Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (20 page)

S
he tried not
to rock along, but he was pulling her apart. Killing her with tenderness.

Feeling too much of her.

She pushed at his bare chest. “Not like this,” she said.

He stilled. “Not like what?”

Not gentle
, she thought.
Not kind
.

She let out a sound of frustration and he started up again, seeming able to read her body. When had anybody ever touched her like this? He nuzzled her again, that heavy slide of whisker on her cheek as he stroked her. “It’s okay,
corazón
,” he whispered.

And it was his words that broke her, made her shatter to pieces there in his hand.

He held her as she came, slowing his motions, whispering endearments in Spanish that she should not understand.

Corazón
, he called her. Heart.

He kissed her one last time, on the cheek. He drew away slowly, as if to make sure she could still stand upright, as if he knew he’d torn her apart with kindness. Then he returned to his seat, leaving her standing there, boneless in the firelight, flames dancing on the ceiling.

She straightened her dress, heart thundering. “Nothing more?” she whispered.

“Leave me.”

He didn’t want to fuck? Not even for her to blow him? She wished he would, just so she could take something back.

Like herself.

“Do not come out again until you hear the bell.”

She stared down at this beast of a man who just might be Kabakas, who’d battered her defenses with kindness. It seemed like a dream.

“Go.”

She turned and stumbled to her room, exhausted beyond comprehension. She flopped onto her bed, buzzing with his touch. What had just happened?

She opened her
eyes, stunned at the brilliant sunshine streaming through the window. It was late morning—nine, maybe. How had she slept so deeply?

And then she remembered Hugo making her come with his hand. She still felt him on her body.

And then she remembered the burns.

Nine years ago, her colleague had seen Kabakas walk into a fire—an explosion. If he’d survived, he would have burns. But then, everyone knew the story of the fire. Other people in the world had burns. He said he’d been burned nine years ago. People lied. If he were some sort of Kabakas superfan, that would be what he would say.

I’ll send a team,
Dax had said.
We’ll take him down and get the proof.

Fuck.

She washed up and put on a fresh uniform and fresh granny panties and headed out to the kitchen, breathing in the scent of coffee. Nobody around.

She wandered through the place and to the back. The sun peeked over the hills, lighting up the rows of the green savinca bushes. She saw Hugo and Paolo, both wearing broad-brimmed hats, heads bent over the bushes. Farmers.

They seemed to be studying the leaves. They went to the next plant and studied that one. Then to the next. Hugo walked behind Paolo, moving stiffly. At one Paolo walked behind Hugo, and Hugo moved normally. Hiding the pain. Not a surprise.

Had the pain at least lessened? And how much of the night did he remember?

She wandered back to the kitchen, stopping by the locked cabinet. She fingered the padlock. Decorative, but strong. She could get in. She should get in. There were pirates holding a tanker. If Dax thought that offering up Kabakas’s whereabouts would grease the wheels for an end to the standoff, then it would work. Dax’s assumptions on the geopolitical level were always spot-on—she knew that. And the sure thing was always the best—she knew that, too. But turning that Brujos guard, Sal, and getting a bargaining chip through him—she wouldn’t have offered it up if she didn’t think it would work. She knew the sound of a disgruntled employee. They could offer him a lot.

She ran a thumbnail over the ridged side of the lock. Burns didn’t make him Kabakas. A lot of people had burns. Anyway, her colleague had seen Kabakas die. They’d recovered bodies. They didn’t have Kabakas’s dental records, true, but her colleague wasn’t stupid.

And with that, she returned to the kitchen. She lifted the sturdy silver press pot. Partly full. For her? She poured herself a cup and set to work on the scrambled eggs. She’d put chicken and egg and sliced avocado on the side, a regional favorite.

Eventually, Paolo wandered in.

“Good morning, Paolo,” she said.

He mumbled his good morning.

“Do you and Hugo like cinnamon on your plantains?”

He watched her blankly.
Cinnamon
was a big word for him.

“I’ll just put it out.” She set the chicken roasting. He seemed content to stay. Was he beginning to warm up to her?

“Does Hugo teach you other languages?”

If Paolo understood, he hid it.

She put up a finger. “Spanish.” She put up another: “English…” She put up a third finger with a questioning gaze. It would be interesting, for example, if he was teaching Paolo Chinese or something.

He just looked at her. Yeah, he understood. “The code,” he finally said. “It allows you to determine any answer?”

“For fractions,” she said.

“Say more.”

She wiped her hands on her apron, stifling a smile—that was Hugo’s line. She covered the potato cakes and grabbed a stack of paper plates she’d spotted the day before. “You have to convert it, just like a code.” She cut a paper plate in half, then one half in quarters. She gave him a half and a quarter. “Add this.”

He looked up at her.

She pointed at the half, then the quarter. “This plus this.”

He frowned, confused. She then cut the half into quarters. “Now?”

“Three quarters.”

She smiled. He straightened. That was how she could tell when it clicked, that making the fractions all of a kind, a family, was the key. They went through several more paper plates, doing eighths, thirds. She gave him new plates to cut up and convert. After, she showed him the trick of multiplying crosswise. He practiced while she checked the chicken. He was incredibly smart, this kid.

