Hush (5 page)

Strong, stubborn jaw, blade of a nose. All those scars. … A fighter. Because she couldn't help herself, Acadia traced a gentle finger across the wide expanse of his chest, through his thin blue cotton shirt. Internal muscles she'd only recently discovered contracted in response.

“What's your last name, soldier?” she whispered, tracing his hard, thin slash of a mouth, which was set firmly, as if he were fighting even in his dreams. Maybe he was.
Given the way he'd handled himself in the hotel room, maybe he was all too used to brawling with strangers in dangerous places.

Acadia had a Technicolor memory of kissing and licking her way down the crisp hair on his chest and following the arrow all the way down to … Her cheeks turned fiery hot.

So much for her prediction that he'd leave her room while she slept, after they'd made love. So much for her certainty that she'd never,
never
see him again. Wasn't that what one-night-stand guys
did?

There was that whole be-careful-what-you-wish-for thing that she'd never appreciated the irony of until now. She carefully wiped around the bump and worked carefully at the crusted blood on his temple with the pungent wipe. The bleeding had stopped. That was a good thing. But he was still unconscious after all this time—a bad thing.

“Dirt roads, armed men, jungle,” she said briskly. What she wanted was the magic button she could press to reanimate these guys. “They are not taking us to a fiesta, boys, so can you please wake up sooner than later and help me figure out what we're going to do when we finally stop? I would really, really like to have a plan.”

Acadia did not like chaos or uncertainty. Life went much more smoothly when things were anticipated and planned for. She made lists of her lists; she anticipated, strategized, and planned ahead. Boring, her friends insisted. But Acadia knew that the way she did things left no room for horrible surprises.

The smorgasbord of current possible “surprises” made her heart pound. She tried to keep track of when they turned and when they went straight. Hard to do without visual clues. She made a mental note of the condition of the roads they traveled, which kept her mind occupied and her dwindling hopes up as her mind filled with “ifs”: if they could escape; if they could make it to a road; if they were actually able to walk and able to backtrack.

Her heart skittered as the bald tires of the van bumped off a paved road and turned left onto something rougher and a lot more ominous. God … a dirt road could go anywhere.
Be
anywhere.

She finished thoroughly cleaning Zak's head wound, then used a clean edge to wash several smudges off his face. He still looked dangerous. She whipped out another wipe and went to work on the other guy. Good-looking, with shoulder-length dark hair. Not as interesting a face as her lover's, but nice enough. “At least you don't have to listen to me talking to myself,” she told them as she finished up the triage. “I tend to get overly chatty when I'm nervous. And this situation is tying my stomach in knots.”

She did something else when she was extremely nervous: she lied through her teeth. She knew she was doing it, but couldn't seem to stop herself. Staff Sergeant Dad used to warn her that her fibbing would get her into serious trouble one day. Last night had clearly been that day.

She'd fibbed to Zak about being a dancer—when the least of it was, she had two left feet—the exotic, erotic kind was implied when he'd approached her in the dimly lit,
very loud cantina the night before. As fibs went, it was pretty much a white one. The whole evening had been a surreal, exciting, out-of-body experience. The small …
untruth
had enhanced her first one-night stand.

Talk about Murphy's Law. Her first one-night stand couldn't have turned into a worse nightmare. She wasn't used to standing around bare-ass naked and surrounded by burglars, or felons of some sort, being … eye-fucked. Oh God. That was the very first time she'd ever used
that
word, even in her head, but there wasn't really any other way to put it.

Apparently she wasn't cut out for adventure. She shouldn't have come to Venezuela a day earlier than her friends to get acclimatized. She sure as hell shouldn't have picked up a dangerous stranger, should not have brought him to her room, should not have had wild monkey sex with him, and should not be traveling at the speed of fright to an undisclosed second location.

The Lover She Never Wanted to See Again was supposed to have gone off this morning at dawn for his Angel Falls BASE jump. She, to do a river trip to
see
those falls. Which pretty much highlighted their different life views as far as she was concerned. He was a doer. She was a watcher.

