CHAPTER 9 #2
He brushed his lips over hers, the mere whisper of a touch sending shudders through her, making her breath catch.
Then he slipped his other arm around her and drew her against his bare chest, the hard feel of his body making her go weak.
But still he didn’t kiss her full on, teasing her mouth with his, nipping her lips, tracing their outline with his tongue, until her lips tingled and ached and she was trembling.
She shouldn’t let him do this. Zach was a dangerous man, a killer. She knew next to nothing about him, not even his last name. All she had was his promise that he wasn’t a criminal. But it had been so long since a man had touched her, so long since she’d wanted a man to touch her.
She slid her arms around his neck, arched into him, desperate for more.
He groaned, and the hand in her hair became a fist. And in a heartbeat the kiss transformed, his lips pressing hard and hot against hers, his tongue thrusting deep.
Oh, my stars!
Heat lanced through her, striking deep in her belly. With a whimper, she kissed him back, welcoming his tongue with her own, breathing in the male scent of him, her insides going liquid as his hand moved slowly down her spine.
And then it was over.
He drew back, his gaze meeting hers, his brows furrowed. He was breathing as hard as she was, his lips wet, his eyes dark. “I’m . . . I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He’s sorry.
Natalie tried to still her body’s trembling, tried to catch her breath, fighting to understand how he could mean what he’d just said. He’d been the one to start it. “So . . . you . . . you didn’t actually mean to kiss me?”
She didn’t believe that.
“Ah, hell.” He stood, took a few steps back, ran a hand through his hair. “Of course, I did. You’re a beautiful woman, Natalie, but this isn’t the time or place for . . . I can’t afford to get distracted.”
“Oh.” Natalie hugged her arms around herself, feeling rejected despite his attempt at a compliment, her body still thrumming.
He sat down in the chair again and leaned forward.
“Here’s the bottom line. You need to trust me.
We need to be able to trust each other. If we’re going to get home safely, we need to work as a team, just like we did yesterday.
I need to know that you’ll do what I tell you to do, and you need to believe that I’m acting in your best interests.
I may not have time to explain everything, but I won’t tell you to do something if it isn’t very important. ”
“Why is it important that I not call my friends? I trust them with my life.”
“We’re still deep in the state of Chihuahua.
All it would take is one wiretap, one intercepted e-mail, one weak link in the chain of communication to bring the Zetas crashing through that door.
” He pointed, his words leaching the heat from her blood.
“It’s better for your friends and family to worry about you for a few extra days than it is for them to hear you’re okay, only to have you killed on the way home. ”
She hadn’t realized they were still so vulnerable—or that the Zetas were so connected. “What is your plan for getting us home again?”
“We can’t go to the consulate. I’m sure they’ve staked those out.
We’d probably get ambushed and shot trying to walk in.
Same thing with the police stations. We can’t just drive across the border—his men are probably watching the highways up to the ports of entry, too.
Traffic comes to a stop there, making it very easy to close in on a vehicle and carry out a hit.
So we’re going to do the last thing Cárdenas expects us to do. ”
“And what’s that?”
“We’re going to head northwest to a little town called Altar. We’re going to buy supplies there, and then we’re going to sneak across the border on foot. By the time Cárdenas has any clue what has happened, you’ll already be back in Denver.”
ARTURO KNELT IN his private chapel, blood rushing to his head at the news. “What do you mean they got away?”
His sister’s youngest son knelt in the aisle, gaze focused on the chapel’s marble floor, his arm bandaged where a bullet had struck it. “Forgive me, Jefe, but we did all you asked and more, and we cannot find them. They have vanished like two wisps of smoke.”
Hands clasped piously, Arturo bent his head as if in prayer, not wanting José-Luis to see his fear.
Arturo César Cárdenas feared nothing. It was he who made others fear.
Those who served him well, he rewarded. Those who failed him, those who betrayed him, he killed, their blood, their pain, their lives an offering to the one saint who ruled over all—La Huesuda, the Bony Lady, his grandmother had called her. He called her Santa Muerte.
Holy Death.
He raised his head, looked at the carved image of her that sat upon the altar, the candle he’d lit flickering at her feet.
He’d had her carved from ivory and crowned with gold, her white hood and robes made of cloth taken from a priest’s robes.
In one skeletal hand, she held a carved human skull, in the other a scythe used for harvesting human lives. And she was his protector.
She would protect him now.
His heartbeat slowed, fear cooling to anger. “Two people kill five of my men, escape in one of our cars, shoot you, my own nephew—and you cannot find them? I think you must not be trying. He is nothing but a thief and a liar, and she is just a woman, just another whore.”
An image of Natalie Benoit came into his mind.
Young. Beautiful. Her strange blue eyes full of life.
He’d been looking forward to having her for weeks.
He enjoyed nothing more than dominating a woman until she broke, until her own suffering no longer mattered to her if it meant she could please him.
Some of his women had walked willingly into the hands of Death for his sake.
Others had fought him until the moment their souls had left their bodies, the fear on their young faces transforming to peace with their last breath.
At that moment, they were more beautiful to him than they’d ever been.
Natalie Benoit would have made the perfect sacrifice. But now this chingadero who’d stolen his shipment of cocaine had also stolen her. And his men had failed to bring them back.
He crossed himself, wanting to set a good example for José-Luis, ugly scarred bastard that his nephew was.
Then slowly he rose to his feet. “This man who stole the shipment—the man you could not break. He has taken the girl for himself. He probably has her in a hotel somewhere and is even at this moment fucking what is mine. Get our police officers into the hotels with her photograph. Check every hotel in every town in the state of Chihuahua if you must, but find them. Then bring them to me.”
“Sí, Jefe.” José-Luis started to rise.
Arturo caught him by his injured arm and squeezed, ignoring his nephew’s gasp of pain. “You have lost me a sacrifice. I swear on La Santa Muerte that if you do not find her, you will pay in blood. ?Comprende?”
“Sí! Sí, Jefe.”