As Lost as I Get (21 page)

The scissors
. They’d fallen out of his hand when Arcangel broke free, but he could see them on the floor not far from them. Lee shoved harder with his left hand, leaning toward the right, stretching as far as his abused muscles would allow. It wasn’t enough. He heard Zoe shouting something and all he could do was hope she was all right.

Gritting his teeth, his lungs starting to ache along with the rest of him, Lee kicked out and let the momentum roll him over. The pain washed over him in a sickening wave and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from passing out. It worked. He closed his fingers around the scissors just as he rolled to his back.

The sharp blast of the pistol echoed in the small closed room, and Zoe’s voice came again, cutting through all the fog. “Let him go, Santiago. I don’t want to kill you.”

Both of them looked up to see her standing only a few feet away, the gun in her hand, pointed at Arcangel. She’d fired into the wooden ceiling before, her only warning shot. The guard was nowhere to be seen, but his rifle was propped against the closed door.

“Get up. Now.” This was a Zoe Lee hadn’t seen before, frightened but angry, and entirely fed up. Her hands were rock steady holding the gun.

Arcangel scrambled to his feet, trying to smile. “You wouldn’t shoot me,” he said. “You’re not a killer, Zoe.”

“I don’t have to kill you,” she answered. “I’m a trauma surgeon. I could shoot you and then keep you alive. With no anesthesia you’ll only wish you were dead.”

Lee had never wanted to kiss her so badly before.

“Put your hands on your head,” Zoe told Arcangel, and he obeyed. “Lee, can you chain him?”

“Uh . . .” Lee scooted away from Arcangel, not trusting himself to stand. He got within arm’s reach of Zoe. “How about you give me the gun, and you chain him. And gag him.”

She gave him a worried look, but handed him the gun. Once she had Arcangel chained to the wall, she came to check on him.

“What happened to the guard?” he asked.

“I told him to get out.” He recognized the grin she gave him, one that said
and I can’t believe that worked
.

Out. He’d forgotten. What the hell was going on out there? He scooted back against the wall and braced himself against it. “Here, help me stand.” Zoe came over and took his arm. He shoved the gun in his waistband and leaned on her to stand. Being this close to her was suddenly too much. He leaned in and kissed her, almost overbalancing. He wanted nothing more than to lose himself in her presence, but that had to wait.

She was smiling when they parted. “That’s why you called me over here?”

“Only partly. Help me to the door. We’re not out yet. I want to see what’s going on out there.”

Walking was easier with Zoe to lean on. He eased open the door and they walked down the short corridor to the stairs. The worst of the shouting had stopped up above—whatever had happened, it was over. Zoe took one look at the stairs and one look at him, and said, “Wait here.”

“Be careful,” he said.

She got to the top of the stairs and opened the door. “Oh my God.” She started laughing. “Lee, I think our ride is here.” She stepped aside to reveal Wishnevsky and Timo, both heavily armed and armored.

“What,” Wishnevsky said, “are we too late to rescue you?”

“Zoe did a pretty good job of rescuing us already.” Lee leaned heavily against the wall. “Tell me you two didn’t go against an entire squad by yourselves.”

“We had help,” Timo said. He came down the stairs to help Lee to his feet. “Doctor Alejandro is a damned good shot.”

“Maria came with you?” Zoe looked horrified.

“Not bad for a couple of old women and a kid, right?” Wishnevsky wore a smug grin. “Still want to make Cold War jokes, Wheeler?”

“Please tell me there were more than three of you.” Lee winced as he limped up the stairs, leaning heavily on Timo.

“Don’t be an idiot. Of course there were,” Janet said. “And your mission?”

Lee tried to stand a little straighter. “Found the man calling himself Arcangel. He’s chained up in the cell at the bottom of the stairs.”

“Well done, Agent. Come on, let’s get you two out of here.”

“Wait, can you give us a minute?” Lee asked, glancing at Zoe.

“We’ll be outside.” Wishnevsky opened the door and Timo followed her out.

Lee leaned against the wall, but not before reaching for Zoe’s hands.

“We should get you out of here,” she said. “I was able to stabilize you a little, but you might have internal bleeding, and you need X-rays—”

“Zoe.”

She looked at him and stopped talking. In the dim light of the hall, he could just make out the soft gray of her eyes and the sweet curve of her cheek. “You saved my life,” he said.

