Beneath the Fire (A Guardians Novella) (8 page)

He decided to check on her.
 

“Stark? Everything alright?” Maia said when she answered her phone.

“Yeah, just wondering how you’re holding up driving.”

“We might stop for a break in a bit and figure out if we want to head into Monterrey. Some cops or whoever may be in Francisco Cortez’s pockets may be waiting for us.”

“Fuck. You’re right.”

“I’ll text you when we’re pulling over.”

“Sounds good.”

Lucy was fumbling for her phone when he ended the call with Maia.
 

“Lucy, what the fuck?”

“Call Eva.”

“What?”

“Call Eva!” Lucy repeated, shoving her phone under his nose. “She’s at Leo’s house.”

“Shit. You’re right. Code?” Nathan said tersely.

Lucy rattled off the code to her phone. Of course, Nathan already knew the code to her phone. The perks of his job was the ability to stalk his own girlfriend and it would be classified as “acceptable.” Scrolling down to Eva's number, he pressed call.
 

“Lucy! How did it go?” Eva answered on the first ring.

“You got Nathan here.”

“What?”

“Listen. No time to explain. But you need to get out of the house. Francisco Cortez knows everything and that Leo instigated this operation.”

“I want to talk to Lucy.”

Nathan sighed and handed the phone to Lucy.
 

“Eva?... Yes, I’m fine. Nathan?... It’s a long story... Leo got shot... yes... listen, you need to leave the house and don’t forget the medkit. Check into a motel. Do not use your real name. Text me the address... We’ll come and get you ... OK... love you too, Eva...”

The brooding silence resumed. In the darkness, all he could see were the shadows on her face, sometimes getting illuminated by a random car’s headlights. Her eyes were firmly fixed on the highway, like she was staring off into the distance.

“Lucy?”

She grunted a short response.

“What’s bugging you?”

Silence for a beat and then. “If you were asked to go on another assignment, like if you were required to get close to say, a supermodel...”

Nathan started laughing.

Lucy glared at him. And at that moment, he couldn’t help himself, he leaned in and kissed her deeply. He captured her lips with his, darted his tongue out quickly to taste the inside of her mouth. He groaned, god he missed her.

Lucy pulled away, shocked. She switched her attention back to the road. “That was not fair.”

“I’m not apologizing,” Nathan replied.

“You did not answer my question.”

“I wouldn’t accept the mission.”

“You accepted your assignment with me.”

“I wasn’t attached.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know we’re still attached,” Lucy said sarcastically.

That’s it.
 

“Pull over,” Nathan said quietly.

“What?”

“Pull the fuck over!” Nathan roared and he must have freaked her out, because the car immediately swerved and skidded onto the shoulder.
 

“Jesus, Nathan,” Lucy yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Nathan slammed out of the car and ran around to her side, yanked the door open, pulled her out and cut the engine.
 

“What are you doing?”

“We’ll be quick,” Nathan said tersely.

“What?”

Nathan pushed the back of the driver’s seat forward and bundled Lucy into the backseat, immediately following her and pulling the door shut behind him.

“You need to be fucked hard.”

“Are you insane, we’re on the side of the road!”
 

Thankfully it was pretty isolated.

He hauled her under him, settling between her legs and ground into her crotch with his rapidly hardening erection.

“Oh god...” Lucy whispered.
 

“Yes baby, feel that, feel what you do to me,” Nathan whispered hoarsely before his lips
 
crushed her soft ones, driving deep into her mouth with his tongue. After a hard, punishing kiss, he relinquished her lips and trailed kisses from her jawline to her ear. “Tell me you want this.”

“Nathan...”

“If you don’t want this, I’ll stop.” He ground his hips into her again.

“I want you! Oh...”

“You want me inside you, babe?”

“Yes ... I need you inside me ... Nathan.”

Good. Because the past 24 hours had him on the brink of his sanity, the thought of losing her raising his instincts to bury himself inside her to feel that she was alive and his to protect.

His fingers deftly unfastened her shorts and pulled down the zip, he leaned back and pulled it off, taking her panties along with it. He looked at her nakedness before him and realized he was breathing hard.
 

