GABRIELLA #3
“Gabriella,” he whispered, “those men want to hurt you. I don’t want them to. It’s as simple as that.”
Her lashes fluttered, eyes bouncing over the shadows that line his face. “Why?”
“Because you are mine … to protect for now.”
The word mine carried differently than what it used to when she was married. With Mateo, she only felt that word meant to him in a way that was about possession and protection.
“Are you afraid?” she asked. It was an impulsive question, and she wasn’t even sure where it came from. But there was just … something in how he spoke, in how he looked at her, that caused her to ask.
Her voice had been so quiet she was certain the sound of the waves had swallowed it before it reached him.
But he froze at her question in a complete, total stillness, every muscle in his body locking simultaneously.
His shoulders drew up, his arms bracketing her more completely, his body closing the space around her in a way that her nervous system registered before her conscious mind did—registered as enclosed, as surrounded, but not with the spike of fear she would have expected.
With the confused warmth of being protected rather than captured.
He leaned closer, his breath disturbing the loose strands of hair along her nape, the warmth of it reaching her skin. “I am afraid. Do you see me as weak for it?”
Weak? Him? This man whose presence took up so much space she could barely breathe? The comedy of it nearly had her laughing, despite the juxtaposition of emotions rampant in her system.
With the barest movement, she shook her head. “No. Never.”
Tension dissipated from his body as he leaned his head onto her shoulders. “Good, because I could never forgive myself if you hated me for it.”
Oh, she thought. Was her opinion of him so valuable that he would risk so much for it?
She hesitated before she tried again, desperately trying to ignore the heat of his skin or how close his lips were to her collarbone. “Why me?”
He took a breath and furrowed his brows. “Someone … leaked information about your research to some very bad men. Now they’ve made you a target.”
The waves of exhaustion and adrenaline pulsed through her in alternating currents, her body unable to decide which state it was supposed to be in.
She was certain she had heard him wrong, despite the intimacy of his delivery, despite the closeness of his body, his breath on her skin and the absolute, direct sincerity in his voice.
He pulled back, and the loss of his heat left a cold band across her front that her body noted with an embarrassing, involuntary ache.
You are losing your mind, Gabriella. You cannot want this man. Not after what’s just happened. What is still happening.
She stared at him as she struggled for words, watching his hands move methodically once again over the rope. But then—why do you feel safe?
“Made me a target? I’ve been studying turtles, Mateo.” Her words came out carrying all the bewildered absurdity of the situation. “Turtles. Not nuclear secrets.”
As he inspected the knots he’d just tied, running his long fingers over the rope, a part of her wished it was her skin he was touching. His jaw was set in that specific way—the muscle ticking, the teeth pressing—that she had come to recognize as him processing something he didn’t want to verbalize.
Eventually, he said, “Your fieldwork observing turtles? Documenting their nesting sites and migration routes? Well, you’ve been accidentally documenting a whole hell of a lot more than that.”
She nearly rolled her eyes, her tone taking on a hint of frustration at having to repeat herself. “I don’t understa—”
“It’s a smuggling ring,” Mateo said. The words were flat and direct, dropped into the space between them without softening.
“You’ve been gathering data on routes and sites that are used to smuggle anything that turns a profit—weapons, drugs, people.
Even sea turtle eggs, if you can believe that.
Your data would have exposed those routes.
They’ve been aware of you for weeks now. ”
Oh shit.
She shook her head, the motion slow and continuous. “No. No, that’s impossible. My work—”
“Accidental or not, you found and mapped nesting sites at the same points where some rather important shipments have been delivered and buried. We’re talking military-grade contraband.” He stood then, his silhouette highlighted by moonlight as her eyes caught a flash of his own rich brown.
The precision of his knowledge was disturbing. Unsettling. These were not guesses. Not approximations. Specifics. Which meant he had access from proximity, from being inside the information rather than adjacent to it.
Gabriella stared at him in horror and asked the question she feared she already knew the answer to. “Mateo … how do you know any of this?”
He hesitated. His gaze moved away from hers—a glance towards the dark tree line, towards the place where the jungle held its own secrets—before returning to look into her eyes. “Because I run that smuggling ring.”