Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(28)

“Who says you’d be taking advantage?”

She was like a goddamned dog with a bone. The stubborn, willful, wonderful woman.

“I do,” he insisted. “I’m not likely to make it out of this mess alive and—”

“Pfft,” she cut him off. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, you’re going to make it out of this thing alive. Now that we’ve found you, we’ll all help you clear your name. And once that’s done—”

“What makes you so sure my name can be cleared?” He made sure his tone was unmistakable.

For a long moment, silence echoed more loudly than a gunshot through the hollow log.

“I don’t believe what they’re saying about you,” she finally whispered. But he could hear the note of hesitation in her voice. Good. As long as she had the slightest hint of a doubt, letting him go once he got her back to San Jose would be just that much easier. “And you’re trying to change the subject.” Um, busted. “We were discussing the reason why we can’t act on this…this thing that’s between us.”

Thing.

Sweet Lord have mercy! It was more than a thing for him. It was a goddamned obsession. He couldn’t shake it. Because every other thought in his head seemed to circle back to the fact that he wanted to know her body.

Every detail of it…

The shape of her hips. The smoothness of the skin behind her knees. The taste of her desire on his lips when he kissed her where she was hot and wet. He wanted to know the way she responded when she was being loved. How she breathed when he kissed her nipples. How she arched when he entered her body. How she moved beneath him, above him. He wanted to know her. It. All of it. All of her…

Which was why he had to nip this thing in the bud. For her sake and for his own. It was time, as his dear ol’ daddy used to say, to deliver the coup de grace.

“Okay, let me make it very clear to you, chere,” he said, his heart pounding for the pain he knew he was going to inflict. But that’s the thing about the truth. It hurt. “You have some romantic notion in your head that we could act on this thing, as you call it, and then it would grow into something more from there. But I can assure you it won’t.”

“Why?” The word wasn’t timid; it was demanding. The woman had the heart of a lion and he wished, oh how he wished, things could be different.

“Because while I have no doubt I could give you the thrill ride of your life, I can guarantee that’s all it’ll be. You see, ma belle, no matter what, you can’t let yourself fall in love with me.”

“Why?” That one word again.

“Because I’ll never fall in love with you.”

***

“They’ve lost contact with the targets.”

It was not the news Rwanda Don had hoped to hear upon answering the phone. Squeezing the untraceable device in an angry fist caused the cheap plastic casing to crackle warningly.

“What do you mean? What happened to the RFD on Miss Cordero?”

“It was found attached to a stone some sixty yards from Babineaux’s tree house,” the CIA agent relayed. “He obviously discovered the thing and disposed of it. And, while the teams were busy following the device’s signal, he and Cordero managed to slip away.”

Slip away.

Indeed. Just as R.D. suspected might happen.

Goddamn Rock! The man was too smart for his own good. Definitely too smart for R.D.’s peace of mind.

“Any idea where they’re headed?”

“Tracks lead into the river, but the teams have found no point of exit. It’s suspected Babineaux and Cordero rode the sucker all the way back into Santa Elena…or else they drowned. Parts of that river are very dangerous.”

“No.” R.D. wasn’t sure of many things, but the impossibility of Richard “Rock” Babineaux, all-star ex–Navy SEAL, drowning was one of them. “You know as well as I do, there’s no way he drowned. He’s still there. Somewhere.”

“Mmph,” the agent made a noncommittal sound before continuing. “They’ve called in a backup team to search Santa Elena, and the other two teams are tearing the jungle apart. Don’t worry. If Babineaux and Cordero are still alive, they’ll find them. We’ve got three more hours until daybreak in those parts, and they can’t hide forever.”

R.D. was beginning to have doubts in that respect.

Beginning? What a joke. There’d always been doubts that Rock could be caught. The man was too well-equipped and too well-trained. To put it simply, he was good in the woods. Which was the military’s cutesy way of saying he was a veritable prodigy when it came to jungle recon, battle, and survival.

As a rule, R.D. didn’t have much respect for the armed services. They were too loud, too extravagant, fighting all-out wars when a few well-placed bullets in the heads of very specific people could accomplish the same task. But, occasionally, Uncle Sam popped out a specimen of inordinate intelligence and skill.

Unfortunately for R.D. and the CIA agent who’d personally helped pursue The Project after The Company decided to put the kibosh on it, Rock Babineaux happened to be one of those…

“There’s more,” the agent went on. “Inside Rock’s tree house was a shit-load of intel.”

The small seed of fear that’d taken root in R.D.’s stomach upon hearing the initial news that not only was Rock alive and well, but he’d had managed to disappear like a goddamned ghost, bloomed into an ugly flower of chill-inducing terror.