clear warning in his eyes, then got back into his car. Through the lowered window, he pinned Mandy with a look. “Good night to you, now.”
Neither Rocco nor Mandy moved as they watched the cruiser move down her driveway and turn back onto the road. Rocco caught the shiver that passed through Mandy. He wished he could touch her, wrap an arm around her, pull her against his body. Instead, he offered the only comfort he could.
“I can kill him for you.”
Mandy slowly turned to him. There was no humor in her face. “Rocco Silas! That is not acceptable behavior.”
“It’s what I do.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry, it won’t look like murder.”
“It’s what you did.” Well, heck. Where did that come from? she wondered, embarrassed to have implied she thought he was a murderer. “It’s not what you did. I don’t know what you did.” God, she was rambling. “Jerry Whitcomb is not an enemy.”
Rocco did not try to soften the threatening look he gave her. “Who’s Bobby?”
Mandy crossed her arms. “A friend of Jerry’s. We had an on-again off-again thing. We’re off-again at the moment.”
Rocco nodded. “Keep it that way.”
“Bobby’s nothing like Jerry. And I don’t need you to tell me how to manage my personal life.”
“I’ll call Kit,” he warned.
“That’s not fair.”
Rocco grinned. It was not a nice expression. “We’re even then.” He looked at the table. “Want some help with the dishes?”
“No. Thank you.”
He set his hat on his head and jogged down the steps. Once in the drive, he turned around and walked backward, watching as she collected dishes. He felt strangely reluctant to move away from her.
“Em?” he called. She glanced over at him.
He stopped moving and hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. She walked to the edge of the porch, looking sweet and feminine as she leaned against the support beam.
“Thank you.” He told himself not to notice the way the light hit her hair. “For feeding me.” For the sunshine. The work. The place to be. Her eyes met his. “You sure I can’t kill him?” He grinned at her.
Her eyes widened. “I mean it, Rocco! That’s not funny.”
Chapter 7
Rocco stood in the narrow shower stall two days later. Hot water sluiced down his back. It did little to ease the tension gripping his neck and shoulders thanks to the night’s virulent dreams. He lifted his face into the sheeting streams of water.
Despite the sun and the work, the meals with Mandy, he lost a little more of himself every day. What pieces remained of his soul jangled against each other like the unglued shards of a broken pot, more apart than together.
A vision of wispy, gold-red hair sifted through his mind. Big, green eyes. Mandy. He couldn’t see her or think of her without heat slashing through his body. The meals they shared in the evenings were a blessing and a curse. He ate because she would sit with him, chatting about lots of things. Nothing. The wind. Kitano. The progress of the construction. It didn’t matter. Her voice flowed through him like a river. His source.
Thank God she wasn’t a mind reader. His thoughts about her were never pure. He listened to her, watched her, all the while wondering what her voice would sound like as she straddled him. He would feel her laughter, her breathing. Her life would be a jumper cable to his, feeding it energy, strength. Life.
He ached to hold her, to draw her into himself. To pretend for a short while that he was whole. That he could feel something. Anything.
He opened his eyes through the streaming water. His dick stood at a right angle to his body, wide and thick, pointing straight toward the wall. He touched himself, felt his balls tighten even more. He slipped his fist over his rigid cock, slowly, imagining her mouth moving over him, those soft, pink lips parting, taking him deeper, deeper into her throat. He hadn’t been blown in almost a decade. He’d lived the chaste existence of an unmarried Muslim while undercover. And once he was married, oral sex wasn’t an acceptable practice.
Ah, God, Mandy. She would look up at him with those enormous green eyes, her mouth full of his cock. Rocco’s nostrils flared. He shut his eyes, seeing her kneel before him. He pumped into his fist. In his mind’s eye, he was easing deeper into her. Pulling back. He soaped his hand, making his grip slicker, moving faster. Harder.
He’d make her go to all fours, lifting her sweet entrance up toward him. He’d slip into her, easing in deep, feeling her sheath grab him. Then he’d take hold of her hips and slam into her, pumping, pumping until he felt her small muscles grab him, milk him, force him to release.
As he thought it, his semen shot out, sluicing in hot jets into the water that now ran cold. He leaned his head against the wall of the shower, feeling a long, long way from sated.
Nothing about him was right.
Wasn’t that what had given him away? He’d been married for four years to the daughter of a powerful Afghan warlord tightly aligned with the Taliban. It had taken three years to infiltrate her people, but once there, it had been so easy to catch her eye, to find himself in her circle, to be accepted by her father. He’d paid the bride price of forty goats, ten cows, and five RPGs. They’d married in a long ceremony. He’d thrown himself into the act, giving her amorous looks and secret smiles. People saw what they wanted to see. He wanted them to see two people in love, a rare enough situation in a country so ravaged by war.
Kadisha had been promised to another before him. Ehsan Asir. Asir was a power-hungry zealot who’d worked hard to earn a spot on the Taliban’s top leadership council, beneath Ghalib Halim. Asir was furious when Halim broke his betrothal to Kadisha in favor of Rocco. Had she shared Asir’s feelings, Rocco would have found a different way to stay close to Halim. She hadn’t though. She was over the moon to be the one to marry Rocco.
On their wedding night, he had been attacked by remorse. He knew he was stealing from Kadisha something he had no right to take-her innocence. He’d taken his time seducing her, hoping to give her a memory to cling to when he was gone. He’d become a whore for God and country, all to slip into the sacred enclave her father inhabited, to join his inner circle and spy on him-and, when ordered, kill him.
His son was conceived on his wedding night. When Kadisha told him a few months later that she was pregnant, he’d been relieved. It meant he didn’t have to bed her so much anymore-and that he could focus on the mission. After Zaviyar was born, Rocco knew his facade had begun slipping. He wasn’t the happy groom, had never been the man he’d pretended to be. Kadisha, ever watchful, caught on. When Zavi was three, she told him she was pregnant again. And in the next breath, she said, “You did this. You killed us.”
Rocco’s fingers dug into the cold, wet tile, finding no purchase.
Perhaps he had killed them.
Mandy felt the first inklings of worry around 11:00 a.m. Rocco was gone. His truck was still parked next to the garage. His bed was made. His toiletries were still in the bathroom of the bunkhouse. She’d been tied up meeting with George down at the construction site for a while during the morning. She’d expected to find Rocco in the fields, as was his usual routine, but he’d done no new work on the fence line.
Had he gotten hurt during his run that morning? Would anyone have known to call her? She tried his cell phone again. No answer. She’d just retrieved her purse and keys when a sheriff’s patrol car pulled onto the dirt road below. She watched it make the long drive up the hill, her stomach beginning to knot up.
Sheriff Tate put the car in park and rolled down the window. “Sheriff,” she greeted him tensely.
