Seduction Under Fire (12 page)

“Aaron, stop. It’s not my blood. I swear.”

Finally, with no inch of her body left unchecked, he stood. His pulse was racing, his breath coming in ragged fits. Impossible that she could be covered in so much blood and not be injured.
Impossible.
But whatever her wounds were, he had to get a grip before he got them into more trouble.

He had to get Camille to safety. The urge to protect her was fierce. At that moment, there were fifty-fifty odds he’d call Dreyer to get them out of the country by morning. They might have to hide for the rest of their lives in WitSec, but she’d be safe and that was all that mattered.

He looked her way. Wearing nothing but panties and a bra, she sat utterly still, chanting quietly, looking more fragile than he knew her capable of being. That certainly got his attention.

Finally, he heard what she was chanting.

“It’s not my blood.”

Blinking rapidly, he nodded, processing. “It’s not your blood.”

“No.”

“Whose?”

“Two men from the compound and another I didn’t recognize.”

“You killed them?”

“Yeah,” she said wearily.

“You weren’t shot?”

“No, just a little beat up.”

Aaron looked around the ground for the change of clothes he’d brought, that he’d dropped in a fit of panic when he’d seen her. “Here, hurry. We need to leave.”

She put her clothes on while sitting, even her pants. Aaron couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, as if his sight held the power to keep her from evaporating into thin air. When she was done, he handed her a helmet.

“A motorcycle?”

“Dirt bike. With helmets on, there’s no chance of being recognized.”

Camille nodded. Aaron offered her a hand, which she accepted. She grimaced as she pushed to her feet, as though she was injured worse than the superficial wound on her ankle. But he had inspected every inch of her body.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she replied thickly. “Get the bike started. I’ll be out in a sec.”

“No. You’re not getting out of my sight again.”

“I’m right behind you.”

“What are you hiding from me, Camille?”

“I need a minute.”

Then he noticed the way she stood—on her right foot. The pieces fell into place. The grocery store was at least six or seven miles away.

“You ran, didn’t you? From the market?”

“I did what I had to do. Please, wait at the bike. I’ll be there in a sec.”

Aaron lifted her into his arms. Her bad leg had to be killing her, and she didn’t want him to see her limp. Stubborn, stubborn woman.

“You promised—no pity.”

“Right. No pity,” he murmured absentmindedly as he walked.

“Then what do you call this?”

Taking care of you, my proud warrior.
“Only trying to speed things along.”

They barreled through the city. The feel of Camille, with her arms holding tight around his middle and her warmth pressed against his back, was a balm against the fear and regret that had consumed him. She was alive, relatively uninjured and safe.

Pulling into a private marina, Aaron cut the engine on the bike and used his feet to walk them down the ramp to the dock.

“You bought us a yacht?”

“Yeah.” He helped her from the bike and over the railing of the boat. “Transportation-slash-housing all rolled into one.”

Camille nodded. She looked exhausted.

He lifted the bike over the rail and onto the deck of the boat. Its lightness was one of the main reasons Aaron bought a dirt bike instead of a motorcycle. The other was its ability to traverse both streets and off-road trails, wherever their search for Rosalia Perez took them.

“The bathroom’s by the bed,” he said. “I’m going to get us offshore, then we’ll talk.”

“Okay.” But she didn’t move, just stood on her right leg, probably waiting for him to turn away so he wouldn’t see her limp. Stubborn woman. Though he wanted to carry her, her safety was more important. Every moment on land kept Camille in danger.

Aaron untied the ropes that anchored them to the dock and climbed the ladder to the bridge. With a turn of a key, the boat rumbled to life. He pushed the throttle forward and the boat responded, racing them into the safety of the deep, black sea.

One hour later, with the boat anchored in a leeward cove of a tiny island off the coast, he sat on the bed and waited for Camille to finish showering, holding a pair of scissors and a box of hair dye he’d found amid her purchases. He worshipped her hair but valued her life even more. Maybe if she’d disguised her appearance sooner, before Aaron stopped her, the shoot-out could’ve been avoided. He wouldn’t make such a careless mistake again.

