Chapter Three
“We have got to go.” Alex grasped her arm, but her resistance surprised him. He knew she hurt, but he thought her will to survive was stronger.
He turned. Her gaze was riveted by a kid sprawled on his stomach, arms stretched out toward a woman—his mother?
The goddess stared. Damn, was she going to break down on him? Last thing he needed was a hysterical female.
“We can’t just leave them like this,” she said through lips that didn’t move. “We need to bury them.”
He felt sick about it, but said, “Right, and Santiago’s men will just hang back and wait for us to finish our good deed. We’re moving on.”
She dug her heels into the soft earth beside one of the smallest victims. Neither of them looked down. Instead, her eyes burned into his.
“I hate you.”
“I’m hurt.” He headed off into the jungle, hating himself pretty much as well.
Isabella followed, barely able to see him through the tears of sorrow and anger that blurred her vision. Each step took them from the people who needed their help, and she couldn’t forgive him for it.
Finally, she couldn’t go any farther. They’d left the village an hour ago, maybe longer. Her muscles were watery and her feet screamed in a symphony of pain. She was dizzy and she was thirsty and she was hot. But she hadn’t spoken to Shepard since they’d left the villagers lying in the open, waiting for the jungle to reclaim them.
He hadn’t spoken to her, either, had gotten as far as twenty feet away before slowing to wait for her. She’d thought he meant to leave her, like he had the villagers, and part of her was relieved. She couldn’t go on much longer.
He was ahead of her again, standing, waiting, every line of his body telegraphing his impatience. She didn’t hurry to catch up—couldn’t—but when she reached him, he swung his pack to the ground and said, “Break,” without looking at her.
Why was he mad? Oh, yes—he thought it was her fault those people were dead.
He might be right. She couldn’t care just now.
As he crouched and opened his pack, she swayed on her feet. He pawed through, then reached up toward her with a power bar in his fist. She took it, unwrapped the plastic and scarfed the crumbly bar, barely tasting it, before he stood, unwrapping his own.
His gaze flicked from the empty wrapper, then her, for the first time since the village. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hungry?”
Surely he was smart enough to figure it out, so she didn’t answer. When he rolled his eyes, she knew he’d made the connection.
“Still mad?”
She didn’t have the energy to argue with him about leaving those people, didn’t want to tell him about her fears that he’d leave her as well, so she said nothing.
“There was a reason you snuck out of the compound, right?” he asked.
His ability to form complete sentences stunned her. He had to be as exhausted as she was. She merely nodded.
“I figure you probably don’t want to go back or end up like those people.”
The memories of those people swamped her, choking her, and she shook her head. Her eyes burned. She was going to cry and he was going to hate her even more.
“If we die out here, no one’s going to bury us,” she whispered.
“No.”
Her breathing became faster as she swallowed her tears, then she whirled away from him, too tired to fight them anymore. Dizzy, she dropped to her knees, dug her fingers into the decaying vegetation and stopped resisting.
Terror, rage, sorrow gushed out in a torrent, monsters her body struggled to purge. Behind her, Shepard loomed, making no effort to quiet her, to comfort her, to chide her. He only stood, waited until she got control of herself.
Sitting on her heels, she wiped at her face. She couldn’t look at him, at his judgmental eyes. But once her vision cleared she saw the canteen he offered her. She took it silently and drank big gulps, passed it back considerably lighter.
He sighed and capped it. “You need to get some sleep.”
If he’d told her they would be airlifted into Air Force One, she wouldn’t have been more surprised. Or relieved. But… “Where?”
He pointed up, still looking at her. “There.”
She followed his finger. “In the tree.”
“Yep.”
“How are we going to get there?”
He swung his pack on his shoulder and grinned—the first smile she’d seen, and the flash of white teeth took her breath away. She had thought he was handsome before, sure, the lean planes of his face accented by his shorn brown hair and his body honed to perfection. But there had been nothing in his eyes but contempt.
Until now.
He was challenging her, probably his way of motivating her. A challenge, she could take. Except she’d never climbed a tree before, not even as a kid. She’d always been a princess.
“Why in the tree?” she asked.
“Because if Saldana’s men come, they won’t be likely to look in the trees.”
That made sense. “What about jaguars?”
“They’re nocturnal. We have a couple of good hours before we have to worry about them.” He followed her gaze up. “It’s not the featherbed you’re used to, but it will be safe enough. I’ll go first.” He moved toward the tree and inspected it for a moment, finding hidden footholds before muscling his way to the first fork, about ten feet off the ground.
Then he turned and reached for her.
