Scorch: A Soldiers of Fortune Romance (Military Bad Boy Romance) (14 page)

There's a quarter second of everyone freezing and not quite believing it - myself included - before I use that to jump into action. I elbow the other guy holding me sharply in the nuts, knocking him over. Benson shouts and fires barely a foot from my head right over me towards Chelsea, and I lunge at him as I plant a haymaker of a fist into his fat face.

I'm running for Chelsea, ducking wildly as she fires right over my head, before I tackle her back behind a dumpster.

"Nice timing, spy-girl."

"I
told you
not to run off without me!" She looks furious, but I only grin at how insane this all is.

Suddenly, there are flashing blue and red lights and the sounds of sirens at the other end of the alley; great, the fuzz is here.

"Police! Everyone freeze!"

Fuck, just what we need. I whirl to Chelsea, still crouched behind the dumpster with me, holding her gun with an iron grip; "We need to run."

She whirls to me; "
What?!
It's the
police
, Javier; we're going to-"

"Remind me which one of us has actually worked for Blackriver again?!" I shake her by the shoulders, trying to impress upon her the seriousness of this; “Trust me, if the police are here, they’re with them. We need to run."

Chelsea rolls her eyes and puts the safety on her gun; "Jesus, you really are insane, you know that?" She starts to roll her eyes again as she begins to stand with her hands in the air. She screams as I tackle her back down as bullets from the guns of both both groups rake the side of the dumpster and the brick next to us.

Jesus, I hate being right all the time.

"Will you fucking
listen to me
for once!?" I yell; "Can we run now, princess?"

Her mouth presses into a line and her eyes search my face wildly.

"We need to run; now, Chelsea“

She nods quickly, her eyes blazing and her mouth tight as I grab her and we run.

*****

Her hand is firmly in mine as I lead us charging down alleyways, between buildings, and down towards the dark of the beach. Running feels good. Running is freedom, and the fact that I'm holding her hand sure is fucking helping. It's bizarre, but as insane as this moment is with Blackriver and the cops chasing after us and the fact that I just had a gun to my head, I'm almost laughing as we dash through the darkness. I feel more alive and more in control than I have in ages, and having this girl's hand in mine as we pound the sand has me feeling like a golden god.

Her face looks tight but she’s not yelling, and she’s not panicking.

And she came back for you
.

Quite honestly, I'm not sure anyone's ever “come back for me." I'm the guy you leave; the one that takes the hit because I was disposable anyways, and the fact that Chelsea of all fucking people in the world is the one that came back has me grinning like an asshole.

And we have a “thing” now; a common enemy in Blackriver. Whatever comes next, we’re a united front.

And really, this princess ain’t so bad as she seems.

This situation is fucked. Actually, I think Logan, Bryce, and Hudson would call it
FUBAR
- fucked up beyond all recognition.

I've graduated from flirting with a criminal, to hiding from mercenaries, to running from the cops now. If I had any sense left in me at all, I’d stop all this. I'm supposed to be lying low, and keeping a low profile and waiting for further instructions as to what to do for
my job
.

And again, ”running from the cops” is
hardly
a low profile move.

At the same time, my heart is racing a mile a minute, and the fact that people with guns are chasing us is honestly only half responsible for that; at best. Because the other part of it is that my hand is firmly in Javier Toro's and as we run headlong down the beach, I can't help but let every part of me soar.

We run for what seems like hours but must be more like minutes, though at our pace we've got to be at least two miles down the beach from where we were. We come up on a rocky area of the beach, and as we dash around the rocks and boulders, Javier brings our mad-dash to a halt.

We stop, panting with our hands on our knees as we suck in breaths of air. I'm swallowing my pounding heartbeat, trying to catch my breath when I hear laughing. I frown and look up to see Javier chuckling with a grin plastered across his face.

"Are you
laughing
?"

He howls out another laugh, his whole face actually lighting up as he throws his head back and hoots at the night sky. Sweat drips down his face and his chest but he's laughing even as he struggles for a full breath.

"You're insane."

"I've been told." He grins at me and shakes his head; “Where the hell did you get bullets for that gun?”

“The third Blackriver guy that was standing guard around the corner.” I try and shrug it off as if sneaking up on mercenaries and knocking them out to steal their ammunition clips is in
any way
something I’ve ever done before. Javier snorts, his laughs telling me he doesn’t buy my attempt at being a bad-ass at all.

“Well, nice job, Rambo.”

I shake my head and start to turn but he stops me with a hand on my arm; “C’mon, princess, don’t you feel fucking
alive
right now?”

I take another gasp of air and shake my head as I turn to look out at the dark of the ocean; "I feel like we’re making this situation worse."

