. Her skin was the same perfect golden color all the way down to her waistband, only her bra interrupting the view—an impediment he dealt with quickly.
Then he could only stroke a hand down her in wonder. He’d had his share of hot lovers, but Sofia was something else entirely. Duane had to see more.
He began stripping off her pants.
“No, wait.”
Her fly open, his hands curled in the fabric to reveal her in one long pull, he stopped and looked her in the eyes.
Her breath heaved once, twice, a third time, her magnificent breasts riding up and down on each successive wave.
“No…” she heaved another beautiful-to-watch breath. “Don’t wait.”
He didn’t.
Nor did he waste time in getting naked himself. Holding Sofia was always incredible. Holding a naked Sofia against his own bare skin was a revelation.
There was no holding back. There was no slowing down.
Yes, it had been a while since his last port of call.
Wasn’t even a part of the equation.
Sofia lit a fuse in him that burned so brightly it was a wonder he didn’t spontaneously combust. The body of a fighter—strong, flexible, perfect—was a hundred percent pure woman.
Ha! Used that percentage right.
They feasted on each other. Caress, taste, feet winding together testing the curve of a calf against an instep. No quiet foreplay. No gentle teasing. No male-female roles. Just two greedy needs coming together and crossing an instant ignition point.
One memory stood clear of all the others. One instant when they both hesitated, paused to appreciate the exquisite wonder of the moment. Safely sheathed, he slid inside her in a moment of utter silence. Her black eyes watching him steadily as her body arched up against his.
Their rhythm built together, their gazes locked, until her eyes finally rolled shut as her entire being strained one last time against him before exploding. She cried out as her body thrashed and her arms clung. Her legs locked so hard about his waist that his own detonation—for there was no other way to describe the power of it—somehow blew them closer together rather than farther apart.
And still she writhed, finally burying her face against his neck as the last of the roiling aftermath rattled through her.
For timeless minutes, neither of them moved.
He slowly became aware of one hand tucked under her butt. Of the other buried deep in her hair and cradling her head. Her own hands—one on his own butt and the other still locked about his neck.
“Sweet Jesus,” he managed on a gasp.
“I have never been called that before,” Sofia mumbled without unburying her face from his neck. He could feel her smile.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t take more time. Later, I promise. I just…” He didn’t know what “he just.” Needed her? Wanted her? Had to be buried deep inside her? Had lost all goddamn control for the first time since Cindy Sue had introduced him to the wonders of sex as his sixteenth birthday present?
“I am filing no complaints with any persons,” the Spanish influence was richer than usual in her voice. It rose and fell like music on the morning light.
He managed to roll onto his back, keeping her tightly against him. She made no effort to move away. He slipped his hands over her, from butt to hairline she was blemishless.
“We are going to be needing to do this again.”
“Give me a couple of minutes on that. You’ve tripped all my circuit breakers, lady. Need a little time to reset them.”
“Really?” she wiggled against him like a serpent uncoiling from a nap in the sun. “That is such a pity. And I thought you were a real man.” She nipped at his shoulder.
He got his hands around her rib cage and lifted her into the air. “Behave, you.”
“Never!” Sofia cried and reached down to tickle him under the arms.
In his surprise, he dropped her and she landed squarely back on him, knocking the breath out of both of them.
But she didn’t stop. In moments his arms were full of squirming, fighting woman. Except she wasn’t fighting to get away, she was fighting to make him completely crazy.
He finally captured her wrists in one hand, but she used that as leverage to sit up over him. He used her moment
um to carry her right over onto her back which had her hanging head and shoulders over the foot of the bed. By a miscalculation of center of gravity, caused by a well-placed knee to his gut worthy of a yogi contortionist turned street fighter, combined with the slickness of the duvet, they both toppled off the end and onto the carpet.
By some secret ninja method he’d never seen before, she ended up kneeling astride him as he lay on the carpet.
“Now,” she declared, leaning in as he cupped her breasts. “I think I need to go have a shower since you are no real man.”
Impossibly she managed to slip away from him and stride naked to the bathroom.
