One corner of Carlos’s mouth quirked as he continued to shake his cargo pants and boxer shorts. “Please tell me you’ve seen a penis before.”
“Y-yes,” she rasped. “But I’ve never see one so…pretty.” Yep, and maybe she should consider not saying the first thing to pop into her head.
His eyebrows pinched together, his grin disappearing. “My penis is not pretty,” he grumbled, glancing down at the organ in question.
She begged to differ. Because he was thick, long, deeply tan, and still partially erect. And with a plump head and two identical veins running up his length, she’d go so far as to say that, in the world of phallus beauty contests, his could make a run for the money as Mr. Universe.
“If anything,” he said, still staring at it, “it’s a handsome penis, a manly penis.”
“Whatever you want to call it”—her voice was a husky parody of its usual timber—“I’m just saying I visually enjoy it.” Gah? Really, Abby? What the frickin’ sticks happened to not saying the first thing to pop into your head?
He glanced up then, and there was no use trying to hide the hunger in her expression. It was plastered so clearly across her face that a man with two glass eyes could see it. To her amazement, she watched his manly, handsome, pretty cock swell and rise.
“You keep staring at me like that, bonita,” his said, his voice all low and rumbling, his accent thick, “and I’ll be forced to go against my better judgment and push you back against this tree in order to—”
Her senses came back to her in a rush. There was a very important reason why she couldn’t walk over to him, whip off her skirt/shorts, and climb aboard the Latin love train. Choo-choo!
“Sorry!” she barked, shaking her head. Holy ass! She was dizzy. She lifted a hand to her temple. “I shouldn’t be—” She blew out a breath. “I shouldn’t have gawked. That was insanely rude of me.”
“I don’t mind.”
She glanced up to find his eyes half-lidded and sparkling. Then movement in her peripheral vision had her gaze once again darting down to his penis. Now the thing was fully engorged, standing almost vertical, and bouncing with every beat of his heart.
Her breath left her lungs in a whooshing rush and for a moment she thought she was going to have to physically reach up and, with thumbs and forefingers, force her eyeballs away from the sheer masculine beauty that was Carlos Soto in his gloriously aroused birthday suit. But after a bit of a struggle, she was able to direct her attention to the root beneath her feet.
“Come on now,” he teased as he stepped back into his boxer shorts. For the love of St. Christopher’s cane! Hurry up and get ’em on, already! She was about two seconds away from taking him up on that offer of pushing her back against the tree. And that would be so, so bad. For many reasons. “Surely you’re not shy after what we just did together.”
“I’m not shy.” She decided to play the logic card. It was the only thing she had in her deck that was worth anything. “I just think we shouldn’t press our luck. Let’s cross the Thai border, catch a ride with that extraction team, and then we can talk about…” what happened “…whatever.”
“Probably for the best.” His tone was amused. Although she didn’t lift her gaze from the pattern of brown bark winding beneath her black flats, she could hear him slipping on his pants and then hopping from the root to retrieve his jungle boots and holster. The subtle clanking sound of a jostled handgun told her he’d re-strapped the latter to his thigh. And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, she was able to draw a full breath.
She’d done it. She’d resisted him. And it was as if she’d run a marathon. She was completely and thoroughly depleted.
“You ready?” he asked.
No. Not in the slightest. “Of course.” She forced a smile.
“Good girl.”
God, why did he have to keep saying that?
* * *
“Tell me why you planted those bombs!” Dan thundered, slamming his hands down on the little circular table and glaring at the blubbering hotel maid with so much fire in his eyes Penni thought it was a wonder the woman’s hair didn’t ignite. Just whoosh! “Tell me how you knew which rooms to put ’em in!”
Penni curled her fingers under the seat of her chair as Dan’s voice echoed around the cramped storage space the hotel manager had allowed them to turn into an interrogation chamber. The hotel’s security director had called in sick to work, and the only surveillance footage the manager had known how to access was that from the elevators. But it had been enough. Because after spending a couple of hours combing through the previous day’s archived digital recordings, they happened to come across footage of a maid, the very maid seated across from them now, as she exited the elevators onto the twenty-third floor, their floor.