Hot Intent (Hqn) Read online

  “Thank you, professor,” she replied dryly. He opened his arms and she wasted no time accepting the invitation to press herself against him from head to foot.

  He wasn’t any warmer than she and was also shivering, but before long, warmth built between their bodies. Still, it was taking them a long time to warm up. She muttered against his chest, “Wouldn’t this go faster if we had sex? The exercise and friction would help warm us up, right?”

  He chuckled into her hair. “True. But our contact could show up at any second. I didn’t think you’d appreciate being discovered in flagrante delicto.”

  “Is that fancy Latin for humping like bunnies?”

  “It is.”

  “I’m so glad I fell for a Harvard-educated genius. Life will be nothing if not educational around you.”

  “You have no idea,” he murmured back, a distinctly sexual edge in his voice.

  He had yet to show her most of the dark sexual tastes he claimed to have. One of these days, though, she was going to get him to really cut loose with her and take her there. A shiver of anticipation rattled down her spine. If only danger wasn’t such sexy stuff.

  “Still chilled?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t shivering from cold,” she grumbled.

  He laughed low in her ear. “Ahh, one of these days, little innocent, we’ll appease your curiosity.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  His arms tightened lightly around her, pressing her a little closer to his muscular body. His hands roamed up her bare back while her hands roamed down his. His buttocks were firm and imminently gripable. They made her think of athletic sex.

  “You have the best ass ever,” she whispered.

  “You have the best—”

  A noise behind them made him shove away from her, whirling into a defensive crouch.

  A motorboat was coming around an outcropping of rock at the end of the tiny beach.

  “Get down,” Alex bit out.

  Katie threw herself down to the sand. Crap. That looked like a military patrol boat of some kind. The half dozen men on board wore military uniforms and were using binoculars to stare at the shore.

  “Don’t move,” Alex muttered. “As long as we don’t call attention to ourselves, they won’t see us here in the shadows.”

  She made like a lump of driftwood to the best of her ability as the vessel cruised slowly, ominously, past. Was this a routine patrol? Or had these guys spotted Pedro’s fishing boat on radar, maybe?

  The military vessel rounded the point at the north end of the beach and disappeared from view. Alex scrambled to his feet, dressing fast. She followed suit, too terrified to pause even to brush the sand off herself. Alex eased down the beach, sticking to the shadows, and she followed close on his heels. Tension vibrated in his movements, which alarmed her mightily. Why was he so on edge after seeing that boat?

  Without warning, he plunged into the pile of debris. What the heck?

  She followed after him, surprised to come into a tunnel of sorts. It looked to have been hacked out by humans. It was barely wide enough for her to pass through, and in the middle she had to turn sideways to slip through. But in a few seconds, she popped out the other side.

  “Now what?” she whispered at Alex.

  “We’re going to have to head for the alternate rendezvous point,” he whispered back.

  “Let me guess. More hiking.”

  He shrugged and gave her a hand signal to be silent followed by the signal to move out. Oh, joy.

  They crossed what might at one time have been a paved road, but now it was a smooth drift of sand. Alex hugged the edges of the drift, sticking to the patches of exposed asphalt wherever he could for perhaps a quarter mile when he threw up a fist abruptly, signaling a halt.

  She stopped, listening intently. Only the swish and crash of the nearby surf were audible at first. But then she heard voices. Crap.

  Alex plunged into the brush at the side of the ruined road and she followed suit. Her T-shirt caught on something and she gave it frantic jerk. It tore with a sound of rending cloth, and she froze, horrified. Alex grabbed her arm with his left hand and yanked her down beside him. She mouthed a silent apology and he nodded tersely as he quickly tied a piece of dark cloth in a makeshift do-rag over her blond hair. A pistol appeared in his right hand.

  Were they really in so much danger? She thought the whole point of sending him down here was that the Cubans would think he was on their side. Why was he so freaked out at the prospect of running into Cuban soldiers? Shouldn’t he wave hello to them, introduce himself and let them know he was going to be rendering first aid to locals for a while?