“This is going to be rough and quick,” he warned.
 

Lucy nodded and lay flat on the backseat. Damn, he had not done this since high school. Nathan unzipped his cargo pants and freed his erection. “I’m going to raise your legs up high, brace your hands on top of your head so I don’t give you a concussion.”
 

Lucy laughed nervously.

“Relax babe I got you, but this is going to go deep.” He leaned one knee on the seat. His other leg in a lunge position with the foot braced against the side of the car. Without another word, he wrapped Lucy’s legs around him, pushed her thighs up high and slammed inside her. Her moist heat grabbed his cock immediately in a tight squeeze and he felt like he would lose it right then.

“Fuck, baby I miss this.” He wrapped his left arm around her and with his right hand braced against the window frame for leverage, he pumped inside her fast and hard, punctuating each thrust with a deep feral grunt. The cramp space only added to the eroticism, both of them folding into each other,
 
joining in one explosive moment when they both yelled in passionate release.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“That was crazy,” Lucy whispered. Nathan took over the driving. Maia had just texted them the exit for the stop over in Ciudad Victoria.
 

Nathan shot her a sexy half-grin. A satisfied half-grin, much like the cat that had his cream and licked every drop of it. He had fucked her in the backseat of the car, on the side of the road, with bad guys after them. It was reckless. No, it was stupid. It. Was. Hot. Who was she? Who was this person she had become?

“You’re a bad influence,” Lucy muttered.
 

“You’re not regretting what happened, are you?”

“My father’s men could have shot you in the ass!”
 

“Babe, there were no headlights for miles. We took five minutes,” Nathan replied with amusement. “I would have loved to have taken longer but like you said, bad guys are after us.”

“My brother better not find out we did it in the backseat of his car.” Lucy laughed.
 

“Sorry to blow your bubble, Lucy, but I’m sure we’re not the first ones to bless that backseat,” Nathan said with a smirk.

Lucy shuddered at the thought. Definitely TMI for her. The last thing she wanted to picture was her brother doing the nasty. Nathan held out his right hand to her and she cautiously laced her fingers with his. He raised his hand and kissed their linked fingers.

“I can still feel you.” Lucy touched her womb. Nathan had powered into her so hard, she had felt him touch the end of her sex. It was an odd sensation, like he had branded himself on her.
 

“Good.”
 

“We were supposed to start over, um—slowly.”

Nathan’s smile softened, his eyes sought hers in the dim light.

“That was incredible, babe. Thank you,” was all he said.
 

***

The two vans and Maia’s SUV were already at the designated stopover by the time Lucy and Nathan pulled in. It was a 24 hour rest stop with a gas station and convenience store. It was quite busy, so it was easy to blend in. The eight women were walking around, they looked a bit dazed and subdued. None of them looked older than twenty.
 

Nathan lifted his chin at the guys before he walked up to Pierce, who was still sitting in the van. Her eyes were closed. She did crack an eye open when she heard his approach.
 

“Hey,” was all she said.

“You OK?”

“You asked me that earlier.”

“Touché.”

Her phone buzzed. The caller id said:
 
Jack

“Are you going to get that?”

“I’m almost afraid to.” Maia gave a short laugh. “Viktor left a couple of messages too.”

Nathan nodded. “Yes, he left me two. I haven’t listened to them yet. I also missed calls from a New Park City number, I think it’s your Jack.”

The phone stopped buzzing.
 

“How is it going between you and Lucy? Have you cleared things up?”

We just fucked like crazy on the side of the road.

“We’re getting there. She said at least we’re on the right side of the law.”

Nathan’s phone started ringing: Viktor

They stared at each other.

“Put him on speaker, might as well get it over with,” Maia sighed in resignation.

Nathan answered the call.

“You both are in deep shit,” Viktor’s gravelly voice came through the phone. “Where are you?”

“We’re in Ciudad Victoria,” Maia said.

“The girls?”

“We have them.”

“FBI should be at the Laredo border by now. Do you need them to move in?”

“No, I think we got this,” Maia replied, giving a short nod to Nathan and he shrugged.

