Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(7)
The muscles beneath his tan skin bunched at her touch, his prickly man-hair tickling her palm. A stupid woman might find that sexy as hell. Thank goodness she wasn’t a stupid woman. Or was she?
Because when he screwed up his mouth, that mouth that was so beautiful and so perfectly proportioned one usually only saw it on renaissance sculptures, she began to think her confidence in her own mental acuity was highly inflated.
“We can help you,” she insisted, dismayed when her voice came out all low and breathy. “We can figure out who burned you and determine how to—”
“What makes you so sure I was burned?” he asked, his expression like a chalkboard that’d been wiped clean.
“Because I know you. I know you wouldn’t—”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me, chere,” he whispered, stepping away, out of her reach.
Chapter Two
“Go back the way you came,” Rock growled, swinging around on the path to glare at Vanessa after it became apparent she was determined to stick to him like a cocklebur.
“No,” she declared, crossing her arms and jutting out her small, stubborn chin, looking madder than a wet hen in a tote sack. Looking like it’d take a jackhammer and two WWE wrestlers to break her away from that spot. “The Knights tasked me with bringing you home, and I’m going to bring you home.”
Home? He didn’t have a home. Not anymore. Not since that last fateful mission. Not since he’d started asking questions…
Non. Now all he had was a lonely tree house deep in the jungle and, honestly, he didn’t even have that anymore. Now that the Knights had found him, he was going to have to relocate. For their safety and his…
“I’m not gonna say it again.” He grabbed her shoulders and gave her a little shake, just so she’d know he meant business. “You have to go back.”
He couldn’t ignore the softness of her flesh beneath his fingers or the way she smelled like mint bubble gum and dryer sheets, so clean and fresh despite the sweat slicking the dusky skin of her chest and neck. He released her shoulders and took a hasty step back.
Everything about her was heart-shaped, from her face to her mouth to that high, tight ass of hers that was enough to make an atheist believe in God. She was small and exotic and, even dressed like a man and sporting that patchy beard, she was still the most desirable woman he’d ever seen.
For all the good that did either of them.
Because if there’d been no chance of a future for them before this fiasco, there certainly wasn’t a chance for one now. And, oui, he knew it was a future she was after. It was there in her big, dark eyes every time she looked at him. He could almost see the visions of white dresses and orange blossoms dancing around in her pretty head.
And if things had been different…
But, no. There was no use what-iffing. A man could make himself crazy doing that.
“I’m not going without you,” she declared through clenched teeth. “Don’t you want our help?”
Mon dieu, just the thought of the Knights getting themselves involved in this mess turned his stomach and had the sweat on his skin going cold and clammy.
“Y’all can’t help me, chere.” He was beginning to think no one could. “The best thing is to just forget you ever knew me.”
The expression on her face was more determined than that of most four-star generals he’d known. “Impossible,” she declared with an angry shake of her head. It caused her long, black ponytail to slip across her shoulder. A few strands stuck to the dampness on her neck, and it took everything he had not to reach forward and brush them away.
Touching her only reminded him of all the things he’d lost in his life, all the things he’d given up when those losses galvanized him into agreeing to become The Interrogator for The Project and—
“There has to be something we can do for you,” she insisted.
“There isn’t,” he growled, giving her the look he’d perfected over the years when questioning bad men about bad doings, the one guaranteed to shrivel a guy’s balls.
“There has to be,” she snapped right back, apparently immune to his expression.
Well, there you go. That’s what you get for thinkin’ it’d work on someone who doesn’t have any dangly bits…
For long seconds they stood and glared at each other, a kind of old-fashioned staring contest. But unlike that childhood game, the stakes here were as high as they came. Because death was stalking him as surely as the jaguars living in this jungle stalked their prey. There was a pretty good chance he wasn’t coming out on the other side of this thing alive. So, the most he could hope for was to keep his friends safe while he hunted for the answer to the question of why he’d been betrayed, and while he made whoever was behind that betrayal pay for their duplicity.
“I’m givin’ you one more chance, chere. Turn around now and go back the way you came.”
“Or what?” She dared him with every fiber of her being, looking like a very angry…a very angry…? How to describe her? A very angry sex kitten, that’s how. Oui. That’s about all the mean and menacing she could muster—which wasn’t nearly enough for what he was involved in. But she didn’t know that. And even her hip shot stance seemed to call his bluff.