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  A few moments of sweating balls in the blazing Brazilian heat, and then I heard tires on gravel and an engine lowering down to idle, doors opening and closing, men talking. Slides being pulled, footsteps crunching. Words were exchanged, voices were raised. A gun went off, making me jump, and then more shouts. Silence.

  I couldn't see Harris anywhere.

  I was on my belly, a pistol in my hands, pointing it through the gap in the stacked barrels at the opening in the wall where the bad guys had to come through. I checked the weapon in my hands, made sure the safety was off--it was a Glock, apparently, since it didn't have a safety. That was a little factoid I'd learned from Oliver, the guy who'd run the firing range: Glocks didn't have safeties.

  I pulled the slide, doing so as quietly as I could, and then set it in the grass at my right hand, took the spare from my waistband, checked it, racked the slide on that one, and arranged my extra clips where I could grab them easily.

  My hands shook.

  My pulse thundered in my ears.

  I was not ready for this. Killing a guy in self-defense was one thing. But lying in wait to kill people in cold blood...that was another prospect.

  I couldn't do it.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  What was I thinking?

  A hand appeared in the fence break, holding onto the grip of some kind of compact machine gun. Harris would probably have a proper name for it, but I didn't give a shit what it was called. A kill-Layla device. That was all that mattered. The body followed, a short, stocky man with sweaty hair and a stained T-shirt.

  My finger twitched on the trigger, but I waited; I'd start shooting only after Harris had. I didn't want to spoil the ambush by shooting too early.

  Heh. I didn't want to shoot too early; I wondered idly if Harris had that problem. Probably not.

  Jesus, Layla. Now is not the time to be thinking about Harris's sexual prowess.

  Yes it was. It was always a good time to think about Harris's sexual prowess. He probably had a lot of prowess.

  A second man followed the first, and then a third, and a fourth. And a fifth. They were each armed with a machine gun. They all looked extremely unpleasant.

  The first man was about ten steps into the field as the fifth and final man was stepping over the makeshift area of fence. And that was when Harris cut loose. It happened so fast I barely registered it: there was a loud chattering crash, and the fifth man collapsed, falling into and effectively blocking the open section of fence. This happened in an eye-blink.

  Another loud detonation--CRACKCRACKCRACK--and the first man in line fell.

  The other three scattered in three different directions, and I realized this was my cue. I adjusted my two-handed grip on the pistol, aimed at the torso of the left-most attacker, held my breath...squeezed the trigger.

  BANG! The gun jumped in my hands, and my target twisted, stumbled, a red circle spreading on his stomach. Shit. I'd have to shoot him again. I aimed more carefully this time, drawing bead on his face. Deep breath, hold it...BANG!...let it out. He dropped, gurgling. I'd missed his head, the round going through his throat.

  My stomach lurched, my eyes watered.

  No time for that, bitch, I told myself.

  I had no clue where Harris was hiding. I hadn't seen a muzzle flash, and the sound had bounced off the walls, effectively disguising its location of origin. Clearly the remaining two thugs weren't sure either, because they had both dropped to the ground in the waist-high grass and were firing their weapons at random, spraying bullets in every direction.

  One pinged loudly off the barrel in front of me, startling me so badly I screamed. Which, in hindsight, was a dumb idea. One of the bad guys stood up and moved toward me in a crouch, an evil grin on his face.

  CRACKCRACK! He fell, toppling like a bag of bricks, his head exploding in a red mist. Oh fuck, that was nasty. His entire face was gone, just...gone.

  Bile filled my mouth, and this time I couldn't choke it back.

  I heard shouting in Portuguese. I spat the nastiness out of my mouth and then looked up to see Harris approaching the last man left alive. Harris gestured with his gun, and the man dropped his weapon, held up his hands.

  "Stay there, Layla," Harris said, not looking in my direction.

  I stayed put.

  The man spoke, and Harris responded, his voice terse and harsh. The man said something else, and this time Harris responded with a shout, and the man backed up, both hands high in a gesture that clearly meant "no, no, don't shoot!"

  Harris shot.

  CRACK! One bullet right between the eyes. Harris lowered his weapon and moved from body to body, nudging them with his boot. One, the man I'd shot, moaned.