“No, I—” She glanced away and down. “I mean, if I did— You already saved mine a couple of times now.”

“When we’re back home, and settled”—he paused and took a deep breath—“I want to talk. It’s not just me, is it? There’s something here—it wasn’t just sex.”

Zoe shook her head, her smile flashing bright and blinding his heart. “I—tried to make it be just sex. But you’re right. We should talk.” She leaned in and kissed him and he wrapped his arms around her, letting his muscles complain. All that mattered was having her in his arms.

Chapter Twenty-two

The capture and unmasking of Arcangel, along with the systematic dismantling of Las Autodefensas de Colombia, made international news. The U.S. government was only too happy to keep the civilian involvement quiet, so Zoe and Maria and Ana officially had had no role to play at all.

Zoe waited for the nightmares to return—for the first few days, the fear during her waking hours was almost unbearable while the U.S. and Colombian governments were cleaning up the rest of Arcangel’s men. The waiting only made it worse. Janet insisted on them staying in various safe houses until she gave the all-clear.

There were no nightmares, and if she was honest, Zoe thought she could attribute that to the fact that she was spending every night sleeping in Lee’s arms. They hadn’t made love again; between his injuries and her fears (not to mention a contingent of watchful CIA agents), the timing seemed all wrong. She wanted his touch for comfort.

There hadn’t been time for the talk they’d promised each other either. Debriefing after debriefing filled the first day or so before Zoe’s insistence that Lee needed a full medical examination got through to both Janet and Lee. His ribs were healing well, and the worst of the bruises were starting to fade. None of the MI doctors were orthopedic specialists, but they all agreed that the initial trauma to Lee’s knee was compounded by the torture and everything that followed. Susan confided in Zoe that she didn’t think the knee would ever be fully stable again.

It was mid-afternoon of the third day and Zoe was in the kitchen making coffee when Lee came limping in.

“You know, crutches work a lot better when you actually use them.” Zoe gave an exasperated shake of her head.

“They’re a pain. I don’t need them to get around the house.” He leaned in the doorway, watching her.

“What part of ‘keep your weight off your knee’ did you not understand?” She started the coffeemaker and turned around, leaning against the counter.

“The part where I have to use crutches in the house.” He grinned, then hobbled to the kitchen table and sat down. “There, better?”

“I am so glad you’re not my patient.” Seeing him smile and joke lifted her spirits. “Want some coffee?”

“Please.”

“Should I offer any to our guards outside?”

“What, and acknowledge that they’re there?” He rested his elbow on the table and propped up his chin. “I was trying to pretend this was a vacation.”

“Some vacation, with your boss separating us for questioning for hours at a time.” Zoe put milk and sugar on the table—of all the things she knew about Lee, she realized she had no idea how he took his coffee.

The coffeemaker clicked off and the aroma of fresh coffee filled the kitchen. Zoe brought two mugs to the table and sat down. Lee said, “She’s not here now, you know. We have the house to ourselves.” There was a low edge to his voice that
caught her attention and sent a shiver down her spine.

She didn’t look at him, but added a spoonful of sugar to her coffee and stirred it. “So we’re alone?”

“Entirely.” She did glance up at that, and found him watching her intently.

The corner of her mouth tugged up without her willing it to. “You sound as if you’re not interested in coffee.”

“Not true. I’ll need the extra energy.”

Zoe laughed and met his eyes. His laughter faded, and he reached out and took her hand.

“Zoe, back at Puerta del Ángel, you said you tried to make us be just about sex. Why?”

“Not just that. I didn’t want to make any assumptions.” She hid behind her coffee cup, feeling its warmth seep into her skin. “With our history, I mean.”

“Because of my job?”

Oh God, he was going to make her spell it out. “After Oaxaca, I struggled a lot. For a while I didn’t want to leave my mom’s apartment. Sometimes—” Her cheeks got hot. “Sometimes the only way I made it was to imagine that you were with me.” She couldn’t look at him. “I told my therapist about it and she said that was normal. Transference. I mean, you were almost literally my knight in shining armor and I . . . kind of carried that around for a while.”

