Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (27 page)

“Your mother must have missed you.”

“I don’t know.”

“She tried to protect you.”

“The fights were getting worse. She would’ve had to choose. It was better that I left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“
No importa
.” He shrugged. “My so-called father died years later The oilman cast my mother out for a younger and prettier servant. I was rich by then. I found a way to ruin him.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I set her up in a small house.” He put down the stick and picked up the puzzle box again. “Paolo would love this. I could have given it to him, but I kept it locked up instead.”

“You could give it to him now.”

“What I mean…” He paused. “This remoteness; it is a coward’s way to raise a boy. I let him think I don’t care.”

“He knows you care. He thinks the world of you.”

“I will give this to him.”

She picked up the Moro wand again, eyes half hidden by dark lashes, but he did not miss the sadness. She set it down. “Thank you for showing me. These things are wonderful.”

He heard the lie in her words—she didn’t think they were wonderful at all. They’d shared too much stillness for her to lie to him effectively.

She turned and went to the fireplace.

Sometimes his instincts as a killer doubled as instincts as a lover, like the instinct to chase down prey when it darted away. He did that now. He went after her. They’d connected for a moment, and he couldn’t stand to lose that. He could not let her go.

He set his hands on her shoulders, feeling torn in two.

He tightened his grip and turned her.

She looked…worried.

She’d seen inside the box, which was more like his heart than she could ever imagine. And she’d come out worried.

“
Corazón
,” he said, brushing a knuckle across her cheek. “I won’t hurt you.” And like the killer that he was, like the taker that he was, he closed his mouth over hers.

He felt her body change between his hands. She seemed to fill with lust, or maybe loathing. Still he kissed her, pressing his tongue to the seam of her lips, forcing her open, desire pulsing through him. “
Entrégate a mí,”
he gasped.
Give yourself to me.

She pulled away, breath coming fast. “Fuck,” she breathed.

“What?”

She studied his face. It was strange, the way she looked at him, as if she were seeing him for the first time. “Fuck,” she said again. It meant something different the second time; what, he didn’t know.

He simply pulled her to him, hands fit over the small of her back and the swell of her ass, molding her to fit him.

She grabbed onto his hair as he took her mouth. His cock was a hot, rigid bar against her heaving belly. He sucked in her tongue, hands exploring her body.

She sighed. Softened. Melted into him like sunshine.

H
e was Kabakas.
And he was kissing her.

Kabakas.

He was beautiful and dangerous and wild, and he was kissing her, taking her over, and in that moment she didn’t care; she just wanted him. She’d always wanted him. It was no time to lie to herself.

Ever since she’d tacked that blurry photo up on the bulletin board, she’d wanted him.

She pulled away, looking at him again.
Kabakas
. “Fuck, yes,” she amended, twisting her fingers in his sooty hair, pulse skittering. Then she kissed him again.

He groaned into her kiss, moving against her.

This is fucked up.
A little voice in her head kept chanting it over and over as his huge hungry hands roamed over her hips and ass.
This is fucked up.

And she’d never been more turned on in her life.

He spoke to her in Spanish. Hot, dirty words.

“Tell me in English.” She wanted to be with him on every level.

“I want to strip you bare and devour you.” He stood back to undo her buttons. “I want to hold you still and fuck you in every hole.”

She opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to tell him fuck, yes. She wanted to tell him that he wasn’t alone, that she was here with him under the endless night sky. That she’d always been with him. She wanted to tell him that the things inside the cabinet were beautiful. That the Moro wand was amazing. All of these things she’d wondered about for so long. Like treasures he’d kept for her.

“I want to fuck you and devour you with every part of myself,” he said. “Every part. And make you come as much as I please.”

Nothing mattered, nothing made sense. Loving Kabakas—it was all wrong and all right.

She stiffened.
Love
—where had that come from? What was she doing?

“You never have to say yes when you’re thinking no,” he said, sensing her stiffness. He still thought she was a prostitute, of course. “I’ll be gentle,” he whispered into her hair. “If you prefer it,” he added.

She closed her eyes as he sucked in a bit of skin from her tender neck, a bright, sharp bite of pleasure, and then he licked her there, and kissed her.

Heat pooled between her legs.

“You have nothing to fear from me.”

Except that she did. He touched something raw in her, made her feel out of control. She was so full of guilt and shame, she didn’t know if she could survive too much of a breach.

And on a more practical level, if he ever found out who she was, he’d kill her.

He’d have to; he’d see her as a threat to himself and Paolo, and he’d have to kill her. His harsh love for Paolo ran deeper than midnight.

“
Corazón
.” His hands shook as he pulled up her dress, up, up, over her thighs, over her hips.

He seemed to be trying to be extra gentle with her and barely managing it—his touch was bottled thunder, liable to shatter the glass at any moment. It turned her on like nothing else.

“You,” she said, tracing the scruff on his chin.

He kissed her forehead, and with a swift, sure movement, he picked her up and carried her to his bedroom. She undid the buttons on his shirt, kissing every newly bared space until he set her down on his bed.