  CRACK! The moaning stopped.

  "You can come out now," Harris said.

  He was rifling through the pockets of each of the dead men, taking clips, currency, and weapons. He stuffed everything he took into his black bag, which he then zipped and slung on his shoulder.

  I was making my way through the grass, knees weak, stomach lurching, heart hammering. I tried not to look down at the red-stained grass, but I couldn't help it.

  I stopped next to Harris and stared down at the man I'd shot. I'd hit him in the stomach and the throat, and Harris had finished him with a bullet in the forehead.

  There was blood everywhere. The grass was crimson and wet, and the stink was nauseating.

  "Okay?" Harris asked, glancing at me.

  I shook my head negative. "I'm fine."

  Harris barked a laugh. "Well that was clear as mud. I'll ask again, Layla. You good?"

  I closed my eyes and focused on breathing shallowly and evenly. "Just get me out of here. Please?"

  He reached out and took my hand. "You're fine. You did great. We're gone, okay?" I felt him squeeze my hand. "Look at me, Layla. Eyes on mine." I forced my eyes open; his gaze was calm and cool, his eyes green as freshly mown grass. "You did great."

  "I shot him. Twice."

  "He was going to kill you."

  I shook my head. "No, he wasn't. He was going to bring me back to Vitaly. He's the one who wants to kill me, now. I think Cut was important to him. So now I'm on his shit list and so is Kyrie. He doesn't want us dead, he wants us alive so he can torture us and then kill us."

  "Don't think about that," Harris said, hiking his bag higher on his shoulder and taking my other hand. "I'm with you, now. I'll get you out of here. I promise. No one else will ever lay a hand on you, or Kyrie. You have my word."

  I felt weak, shaky, and vulnerable, and I hated it. I hated myself for feeling weak. I hated myself for showing that weakness to Harris. And I hated Harris for seeing it and acting like it was no big deal. It was a big deal. I'm not weak. I've never been weak. I don't show weakness. I don't need anyone.

  But I needed Harris in that moment, and he knew it.

  And he was being totally awesome about it, and that pissed me off. I could have handled it if he'd been all cold and businesslike, but he wasn't. He was looking at me with this...softness...in his eyes that I wasn't sure any human being had ever seen before. It was odd and disconcerting and disorienting and bizarre, especially because Harris had just killed five men in less than a minute.

  It hit me, then, how fast all that had happened. Less than a minute. Five men dead in sixty seconds. Well, if you want to get picky about it, the first four had gone down first, and the last one about a minute later. So the whole business, from the moment the first man stepped through until the last bullet pierced skull bone, had lasted, at most, two minutes.

  "Is it always like that?" I asked.

  "Is what always like what?"

  I gestured around us. "Combat. Does it always happen so fast?"

  He nodded. "Yeah. You're sitting there waiting, and time stretches out like fucking taffy, so slow you can feel each bead of sweat, hear each one of your heartbeats. And then once the first bullet flies..." he shrugged, "everything happens in a split second. Blink and you miss it. Bam,
people are dead and you're pissing yourself and you don't know whether to cry or laugh or puke or all three."

  "I puked after I shot that guy," I admitted.

  "No shame in that," Harris said. "I damn near pissed my pants first time I went into combat. If you're not scared shitless before, during, or after combat, you're a sociopath."

  "Even after you've done it a thousand times?" I asked.

  He nodded. "I'm scared every time. I know what to expect and how to deal with it, but I'm still scared. No matter how good you are, how careful you are, something can always go wrong. A stray bullet doesn't give a shit." He pulled me into a walk, letting me go briefly to shove the dead man out of the way, and then he helped me over the corrugated iron fence. I refused to look down as I stepped over the corpse.

  Harris led me back to the Defender, opened the trunk and set the bag in, keeping only the handguns. I had no memory of doing so, but apparently I'd grabbed my own guns and clips. Harris took them from me, stuffed them in the bag, and then led me to the front passenger seat, opened the door, and helped me in. I was in a daze, running on autopilot, content to let Harris take care of things. Adrenaline was still slamming through me, pulsing in my blood. I didn't know what to do with myself, whether I wanted to vibrate like I'd OD'd on Five Hour Energy or just fall asleep.

