Master of the Game (Rush Series Book 3) (23 page)

“Just
give me a couple of minutes,” he told him before turning his attention back to
Devon.

He felt
her tense underneath his hands. She tilted her head and contemplated him with
her one opened eye for a long moment before running a hand over her head, she
simply nodded. “I just need to gather some of Roman’s personal effects for his
family…” she trailed off as something dark crossed her face. She stood facing
him, her chest heaving.

Alex
gently rubbed his hands up and down her arms. “What is it?” he asked.

She
blew out a huge puff of air. She laid one of her hands over one of his, “We
really need to talk…
there’s things
…” she trailed off
again, not sure where to start.

He
grasped her hand and brought it to his lips. “Why don’t you sit here next to
Mitch while I gather my few belongings, then we’ll go gather what you want from
your tent. We’ll talk on the ride, okay?”

She
dashed the tears from her cheeks and again nodded.

Within the
hour, they were hustled into the back seat of a black SUV and began the long
trek back to the real world. They’d tried repeatedly, with no success, to reach
her mother. Worry and stress settled once more upon her shoulders. If anything
happened to her mother because of her, she’d never forgive herself. With her
head and body aching, she downed several headache tablets. Ben forced her to lie
down in the backseat and rest her head in his lap. She flipped and flopped as
her mind spun in so many directions. Finally, he pulled her up onto his chest
and held her tightly against his him. She breathed him in as he pressed soft
kisses against her head. “Try to get some sleep, we’ll be back to the hotel
soon,” he said.

“But we
really need to talk,” she whispered groggily.

“They’ll
be plenty of time for that later, I promise.”

“Okay,”
she concurred as her eyes began to drop.

Alex
stared straight ahead as he absent-mindedly rubbed a hand up and down her back,
his thoughts swirling to everything that needed to be regurgitated, revealed,
and rehashed. There’d been so much deceit on both sides, he didn’t know where
they’d go from here; or even if he wanted anything beyond this point. He only
knew that he wasn’t ready to let her go quite yet. He needed to be sure she was
going to be okay. He needed to ensure that when all of this was over, she had a
soft place to land – he owed her that much.

~*M*~

The sun
peeking in through the curtain teased her eyes open. While they still felt heavy
and swollen, at least she could open them… mostly. She worked her jaw back and
forth trying to work out the stiffness. She slid her leg up and down under the
cool silkiness of the sheets, striving to stretch her cramping muscles. She
stopped when her leg encountered another leg… one not attached to her own. She
slowly turned her head and found herself staring into eyes the color of
sea-foam. He smiled lazily at her and raised a hand to lightly trace the curve
of her jaw with his fingertip.

“Good
morning,” he said huskily, smiling over at her.

“Morning,”
she repeated as she closed her eyes to further enjoy his touch.

“How
are you feeling?” he asked softly.

“A little stiff.
What time is it?”

Alex
twisted his wrist to look at his watch. “It’s almost ten. Are you hungry?”

Her
eyebrows scrunched together. “How long have I been asleep?”

“
Ummm
, fifteen or sixteen hours.
You
needed the rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

She
bolted up. “I have to try my mother again,” she said in a panic.

Alex
grabbed her and slowly interlaced their fingers before raising them to his
lips. “Devon, she’s… gone. We had a team dispatched to their house and it was
empty. It looked like they left quickly. I don’t know where she is, but she’s
not at the house.”

She
slowly shook her head as she struggled to rattle some sense into her head.
“Team?
Yesterday, those men called you Alex? Who are you…
what are you?” she asked on the edge of desperation.

He
exhaled deeply, knowing this was coming, but still unsure of telling her. After
weighing his decision for several long moments, he said, “My name is Alex
Masters. I’ve been working undercover for the past two weeks with the CIA to
find the missiles.”

She lay
still for a long, while absorbing his words. She blinked rapidly as her
thoughts ran in torrents through her mind. Nothing was real between them. He’d
lied… she’d lied. Her mother was missing. Untangling their fingers, she sat up
and swung her legs to the floor. Her head began to pound at the movement. She
raised a shaky hand and pushed the hair away from her face.

He laid
a hand against her hip. “Hey, talk to me,” he implored.

She sat
with her back to him and slowly shook her head. “I… I need to try my mother,”
she finally said. She rose stiffly from the bed, found her purse with her
cellphone inside it, and moved into the tiny alcove next to the bathroom for a
little more privacy.

She hit
the speed-dial number for her mother and waited. The phone rang, rang, rang –
seven rings, then voicemail. “Mom, please call me,” she begged into the phone
once more. She clicked the phone off before clutching it to her chest as pain
twisted there. Her world was well and truly falling apart, and the one person
she’d always been able to depend on and confide in was gone. What would she do
without Roman in her life? She didn’t even know if his family knew he was dead.
Her chest burned and she struggled to breathe.

She
tried to wrap her mind around what the man in the next room had told her. She
didn’t even know what name to call him in her head. She glanced up at her
reflection in the mirror and cringed. She was a mess. Her hair was dirty and in
total disarray… and that was the best part of her appearance. While both eyes
were blackened, one was still extremely swollen. Her lips had big splits in
them, and her jaw had severely dark bruises running over it. She leaned weakly
against the sink’s edge.

Her
lips began to tremble. She needed her mom… she needed Roman… and she could have
neither. Taking the phone with her, she moved into the bathroom and noiselessly
closed the door behind her. She flipped the tub lever and turned the water on
to fill the tub and slowly removed her clothes.