  Waiting breathlessly, she crouched a dozen feet into the tangle of brush. Who was out there? More soldiers? Locals? Looters? A line of uniformed men on foot drew even with their position, six across, all wielding automatic weapons. They looked like they were expecting trouble.

  The two on the end closest to her and Alex were muttering something about footprints in the sand and she caught the fractional wince that crossed Alex’s face. Was that why he’d been avoiding the smooth sand and making her stumble along on the torn-up asphalt?

  Someone called out an order low in Spanish. Something about fanning out. She glanced over at Alex in panic. Shouldn’t they run or something? He shook his head in the negative so infinitesimally that she nearly missed the gesture. Instead, he sank lower by extremely slow degrees. She mimicked the sinking movement until she lay flat on her belly beside him. By inches, his arm came over her shoulder blades. Whether it was meant to protect her or hold her down if she panicked, she had no idea.

  Crashing noises shockingly close to them indicated that the soldiers were pushing out into the bush. Not good. Not good at all. She tensed, and Alex’s arm went iron hard across her back. The message was clear. Don’t move.

  She’d heard her brothers talk about close calls when hostiles walked right by them in the dark, but none of them had ever described the throat-paralyzing terror of it, the roaring helplessness of having to just wait and hope you weren’t spotted while the bad guys crashed past your position.

  A soldier passed maybe four feet from them, moving left to right. But at the exact moment when the guy had a clear sight line down to where they lay between two dead logs, a spiderweb or something similar brushed against his face. The guy sputtered and waved his right arm impatiently while he used his left hand to wipe his face. The soldier took the next step, disappeared from a direct sight line and the threat was past.

  Alex held her down while the line of soldiers gradually drew away from them, moving south down the road and beating their way through the brush beside it.

  After a few minutes, Alex’s arm lifted away from her and he rose to a crouch beside her. She scrambled upright somewhat less quietly than he did in spite of her best efforts to be stealthy. He gave her a hand signal to hold her position, and then he rose slowly to his feet.

  Her thighs were killing her before he finally held a hand down to help her rise. He eased back down toward the road, which shocked her. Maybe it was more important for them to leave the area quickly than it was for them to remain unseen. Either way, she noted that Alex was careful to stay off the sweep of sand covering most of the roadway.

  They’d been walking maybe five minutes when Alex swore low under his breath and dived for the brush again. Echoing his sentiment, she followed him again. With the exception of the chorus of insects, the night sounded completely normal to her.

  She was ready to stand up and let some circulation back into her legs, but still Alex crouched there. What was he waiting for? She sent him the hand signal questioningly for moving out, and he shook his head sharply in the negative. Confused and uncomfortable, she held her position. In a few minutes, the sound of a vehicle approaching became audible.

  It was a jeep picking its way slowly along the remains of the road. Four soldiers sat in the vehicle, and the passengers were scanning the shore and jungle carefully. The two in th
e back had automatic weapons in their laps. The two in front were armed most notably with gigantic machetes attached to their belts.

  The vehicle did not stop and rumbled on by their hiding place. It retreated in the same direction the walking men had gone.

  What the hell was going on? How was it the Cuban military had converged on nearly their exact position within minutes of their arriving here and appeared to be searching for them? Had Pedro turned them in? Although she disliked that idea, she disliked the alternative more. Surely, they hadn’t been betrayed from within Doctors Unlimited. Or worse, the CIA.

  As soon as the jeep passed out of sight, Alex eased out of the brush and continued in the direction the men and vehicle had come from. She knew it was a good thing to have slipped through the search line like they’d managed to do. But it didn’t mean they’d seen the last of waves of incoming Cubans, nor did it mean the soldiers wouldn’t head back this way at some point.

  She followed Alex for maybe ten minutes in cautious silence before she ventured to whisper, “How did you know the jeep was coming?”

