Someone Like Her (20 page)

Before she could figure out how to get through to him, four men dressed in all black slithered up behind Mrs. Watkins. Maria looked into the eyes of her brother, visible through the eyeholes of his black face mask. His gaze raked over her, and she knew he was determining for himself that she wasn’t hurt. No, she wasn’t, she messaged him back.

Logan nodded, then turned his attention to Jake and Fortunada. Both seemed to be unaware of the scary men watching them with envy in their eyes, every one of them obviously wishing they were in Jake’s place.

What was it with men and their loving to punch the daylights out of someone? Maria’s only concern now was the heart attack Mrs. Watkins was going to have if she looked behind her.

“Mrs. Watkins, my brother’s here with his men. He won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Mrs. Watkins glanced to the left, then to the right, before turning her body around to see behind her. “I didn’t hear you boys knock.” She lowered the frying pan. “Are you here to save us?”

“Yes ma’am,” Logan said and pulled off his face mask. He gave the woman a killer smile, then stepped past her and rapped the back of Jake’s head with his knuckles. “Enough, Tiger. I know you want to send him to hell. So do I, but that would require too many explanations of who we are.”

Maria watched as Jake came back to himself and glanced around. Then his gaze settled on her, and the look in his eyes, God, the look in his eyes took the ability to stand right out of her. She sank to the floor in front of him.

“You came for me,” she said.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

He seemed so disappointed and she didn’t know how to tell him she’d believed he was on his way to Egypt, putting his job first. She didn’t know how to tell him she loved him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

J
ake half listened to the older woman tell Kincaid how Mr. Buchanan had done some kind of “chop, chop” on Fortunada’s neck and sent the gun flying. He half heard her tell the boss how she’d put three of her sleeping pills in the iced tea she’d planned to give the bastard. All he cared about was the woman kneeling in front of him, surprised that he’d come for her.

That really pissed him off. How could she not know he’d come for her? The caveman scenario had been a fantasy, or so he’d thought until, gone some kind of stupid, he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder.

“Where the hell you going?” Kincaid called after him. “You’re supposed to be on your way to Egypt.”

“I will be. Tomorrow,” he tossed back. And he would be after he and Maria got a few things straight between them. If it took all night, all the better.

“Damn men in love,” he heard Kincaid mutter.
Damn straight
, Jake thought as he kept going.

“Put me down,” Maria said when he was halfway to her car.

That she’d kept quiet that long was actually amazing. “No.” Fuck no. “You really need to shut up,” he said and trudged on. If she didn’t heed his advice, he might very well lay her down in the middle of the road and screw her until her eyes crossed and she admitted she loved him.

Wisely, she didn’t say another word. Seeing that bastard put his hand on her breast had sent him into a murderous rage. By the time he reached her car, he’d managed to walk off some of the fury threatening to put him over the edge and was able to refrain from claiming her in the cramped backseat of her car parked at the abandoned house. Barely.

In silence, he drove on the I-10 to the next exit where the road sign had three pictures of motels on it. The first one he came to was a Ramada, and if it wasn’t his first choice of where he’d like to take her, he didn’t care about that either.

“Don’t move,” he said as he stepped out. After securing a room, he followed the clerk’s directions to the back and pulled up in front of room 116.

During the fifteen minutes it took for them to get to the motel, she’d not taken her eyes off him. He knew that, even though he’d not once looked at her. He was afraid to. If he did, he would yell at her for scaring twenty fucking years off his life.

She’d been through an ordeal he’d wish on no one, and it wouldn’t be very nice to give her hell about it. But, Jesus, he wanted to. He wanted her to know he would’ve willingly killed a man tonight for simply touching her. Never mind the bastard had intended much more than that. Thinking about it, he was sorry he hadn’t killed Fortunada.

“Jake?”

Finally looking at her, he took in the uncertainty in her eyes. “Tomorrow, I have to get on a plane and fly seven thousand miles away from you. I won’t be here to keep you safe, and that just about makes me crazy. But tonight, I’m here and you’re mine.”

Not giving her time to answer, he got out and went to the door, sliding the key card into the slot. He turned and stared through the windshield until she got the message that this room was where she’d spend the next eleven or so hours.

