Thrill Ride Read online

  Well, bon. If she considered him a prick of legendary proportions, she’d be only too happy to see the backside of him once he returned her pretty ass to the Knights. And it was better to suffer some hurt feelings now than all-out heartbreak later on.

  “Suit yourself,” she finally huffed, and he figured it was mission accomplished on the whole getting-her-to-think-he-was-a-prick front. A rustling sound alerted him that she’d picked up his pack, but he was still caught off guard when it slammed into the center of the chest. The breath shot out of him in a harsh oof and, despite himself, he felt a smile curve his lips.

  Mon dieu, he liked her. Considered her damn near perfect, in fact. Because along with being tough and beautiful and lusty, she was also spunky as hell. The combination was Kryptonite to his Superman. Which was just one more reason why he had to make sure he didn’t encourage any more bouts of tongue wrestling—Lord have mercy, can that woman ever kiss! He was already too far gone where she was concerned.

  “Thanks,” he wheezed, digging into his pack, fishing for the antibiotic wipes and self-adhesive bandages he’d packed.

  “Oh, you’re very welcome.” The sneer on her face was apparent in her tone, and it occurred to him, as he broke open a pack of wipes, that since she was already pissed, it was probably a good time to go all in.

  “And about that kiss,” he said, hissing when he wiped the antibiotic cloth across his cut. It burned like the fires of hell.

  Appropriate, considering that’s probably where he was headed someday.

  “Yeah? What about it?”

  For a moment, he was too busy blinking back tears of pain to speak. Glad, for once, for the complete darkness inside the log lest she realize what a goddamned sissy he really was. Zut! Just give me some bubble bath and a tampon. I think I’m officially part of the estrogen party.

  Then he managed, “It can’t happen again.”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” she snapped. “The way you’re acting right now, not only do I have no plans to kiss you again, but you’ll be lucky if I don’t suffocate you in your sleep.”

  He smiled.

  Funny. He’d forgotten to add that to his list of reasons why he thought she was perfect. Tough and beautiful, lusty and spunky…and funny.

  Goddamnit!

  “I’m serious.” He had to work hard to keep his voice stern.

  “So am I,” she shot back without missing a beat.

  “Vanessa,” he warned.

  “Richard,” she mimicked his tone, but the sound of his given name on her lips had his stomach turning a fast, dizzying somersault.

  No one called him Richard. Not anymore. Not after his parents. Not after Lacy…

  Words abandoned him, so he busied himself with the bandage’s adhesive strips. Carefully peeling them away, he found the outer edges of the cut on his neck and centered the dressing over the top of it. Pressing the medicated pad in place, he wondered what she was doing. She was awfully quiet over there. Too quiet.

  What’s she thinking?

  Of course, when she opened her mouth, he decided he’d have preferred it if she kept her thoughts to herself. “Just out of curiosity, why can’t we do that again?”

  He knew what she was after, but he still asked, “Do what?”

  “Kiss.”

  And just the word, spoken from those heart-shaped lips of hers, felt like an intimacy, like a single finger running up the length of his dick, like a wet tongue sliding—

  Jesus! He was a lost cause.

  “Because we’re coworkers,” he said and wished he could call the excuse back the moment it left his mouth. It was so lame it only opened up an avenue of argument. And, oui, just as he expected…

  “That’s ridiculous,” she huffed. “Just look at Boss and Becky. And, last I checked, we aren’t coworkers anymore. You haven’t drawn a BKI paycheck in months.”

  She had him there. So that left…the truth. Even though he knew it was going to hurt.

  “Well, then, we can’t do it again because you’ve got orange blossoms in your eyes, chere. And since I’m not the kind of man who would take advantage of a woman, it’s best we just keep our hands, and everything else, to ourselves.”

  “Who says you’d be taking advantage?”

  She was like a goddamned dog with a bone. The stubborn, willful, wonderful woman.

