Deep Under (Tall, Dark and Deadly #4)(58)

“You said yourself that they only pick women who have no one to look for them,” I remind her. “Don’t put guilt on yourself you don’t deserve.”

“A model would be highly sought after in some of the more elite world’s Michael sets up.” She swallows hard. “He has levels of girls. Gold, silver, platinum. Some are worth more risk.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“They think I can’t speak Spanish,” she surprises me by saying. “It’s how I got a lot of the information I gave you.”

“That’s impressive, sweetheart,” I say. “You’d make a damn good agent.”

“Thanks but no thanks on that,” she says, flattening her hand on the pad, seeming to want, and even need, to focus on the ad campaign. “I’m thinking of something like a really cool multi-color wire mannequin, with a dress hanging on it. The slogan would be: We design. You make the style. What do you think?”

“I think it’s brilliant, even if you weren’t trying to get away from models.”

“Brilliant,” she says, but she doesn’t look convinced. “I guess we’ll see if they’re as kind as you. I just need to put it on paper and make it look good.” She turns to the table and starts drawing, losing herself in what she’s doing, unaware that I get up and go get my computer. Or when I return and sit down next to her, and begin looking for Alvarez myself.

And I leave her that absorbed in her work, watching with interest as her creation comes to life. Because I know what survival looks like. It’s needing to do something, anything, to make a difference. It’s convincing yourself you’ll be here tomorrow to survive another day. It’s me promising her we’ll get out of here alive, and meaning it. Because if I don’t mean it, we won’t survive.

And Myla is a master of this type of survival, even if she doesn’t know it. She finds a place to put what she doesn’t think she can handle, knowing when to seal the little cracks she feels surfacing. She did it when she exited the room when Royce and I were talking. She did it by grounding herself in what she calls “the plan”, not in defeat and misery. She did it when she refused to talk to Kara. Because she knows, and I see, that Kara is her strength and her weakness. The problem is that Alvarez clearly sees that, too. Which has a bad feeling forming in my gut. If Alvarez really is targeting Kara, how and why did Juan think Kara wasn’t ex-FBI? Something doesn’t add up, and I don’t like how it feels.





Chapter Sixteen





Myla





It‘s the first day in fourteen months that I wake without a monster either in my bed or in my head. I blink awake to the first dawn of a new, better day, immediately aware of the heavy weight at my back, an arm draped over my waist, warmth filling me. Kyle. I smile with the memories of him carrying me to his room again last night, and of how I’d ended up in my current state of absolute nakedness.

He’d set me down in front of the bed, dragging the shirt off of me, his shirt, his hands all over my body, his big, hard body pressing me into the mattress. His shirt had come off next, followed by his sweatpants. There had been kissing, licking, touching. But when he’d told me to turn over, I’d refused. I close my eyes now, reliving it.

“No,” I said. “Not this time. This time I get to do the touching. This time I get to kiss you.” My hand flattens on his chest. “Lay on your back.”

“No,” he says. “You-”

I lean up and silence him with a press of my lips to his, my hand on his cheek, lingering there several beats before I pull back and let him see the truth of my words in my eyes. “I have not touched anyone because I wanted to touch them in a very long time. And I want to touch you.”

His gaze darkens, his fingers flexing into my backside that he’s now cupping. “Myla,” he whispers, my name a hot rasp of pure heat and passion, and when his mouth closes over mine, his tongue stroking deeply, I taste the lust in him, and it is the most amazing feeling to have that arouse me, not repel me. With him, I am human again. I am a woman again. I am me again.

He rolls to his back, taking me with him and I do not hesitate to meld my naked breasts to his chest, nor does he hesitate to cup my breast, to pinch my nipple. I kiss his neck, his shoulders, his lips. I kiss my way down to that deliciously ripped stomach of his, loving the way his hand goes to my head, but doesn’t push, tangle or hurt. It’s about arousal, about need, not sharing, not taking. And when I slide lower and take his cock in my hand and lick that salty proof of his arousal at the tip, the way his body stiffens, the way he makes this low, almost growl, has me wet and achy in ways I have not ached in oh so long, if ever.

“Good morning.”

Kyle’s deep, gravelly voice at my ear snaps me back to the present, his hand flattening on my belly. “Morning,” I whisper, and he shifts my hips, his obviously hard cock settling in the crux below my backside, where I am already wet with my memories.

His hands slide lower, fingers resting just above my clit without moving. “Do you–”

“Yes please,” I say, sounding breathless, feeling breathless, his fingers sliding lower, stroking my sex, and the instant he feels how ready I am, he makes another of those low, hot sounds he makes.

He pulls my legs toward my belly, arching around me, dragging his shaft up and down my sex, back and forth until he is pressing inside me, so damn hard it almost hurts, but oh so good. And once he’s there, his hand cups my breast, his lips find my ear. “You make waking up really damn hot, sweetheart.”