The reason the sex had been so incredible—so mind-bendingly
amazing
—was because she'd believed it was a one-time-only deal, so she'd checked her inhibitions at the door. A one-night stand, she thought, annoyed, should be just that. One damned night.

Her entire body blushed with mortification. She'd done things, had things done to her, that she couldn't
even
think
about in the daylight. She'd never done anything remotely like what they'd done the night before.

Acadia wiped the sweat dripping down her temples on the shoulder of her T-shirt. She couldn't imagine looking into the eyes of the short-term lover who knew what she'd done the night before. He had been a hot, sweaty adventure that she'd never forget. She didn't need the knowledge in his eyes to remind her of just how adventurous she'd been. She let out a little moan of embarrassment. All she'd damn well wanted was an
adventure
before her thirtieth birthday. To live a little. To step outside her small box in Junction City, Kansas, and experience what she'd only read about. She'd wanted to taste a hot arepa fresh from the oven, pick a sun-warmed passion fruit straight off the vine, feel the tropical sun on her face and the splash of the Akanan River against her skin as she and her friends went on their crazy adventure to see Angel Falls.

She'd wanted a fun-filled vacation before she packed up her neat little life and took her first steps into a brandnew world; wanted to say good-bye to her friends in style, give herself memories to savor when she moved away to start her new education in a new city.

Had that been too much to ask? Clearly, yes. The universe, not known for its sense of humor, had granted her wish. Her father, retired army staff sergeant Corey Gray, had frequently warned her to be careful what she wished for. Maybe she'd wished too big, Acadia thought, as the van slewed around a corner and threw her back against the hot metal wall once more. The guys' heads rolled, and she anchored them with a hand on each forehead.

She'd wanted to live, and instead could very well die in the jungle where no one would ever find her.

ZAK CAME TO WITH
a blinding headache, his head pillowed on the woman's leg, the smell of antiseptic and hot female overpowering the unwashed stink of the van. Tuning in to his brother's steady breaths, Zak asked, “You awake?”

“Oh! Yes, I—”

“Yeah,” Gideon answered over the woman, his voice laced with amusement.

Much as he'd have liked to lie on her thighs all day, Zak forced himself to sit up. The interior of the vehicle swam in his vision.

Her slender hands supporting his back, she said in a worried voice, “You probably have a concussion.”

He waited for the black snow to fade. “I don't.”

“You don't know that for sure.”

“I know the difference.” He squinted until his brother, also sitting up, solidified. “Had it before.”

“Many, many times,” Gid added, scraping his long hair back and securing it with the leather thong he kept on his wrist. He looked like hell, probably felt worse, but smiled as he returned Zak's searching look. “You look like shit.”

“Feel excellent,” Zak assured him, turning his head to look at the woman. Her shoulder-length streaky blond hair was disheveled, and her Persian-cat-gray eyes looked as serious as the situation warranted. Her hands were still on his back, braced on either side of his spine. Right where her heels had pressed just hours before.

He was relieved to see that she was dressed. Not in the little bit of nothing she'd worn the night before, which had consisted of about a yard of pale yellow silk, her blond hair curled enticingly around her lightly tanned shoulders, eyes smoky, smell mouthwatering. Now she wore sand-colored cargo pants and a sleeveless zippered vest over a pink T-shirt, last night's makeup smudged beneath her eyes. Her hair was disheveled, and dirt streaked her face—tear tracks, he realized with a twist of his gut. But she didn't seem to have any injuries. She'd been lucky, no thanks to him. Fury raced through him, startling him with its savagery. Those assholes had abused her, nearly raped her, and he'd been helpless to prevent any of it. He reined in his anger, because losing his temper when the object of his rage wasn't around was a waste of time. It was going to take him a while to get over feeling so goddamned helpless. Again. He'd pack the new guilt on top of the boatload he was already carrying.

