Hostage Crisis

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Chapter Five

  While he sat in the one chair in the room, Olivia actually sprawled on the floor like a teenager, her long legs everywhere. Daniel wondered if she was aware of the fact that she had let her hair down—quite literally—and kicked off her shoes.

  He kept the cup topped up. She took it black, like him.

  She lay on her stomach, the coffee cup and a book just ahead of her, sometimes lifting up her feet to let the trousers fall back and show off her trim legs. Sometimes, she rolled over on one hip and sometimes she sat up cross-legged.

  Why could she not sit decorously on the bed like an old maid?

  The knowledge that her breasts lay beneath the soft silk of her shirt, unbound, burned like a brand on his mind. Had she known what that fact would do to him? He had not been able to dismiss the thought all day. Four buttons on her shirt. Tiny things he could get rid of with one good tug. His hands itched to slide aside the blue silk and make her arch and moan in his arms.

  It was a wonder she could not feel his overpowering need for her. It seemed to pulse from him in waves like a radiant room heater, giving lie to every word he spoke to her. She kept provoking him, kept forcing truth from him.

  How did she do that? In his position, honesty was a luxury he could not afford.

  It wasn’t women over thirty that he was afraid of. It was just one—Olivia.

  Yet it wasn’t Olivia he feared. It was the truth she extracted from him every time she stepped within his radius.

  “You look sad,” Olivia said, sipping her coffee. She laid on her side now, one elbow beneath her, her hair trailing on the carpet. She smiled. “And older.”

  Damn. Daniel sat up straighter. He was getting tired. He reached for something, anything to deflect her. “You were wrong, you know. Earlier. Most women over thirty don’t know how to just have sex. They mix it up with emotions, with what they think is ‘love’ and complicate it. They have no idea about how to simply have sex and just enjoy themselves.”

  She put the coffee down, but otherwise showed no sign of reaction. Yet her eyes seemed bluer. Sapphire blue and big.

  “I’m wrong about a lot of things,” she said, her voice mellow. Mellow like the call of trumpets to battle. Daniel could feel the prickle of tension up his spine. “Yet I know something you have plainly overlooked or chosen to ignore because it suits you to pretend otherwise. Women over thirty—women like me, because that’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it? Me.” She gave a small smile that made him think of a cat with sheathed claws. A big cat. A lion, or a cheetah. A sleek predator. His gut tightened in a pleasurable way. Didn’t she know a man loved the hunt as much as the kill?

  “Let’s call it for what it is,” she said. “I know far more about how to have better sex than any twenty-something walking the planet. I’ve had more sex than they have. Good, bad and plain indifferent sex, period. I’m experienced. I know how to make you cry for mercy. I know my own likes and dislikes and I’m old enough to be adventurous. Don’t ever accuse me of not knowing how to have sex, because you’re dead wrong. You’re so far wrong, Daniel, that monks would weep with hysteria, if they knew.”

  He was drowning in her eyes.

  Three movements. That was all it would take to rip her trousers from her body, his own from his and drive deep inside her.

  He gripped the arm of the chair, as his body tried to pull him from the chair to the floor where she lay.

  “It’s a pity you’re more interested in bedding a walrus than me, isn’t it?” he ground out. “I’m missing out on an education, from the sound of it.”

  She picked up the cup and put it on the table next to him. He could see clearly delineated by the silk the soft outline of the underside of her breast beneath the pocket of her shirt.

  He breathed in a sharp, ragged lungful of air and dug his fingernails more deeply into the upholstery of the chair.

  Olivia lay on her back on the carpet. Her hair spread out across the Axminster. She rested one hand on her abdomen. “At least a walrus has clear motives,” she murmured.

  He surged from the chair before he processed his own thoughts or the wisdom of what he was about to do. The pulsating need bloomed and drove him with the power of its growing drive.

