He exhaled again. “What’s going on with us, Piper?”
“I…I don’t know what you mean.”
“What are we?”
He wanted to have that talk NOW? I blinked into the darkness. “I don’t know…two people who met on an airplane, have had a ridiculous week of crazy sex, Incan architecture and dangerous encounters with homicidal drug dealers?”
“That’s it?”
I pushed out of his arms and sat up, turning on the lamp on my nightstand. “Of course, that’s not it. I have feelings for you, feelings I didn’t think I’d ever have again, and certainly not after only knowing someone for seven days. But you’re going to Santiago tomorrow, and I’m going home. I just need to book my flight before we go to sleep, I keep forgetting. This is our last night together, right? This is a fling, that’s all.” It was a struggle to get that last sentence out, and my throat choked and squeaked while my heart felt like it was being ripped from my chest and brutally manhandled.
His eyes were pure fire, gray dancing fire in the soft lamplight, as he stared me down, taking in my words and the feelings I was holding back.
He nodded. “All right then, well, as long as we know what we are.” He rolled on top of me, his cock already hard and thick, laying demandingly at the juncture of my thighs. I went to say something, to ask him what the hell was going on and what had changed, but he captured my unspoken words with his mouth; devouring me and my questions, my concerns and my true feelings, the deep and scary feelings that sat right next to my heart, begging to be let in.
Unlike earlier when he’d used the belt, alternating between pain and pleasure, playing my body, toying with my need and making me beg for release, now he made it his mission to make me come. And I did, over and over again. The orgasms rippled through me as he worshiped my body with his, his tongue, his hands, his cock plundering my body, pleasuring it, pleasing it.
I took him in my mouth several times, licking him from root to tip, reveling in his deep moans and profanity-riddled releases, a canticle of male exultation as I took him to the back of my throat and milked him. And then he’d feast on my sensitive flesh, bringing me to climax more times than I could count, fucking me with his skilled tongue and tireless lips.
Once he was ready to roll again, he’d climb back on top, pinning me to the mattress and sheathing himself to the base. It was at this moment when his forehead would fall to my shoulder, as he sank inside me balls-deep, that I would just for a second let the emotion of it all swamp me. The finality of it, the fact that it might be the last time I ever felt whole again, felt complete, that it might be the last time Derrick King was ever inside me.
I wanted to make the most of it. I wanted to imprint each and every moment on my brain so I’d never forget how good my second chance at happiness had felt, how he’d resurrected the old Piper, even if just for a week. I wrapped my legs around his waist and lifted my hips up, meeting him thrust for thrust. His teeth snagged my nipple, and I hissed in delight.
Another orgasm slammed through me as he rotated his hips just so, hitting my clit until I was a thrashing mess beneath him, my hair flying wildly across the pillows while my toes curled and my hips ached. But I couldn’t get enough. If this was our last night, I wanted to savor every moment.
I raked my teeth along his jaw, loving that the stubble had grown back and how rough it felt beneath my lips, like bristly sandpaper or a short-haired scrub brush. His hand coiled around under my butt, and he lifted my hips up, snaking an inquisitive finger between my cheeks and probing my tight hole. I tilted up to allow him access, moaning low in my throat as he claimed me in that forbidden way.
I’d lost track of the orgasms, of the time, of where we were, but soon daylight started to peek in through the windows, and the stir and ruckus of a new day could be heard just beyond the door. Had we made love all night long? It hadn’t felt like all night; it’d seemed like but a blip in time. A rogue tear drifted down my cheek as he continued to hammer into me, coaxing out another orgasm.
“One more, Piper. Come for me one last time. Come on, baby.” He dipped his head to latch on to a nipple again, biting down just hard enough to make me moan, and then flicking the tip with his tongue, while he added another finger into my ass and did that decadent little hip swirl, so his pelvic bone hit my clit just right. The man was a multi-tasker, completely and utterly devoted to my pleasure. “One more time, baby.”
I shook my head and whimpered. “No…I’m too tired. I can’t.” I wanted to come again for him, but I wasn’t sure if I could.
