Demon Seed (2 page)

“Yes.” Her wet hair trailed his forearms, and she clung to his shoulders. “Are we safe?”

“Yes.” No chance those fuckers could make their location. Not unless the moon made a sudden appearance. Even then, none of them looked capable of an accurate shot at this distance.

“I can’t see the shore.”

She’d have to be an eagle to see anything. “You will soon. We’re heading back in about ten minutes.”

“Nooo. Please don’t take me back there.” She straddled her legs higher up his belly, and her nails dug into his back when she locked her feet around his waist.

“They’ll expect us to head to the next bay.” He stroked her spine—short, slow, even movements—and her shuddering receded a tad. “They won’t expect us to return to the same spot.”

“Oh.”

He could almost hear her mind ticking.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

The long sigh she blew out plus his continued rhythmic caressing eased the stiffness from her posture. She bent her head, and wet strands of hair grazed his chin. He liked the way she felt in his arms, all soft and curvy. Not to mention the plump ass cheek nestled in one palm.

“I can swim on my own. I can pull my own pounds.”

“Pounds?” He frowned at her.

“Is that not the saying?” She had settled back down, and now her naked pussy rode his belly button. The small, crisp pubic hairs covering her mound had his prick very, very interested.

“Your English pronunciation is good.” With a hint of an Irish accent. Intriguing. And her idioms needed a ton of work; he’d just figured out what she meant and grinned.

“
Gracias
. Languages are easy. Not like the physics.”

He’d bet odds she had wrinkled her nose. What a piss-assed conversation to be having with a woman who’d just escaped certain gang rape, being shot, and who knew what else. “Pull your own weight.”

“Ah. Of course. I can pull my own weight.” She let go of his neck.

“But you don’t have to. Relax.” Demon had no intention of letting her go, not until he had some answers. And her interrogation would have to wait. He didn’t want her spooked. Not yet. The tide was rising, and he wanted to use the strong current to speed their return to the bay. Demon turned them around.

“We’re heading back?”

He figured that was dumb-wad obvious, but she had just been through a shitload of hell and didn’t need a smart-ass remark. “Yes. We’ll go slowly.”

“How can you tell which way is back? I cannot see anything but blackness.”

“I have good eyesight.”

“You are a warrior?”

Demon didn’t bother to answer. He had no intention of giving away his identity or blowing his cover. If that hadn’t already happened. Had it been an ambush? And was she part of it?

“We’re almost there. When I squeeze you—no more speaking.”

She nodded.

Jacinta didn’t seem to own the fill-in-the-silences chromosome most women possessed, for she said not a word during the seven minutes it took to reach the rolling swells that preceded breaking waves, surf, and beach.

“We’re getting close.”

“I still cannot see a thing.”

Voices carried on indulgent breezes, but she had reacted to his whisper by answering in kind, and his hearing picked up nothing but nature’s symphony. The wind’s speed kicked up a gear, and he knew the contrast between the warm sea and the cooler breeze would start the chills for her in about fifteen minutes.

“You’ll be able to stand soon. We’re going to need to get you some clothes.” He still had all of his, save the belt he’d had to ditch or risk injury to his dick or stones.

“Sister Helen is not going to be pleased.”

That had his eyebrows lifting. “Sister Helen?”

“Oh.” She thunked her head on his shoulder. “I am so in trouble for losing that dress. Not to mention the shoes.”

Demon grinned. Gang rape and death didn’t faze Jacinta, but the loss of a dress and shoes did. He liked her more and more. She was gutsy and had a drive to survive that equaled his. “Sister Helen?”

She groaned. “My mentor.”

He gave her a little shake and untangled her legs from his waist. “You should be able to stand now.”

“I can.” She touched down.

He held her until her stance steadied. “Stay here. I want you to be quiet and keep only your nose above the water. Got that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to check things out.”

“You’ll come back?” Her whisper wavered a tad.

“Yes.” He gave her hand a squeeze and headed for the shore, pulled down the T-shirt that had ridden to midchest, zipped his fly, and buttoned his jeans.

