by Lexi Ryan
* * * *
Paige stood with the girls on the beach, overlooking the waves, hating that the SIA guys had been here twenty-four hours longer than they had. While the Stiletto Girls had been stuck in the endless red tape of security, the guys had been picking up intelligence, scoping out the island.
“Have you gotten anything off the guys?” Josie asked Chrissie, her eyes glued to the waves as she chewed her thumbnail.
“Just that they’re not under orders to follow us anymore. It was a legitimate memory, but I think Fernandez was letting me see it.” Chrissie frowned. “He’s pretty damn good at controlling what I see.”
Josie giggled. “Yeah, I saw that coming.” She wriggled her eyebrows at her friend. “Somebody wants a little Latino lovin’?”
Chrissie rolled her eyes. “Hardly.” Her frowned turned to a scowl. “What have you seen?”
Josie raised her hands in a gesture of innocence.
Paige shook her head. “We need to know if they’ve found anything that they’re keeping from us.”
“I’ll get it,” Chrissie said. “I just need some time.”
Paige took a deep breath of the salty air. The roar of crashing waves filled her ears, silky white sand slipped between her toes. “Let’s look on the bright side, ladies. There’s nothing they can find that we can’t. How often do working girls like us get the chance to explore a beautiful private island?”
“Good point,” Chrissie muttered. “But I need to pull a Paige before I can do much more. I haven’t had sex in so long, the gropey concierge back at the hotel was looking good to me.”
Paige snorted. “The one with the cane?”
* * * *
Rider watched the Stiletto Girls walk down the beach and felt the vibration of his phone on his hip. Right on time. As always.
He put it to his ear. “Rider.”
“Are the plans in place?” a crackling voice asked on the other end. That was Collin’s way, always going to extra lengths to encrypt his lines, to the extent that he protected himself from his own men. Probably actively protected himself from his own brother too.
“I’m on the island.”
“And the girls?”
Rider held up his binoculars to study the girls on the beach. They might have passed as vacationers to someone else, but Rider had worked with them long enough to know when they had their game faces on. “They arrived an hour ago.”
Collin cursed.
“Collin, if they knew the truth, they would help us.”
Collin was silent for a long time. “Is that what you want? You want Chrissie to know about the things you’ve done? About the people you killed?”
Rider watched Chrissie run through the surf and splash water on Josie. Even when he’d let her see his memories, there were years he’d cordoned off. He’d wanted to save her from the darkness of those years, yes. He’d been terrified she wouldn’t be able to love him anymore if she knew the truth. “No,” he whispered. “I don’t.”
“Then we’re in agreement,” Collin said. “The Stiletto Girls stay out of this. How’s our intel?”
“Solid. The president has been visiting at regular intervals since Wednesday morning.”
“Be on the lookout for Tara. I’ll arrive shortly thereafter.”
“Is Tara up for the trip?”
“She’s never been better.” There was almost a smile in Collin’s voice.
Rider frowned as he disconnected the call. He didn’t feel right using Tara this way, even knowing what they did about the girl’s future.
On the beach, Chrissie stretched her arms above her head, exposing her bare midriff, and longing shot through him like a hard and hot ache. He missed his girlfriend. But what choice did he have? Allowing Winston two hours with the powers of the president of the United States was too much. They needed to remove him yesterday.
When this was over, he’d see if Chrissie would take him back. If she wouldn’t, then at least he’d live the rest of his life knowing the woman he loved was safe.
But first they had to kill the president. First, they needed to end what they’d started.
Chapter Thirteen
Paige was loath to leave the beach where the sun warmed every inch of her skin and the breeze off the water cooled it again. Where the air buzzed with energy. But as long as she was going to actively avoid Darian and continue to get readings off the island, she needed to stay out of plain view.
She’d spent the morning combing the island. She’d introduced herself to staff, to guests. She’d shaken hands, brushed people when they walked by. She’d gone through the hotel and through the staff quarters.
She’d gotten nothing.
Now, in the relative privacy of the trees, Paige closed her eyes and surveyed the island.
Passion. Heat. The sensation came to her in a buzz from the sandy earth at her feet all the way up her legs—an electric sizzle of desire. There was so much sexual energy on Eden that her ability picked it up everywhere she went. She didn’t need to touch a soul.
The energy was alive, hungry. It pulsed between her legs now, needy, insistent. Her body didn’t care that the passion she felt wasn’t her own. It demanded release and she didn’t have anything to give it.
She’d walk it off. The alternative was finding Darian and reenacting her dream.
Not an option.
She was still pretty pissed at him for getting them waylaid at the airport. Security never would tell them why exactly they wouldn’t let them board, but from what Paige and the girls could pick up, the airport’s machines had detected some substance on their bags that was a security red flag.
A substance Darian and his guys had planted on them.
Yes, a walk would be much preferable to finding Darian.
As she turned to find the path that trailed through the woods, she slammed right into a solid, very warm object. She jumped back and had to look up a good foot before she saw his face.