While he practiced the crosswise trick, she wrote him a note where the common denominators revealed the letters. Like a real code.

He went at it with gusto as she flipped the cakes…which had gotten a bit burnt. She put them under a cloth and started two more.

He wrote her an answer back, watching over her shoulder as she cracked the code, laughing when she got it. He liked writing the code better than cracking it, which was fine with her.

He wrote her a new one:
No cinnamon.
She laughed. This kid was smart as hell. And the drill—he’d ace that fucker now. There was another word for her to decode. Paolo laughed as she slowly worked it out.

She felt Hugo before she saw him. She straightened up, turned and met his eyes. He seemed so huge and cold and unmovable.

But God, the way he’d touched her last night. Her face heated.

He turned his dark eyes to Paolo. “Are you distracting her?”

“We’re playing a math game,” she said.

Hugo narrowed his eyes.

Paolo scurried away.

Hugo turned to her, searching her face. “Games are not how you are to teach.”

“Why? It makes it fun for him. Fun to work with fractions.”

“You would disobey my instruction?”

“Well…he understands it now.”

“You will teach future lessons from the book.” He made his oo’s long.
Boook.

“Why?”

A flash of surprise. “Because you will.”

She pressed her lips together.

“Private thoughts,
señorita
?” His eyes glittered. “You are an expert in math instruction?”

“No, but I know this is the way to teach fractions, considering…”

Her words trailed off as he advanced on her, and suddenly she was back in the opium and lavender scented room, being consumed by him and his fingers. “Considering what?”

“That he can solve the problems now.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “Do you have other talents I should know about?”

She fought not to show her alarm. This was why you didn’t break character. “I like games, that’s all.” Liza loved games. She wouldn’t have been able to teach math with a game but she loved them. Was he just trying to rattle her?

He was so close now, his breath stirred the hair around her forehead. “You do not teach with games. It is not how you prepare for life.”

“So it all has to be hard and harsh and unpleasant?”

He tilted his head and looked at her strangely. “I do not know,
señorita
. Does it?”

Her heart was pounding now. She’d been worried about him busting through her Liza disguise.

She should have been worried about him busting through Zelda.

“Breakfast is getting cold.” She pushed past him and went into the kitchen to grab the plates.

H
e stood at
the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, watching her set the table.

In one deft stroke, Liza had done what he never had—made a game with the boy. Drawn him into play.

Had Paolo wanted to play all this time? Hugo had never played as a child—not that he could remember, anyway. He’d learned early on that showing any kind of happiness was the fastest route to punishment at the hands of the man married to his mother. So he’d stuffed down his happiness. You couldn’t take away what you couldn’t see.

After he’d learned the truth about himself and run off to the islands, he was too old for play, and the fighting men he’d joined up with were the opposite of playful. He’d liked it that way. He’d imagined he’d found his tribe.

He’d assumed that Paolo, coming from blood and hate as he had, would be well past play. He’d imagined that they were connected in at least that way.

And then in came Liza, creating a secret world of fun just big enough for the two of them, weaving a story, winning him over, all in the space of one morning. He’d stood watching with the strangest feeling in his belly.

He’d gotten used to getting what he wanted and taking what he wanted, molding the world around him.

She was changing everything.

She said, “I’ll go grab the serving platter.”

He slammed a hand on the doorframe before she could slip by, remembering the way she had felt.

He remembered every second of her. Every breath of her. She fascinated him—dangerously so, perhaps—because he still didn’t know her. Last night had only underlined that.

“You will obey my instructions in your work with the boy,” he said, gripping the wood. “It is important that you obey my instructions.”

She bristled. Just that one movement made him go hard. “Fine.”

His gaze fell to her lips, parted in surprise. “You disagree?”

“The boy is a real person who needs…more than instruction,” she said.

“You don’t know what he needs.”

“He needs more. He needs
you
, Hugo. God, he idolizes you so much, but you keep your heart as locked up and closed up as that little cabinet,” she said. “
See
him, Hugo.”

“You think I do not see him? I see him and hear him in ways that you never can.” He still heard him crying out on that bloody field. Even now, Hugo was desperate to silence those cries. “You will teach out of the book. The book is superior.”

“The facts don’t serve at your whim,” she bit out.

He leaned in. “But you do.”

Her nostrils flared. Her eyes flared. All he could think now was how badly he wanted to drag his lips down the side of her neck and taste her heartbeat. To move inside her.

“Don’t you?” he whispered.

“So it seems.” She ducked under his arm to grab the platter.

With a casual attitude, he wandered in and took a seat at the head of the table.

She ferried in the dishes, not looking at him. He couldn’t have that, couldn’t be banished from her sphere. “Liza,” he said, and when she looked up, he pointed at a napkin she’d dropped on the way in.

She stared in disbelief. She wasn’t cut out to be a domestic—not in any way. God, he wanted her to never leave.

“Did you not agree to housekeeping duties?”