Water sluiced off his wet clothes and boots as he threaded through the surf. The pungent body odor of the men who’d been on the beach had vanished, replaced by brine and the rotting seaweed low tide had deposited on the beach. A strand curled around his hand. He flicked away the weed and stilled. Other than the rhythmic crashing of waves, he heard nothing unusual. Julio, slob fuck that he was, had the rasped, heaving breathing of an asthmatic.

Demon scouted the bay and found tire tracks at the northern end. He followed the grooves and noted that two vehicles had gone north and one south.

He’d studied the satellite images of the area before beginning this mission. Two fishing villages bordered by steep mountains lay to the north. The heart of the Venezuelan tropical jungle lay dead ahead. Nine miles in the opposite direction across the Gulf of Paria was the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Southeast would take them through a series of rural settlements and then to the Guyanese border.

Until the reoccurrence of his malaria three days ago, he’d scouted the area with his normal anal attention to detail. Not once had he seen any unusual behavior. Until today. He’d fucking relaxed his guard. His initial reaction couldn’t have been correct. It couldn’t have been a deliberate ambush. Yet his honed neck-hair-bristling instincts couldn’t let go of the notion.

Years of SEAL deployments had taught him one vital lesson—fucking coincidences didn’t exist. So if not an ambush, then what? One fact he knew: the beach had been compromised. No way could it be the emergency escape route Satan, his Hades Squad team member, had suggested. So much for the expensive equipment he’d painstakingly stashed in the cave at the far end of the bay. SEALs double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked every fucking detail of a mission. But he was more OCD than even Satan and just had to take one last inspection tonight.

Emilio wouldn’t expect anyone to head east straight into the Venezuelan interior, and that was Demon’s ultimate destination. But first he had to get Jacinta back to wherever she came from. If time allowed that little luxury.

His clothes, designed not to retain moisture, were almost dry. Demon tugged off his shirt, snagged it around one of the sea grape trees lining the beach, and then headed to retrieve his curvy package.

Before he reached her, Jacinta called out softly, “Is it okay?”

“Yes.”

She was at his side in less than three seconds. “I knew you’d come back.”

The fact she had to say the words said otherwise. He scooped her up and carried her to where the beach turned into gravel and then soft grasses. After setting her down, he ordered, “Put your hands up. I’m going to loan you my shirt.”

Not once had she disobeyed an order. “I am fine. You did all the peddling. You need your shirt.”

“Paddling. You
will
wear the shirt. But you might want to take off that wet bra first.” He marveled at her calm. Not a single note of hysteria rode her voice.

The moon made a sudden appearance. Demon pulled her under the tree. “No time to argue, Jacinta. We have to get moving.”

“I can carry my brassiere until it dries.” She reached behind her back, undid the strap, and hung her head for a second before slipping the garment off.

“Bra. Not many people say brassiere.” Demon took the wet bra and slung it over his shoulder.
Shit
. He never had trouble controlling his breathing. And he never had trouble controlling his blasted cock. He wanted to tell her that she had magnificent breasts. Big-nippled, perfect, rounded globes that didn’t sag a millimeter without support. “Hands up.”

When she kept her head down, he nudged her chin.

Damn. She looked about to cry. Reaction had finally set in
. Gathering her close, he shared his body heat and massaged her lower back, trying to ignore the soft press of her nipples, the supple silk of her skin, the whiff of lemon clinging to her wet hair. “Easy, honey. You’ve been so great tonight. Don’t fall apart on me now. I have to get you to safety.”

Sniffing, she lifted to meet his gaze and managed a tremulous smile. “I’m okay now. Can I put on the shirt myself?”

Reluctant to forgo the anticipated pleasure of skimming more of her soft flesh, he released her, stepped back, and gave her the garment.

She turned around to put the tee on. Moonbeams flickered through the branches above, and he got a leisurely up close and personal view of her gorgeous ass and a waist he estimated to be twenty-two inches at most. His stones fired tight and hard, and he was so close to shooting his wad that he had to concentrate on the branch of the tree above him for a good nine seconds before he risked glancing at her.

The T-shirt reached her just above the knee. Demon shook his head, not understanding how any female could look both demure and sexier than Aphrodite at the same time. He scooped her up again.