  He grabbed Olivia’s wrists and brought them above her head and pinned them easily under one hand, even before her eyes widened in surprise, as he straddled her hips and anchored her with the weight of his own. He thrust his thigh between hers, pushing it high between her legs until it came up hard against her. He felt heat against his leg.

  He hooked his finger over the opening at the top of her shirt. “Clear motives, Olivia? How clear do my motives have to be? How simple does wanting you have to be? How badly do I need to have to want you before it moves beyond simple?”

  Her eyes widened. “Daniel….”

  It was the most delicious sound he’d ever heard, his name on her lips, said in that breathless way. He would have more. He’d have her screaming his name. His body shook with the need to have her arching beneath him.

  He tugged sharply and the top button flew away with a soft snap of thread. Olivia moaned. She wanted him.

  He kissed the sliver of soft flesh revealed between the silk edges of shirt fronts.

  “Daniel,” she whispered.

  He looked at her. Shocked slammed into him.

  Her eyes were filled with tears. “No.”

  She was saying no. She was refusing him.

  It took him five long seconds and every ounce of willpower he possessed to let her go. His mind reeled with the conflict. The need to try to persuade her, to talk her into it…he knew he could. In his gut, he knew he could seduce her if he tried.

  Olivia made no move to escape or struggle. She just laid there, her soft, long length beneath him, pushed up against his thighs. Her wondrous eyes watched him struggle with it. She expected her simple “no” would deflect him, that it would be enough. No, she didn’t expect that it would. She knew that it would.

  Daniel sat back on his heels, then got to his feet and shoved his shaking hands into his pockets.

  After a moment, when he thought he could speak evenly, he said, “I apologize for the ruined shirt.” His voice emerged stiff.

  “It’s just a button,” she returned. Her voice was thick. Husky with…what? He didn’t want to assume it was lust. She’d had tears in her eyes a few seconds ago.

  She was a complicated woman.

  Lord, he needed to step out of this trench he was digging himself. “I’ll see myself out.” He headed for the door.

  “It’s past curfew,” she called. She had rolled onto one elbow, her hair spilling over the carpet behind it.

  “You really want me to spend the night here, now?” he asked.

  She dropped her gaze.

  “I rest my case,” he said bitterly.

  All the way back to his room, as he dodged guards and moved from blind spot to blind spot, he was conscious of his thigh where it had rested between her legs and the warmth and softness of her body he’d felt resting against it.

  She’d wanted him. He’d bet his life on it.

  Why had she turned him away?

  * * * * *

  Long after her tears had dried on her cheeks, Olivia lay looking up at the dark ceiling, as it turned slowly to daylight.

  Liar, liar, liar! The mental taunt played over and over in her head. She was playing with fire and she didn’t seem to know how to stop. She had accused Daniel of being two-faced, but it was she who was playing the double game. Daniel thought the stakes on the table was just sex because she wasn’t being honest.

  At least she had halted it before it had gone too far. It had shocked her to discover he wanted her after all. It had taken her shock-stunned mind minutes to recover while Daniel had felt her respond positively to him and learned the truth, that she wanted him, too. That damage was irreparable. At least she had pulled back as soon as she realized what was going on. He was just going to have to live w
ith being puzzled about why she’d said no.

  She was never going to explain to him that the complicated, emotional, relationship-heavy thirty-something stuff he’d spent a lifetime avoiding was exactly what she wanted—with him and no one else. Daniel was not about to be converted to the glories of love and stable relationships. She knew better than to think he might be. She would have to forego even a simple relationship with him because she didn’t trust herself around him.

  If she did indulge herself with Daniel, she knew what would happen. The danger signs were all over the situation. She would do something completely stupid like fall in love with him and then have to break her heart when he left, as he would do in the end.

  She had to end it here. End everything.

  Except she suspected it might already be too late for her.

  * * * * *

  As she tapped on the door of the eighteenth cabana at the far end of the bay, cold steel touched her neck and Téra froze.