  “I do,” he insisted. “I’m not likely to make it out of this mess alive and—”

  “Pfft,” she cut him off. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, you’re going to make it out of this thing alive. Now that we’ve found you, we’ll all help you clear your name. And once that’s done—”

  “What makes you so sure my name can be cleared?” He made sure his tone was unmistakable.

  For a long moment, silence echoed more loudly than a gunshot through the hollow log.

  “I don’t believe what they’re saying about you,” she finally whispered. But he could hear the note of hesitation in her voice. Good. As long as she had the slightest hint of a doubt, letting him go once he got her back to San Jose would be just that much easier. “And you’re trying to change the subject.” Um, busted. “We were discussing the reason why we can’t act on this…this thing that’s between us.”

  Thing.

  Sweet Lord have mercy! It was more than a thing for him. It was a goddamned obsession. He couldn’t shake it. Because every other thought in his head seemed to circle back to the fact that he wanted to know her body.

  Every detail of it…

  The shape of her hips. The smoothness of the skin behind her knees. The taste of her desire on his lips when he kissed her where she was hot and wet. He wanted to know the way she responded when she was being loved. How she breathed when he kissed her nipples. How she arched when he entered her body. How she moved beneath him, above him. He wanted to know her. It. All of it. All of her…

  Which was why he had to nip this thing in the bud. For her sake and for his own. It was time, as his dear ol’ daddy used to say, to deliver the coup de grâce.

  “Okay, let me make it very clear to you, chere,” he said, his heart pounding for the pain he knew he was going to inflict. But that’s the thing about the truth. It hurt. “You have some romantic notion in your head that we could act on this thing, as you call it, and then it would grow into something more from there. But I can assure you it won’t.”

  “Why?” The word wasn’t timid; it was demanding. The woman had the heart of a lion and he wished, oh how he wished, things could be different.

  “Because while I have no doubt I could give you the thrill ride of your life, I can guarantee that’s all it’ll be. You see, ma belle, no matter what, you can’t let yourself fall in love with me.”

  “Why?” That one word again.

  “Because I’ll never fall in love with you.”

  ***

  “They’ve lost contact with the targets.”

  It was not the news Rwanda Don had hoped to hear upon answering the phone. Squeezing the untraceable device in an angry fist caused the cheap plastic casing to crackle warningly.

  “What do you mean? What happened to the RFD on Miss Cordero?”

  “It was found attached to a stone some sixty yards from Babineaux’s tree house,” the CIA agent relayed. “He obviously discovered the thing and disposed of it. And, while the teams were busy following the device’s signal, he and Cordero managed to slip away.”

  Slip away.

  Indeed. Just as R.D. suspected might happen.

  Goddamn Rock! The man was too smart for his own good. Definitely too smart for R.D.’s peace of mind.

  “Any idea where they’re headed?”

  “Tracks lead into the river, but the teams have found no point of exit. It’s suspected Babineaux and Cordero rode the sucker all the way back into Santa Elena…or else they drowned. Parts of that river are very dangerous.”

  “No.” R.D. wasn’t sure of many things, but the impossibility of Richard “Rock” Babineaux, all-star ex–Na
vy SEAL, drowning was one of them. “You know as well as I do, there’s no way he drowned. He’s still there. Somewhere.”

  “Mmph,” the agent made a noncommittal sound before continuing. “They’ve called in a backup team to search Santa Elena, and the other two teams are tearing the jungle apart. Don’t worry. If Babineaux and Cordero are still alive, they’ll find them. We’ve got three more hours until daybreak in those parts, and they can’t hide forever.”

  R.D. was beginning to have doubts in that respect.

  Beginning? What a joke. There’d always been doubts that Rock could be caught. The man was too well-equipped and too well-trained. To put it simply, he was good in the woods. Which was the military’s cutesy way of saying he was a veritable prodigy when it came to jungle recon, battle, and survival.

  As a rule, R.D. didn’t have much respect for the armed services. They were too loud, too extravagant, fighting all-out wars when a few well-placed bullets in the heads of very specific people could accomplish the same task. But, occasionally, Uncle Sam popped out a specimen of inordinate intelligence and skill.