“You better call Jack. He’s already at Laredo, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s also foaming at the mouth.”

“Fuck,” Maia whispered.

“I’ll deal with you two when you get back,” Viktor promised and then hung up.

“That’s it?” Nathan asked, confused.
 

Maia grinned. “Viktor is unpredictable. He doesn’t care if you break the rules as long as he doesn’t know when you’re doing it, and it’s best if you get results.”

Nathan nodded without a word.

“Don’t tell him I told you that,” Maia said with a twinkle in her eye.

Her phone buzzed again. It was Jack and this time she answered it.

“Hey baby!” Maia rolled her eyes as McCord lit into her from the other end of the line. She patiently listened to Jack’s freak out, Nathan chuckled and backed away.
 

Nathan leaned back against the hood of the car as he kept a watchful eye on Lucy and the girls through the convenience store’s picture windows. He also observed the cars that were coming and going through the rest area; so far none looked suspicious.

“We need to leave soon,” Maia said, coming up beside him.

“How did it go with Jack?”

The redhead’s face looked pained. “He’s majorly pissed. He was about to cross the border into Mexico to find us. I had a hard time convincing him to stay put.”

“You think he’ll listen to you?”

“If he doesn’t, then I’m the one whose going to be pissed at him,” Maia declared.

They stood in companionable silence for a beat.

“How do you make it work, Maia? Doing the job we do and being in a relationship?” Nathan asked finally.

“It’s not easy,” Maia admitted. “It’s how much you love each other. If you don’t love each other enough, this job will tear you apart. It takes a very strong person to be with someone like us. And it comes down to what one can live with and what one cannot live without.”

“My relationship with Lucy was built on a lie,” Nathan said. “I’m afraid the reality of what I do for a living will catch up with her and drive her away.”

“That’s not true, Nathan. You all may have started on a deception, but when the feelings came, they were real, weren’t they?”
 
Maia said
 

“Absolutely.”

“Then don’t give up,” Maia said. “After seeing what Lucy was able to do tonight, do you still think she couldn’t hack this kind of life? That girl is hell on wheels.”

“Don’t remind me,” Nathan muttered. “I clenched my jaw so hard when she did that 180, I thought it would break.”

“See, that’s the problem with Jack too,” Maia said. “He knows what I’m capable of, but he treats me like I’m made of crystal. If you loved Lucy a little less, maybe you’d understand her a little more.”

“How in the world can you tell yourself how much to love a person?” Nathan scoffed.

“Hey! Don’t get all riled up, I was just saying,” Maia retorted. “Believe me if the situations were reversed between Jack and myself, I would be reacting exactly the same way he does.”

Just then a group of bikers roared up on their Harleys. Nathan felt every muscle in his body turn rigid as Maia turned rock solid beside him too.
 

“I’ll go get the girls,” Maia murmured, making her way to the convenience store.

“Hey cherry pie!” One of the bikers called after her. She ignored the man and pushed the door into the shop open.
 

Grinning like an ass, the biker turned his attention to Nathan. “Is she yours, boy?”

The biker was a big guy. Fierce-looking face with a scar crossing one side of his cheek. He was wearing leather cuts dotted with the patches of his motorcycle club and his body was covered in tattoos.
 

Lucy came out with some of the girls.

“They’re mine,” Nathan said, walking up to Lucy and grabbing her hand. She looked up at him questioningly before becoming aware of the group of bikers that had their malicious gazes fixed on the women leaving the convenience store. Maia brought up the rear. Leo and the other three men hurried alongside the women and formed a protective circle around them.

There was a burst of laughter from the newcomers. “Looks like you crashed and burned again, Scar.”

“Well, a man’s got to try with pussy that sweet looking.”

Nathan felt his face heat up as he and Leo made a move to confront the men. Maia rushed in front to stop them.

“Not worth it, Stark, Cortez,” she hissed.

“Listen to Maia, boys,” Lucy whispered fearfully.

“A real man ain’t letting bitches tell him what to do,” Scar continued taunting the group. “How about it cherry pie? Back of my bike, I’ll show you a good time, darlin’.”