Chapter 35
She was sorry.
The thought exploded in Gabe’s mind, burning a little deeper with every jarring step he took. He had fucked up…again. Made mistakes that nearly cost both their lives. And she was sorry. The idea was damn near hilarious. But he wasn’t laughing. Instead, he trudged on, watching her as she moved ahead of him through the receding darkness.
They didn’t hike far before finding a little haven a couple hundred yards from the river. Sheltered on the south by an overhanging bluff, from the east and west by almost impenetrable vines, it was relatively dry and utterly hidden.
“We’ll rest here for a while,” he said.
She nodded but remained silent.
He didn’t ask if she was all right, didn’t offer platitudes, didn’t coddle her. She’d volunteered for this mission, he reminded himself again. She was a trained agent, for God’s sake, not some half drowned fairy goddess, no matter how she looked. “I’ll see what I can find for kindling.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. She lifted her chin a little. “I don’t need a fire,” she added but didn’t quite manage to suppress the full body shudder that shook her.
Holy shit. “Well, I do,” he said and stepped back into the elements. But in the end, he had to admit defeat. Every inch of jungle was as wet as a first kiss.
He turned toward the cave in defeat, a little more tired, a little more angry, a little more fucked up.
And she was sorry.
It took him a few minutes to get his bearings after turning back, but he finally ducked through the wall of vines to find her digging through his pack. He stopped. Had there really been a time when he resented others touching his gear? It seemed unlikely, since the sight of her pale, delicate fingers against his bag made him feel strangely… He didn’t have a word for how he felt. Nostalgic maybe. Or homesick.
She glanced up. “I’m sorry. I can’t find the matches. They were in your pack, weren’t they?” Her voice was hopeful, but her lips were blue.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I couldn’t find any dry wood.”
“Oh.” Though she tried to hold on, the hope had slipped from her voice.
“Take your shirt off,” he said.
She blinked.
“Hurry up,” he ordered.
She rose reluctantly to her feet, skin ashen, as if she’d rather face a firing squad.
He scowled at her. It wasn’t like he was the devil or something. There were women who actually found him attractive. None he could name right off the top of his head, but oh…fuck, she was taking off her shirt.
He dropped his attention to his pack with a concerted effort and fumbled with the ties that held their one remaining sleeping bag. Rising, he prepared to hand it over, but she was just pulling her bra over her head and suddenly his mouth couldn’t quite remember how to formulate articulate speech.
He blinked at her, heart pounding. Who would have guessed her breasts looked like…well, like that! “Pants, too,” he managed.
She stared at him as if unsure whether he had spoken. But, hell yeah, he wasn’t a complete moron.
“What?” she asked.
“Listen…” He tried to keep his tone deadpan, but while his heart was doing some kind of weird happy dance in his dumb-ass chest, his head was reminding him that it was hard enough making it through the jungle with a healing shoulder, an achy hand and a bitching leg wound. A full-blown hard-on wasn’t going to make things any easier. “You don’t need to worry. I don’t have enough energy to bother you anyway.”
“I’m not…worried,” she said.
“Then get out of those pants before you catch your death.” Catch your death? Holy crap, he sounded like some antiquated school marm. He might as well have said she was going to catch the ague. What was the hell was the ague anyway? Something the super-hot women in historical novels always seemed in danger of contracting.
“I’m fine. Really,” she said, but just as the words left her mouth, she shuddered.
“You’re not fine,” he said. “You’re freezing. Take off your pants. We’ll get you as dry as we can.”
She pursed her lips and bent to untie her boots. But her fingers were sluggish.
Crouching, he nudged her hands away and undid her laces. She straightened self-consciously, taking her breasts with her. He tugged off her footwear and tossed them aside. In a moment, she was easing out of her pants.
Holy ever-loving hell, her legs were almost as spectacular as her breasts. And who the hell would have thought that was possible? They were pale, smooth, and as long as a thoroughbred’s. Her belly was flat, her panties red, and her sweetly rounded bottom almost entirely visible beneath the wet fabric.
Sweat popped out on his forehead like dew on a lily. He jerked his gaze away and fiddled with the zipper on the sleeping bag, but it was stuck tight.
“Could I have that?” she asked and reached toward him.
He blinked.
“Durrand?”
“What? Oh!” he said, realizing belatedly that she was reaching for the sleeping bag.