“Oh, but you can.” Then suddenly he pulled out, and I found myself on my belly, face first into the pillows. He molded my body, bringing my knees together and my arms up next to my head. Lowering his body back down he wedged himself inside of me. Only this time the angle was different; this time my legs were closed, my body was tight, and my clit was grazing the sheet. I felt the blood rush between my legs, the heat in my belly spreading while the orgasm bloomed. He started to buck into me, one hand coming beneath my chest to cup my breasts. He tugged on a nipple again, and his teeth ran along my shoulder blades. “I can feel it, Piper. It’s in there. Come for me, baby, come.”
I was breathless, humping the bed for more friction while beckoning him deeper, my greedy flesh grabbing hold of him and pulling him into me. I went off like a warehouse full of dynamite, turning my face into the pillow to muffle my cries, while my entire body convulsed around him, squeezing tight and encouraging him to lose himself, just one last time.
He snarled in my ear, his teeth nipping the shell as he stilled above me, deep breaths and strangled groans as he finally let go.
I joined him back in bed, having quickly peed and brushed my teeth. And then purchased a cheap, last-minute flight home (sometimes it paid to not plan too far in advance) leaving just after midnight the next day. I was bone-tired and desperate to close my eyes, even if just for an hour or two. We’d paid for a later checkout, and our flight back to Lima wasn’t until the late afternoon, so we had nothing to do but wait for Chase and spend some time together. I’d hoped that we could have spent a bit of that time talking. I knew we needed to sleep, but things felt off, and I didn’t want to leave them this way. I wanted to talk about what was going to happen next, maybe make plans to meet up once we were both back in Canada, even if just for coffee or dinner. But Derrick had other plans. When I slipped back into bed, he was already sound asleep, his back to me while his chest rose in a steady rhythm.
I swallowed the thick lump in my throat and climbed under the covers, turning my back to him as well, gluing my eyes shut and willing sleep to claim me. It did in seconds.
CHAPTER 19
Several hours later we were rudely woken up by a harsh rapping at the door. I groggily checked my phone, feeling like I’d been up all night drinking, my brain fuzzy and my eyes sore. I had been up all night, but for once in the past week, it hadn’t involved any alcohol. Derrick stirred next to me and fumbled on the nightstand for his glasses. He slid them on and stood up, his taut butt flexing as he strode toward the door.
“Uh…boxers?” My voice sounded like a chain-smoking frog.
He nodded and grabbed them off the floor, pulling them on before heading to open the door. And there stood Chase, big and tall and handsome as hell, with a grisly scowl on his face but also three steaming cups of coffee.
His eyes snagged mine and then drifted a little lower before quickly flying off to the corner of the room. Oh shit, I was naked, and the sheet was not covering my chest. I hastily wrapped it around myself and then hightailed it to the washroom, emerging a few minutes later in some sweats and a hoodie.
“Here,” he said gruffly, thrusting the frothy mug into my hand. “Show me the stuff.”
I took the coffee willingly and cupped it in both hands, while Derrick wandered into the bathroom and retrieved the bag and envelope from the toilet tank. I glared at the Ziploc full of contraband. I could be in prison right now because of that bag; I want
ed to destroy it and anyone associated with it.
Chase set his mug down and took the bag, examining it and its contents. He nodded once. “It’s Fentanyl.”
“Fuck!” I took a sip of my coffee to steady my nerves and quell my building rage. “What about the cash?”
“Most likely drug money. Haven’t figured it all out yet, but we’re getting close.” He nodded again. “I’ll go back to the airport with you guys, just to be on the safe side, okay?”
He set the bag down on the bed. “Is there anything that you’ve had on you the entire time? During every encounter and attempted theft?”
I scrunched up my nose and bit my lip, trying to think. “My passport? I’ve kept it on me this entire time. I have one of those small discrete money belts. But I didn’t want people watching me go in and out of it for money, so I just put my passport in it, tuck it under my shirt, but I don’t take it off until I go to bed.”
