Tempting the Fire (6 page)

She stared at him. “How do you know I’m a scientist?”

“I heard …” He’d heard. What the fuck? “I heard Shep talking before he went to get you. Goddamned guy can’t stop running his mouth.”

She nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “My friend and I, we were lost. We went too far and got separated from our camp.”

“So these guys rescued you.”

“I guess so.” She yanked at the handcuff attached to the cot and looked miserable.

And hot. Like, the good kind of hot. And he was getting hot too, and what the hell? Maybe she was wrapping his dick around her finger … and maybe he was way more dim-witted than Shep.

Or maybe … maybe it was all the changes he was going through. Because there was no way he’d ever healed this fast before. He’d been on the goddamned brink of death.

He inhaled. Damn, the woman smelled good.

“Chance …” The word came out a whisper, because she had no recourse against his approach.

“Your scent … it’s killing me,” he growled against her ear, then buried his face in her neck, her hair, his hands traveling along her body while she remained trapped on the thin mattress.

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“Why don’t you even the playing field?” she asked, rattling the chain, but he was far too intent on getting into her pants.

His hand slid under her shirt, along her bare belly. He needed to touch her.

Taste her.

He simply needed. She didn’t resist, parted her thighs for his touch. Wanted him too. And when his fingers found her, rubbed her hot, wet sex, he captured her groan against his mouth. His erection jutted against her side as he attempted to shift her so they could press together.

Her handcuffs were in the way, but he continued kissing her, and even in his sex haze, he knew she was voluntarily kissing him back, her tongue teasing the roof of his mouth as she rocked against his hand.

He wanted to drop to his knees, tongue her, taste her … but his need to mark her, to fill her was stronger. That was a keen, unbearable longing he would not be able to stop.

With a sharp tug, her pants and thong were pulled down, but they wouldn’t fit over the heavy boots she wore. Frustrated, he managed to free one leg enough for him to hook it around his waist. To open her to him.

Her wet sex welcomed the head of his cock easily. Teased it, and for a second he wondered what the hell was going on here, why he couldn’t stop. Why she didn’t want him to.

Why all of this felt so goddamned right.

With a harsh cry he didn’t recognize as his own, he thrust inside her. Felt strange at the lack of guilt, because he hadn’t asked her if any of this was okay.

But even though Marlena was bound, she was consenting. Opening for him.

Wrapping her legs around his waist as he balanced them both, her head thrown back in pure ecstasy.

From there, it was all happening in slow-motion flashes. He was vaguely aware of her cries of pleasure. The room seemed to spin and he was seeing Marlena’s face … and then jungle … and then just a white light that burned hotly through him as he came, harder than he’d ever come in his life.

He thought he was dying. Having a heart attack at the very least. But then the tightening in his chest subsided and gradually he floated back to consciousness, and to the woman he’d collapsed onto.

He lifted his head and they stared at each other, half in shock in their post-orgasmic haze. He eased Marlena’s legs from around his waist and steadied her when her feet hit the floor.

Her BDUs remained on one leg and he bent quickly and got them back on her. Because they were coming for her—for them—and no one would see his woman naked but him.

His woman. Shit.

Before he could say anything, explain—and what the hell kind of explanation could he give anyway?—Shep burst into the room.

“What are you doing?”

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Chance wheeled away from Marlena and faced Shep, who had a pistol pointed directly at him.

“Back the fuck away from her now,” Shep ordered.

Chance heard a low growl … and spun, searching for the source. Until he realized it had come from him.

What happened next was both completely unexpected and strangely natural, and like most things he’d done in his life, he simply went for it.

BITING THAT WOMAN ON THE EARLOBE HAD BEEN ONE OF

THE stupidest things Logan had ever done in his life, because it had made the whole I’ve-been-in-the-jungle-for-a-month-without-a-woman thing start screaming inside his pants.

God, she was pretty. Pretty and sweaty and pissed as hell, which, yeah, was another one of his turn-ons, right up there with the whole earlobe thing. She’d tasted a little salty, smelled like vanilla, and fuck it all, why, today of all days, was there actually hot water in this godforsaken shower when he most definitely needed cold.

