Scorch: A Soldiers of Fortune Romance (Military Bad Boy Romance) (2 page)

Her hands slip down to my shirt, hastily, like she's desperate for it. She yanks at it, tearing it over my head as I let her go just enough to get the thing off my head before I'm crushing myself against her again. I'm pressing her hard against the rock at the small of her back before I slip my hand down to her ass. I grab her tightly, my strong hands gripping and kneading the supple flesh there as I lift her up and into my arms. Her legs wrap around my waist as I push her up and back onto the flat top of the rock.

My cock is rock hard in my pants and straining for release. But I know what I need first; I know what I've been craving and dying for since the second I saw her in that bikini down by the pool.

I push her back down onto the rock, and she's gasping as I break our kiss. But my hands are yanking the button and the zipper of her cutoffs down, and she whimpers as I grab them and tear them down and off her perfect legs right along with her panties.

She blushes and moves to curl her legs beneath herself, but I grab her thighs tightly in my hands as my eyes drag up her body to her eyes.

"Show me," I growl, and I see her face flush with desire as she slowly nods, biting her lip so coyly as she lets me pull her legs apart.

"You arrogant prick."

"You uptight little tease."

"Fuck me," she groans into my ear; "Fuck me like you mean it.”

“You’ve been a bad, bad boy, Javier.”

The punch to the gut that immediately follows Warden Juan-Carlos Gustavo’s words knocks the wind from my lungs. But, it doesn’t do shit to knock the grin off my face. The real tragedy here is that the irony of Señor Gustavo’s
wife
saying the same thing to me not thirty minutes before - albeit in
slightly
different circumstances - is probably going to be lost on him and his men.

Not, of course, that it’s going to stop me from saying it anyways.

“You know, thats the second- no, wait, the
third
time I’ve heard that today.”

The Warden’s eyes narrow at me, making him appear even more piggish if that was even possible from an already fat, sweaty, snout-nosed man. But truth be told, despite his appearance, Warden Gustavo is
not
a man you should fuck with; least of all when you’re a prisoner in his jail. I’ve learned a few things in my nine months here in Venezuela, but that one sticks out.

Yeah,
fucking
Venezuela. I learned something when that cargo plane those pricks back in the States put me on touched down in Madrid; if you’re a big enough problem,
no one
wants you. Spain wanted nothing to do with me, even with being a citizen, and even with the shit they probably had on me from my bullshit there years ago. So instead? They called around, found out about the smuggling charges I’d pulled in Venezuela when I was younger, and figured I was someone else’s problem now. See, not
many
people really want anything to do with me, which suits me just fine because most of the time, I don’t want a fuckin thing to do with them either.

Except let me tell you, South American jails aren’t
anything
like the jails they’ve got up north in
Los Estados Unidos
; not by a Goddamn mile. Sure, up north, prison might be cold, and boring, and possibly not the best place to take a shower if you’re in with the wrong people. But shit, they’ve got electricity, and three meals a day, and a roof that doesn’t leak when it rains. Down here in Venezuela? Yeah, down here things are a
little
different. Down here, we’ve got
El Muerto Viviente
; The Living Dead.

Yeah, we’ve also got a
touch
of flare for the dramatics.

But
El Muerto
is no fucking joke, I’ll say that. A crumbling, shattered shell of a castle from the colonial days, built up on a cliff and slowly melting into the ocean. It’s treacherous, smells like shit, and Warden Gustavo runs it like a Russian Gulag. So yeah, jail fucking
sucks
down here.
 

That is,
unless
you know where to look for the perks. And in this case, “perks” was fucking the cute prison nurse in terrible,
terrible
ways in the pharmacy supply closet twice a week for the last two months. Oh, and if that cute nurse happens to be
Mrs.
Warden Juan-Carlos Gustavo?

Merde
, now we’re cooking with fire, aren’t we.

The good Warden’s fist crashes into my face, jolting me back into the now as I shake my head, blinking at the stars flashing through my vision.

“You’ve fucked up for the last Goddamn time, Toro.” He says. He’s grinning; that’s not a good sign.
Angry
Gustavo acts like every other angry little fat man in the world;
that
I can read. But when he grins like that, you know something’s wrong. And something is
very
wrong.