  Unfortunately for R.D. and the CIA agent who’d personally helped pursue The Project after The Company decided to put the kibosh on it, Rock Babineaux happened to be one of those…

  “There’s more,” the agent went on. “Inside Rock’s tree house was a shit-load of intel.”

  The small seed of fear that’d taken root in R.D.’s stomach upon hearing the initial news that not only was Rock alive and well, but he’d had managed to disappear like a goddamned ghost, bloomed into an ugly flower of chill-inducing terror.

  “Wh—” Grabbing a glass of water from the edge of the desk, R.D. took a quick swallow and tried again, “What sort of intel?”

  “Reams of information on his targets,” the agent declared, discomfort in every word. “I’m talking thousands of documents with red strings connecting this piece of information to that. It looked like A Beautiful Mind in that place. Very concerning.”

  “I want copies of every piece of intel and—”

  “Now, hold on a second,” the voice on the other end of the line sounded alarmed. “You know I like you and I think it’s a shame The Company shit-canned The Project all those years ago. And I’ve been happy to help you out up until now. But this thing we had going is done. It’s over. And I’m only keeping you in the loop now as a favor and because—”

  “You’re keeping me in the loop because your ass in on the line just as much as mine is. And you helped me out because you were greedy and wanted the money The Project could provide you with. So don’t try pulling that self-righteous bullshit on me. You forget who you’re talking to.”

  “Fine.” The word was spat out like a hunk of rancid meat. “But it’s one thing to keep you up-to-date on our activities. It’s another thing entirely to funnel copies of top secret documents your way. It’s my neck on the line over here.”

  R.D. sighed in exasperation. “I understand that ever since we sacrificed the funds we took—”

  “Stole,” the agent interrupted. “Have the balls to call it what it is. We stole those funds.”

  A blood vessel in R.D’s temple began to pound. “Fine. I understand that after we had to sacrifice the funds we stole from The Project’s targets by anonymously donating them to those charities—”

  “A goddamned waste of good money, if you ask me,” the agent grumbled, and R.D. had the urge to reach through the phone and strangle the fucker.

  “Would you stop interrupting me?”

  “Why did you have to use that money for the campaign? You know that stuff always gets vetted time and again. It was a stupid—”

  Now it was R.D.’s turn to interject. “Shut up! We’ve gone over this. I made sure to cover my tracks. I spread it out over legitimate sources—”

  “Not legitimate enough, obviously. Billingsworth smelled the stench and started nosing around.”

  Yes, he had. And it was a crying shame.

  “What’s done is done,” R.D. insisted with a growl. “Now we just have to clean up the mess. Which brings me back to the point that even though you no longer have monetary incentive to continue helping and sharing information with me, you certainly have a personal one. I need to see that intel. You don’t have time to go through it piece by piece to make sure Rock didn’t find anything that points back at us. I do. Get me the documents.”

  “Nothing points back to me,” the agent announced, a chilling sort of certainty in his voice. “It was your twin brother’s murderer who was The Project’s first target. It was your use of the funds for campaign purposes that resulted in Billingsworth needing to die.”

  It took everything R.D. had to maintain calm. “Have you forgotten it was you who pointed the CIA to Rock’s post office box after he started nosing around? And, believe me, partner, if I go down for this, I’m not doing it alone.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  R.D. leaned forward, sighing heavily. “Just get me that intel, will you?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” the agent declared, but R.D. detected a note of indecision.

  Shit! It couldn’t fall apart now. “We need to stick together on this. I…” What R.D. was about to do rankled so badly it necessitated a pause. “I have some money left over from my brother’s life insurance policy if that will help you come to the right decision.”

  “How much?” the agent asked curiously.

  A hard stone of hatred settled at the bottom of R.D.’s stomach. “How much will it take?”

  Chapter Eight

  Vanessa jerked awake at the feel of a hand on her shoulder. She would have squealed, too, had not a warm palm immediately settled over her mouth.

