Sonofabitch. She is not yours. You must resist the urge to shelter and care for her.
Snarling at himself, he made his way around her property via a small trail that led to the sloped beach. He found the back entrance to her yard-a tiny patio with a low wall that butted against the beach without much protection from intruders. He hopped over the wall and tried the back door.
Unlocked.
"Damned woman is asking for trouble." He'd have to talk to her about that later. If he talked to her. At this point, he didn't know if he'd ever speak with her.
He entered the kitchen and was hit with a delicious scent-sweet, floral, and fresh.
Ashli.
Must ignore how good she smells. It is simply chemistry. A physiological reaction. Are you weaker than chemistry? No! You are not. You are a god. Chemistry is your bitch.
He looked around the kitchen, inspecting for any obvious dangers. It was cheerful and tidy with white-and-blue Mexican tiled counters. A bowl of mangos and papayas topped the little wooden table in the center of the room.
Nothing overtly perilous.
Máax continued to the living room. Typical for these parts, the floors had that reddish-brown tile and the walls were made of rough plaster. On the coffee table, a bright blue, hand-painted ceramic water pitcher sat next to a small potted plant and a little Mayan statue of his sister Akna, the Goddess of Fertility. The statue depicted her with a giant round belly, gritting her teeth as she prepared to give birth. Máax instantly found himself imagining Ashli with a big round belly, carrying his bab-
Sonofabitch! No. You will not have babies with her. You are going to be entombed. Forever. And if that doesn't happen, it's because there's an apocalypse. There is no future for you and her.
Grumbling profanities at himself, he finished inspecting the room. Beautiful black-and-white photographs of the ruins of Tulum hung on the wall. He leaned in toward one of the frames to inspect the signature. "Ashli Rosewood." She'd taken the pictures. He didn't know why, but imagining her traipsing about in the ruins with her camera made him smile. Then there were her stunning photos of the beach. She seemed to love the ocean as much as he did.
Not that it mattered.
That's right. Means nothing. Millions of people love the ocean. It's not like she's a fucking unicorn.
He continued down a long hallway and found a study without much to see: desk, chair, bookshelves filled with those god-awful romance novels. The next room was a dusty guest quarters with a private, enclosed patio.
He pushed the last door open and saw the large unmade bed. Her sweet, tropical scent filled the air.
Her room.
He inhaled deeply. A wave of heat flooded his groin, triggering his male anatomy to thicken. Exactly how fucking old are you, man? Pathetic.
But he could no more stop his arousal than he could that sliver of satisfaction he felt from finding no trace of any male. None at all. But why was a woman of such beauty, who clearly had a rabid following of eligible men as he'd seen when he went to her café, without a man?
Perhaps she has been waiting for you. That thought pleased him.
Why? She is not yours. In fact, you should be hoping and praying she moves on. Finds a male worthy of her.
Ignore vicious pangs of jealousy. Must ignore.
Máax completed his inspection of the entire home-bathroom, laundry room, closets. It was clean, well cared for, and had no obvious dangers about with the exception of the easy access to the beach. He'd have to make sure her doors were always locked.
Now for the next task. He grabbed Ashli's car keys from a clay dish by the front door, went outside, and ripped out her battery cables.
That should prevent her from driving for a while. She could walk to work, and he would follow closely behind to protect her.
Yes, but not too close.
Ashli panted hard, her sweaty body burning with heat while she stretched. The run had felt amazing, and her muscles now trembled from the exertion. She hiked up the steep, sandy embankment to the back of her home, but as she was about to enter the enclosed patio, she noticed large footprints in the sand, disappearing where the cement slab started a few feet from her back door.
She froze. Someone was inside. She and her neighbors paid for a security service to patrol the beach, but that didn't mean someone couldn't sneak by.
She backed away from the door and sprinted toward the shoreline for a better view of the beach.
There he is. "Oye! Oye, Señor Luis!" She waved at the short, older man wearing Bermudas and carrying a baton. He waved back, and she pointed at her house. He immediately understood and charged toward her back porch, disappearing inside her house.
Ten minutes later, Luis emerged. "Nadie. No hay nadie. Qué pasó?"
She explained about the footprints, but Luis swore he'd checked every inch of her house and found no one. Nothing missing. Nothing disturbed.
She thanked him and went inside, but the moment she crossed the threshold, an eerie sensation nearly sacked her. "Hello? Is anyone here?"
Dammit, Ash. Luis told you the place is empty. But what was that strange scent? It was faint, but she did smell it. Like a sweet, exotic spice of some sort. Not Luis. Luis smelled more like last night's tequila and rancid ocean.
She grabbed a large knife from her kitchen drawer and tiptoed into her living room. Although her home had those natural clay tile floors (kept things cooler), the rest of the house was bright and cheery with lots of windows and light, tons of fun Mexican artesania-little clay statues, handwoven tapestries, and hand-stitched pillows with bright red flowers.
But not one single item had been disturbed. Nothing.
Quietly she tiptoed down the hallway. When she got to her room, she pushed open the door and held out her knife, quickly releasing a breath. "No one's here. And you're an idiot." Why was she so determined to spoil this wonderful day? Her first day off in a year.
She would take a shower, put on her favorite little hang-out dress, make poached eggs with the handmade tortillas she'd bought yesterday, and sit out on her patio reading a book. She'd ordered five new historical romance novels, the ones with the hunky kilted guys, and had yet to dig into any of them.
Shaking her head, she placed the knife on the dresser and began shedding her sweaty clothes. Naked, she trotted down the hallway to her bathroom. She reached inside the shower stall to turn on the water and heard a crash. Her head flipped in the direction of the sink where her perfume bottle lay.
That's funny, she thought. Hadn't she left the perfume on the other side of the sink?
You're imagining things. Stop. Trying. To ruin. This day!
Ashli slipped inside and took the longest shower of her life, carefully shaving all of those places that needed shaving since she planned to go swimming later, and then wrapped herself in her robe. She went into the kitchen, turned on the kettle and music-salsa always put her in a good mood-and began heating her frying pan to warm up her tortillas.
"My day. It's my day," she sang over the peppy Celia Cruz tune. "Nothing's going to ruin it. Nothing's going to-ouch!" She slapped her neck. A burning sensation spread through her shoulder and down her arm.
She glanced down at the twitching bee next to her bare foot. "Crap, crap, crap."
She leaped to her refrigerator and dug through the top shelf. Dammit! Her syringe! Where the hell was it? It didn't require refrigeration, but it was where she always left it. Maribel, her cleaning lady, must've moved it.
"No. No. No." Ashli rushed to her purse on the kitchen table, but when she opened the hard plastic case containing her epinephrine pen, it was cracked.
Empty. But how? She'd just checked the damned thing a few days ago.
She gripped her throat and began wheezing. Her head began to spin.
Car! She kept an extra epinephrine shot in her glove box.
She stumbled through her living room and fell to her knees only a foot from her front door. She could make it. She knew she could.
"Holy fuck, woman!" The heavenly deep, masculine voice filled her ears. "I only left you alone for three minutes."
Her brain couldn't process where the sound had come from or who spoke, but she suddenly felt grateful for another person's presence. She pointed toward her car. "I … need … my shot," she said, gasping her words.
"Sanguine ad infernum," said the voice.
She felt her body lift into the air and float outside. Head spinning, the air to her lungs becoming shorter and shorter, she tried to focus on his face. Who was carrying her? And had he just spoken Latin? She hated Latin. It sounds so weird.