“I can walk.” But she looped her arms around his neck, and her teeth flashed white when she smiled. The tiny gap proved both charming and enticing.

“Not on bare feet, you can’t. As we walk, want to try filling me in on what happened earlier?” Demon had a feeling he could get used to having Jacinta in his arms.

He made it to the dirt road, and she still hadn’t uttered a word, and then the tension went out of her limbs. She’d fallen asleep. He’d have to teach her not to trust so easily.

What had he interrupted?

A brother who wanted to do his sister.

Demon had no truck for the half part. A half sister is a sister, that’s all there was to it. And a brother protects a sister. Period. Emilio was the sickest sort of fucker on the planet.

Ten to one, Emilio and his gang were dealers or worked for one of the cartels. With the waters between Trinidad and Venezuela almost impossible to patrol thoroughly and relentlessly, and the increasing isolation of Venezuela under Chavez, the drug trade in Trinidad had mushroomed like a deployed atomic bomb.

She muttered something that tickled a boyhood memory. A grin chased his lips when he recognized that she’d been conjugating the Latin verb for
carry
:
port
ō
, port
ā
re, port
ā
v
ī
, port
ā
tus
. He stopped dead in his tracks. Latin? Sister Helen? Her mentor?

No way.

He hadn’t fucked a nun.

A nun couldn’t have turned him on.

His half-hard cock refused to believe her a nun and refused to go flaccid.

Go figure.

He’d had three-ways, experimented with BDSM, done a few ménages, and never, not for a single moment, had he ever felt guilt. Until now. Not to mention a rising level of self-disgust. He was a man of honor. A man bound by his vows. And he’d fucked a nun.
Double crapola.

Jacinta woke up like a kitten.

First she rubbed an eye with one fist, then she arched a little, and then she blinked. And dazzled him with a wide, upturned grin. The moon had ducked behind clouds yet again, and he still had only a vague notion of what she looked like. “I thought I had dreamed you.”

“A nightmare?” Demon acknowledged the fact that he scared most people. Most saw only the scar that had turned his mouth into a perpetual sneer. The nose that had been broken more times than he could count. He didn’t have a handsome bone in his body, and he knew it well.

She hugged him.

The spontaneous gesture surprised the piss out of him.

“You’re so silly. A nightmare? No, my knight in shining armor. Lancelot du Lac. Or maybe King Albert. Or Cormac mac Airt. Or Niall of the Nine Hostages.”

Demon stumbled and righted himself immediately.
Sir Lancelot?

“But you are so much more handsome than Franco Nero.”

He tripped again. He
never
stumbled. Handsome? If his best friend and teammate, Devil, ever heard of this, he’d laugh for days. Maybe even decades.

“What is wrong?” She touched his forehead. “Are you weary? I can walk, I promise you. And I am no longer weepy. I can hike for a whole day, even up a steep mountain. Sister Helen and I hiked often.”

“Sister Helen?” Maybe this time she’d answer.

“I live in a cloistered convent.” Her voice wavered. “Or I used to, before I let the devil tempt me.”

His mind went blank. He picked up his pace. No one had ever surprised him into dropping his jaw or blurting a question until now. “A cloistered convent?”

He dreaded her answer.

“An enclosed convent where the nuns have very little contact with the outside world.”

No way he could let it go. He had to know. “Are you a nun?”

She sighed, a long, audible sigh. “No.”

Thank the Lord.

His dick took the news as a full-speed-ahead signal and hardened with each stride.

“Where is this convent?”

“In the mountains north of Roraima.”

He came to a dead, jerky halt seconds before he rammed her into the bark of a tree trunk.

“You
are
weary.” She placed her hand on his forehead. “And hot. You were in the water too long. I told you I could pull my pounds.”

“Weight.”

There are no coincidences in life.

He lived his life by that credo.

But this fucking had to be. “How did you come to be with Emilio on the beach?”

“I let the devil into my soul.” She ducked her head. “And I foolishly believed Consuelo was helping me escape.”

They reached the road, and he had a decision to make. He had to leave in less than an hour. No way did he have time to find her a safe house. If she did indeed need one and wasn’t playing him for a big-time sucker.