Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(40)
Any hope of making it out of this jungle alive…
Focus on what’s in front of us…
Alrighty then, so maybe now wasn’t the time to dish out heaping helpings of truth. Maybe he had enough on his plate without her adding a big ol’ spoonful of painful revelations to the mix.
And maybe I’m just a coward…
“Okay.” She nodded, forcing herself to swallow the guilt sitting at the back of her throat like a thick slice of Momordica charantia, a plant known in these parts as bitter melon. “Let’s get a move on.” But when she took a step forward, her toe caught on a root, and she was thrown into his arms. “Son of an ingrown butt hair,” she grumbled.
“Ha!” Carlos’s crack of laughter echoed into the canopy, startling her. “Son of an ingrown butt hair, eh?” With his warm hands on her shoulders, he helped her regain her footing, setting her gently away from him. And now her stupid shoulders were the ones prickling. “That’s a new one.”
“I try.” She twisted her lips and looked down to re-arrange her tunic top around the skirt material bunched up around thighs. When she glanced back up, it was to discover a strange look plastered over Carlos’s face. Then to her utter consternation, he jumped back and started flailing around like one of those plastic, inflatable air-puppets that dances in front of used car dealerships.
“What’s that? What are you doing?” she demanded. “Why are you hopping around like you have ants in your pants?”
“Ants!” he yelped, whacking at his legs as he simultaneously unfastened the holster tied around his thigh. “In my pants!”
For a moment, she simply stood there, blinking at him as he danced around. Then the levity of the situation had her rolling in her lips to keep from grinning. “So that’s an actual thing?” Of course, all her humor dissolved when she glanced around to discover that, sure enough, the elephant had disturbed an anthill and the dark red critters were swarming all around them. “Oh, God,” she said, then “Oh! Ow!” when one of the little suckers sank its mandibles into her ankle. Hopping on one foot, she slammed her palm down on the impudent pest and ran for the relative safety of the roots of a nearby tree. Jumping on the foot-high, bark-covered log, she watched Carlos bend to untie his jungle boots. For a moment, she was distracted by the quick efficiency of his long fingers. Fingers that had speared deep into her hair. Fingers that had gripped her hips to grind her—
Oh, for the love of Peter Piper’s peppers, Abby!
Carlos toed out of his boots, and then—quick as a whistle—shucked his drawers…er…cargo pants. He stepped out of his boxer shorts a half second later. Buck-naked except for his tank top and green tube socks, he started vigorously shaking both garments as he joined her atop the big root.
Jaw. Slung. Open.
Eyes. Bulging. From. Head.
That was Abby. A caricature of herself. If a blaring sound effect, something like ah-ooo-gah, were to blast through the air, she wouldn’t be surprised. She tried to close her mouth, and couldn’t. She tried to swallow, and couldn’t. Blinking worked slightly better. She managed to get her eyelids to cooperate once. But then they stuck wide open again like her eyeballs were coated in the syrup she sometimes extracted from the maple trees as a demonstration to tourists who visited the DC Botanic Garden.
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.”