Kiss the Enemy (Slye Temp) (17 page)

His hand cupped her head. She didn’t care. He muttered, “Have to get that fever down.”

She was fine as long as she could snuggle up to him and get rid of the chill that she doubted would ever go away. She opened her eyes and saw the sat phone hooked to his waistband. The First Aid kit was cumbersome, but she could at least carry the damn phone.

Did she really care? No. Let macho man carry it all.

“Come on, Sugar. Just a little further.”

She could do this. Pushing away from his chest, she looked up in his face and noticed his swollen eye had opened up more since this morning. He had nice eyes. Pretty brown eyes for a man. She’d told another man he had pretty brown eyes once.

When?

He kissed her, not crazy wild like before, but just a kiss on her forehead. She let him. Why not? They were stuck here, wherever here was. He kissed her on the lips this time.

She liked the way he kissed. Had always liked that mouth.

That was a dumb thought. It made no sense.

“Can you still walk?”  His words came from a distance, but he was right in front of her, still holding her and rubbing circles on her back.

She thought she’d snapped back, “Is the Pope Catholic?” but it sounded slurred. Must be the drugs and that she was so dog-tired.

She clenched her eyes and tried to think. They were running from kidnappers. Check. She called Nick on the sat phone. Check. She had to tell Dragan something before Nick or Sabrina showed up. What was it?

The world came into focus and went out again. One minute, she was walking and the next minute everything blurred then she was hanging over Dragan’s shoulder. What the hell?

Every time she almost fell asleep, he’d say, “Wake up, Sugar. I need you to watch my back.”

She’d shake her head and look around.

Time stretched forever with that constant drill of waking up and falling out of time until Dragan stopped. He slid her down in front of him and held her head against his chest. She could feel his heart thumping, but she was no small woman and he’d been carrying her awhile.

He sat down on a fallen tree and pulled her onto his lap. “Let’s rest.”

She should tell him he was a pussy and they had to keep moving with the enemy on their tail, but she was freaking tired and lying here against him felt too good.

“Don’t pass out now,” he ordered her. His hand cupped her forehead again and he cursed. “Stay alert. We aren’t out of here yet.”

That perked her up. She lifted her head and looked around, but nothing was in focus. “We need to hide until ...”  She swallowed. “Until we can make it further.”

“We’re good here.”

She couldn’t push him to keep going when he was stuck dragging or carrying her. “I have to tell you something.”

“What?”  His hands were massaging her neck and back.

He had nice hands. Not like the two other men she’d been with in past years, but hands that knew her body.

“Sugar?”

“What?”

“You had something to tell me.”

“I like your hands.” 

He chuckled, but it was drowned out by a whomp, whomp, whomp sound. Her brain registered helicopter.

Dragan yelled something. He picked her up and was hugging her to him as he started moving.

A chopper. Sabrina was better than anyone knew. Who had she called to get someone here so soon?
Sabrina. FBI
. Oh, shit. That’s what Margaux had to tell Dragan.

This rescue would suck if he said the wrong thing.

The noise roared as the chopper descended.

She remembered what she had to tell him. She clutched his shirt.

He covered her hand. “It’s okay, Sugar. Don’t worry. This is our ride outta here.”

“You don’t understand. Don’t tell them your name.” She thought she’d shouted that but she hadn’t heard her own voice.

Dragan stood with her in his arms and she didn’t have the fight left in her to bite his head off for carrying her in front of a rescue team. She tugged on his shirt again.

He leaned down. “What?”

“Don’t give up your real name,” she whispered, the last of her energy draining out with that effort. Her head rolled to the side where she saw men dressed in fatigues, armed to take out a small country and ... not a face she recognized.

Sabrina must have used a marker with her military contacts.

Add that to the debt Margaux owed her.

The men blurred into one big blob of jungle camo and she gave up the fight to stay lucid.

CHAPTER 19

Voices were whispering again.

Cold cloth moved over her face. Margaux had to climb out of this black hole. She’d been bobbing up and down, living in this half world, listening to sounds in between moments of pain and falling back into the void.