Tempted to touch her to make sure she was okay, Zak resisted the urge and kept his hands to himself. Besides, sympathy would probably make her fall apart. “How you holding up, Barbie?”

Her hands dropped away from the back of his shirt and she squared her shoulders as she said fiercely,
“Acadia.”
Her pale cheeks went a little pink. “Acadia Gray.” Scissoring her legs closed, she curled them under her and leaned against the wall, looking up at him as he staggered to his feet. “And to answer your rather obvious question, I'm fine. I always enjoy a hot sauna.”

Good. She was going to need that sense of humor. “Stop looking at me like I'm going to find some fucking magic carpet and fly us out of here,” Zak told her, annoyed as hell at seeing the hopeful look she was giving him. “In case you haven't got it yet, this is not going to end well.”

“Zak—” Gideon cautioned.

“Oh, for—You have the emotional range of a freaking teaspoon, you know that?! Just because I'm blond doesn't mean I'm stupid,” she said with asperity, talking over his brother. “And the way I'm looking at you is because I'm concerned about the severity of your concussion, and if you'll be able to defend yourself when we eventually stop. Because
I'm
going to do whatever it takes to get away from these people before they—” She rubbed her throat as she swallowed, gave him a flinty look, and repeated, “
Whatever
it takes.”

His brother was watching him with narrowed eyes and a belligerent expression, which meant he wanted to say something that tasted bad. “Don't say it,” Zak told him, then glanced back at Barbie. “Whatever it takes?”

“My father was a soldier.” Her chin tilted pugnaciously.
“Whatever it takes.”

Zak looked at her slender body, her mass of messy blond hair, her slender hands. Her big, soft gray eyes. “Trained you, did he?”

She looked him in the eye. “Yes. He did.”

If Zak hadn't been watching her so closely he would've missed her pupils dilating. It had taken him years to learn the tells when a beautiful woman lied to him. But he'd finally gotten it. Too late, but he'd learned.
Eventually. He hated liars almost as much as he hated having anyone—male or female—depending on him.
Especially
a female.

“Good,” he told her. “I'll keep you in the loop.”

She crossed her arms at her waist and gave him a level look. “Do that.”

Zak's jaw hurt from clenching it so hard. Christ, it had been so long since he'd wanted to laugh that for a moment he didn't recognize the ache in his chest. Most women would have curled into a fetal ball and stayed that way for the duration. She was practically coming out swinging. Warrior Barbie.

“Don't tar her with the same brush as Jennifer,” Gideon warned, while he examined the wall that was between the cab and the rear of the van. He had to duck his head to move about.

“No tar and no fucking brush.” Zak's mild amusement evaporated. “It's a nonissue.”

She looked from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”

He shot her a cold look. “None of your business.”

“
Everything
is my business. We're in this together.”

“Just because we're in the same geographical space doesn't mean we're together.”

“Maybe they can shoot you first, and put us
all
out of our misery,” Acadia told him tartly. Then she immediately shut her eyes and dragged in a shaky breath. “Sorry …” Her eyes were still stormy when she opened them. “I don't want anyone to get hurt. Even you. But we don't stand a chance if we're already fighting among ourselves.”

Braced stiff-armed against the erratic movement of the vehicle, Zak's hand splayed over her head for balance. They were only a foot apart. Her pupils dilated as he stared into her eyes for a moment longer than was polite for strangers, because despite what they'd done in the early hours of that morning, they were still strangers. Intimate strangers, but strangers nonetheless. He knew more about this woman's body than he knew about her.

“We're not ‘fighting,' we're not buddies, and we're not together. We just had sex.” It
hadn't
been “just sex.” But the fact that he'd felt alive for the first time in years was none of her damned business. He didn't want her clinging. Didn't want her feeling needy and dependent because they'd slept together. Didn't—damn it all to hell—want to feel anything seeing the tear tracks on her face.

Fortunately, he didn't feel a damned thing right then other than irritation.

“Fine,” she told him sweetly. “Can we both agree you're an ass?”