  Who? Where—

  And that’s as far as she got before the memories came flooding back. She was in a hollowed-out log, in the middle of a Costa Rican rainforest, being hunted by the CIA with a man who had no qualms telling her that, while he thought she was hot-to-trot and he wouldn’t mind letting her polish his rocket—so to speak—he had absolutely no plans to start anything permanent with her because…and get this…he would never—that would be with a capital N, his tone had made that very obvious—fall in love with her.

  When he’d blurted that out the night before, she’d sat in the dark struck completely mute. Because, really, what did one say to a declaration like that? Ow? And, yeah, it had hurt so badly she’d been unable to breathe for long seconds afterward.

  But to admit as much to him would’ve only added to her humiliation, so she’d done the only thing she could think of. She’d pulled herself together, bolstered her tattered pride and said, “Well, okay then.” And immediately followed that up with, “Do you have anything to eat in that pack?”

  Not that she’d been hungry, of course. Quite the contrary. The granola bar he’d handed her had gone down about as easy as a handful of woodchips dipped in habanero sauce, but she’d managed, by God. Because she’d been determined not to let him see how much he’d wounded her.

  And in keeping with that line of thinking, this morning she pushed his hand away from her mouth and whispered in what she was proud to say was a completely firm and completely non-pride-shredded voice, “Holy shitburgers, I can’t believe I actually slept.” Especially not with you stretched out beside me, each one of your breaths echoing in the darkness and reminding me that, no matter what my fantasies, you’ll never be the man for me.

  Yeah, she went ahead and left that last part out.

  “It’s the adrenaline wearin’ off,” he murmured, and his voice was rock steady, too.

  Well, goody. We’re both just hunky-dory after last night’s little Come-to-Jesus chat.

  Great. Perfect…

  Goddamnit!

  She pushed into a sitting position, trying to beat back the humiliation that threatened to choke her even as she blinked owlishly in the dimness. No longer was the inside of the hollowed-out tree pitch black. Subtle light drifted through the small breaks in the dense foliage over
the opening. And despite her having named her fear—and, in the process, found a way to, maybe not beat it per se, but at least mitigate it—the break in the inky blackness was a welcome reprieve.

  Well, at least one thing seems to be going my way…

  “We need to get movin’,” he declared, stuffing all the trash, the granola bar wrappers and empty pouches of antiseptic wipes, into his pack.

  Vanessa highly suspected his actions had little to do with the fact that he was conscientious about leaving the jungle unspoiled and more to do with the fact that rule number one when trying to outfox a hunter was don’t give him a place to start. If for some reason the men gunning for them happened to stumble upon this log, Vanessa knew Rock didn’t want to leave any trace that they’d passed the night here.

  Which was fine by her. She’d rather there not be any telltale reminders of this place left lying about either, reminders that this was the spot where she’d offered herself up, body and soul, and been soundly rejected.

  A hot morsel of shame and indignation burned in her chest, but that was nothing compared to the city construction workers operating jackhammers inside her skull.

  “I have a headache so big it makes the Sears Tower look like a domino,” she admitted, lifting a hand to her temple.

  “It’s dehydration and heat exhaustion,” Rock said, shouldering into his pack and checking that the clips for his SIGs were loaded before slamming them back into the grips with his palms. The maneuver flexed the large, stylized skull tattoos with their crossed swords and the words sea, air, and land that were inked on each of his bulging biceps, and emphasized the barbed wire and thorny rose tattoos ringing his muscular forearms.

  Grrrr. Why did he have to be so damned sexy?

  I mean, seriously? He had a voice like an angel, a heaping helping of that oh-so-delicious Southern charm, a dangerous streak that was guaranteed to have a girl squirming in her seat, and a body like an Adonis? Not to mention that, while she smelled like she’d spent the night in wet clothes on the inside of a hollow log, he still managed to emit a…well, not necessarily a clean scent, but it was definitely a hot manly scent. Manly enough to have desire swirling through her belly and her toes curling inside her boots.