She emerged from the bathroom dressed in sweatpants and a white T-shirt. The bruises on her cheek looked even worse in the light. Her left eye was almost completely swollen shut, but she zeroed in on the items in his hands and nodded.

She took a step and sniffed. Gathering her in his arms, he ignored her weak protestations and deposited her on the toilet lid.

Without a word, she turned, offering him access to her hair. He gathered it in his hand, gave it one final caress.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. Then he made the first cut.

Before long, blond locks littered the floor. Camille remained still and silent as Aaron snipped her hair to chin length. When he’d finished, he opened the box of dye.

“I don’t know how...” he started.

She turned toward him and set her hand over his. “I’ll help you.”

Her fingers were cold, shaky. He dropped to his knees and brought her hand to his lips. He felt a welling of sorrow and anger stir within him, threatening his careful composure, and cleared his throat. “We’ll save enough dye for my hair, too. We’re in this together.”

She nodded and took the box of dye. Bent over the instructions together, they got to work.

An hour later, they were brunettes. Aaron dabbed her hair one final time with a towel, then lifted her into his arms. She complied without complaint as he carried her to the bed.

Rolling to her side, she stared at the wall with stormy intensity.

After turning off the lights, Aaron stripped to his boxers and slid beneath the covers, all the way over to her. She didn’t acknowledge his nearness, but she didn’t protest either. He rested the entire length of his body along her back, spooning her tightly. His fingers locked with hers.

He spent nine hours that day thinking she’d died in a vicious gun battle. Though he knew better now, he felt damaged by the experience. Tonight, he needed to hold her as much for his own healing as for hers.

Tonight, she let him.

Chapter 9

C
amille woke with Aaron’s nose touching her cheek and his arm draped across the underside of her breasts. She should get up. They had so much to do. Every moment they wasted kept their families and Rosalia in danger. But his body felt heavy and good and she dreaded moving her throbbing left leg.

She worked her fingers through the tips of Aaron’s thick hair and felt the ends where it curled around his ear. He looked as handsome as ever with brown hair. Her fingers glided over his earlobe and around the strong angle of his jaw. When she did not dare explore him further, she rested the palm of her hand against his neck and concentrated on the beat of his pulse.

It would be worse now for her. If they survived this mission, it would be painful in a way she wanted to deny but couldn’t—not if she was being honest with herself. She’d invested years of her energy hating Aaron, on actively trying not to think about what she wanted from him. That would be impossible now. The man she held for this brief moment in time beneath the palm of her hand would exist forever on the fringe of her life, unattainable and heartbreaking. She should have tried harder to hate him.

When the tickle of blinking eyelashes brushed her cheek, her hand flew from Aaron’s neck. Silently, he levered himself onto an elbow. She met his fathomless brown eyes, felt his arms slide along her shoulders, caging her beneath him, his fingers tangling in her hair. He lowered his mouth. Through no conscious will of her own, Camille’s lips parted. Hovering only centimeters above her, he closed his eyes, his breathing strained, shallow.

A lock of his hair fell forward, skimming her forehead. She closed her eyes, the effort to stay still, to not pull his head down that final bit, sapping her already negligible strength.

He sucked in a deep, tremulous gulp of air, rolled off the bed and staggered to the bathroom. Camille let go of the sheet she was twisting and pushed to a seated position at the edge of the bed. Her whole body hurt, as if the pain of her leg had seeped into her bloodstream and spread while she slept.

Good. Anything to keep her mind from dwelling on what just happened.

When Aaron emerged from the bathroom, neither spoke as he carried her up the three stairs to the sofa. She let him because, frankly, she couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

“This is the living area,” he said without meeting her eyes. “There’s a deck out back with a ladder that leads to the bridge. The boat’s only thirty-three feet long, which is tiny, I know, but it was the best I could do.”

In addition to the sofa on which Camille sat, the main cabin housed a dining table and a kitchenette complete with a sink, mini-fridge and microwave. “Actually, it’s not much smaller than my apartment. How much did you pay?”

