Dangerous Curves (3 page)

“What’s wrong?” Max asked.

“I think I recognized someone, but I can’t place where.” She felt annoyed and awkward with the information inside her head that wasn’t accessible. The damn drugs they gave her, along with the conk on the head, made her second-guess herself. She hated second-guessing herself.

“Want me to check it out?”

“No, he never even looked in this direction. I’m sure it’s nothing, just my overactive imagination running away with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, let’s go to the beach.”

The day was warm and the feel of the sun on her skin made her sigh. She found a beach chair tucked in to a small cove a little ways from the main part of the hotel and sank down into it. Pulling suntan lotion out of her bag, she turned to Max.

“Could you do my back?”

“I’ll do anything you want me to, especially when it comes to your body. I’m supposed to be guarding it.”

She smiled. “Such a dedicated agent.”

He straddled the cabana chair and patted the seat. Rio got comfortable and handed him the lotion. “Rub it in good. I don’t want to burn,” she said a bit breathlessly as his palms flattened on her back and started to rub and slide upward. Her eyes closed as his big, clever hands
moved from the small of her back to her shoulders and then down her arms.

“How’s that?” he murmured, his mouth next to her ear. Then he drew his hands down her arms, making her skin tingle at the warm contact.

She had to work to keep still and not arch into his hands as he rubbed. His knuckles barely brushed the swell of her breasts as his hands continued up and down her arms. Her nipples tightened almost painfully, wanting contact that wasn’t appropriate even for this sparsely populated beach. The lack of direct stimulation was almost more erotic than if he’d teased and tweaked her.

He moved then and she felt momentarily bereft. But he was soon kneeling in the warm sand and adding more lotion to his hands. “Lift your leg,” he ordered.

He massaged his thumbs into the muscles of her legs, digging his fingers in lightly along her inner thigh, before continuing down around her calf. He carefully moved around every bruise, cut and abrasion with gentle ease. When he cupped her foot, she made a soft gasp. Feeling his hands mold every curve of her body, except those that craved his touch most, was far more stimulating than she’d ever imagined. One thing his slow, methodical journey had accomplished was to dismantle her ability to think about anything other than where he was going to touch her next.

It was hard not to be restless, to move her torso, shift her limbs, in an effort to ease the ache that had pervaded her every muscle and pore.

He teased his fingertips along the arch of her foot. A dark brow rose over one of those disarming, see-
everything eyes of his as he moved to her other leg and slathered more lotion, using his hands to massage it into her skin. He rose and gently did her face, neck and upper chest, brushing tantalizingly close to the swell of her breasts.

He rubbed his thumb along his hard jaw in an absent caress, studying her from across the expanse of space separating them. “My turn,” he said softly and removed his shirt.

Rio stared and for a moment had to pay homage to the muscle gods. He wasn’t just muscular. He was honed to a hard, cutting edge. Her fingers itched to touch him. If he’d been a sword, he’d have been a killing blade.

His wide, hard chest tapered down to a taut waist with the definition of those knee-melting oblique muscles fully defined.

When she didn’t move, he held out the bottle of lotion. “Come on, you’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“Should I be?”

“Depends on the situation and circumstances,” he said, giving her the distinct impression he was testing her, though she had no idea why. “Yes or no?”

Her heart beat hard in her chest, the thrill of the forbidden heightening her anticipation. “No, I’m not afraid of you.”

“Let’s get going before I burn.”

Rio was coming to realize Max Carpenter was a take-no-prisoners kind of guy both in the field and in his personal life.

He stood there casually, so utterly male, so intensely
sexual without trying to be, while waiting for her to obey his command. The challenge in his gaze was entirely unapologetic, as if he had every right to be confident. As if he knew she found his calm self-assurance not only a challenge, but a huge turn-on as well.

He was right.

“Now that would be a terrible shame.”

She could only imagine what he had in mind for her, but she was ready for anything. Anticipation swirled low in her belly and, unable to resist his allure, she tugged on his wrist and pulled him down onto the cabana chair. She had used her sexuality while in the field, playing a brazen, fearless vixen and a sweet ingenue ripe for a sexual fling, but with Max, she couldn’t help being herself.

“Turn around,” she demanded and he complied. She squeezed a generous amount of the lotion onto her palms and rubbed them together. Placing her hands on his wide, ripped back, she smoothed in the lotion with circular strokes. He felt deliciously warm and sleek, exceptionally hard in all the right places, and she savored his virile strength as she moved across his broad shoulders. When she switched to the nape of his neck, his silky dark curls tickled the back of her hand, and it was his turn to gasp. That small sound twisted her insides like one of the pretzels they sold on the boardwalk.