Right. She secured her pack behind her and gripped the tree, trying to find the footholds he’d found in the slick bark. Her already throbbing feet protested as she clumsily bumped them against the trunk, searching for a way to get up.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“I’m not as closely related to my ape ancestors as you,” she muttered and hauled her weight onto the slight foothold she’d found, only to slide loose and hit the ground with enough force to have her feet screaming.
“Jesus, Goddess.”
“I’ve never climbed a tree before,” she said, frustration making her grit her teeth. “And quit calling me that. My name is Isabella.”
“I know your name.”
She tried again, with a different foothold, refused to see how far away he was.
“I know what yours is too,” she said, almost breathless with the effort of hauling herself up almost two feet from the ground. Her stupid pack made her off balance. “That A on your name patch? It’s Asshole, isn’t it?”
He chuckled softly, but his voice sounded close. She looked up in surprise to find his fingers closer than she thought, and she gave herself a heave until their fingers brushed, another till he could grip her wrist and pull.
When she was sitting beside him in the Y of tree branches, he turned to her and grinned. “You got it, sweetheart.”
The first fork in the tree wasn’t good enough for him. No, it was too close to the ground. So they had to climb to the next one. If he thought she was going to be able to fall asleep twenty feet from the ground, where one shift of her weight while she was sleeping could send her tumbling out of the tree and onto her head…
“Come over here.” It was a command, so she paused. They were in close-enough quarters but he wanted her closer.
Part of her hesitation was that, well, she was a little scared of him. He didn’t like her, had no reason to keep her safe, and she was slowing him down. He might well push her to the ground.
The other reason was that she smelled to high heaven, and she was still woman enough to worry about his reaction to that.
Not that he smelled any better.
Not that she noticed what he smelled like.
“Goddamn.” He stopped himself. “Isabella, get over here. Just treat me like your pillow, all right?”
Shepard as a pillow. That would be about as comfortable as a rock. But he would anchor her. Reluctantly, she edged closer so they were hip to hip. He shifted his arm so he could loop it over her shoulders, holding her against his side. She had no choice but to relax back against his shoulder. Hard, just like she thought.
She’d never slept with a man’s arms around her, never experienced this level of intimacy. Why did she have to realize that now? She’d never get to sleep.
“How are your hands?” she asked so she wouldn’t be focused on the rhythm of his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest that suddenly consumed her field of vision.
“Good. How are your feet?”
Liar. “Peachy.”
“I’ll check them before we leave.” His chest rumbled with the words. “I’d have you take off your shoes right now, but no telling what the blood might attract.”
She was definitely not going to get any sleep thinking about that. “How long till we can get in contact with the rest of your crew?”
“I’ll try again in the morning. One step at a time, Goddess.”
“Okay.” His voice, his words, were soothing, along with the steadiness of his heartbeat beneath her cheek. She fell asleep almost immediately.
The goddess was drooling. That was the only explanation for the wet patch under his nipple, right about where her mouth was.
He’d awakened himself after two hours of sleep. He wanted to be out of the tree before nightfall and he had to rebandage his hands and her feet.
She was so relaxed against him, one hand sprawled across his belly, one leg thrown across his.
And she was drooling. The sleep of the innocent.
He, however, had a hard-on. He thought about putting her palm over his erection, be the asshole she thought he was. But then he’d be just like her. Goddamn her.
Now that he’d found his anger again and let it supplant any tenderness, he could wake her. He shoved at her shoulder.
“Come on, Goddess. Time to get moving.”
She didn’t move, at first, just made a soft sound of protest that shot to his groin. Christ.
He shoved harder. “Isabella. We have to go.”
She curled into herself, dragging her fingers across his stomach, her leg along his.
“Please. A little longer,” she said in a husky voice.
“No time.” He kept his tone as sharp as necessary to penetrate her sleep. Had he been too soft with her before? Did she think he wasn’t in charge here? “Let’s go.”
She sat up slowly, wiping drool from the corner of her mouth with the shoulder of her shirt. Her face reddened when she saw the wet patch on his shirt. At least she wasn’t looking at the bulge in his pants.
“Can you get down by yourself? I have to pee.” He pushed her away till no part of her was touching him, then he started down without waiting for her answer.
The jungle was scary as hell at night. The sounds, the cries of the animals that lived there, intensified. Even though she couldn’t see all the animals during the day, not being able to see them at night was more frightening.
Shepard wasn’t talking again. Had she only imagined his kindness earlier? But no, she hadn’t been tired enough to dream something that couldn’t have happened, and she’d awakened in his arms, after he’d offered himself as her pillow. She hadn’t imagined that. What had happened while she was sleeping?
She hated the silence, though. It left her head too full of her own thoughts and fears. She had to talk, to hear another voice, or go crazy. So she hit upon a topic of conversation.
“Tell me about her,” she said.
He whipped his head around. “What?”
“Tell me about your girl. The one who is so much more deserving than I am.”
