Full Throttle(78)

So she did the only thing she could: She gave herself a reason to cry. One he wouldn’t find suspicious. “And since we’re on the subject of sorry,” she quickly added, dismayed to hear her voice crack, “I think it’s time you told me what happened to my security detail. Why you were forced to come up here all alone.”

She hadn’t missed that strange…something that had entered his tone back there in the jungle when she asked who would be meeting them over the border in Thailand. Although, quite honestly, she’d been doing her damndest to avoid it. Because niggling at the back of her brain like a colony of termites was the suspicion that she wasn’t going to like whatever he told her. And, sure enough, she’d been right to put off the inevitable when his big chest rose on a huge, indrawn breath a second before his words plunged into her heart like a giant pair of hedge clippers.

“They’re dead, Abby. All except Agent DePaul.”

Oh…God! It was worse, even, than she’d feared. She’d been prepared for incapacitation or injuries, but…but this? And now she didn’t need an excuse for her tears, the explosive waterworks were in earnest. She choked on them as she pushed up on her elbow to stare down at him, disbelief and remorse nearly suffocating her.

“H-how?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t when he described, in clipped, no-bullshit terms, the brutal deaths of the Secret Service agents.

“Sweet Jesus!” she wheezed when he was finished. “Not again!”

“Abby.” He tried to pull her into his arms, but she refused to let him, refused to be comforted when six more people were dead because of her. “This doesn’t fall to you, cariño. Wait…what do you mean not again? Has something like this happened before?”

She realized her mistake. “I-I can’t…I don’t…No. No, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’ve lost them, too,” she finally managed, shaking her head.

His expression cleared, and this time when he wrapped his big hand behind her head to pull her dripping face down to his chest, she let him. Lord forgive her, but she needed him right now. Needed his warmth, his strength, his support.

Six dead…

“Shh, shh, neña,” he crooned, running his wide-palmed hand over her hair as she gnashed her teeth and soaked his chest. “You have to know this wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. And those agents were well aware of the risks they faced when they joined the Secret Service.”

Yes, maybe she hadn’t done anything wrong this time, but she couldn’t help but feel responsible. Those agents never would have been in Malaysia, in the same realm with a skinny bunch of bloodthirsty terrorists, if not for her. Marcy Tucker, LaVaughn Silver, Tony Bosco, and the others would still be here if she’d only—

“You’re breaking my fucking heart, Abby.” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her completely atop him so he could wrap both arms securely around her. Her knees fell to either side of his narrow hips, scraping against the mat. “But it’s okay, mi vida.” He lifted her chin with his thumb and forefinger to pepper her wet face with gentle kisses. “It’s okay to cry. I’ll kiss each tear away.”

Only when he was holding her like this, loving her like this, the last thing she wanted to do was cry. In a blinding flash of clarity that seemed to coincide with a blaze of lightning through the hut’s walls, she realized this was it. These few moments, right here, right now, were all they had left. The rain would let up soon and their time together as friends, as lovers, would end with the fury of the storm.

I’m not ready for that. Not yet. Not yet…

And despite the soul-sucking pain and grief slicing into her chest like a garden spade, she was determined to make one more beautiful memory. One that would last her a lifetime. “Make love to me again,” she whispered before claiming his lips in a deep, penetrating kiss. She could taste the salt from her tears mixing with the sweetness of the rambutans and her own flavor on his tongue.

He stilled beneath her, hesitating, even as his tongue eagerly met hers stroke for stroke.

“Touch me, Carlos,” she husked. “I need to feel your hands on me again.”

“Dios,” he growled, his hands sliding from her back to her bottom, the calluses on his palms deliciously scratchy. He grew hard in an instant. His plump plumb-shaped head pulsing insistently against her lower belly.

“Yes,” she breathed into his mouth, bracing one hand above his shoulder and using the other to reach down between them. The thick base of his cock filled her hand as she angled him toward her opening. And when the searing head of him penetrated her, filled her, stretched her, she watched him grit his jaw and arch his neck.