Oui, she had it all. And it was all explosive. To a man’s senses, that is.
And that was before he got to her nipples…
Whowee, he reckoned she had the most delicious nipples on the planet. Round and brown and a little bit puffy, just like he liked, standing out slightly from the rest of her breast. And he would bet his daddy’s old ’coon-skinning knife that she tasted as good as she looked.
Leaning forward, cupping her breast in his palm, lifting it like an offering even as he ran the rough pad of his thumb over her nipple just to see it tighten more, he sucked it into his mouth. She was salty and sweet. He could taste the sweat on her skin, but beneath that was the minty lotion she used.
Yep, just as he’d thought. Delicious.
Vanessa moaned as she worked one hand free from his grip in order to palm the back of his head and press him more tightly against her. Her heels dug in just above his butt as she pulled him close, the material of her cargo pants hot and damp and—
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Damp!
The woman was wet clean through her pants. And that was it. The momentary control he’d managed to wrangle suddenly snapped, and all the gentleness he’d forced on himself was gone in an instant. He sucked at her breast, flicking his tongue fast and hard, feeling her breath hitch even as a slow keening whine sounded in the back of her throat.
It was a plea. A sweet, feminine entreaty for more.
And, oui, you better believe he was going to give it to her.
Snaking a hand between their bodies, he managed to unsnap her fly and slide her zipper down. Then he delved inside and realized why she was damp clean through her pants.
The woman wasn’t wearing any underwear.
He pulled back, grumbling with delight when her nipple popped free of his mouth, all wet and shiny and begging for more kisses.
I’ll come back to you, he promised before looking up to find Vanessa watching him with that particular look a woman gets when she knows she’s got a man eating of her hands, when she knows she has him just where she wants him because he’s stopped thinking with that round thing on his shoulders and has started thinking with that hard thing between his legs.
“You’re not wearin’ any panties,” he murmured, his fingers finding nothing but smooth, wet flesh.
Apparently, Vanessa shaved. Everything.
Mon dieu. How the hell was he supposed to keep his head about him, make this all for her, when she was both pantyless and hairless? Had she intentionally come to the jungle to drive him crazy? Or…get him killed? Because he’d certainly lost track of time—it could’ve been minutes or hours since they’d started this—and that was oh-so dangerous.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to make himself care. All he knew was that there was no stopping now.
“They chafe in this humidity,” she breathed, even as she worked her second hand free from his grasp in order to reach down and grab him. She wasn’t shy about it either. She clamped on and started stroking him in a firm, fast rhythm that had his eyes threatening to roll back in his head.
Since he figured turnabout was fair play, and since it was either get going on her or he was going to make a big ol’ fool of himself by popping off like a pubescent boy, he slammed his lips over the top of hers and sucked her tongue into his mouth at the same time he slid a finger inside her.
Damn, she was tight. Smooth as satin, hot as sin, and oh-oh-oh so wet.
“More,” she demanded against his lips.
He aimed to please, so he worked a second finger inside of her and was rewarded when she tightened around him, squeezing gently, giving him an idea of what kind of heaven he’d find if he used his knife to slice off her pants, if he took a step forward and spread her wide, if he pushed himself…
But he wasn’t going there.
Oh, no.
He may have made the decision to take a taste of what she was offering since it was likely going to be his last meal, but he was damned well going to stop before the main course. Because he knew she had feelings for him, and he knew she talked big about not thinking he’d be taking advantage of her if he…well…fucked the shit out of her like he wanted to. But the truth of the matter was, despite her bravado and protestations to the contrary, Vanessa Cordero was a bleeding heart romantic. And if he let this thing between them reach the pinnacle of physicality, he knew she’d regret it.
She’d regret it when she realized he wasn’t lying about keeping his emotions locked away. She’d regret it when she knew he really wasn’t coming back for her no matter what. And, she’d definitely regret it once he was dead and buried and there’d be no way for her to salvage her pride and tell him off for the previous two infractions.