“Sorry,” she muttered, then she frowned.
Darian pulled his eyes away from the book he was holding—something about physics and the composition of the universe.
More science stuff. It figured she was hot for a geek.
But Darian wasn’t just a geek. He was a chameleon, and right now he definitely had that sexy scientist thing going on: his short, brown tufts to hair curling in disarray in the island’s humidity; thick, dark-framed reading glasses perched on his nose.
He was still frowning. “I thought you didn’t want to see me.”
He didn’t have to sound so damn disappointed by her presence. “I don’t. I need some privacy.”
“I was looking for the same.” His smile stretched across his face. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in putting our heads together to find some privacy...”
Paige rolled her eyes. “It’s a big island. I’m sure we can manage to avoid each other for a few hours.”
He eyed her, his disappointment clear. “Well,” he said, turning away and returning his attention to his book. “I suppose there’s nothing to say we can’t try.”
She clenched her teeth and scowled at his retreating back. “You’re not going to find it there,” she called out.
“Where?” he asked, slowing.
“Your book isn’t going to help you find it.”
He stopped and turned. “Find what?”
She sighed and softened her voice when she answered. “You aren’t going to find a human explanation for your superhuman ability.”
He winced. That wasn’t a part of himself he thought he’d exposed, but it was there. Buried deep. She’d seen it when they’d made love. Her power worked very well when she touched someone, but when she was having sex, when a man was inside her, he was completely exposed to her. Darian was looking for an answer, a reason based in non-Special science to explain why he could do what he could. When he wasn’t bringing down bad-asses through his work with the SIA, he was searching.
“Paige,” he said, and his voice was so
ft too, “that one-way glass you stand behind doesn’t hide you as well as you think.”
What was that supposed to mean?
He turned on his heel and strode into the thick trees.
When Paige was done glowering at nothing, she turned in the opposite direction of his retreat and wandered through the thick forest. Her skin dampened quickly with perspiration and the moisture in the air.
A couple of yards into the island’s thick forest and the breeze from the beach had disappeared. The air was thick and the sunlight scarce, only coming through the dense thatch limbs overhead in a sparsely dappled pattern to light her path. The sound of the ocean faded into the distance and the calls of island birds increased in volume. She continued to wander away from the crashing waves and heard the swoosh of running water ahead.
She followed the sound until she found its source. The trees broke and a steady creek moved through a crevice in the earth. Up ahead, she could see a low cliff and a gentle waterfall. The light sparkled like tiny diamonds through the running water.
Suddenly, as Paige stepped into the sun streaming down on the creek bed, the heat was too much. Her clothes were saturated and the water called to her.
Without thought, she untied her boots and pulled them off, followed by her tank top and shorts. She laid her clothes on a stone to dry—not that they would with the humidity, but she could hope.
She hadn’t bothered with a bathing suit this morning, knowing she wouldn’t be spending much time on the beach. Her bra and panties would suffice.
She eased into the water slowly, testing the current, and sighing as it lapped cool kisses against her sun-warmed skin. She closed her eyes and waded deeper.
“Whatever you do, don’t piss in the water.”
Paige’s eyes flew open and her head snapped up. Darian sat on the opposite bank. He leaned against a tree, book in his lap, his legs stretched before him and crossed at the ankle.
“Excuse me?”
“Most of the parasites that live in fresh Caribbean water won’t bother you. But piss in the water and you might as well get a flashing neon arrow that says ‘enter here.’”
She froze. She hadn’t even hesitated before getting into the water. In retrospect, that had been pretty foolish. “Enter where?” she asked, though she was sure she didn’t want to know the answer.
“Ah,” he said on a chuckle, “I think you know.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t scare off easily, if that’s what you’re trying to do.”
He gave a half shrug as if to say, Suit yourself, and returned to his book.
Paige felt the growl in her throat as she made her way back toward the bank and her clothes. He was probably just trying to scare her away so he could have the area to himself. She didn’t want to lose their childish battle of wills, but neither did she want some parasite swimming up her hoo-ha.
She pulled herself out of the water and walked to the stone where she’d left her tank and cargos.
But they weren’t there.
She looked around. She must have gone further downstream than she thought. She walked fifty yards upstream and found nothing. She came back and covered fifty yards downstream. Still no clothes. Where the hell were they?
She didn’t see a scrap of clothing anywhere, but she did hear a chuckling bookworm all the way across the river.
She turned, unconcerned about her near-naked state, and put her hands on her hips. “If you’re trying to get me to forgive you, I don’t think stealing my clothes is the way to go.”
He shook his head and kept on chuckling. She didn’t know what pissed her off more: the fact that he was laughing at her in a rather embarrassing situation, or that being in front of him in nothing but a dripping wet bra and panties was making her want to pull him into the forest and have him do the job she’d been saving for the showerhead back in her hotel room. Not that forest sex was really an option when possibly-parasite-infested river stood between them.
She debated this for a moment. Then, to Paige’s exasperation, he returned his attention to his book.