“A hundred grand, which would be steep for a legitimate sale of a yacht this size, but on the black market, it seemed a reasonable price, especially since the guy selling it didn’t care who I was and why I had so much cash. He got the boat as a gift for his wife last year and now she’s hinting about a bigger one. Must be nice.”

“This is perfect. Really great thinking.” She tried to smile, but the action brought too much pain to her swollen cheek. “I didn’t know you had experience with boats.”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I’ve done my share of water-skiing and speedboating over the years. Never captained a yacht, but I’m getting the hang of it.”

“How far offshore are we?”

He emptied a can of soup into a coffee mug. “Twenty miles. About an hour’s drive.”

“Great. I’ll heat up the soup. You fire up the boat. We can start with surveillance. Make a few passes by the Gigante Market, see if any other cartel operators are lurking nearby who might lead us to Rosalia.”

He set the mug in the microwave. “We’re going to shore this afternoon, but only to meet Ana at the marina. She called last night while you were showering to check on you and offered to drop off some groceries. I asked her to pick up the package from Jacob and some materials one of my coworkers overnighted to me, too. You’ll be staying in the cabin, out of sight. You’re not getting off this boat for a few more days.”

Anger tightened her throat. “Who the hell are you to issue a command like that? If I say I’m all right—” She pushed to standing, swallowing a gasp as waves of pain radiated from her leg.

Aaron was in her face before she could recover enough to speak, stabbing the air between them with his finger. His eyes were wild, furious. “Sit down. Right now. Never once in my life have I forced a woman to do anything she didn’t want to, but so help me, Camille, you’re going to stay off that leg if I have to tie you to the bed.”

Camille bit back the challenge hanging on the tip of her tongue.
I’d like to see you try.
Because what if he seized on her words? What if he touched her again?

Still, she was far too stubborn to capitulate. Balancing on her good leg, she held her ground. “How dare you, you chauvinistic jackass. You’d never talk to one of your ICE unit members like that. If I say I’m all right, then I am. The fact that I’m a woman is immaterial.”

Yet how could she ignore that truth when he stood so close? When she could smell soap on his skin and watch the throb of a vein in his forehead? She’d never been more aware that she was a woman than when she was near Aaron Montgomery. And for that alone, she wished she could hate him.

“You’re a terrible patient.”

“And you’re an insufferable pig.”

She jumped a little when she felt his hand on her hip. Trapped between his broad, solid body and the sofa, her only move was to scramble onto the cushions, but she was too confused to move. She sought out an answer in his eyes and found them narrowed with resolve.

“You’re right. Your gender doesn’t matter to me one bit. Never has, never will.” His voice had turned a soothing, patronizing tone. His hand, rough and sure, slid along her thigh and she caught herself pressing into his touch as her body stirred to life. “In fact, I barely notice you’re a woman at all.” His other hand closed around her waist as his fingers skimmed her knee.

Her breathing grew shallow. She stared at his chest, unwilling to meet his gaze.

“But if we got in a jam while doing surveillance, you couldn’t run fast enough to escape.” He dug his fingertips into the sensitive hollow behind her knee and her standing leg buckled. Her arms flailed as she dropped to the sofa. “And if you were caught, what good would you be to Rosalia?”

He was right, damn him.

She stared out the window at the rolling gray swells, her hands fisted to keep herself from rubbing the skin he’d seared with his touch. She could think of nothing to say, no clever retort or convincing threat. No argument to match his foolproof logic. She had to let him win this one. For Rosalia. For their families.

He banged the mug of soup down on the side table. She lifted it to her lips and drank deeply. Through her silence, she conceded defeat.

* * *

For the rest of the day, the yacht bobbed in the Sea of Cortez, so far from the mainland it looked like a layer of brown smog across the western horizon. Outside of using the bathroom, Aaron let Camille do nothing for herself—not walk, get a drink of water or brush her hair. He hovered, like the world’s most handsome private nurse, over her every waking moment.

At four o’clock, the yacht rumbled to life and they made their way through the long, narrow Bay of La Paz. When they reached their slip in the marina, Aaron ducked his head into the cabin with a warning for Camille to stay out of sight. She responded with a huff of protest. After resting her knee for a full night and day, she was anxious to measure her recovery.