He winks at his lieutenant, a thin man with a wispy mustache, before he turns back to me; “Listen you little
marico maric
ó
n
,
this time
, I’ve got a special place for you.”

“Oh I think I’ve already been to you
special place
, señor.” I barely finish laughing the words out of my mouth before he starts to hit me. They all start to hit me, in fact.

By the way, my hands are cuffed to a pipe above my head, and there are four of them. South American prison; comprende?

I can
take
a beating. Well, I
could
take a beating, a long time ago back when I was a fighter and before I sort of let myself go. But nine months of hard time in El Muerto have me back to lean muscle and hungry fire inside. Not that it does a bit of good when you’re cuffed and outnumbered.

 
I groan and sag against my handcuffs as the men in uniform step away, spitting on the ground around me as they wipe their hands of me. Gustavo is grinning at me again, slowly nodding his head; “Hope you packed your swim-suit,
hijo e puta
.” He says slowly; “Because you’re going for The Swim.”

Oh,
shit
.

I’ve heard stories of problem prisoners being taken out for The Swim and being made to disappear, but it’s always third or fourth hand talk from guys who’ve been here too long. The Swim is a one-way ticket three miles off shore. Full stop. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, and don’t bother trying to swim for it because if the sharks don’t get you, exhaustion will. It’s a bad dream; a scary story like the boogey man the guards tell us to keep us in line.
 

Except from the look on the Warden’s face, this is anything
but
a made-up story.
 

I want to tell him he “can’t do this”, or he “doesn’t have the right”, but in reality, we both know he can and he doesn’t fucking care. I’ve managed to go the last ten years or so of my life without, or at least squashing down any regrets, but something tells me that streak is about to change. Because for the first time maybe ever, I’m starting to wonder if
maybe
I’ve gone too far.
 

Shit
.

Gustavo leans in close, his breath hot on my face as he pats my cheek and grins wickedly at me; “
Te veré en el infierno, motherfucker.”
See you in hell.

The silver and glass hallway that leads towards The Vault is innocuous enough for what it needs to be. It looks like any other office hallway in the world I suppose, except you can’t help but feel a little shiver of excitement when you walk down this one, knowing what’s waiting at the end. It’s not the kind of excitement you might find in another job; not in a
normal
job.
 

Of course, I’m still fairly new at the Center, which might contribute to the excitement, but it’s also just the general feeling of the place. For instance, I doubt
normal
jobs have two armed personnel guarding the doorways to areas that require a retina scan in order to enter.
 

I take a deep breath as I approach the two men in black tactical gear holding machine guns. They’re parked next to a frosted glass screen with only the briefest shadow of a person standing behind it.

“Agent, please state your identifying code.”
 

The voice sounds metallic behind the glass, and I force myself into composure as I look evenly into the retina scanner and speak as clearly as I can; “Six oh wilco wilco charlie alpha eighty eight.”

The door hisses silently open with the small click of a lock, and I nod as authoritatively as I can despite my nerves at the two men standing guard before I step into the cool, darkened ambience of The Vault. It’s my first time in here, and the sudden reality of that has me pausing just for a fraction of a second to take it all in. The projector is already on, casting a bluish glow on the far wall, and I realize that the others are already there, sitting around the dark mahogany conference table with the lights low.
 

The Director looks up and nods curtly to me; “Ah, Agent Archer, we’re just getting started. Please, have a seat.” I nod quickly at a few familiar faces around the debrief room before I take an empty seat next to Agent Koufax, my supervisor. I can hear the door sealing shut behind me, and I’m aware from the debrief I received on The Vault last week that by now, my cell service is at
zero
, and that anything and everything I say in here is being recorded. What’s discussed here is for
here
only, and it’s only for matters where secrets need to stay in the dark. You bring nothing in here, and you take nothing out.
 

Yep, welcome to a typical Tuesday at the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Glad you could
make it
, Agent.” Koufax whispers harshly as he turns and glares at me, his eyebrows knitting and his silvered goatee mustache twitching.

“I just got the notice five minu-“

“Just try and keep up,
rook
.”

Rook
; as in, “rookie.” I narrow my eyes at his back as he turns, knowing it’s useless to even try and come back with anything, He’s
hardly
my superior, and I know even if I am one of the younger people here, most of his bullshit is because of my
gender
rather than my experience with the Agency.