  “How did you find me?” Lucas asked. He withdrew the gun and stepped out of the shadows thrown by the moon sinking into the sea, at the end of the cabana. He was wearing his army pants and shirt, but was barefoot. His shirt was unbuttoned.

  “How did you know I was out here, before I knocked?”

  “You don’t know how to walk silently.”

  “I’m barefoot and walking on sand,” she pointed out, lifting the hem of her gown.

  “You breathe heavily and you’re wearing French perfume. Why are you arguing the point? I had the gun at your throat. It’s academic.”

  True. She watched him step up to the door of the cabana, as if he intended to go inside. She caught at his hand.

  “Don’t do this, Téra. I will have to reject you. Then you will be upset and will hate me.”

  “How can I hate you?” She tugged at his hand. “Come here.”

  “I’m too old for you.”

  “So what?”

  “Your brother will kill me.”

  “He gave me your billet number.”

  Lucas sighed and stepped down onto the sand in front of her. “How can I make you stay away?”

  She reached for his trousers and unfastened them. “You can’t.”

  “Téra, no.” He stilled her hands. “I beg you, give this up.”

  “Give me a good reason why.”

  “I don’t want you.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You’re confusing lust with love, little one. Yes, I want you in a crude way. Who wouldn’t? Look at you. I am a man.” He shrugged.

  Two armed guards walked past and saluted. Lucas returned the salute, with a hiss of impatience under his breath. “Grounds security,” he murmured.

  “Let’s go inside,” Téra said, stepping around him.

  “No, Téra, wait,” Lucas said.

  She evaded his hand and climbed the three wooden steps. She pushed inside the cramped cabana they’d assigned him as his private quarters and came to a stop.

  There was a camp bed that he’d clearly just abandoned, a gas lamp turned low on an army box that he was using as a desk. That was it for furniture. There was a window in each of the two short walls, but on the wall opposite the camp bed, he’d tacked pictures, newspaper clippings and printouts from the internet, photos and more. Most of the wall was covered.

  They were all of her. Her triathlon wins and losses. Her Facebook account pictures. Blog entries. Her online life. Photos—dozens of them. Instant photos, online photos, photos that had clearly been taken from around the house and Acapulco and printed out on cheap paper. There were even good quality photos tacked up with brads and nails and thumb tacks. Posed pictures of her with her family, with Duardo, but most of them just her. Many of them were candid and some of them she didn’t remember being taken at all. All of it was laid out for the gaze of a man who supposedly didn’t want her.

  There was one photo, an eight by ten glossy, that clearly was in pride-of-place in the center of the wall, that had caught her looking dreamy-eyed and wistful, staring almost directly at the camera, her hand resting low on her chest, her lips parted.

  Téra knew instantly why Lucas had focused on that photo. It cried out passion. Lust. Longing.

  He said he didn’t want her?

  She spun and hurried down the cabana steps again.

  Lucas had gone.

  Téra picked up the hem of her gown and ran after the armed guards. “Did you see where Captain De la Cruz went?” she asked.

  “Along the beach,” one of them answered, pointing.

  She looked. Lucas was striding along the wet sand just above the rolling waves, heading for the point at the far end of the bay, a black figure silhouetted against blacker night sky.

  “Thank you.”

  She hurried after Lucas, hoisting the skirt of her gown over one elbow and running. Lucas was moving fast, but she was a runner and it took only a few minutes to catch him. Even when she did, he didn’t stop striding. She stepped in front of him and walked backward. “I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “Lucas, please. Just stop.”

  “I can’t.”

  She jumped, threw her arms around his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. It made him halt and hold her at the same time.

  “I love you,” she told him.

  He closed his eyes.