She went up on her knees, then undid his belt buckle and shoved down his pants. His massive cock sprang up, golden brown, skin taut over ropy veins, like a map to somewhere else.

She grabbed him at the root and pulled. He groaned and shoved into her hand. His wild energy intoxicated her, but it also frightened her.

“
Me estás matando
,” he said.
You’re killing me.

She bent over to lick the tip. He shuddered just from that. He was Kabakas. She was driving Kabakas crazy. She took him all the way in, coaxing him into a rhythm that would get him senseless, needing to get back some order, some control. She took him in deeper and deeper, but he grabbed her hair and stopped her.

“What?”

He rolled away and went to a cabinet. He unzipped something and came back with a condom.

She rid herself of the last of her clothes.

He tipped his head down to face her as he stood over her, rolling it onto himself, eyes wild. It scared her a little, how present he was, how raw everything was.

“Fuck me,” she said, feeling frightened, feeling too much.

He pushed her down onto the bed and buried his head in her belly. She touched his hair, senses ablaze. She felt as though he could see all her secrets when he pressed his face to her like that. It felt unbearably intimate.

He touched her breast, fingered her clit, but it was his soft, wet kiss on her belly that destroyed her.

And suddenly it was too much. She grabbed his hair in two fists and yanked his head to hers. He grabbed her wrists. “
Corazón
,” he said with a dark, warning look.

She let go of his hair and he pressed her hands above her head, intense eyes on hers.

She could feel it even more now, that barely restrained thunder under the surface of his skin. His thunder, his passion, his desire to be gentle with her, those treasures he’d collected, this windswept place of his, his love for Paolo, all of these belonged to the same class of things—true things, important things, human things, raw things. The raw things that could break through her walls.

“Guide me,” he whispered.

She took his cock and pressed the fat head to her entrance. He pushed in little by little, stretching her, filling her, letting her see the naked desire in his eyes. She felt like she might drown in the truth of his eyes as he entered her.

He pushed all the way in, stretching her.

She gasped; he was so huge inside her, moving and filling her.

“Okay?”

“Please, yes. Please,” she said, though she hardly knew what she was asking for. Just
please
. His gentleness scared her. The thundering passion below the surface scared her. But she didn’t want a coldfuck.

She didn’t want to be alone anymore.

The legendary and semi-mythical Kabakas was the only real thing to her now, and everything else seemed unreal.

Rabbit hole
was a term they used a lot in spycraft, mostly for distraction. But she felt like she was coming up against the original meaning, the true
Alice in Wonderland
rabbit hole, a new world just as vital as her own.

He pumped into her slowly, breathing her secrets with his cock. “I’m here,” he whispered as he shoved into her, devouring her. She squeezed her pussy as he thrust, trying to make herself feel extra tight, trying to take over. But he wouldn’t go on autopilot. He wouldn’t get lost. He would stay with her. Keep her there, present and gasping.

“
Corazón
,” he groaned. He kissed her all over her face and neck as he fucked her.

He fucked her like he cared. Like he was fucking
her
instead of just fucking. Like a waterfall of dangerous feeling crashing right through her.

D
r. Ruiz’s phone
rang late that afternoon. El Gorrion’s connections in the CIA hadn’t even needed to run facial recognition: they knew this woman. The name wasn’t Liza. It was Zelda Pierce, a forensic botanist and former field agent.

“Has she said anything to you about the blight?” El Gorrion asked.

“She doesn’t speak Spanish,” Ruiz said.

“Oh, yes, she does,” El Gorrion said. “She was an agent during the war. She was part of the Peru network. And she helped take down the Lopez ring. She was in Ecuador the year after…”

El Gorrion went on, but Ruiz had stopped listening at
botanist
. “A botanist? She could ruin me.”

“Stop whining. She is a Kabakas hunter—that is her interest. This woman—she is retired now, but she was one of the leading hunters. Every single one of my contacts mentions this,” El Gorrion said. “She is still active, but with her own organization—so that she can hunt Kabakas full time, perhaps. They do not know. This interest in the crop—it is extra. She is using the American farmer to get close to the villagers. She wants them to open up about Kabakas.”

“But she is suspicious of me,” Ruiz said. “What if she uses her knowledge of the crop to gain the trust of the villagers? If I go down, our work together…it could be harmed.” He wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that if the blight was linked to him, it could then be traced to El Gorrion. You never threatened El Gorrion.

“She has been there longer than you, no?” El Gorrion said.

“Yes,” Ruiz said. “She arrived the day before I dropped the pellets.”

“We use her, then,” he said. “We will say that she caused the blight. A CIA botanist. It’s perfect. Unmask her, and see what happens.”

“Why not kill her?” Ruiz said.

“Because I want to see what happens.”

“You think she will get a lead on Kabakas? You will follow her?”

“Perhaps. But if the scourge is traced to her, we may get something better—she may get the wrath of Kabakas turned onto her. He killed for that village once. We keep watch on her, and Kabakas may reveal himself.”

“The farmer is in love with her,” Ruiz said. “That’s what the villagers say. He may try to hide her. Protect her.”