So he’d offer her what he could, and take from her what he felt she could afford to give without suffering any self-recrimination, and he’d hold what they shared in—maybe not his heart; he was making damn sure to keep that particular organ out of the equation—but, perhaps, his soul. Oui, somewhere safe. Somewhere where he could take it out and cherish it when the end was near.
“Oh, Rock,” she gasped, stroking him so expertly it took everything he had not lose it right then and there. In fact, he needed to make this thing happen. Now.
He found the hard, slippery knot of nerves at the top of her sex with the pad of his thumb. Rubbing it gently from side-to-side, he worked his fingers, pumping quickly.
“Rock, Rock…” His name became a chant she whispered over and over against his lips and then…
Sweet Lord in heaven, she came.
With one long cry of triumph, she clamped down on his fingers, sucked his tongue into her mouth, and moved against his hand with the kind of wild abandon every man dreams of. Rocking her hips, her inner muscles spasming, hard at first, and then more softly, she rode out her orgasm. And all the while her hand was still working on his raging cock, sliding, stroking, spreading his own wetness down the length of him until it felt so good he knew he had to stop her.
With his free hand, he grabbed her wrist, but she refused to let go, refused to stop that maddening stroking. Pulling back on a strangled gasp, he found her watching him, a dark, feminine knowledge glowing in the depths of her eyes.
“S-stop.” That’s what he said with his mouth, but his body demanded more, more, more. Evidenced by the fact that his pelvis tilted slightly forward, seemingly of its own accord.
“I’ll stop,” she breathed, still working him, still looking up him, the very picture of female provocation, “if you make love to me.”
“N—” For an instant the pleasure was so intense he couldn’t make his vocal cords work. But when he squeezed her wrist, managing to slow her movements, he found it within himself to shake his head. “Non, chere. I can’t do that. I won’t.”
For a long second, she just watched him and…oh, Lordy, is she ever somethin’! With her cheeks all flushed from desire, her lips swollen from his kisses, and her dark eyes half-lidded and lazy from spent passion. Then she seemed to come to some sort of decision, because her expression changed and—
Oh, hell. I know that look!
It was the same one she’d given him when they’d been standing in the middle of that jungle trail back in Monteverde Cloud Forest. And that look was, in a word: determination.
He had a moment to feel a skitter of apprehension slip up his spine, but that was it. Just one, all-too-brief second to try to decide how to best remove her firm grip from his cock without doing himself serious harm, before she leaned up and snagged his lips, licking slowly into his mouth as she did something crazy with her hand. And then he not only forgot that he was supposed to be stopping this thing, he also forgot his own name.
Zut alors! He didn’t know what she was doing, some sort of magical twist and tug, but it was the best damn thing he’d ever felt. And before he could try to wrangle his scattered thoughts, before he could pull his wits about him and take back control, she released his lips, only to kiss her way back to his ear and whis
per, “Come for me, Rock,” right before she bit down on his earlobe.
His orgasm exploded through him like a landmine, quick and startling and completely debilitating. Colors flashed, sounds echoed, the world around him condensed into a tight ball of sensation, and Vanessa worked at him until she’d wrung every last drop of the pleasure from his body.
And only when he slumped against her, his forehead on her shoulder, his breath sawing out of his lungs like he’d just wrestled an alligator, did it begin to sink in what had happened.
Sonofabitch! This isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t—
“Your thoughts are incredibly loud,” she whispered, placing a series of gentle kisses on the bandage that covered the wound on his neck.
He pulled back to look at her, at the beauty of her face, at the perfection of her small, triumphant smile, and something in him threatened to soften. For a brief moment, he once more found himself wishing things were different. Wishing he’d chosen another path all those years ago when his family died, when Lacy died, and the specter that was The Project and Rwanda Don offered him a chance at another life.
But then an image of his parents’ bodies, bloated and unrecognizable, flashed through his brain, an image of Lacy, looking up at him from her hospital bed with such sadness, skewered through his mind, and his heart hardened once again.