“I wanted to stay in touch with you.” Lee squeezed her hand. “I don’t, usually, with mission targets. You were different.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I thought the last thing you wanted was a constant reminder of what happened. And, I guess I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated either.” Zoe managed a small smile. “I didn’t want you to think I expected you to keep taking care of me.”

“Seeing you that day in the marketplace was the best and the worst thing that could have happened to me.” Lee shook his head with a laugh. “I couldn’t believe my luck, seeing you again, but I knew I’d never be able to focus on my mission if I thought you were in danger.” His smile was warmer than the ceramic she cradled in her free hand. “And I was right. What did you do? Marched right into the most dangerous place around for miles.”

“I promise I won’t make it a habit.”

“Liar,” he said, but his voice and eyes were soft. “Going to dangerous places is your job too. We both try to make things better, but I think you succeed more often than I do.” He paused, not looking at her, focusing on his own untouched mug. “It’s one of the things I love about you.”

Zoe’s heart thudded in her chest. “Lee?” He looked up and she hesitated. “There’s . . . a lot of things I love about you too.”

His smile brightened and grew, and he tugged on her hand. “Come here.” He pulled until she sat on his uninjured leg, her arm around his shoulders. “Not transference?” he murmured.

“Maybe at first,” she said, and rested her forehead against his. “Now I know you.”

“Zoe, the minute I saw you I knew you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. It only took me a little bit longer to realize you were one of the strongest and bravest as well.” His fingers curled at the nape of her neck, tilting her head so he could kiss her slowly and gently. “How could I keep from falling in love with you?”

Her breath caught in her throat and she wanted to laugh; all this time spent running from what now seemed so obvious. “So we’re entirely alone, are we?”

He grinned and slid his hands around her waist, stroking up her spine. “Probably for hours.”

This time she kissed him, teasing her way into his mouth, reaching up to tug at his hair gently. She shifted so she straddled his good leg, pressing her body tight against his. His hands were spread wide over her back, as if he were stretching his fingers to reach everywhere at once. He tasted of good coffee and faintly of toothpaste, and the hot slickness of his mouth drove away any thoughts except of him and his body.

She shivered as his hands crept around her ribcage, sliding up between their bodies until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. “Okay.” She broke the kiss, breathless. “I’m going to go get your crutches, and then I’m going to take you to bed.”

“Be faster without the crutches.” He tried to recapture her mouth. “And if we didn’t bother with bed.”

It was tempting. “I don’t think your knee is up to anything that isn’t lying down,” she teased, nipping at his chin. “And I’m not interested in explaining to the CIA why I was having sex with one of their agents on a kitchen floor.”

“The answer to any question, always, is ‘Because national security was at risk.’”

Zoe laughed and reluctantly stood, pulling away from his mouth and his dangerous hands. “Stay here. I mean it. If I come back and you’re standing, I’ll send you to bed by yourself.” The crutches weren’t hard to find: they were propped, ignored, in a corner of the living room. He must have taken her at her word, because he was still seated when she came back. He grumbled good-naturedly, but pulled himself up on the crutches and led the way down the hall.

***

The bedroom Lee and Zoe had been sharing was the largest in the house, with wide windows that looked onto a small overgrown backyard. The windows were open and the afternoon’s rain misted in when the wind shifted just right. Lee already loved this room because it was where he’d first gotten to wake up next to Zoe in a real bed. Now it was about to become even more perfect. She closed the door behind her and came over to him, running her hands up his chest.

“The first thing,” she said, and the whispered huskiness to her voice made his knees weak, “is to get you comfortable.” She leaned up to kiss him and reached for the waistband of his jeans. His cock, which had been stirring already, started to sit up and take notice as she undid his pants and slid them down, followed by his underwear.

“You’re not messing around,” he teased, leaving a line of kisses from her mouth to her ear.

“Don’t want you to have to get up later. Sit down.” He did, and she took the crutches and propped them nearby, close
enough that he could reach them if he needed to. She leaned down and pulled away his jeans, careful of his wrapped knee. When she straightened, she rested her hands on his bare thighs and leaned in to kiss him again. The way her tongue slid and stroked against his threatened to drive him mad. He gave in to the urge to cup her ass and pull her against him. With the height of the bed, he was only a little shorter than she was. He bit at the sweet fullness of her lower lip, following it with teasing bites under her chin and down her neck, wanting to hear her moan softly as he lapped at the pulse point of her throat. He kissed his way down to the front button of her shirt and paused to unbutton first it, then the next one, revealing the stunning brown-gold curves of her cleavage, so tempting he couldn’t resist tasting her skin, running his tongue just along the line of her bra.