She
lowered her aching body into the hot water and wrapped her arms around her
knees. As her chest began to heave, she laid her forehead against her knees and
let the tears fall and the sobs come. She cried for the known loss of Roman –
her mainstay – and the unknown circumstance of her mother. Guilt at her part in
putting her mother in danger slashed at her insides. She wanted to run back
into the arms of the man in the next room, but she didn’t know him, not really.
She felt lost… well and truly lost.

Alex
lay in bed, his arm under his head, and listened to Devon call her mother’s
phone. His experience in these types of things made him doubt her mother’s
survival. He wasn’t sure what to do to help her. These were going to be long,
hard days for her. Everything in him told him to run… not walk, back to the States.
This was not his problem… she was not his problem.

He
listened intently, when he didn’t hear anything for several minutes, he sat up
and leaned back against the headboard so he could hear better, then he heard
the bathroom door close quietly. It wasn’t long after when he heard the water
begin to flow into the tub. He thumped his head against the headboard in
frustration. He should leave this minute – leave before she became too
dependent on him. He’d lived through this before. He wasn’t able,
nor
willing, to endure it again – be the emotional support
to someone. He
should
leave… but he
wouldn’t… couldn’t
leave her like this. Somehow, she’d
crawled deep inside him; made him want her… made him need her… made him want to
protect her.

She’d
been in the bathroom for a long while and his concern overwhelmed him. He went
to the bathroom door with the intent of calling to her through the door;
however, while he stood hesitantly outside, debating the saneness of his
actions, he heard her faint sobs coming from within. Slowly, he opened the door
and stepped into the small enclosed space.

He
leaned against the door and studied the suffering woman sitting in the tub. Her
head was pressed down against her raised knees and her slim, golden shoulders
quaked with heartache. Wordlessly, he walked over to the rack and pulled down a
washcloth. Sitting down on the closed lid of the toilet, he sank the cloth into
the warm water and squeezed the water over her back and shoulders. She
stiffened immediately.

Without
lifting her head, she rasped, “I… I really need to be alone right now.”

Softly,
he murmured, while leaning down to gather more water in the cloth, “No, I don’t
think you do.” He squeezed the water out once again.

“Please
just go,” she begged him.

“Look
at me,” he commanded softly.

She
tensed at his tone. Not in fear – who could fear that soft, smooth as honey,
tone? It seemed to flow over her skin with silky decadence. His commanding
voice made her want to follow his lead. The tone made her feel calmer somehow;
as if he could make everything in her life better.

Slowly,
she turned her face and leaned the side of her head against her knees. Her
swollen eyes were now red from her crying jag. She looked into his beautiful
face and once again cringed when she considered the condition of her own face.
His blonde hair had grown longer in the last week, and curled up at the edges.
His five o’clock shadow had turned into a thin beard. His scruffiness only
accentuated his attractiveness instead of detracting from it. His amazing pale
green eyes were filled with equal measures of confidence and concern.

“Tell
me what’s going on in that head of yours,” he said with a soft smile. He leaned
forward and once again squeezed water onto her skin.

She
closed her eyes, pretending if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her. But
he was too smart for that. “You’re hiding from me, Little Devil.”

She
opened her eyes to meet his once more. She swallowed painfully, her throat
feeling as if shards of glass had been run through it from where
Lex
had choked her. “I don’t know who you are,” she finally
said.

He gave
her a wry twist of his lips. “When has that ever stopped us?”

She
stared into his face as indecision flared within her. A long, lost memory
flitted around the edges of her memory of when she’d been a little girl, and
had climbed up onto the roof of their single-story house, her goal being to
jump off and fly through the air until gravity brought her back down to the
earth. It had sounded good in theory… until she’d actually crawled to the
roof’s edge. She remembered her heart pounding, her breathing labored, and a
thin layer of sweat coating her skin as she’d stared down at the ground below.
That was how she felt now. Like she was on the edge of a precipice, not sure if
she should jump … not sure what would happen when she landed.

“I
wasn’t ever married to Roman,” she finally said, needing to finally come clean
to him.

Reaching
back down into the tub, he squeezed more water over her back. “I know,” he
replied softly.

She
searched his eyes when he lifted them back to her own. “How long have you
known?” she asked.

“A couple days.”

She
gave a small nod of her head. “I loved him,” she said simply.

He set
the cloth aside and brushed a finger over her cheek. “I know,” he answered
again. Picking up a small bar of hotel soap, he unwrapped it,
then
lathered it up between his palms. Slowly, and
methodically, he began to slide the soap over her back and shoulders. In a
smooth, non-accusatory tone, he asked, “Why did you tell me you
were
married to him?”

She
inhaled a ragged breath as the memory of Roman’s contorted face flashed before
her eyes. She turned her head to face forward and she shoved hands that shook
into her hair. “It’s… complicated,” she finally whispered.

Still
rubbing soap over her skin, he said patiently, “Tell me.”

Wrapping
her arms back around her knees and replacing her head on her knees, she watched
his face as he systematically washed her body. “About a year ago, not long
after my father was killed, my mother called and told me she was marrying my
stepfather, Miguel Munoz.” She stopped to let out a shaky breath.

“I was
so angry at her. My father hadn’t been gone very long and she was jumping into
another marriage as if my father didn’t matter.” She batted at the tears
sliding down her cheeks. “I almost hated her then.”

With a
small shake of her head, she continued. “It didn’t take me long once I met
Miguel to realize his wealth came from drugs. From the beginning, he was
abusive to my mother and I begged her to leave him, but for reasons I didn’t
understand at the time, she refused. In turn, I refused to condone his
lifestyle, so I left and moved in with Roman.”