She wanted to rip the damn thing out of his hands and demand he return her clothes. She eyed the now-ominous water and weighed her options—parasite or screaming uncle in this juvenile game? Neither would do.
There had to be another way around the river that didn’t involve getting in the water. He’d gotten over there, hadn’t he?
She looked around for anything—a narrowing of the creek, a small bridge, a stone path through the water—anything that could help her get from her side of the river to where that pompous ass was hiding her clothes. Nothing.
She lifted her face to the sky to ask the universe to give her a little patience.
It was while she was looking up that she saw a long thick vine. It had been chopped loose from a tree on one end and was hanging from a high branch on the other.
She glanced from the vine to the river and the other bank. She might not be a physicist, but it didn’t take much special understanding to know that this vine could very easily take her to the other side of the water without her stepping foot near the parasites. When she went to summer camp as a child, she and the neighbor boys would swing on vines behind their cabins. She remembered well how easy it had been to wrap her arms around a vine and launch herself out and over the ravine. The vine had always delivered her safely back.
All she would have to do was climb that boulder and swing over. Simple.
The boulder was steeper than it looked, but she couldn’t reach the vine from the ground. It was flat at the top and would give her the perfect platform from which to push off.
She was breathing heavily by the time she reached the top and grabbed the vine, but she smirked in satisfaction when she saw Darian wasn’t paying any attention to his book now.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he called out, pushing himself up.
“You’re not the only one who can cross a river without touching the water,” she said, wrapping her arms around the vine.
“No, listen—”
But she didn’t. She put her weight on the vine and launched herself out over the water.
She’d forgotten the way this felt—how freeing it was to soar through the air on a vine, nothing but the power of her arms holding her up.
That was her last thought before the vine snapped and she crashed into the water.
* * * *
Tara shook as she took Raphael’s hand. What if this didn’t work? What if only pieces of her teleported and she was half in the hospital room and half on Eden? She shuddered.
“I’m really good at this,” Raphael said softly. “Don’t worry.”
Tara looked at Collin. “You can’t come too?”
Collin shook his head. “His power won’t work if I’m with you, Tara. Trust me. I wouldn’t put you in the hands of anyone who wasn’t capable.”
“Why can’t you just take his power and then you could take me?”
Collin and Raphael both frowned.
“Too dangerous,” Collin said.
“I’d rather not,” Raphael said, taking a step away from Collin.
“And why can’t I fly on a plane with you?”
“Trust me, Tara. This is the way it has to be. They’re already watching me. We can’t arrive together. I promise I’ll find you when I get there.”
“Okay.” She turned her gaze to Raphael. “Don’t tell me when. Just do it.”
* * * *
Darian tugged off his glasses and cursed under his breath as he watched Paige plunge into the water. He didn’t know what the hell she’d been thinking, trying to play Tarzan’s Jane and swing across the river.
He watched the water for a moment, willing her to surface. But when she finally did, it was only to be pulled under again by the rush of the current.
Even as he was peeling off his shirt and dropping his pants, he took long strides toward the river. Before she had a chance to surface again, he dived in after her.
Two s
econds later, he had his hands under her arms. She was panicked, though, and kicked him, flailing in the current and pulling them both under. He focused, willing her to calm, to relax until her body went limp.
Out of the water, he laid her on the shore bed, letting her catch her breath while he hovered, making sure she was okay.
He let his fingertips trail over her cheek. “Are you okay?” But he could already tell she was, and he knew her well enough to know she wasn’t going to take kindly to being rescued.
Her eyes widened, and she looked almost vulnerable for a moment. Which was a whole new side of Paige.
“No, I’m not okay.” she mumbled. Her voice turned sharper. “You stole my clothes.”
Suddenly, she shot up to sitting, pushing him backwards. In an instant, she was on her feet, towering over him as he caught himself with his hands.
“Where are they?” she said, whipping out a finger and pointing it at him with the fury of a cowboy drawing his six-shooter.
Apparently, she was pretty pissed. Maybe she’d taken the thing at the airport a little harder than he’d thought. But Darian could no more worry about that than he could ignore the way the wet white cotton of panties exposed the dark hair between her toned thighs or the way her breasts threatened to tumble out of the rather unimaginative but still mind-bendingly sexy white bra.
He’d never seen a woman who looked so damn hot in white cotton. Thirty seconds ago, he’d been terrified, saving her life, and now he was rock hard. That had to be some sort of world record.
“Okay. I’m going to close my eyes and count to three,” she said. “If you’re still ogling my breasts when I open them, I’m kicking your brainy, stalker, interfering, chauvinistic ass all the way back to MIT.”
Now, this was just too much fun. He wondered how hard she’d hit him if he told her how sexy she looked when she was angry.
He dropped to his elbows, leaning back and exaggerating his appraisal of her body. She had a slight rounding to her belly—just enough that, though she was fit and toned from head to toe, his lips met a pillow of soft, feminine skin when he pressed them there. His cock jumped, imagining and remembering, a fact he knew his own wet clothes would do little to disguise.