by Unknown
But did you care? Hell no. You were more than ready to jump her bones right then, right there, out in the open where anybody with two eyes could see you. Anybody who, if they’d happened to be up on the cliffs with a rifle, could’ve picked you off like ducks in a bathtub. Especially Lilah, whose pale blond hair makes her an easy target.
And now this.
God help him, but it had been his belief that all he had to do was walk half a mile, retrieve the Jeep and drive like hell back to Santa Marita, where he planned to steal the first boat or plane he found that could quickly get them to a friendly harbor, that had given him the strength to pry himself away from Lilah’s soft, yielding, made-for-him body.
Instead, barring a miracle—and really, what were the odds of a supercharged Hummer dropping out of the sky in front of him?—they were going to get to spend a considerable amount of time together.
This time he did swear, out loud and with enough vehemence to curl the leaves on the surrounding trees.
Then, knowing he could no longer avoid it, he turned to face Lilah. Not unexpectedly, she was staring fixedly at the carcass of the Jeep, conveniently avoiding his gaze. “I take it this was to be our ride out of here?” she said quietly.
“You got it.”
Still not looking at him, she caught her lower lip between her teeth and worried it; his body immediately reacted, remembering her taste. “So what do we do now?”
“What do you think?” He didn’t even try to temper the bite in his voice. After all, he’d already proven he couldn’t be trusted to stick to business; it was up to her to keep him in line, so the more he offended her the better for both of them. No matter how much he wanted her. “We walk.”
“Oh.” She released her lip and her chin came up. And still she didn’t look at him.
Well, isn’t that what you want?
Damn straight. And if that meant behaving with all of the grace and maturity of some adolescent kid who’d caught his most prized piece of anatomy in a vise, so be it. It was for Lilah’s own good.
“Stay here,” he said curtly. Tearing his gaze from her, he turned and strode around the Jeep and into the jungle beyond to the smallest of the surrounding palms, the one with a distinctive crook halfway up its trunk. Stepping around the tree, he squatted down and dug through the thick undergrowth until his hand encountered a familiar piece of nylon webbing. With a grunt of relief, he dragged the backpack toward him, hefted it up and slung it over one shoulder, then returned to the clearing.
His momentary sense of satisfaction vanished.
The good news was that Lilah was standing right where he’d left her, exactly as ordered. The bad news was that she was in the process of squeezing the salt water out of her hair, which meant her arms were raised up and back, stretching her white cotton blouse across her breasts. And said cotton, being damp like the bra beneath it, was nearly transparent.
He dumped his pack on the ground, ripped it open with more force than he’d intended and yanked out his extra T-shirt. “Here. Put this on,” he said, lobbing it at her. “That white stands out like a neon sign out here.”
Displaying excellent reflexes, she snatched the shirt out of midair. Then, for the first time since the beach, she looked straight at him, her opinion of him written clearly on her face—and it wasn’t pretty.
He stared stonily back, daring her to comment.
Wisely, she didn’t. She drew herself up and began to unbutton her blouse, her movements slow and deliberate. Then she slipped the garment off, shook out his shirt and just as unhurriedly pulled it on. She freed her hair, smoothed it back, glanced down at the shirttail hanging clear to her knees and gathered it up, securing it above one slender hip with a knot in the excess fabric. Her gaze came back to his. “All right?” she asked, her voice cool except for the faintest note of challenge.
Well, damn it all to hell anyway. Just what he’d needed to top off the night—a private striptease. Not only was the image of her smooth stomach and gently rounded breasts now permanently seared on his retinas, but somehow she’d managed to make even his old black T-shirt look good.
“Terrific.” It was definitely time for some exercise. And while he longed for a real out-of-body, wear-himself-out challenge, like swimming the Bering Sea or bench-pressing Volkswagens, he was going to have to settle for a stroll dialed down to Lilah’s current strength level, dammit.