He snorts; “But don’t you feel it? This is life; raw and crazy and happening all around you.” His voice is closer than it was before, and I turn suddenly to find him standing much closer to me, and my breath catches; “Don’t you feel alive?”

More than I can possibly feel comfortable even admitting to myself,
especially with him so close to me. I can smell his scent, and I can feel the heat of him, and I'm starting to lose myself in the reflection of the moon in his eyes.

I take a small step back, biting my lip with eyes locked on his. This is dangerous; I'm flirting with real, tangible danger in the form of a criminal.

My criminal.

He holds my gaze a second longer before he turns and brings a bottle to his lips that I never even realized was in his other hand. He bites the cork in his teeth and yanks it out with a pop before spitting it out and raising the bottle high in his hand; "A toast!”

I frown; "Is that alcohol?"

"Absolutely"

I'm laughing then. In spite of myself - in spite of knowing I should be furious or terrified, or scared - I'm laughing.

And it feels fantastic.

"Did you
steal that
from the bar?" I choke out, wiping tears from my eyes as the giggle-fit shakes me to my core.

Javier grins at me as he takes a swig from the bottle, makes a face, and then passes it my way; "Have a drink, princess; we're celebrating a win tonight.”

My giggling slows as I take the bottle. Drinking with
him
? Yeah, that's a bad idea.
 

That's a horrible idea, actually..

Javier turns and starts dragging and pushing bits of driftwood together into a little hut shape. He takes a lighter out of his pocket and begins to hold it to some of the smaller pieces in the middle while I watch him. I’m painfully aware that I’m standing on a secluded moonlit beach with a stupidly attractive Latin man panting with his shirt open like some kind of bull fighter, and he wants me to drink with him. Oh and he's building a fire.

Yeah, no; no freaking way. Trusting him is one thing; trusting myself is another altogether.

The fire begins to catch as he adds smaller bits of wood to fledgeling flame, before the whole pile starts to burn. He stands and turns, and then he rolls his eyes and looks pointedly at the bottle still in my hand.

"
Fine
," I say dramatically, before bringing the opening to my lip and tilting the amber liquid into my mouth.
 

I swallow the swig and cough as Javier chuckles; "
There
we go."

He takes the bottle from my hand and moves back to the now crackling fire, where he tosses another chunk of driftwood onto it before settling down against one of the large boulders in the sand. I don’t think anymore, I just move to sit next to him, lying back against the rock and looking out past the fire over the ocean.

There’s a war of ideals raging in my head, but I'm trying to drown it out and just enjoy the moment. Because one side of me is still raging that this is wrong; that Javier is the
bad guy
, and as the
good guy
here, it's my job to be his enemy.

Drinking tequila around a campfire on the beach really doesn't fit on that list of good-guy versus bad-guy activities. Except I heard what they said back at the alleyway, and I saw what he did, and part of me knows that
that’s
not quite how the "bad guy" is supposed to act, either.

So is he really bad?

“What now?" He says with a smirk.

I laugh; "Oh, I'm in charge now?"

"Oh, sure," He grins; “Only because I’m letting you be in charge though."

I roll my eyes and punch his shoulder; "Oh
please,
I'm in charge."

"If you say so, spy-girl."

We're laughing, and he moves closer towards me; very close. I can feel my pulse jump at the nearness of him.

And there's that war inside of me again; the one side crossing her arms and saying no, and the other side just screaming
yes.

Javier turns to me, and I can feel my breath catch at the glint in his eyes, the throb of my pulse, and at the heat between my legs. I take a deep breath and I bring the bottle to my lips again, taking a swig with my eyes never leaving his; "Why did you come down to the pool that day?"

I have no idea where the question suddenly comes from, but suddenly I'm dying to know how it is that circumstance brought me across Javier Toro's path in the way it did.

"I saved you."

I smirk; "
Well
, I think we both saved each other, but why’d you come down in the first place? It wasn't to 'save me'."

Javier laughs and looks away, shaking his head before he turns back to me with that sparkle back in his eyes; “I already told you; I saw a hot blonde with a hot body in a sexy fucking bikini, and I wanted to come down and make a move."

I want to hold back the grin that threatens to spill over my face, but it's no use. I look away as my face burns, hoping he doesn't see how girlishly goofy it is that I'm blushing at a comment like that.

Of course, the thing is,
I
don't want to see the goofy look either, because it's one I should
not
be having about the man sitting next to me. But there's my pulse, beating faster anyways, and there's my breath, catching in my throat. I know the booze is going to my head here, but I also just don't care. This is more than that anyways.

This is me letting go.

"So how do you feel about brunettes," I say slyly.

What are you doing!?
The voice inside screams at me;
Stop playing with fucking fire!

But I know I can't stop at this point.

I know I
won't
.

Javier's gaze narrows at me and the corners of his perfect lips turn up; “Rapidly climbing the charts, princess."