When she reached him, she lifted on her toes and pressed her lips against his, and Jesus and all his angels, he almost took her against the open door of a Ramada Inn with traffic whizzing by on the road two hundred feet away.

Between the walk to the car and the drive to the motel, enough time had elapsed for some semblance of reason to return. There had been no way for her to know his flight had been delayed, that he’d still been in Pensacola when Nolan’s call came. How could she know he’d defy orders no matter the consequences and not stop until he found her?

He’d given her no indication by word or deed that she meant more to him than a bit of fun for a few weeks. The anger at her for not knowing he’d come for her had been entirely misplaced, and he owed her an apology for going caveman on her. And he would apologize, as soon as he had her naked and under him.

What was going through that mind of hers as she stood silent and still, her arms at her sides and her gaze fixed on him? “You’re being scary quiet, Chiquita.”

“I’m unsure if I’m supposed to talk. Last time you were mad at me, you ordered me not to. Are you going to invoke that rule again?”

“Sweetheart, you can talk my ears off if you want.” If she wanted to blabber all night about Hollywood gossip and fashions, he didn’t care. All that mattered was he’d found her and she was safe. He trailed his knuckles down her cheek. “For the record, I’m not mad at you, but if my ordering you about turns you on, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

In response, she threw herself at him and wrapped her legs around his waist. “I was so scared, Jake, and then there you were. I don’t know how you did it, but the minute I saw you, I knew I was safe.”

With his arms wound tightly around her back, he pressed his face to her neck and inhaled her scent, let the touch of her body against his soothe the lingering emotions of the last few hours. Never—not even in the most intense of battles—had he been so afraid.

“It’s over now, baby. Your brother will deliver that bastard to the cops,” he said as he lowered her to the bed, coming down on top of her, a grenade pressed between their stomachs.

“Shit.” He unclipped the pouch and carefully set it on the nightstand. The guns tucked into his waistband were next, followed by the knife and flashlight.

Her eyes grew wider as the pile grew. “Jeez, you’re a walking weapons store.”

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Benjamin Franklin.” How he even remembered the famous quote was a damn miracle when the woman he loved wiggled her body so that the V between her legs aligned perfectly with his cock.

“Does that mean you’re prepared for me?”

“You keep moving around like that and I’ll fuck you all the way back to the past so you can hear ole Ben say the words in person.”

Passion glittered in her eyes alongside a dare. “You could try.”

So he would. He kissed her then, hard and needy, and she gave back as good as she got. Her mouth was wet, hot, and spicy sweet, and he couldn’t get enough. Would never get enough.

There were other parts of her he needed to taste, and he kissed a path to her neck, then to her earlobe where he traced his tongue around the swirl of her ear. She moaned and slipped her hands under his shirt, scraping her fingernails up his spine.

He’d thought his dick couldn’t get any harder. He was wrong. “Clothes. Off.”

In a flurry of arms and legs, they shed shirts, jeans, his briefs, and her bra. When he caught sight of her panties, he brushed her hand aside, sat back on his knees, and stared at them.

A furry cat covered the front with the caption, “Pet me.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “You better not wear these for anyone but me, Chiquita.”

“I thought of you when I saw them. You like?”

“Oh, yeah.” And he liked that she thought of him when buying sexy panties, liked the way her eyes went all soft and warm. When she started to push them down her hips, he stopped her. “Kitty needs a pet.”

Starting at the head of the cat, just above the line of her feminine curls, he stroked his fingers over the picture. The cat’s tummy was situated right at Maria’s clit, and he stopped there and circled his thumb over the little peaking nub. Only a few seconds passed before she fisted the sheets in her hands and brought her knees up, feet flat on the mattress.

“You like?” he said, echoing her last words. Her crotch was soaked, telling him she most definitely liked.

She exhaled a rush of breath. “Stupid question.”

“You saying I’m stupid, Chiquita?” He slipped a finger under the material and traced her damp outer folds, down one side and up the other. While he played with her, sliding his finger in and out of her sheath, he took his cock in his other hand and stroked from the base to the head and back.

“Did I say something? I don’t remember.”

The male ego embedded in him from birth sent a satisfied grin to his mouth. “You said I was the hottest man you’ve ever laid eyes on. Then you said you’d never let another man touch you like this.” He braced one hand on the bed near her waist and rubbed the head of his cock through her slick, wet heat.