He was horny as hell, and it was at times like these that he thanked God he wasn’t fully a machine, that he could still feel all the normal male urges. That he wasn’t a complete monster like the one Frankenstein built, full of wires and steel and mechanisms.

Since the accident and subsequent rehab, his emotions felt flat—he’d been unable to feel truly passionate about anything he did work-wise. Or anything-wise.

Sex was the only way he could convince himself that he was still capable of feeling, and hell, that was something.

Now he leaned his forehead against his arm, which was propped up against the wooden wall of the outdoor shower, his body still soapy, the dirt running down the small hole that acted as a drain.

He was rock hard, uncomfortably so, and Sela was waiting a few feet away, handcuffed to a pole with no choice but to wait for him.

“What’s taking you so long?” she snapped—and oh, yeah, if he could keep her talking …

“You miss me, darling?” he called, the hoarseness in his voice apparent to his own ears as he palmed his shaft and closed his eyes and pretended she was touching him. Stroking him. Maybe even getting on her knees to take him in her mouth. She’d be hot and wet and would put that sharp tongue to use in much more pleasant ways. He could already feel it swirling around his glans and flicking over the tip while her lips created a groan-inducing suction.

“I want to take a shower too,” she said, and Christ, the thought of her in here, with him, almost made him lose it.

Too soon—he needed to enjoy this. Deserved to, since he’d been pulled out of the office and into the fucking jungle to clean up another mess. And yeah, he 35

was about sixty seconds from making a fucking mess of his own, considering he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Sela’s ass instead of on the tracks leading to the escaped animal.

She’d been huffing a little as they’d gotten farther into the brush, each sound, each breath sounding like … like fucking sex noises. He needed to get this job over and done with and get this woman out of this country and away from Chance and the beast running free in the wilds of the Amazon.

“You can join me, in the name of water conservation,” he called back, imagined her slick, soapy body rubbing his. He’d bet anything she was wild in bed; she was the type—all buttoned-up and serious on the outside, but once she got turned on … she’d probably rake her nails down his back when she came.

Oh. Fucking. Yeah.

He stroked himself harder, the build up nearly too much, and he forced himself not to bite down on his own arm. She’d probably bite. And scratch. She’d lock those long legs around his waist and tease him by rocking her slick sex, her swollen clit, along the length of his shaft, working her honey all the way to his balls.

Which were drawing up, boiling with come. He imagined her palm cupping them, rolling them between her long fingers as she arched up, finally taking him deep. They’d both shout at the joining, and she might even reach her first orgasm when his cock raked a sensitive place inside.

“Do you think you’ll be ready soon?” she persisted.

“Yeah,” he panted. “Really ready.”

God, she’d be hot and tight—his hips rocked a little as he thrust into his fist.

“Because then we need to discuss the fact that you’re keeping me prisoner

…”

Sela in handcuffs in the shower naked with him. “Yeah. Prisoner.” At his mercy, spread-eagle and calling his name …

“Logan, do you hear me?”

“Mmmmmhmmm.”

“Because that’s against the law.”

“Oh, yeah. Against.” Pressed against, her nipples rubbing his chest, her core contracting around him, and fuck, he was at the edge and he was going over fast.

“Why are you suddenly being so agreeable?” Her voice had turned suspicious and he was seeing the white light behind his eyes. He pumped his hand faster, long strokes from base to tip, adding a twisting motion at the head that made the white light turn blinding.

“Because … it feels … so damned good,” he ground out. Sensation sizzled like a lit fuse down his spine to groin, where the pressure that had been building combusted. His balls tightened and his dick pulsed in his hand and he came, hard and fast, shooting on the floor while the water ran down his back like a soft caress.

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There was dead silence on her end, and then, “I hope you enjoyed yourself in there, as that’s the closest you’re ever getting to being with me.”

He finished rinsing off and opened the door without bothering with the towel. In this weather, he’d never dry fully anyway. Fucking humidity. “Who said I was thinking about you?”

“You said my name when you came,” she said dryly before she turned away, as if she didn’t see anything that impressed her.

Chuckling, he pulled on a fresh pair of jungle camo BDUs. She had sass, and dammit, he liked sass.