He grunted and continued forward. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Do we need to be quiet? Are they close?” She eased closer to him, regretting that her temper overcame her sense of survival.
His shoulders relaxed a bit. “I haven’t seen any sign.”
She fell back, allowing more space between them. “So we can talk.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“I got that. But I want to know about her. You miss her.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Where does she live? Where you live? Do you live together?”
He whipped around. “Goddess, as far as I’m concerned, you’re the enemy. I’m not telling you anything about my private life.”
She shut out the pain that his words caused. “Not that you have one or anything, what with trekking through jungles all over the world.”
He stiffened. She didn’t know if it was the private-life comment or…
“I hate jungles.” He stalked off.
A few hours later—God knew how long they’d been walking. The trees were so thick, it could be broad daylight but they’d never know it—Shepard signaled for her to stop again.
“What?” she whispered, right up behind him, and he glared.
Okay, so she’d be quiet. Except the need to be quiet meant danger. Her heart pounded and she wouldn’t have been able to hear him if he did speak to her.
Now what?
“Village,” he finally said, so low, she mostly just read his lips.
Her heart filled with dread. If Santiago’s men had been here first, she couldn’t handle seeing that carnage again.
“Not dead,” Shepard said in that less-than whisper.
How did he know? But she allowed herself a small measure of relief at his words.
Then he was dropping his pack to the ground and motioned for her to have a seat on a fallen log. “We wait here till dawn.”
Alex couldn’t make any headway with the chief of the village. He wanted information and he wanted supplies, but either the man didn’t understand Alex’s admittedly choppy Spanish or he didn’t like the fact that an American soldier had been waiting at the edge of his village at daybreak. Not that Alex could blame him.
The man stood stubbornly despite Alex’s bargaining, cajoling, doing damn near everything but begging.
He stomped back to Isabella’s side, disgusted.
“What is it you want from him?” she asked wearily.
The woman was so tired she could barely stand, and he couldn’t get his mind off her mangled feet. Both issues were in the forefront of his mind as he spoke to the chief, and probably his frustration had mangled his message. “Best case? Transportation. Failing that, some supplies to replenish what we’ve used. I hadn’t counted on hiking two of us out on the supplies I had.” He’d given her his last power bar this morning. Hunger didn’t improve his mood.
“Okay.” She gave him the gun he’d let her carry so he would appear less threatening. She stepped back, bent her head and shook her hair loose. Then she straightened and scooped it back into a ponytail. Smoothing her palms down the front of her filthy T-shirt, she squared her shoulders and sauntered toward the chief.
As best she could on those bad feet, anyway.
While Alex watched, she moved in close to the chief. She tucked a stray dark curl behind her ear, tilted her head one way, her hip another. She smiled, her eyes bright with it, her whole face transforming to something even more beautiful, despite her lack of makeup and her exhaustion. The chief asked her something about being a captive, but she only laughed, letting her head fall back, exposing the line of her throat. Alex was riveted to the sight of her long neck, even ringed as it was with dirt.
The chief was riveted too.
She said something to him and he replied in rapid-fire Spanish. Isabella gave him all her attention, watching him, nodding, touching his arm.
Christ, what a player.
She waved in Alex’s direction and the chief nodded. Isabella leaned forward and kissed the man’s cheek before she turned and approached Alex with a smirk replacing that gorgeous smile.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded.
“Vicente regrets that he doesn’t have enough food to send with us, but we’re welcome to join his family for breakfast. Unfortunately, that won’t be for a couple of hours, so he said we are more than welcome to use their facilities before breakfast.”
“Their facilities,” he repeated, beating down his disgust that she was able to charm the man when he wasn’t able to reason with him.
“A waterfall,” she said, a tinge of rapture in her voice as she pulled her hair free of its ponytail. “It will feel so good to be clean again.”
Alex checked out the river before he let Isabella go in. Just what he needed was to pick a bunch of leeches off her naked body. But calling it a waterfall was a little grand. It was no more than a steady flow of water over rocks into a clear pool surrounded by low plants—no place for predators to hide. She was safe enough.
From the moment he said so, she started stripping, and he turned, intending to go into the village.
He stopped at the edge, realizing he had no allies there. Not that it was out of the ordinary—US soldiers weren’t welcome many places. He should be relieved not to have to worry about Isabella. He could leave her here. Once he had his supplies, he could haul ass to meet the rest of his team and get the hell out of this country.
Except the DEA wanted Isabella for questioning, and they’d just send him back in for her.
For a drug lord’s whore.
Not for the first time, he wished he could see Rebecca, touch her, kiss her, take comfort in her innocence. He loved how calm he felt with her, not the tension he experienced every moment with Bella. Too much time had passed since he’d seen her and he needed the normalcy he felt with her again.