This sucked.

She hated to be still. Add that to her hate list, too. Right along with not being able find her way out of this stupid darkness. Who was talking around her? Warm lips touched her forehead, then her cheek.

She mumbled something about kicking someone’s ass.

Not that those lips hadn’t been nice, but no one kissed her unless she decided they could first. Someone was getting ripped a new one, just as soon as she got her stupid eyelids to open.

How hard could that be?
Blink, dammit.

Time dissolved.

She surfaced again, but this time she opened her eyes.

Why was it
still
so dark? Was she blind?

A flicker of light registered to her right. It wasn’t enough to make out anything but dark shapes in the room, and she didn’t see a window. A candle had burned down to the point the flame was little more than a suggestion. Anxiety hung at the edge of her consciousness, reminding her of the last time she’d been locked in a dark room. A closet really.

She curled her fingers and touched ... sheets. Thank goodness. She wasn’t sure why that was special, but trusted her gut that this was a good thing. Now, to figure out where she was and what was going on. She was lying on her back with her arms at her sides, but not bound. Lying on a bed. She had on a shirt that clung against her hips, but not another stitch of clothing.

Her right arm lay on the bed and it was sore, but tolerable. Nothing like before.

That’s right. She’d been in the jungle. She’d gotten cut. The back of the other hand, at the edge of the bed, felt pinched. If she started counting aches and pains, she’d need a calculator. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail. Odd that she wasn’t scratching her scalp after going without a bath for so long, but she didn’t feel grungy either.

She’d been naked on the floor of a hut in the jungle. She and Dragan had escaped.

They’d been rescued.

Men in cammies. Sabrina had made a call and a military unit had picked them up.

What had happened to Dragan?

Margaux’s heart thudded in her chest. She hadn’t been cognizant to protect him from Sabrina. Had he ...

The mattress moved.

She looked in the direction of the shift and someone was there, turning to prop up his head on his hand and bent arm. Dragan. She couldn’t see his face, but the outline of that large body had to be his. She just knew, could feel him when he was close. How weird was that?

He asked in a ragged sleep voice, “You caught up on your rest, Sugar?”

“Guess I needed it.”

“Want some water?”

“Hell, yes.”  She unconsciously licked her lips, anticipating a swallow while the bed moved. When he returned to her, he lifted her head and put a cup to her mouth. She drank the best tasting water she’d ever had, but stopped before she made herself sick. “That’s all I want.”

He put the cup away and came back, a big hulking shadow hovering over that side of the bed. “Think you can eat?”

That didn’t sound so good. “Not yet. How long have we slept?”

“I napped an hour since lying down tonight.”

“Is that all? You have to be beat.”

“Oh, I slept the first day here.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. The first day as in they had been here for more? Were they locked up together? Couldn’t be. She didn’t understand and frankly didn’t care right now, because she was glad he was here.

With her.

She could have died out in the jungle, but the two of them had gotten each other through and he’d kept her moving when her body wanted to hole up somewhere and quit. If they were locked away together, why question good fortune when it came her way? “How long have we been here, and
where
is here?”

“We’ve been here for four days. You’ve been out most of that time.”

“What the hell? Why didn’t you wake me up?” She raised her hands to emphasize her words and sucked in a breath when she bent her injured arm at the elbow.

He reached over and put his hand on her shoulder, gently pushing it back down. “Careful. We’ll take out the IV in a little while now that you’re drinking water.” 

“How about
right
now? I hate anything attached to me.”

“Hold on.”  He got up and moved around. How he saw in such low light she had no idea, but his fingers seemed to work by rote once he unclipped the IV. He moved around and made a noise searching for something then came back to remove everything from her left hand. He pressed cotton and tape over the puncture.

As soon as she was free, she tried to lift her injured arm again and sucked in air. That hurt.

“Don’t make me regret doing that, Sugar.”  He took her hand and guided it back to the bed then leaned across her, putting his arm down for support. “If you don’t eat, the IV goes back in.” 