His lips twisted in thought. “And was it ever not on you?”
I went to shake my head but then stopped. Shit! I nodded. “Yeah. I spent nearly a week in Panama City, and they had pretty decent security at the hostel I was staying at, even offered to hold your passport in their safe, so I left it with them.”
“Let me see your passport.” He held out a big hand the size of a Christmas ham.
I went into my backpack and retrieved the small money belt, unzipping it and pulling out the blue- covered Canadian passport. He took it from me and started flipping through the pages, and then suddenly he stopped, reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. Then he proceeded to dig with expert precision, using the tip, along the spine, and a little chip, about a quarter the size of my pinky fingernail, popped off.
“That is how they’ve been finding you. These fuckers are dangerous if they went to the length of putting a tracker on your passport.”
“Fucking Eduardo!”
Chase nodded. “Fucking Eduardo, indeed.”
I had hoped that finding out how they’d been able to locate me, even up in Cusco, would be some kind of closure, but instead, it just stoked the burning rage inside me. And now more than ever I wanted to go bust a cap in some Panamanian hostel worker’s ass.
He tossed it to the ground and stomped on it until it crumbled beneath his boot. I tried to sigh in relief, but couldn’t. We all grabbed breakfast in the hostel dining room, and then after Derrick and I packed up and checked out, we loaded into the car that Chase had hired and set off for the airport.
“Shit!” Chase spat as we turned a corner around one of the many, identical stone buildings. Cusco was an old-world Labyrinth. Everything looked vaguely similar; there were dozens of tiny side streets and alleyways. I’d guess even the locals got lost from time to time.
My head whipped around to look out the back window. “What? What’s wrong?”
“We’re being followed,” he said blandly, his face blank, though his eyes held a murderous gleam, as if he were preparing for battle.
“You’re sure?” Derrick asked, spinning around to look behind us.
Chase nodded. “Yeah, we’ve been deliberately driving around aimlessly for the last ten minutes, and that car behind us has always been no more than two car lengths away. We’re being followed.”
My eyes darted between Chase and the driver, and then back to Derrick and then to the car behind us. Its windshield was tinted, so I couldn’t see the driver.
“What are we going to do?” I asked, panic in my voice, not only for my life, for Derrick’s life, and Chase’s and our driver’s life, but also because, well, we had to catch a plane in a few hours. I wanted to get the hell out of this place, and the only way I could do that was by getting our asses to the airport on time.
Chase murmured something to the driver, and then we took a hard right around a corner, my body whipping across the bench seat only to get slammed in the chest by the seatbelt. Derrick’s hand came out, and he caught me, even though I didn’t need to be caught. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Our vehicle came to a sudden stop, and both Chase and the driver got out. The driver, whom I hadn’t caught a glimpse of until now, was just as big as Chase, maybe bigger, and had the most luscious head of shaggy blond surfer-bum hair. He caught my eye as he walked past my window and flashed me a panty-dropping grin before he and Chase continued walking behind the SUV. “What the hell are they doing?” I asked, unbuckling my belt so I could pivot around in my seat completely.
“Get back in your seatbelt!” Derrick ordered. “If they all of a sudden come rushing back in and gun it, I don’t want you getting hurt.” My head snapped up to his face at his harsh tone, and even though his voice was rough, his eyes held sadness, a plea almost, if I wasn’t mistaken. He wasn’t really telling me to do something; for once, he was asking me, practically begging. I did as he asked and buckled my belt.
“What do you think they are doing?” I asked again, more cautiously this time. Something was going on in his head. He’d shut down last night after we’d talked about what was going on between us. Right after I’d told him I was heading home today, he had a chip on his shoulder again, the walls were back up, and he wasn’t letting me in, so I needed to tread lightly.
He ground his molars together. “I don’t know, but you need to duck down.” He did the head push, only there was nothing sexy about it, forcing my body to double over, my head in his lap. He draped his coat over my body until all I could see were his big booted feet on the ground and darkness. Damn, even his coat smelled amazing. I grabbed the edges of it and pulled it tighter around me, so it felt like Derrick was protecting me, and not just his coat.