He handed it off and she wrapped it around her body. Still zipped, it left spare pieces and parts disturbing visible: her left shoulder, her right thigh. Jesus God, was she trying to drive him crazy?
Visions of the night they’d first met flashed through his discombobulated brain. Maybe she wouldn’t be completely adverse to the idea of sex. In fact, hey! It would warm her up. Practical, really. And, at one time, she hadn’t seemed entirely repulsed by him. Some women found him mildly appealing. True, that was generally before he opened his mouth. And he’d pretty much done everything wrong from the moment he’d laid eyes on this particular woman. He had, at one point, threatened her life, and past experience with women, though admittedly sparse, suggested that the fairer sex didn’t usually appreciate that sort of thing. But she was standing very close, making his gut cramp up and his cock—
“Does it hurt?”
He stared at her.
“Your hand,” she said. “Let me see it.”
He didn’t know how long it should have taken him to respond. But he was pretty damned sure his silence shouldn’t last a full thirty seconds. “My hand’s fine.”
“It’s bleeding.”
He glanced at it. Yup, it was bleeding. “You should take off your…” He shook his head. For reasons entirely unknown, he couldn’t seem to say the word underwear in her presence. He considered undergarments but that seemed ridiculous, like some fastidious blue-haired woman in a PBS special. Unmentionables might make her wonder about his literary choices, and the term panties remained stuck in his throat like a goddamn cocklebur. “—the rest of your clothes,” he finished badly and squatting, untied his own boots. His fingers felt like chilled sausages.
“Aren’t you cold?” she asked.
He straightened, toed off the wet leather then pulled off his saturated t-shirt. “No.” The air felt like shards of ice against his bare chest. “I’m naturally hot-blooded.” Hot-blooded? Really? Shit.
She stared at him, eyes bright as emeralds in the slow-waking sun. “What if you run a fever again?”
“Not going to happen. I’m still on antibiotics and I have dry clothes,” he said then tugged a shirt from his pack. If he weren’t mistaken, at least part of one sleeve wasn’t entirely soaked.
She drew a deep breath before speaking. “I’ll do better.”
“What?” He glanced up sharply.
“I won’t mess up again,” she murmured and something in her melancholy expression made his mind explode.
“What the hell are you talking about?” His voice growled like a cantankerous bear, but she didn’t back down.
“That pack was my responsibility. I should have been more careful crossing the river. I compromised the mission and for that I apologize.”
He ground his teeth at her. “Listen, Edwards, this is my operation. I ordered you to cross the river knowing the risk factor was escalated due to fatigue and darkness.” Goddammit, he sounded like a fucking robot. Not to mention the fact that he was the one who had knocked her over. “Culpability is mine.”
She drew a deep breath through her nostrils. Her nose was slightly upturned, and damned if he couldn’t make out her freckles even in the shit poor light. You know who shouldn’t be on deadly mission in the middle of a fucking jungle? Fairies with freckles.
“Maybe I can find the GPS,” she said.
He turned his head slightly, certain he had heard her wrong. “What?”
“The guidance system,” she said. She was standing ramrod straight. “I dropped it when I fell, but it may not have hit the river. If you let me use your headlamp, I can check the east bank and be back before it’s fully light.”
Is she fucking kidding? he wondered, but one glance into her ridiculously serious face assured him she was not. “Listen, Edwards,” he said, “mistakes were made. Things went south. Let’s not make the situation worse than it is. Try to get some sleep.” He pulled the half-soaked jersey over his head and glared at her over the top of the ribbed neck only to find that she was just jerking her gaze up to meet his.
He froze. Holy shit! Was she checking him out?
She lifted her chin. “I understand that you feel it’s your duty to keep me safe,” she said. Her gaze was as steady as granite on his now, and her cheeks had gained a little color. “But I’m a trained agent. I can look after myself.” She took another stuttering step toward him. “And I would appreciate the opportunity to remedy my mistakes.” Her tone was as stiff as her posture; her knuckles white where they clutched the edge of the sleeping bag, which brushed her thighs. Her bare thighs. Her long, smooth, hopelessly perfect bare thighs.
His cock did a little check in, but he checked it back out.
“Just get some sleep,” he said and forced himself to turn away before there was no hope whatsoever of doing something so painfully sensible. “That’s an order.”