Ignoring the twinge in her ribs, she rose and went to face him. “It would be easier if you stood while I do your chest.”

“I can take care of my chest just fine,” he said, reaching for the lotion in her hand.

“So can I,” she said, jerking the bottle away from him. She could lie to herself right now and say this was part of the seduction plan she was weaving around him, but Rio tried to keep herself on the straight and narrow. She wanted to touch him, needed to touch him, had to touch him.

He sighed and spread his hands, but his eyes twinkled. She was once again struck by how incessantly blue they were. It was like staring into an endless sea, sparkling with sunlight. “Have at it, then.”

“Ah, you give up way too easily.”

“What can I say? I’m easy.”

“Ha. I doubt that.”

“Then give me the bottle. I say if you want something done right, do it yourself.”

“You’d have to get it,” she said with a challenge.

He grabbed her around the waist, careful of her ribs, but her laughter gusted out as she switched hands and kept the bottle away, hurting her ribs anyway.

Jockeying for position, he reached for the bottle again, but Rio used her foot to trip him and almost got away. She got tangled up in him and they both fell to the sand, laughing like fools.

Then their eyes met and Rio felt a magnetic pull and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Panic engulfed her, spread through her like wildfire with a warning. Danger. She laughed again and broke eye contact. Standing awkwardly, she handed him the bottle of lotion.

“You win. Here you go.”

She was a confident woman who handled her affairs, both private and public, with relative ease. But this man
had so totally made her a wanton. All the people who had been close to her were dead. No one had tapped in to her core as he had done, and he’d done so almost effortlessly. A moment ago, she had let down her barriers, actually been herself and not a role she was playing.

She tried her best to appear unaffected and coolly in control as she walked back to her cabana chair and settled into it.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see him still lying in the sand looking at the bottle as if it could give him answers to her switch in mood.

She didn’t want him to get to know her more intimately. She’d had enough of relationships that ended badly and this setup would end in two weeks. Keeping things strictly physical was the only way there could be anything between them.

And that sounded like one of the toughest missions she’d ever undertaken in her life.

M
AX SAT IN THE SAND
with the lotion bottle in his hands and asked himself what the hell he was doing. He felt almost as if he’d been released from a spell.

It seemed that ever since he’d met Rio Marshall his focus went by the wayside, and it wasn’t like him. Damn hormones.

The truth of the matter was he’d decided to go along with her and see where it took him. If it took him inside Rio, he wouldn’t complain.

He rose. Glancing over at her, he saw she’d closed her eyes. Was it meant to shut him out or was she just tired from the flight and the tussle with him? She did look drawn, her skin tone a bit gray.

But the rest of her. Jeez. The rest of her was perfect. His life couldn’t possibly be this complicated or this crazy. He should be in his office at the FBI, hot on the trail of the Ghost. He shouldn’t have been pulled off his active cases and given this P Triple-A job—Protect Another Agent’s Ass. He looked away.

He was all for interdepartmental cooperation, but there were other guys, veteran guys who would have
been better suited to babysit Rio Marshall. Max had to ask himself again. Why him?

“You are going to hurt yourself over there,” Rio murmured.

He turned to look at her; her eyes were open and staring at him.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re thinking really hard. I was afraid your head might explode.”

“You don’t find this all very strange?” Max asked.

“What?”

“My being chosen to guard you.”

Rio shrugged. “Why would I think that was strange? I don’t even know you, nor do I have any pull with my boss. I screwed up, remember?”

“I remember, but still, there are plenty of other agents in the FBI my boss could have chosen.”

“Did you screw up?” she asked, taking a sip of her drink.

“What?” He hadn’t screwed up. He’d been pursuing his cases in the gung ho way he always did. All except the Ghost’s case. That was something he was pursuing under the guise of his FBI job, but was really much more personal to him. His supervisor had never really come out and said he should drop the Ghost’s case. It got him to thinking this bodyguard assignment with Rio had come at a crucial point in his investigation. Was he seeing a conspiracy theory where there wasn’t one?

“Maybe you treaded on somebody’s toes and this is your punishment.”

“Rio, I’m on a sun-drenched beach with a beautiful
woman for a two-week walk-in-the-park assignment. Where is the punishment?”

Rio bent over to rummage around in her bag and Max almost swallowed his tongue. The globes of her breasts sidled together to form cleavage he couldn’t take his eyes off even if his life depended on it.

“You do have a point there,” she said casually as if she wasn’t giving him the peep show of his life. “But I’m tired of thinking and worrying about what happened,” she continued, shoving and searching through her bag.