He’d had fantasies like this this one—Duane was sure he had. But if so, he knew he’d been lacking in imagination. She moved with a spring in her step and a soft swish of tangled hair that had him starting to his feet.
By the time he reached the bathroom door, she’d closed it. The click of the lock sounded clearly in the suddenly quiet bedroom. His knock went unanswered. He could hear the shower start.
He pounded again.
He was answered by the opening lyric to Paula Abdul’s Opposites Attract.
If a naked Sofia Forteza was dancing to that music in the shower and he missed it, he was going to have to kill himself.
He tried the handle again.
No joy.
It only took him a moment to locate his pants and his pick set.
Five seconds later all he could do was stare in wonder as Sofia danced within the glassed-in shower enclosure. The russet and golden tiles highlighted her as if she was the most precious thing ever, poised in a life-sized display case.
Sofia loved her control over Duane. It seemed trite, selfish, and egotistical.
But she watched him through the curtain of spray and the glass. One of the most skilled warriors anywhere stood frozen in all his naked glory in the middle of her bathroom. How was a girl not supposed to feel good about that?
Maybe it was okay to tease him with her body.
She turned a slow circle in her dance as she broke into the refrain.
Opposites attract?
But how opposite were they?
Intelligence agent versus Unit operator—both at the top level of Special Operations. Both rich. Both repulsed by their parents. Both…
All she was coming up with was similarities.
Yet by the time she’d circled around, Duane still hadn’t moved. No, at least one part of him was moving. He had delivered the most powerful sexual experience of her life, and it was clear he would soon be ready to prove that it wasn’t a fluke.
“I once dated a Greek military officer—” she called out loudly enough to be heard over the pounding spray.
“I didn’t need to hear that,” Duane’s growl carried into the shower enclosure just fine.
“He said that no day is a complete day if there isn’t dancing in it.” She kept dancing by herself—torn between embarrassment at her display and a primal joy at Duane’s on-going paralysis. “He was right! Some people sing in the shower. But I know better, I sing and dance.”
Still nothing.
“We were showering when he taugh—”
“Enough already! I surrender!”
Duane stepped in quickly to join her.
“Holy hell, woman!” He reached for the temperature controls but she slapped his hand away.
“I like my showers the way I like my men. If you are one who can not be taking the heat, you had better be getting out of my shower,” she ran a soaped hand down his chest.
“If you can take it, so can I!” He snatched the bar of soap away from her. “I need to check on some things.”
“You need to what?” But her next breath was snatched away as he brushed a soaped palm over her hip.
“I was in too much of a hurry before to notice the shape of this curve. Or this one,” he brushed a thumb along her jawline then leaned in to kiss her. Unable to do more than groan, she leaned into him.
As strong and willful as she’d felt a moment before, now she felt helpless, unable to respond, to move, without Duane’s guidance. He took control of her body until once again her voice rose to echo from the walls.
She lay against the cool tile as the heat washed over and through her.
Her grandmother was wrong—Nana had provided all the role model she would ever need. She would stand alone. In the Activity, and someday the vineyard, she was all she needed.
But this. She clung to Duane’s broad shoulders to keep her sanity—for her self-control, it was too late; it had left the shower long since—as he found yet a higher place to force her to climb. She would definitely have to make sure she always had time for this and a man to take her there.
Unable to bear the impossible tower he was making her ascend alone, she bolted from the shower.
Duane looked upset by the time she came sprinting back to the shower, still soaking wet. Her wet and soapy feet had her skating across the tile floor. She hopped through the open shower door and slammed into his arms.
Then she slapped a condom into his hand and in moments they were seeking the heights together.
They finished that dance, then Estefan’s Conga and Maroon 5’s Sugar before they were too waterlogged to move.
An hour later, the shrill scream of the phone beside the bed yanked them from a slumber that was more boneless collapse than sleep.
There wasn’t even time to dry her hair. When Nana ordered them not to be late for lunch, she didn’t dare delay.
Duane could get used to this. His parent’s place had a territorial view of the local neighborhood and the high-rises of Atlanta. Ansley Park allowed the wealthy to look at the city they ruled.