  I also felt strangely...turned on.

  I mean, it wasn't hard to turn me on under most circumstances, but this was overwhelming. Waves of need blasted through me, desire throbbing between my legs, making my nipples hard and my breasts ache.

  I wasn't wearing a bra, which meant I had some serious headlights going on.

  The dazed feeling, I was realizing, was my circuits being overloaded. I was feeling too many things at once for my psyche to be able to deal with them all.

  I wanted, like Harris had said, to puke again from the knowledge that I'd shot a man, and I wanted to cry, and to laugh. I also wanted to touch myself. To pinch my nipples and stuff my hands down my pants and finger my clit.

  I wanted to strip naked and shove three fingers inside myself.

  And then, the biggest need of all, I glanced over at Harris as he turned on the ignition and backed out of the alleyway. And Jesus shit fuck--I wanted him.

  It made no sense, but there it was.

  He'd come after me, he'd taken charge, and he'd killed for me.

  Risked death for me.

  From the point of view of an alpha, Type A, totally independent sort of woman, a man who could take charge was kind of sexy to me. This translated to me being attracted most strongly to men in power, to men who wore uniforms. Of course, those men were usually assholes, but I typically didn't care because I was just using them for their dicks.

  But I'd never in my life felt such a strong need. Not like this. I NEEDED.

  I ached.

  I was hyper-aware of every move I made, how my thighs rubbed together--yes, my thighs rubbed together; no gap there, just flesh and muscle. I was hyper-aware too of Harris, of every move he made, of his hands on the steering wheel and the gear shifter, of how big his hands were, how strong and callused. How they'd feel on my skin, scratchy and hard and powerful. I was aware of his face, the strong jaw and the high cheekbones, the jade of his eyes, the stubble on his cheek, the dark fuzz of his hair cropped close on the sides, and long enough to sweep backward on top. He wasn't gorgeous, not in the sense that Roth was just insanely, inhumanly beautiful. Too beautiful for my taste. Harris was rugged, hard, and weathered. He was handsome, but again, in that rough and rugged sense. A steamy novel might describe his features as "craggy". Cheesy and cliche, but true. He looked so rough and hard that he might have been chipped out of granite, carved out from somewhere deep in the crust of the earth. He was lean, sharp as a razor, not overly muscled but quick and lithe.

  If Harris had an animal spirit, he'd be a puma.

  I almost laughed out loud at myself at the comparison. But it struck me as true. He was a predator. Cunning, able to move in utter silence, radiating threat and lethality, oozing poised grace and coiled ferocity.

  I wanted him.

  I didn't want to want him, but I wanted him.

  God, did I want him.

  It was just the adrenaline, right?

  Adrenaline made you feel horny. I'd read that somewhere, or maybe I'd seen it in a movie.

  Keep it together.

  Don't jump him.

  My hands were twitchy and itchy. I wanted to paw his shirt off and run my hands over his abs, feel his ass cool and hard and taut in my hands, I wanted to clutch his cock and feel him throb between my fingers. I wanted to taste him and touch him and lick him and suck him and fuck him.

  I stole a glance, and caught him just as he was looking away, returning his attention to the road. He'd been staring at my tits.

  I looked down, and totally understood. I mean, they were pretty fucking prominent, especially with arousal making my nipples so hard they hurt, so hard they could cut diamonds.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, but that didn't help. My own arms rubbing over my sensitive nipples had me squirming, aching. My core pulsed, and I crossed one leg over another, but that made it a thousand times worse.

  I couldn't breathe for how badly I needed sex...

  For how badly I needed Harris.

  I looked left again, and this time my gaze caught his. He cut his eyes to the road briefly, just long enough to navigate a turn, and then he was looking at me again. I held his gaze, lifted my chin. Defiant. Daring.

  It was an act; I couldn't fucking breathe, couldn't take another second of insatiable need. Pure, unadulterated thirst for Nicholas Harris.

