“Big? Hell, no.” His hands swept off her tangled clothes and kneaded the curves in question. “Sweetheart, you have the most amazingly perfect ass I’ve ever seen. Makes me want to…bite.”
He leaned down and did just that, sucking hard, his mouth leaving a brand against her rich skin. She cried out in surprise and pleasure, then in shock as his mouth moved lower.
“I—can’t,” she said, writhing beneath his hungry tongue. “I’ve never—”
Turning away from the shy feast he’d barely tasted, he kissed the inside of her thighs and murmured, “Next time. Or the time after. I want you like I’ve never wanted a woman. All of you, sweetheart. Everywhere. Everything.”
Lina moaned at the same time a rush of liquid heat left her core. Before she could draw another breath, he came back up her body like a storm tide, covering her, tumbling her around and around, entering her, engulfing her. She hung on to him with her arms, her legs, her mouth, everything she was, moving as he did, giving and taking and demanding. Then she cried out as her body bowed in an arc of passion that turned her inside out, breaking her and remaking her with each wave of release.
Hunter locked deep inside her and rode her orgasm until he could no longer hold back his own. Release pulsed and racked him until he was empty, fulfilled, and knew only her. Breathing hard, he licked the slow tears from her cheeks.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
“No. You…” Another wave rippled through her. Deep inside, she clamped down on him, milking him. “So good.”
“Amen.” He shuddered as he felt her caressing him, holding him sweet prisoner.
When she was finally still, he rolled aside. He knew he should separate their bodies and get rid of the condom, but he felt too damn good to move.
“This could be addictive,” he said against her skin.
Her breath sighed out and her hands stroked the slick heat of his back. “I’ll risk it.”
Reluctantly he pulled out of her. She made a disappointed sound.
“Condom,” he said.
She mumbled something and snuggled under the covers while he disposed of the protection.
“Shower?” he asked, turning over and reaching for her.
“Sleep.” She burrowed close to him, skin to skin.
He pulled the bedspread over them and was asleep before his head hit the pillow. So was she.
HUNTER AWOKE AS HE HAD SLEPT, A SENSUAL TANGLE OF HEAT and flesh, female and male. He watched the sun spill across Lina’s face. Dark hair, eyelashes black half circles against her creamy brown skin, her lips full and red. Her beauty made his heart ache. They had reached for each other again and again during the night and he still wanted her. Knowing that she wanted him in the same way was a miracle he was still trying to absorb.
He looked at the digital clock on the small bedside table. It was early, but tourist towns worked long hours. Crutchfeldt and his staff should be awake. From what Hunter had found out about the man, he was up at dawn and lying in the sun like a lizard until the sun went down. All work was conducted at poolside.
The clock told Hunter it was time to get going, to find out who El Maya was and make sure he would never threaten Lina again.
But all Hunter wanted to do right now was sink into Lina so deep they would never be separate.
Caught between what he should do and what he wanted to do, he forced himself to slide slowly from the bed. The room was warm, not only with the day but with a whole summer’s worth of heat still captured in the cinder- block walls. He retrieved his cell phone from his jeans and went to the living room with long, silent strides.
The first call he made was to the nurses’ station on Jase’s hospital floor. Ali had told them that he was Jase’s brother, so getting information wasn’t a problem. A nurse reassured Hunter that Jase was doing well, a lot better than expected. His condition had been upgraded to good.
Relief went like wine through Hunter’s system. He savored it for a moment before he went to the living room, where his computer had been plugged in for a charge. The workstation in the corner of the living room was mildly messy and quite dusty. He booted up his computer and read quickly—e-mails from contacts answering his queries, and from his uncles concerning background checks.
Snakeman had been deported in record time.
The body count at the second death house was up to eleven, but only a few of them had had their hearts removed.
No one had any answers, or even hints of answers. None of the gangbangers who had been arrested had talked. They didn’t know nothing from nothing. Each one of them had claimed he was just couch-surfing at a friend’s place and he’d been arrested for no reason but racism.
The dead janitor had a mother and two teenage sons living across the border. When questioned, they admitted that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Other than that, they only knew that the dead man had sent money south and now he didn’t. The grandmother was terrified. The grandsons were sullen.
The crime-scene photos an ICE contact had sent were as ugly as Hunter’s memories.
Nothing new.
Certainly nothing useful.
The quick, but not careless, background checks his uncles had done yielded little more than Hunter had already guessed or known. Lina’s parents lived separately. Other than a single scandal about artifacts that were sold from Reyes Balam land without government approval and a public drunkenness charge when Philip was a freshman, there were no flags in any official files that had been searched.
Carlos had indeed been a bad boy in his early teens, but had grown into a citizen in good standing with two governments. There were bare hints that he might be unofficially working for and/or being investigated by DEA. Not surprising for the Mexican-born CEO of a cross-border enterprise in these days of open narco warfare. Two ex- wives, serial mistresses, no children.
De la Poole was single, upper class, educated, connected, and clean.
Crutchfeldt not so much, but he didn’t have any official black marks on his record on either side of the border. Reading between the lines, there was a good probability that he snitched on illegal artifact middlemen from time to time, which kept the cops off his own back.
He kept reading swiftly. Everything he saw made him believe that if he was going to find the shooters and whoever they worked for, it wasn’t going to happen north of the border. The people in the United States who might have answers were dead or lawyered up. As much as he’d like to beat the truth out of the gangbangers, he had a gut feeling that any real knowledge had been lost when Snakeman went south.
Hunter punched up a travel Web site and checked availability. From the look of it, they’d just added more flights to Cozumel to accommodate the holiday-season demand. He booked several different flights on the family business account, paying extra for fully refundable tickets.
Good or bad, Hunter would find out. He wasn’t letting Lina out of his sight until he was sure she was protected. Then he’d go hunting in Mexico, where rules were different and life was lived a lot closer to the bone.
But first, Crutchfeldt.
“Hunter? Where are you?”
Lina’s voice floated through the silence like music. The huskiness told him that she had just awakened.
“I’m just checking on Jase.”
“How is he?” Her voice was as anxious as Hunter had been before he talked to the hospital.
“Good,” Hunter said. He left the computer and headed toward the bedroom. “Out of danger, stable, recovering faster than anyone expected.”
“That’s wonderful!”
When he got to the bedroom, she was propped on one arm, the sheet loose around her breasts. She was more beautiful to him than ever, goddess and woman, as deep inside him as his heartbeat. Deeper.