He reclaimed his watch, clipped his knife and a water bottle to his waistband, tossed a second water bottle to Lilah, shrugged into his backpack and settled it in place. “Stay behind me,” he told her brusquely. “Once we’re on the road, if you hear anything that sounds out of place—a human voice, an approaching vehicle, a dog barking—get out of sight in the underbrush and wait for me to come find you. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go. The more distance we put between us and El Presidente’s henchmen before they realize we’re gone, the better.” With that, he set off.
Thanks to the jungle’s dense growth, it took them a good five minutes to negotiate the stretch from the Jeep to the road, although road, Dom thought, was a generous term for the narrow dirt track that ran from the compound where Lilah had been held to a five-hut village some twenty-five miles inland.
A village where, on his trip out, he’d managed to render himself invisible by pushing the Jeep past the slumbering villagers in the dead of night. And where he now hoped to acquire some sort of transportation, since by the time he and Lilah arrived there, the search for them should have moved on.
Should have being the operative term. Because the advantage of being an unknown quantity that he’d had previously would be gone. Once the guards did their breakfast check, they’d know he wasn’t the crazy lost American hiker desperate for water that he’d pretended to be when he’d stumbled out of the brush and demanded to be let into the “villa” por favor.
Come morning, things were probably going to get interesting.
But then, come morning, he planned for Lilah and him to be safely tucked away somewhere they couldn’t be found, catching some z’s. Although, the chance of him getting much sleep with her close at hand seemed about as likely as the pope announcing he was in favor of polygamy. Or the Rockies ever winning the World Series.
Or Lilah ever again wanting to have sex with him.
With a resigned sigh, he took the mental picture of Lilah lying beneath him—her hair spread out, her head thrown back with pleasure as he thrust himself inside her—and shoved it out of his head.
They trekked along the road for nearly two hours without exchanging a word. Dom could hear Lilah behind him, her breathing growing increasingly harsh and labored. Which, when he stopped to think about it, made sense, since at some point he’d really picked up the pace. And that meant she was really having to work to keep up with him.
So? Your first priority is to get her to safety, not to be Mr. Nice Guy.
Except this was a marathon, not a sprint. And it wouldn’t do either of them any good if she wore herself out tonight to the point she couldn’t walk tomorrow. “You okay?” he asked, shortening his stride.
“Yes.”
Despite her declaration, he could hear the exhaustion in her voice. Yet it was pretty clear she was prepared to walk all night rather than admit she was tired. Of course, Lilah had always had a core of steel deep inside her. She might look delicate, but she had enough backbone for ten women. A very nice backbone—
Knock it off. “Well, I’m not okay.” How was that for an understatement? “So let’s take a break.” Matching action to words, he stopped.
She didn’t say anything. At first, it was because she was catching her breath. But then, well, hell—why should she want to talk to him?
Then again, she probably had the right idea. Maybe if he acted as if she were invisible, his testosterone level would fall back to something approaching normal. He took a swig of water and a good long look at their surroundings before he finally slid a glance her way.<
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He was just in time to see her limp over to the nearest palm and brace her hand against it. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just—I think I stepped on a thorn.” Cocking one leg at the knee, she leaned over to examine the sole of her foot.
Her pale, slender, bare foot.
For a moment Dom couldn’t believe it. In the next instant, without a conscious decision, he’d obliterated the distance between them. “Where the hell—” he demanded, scooping her into his arms “—are your shoes?”
“In my waistband,” she said breathlessly. “I took them off.”
He looked around, then stalked toward a fallen log. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because they’re sandals. Wet sandals with lots of little straps coated in sand that were rubbing my feet raw. There was no way I could wear them and keep up with you.” He could hear an uncharacteristic huskiness that he wasn’t sure what to make of. “I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t want to slow you down.”
“Dammit, Lilah, you’re not in charge here. I am. That means you don’t get to ‘want’ anything—or have any ideas or questions or make a decision—that you don’t run past me first. You understand?”
