Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(14)
She could see his attention move to her hair or…her ear?
Yes! It was her ear. How could she have forgotten about the faux diamond studs Carlos had insisted she wear?
“I know you trust your security detail and the protocol they’ve established implicitly,” he told her after slipping into her hotel room with two of his teammates soon after their arrival in Kuala Lumpur. God, he looks good, she thought. Grown up. All the softness of his twenties replaced with one hundred percent pure, hard-bodied man. Yowza! Hubba-hubba! And the way he spoke to her? With no nonsense, no hesitation or pause for greeting besides a quick dip of his chin and a flash of that one delectable dimple? It made her feel like it’d been mere days since they last saw each other instead of eight long years. Familiar, she guessed was the word. Then again, he’d always felt familiar. Like something she’d somehow subconsciously known was missing in her life…and maybe in her heart, too? “But for my own peace of mind, I want you to wear these.”
He held out his hand. Broad-palmed and long-fingered, with little crescent moons visible in his neatly tended nails, she’d always thought he had the hands of the surgeon he’d considered becoming once upon a time. They were strong, steady…like his nom de guerre—his war name. And how strange was that? To have gone from a man poised to take the medical community by storm to a man who literally stormed into battle?
A part of her couldn’t help but lament the role she’d played in the sudden left turn in his life path. But she couldn’t let him see the direction of her thoughts, so she concentrated on the two diamond studs glittering in his grip.
“Oh, Carlos!” She batted her lashes at him and clasped her hands together, playing the part he would expect of her. “You shouldn’t have!”
His chin jerked back, his expression startled. “Oh, no. No, they’re not what you think.”
She made a face. “They’re big ol’ diamond studs that look like something a rapper would wear. So, I think they’re transmitters.” When she took the earrings from him, she shivered as her fingertips brushed his warm, calloused palm. What would it be like to feel those hands on my body? It was a question she’d asked herself a million times over the years.
“Then they are what you think,” he told her, winking and giving her arm a squeeze before one of his teammates called him away. It was a friendly squeeze, like one might give a favorite cousin—though there was no convincing her arm of that; the idiotic thing tingled with awareness. And to her eternal chagrin, she knew that despite the fact she was all grown up now, a woman in every way, Carlos still thought of her as nothing more than a wide-eyed schoolgirl.
But that’s for the best, she told herself. Though, unfortunately, herself wasn’t convinced.
Dragging her eyes away—and, yes, she had to drag them—from Carlos’s broad back…or maybe it was his ass? Okay, so sue her. The man had a great ass…she stared down at the glinting studs in her hand. Why knowing he’d gone out of his way to provide one more level of security should cause butterflies to flutter drunkenly in her belly, she couldn’t say. But there they were, the little bastards. Flitting and flapping and making her feel light as air, as if she could float away any minute, and at the same time making her feel a little bit nauseous, like she was two seconds away from tossing her cookies.
Oh, for the love of… It’s time to grow up, Abby. Stop fantasizing about a man you can never have. And while you’re at it, get a hold of yourself and your damn butterflies!
It was good advice. And she determined then and there to do her best to take it. Unfastening the simple gold hoop earrings she wore, she replaced them with the faux diamonds. Was it her imagination or were they warm with Carlos’s body heat?
Okay, and it was official. She was an idiot. An over-estrogenated idiot, and—
A tug on her earlobe brought her crash landing back to the present. The newest arrival to the unholy trio had been distracted by her earrings. And now he was covertly removing them, glancing over his shoulder at Shadow Man—who was deep in conversation with Henchman Number Two—as if he didn’t fancy the thought of being caught. The syringe was clamped between his snaggly Gargamel teeth so he could use both hands to take out the diamond studs and, oh, how she wished her arms worked. She’d grab that syringe and plunge it straight into his retched, evil eye!
With crazed, nearly hysterical scrutiny, she watched him pocket the earrings. Now her only hope for rescue hinged on whether or not he was accompanying her wherever the hell it was they planned to take her. Because he’d just removed the last thing tying her to the outside world.
Carlos! she thought desperately. Where are you?
He had to know she was missing by now, didn’t he? He and the rest of the Black Knights as well as her Secret Service unit? They had to know!
Once again, the needle slid into the flesh of her neck with nothing more than a small, almost gentle sting. Instantly, the gray was back…clouding her vision, stripping away her sense of smell, stealing her pain and fear in one blood-boiling narcotic rush.
This time she succumbed to the beckoning darkness without a fight, welcoming its cool embrace and blessed oblivion. But right before she slipped unconscious, a random yet familiar thought skittered through her fading mind. Carlos…could you ever forgive me for what I did?
Chapter Four