Driven by Fire (Fire 2)

Chapter Sixteen

She was right, he really was a rat bastard, Ryder thought as he strode out into the early morning air. She’d been half asleep, groggy from whatever erotic dream she’d been having, and for all he knew she’d been fantasizing about having sex with some movie star, not him. Except when she looked at him all that slumberous arousal had been for him and no one else, and when she’d kissed him he’d stopped thinking. What was that line . . . God gave man a brain and a penis but only enough blood to run one at a time. He’d certainly been thinking with his cock last night.

If she just hadn’t kissed him.

Hell, who was he kidding? He’d been looking for an excuse, any excuse, to take her in his arms. He’d wanted to be inside her so badly he hadn’t stopped to think about the ramifications, and even if he had he still would have taken her.

Or maybe he would have given her more time to change her mind. Parker wasn’t someone who lost her mind that easily—she’d been so aroused it hadn’t take much to make her come, again and again, and if he really wanted to, he could have her on her back once more in a matter of moments.

He really wanted to, but he wanted to find Soledad and the smartphone first. With Parker all bets were off. In a better world he could spend days in bed with her, discovering her. But not right now, for God’s sake, in a hostile country looking for a treacherous woman and a phone that could give someone the ability to start up the human trafficking all over again.

But God, she’d looked so pretty, lying there in his arms. She was a restless but heavy sleeper, and he was more than happy to have her end up half on top of him, breathing on his skin, the skimpy underwear no barrier to his imagination. His motives had been pure when he got into bed with her—he’d just needed her to get past her skittishness . . .

Who the fuck was he kidding? He’d wanted to lie in bed with her, wanted to hold her, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Never in his life had he let his libido make decisions for him, and the older he got, the smarter he should have been. Fucking her had been a major mistake, and all he could do was move on from it.

In fact, it could all work out for the best. People who slept together gave off a certain tell, an intimacy that anyone with an ounce of perception could read. He would have known whether Parker was sleeping with someone, and for some reason the very thought pissed him off. He was feeling oddly possessive, when he’d never wanted to possess a woman in his life.

But right now he wanted Parker. Maybe it had to do with the dangerous situation they were in—he felt responsible for her, unaccountably guilty for what he’d had to do to her, and they were alone in a foreign country with very little backup. He wasn’t a jealous man, but the fact that there’d been no man in her life for the past few years had pleased him, and he’d foolishly thought the lack of a condom would keep them apart.

Nothing could. She’d never admit it, but he knew she’d been wanting him just as much as he’d wanted her. He’d felt it in her body two nights earlier, when he’d kissed her. He’d felt it in her shocked betrayal when he’d climbed on the bed and hurt her. He’d felt it when he’d pulled her up against him, under duress, and her nipples had hardened in the warm darkness.

He’d turned a mess into a royal clusterfuck this morning. He couldn’t afford to be thinking about the taste of her, the sweet hitch in her breath, the soft noises, her funny shock each time he brought her to orgasm. He was good in bed but she must have had particularly lousy lovers to be so startled by her own response.

He had to stop thinking about it. He had a job to do, and the first thing he needed was to find Tomás and see what he’d heard about a woman matching Soledad’s description. He could only hope she still had the smartphone with her, but they couldn’t afford to waste time.

He could moon over Parker later. For now they had work to do.

Jenny had showered and dressed by the time Ryder returned. She’d given in and wept in the shower, where no one could hear her, but enough time had passed that she was calm and clear-eyed, sitting on the bed, waiting for him.

Her nerves were strung so tight she jumped when he opened the door, a paper bag in his arms. He kicked it shut behind him, then turned to look at her in the shadowy room. She hadn’t turned on the lamp, and daylight filtered in through the thick curtains, but she hadn’t wanted people to be able to look in their window so she’d left them closed. The first thing he did after setting the bag on the table was open the drapes, flooding the dingy little room with light.

She wanted to hiss like a vampire confronted with sunlight, but she merely blinked, keeping her face stolid. “I brought you breakfast,” he said, unpacking the bag. “A carton of orange juice, some lukewarm coffee, and some kind of egg sandwich. It’s not good, but it’s food.” He dumped the purchases on the table.

“I’m not . . .” she began.

“Don’t tell me you’re not hungry, because I’m not in the mood to force-feed you. But I’d do it—I can’t have you fainting with hunger. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.” He took one more thing out of the bag and set it on the table. A box of condoms.

“I don’t suppose you’re on birth control,” he said evenly.

Color flooded her face. “No.”

“Where are you in your cycle?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I’d rather fuck you. And that’s why I’m asking. If it’s a bad time of month I can get you a morning-after pill . . .”

“Please just stop talking about it,” she begged, getting up and taking the cardboard cup of coffee. “It’s not going to happen again.”

“Then answer my questions.”

“You’re safe from impending fatherhood,” she snapped, ignoring the heat in her face. She glanced at the condoms. “And you’re not going to need those.”

“I like to be prepared for emergencies. Hurry up and drink that coffee. We need to be on the road.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “You’ve found something out? In that short period of time?”

“It doesn’t take long when you have resources already in place. Finish your breakfast or bring it with you—I don’t care which. We need to get on the road.”