“Okay,” she said.
He gave the log a kick to test its density, then set her down, dumped the backpack to the ground, knelt and dug out his penlight and the first aid kit.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he picked up her injured foot and examined it. To his relief, other than one long, ugly-looking sticker and the start of a blister on her heel, the damage wasn’t as extensive as he’d feared.
Yet as fear receded, awareness made an appearance. He was suddenly acutely conscious of the delicacy of her foot, the softness of her skin against his hand, how easy it would be to lift her ankles to his shoulders and bury his face against her most intimate, feminine place….
“This actually isn’t too bad,” he said in a desperate attempt to distract himself. “A little disinfectant and some antibiotic, followed by waterproof bandages—” he removed the thorn and did the Florence Nightingale bit, then turned his attention to the other foot, tending to another blister and two small but angry-looking cuts “—and you should be fine. Tomorrow, I’ll rig some kind of shoes for you. In the meantime, I think we’ve done enough for one night. It’ll be light in another few hours. We might as well make camp and get some sleep.” He painstakingly began to pick up his litter and stowed everything back where it belonged.
“I guess I need to thank you,” she said, her voice even huskier. “Again.”
And that’s when he made his fatal mistake.
He looked at her. And just like that, all the self-protective anger drained out of him like air escaping a punctured tire.
Because this close, there was no way he could miss seeing the faint pulse hammering at the base of her throat, the beckoning bow of her soft pink lips, the flawless finish of her skin—and the gleam of tears in her heavily-lashed eyes.
Tears that he’d put there. After she’d managed to keep it together through weeks of incarceration. After she’d done whatever he’d asked tonight, bravely performing feats he’d seen trained soldiers balk at their first time out.
“Aw hell, princess, don’t. Just…don’t cry.”
“Oh, God.” She hurriedly pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Clearly embarrassed, she lowered her hands and, though the effort was obvious and more than a little shaky, from somewhere she dredged up the strength to smile. “I won’t. Promise.”
And just like that, he was toast.
With a groan, he gave in to the need that had been riding him for what felt like a lifetime instead of mere hours. Rising up on his knees, he leaned forward, tangled his hands in her hair and kissed her.
Five
A s a general rule, Dom considered kissing an art.
There was something incredibly seductive about lazily exploring the curve of a woman’s mouth, savoring her taste, discovering what pushed her buttons.
Kissing Lilah, however, belonged in a whole different category. Goodbye art. Hello full contact sport.
It was annoying as hell. And more than a little humbling. But whenever he laid so much as a finger on her, much less his mouth, he seemed to go a little crazy.
It had been that way from the beginning.
Not too surprisingly, since he’d been barely out of his teens at the time, it had been his sincere and fervent desire to nail the pretty little rich girl that had first sent him striding across the million-acre lawn he now knew belonged to Abigail Sommers.
His aspiration had grown a thousandfold after his and Lilah’s first face-to-face meeting. Up close, she’d been even more striking than he’d foreseen, a gloriously delicate blonde with an aristocratic air he’d expected—and an underlying vulnerability he hadn’t.
He’d sure as hell never dreamed she was a virgin. Or that his eventual discovery of that particular truth would unleash in him a protective streak of monster proportions.
It had also never occurred to him that once they did have sex, rather than having his curiosity satisfied, he’d want her even more.
But he had. The fact that he’d been young and arrogant was no excuse for his lack of perception.
Because despite his age, he hadn’t been some naive, clueless kid. He’d been an army brat, a gypsy, who’d lived on more than a dozen posts and been exposed to all sorts of people. He’d had a job of some sort since he was ten, a necessity when you were one of nine kids, your mother was dead and your old man made barely enough to put food on the table.
He’d also been sexually experienced, and had thought—with a cockiness that now made him wince—that he knew all he needed to about the opposite sex.
He hadn’t.