He uncuffed her, watched her rub her wrists. They were a little red, but that would fade quickly. His little shower fantasy, however, would not.

37

Sela rubbed her wrists, mentally cursing Logan and praying that Marlena could start work on seducing him. “Where is Marlena?” she asked, and he smirked at her.

“My boys took her to the medical tent. It’s reinforced, doubles as our holding tank.”

“Will she be okay? I saw the way your boys leered at her.”

He scowled. “Yeah, you’d think they’d never seen a fucking woman before.”

Oh, he was one to talk, given what he’d done in the shower while she was right outside the door. And what the hell was up with that? Sure, she’d discussed sex toys in the jungle to get him worked up and his mind in the gutter, but it was supposed to be there with Marlena and her vibrator, not Sela.

And now she was the one with her mind stuck in the gutter, because when he’d stepped out of the shower, water running in crystal rivulets along the valleys of his sharply cut muscles, she’d had to turn away to keep from staring as though she’d been in the jungle for a month.

“Logan!” Dax’s shout rang out at the same time as the sound of a scream and an inhuman snarl. “It’s Chance … Quick! He’s attacking Shep!”

Logan sped toward the medical tent, and Sela’s heart nearly busted through her rib cage. That was where he said they’d taken Marlena. Sela ran after him, the sounds coming from the tent scaring the daylights out of her.

Logan tore open the door and drew up so fast Sela ran into him. “What the fuck is that?” he barked, and Sela wished to God she knew the answer.

Shep was on the ground, moaning, blood streaming from his mouth, scalp and nose. A naked man stood over him … at least, she thought it was a man. His skin was grayish, textured like a reptile’s, and his teeth … God, they were sharp, fanged.

Marlena was huddled on a cot, cuffed, her clothes askew, and Sela wondered if this man-creature had attacked her. He watched them with slitted eyes, his entire body coiled inside and ready to strike. An injured animal preparing to defend itself from predators.

And judging by the way he seized Marlena’s forearm, he was prepared to defend her too.

Or maybe eat her.

“Someone get a goddamned tranq!” Logan shouted, and the man-thing snarled. Logan held up his hands and lowered his voice. “Chance. It’s okay. Let the woman go.”

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“Fuck off.”

Alarm skittered up Sela’s spine at the man’s deadly tone, but Marlena, to her credit, remained calm despite the fact that she was in the grip of something that wasn’t entirely human.

A man in BDUs and with a stethoscope around his neck eased into the tent, a tranquilizer gun in his hand. Two men behind him carried pistols.

“Doc,” Logan said quietly, “flank me.”

Logan gestured to Dax, and in the next instant, Dax grabbed Marlena, and the doctor and Logan shoved Chance onto the cot.

“Get Shep and the women out of here!” Logan shouted. Chance roared, his struggles knocking Logan and the doctor, whom Dax called Wes, off balance.

A set of arms circled Sela’s waist as Dax dragged Marlena out of the tent.

Sela elbowed her attacker in the ribs. He grunted, but his hold tightened, and she felt herself being tugged backward. As hard as she could, she brought her booted foot down on his, and at the same time, she rocked her head and cracked the back of her skull against his mouth and nose.

“Ow! Fuck!” His agonized curse accompanied a rough slam to the ground and a knee in the back of her neck, another jammed into the small of her back.

Sela’s breath was ripped from her lungs by the impact, and she gasped like a fish on the bank of a river. Memories of the beating she’d suffered flashed through her head like a movie on fast-forward, but mercifully, the man holding her down made no move to hurt her, and awkwardly, she cranked her head so she could see, past Dax, the struggle between the three men.

An ungodly, high-pitched screech pierced the air.

“Oh, Jesus.”

Sela didn’t know who spoke, but suddenly, Logan flew backward, landing in a heap next to her.

Wes hit one of the tent poles, cracking it in half. One side of the tent collapsed, and then, standing near the bed where Chance had been, its eyes glowing red and drool dripping from its tiger-long fangs, was a fucking chupacabra.

They were real. Dear God, they were real.

THERE WAS A MOMENT OF SILENCE, AND THEN CAME A CLICK