  His eyes flitted over my face, slid slowly and deliberately down to my tits, and then back up. I stared into his eyes when they returned to mine. Glanced down, and saw his bulge. Ho-ly shit, he had a bulge. Massive, huge bulge.

  I swallowed hard and laced my fingers together on my lap to keep from ripping open his pants and deep-throating him as he drove.

  "Don't look at me like that, Layla," he growled.

  His eyes returned to the road and he gripped the steering wheel with both hands and shifted in the driver's seat.

  "Then don't you look at me like that either." I turned away and tried to focus on the scenery outside the window.

  "I'm not looking at you like anything," he said.

  "And neither am I." My words were given a lie by the way I tried to steal a look at him, and caught him doing the same.

  Silence.

  "It's just the adrenaline," I said.

  "Right." His hands were twisting the faded leather of the steering wheel as if trying to choke it into submission.

  "It'll pass on its own. It doesn't mean anything." I tried chewing on my lip, biting down hard enough to cause pain.

  Nope. That didn't help either.

  I crossed and uncrossed my legs so many times it probably looked like I was doing the pee-pee dance. Only, it was the pretend-you-don't-need-sex dance.

  And Harris was doing one of his own. I stole a glance and caught him trying to surreptitiously adjust himself, plucking at the zipper of his khakis to relieve the pressure of his erection.

  Shit. Shitshitshit. Do not think about his erection, I told myself.

  Do not think about his massive, throbbing erection. Don't think about stroking him, petting his thick, veiny cock. Don't think about licking the pre-come from his tip, or wrapping my lips around the bulbous head.

  Fuck.

  Not good. So very intensely not good.

  Now that was all I could think about.

  We drove in complete silence for several minutes. Neither of us daring to look at each other, neither of us daring to cross the invisible line drawn between us.

  He seemed to know exactly where we were going, and it wasn't back to the epicenter of Sao Paulo. If I had my directions right, we were heading east. I didn't care, though. Or rather, I didn't have the mental capacity to care.

  All I could think about was N
EED.

  The sexual tension in the car was at DEFCON 10. High alert. We'd gone past storm watch directly into tornado warning. I couldn't sit still, and neither could he. We stole glances, each pretending nothing was wrong.

  And then a spark flew.

  He took his hand off the wheel and set it on the bench at his side, and I did the exact same thing at the same time. Which meant my hand went under his. My head snapped around and my gaze fixed on our hands, his on mine, and then I looked up at him, at his eyes, and saw that his gaze was daring, challenging.

  You move your hand first, his eyes said.

  I didn't. I never back down from a challenge. That's rule number one with Layla: never dare me or challenge me, because I have zero common sense. I will not back down.

  I rotated my wrist, turning my hand palm-up under his. He narrowed his eyes, looking from me to our hands to the road and back. And then his fingers splayed apart, snaked between mine.

  What the hell was this, junior high?

  Clearly, because my heart was thudding against my ribcage like a fucking tribal drum at the innocent, ridiculous, childish contact of his hand on mine, his fingers in mine.

  We were holding fucking hands.

  HOLDING HANDS.

  I'd never held hands. I'd skipped the silly cute innocent stage of my sexuality, going straight from thinking boys were stupid to making out in janitor's closets within the space of a single grade--fifth grade, if you want specifics. I'd sucked my first cock in sixth grade, and was pretty well experienced in the basic missionary position by the end of seventh. By ninth grade, I was on the prowl.

  Holding hands wasn't exactly on the itinerary, needless to say.

  "Where are we going?" I asked.

  "Mogi das Cruzes," he said. "It's an offshoot of Sao Paulo. Thresh has a safe-house prepped for us." He let go of my hand and pulled a cell phone from his pocket, dialed a number, and put the phone to his ear. "Thresh. We're ten minutes out. No, just secure the perimeter and then head for Rio as we discussed. Affirmative." He hung up, and shoved the phone back in his pocket, doing that uniquely male thing where he lifted his entire body off the seat to wedge the phone into the pocket.

  And then he reached out, took my hand in his once more, and threaded our fingers together. His eyes cut to mine to gauge my reaction; I'd felt strangely disappointed when he'd let go of my hand, and giddy when he took it back. None of this had crossed my face, though, hopefully.