“I said all that?”

“You did.”

“Then it must be true.” Her eyes dilated, going from dark brown to black as she watched him.

So much passion in her and she still had no clue. She was his and he’d kill any man who dared to say otherwise. All he had to do was make sure he didn’t screw everything up and lose her. The thought of her with someone else? No way he’d allow that to happen.

“Do you want to come?”

Those eyes shimmering with heat lifted to his. “Yes, please.”

“So polite,” he said with a chuckle. The hell if she didn’t make him want to smile, to grin, chuckle, and laugh, but most of all he wanted to fuck all that pretty politeness right out of her. He wanted her barely able to talk . . . maybe just enough to beg.

“Time for kitty to go,” he said as he stripped off the panties.

Maria lifted her hips so Jake could pull her underwear down her legs. Although he’d softened somewhat in the last few minutes, there was something hard and angry in him. Until he’d chuckled just then, his face had been a mask of granite, a little scary and a lot sexy. His cheeks were shadowed with a beard trying to grow back, and it added to his dangerous appearance.

He was so freaking hot in so many ways. His body was a furnace, heat radiating off him in waves, but what a fine body it was. The fury in him, the flames she could almost see licking his skin, the male possessiveness in his eyes, all of it was a massive turn-on. She wanted him feral, she wanted to tame him, she wanted to keep him whichever way he decided to be.

“What?” she said when he just kept staring at her.

“He touched you and I wanted to kill him for you.”

An image formed in her mind, and she laughed. She didn’t mean to, but it was out before she could stop it.

“That’s funny?”

“Yes, I mean, no. It really isn’t. It’s just when you said that, I pictured my cat proudly dropping a dead mouse at my feet. It’s his way of showing he loves me.”

His eyes shuttered. Damn, she shouldn’t have said that last part. If Jake came to love her, she wanted him to say it without her prodding him or feeling like she’d forced him into admitting to something he didn’t really feel.

Not responding, he put his hands on her thighs and spread her legs apart. When his mouth came down on her and he began to explore her with his tongue, she groaned and spread her fingers through his hair. The disappointment that he’d not given any hint as to his feelings for her was momentarily forgotten as he sucked her to an orgasm that had her gasping for air and chanting his name.

When the last of her shudders faded, he crawled up her body, licking her the entire way with pauses at her belly button and her breasts. She was fairly certain she’d died, and if this was heaven, she had no problem with staying.

“Maria.”

He’d said her name many times but never like that, as if it were the most precious sound in the world to him. Before she could think how to answer—or even decide if an answer was required—he kissed her and this too was different, almost as if he were trying to show her something he couldn’t say. It wasn’t the words she wanted to hear, but she would take it.

Not that she’d said them to him either, but she wanted to wait until he returned because . . . because why? If there’d been a reason, it escaped her now. He was leaving on a dangerous mission and if something happened to him, he’d never know.

She cupped his jaws, wonderfully bristly, and let him see the truth in her eyes. “I love you.”

Not a word passed his lips, but he held her gaze with a fierce intenseness as he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her with a possessiveness that said he was claiming her. She fought off the hurt that he’d not said it back.

If your own mother couldn’t love you, Maria, why would you think he would?
Don’t go there, not now. She squeezed her eyes shut and banished the dark thoughts. Or tried to, but they hovered on the edge of her mind, mocking her.

If nothing else, Jake hadn’t grabbed his jeans and run out of the room. That was a good sign, right? Still kissing her, his hands began to move over her, sliding over her skin, leaving lines of goose bumps in their wake.

Needing to touch him, too, she trailed her fingers down his sides, over the ridges of his ribs, to his trim waist, then to his narrow hips. His taut butt flexed under her palms and she grasped it, tried to pull him into her.

“Condom.”

“You have one?” She didn’t want a condom. She wanted to marry him, sleep with him every night, and have his babies, ones who would never doubt their mother loved them.

He grunted as he leaned over the side of the bed and pulled his wallet out of his jeans. Did he always have one on him, just in case? She wanted to beat on his chest in a mad rage at the mere thought of him with another woman.

When he tore off the end of the foil, he glanced at her, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” God, why did her every thought have to show on her face?