Life was about loss. He’d learned that lesson the hard way. And loving someone only compounded that loss…
So, no. There was no use in wishing things were different. Because even if they were, he’d never be able to give her what she wanted. He’d never be able to let himself love her; he couldn’t suffer that kind of hurt again. And he’d certainly never allow her to fall in love him, to know she’d suffer after his death the way he’d suffered after Lacy’s.
“We need to get goin’,” he grumbled, pulling away from her even though it caused a startling ache to set up shop in the center of his chest. His jaw worked like a stone grinder as he dug in his pack to pull out the last package of antiseptic wipes, handing them to Vanessa so she could clean up as he shoved himself back in his pants, adjusting his knife in its sheath before bending to retrieve his gear belt.
“Rock.” She tilted her head, watching as he stood, her expressive eyes confused, pleading. “I…I don’t understand…”
And, oui, why would she? He felt like a giant ass.
“I didn’t want it to go that way, mon ange,” he admitted, buckling the belt in place as he stared down at his jungle boots like this was the first time he’d seen them.
“What? Why?” He glanced up to find her ripping open the pack of wipes with her teeth before putting them to use. A deep blush warmed his cheeks as she cleaned the evidence of his blunder from her hand and the tank of the old dirt bike.
Christ, he’d popped off like a champagne cork at a New Year’s Eve party, and he hadn’t lost control like that in years.
What a colossal goatscrew!
“Because I—” he began, then suddenly stopped.
“Because you what?” she asked, stuffing the used wipes into his pack before passing him his 9mms. “Why didn’t you want it to go that way?”
He shoved the weapons in his waistband, giving himself a moment to try to explain to her. But the moment passed and…
Nada.
He had nothing.
“I just wanted it to be all about you,” he finally said, and one sleek black brow slowly climbed up her forehead. He had the inexplicable desire to lean forward and kiss it.
Non, non, non. Bad idea. Colossally bad idea. Because he was absolutely certain that one kiss would set them both off again. One kiss and this time they wouldn’t stop at a couple of hand jobs. Hell no. They’d take it all the way to the finish line.
“Well, why in the world would you want that?” she demanded, buttoning her shirt, covering up those exquisite breasts of hers which—whew!—allowed him to stop acting like that tree behind her was the most fascinating specimen of plant life on the planet.
“Because I wanted it to be a good memory for you,” he said, watching covertly as she tucked the tail of her shirt into her pants before zipping them up and clicking the snap closed. “Because I wanted you think back on me, on…on this moment, with fondness.”
“And you think me giving you a little reciprocal pleasure would…what? Diminish that somehow?”
No. No, that’s not what he was thinking. But he didn’t dare tell her what he was thinking because he was scared to death to admit it fully to himself. In fact, he was very afraid he might be skating precariously close to an epiphany he in no way, shape, or form, wanted to have…
So he simply shook his head and shrugged.
She snorted. “Well, that was just silly of you, wasn’t it? Because in case you haven’t figured it out yet, it’s a point of pride for me to give just as good as I get.”
And, oh Lordy, she wasn’t kidding about that…
Chapter Thirteen
“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Becky asked as Eve tightened her seatbelt and started the Land Rover’s engine. The vehicle came to life with a loud rumble that echoed inside the closed garage and inside Eve’s quaking chest.
“I know this city a lot better than you do,” she said, surprised her voice came out as steady as it did considering there was a whole colony of butterflies fluttering around in her stomach, threatening to come crawling up her throat at any minute.
Was she really about to involve herself in a car chase with the CIA?
She adjusted her rearview mirror, caught a glimpse of her reflection, and frowned at the look of wide-eyed terror on her face.
Oh, come on! It’s not like you’re about to engage in a gun battle or anything. You’re just going to drive…fast…with the CIA hot on your tail. Oh, good gracious…
Okay, and she turned off the internal pep talk since it obviously wasn’t working—typical, really, of most of her internal pep talks…
With a shaky finger, she reached up to press the button on the garage door opener, watching as the contraption ascended inch by excruciating inch. And, yes, there it was. That white van. Just sitting there. And behind those tinted windows, it was filled to the brim with government agents.