Figuring Isabella must be close to done bathing and needing to make sure she was safe, he headed back to the waterfall.
Isabella stood beneath the flow of water, her profile to him, her arms lifted to thread through her hair as the water pounded her body. She was bare-breasted, wearing only a tiny pair of pink panties. And she was humming.
Christ have mercy, she was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen.
She turned, opening her eyes, looking right at him as if she’d felt him watching her. She didn’t cover herself, only watched him watch her.
“Are you coming in?” she called at last.
Why the fuck not? He was filthy, sweat dried on his skin beneath layers of more sweat. He was hot and he was horny—the cool water should take care of both those issues.
He sat to unlace his boots, then stuffed his socks in them to prevent any fun surprises like snakes. He stood and stripped down to his skivvies. What the hell—he stripped those off too.
The goddess was staring. Let her look.
He stood and inspected the clear depths, too shallow to dive. So he took two steps back and cannonballed in, drawing his legs up and giving a whoop.
The pool swallowed him, cold and clear, washing away the past two days. His ass hit the bottom hard and he pushed to his feet, letting the water sluice over him. He whipped the droplets out of his face and still the goddess stared.
“Like what you see?” he challenged.
She did. She really did. His body was hard, sculpted, and there was something appealing about the dog tags resting against his bare chest.
The water came to his ribs, but it was so clear she could see down to his— And it was very impressive.
What would it be like to be with a young virile man instead of one who needed tricks to get off?
No, she couldn’t even think like that. Shepard served one purpose and one only—to get her home.
Besides, he hated her.
“Aren’t you going cover yourself up?” he asked snidely.
“Why?” she asked, determined not to let him make her feel bad about her body. “You interrupted my bath.”
“You’ve been down here half an hour. You should be—pruney.”
“I don’t want to be hot again. It’s not like I’m wasting water.”
“Well, you can’t trek through the jungle like that.”
“Is it time to go already?”
“Soon.”
She sat on one of the moss-covered rocks, dangled her toes in the pool. Shepard moved closer, took one of her feet in both hands to inspect it. Blisters swelled across her toes, some of the skin was rubbed raw, especially around the ankles. His expression grew somber.
“How are you walking on these?”
“You’re not giving me much choice.”
He looked up at her. “Maybe your friend the chief has something, salve or socks or better fitting shoes.”
“So that’s why you’re mad at me now? I was able to accomplish something you weren’t because I was nice?”
“You were able to accomplish something I couldn’t because you’re a beautiful woman. And I was nice.” He dropped her foot.
“You don’t know what nice is. It was fake and he could tell you were just using him.”
“You weren’t?”
“Of course. He had something I wanted. People do it all the time. But the point is to make them feel like they’re doing it because they want to, not because they’re intimidated.”
His nostrils flared. He did that a lot when he was angry. “I was being nice.”
“Please. You’re trained to intimidate, and you’re a master at it. I think part of the reason you don’t like me is that I talk back.” She slipped off the rock and into the pool. He took a step back, but only a step. “Am I right? Don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t like you because you use your body to get what you want.”
She wasn’t prepared for him to admit that he didn’t like her, though she couldn’t say why. Shepard had been nothing if not brutally honest.
So she’d be honest too. “I use my body to survive.”
“Because taking your clothes off and lying underneath men is the only way to survive? You seem smart enough that you could have found other options. You took the easy way out.”
“Trust me when I say nothing about my life has been easy.” She gave in to the urge to swim away, to put some distance between them. Honesty hurt.
“You’ve made your choices. How your life has gone is based on those choices. You don’t know what a hard life is unless you don’t have choices.”
“You’re right.”
She swept her arms back and forth in the water, treading water, angry at herself that he was making her ashamed of her body. She put her feet down and rose to her full height, gloating when his gaze dropped to her nipples and the water running down her body. His jaw tightened.
“I made bad choices. Coming here, letting myself be dazzled by Santiago. But that doesn’t excuse what he did to me, what I had to do to survive it. Yes, I became a whore, but that wasn’t the choice. See, Santiago couldn’t get it up after a few weeks, so he bought me the vibrators. Watching that excited him for a while, but then it was his guests he wanted to watch fuck me. He had a lot of guests. Old, smelly guests.”
Shepard watched her grimly, his eyes giving nothing away. “You could have refused.”
“Gee, thanks. That never occurred to me. The first time, I didn’t think Santiago would go through with it. It was too late to fight then. The next time, I was beaten—by both of them—until I couldn’t walk for days. The last time I tried to fight, he took my son away.” She hadn’t been ready to share that information, hadn’t decided if Shepard even needed to know. But now it was out in the open.
Shock flared on his face, finally an emotion. “You have a son?”