Each time she moved, her firm, round breasts danced and bounced. He licked his dry lips. “Can’t we just take a break from all this and enjoy some time on the government’s dime?” He watched as her silky auburn hair slid along her shoulder and dropped down into that sweet cleft between her breasts. His heart rate accelerated and he started to sweat.

Damn she was sweet, such a visceral addiction, all heat, the taste and feel and scent of her imprinted on every fantasy he’d had, which was driving him insanely crazy.

Today had been such a tease, to be with her and meet the challenge of keeping his desires and his imagination in check. He’d done a pretty poor job of it. Every inch of bare skin had made him want to run his tongue over her to make a connection, to get her wet and mark her as his…the side of her neck, the tender inside of her wrist, the expanse of bare leg in that schoolgirl skirt. He wanted his mouth on her everywhere.

It was a conquest thing, meeting the challenge,
and she was such an exquisite challenge. Yeah, he knew the goal. He understood what was happening between them.

It was like he wanted to meld with her, but he wasn’t a guy who “melded.” He was a guy who conquered.

Okay, it was a little crazy how much he’d thought about her, how much he wanted her, and there was nothing about the fact that had made him happy. His life was all about control, and wanting something he couldn’t have did not fit the paradigm.

But here she was, flashing him, and he’d gotten hard.

Rock-solid hard.

Finally, she found what she was looking for and straightened. She slipped the sunglasses on her face and looked at him expectantly.

He was supposed to answer, supposed to form words and do what humans had been doing for centuries—communicate.

“Okay,” he heard himself say as if the logical, quick-witted part of him had separated from his primal part. One syllable words. This was going downhill fast.

But not all of it was his fault. The water lapped against the beach in an erotic push-pull of waves, the palm trees swayed in the soft, gentle wind. He was standing in a freaking postcard for a sex-filled vacation. He was truly outnumbered and outmanned by an auburn-haired vixen with a glorious body and an intriguing personality.

Right. He was thinking about her personality right now.

He watched as a waiter walked up to her and asked her for her drink order. The waiter’s eyes lingered on
her breasts and sidled down her torso and her legs. Max wanted to sink his fist into the smiling bastard’s face for even looking at her.

Quite the revelation for a man who prided himself on relying on quick thinking and fast reflexes rather than the use of brutality when it came to problem solving in tricky situations.

And he’d been in her presence for less than twenty-four hours.

After she ordered a virgin piña colada, she looked over at him. “Do you want something, Max?”

Did he want something? He wanted everything. He remembered what it had been like to kiss her and he wanted that again.

He remembered what it had been like to touch her, the feel of her hot, wet desire against the sensitive pad of his fingers. How could he forget that?

What he wanted to experience was how she’d feel naked in his arms. Ah, he bet she’d be so freaking soft, and so incredibly hot. The whole short interlude in the plane’s lavatory was permanently hardwired into his memory banks—and there she was, not three feet away, smelling like exotic perfume, in a red string bikini, with her hair coming undone.

“Max,” she said, pulling down the sunglasses so she would have an unobstructed view of his meltdown.

She was so unexpected. Her eyes were clear and guileless and such a pure jewel-like amber, her skin so satiny, her hair an awesome shade of auburn that caught the sun and burst into flame…everything about her so polished and just so.

“Whiskey, straight. The good stuff,” he said, eyeing the waiter.

There wasn’t a namby-pamby umbrella drink that would take care of what he needed now.

Rio gave him one last look and pushed her sunglasses back up her nose.

Max squeezed a generous amount of sun lotion in his hand and finished the job of protecting his skin. With a muttered curse he said, “I’m going for a dip.”

Unfortunately when he hit the ocean waves, the water was a balmy 81 degrees and didn’t cool him off one bit. He should have requested they go to a mountain retreat. No, that wouldn’t have been any good, either. Then there would have been a roaring fire, and with the cold there would have been too much of that trying-to-keep-warm business, which would lead to snuggling and other things that generated body heat.

When he got back to where Rio lounged, she was sipping from a tall glass with a little pink umbrella stuck in it. She glanced up at him and smiled. He picked up the whiskey on the side table of the cabana chair, the liquid the same color as her eyes, and downed the whole contents in one burning swallow.

“You okay?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he said. He walked over, snagged another chair and dragged it to where she was. The beach boy brought him a towel and Max dried off quickly and sank down in the chair. He reached for his discarded shirt, stripped his sunglasses out of the breast pocket and slipped them on.

“You’re not really a vacation type of guy, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, I’ll spell it out. You’re a workaholic, right?”

“No. I’m not. I put in my time, but I take time for fun.”

She snorted. “Your overtime, you mean.”

“I can have fun when it’s the right time. I just chafe at being pulled away from open cases.”