Government agents whom she was about to lead on a wild goose chase.
Geez Louise…
“You sure you can handle this?” Becky pressed, eyeing her bloodless face with concern.
In response, Eve took a deep breath, drank that metaphorical concrete milkshake Boss spoke of, and reached over to yank Becky’s seatbelt tight. “Just hold on to your hat, sister,” she said as she threw the Land Rover into reverse and burned rubber down the driveway.
Once she was on the street, she shifted into drive and took off like a bat out of hell, her tires squealing on the pavement and leaving a thin puff of gray smoke in her wake. The Land Rover’s big engine growled as it shifted through the gears, and Eve took a moment to lament the fact that she’d purchased an automatic. For this little endeavor, a standard would’ve been better, but she’d have to make do with what she had.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered, watching the rearview mirror with one eye even as she kept the other on the road. Her vacation house was on a mountainside, and the road leading to it was curvier than a coiled snake. “Can’t you CIA guys see we’re up to no good? Why the heck aren’t you following us?”
“Jesus!” Becky yelped, grabbing the bar above the passenger window as Eve took the next curve on two wheels. “Where the hell did you learn to drive like this?”
“My father sent me to defensive driving class a couple of years ago when I was having problems with that stalker,” she answered through gritted teeth as she wrestled the wheel back to the right, hugging the edge of the road until Becky glanced out her window and down a mountainside so sheer it defined the word vertigo—why the world’s most beautiful views also happened to be the most dangerous, Eve would never know.
Unconsciously, Becky leaned away from th
e window and toward the middle of the vehicle, as if her puny five-foot-two-inch frame could really affect any change in the vehicle’s trajectory should Eve lose control—which sooo wasn’t going to happen. Eve wasn’t good at much, but she’d taken to driving like a fish to water.
“Defensive driving?” Becky gulped. “This…this is more than d-defensive driving, Eve, this is—Holy shit! Look out!”
A herd of peccaries, Costa Rica’s infamous wild pigs, raced across the roadway, and Eve was forced to slam on the brakes. The Land Rover shuddered and skidded, necessitating her to go against instinct and turn into the slide. But just as her instructor had promised, and just like she’d practiced a million times, the maneuver allowed her to control the vehicle and bring it to a jolting stop a mere foot from the squealing pigs.
“He was an ex-Hollywood stuntman,” she explained, breath sawing from her lungs, heart racing at breakneck speed, even as she tapped an impatient finger, waiting for the nasty-tempered swine to make it across to the opposite side of the street.
“Who?” Becky breathed, foot up on the dashboard to brace herself, both hands now closed in tight fists around the bar above the passenger side window.
“My defensive driving instructor,” Eve explained as the last pig crossed the road—she was certain there was probably a joke in there somewhere. And right at that instant, the white van appeared around the bend behind them.
“They took the bait!” she squealed delightedly and pounded a victorious fist on the steering wheel before stomping on the gas.
“Who the hell are you?” Becky demanded as they proceeded to blast down the mountain like a bullet from a gun.
***
“They’re late,” Boss grumbled in the driver’s seat, checking his watch. They were sitting across the street from the green expanse of La Sabana Metropolitan Park where the Inter-American Highway led into downtown San Jose. The smell of tobacco from the nearby smoke shop filled the air coming in through Bill’s open passenger side window, competing with the more pungent aromas of the fish cart on the corner and dozens of car exhausts. But that didn’t distract him from the fact that, according to what Vanessa told them, they should’ve seen her and Rock blazing into town on the back of a dirt bike fifteen minutes ago. Bill already had his cell phone out before Boss finished with, “You need to call and tell your sister, so she can keep those damned spooks away from the house for a little longer.”
Thrill Ride Page 15