  “The men on foot were talking about their district commander being headed this way.”

  “At this time of night? Why?”

  “No idea. But given that all this activity is taking place in the exact spot, at the exact time, we arrived on the island, one has to wonder if we’re the cause of it.” Alex stopped and pulled out his cell phone. He fiddled with the GPS function for a moment. “Another quarter mile or so should bring us to the backup rendezvous point.”

  Funny, but a quarter mile of walking on sand felt like a lot farther. Her calves ached like big dogs before a roofless stone shell of a small building came into view ahead. It sat high above the road on a rocky crag overlooking the ocean.

  “Gaviota hut,” Alex muttered. “That’s where we’re headed.”

  “What’s a gaviota hut?”

  “Gaviota means seagull in Spanish. It’s a ruin where only the birds hang out.”

  “Our contact is a seagull? Cool,” she replied.

  He smiled briefly and turned up a path that looked more like a washed-out gully at the moment. They wound up the hill about halfway when they reached a massive washout, maybe twenty feet across and at least as deep.

  Alex screeched to a stop on its lip and she barely avoided plowing into him and pushing him over the edge. “Whoa,” she gasped.

  They stared down into the ravine together. A raging torrent of water rushed down the mountain. If either of them fell into that it would smash them on the rocks before washing their broken bodies down the hill.

  She looked up the mountain, and the slash of the ravine was visible all the way to the top. She murmured, “Got a plan C meeting point, Captain Preparedness?”

  “No. We’re on our own for now.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  He shrugged. “I’m good at improvising. I’m going to suggest we head toward the area where the ships have been seen coming and going and scout around for ourselves.”

  “Where is this area exactly?”

  He shrugged. “Up the coast a little ways. I’ve got a map and GPS on my phone. We’ll find it.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, this island is trashed. It’s not like we can just take off hiking over hill and dale. We’ve got no food, no water and, worse, no bug spray!”

  He arched an eyebrow at her.

  “I’m serious! Think about the size of mosquitoes that are going to start breeding in this mess. In a week, they’ll be carrying off small children.”

  “I have industrial-strength bug repellent,” he replied dryly.

  “You do? Hand it over.”

  “There aren’t any insects out to speak of.”

  “I feel itchy,” she declared.

  “That’s the sand in your clothes. We need to preserve the supplies we have. I have no idea what we’ll find when we get to where we’re going.”

  “Do you know exactly where that will be?” she asked in resignation.

  “Nope.”

  He took his bearings using his cell phone, and then backtracked cautiously to a side road they’d passed a few minutes earlier. No telling if there were more military patrols out hunting for them or not. She rather thought that they would still be out here.

  She stared up the narrow track that disappeared into the darkness. “You’re seriously going to just head off into the jungle?” she asked in dismay.

  “There are fresh tire tracks on this road. It’s passable for at least a while.”

  Well, that was encouraging. This “road” of his looked like a pair of bad ruts and not much more. Her irritation, and her certainty that he was torturing her on purpose, mounted as they hiked up into the hills. The “road” did, in fact, hold up for several miles. But then, they hit a patch where, as far ahead as Alex’s high-powered flashlight could reach, nothing but downed trees was visible.

  “End of the road,” he muttered.

  “How far to wherever we’re headed?”

  “Far enough that it’s time for us to make camp and get a little rest before we finish the hike.”

  Oh, God. She watched in dismay as Alex moved a ways up the hill and off into the brush. She followed glumly and helped him spread out a tarp on the ground. They spread another over a downed tree limb lying several feet above the first tarp. They laid big banana leaves in a shingle pattern over the shelter to help it shed water and then covered the whole mess with brush, no doubt to camouflage it from prying eyes.

  She crawled into the tiny tent and Alex followed suit. She muttered, “Did I ever mention I hate camping?”

  “I got that memo when you went looking for an electrical outlet in a cave in Zaghastan so you could blow-dry your hair.”