He’s gotten his first inkling of that on their first date.
He’d picked Lilah up that night on his motorcycle, an old Harley his brother Taggart had helped him rebuild. Other than his first SEAL mission, it had been the only time in his life he could remember being nervous. Not that he’d let on. He’d have allowed someone to rip out his fingernails one by one before he’d have admitted this wasn’t just another date with just another girl.
Yeah, right. That whole delusion had taken a definite hit as he’d ridden up the long circular drive with its broad flower beds and twinkling lights and walked to the huge front door, which had been flanked by soaring panes of stained glass and protected by a portico as big as the entire living room of his old man’s place.
None of which had mattered once Lilah came to the door.
She’d been dressed in slim white slacks and a pale blue sweater-set several shades lighter than her eyes. Her smooth, shining hair had been pulled up in a ponytail high on her head and she’d had demure little pearl studs in her ears. Her perfume had been light, just a hint of vanilla and musk, totally unlike the fragrances of the other girls he knew.
She’d looked and smelled expensive, like something he could work for his whole life and still never be able to afford.
Yet once he’d assured her he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her, she’d trusted him enough to climb onto the back of his bike. And she’d thrown propriety to the winds and held on to him for dear life just as he’d planned when he gunned the engine and opened the throttle to send them hurtling down the drive.
He’d taken her first to Carlin’s, a hamburger joint off Miner Street where some of the guys his age who worked for the lawn service liked to hang out. When they’d walked in, her attention had stayed focused solely on him. She’d earned unexpected points by not acknowledging the openmouthed stares of the other men.
Over the course of the next hour, she’d surprised him further by revealing that some of what came across as haughtiness was actually shyness. And that behind her cool, watchful facade she possessed a wry if understated sense of humor and a sharp intelligence.
She’d only tensed a little when they’d finished eating and he’d slung a propriet
ary arm around her as they walked out and got back on his bike.
Their next stop had been Diablo Point, an overlook north of Denver that faced the soaring rise of the Rockies to the west. It had been a perfect Colorado summer night; the weather had been mild, the moon full, and the stars had seemed to hang in the vast and endless sky, close enough to reach up and touch.
Taking her hand, Dom had led her under the sheltering branches of an enormous ponderosa pine. Neither of them had spoken, just stood there looking out at the moonlit vista stretched so magnificently before them.
And then he’d kissed her and it was as if somebody had blown off the top of his head. His self-control had vanished, abducting his ability to reason when it went. In a flash he’d gone from man in charge to male in need—urgent, no-holds-barred, not-above-begging need.
Not that he actually had begged or anything. No, before it had gotten to that, a miracle had occurred and he’d dimly realized that the one person in worse shape than him was Lilah; although she hadn’t made a sound, the way she’d been crowded up against him, her arms twined around his neck, her body trembling as she inexpertly welcomed the suggestive thrust of his tongue, had told him all he needed to know.
She wanted him.
The old adage about knowledge being power had proven to be dead-on. For whatever reason, the awareness that she’d found him as big a turn-on as he’d found her had given him the strength to slow things down.
He’d managed to hold off making love to her until their fourth date, an entire ten days later.
That had been a life-altering experience, to put it mildly. He hadn’t just felt…desire. He’d felt exalted, exhilarated, as if his body were too big for his skin. He’d never wanted it to end.
It had been one hell of a feeling. And it hadn’t been until years later, when he’d been based at Coronada as a SEAL, that he’d been able to finally put a label on it.
He and a woman he’d been dating had gone to her place one night after dinner, and before getting caught up in other pursuits she’d switched on her favorite movie video, Titanic. Dom hadn’t paid much attention at first, but at some point in the process of making the lady very, very happy, he’d glanced up to see Leo DiCaprio on the TV screen, his body spread-eagled into the gusting wind at the bow of the enormous ship, a blissful grin on his face, shouting, “I’m the king of the world.”