The stone-flagged patio of the Forteza estate house had a hundred-mile view of rolling vineyards, a sweeping river valley, and towering mountains. It was a humbling view, the beauty keeping even the lushness of the family mansion in perspective.
He also liked the simplicity of the meal despite the setting—a meal his mother would never deign to let out of the pantry. A generous platter of cold cuts and other sandwich fixings. Chips, beer, pickles…yes, he was indeed a happy man.
That and looking at Sofia.
The woman in the sapphire blue blouse and jeans was overlaid by his memory of the naked woman gyrating about the shower for the simple joy of it. She had unplumbed depths of joy that were so unexpected. In the field she’d been, by turns: serious, concerned, fierce, and competent. Away from all that she was playful, exotic, and the damn sexiest thing he’d ever laid eyes or hands on.
Now, seated beside her Nana, she was practically prim. A woman of dazzling contrasts.
The rest of the table was a trainwreck of spectacular proportions. There was the youngest Forteza—the silent sister. Consuela was pretty enough in a slender way, with none of the flash of her older sister or her mother. She concentrated on the meal, but Duane would bet that she didn’t miss a thing. There was a sharpness, an awareness in her eyes when they briefly met his. After that, she was careful not to look at him directly. He wasn’t sure what she was hiding from, but the other family members were fair candidates. If she didn’t want to be noticed, she did an excellent job of it throughout the meal—apparently she was wholly invisible to everyone but him.
Sibling Number Three was presently doing three-to-five for dealing coke—the other kind of coke than his own family dealt—to a couple of DEA agents.
That left Sofia’s mother—apparently between fitness trainers until her allowance was restocked at the New Year—and Sibling Number Two—the smug, handsome, snake-in-the-grass Emilio he’d met earlier at the helipad.
“You’re in the Army?” Asked with a dripping disdain—implying Duane wasn’t qualified for anything better—that tempted him to put on his good-old-boy redneck suit. He considered it, except he didn’t want to embarrass Sofia. Then he saw her roll her eyes just the way Chad would as if saying, “There’s fresh bait. Go kill it.”
“Yeah-sir!” Dua
ne let the South roll off his tongue and go for a stroll. “Fightin’ for my country and proud” pronounced per-owd “to be doin’ it.”
“He’s good at what he does.” For a moment he thought that Sofia was trying to defend him.
Until her brother stepped on the straight line, “Oh, I’m sure he is, sister,” with far to knowing a tone.
“Yep!” Duane eased back and sipped the last of his beer before thumping the glass back on the table. Then he made a show of flexing his hands into fists for a moment as if they were a little out of practice from lack of use—like a pianist warming them up. “Why I haven’t beat the shit out of anyone since…” he looked over at Sofia.
“Thursday,” she provided. Man but she cracked him up.
“Right, Thursday. I only fractured his jaw a little.”
Emilio eyed him skeptically.
“A-’course, that old boy is now inside La Joya prison with a lot of other folks that he put there. That’s in Panama, by the way, just in case you didn’t know.” Carefully implying he was too stupid to.
The Panamanian lieutenant who had tried to sell out Operation Prime Cause’s operation to the drug dealers might well be dead already for his deeds. La Joya placed plenty high in the World’s Worst Prison contest. The lieutenant’s trip there didn’t make Duane’s heart bleed in the least. There was a phrase in country that, roughly translated, said the only way out of La Joya was feet first.
“And Duane hasn’t shot a soul for at least a week,” Sofia added helpfully. Damn, all he needed was a Chad-casual move, but he didn’t have a weapon on him to pull out and begin cleaning.
“Been a whole week?” Duane let his surprise show. And he hoped that the CIA team leader’s hand and knee were healing slowly and painfully.
Now Sofia’s grandmother was rolling her eyes. Maybe they were laying it on a little too thick.
“Who are you with?” Emilio hadn’t thrown in the towel yet. There was something odd in his dynamic that Duane couldn’t pin down. He’d have to ask Sofia later. He wasn’t gay, that was obvious from how he looked at his own sister’s breasts—Sofia had told Duane about beating the shit out of Emilio when he tried to put action behind that look. But Duane couldn’t pin down what was out of sync.
Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3) Page 16