“Yes, sir. Sir,” she smarted back. That kept her from thinking about how nice he smelled. He’d had a bath. The dog.

His fingers brushed over her cheek and forehead. “You were unconscious longer than I expected. Once the fever was down, I let you sleep because your body needed it.”

She’d managed to stay out of hospitals and couldn’t recall the last time anyone had cared for her. For four days, no less. She didn’t want to feel anything for this man who had been in San Francisco to meet the Banker, but tell that to the warm sensation that spread through her with him so close.

“Where are we?”

“In a secluded location in the mountains.”

“What are we doing here?”

“Waiting.”

Ah, hell. Sabrina didn’t want Margaux back in Atlanta yet, which meant they were locked up in a remote location. Probably an armed guard outside. “Nobody said anything about you taking care of me?”

“No.”

“Did they send in a doctor?”  Singleton was Sabrina’s field medic, but Margaux wouldn’t use anyone’s name.

“No.”

That sucked. Margaux expected a little more consideration out of Sabrina, but now that she thought about it, Nick advised her to do whatever she was told whenever she was told if she didn’t want to make things worse.

“Don’t worry,” Dragan told her. “I cleaned out the infection again, stitched it and gave you heavy antibiotics.”

“
You
stitched me?”

“Wasn’t my first stitch job.”

“Who else have you sewn up?”

“Me. I had a gash in my leg one time.”

Of course.

He brushed hair off her face and smoothed his hand along her cheek. “You had me worried there for a while. Thought you were just going to wimp out and let some puny infection win.”

The lips she’d felt kissing her at some point must have been his.

Guess she’d have to leave his ass intact. This time.

She made a scoffing sound at his poor attempt to insult her. “If you knew anything about me, you’d know I
never
give in to an opponent, human or bacterial.”

“Oh, I know you.”

Something poked at the back of her brain when he said that. She needed a day just to recall everything that had happened since the Trophy Room. Spending intense time together in the jungle while trying to survive would make any two people more familiar, but his voice
was
familiar and the way he’d said that bothered her.

She wished he’d turn on the lights so she could see his face better. Look into his eyes and see what emotion had pushed that comment.

Teasing, serious or sincere?

She went with teasing and returned the favor. “If you know me so well, then you’d realize that I want a bath. Where’s the shower?”

“You don’t feel clean?”

Actually she did and that bothered her because she’d been nasty the last time she’d been awake. “I had a bath?”

“Yep. Not that long ago. I kept thinking you’d wake up and yell at me.”  He was twirling a lock of her hair around his finger. “I washed your hair, too. That was a trick to pull off, but I had help.”

She frowned, trying to decide if she was happy to be clean or pissed off that a man had been handling her body while she was out of it.

Dragan handling her body.

He sighed. “Quiet’s not a good sign with you, Sugar. No one saw all of you but me, and I didn’t take any liberties, so stop fuming.”

That was better. Sort of. “Why did they let you bathe—”

He leaned over and kissed her, taking his time gently studying her mouth by touch. He turned kissing into an art. His tongue explored and tangled with hers.

She really should tell him that he couldn’t kiss her every time he had a notion, but no one was around and he tasted like cinnamon mint.

He deepened the kiss and lust rolled through her. She used her healthy arm to reach his back.

He didn’t have a shirt on. Running her hands over his muscles just turned her on even more. Her fingers slid across the smooth skin over cut muscle. Dragan was all male from his powerful body to his deadly skills.

Her mind must be mush, because she no longer cared about being manhandled for a bath, not as long as he was willing to keep kissing her this way. He nipped, teased her lips that felt much improved. She lifted her hand to his cheek. The beard was gone. He had a nicely sculpted face. She pushed her fingers into his hair, smiling at the softness.

That was the
only
thing soft on this man.

Hovering over her, his hand touched her waist. Long fingers spread out, moving across her stomach. She’d forgotten how good being touched by the right man could feel.