  “I did not look for an outlet! I merely complained that there wasn’t one.”

  “I rest my case,” he murmured.

  “Just tell me there aren’t ginormous snakes crawling around all over the place out here.”

  “There aren’t ginormous snakes crawling around all over the place out here.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  He snorted. “Of course not. The locals’ name for the Cuban boa constrictor is the maja. They’re native to these jungles. Not the biggest snakes on earth, but they’re aggressive.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Get some sleep, Katie.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  He merely offered his arm for a pillow, and she couldn’t maintain enough ire to turn him down. She was exhausted by all this Jane of the Jungle stuff.

  *

  SHE WASN’T SURE if it was the deafening cicadas outside or the steamy heat inside the tent that woke her up, but either way, she roused to bright green light and the sticky discomfort of sand and sweat on her skin. She rolled over and suppressed a groan. Her body ached from head to foot. Her Pilates instructor was going to be so disappointed. “Alex?” she called out low.

  “I’m here.”

  She crawled out the opening in the end of their makeshift tent and sighed in relief as a stirring of cooler air caressed her. Alex was chopping up a small papaya with the same sort of machete she’d seen those men carrying last night. “Where’d you get that?” she exclaimed under her breath.

  “From the tree over there. It fell over in the storm and the fruit wasn’t all blown away.”

  “No, silly. The big dang knife.”

  “That road we were walking along last night used to have houses beside it. There are all sorts of household goods snagged in the rubble. I picked it up.”

  Personally, she’d been too absorbed in her misery to notice such things.

  He passed her a dripping slice of orange papaya and she bit into it with a moan of pleasure. She’d never tasted anything so sweet and refreshing in all her life.

  “I saved this for last,” he announced some minutes later. He hoisted a big green, roughly triangular fruit onto a big rock and raised the machete over it.

  “
What’s that?”

  “Coconut.”

  “No way. They’re round, brown, hairy things.”

  He grinned at her and took a mighty whack at it. “The brown bit is the seed. This is the entire fruit.” It split open to reveal what she knew as a coconut nestled inside. He dug it out of the mushy pulp.

  He gave the coconut a sharp rap with the machete and it split open. He dropped the knife and caught the two halves in his hand. “Drink the coconut water. We need the fluid.”

  It didn’t taste bad, but it wasn’t that great, either. It was wet, though, and her body craved the moisture. They scooped out the coconut flesh with their fingers and ate that, as well. She liked hers sweetened, but hey. It could be a worse meal. Alex could be asking her to eat raw fish. Or bugs.

  As the morning heated up, Alex stripped off his T-shirt to reveal a glistening chest rippling with muscle. “Are you looking to get jumped, sailor?” she murmured.

  “By you? Bring it, baby.”

  Her gaze narrowed. She did need to get naked, anyway, and shake the damned sand out of her clothes. She wiggled out of her jeans, which had dried tightly to her body. “I’m going to have to do some serious twerking to get those back on,” she declared.

  He grinned. “Can’t wait to see the show.”

  Speaking of which, she stripped off her shirt slowly and made a production of reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. She brushed the sand off her breasts sensuously, enjoying the feel of her fingertips sweeping across the sensitive peaks.

  Abruptly other fingers were there, pushing hers aside. They brushed the sand off her entire body, in fact, leaving her moaning and gasping with pleasure. And when she didn’t think she could take any more, Alex pushed her back against a fallen tree trunk, arching her backward until her body was taut and unable to move. Once he had her immobilized and at his mercy, he finally unzipped his jeans, freed himself and plunged into her.

  She cried out and he pressed his hand over her mouth fast. Good call. She never did have any restraint once he took control of her body. She arched up into him, matching him thrust for thrust sprawled across the giant log, while he took her body fast, then slow, rough, then gentle. He closed his eyes today, lost in his own pleasure. But that was fine with her. Any second now, she was going to...