  Téra gave in to the need that had driven her for weeks. She pressed her lips against his soft, passionate ones, feeling their fullness and the unexpected heat of them. She hadn’t been prepared for the heat. The unyielding firmness behind them, yes, she had guessed that would be there. Just not this warmth, endowed with his scent like a candle giving off an aromatic glow. Téra held on with one arm, not questioning whether he would hold her. She knew he would not let her fall. She used her other hand to run her fingertips over his face and then his lips, before replacing them with her mouth before he could protest once more.

  She used her hand to push his shirt aside as much as she could, to reveal his shoulders and upper arms.

  He stood like a rock, unmoving. He did not respond to her kisses. He did not let her go. He did not even seem to breathe.

  Téra lifted herself away from him so she could see the lines and planes of his face in the moonlight. His eyes were black pits.

  “Are you finished, little girl?”

  The ridicule stung, only she knew he said it to deflect her. She let herself slide down to the soft, cool sand to stand in front of him. “I know you want me, Lucas. I just don’t know why you won’t take me.”

  “You’ll never have that answer, child. It is beyond your comprehension.” His tone was withering.

  “I won’t give up,” Téra told him. “I will find what it is that is stopping you, Lucas. I’ll destroy it.” She stroked his chest. Slid her fingers lower.

  Lucas’ hand snapped over her wrist, the fingers digging into her flesh hard. “Damn it, Téra,” he growled. His other hand thrust into her hair. He tugged her head backward, bringing her face up so he could peer into it. His lips, those soft lips, hovered inches from hers, but fury radiated from him. “Just because you are the sister of the wonderful Colonel Peña and his American wife and their privileged connections to the great Escobedo family, it does not mean you get to have everything you want in life. Don’t you understand that yet? Did your time in Zalaya’s hellhole not teach you anything?”

  Abruptly, she was free of his cruel grip on her hair and wrist. She staggered backward, staring at Lucas’ dark shape as she massaged her wrist.

  She picked the hem of her dress up out of the sand. “Zalaya’s hellhole didn’t turn me into the world-class cynic you want me to be. I learned that life can be cut brutally and unfairly short. It’s better to live it to the full while I can. I want my life to include you, Lucas. You’d better figure out what you want to do with that.” She headed back toward the lighted area where the wedding party was still going strong, far down the beach.

  “Don�
��t do this, Téra,” he said from behind her.

  “If you don’t want me to do it, stop me now,” Téra called back. “If I get back to the wedding and you don’t stop me, I’ll know that deep down, you want this.”

  “Damn it, if I touch you now, we both know what will happen,” Lucas growled.

  “Then you’ve got two things to work out, don’t you?” Téra said sweetly. She didn’t look back. Instead, she walked. Her heart was screaming at her by the time she stepped back onto the dance floor.

  She circled around to the tables where the wine was being served. She needed a serious drink. She felt as though she had just baited a jaguar and won by the skin of her teeth.

  * * * * *

  Ibarra saluted smartly as the long limousine came to a smooth halt inside the compound. He was sweating profusely despite the cool of the early evening. Four more armed guards hurried to form a square around the back door of the limousine and a subaltern opened the door with a salute and click of his heels.

  General Serrano eased himself out of the car and looked around. “This place is a mess,” he observed. After a moment he flicked his fingers to his cap, which released Ibarra from his salute.

  Ibarra relaxed from parade stance, but didn’t let his mental guard down. “We’re slowly clearing up the compound as I can spare the men, General. My first priority is security, of course.”

  Serrano grunted as he looked up at the walls of the hotel. “It used to be a great place for parties.”

  “I’m sure once peace has been restored, we can return the White Sands to its former glory,” Ibarra said smoothly.

  “We have peace,” Serrano snapped.

  “Of course we do,” Ibarra returned, mentally wincing over his gaffe. “I meant, once the last lingering traces of the old government have been wiped away and full diplomatic relations have been restored with the rest of the world, of course.”

  Serrano readjusted the band of his pants under his belly. “Show me the mess you’ve created on the inside of this place. I hope it is not as bad as the outside, Ibarra. One disaster a day is all I can tolerate.”