“You mean your pursuit of the Ghost.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I got briefed. I know what happened to your sister. She was quite courageous, I might add.”

“Yes, she was amazing and I almost lost her because of the Ghost. You don’t remember anything about him that could be helpful?”

“No, I’m sorry. I wish I could remember.”

“How about giving me some details on how your mission went wrong?” When he saw her stiffen, he held up his hands. “I’m not asking for any mission specifics, Rio, just what happened to you and how it came about you saw the Ghost.”

She was debating. He could see that by the way she worked at her bottom lip with her teeth. He also knew when she made a decision because she took off her sunglasses and looked at him.

“All right, but please don’t ask me any mission particulars. I can’t…”

“Divulge. I understand.”

“I found Eduardo Fuentes’s compound late at night. I didn’t know it was his at first until I got closer. I figured it would be a good idea to scout the area before I continued on my way.”

“Reconnaissance can save your life,” Max said.

“Yes, I can vouch for that. Anyway, I was tired. I had been up for twenty-four hours, most of that moving over tough terrain. I found what I thought was a good place to lie low until the sun came up and I could make my way around the compound and get to my destination.”

“I wouldn’t second-guess that call, Rio.”

“What makes you think I’m second-guessing it?”

“Just a hunch,” Max said.

“Okay, so I am. I’m thinking I should have just continued on my way. Working around the perimeter in the dark surely wasn’t optimal, but I could have done it.”

“Sure, and you could have walked into a booby trap or encountered a guard. It was a good call.”

“Are you always so sure of yourself?” Rio asked.

“Yes.”

She laughed as he’d meant her to because he knew how dangerous field work could be.

“How do you know so much about moving through a jungle in the dead of night?”

“I was a marine. I’ve been in more deserts than jungles, though.”

“Mmm, a few good men. Are you good?”

“I am.”

She gave him a soft smile. “Anyway, I found a suitable place and bunked for the rest of the night. When I woke up, it was still very dark. I realized I was on the very edge of the compound, but I’d hidden myself well. Well enough to see one of the balconies overlooking the compound. There were two men standing there talking.
I pulled out my binoculars and when I focused in, I was overjoyed. It was Fuentes. The other man I didn’t know, but he…he looked so familiar to me.”

“Familiar? How so?”

R
IO KNEW SHE HAD
to be careful here. She really hadn’t seen the man’s face enough to identify him for the DEA, but Max didn’t know that and he couldn’t know that. It was the lie she was telling to keep him occupied and fill out her cover story. She hated the duplicity, but she had no choice. She was here duping Max because her boss had told her that a DEA agent’s life hung in the balance.

“He was in shadow and in profile, but something about him made me think I’d seen him before. Unfortunately, I just can’t remember anything important about his features.”

That seemed to appease Max. The next part of her story was all true and she wished she didn’t have to run the events of her capture through her mind ever again.

“Is it possible during one of your past missions, you came into contact with the Ghost and, of course, didn’t know it?” Max asked.

She shivered. In all the times she’d relived those events, over and over again, awake and in endless nightmares, she’d never once contemplated that possibility.

“It’s possible,” she agreed. “I’ve been on many drug raids and dealt with many shady and dangerous people. It was probably where I’d seen the man Eduardo Fuentes was talking to. Fuentes let it slip that his guest, the shadowy man on the balcony, was in fact the Ghost.”

“Fuentes told you the man was the Ghost?”

“He didn’t mean to and I’ll get to that.”

“Please, continue.”

She closed her eyes to gather her composure. That was an out-and-out lie she was telling. She couldn’t be sure that the man on the balcony was the Ghost. He could have been the Ghost’s lackey for all she knew.

They flew open when her waiter placed a platter of fruit on the side table between them. “Would you like anything else? We’re closing up for the night.”

“No, thank you,” Rio said. The waiter nodded and disappeared. In fact the little cove they’d settled in was quite empty. Most of the hotel guests had gone inside for dinner.

“Help yourself,” Rio said.

“Not right now. I want to hear the rest, Rio.”

She nodded. “This is the part of the story where you have to promise me you won’t laugh.”

“Laugh? Jeez, Rio. You’re in that much danger and you think I’ll laugh at you.”

“You haven’t heard the rest yet, have you?”

“No, but I can’t imagine you think I’d be amused at any part of this story,” Max said.

“Do you know anything about howler monkeys?”

“What?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Not really.”

“They’re red, of course, and not usually aggressive. They make this roaring noise and live in the canopy. I also need to mention I’m a bit afraid of monkeys. In fact, I am downright terrified of them.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“You’ll like it even less when you hear. One jumped
on me straight from the tree I was standing next to. It lost its balance after it hit me and made a terrible noise as it went down.”