She arched toward his mouth and he quickly unfastened the rest of the buttons, pushing the shirt off her shoulders before bringing his hands back to cup the sides of her breasts. Her bra was a simple white lace that shimmered against her skin, sheer enough that he could see the circles of her areolas and the tightening peaks of her nipples. How much more sheer would it be wet? Zoe’s eyes were half-lidded in bliss and she was starting to sway on her feet. He brushed his thumbs over her nipples to see her jolt, then lowered his mouth to the right one, gently tonguing it through her bra.

“Oh God,” she murmured, clasping her fingers behind his head and leaning toward him. Her nipples tightened and swelled beneath his fingers and mouth before he drew back to view his handiwork. Her bra was almost transparent when wet—he was grateful that the clasp was a simple one in front, because his hands were shaking too much for anything more complicated. He let her finish taking it off once he’d freed her breasts, wanting—needing—to feel her skin beneath his hands and tongue.

Before long, she was writhing against him and he was hard and wet from the friction of her clothes against his cock. “No, wait,” she gasped, pushing herself away. “Take off your shirt and lie back. I want to see you.”

He wasn’t fool enough to argue with that, and did as she asked. His body was still mottled here and there with yellowing bruises and healing cuts, but he’d gotten off easy. The look in Zoe’s eyes as she stood there, gloriously topless, said she thought otherwise. “I’m so sorry,” she breathed.

“Unless you’re about to tell me you’ve changed your mind about coming to bed, you have nothing to be sorry for.” He met her eyes and smiled. “Get naked for me. Please?”

She grinned and turned her back to him.

“Aw, come on,” he protested, until she unfastened her jeans and started to wriggle out of them. He was transfixed by the roundness of her hips, the slow reveal of the smooth soft skin of her ass as she inched her clothing away. He couldn’t help but lie back on the bed, one hand going instinctively to his cock, stroking it in appreciation. She bent over as she pushed her clothing down, giving him the best view he could have asked for. Finally she stepped out of her clothes and turned around.

She was so beautiful it made his heart ache and sing at the same time. Everything about her, from the thick, natural curls of her hair down to the soles of her delicate feet, was absolutely perfect. “Come here,” he said, holding out his hand. She came over and raised one knee onto the bed, lying down beside him so he could draw her into his arms. Feeling every
inch of her, from head to toe, made it hard to think straight, the warmth of her body driving out anything that wasn’t her. Zoe wrapped one leg around his hip and snuggled closer to him, lying on her side and nuzzling at his shoulder. He turned so he could kiss her more easily, their mouths fitting together soft and sweet. She stroked his chest and—when he felt her grin—tweaked one of his nipples between her fingers, sending a spark spiraling through his body, making him jump.

She giggled, and suddenly he wanted more than anything to hear more of that. He ran his hands over her sides, looking for ticklish spots. “Hey!” She squirmed and started to wriggle against him, her breasts caressing his chest with their soft weight. As she arched away, he took advantage of it to lean in and nip at her collarbone until her giggles turned into a soft sigh. He gathered her in, his hands in the small of her back, and she cradled his head to her chest as he worked his way down, dragging the tip of his tongue over the inside curve of her breast. He wanted to tease her more, but the taut peaks of her nipples were too great a temptation. He closed his mouth over one, tonguing and gently sucking it.

The moan she gave was the sweetest sound he could imagine, and the shift of her hips was like a promise. She parted her thighs as soon as he touched one of them, tilting toward his hand in mute supplication. Now he could tease, just letting his fingertips trail along her inner thigh, never quite going where she wanted him, although he could feel her heat. He left her nipple with a soft bite, then moved up to kiss her neck, inching toward her ear. There was something he needed her to hear.

“I love you, Zoe,” he murmured, finally letting his fingers slide over the curls between her legs, feeling her part wider, opening for him.

“I love you,” she gasped, and the catch in her voice made him pull away to look at her. Her eyes were over-bright and shiny and she was trying not to blink.

He moved his hand away. “I’m sorry, did I—?”