Suddenly there was a loud and jarring noise outside, and on instinct I threw the coat off of me and sat up, coming face to face with Chase and the blond guy duking it out, punching and kicking street-fighter style, with two men in leather jackets and ripped jeans. Chase and his companion had at least a hundred or more pounds on their opponents, but where the bad guys lacked strength, they made up for it in dirty fighting. Both had knives and were wielding them around like swordsmen.
“We have to help them!” I turned to Derrick, whose eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “They could die!”
He grabbed my head and pushed it back down into his lap, snatching his coat off the floor and throwing it back over my head. “They’ll be fine; they’re SEALs or Joint Task Force or something…though I’m going to guess Chase and that blond guy are Black Ops. They seem too funded to be Joint Task Force.” He shook his head and turned back to look out the window again. “Those guys out there are after you, Piper. If they see you, you’re in trouble. So stay hidden and keep quiet.”
I did as I was told, the grunts and snarls of the fight outside making me jump and wince. The sounds of fists hitting faces making me cringe and pray that it wasn’t Chase or his friend’s face. There were sirens off in the distance, but they were growing closer; someone had called the police. But if the police in Cusco were anything like the police in Lima, we were better off getting out of Dodge and taking off. We heard some more grunts, a cry of pain, and then suddenly two car doors opened and slammed shut, followed by the engine revving. And then we were moving again. I motioned to pop my head up, but Derrick’s hand was pressed firmly down on my neck, keeping me in place.
“They’re going to follow us, aren’t they?” Derrick asked.
“There were four of them,” the driver said, his voice was a lot more chipper than Chase’s, so it was easy to tell the difference. “We incapacitated the first two easily, as they were unarmed, but the other two proved to be more challenging. It’s only a matter of time before the cops come after us and/or they all come to track us down.”
“So…what do we do?” Derrick’s voice was a boon of comfort above me.
“We’re going to get you guys on a plane out of here,” Chase said. “We’ll make sure the guys know Piper doesn’t have the envelope. We’ll dangle it in front of their face if we have to. An
d then you two board your plane, and Heath and I will take care of the rest.”
Heath, the driver’s name was Heath. I liked that name. It was strong but friendly, just like him. I pulled the edge of the coat off my face so I could see out, my head still snuggly in Derrick’s lap. “Hi, Heath.”
He turned around for half a second in his seat and flashed me another giant smile. “Hi, Piper, nice to meet you.”
Chase made an irritated noise in his throat. “They’re together. Stop flirting.”
Heath gave Chase a mock face of surprise. “I wasn’t flirting. I was simply saying ‘hello.' He smiled back at me again. “Ignore my asshole brother. He’s always this grumpy. Probably because he hasn’t gotten laid in like forever. Dude, I keep telling you, there are some lovely women down in Mancora, and you don’t even have to pay for them. They’ll sleep with you for free because they want to. You just tell them you have a big willy and say something dirty to them in Spanish and they’re chomping at the bit to get your pants off.”
Derrick snorted above me, while Chase shot his brother a deathly stare, but Heath was all grins and started laughing. That’s when I noticed the red, what would soon be a big ugly bruise on his cheek, and the cut lip. I took in Chase’s appearance, and he was a tad beaten up too, but I’d guess the other guys looked a whole lot worse.
“All right, we’re here,” Heath said, the car coming to a stop once again. “Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport.”
Derrick’s hand on my neck relaxed, and I started to pop my head up, grateful that we’d managed to make it to the airport with only a minor inconvenience along the way. The only thing left was getting inside, getting on the plane and then getting the fuck out of this country.
I was just reaching to unbuckle my belt when I looked out the window past Derrick and saw it. A car coming full speed and straight for us.
“Look out!” I cried, but it was too late, and the medium-size sedan, which was going a million miles an hour, or so it seemed, T-boned us on the passenger side, right where Derrick was sitting.
Tropical Tryst: 25 All New and Exclusive Sexy Reads Page 183