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“A lime-green Cadillac, such a lovely car color.”
He nodded, grinning like an idiot. The thing in his throat that was supposed to operate airflow, allowing him to utter words, blocked up completely.
She gestured at the car. “Are you going to unlock the car?”
Fuck. The door, mate. Mouth still seeking air, he hit the unlock button.
She went around to the other side, threw a backpack onto the floor, then slid into her seat with one long leg leading the way. He’d thought she was beautiful in her habit. That getup had dulled her. As had her contacts. “Those are your eyes.”
Reaching up, she removed the hat from her head. “I’m surprised you could tell. Yes. The brown are my contacts.”
It was the first time he’d seen her hair. Shorn tight against her scalp, elegant came to mind. His hand itched to run along the edges of her face, her perfect ear, her beautiful jaw.
Looking away, he put the car into drive. “The GPS coordinates are over an hour from here, Sister.”
“Dee.”
“For a nun, you sure don’t like to be called Sister.”
Her fingers moved to the leather bracelet on her wrist. “I’m an undercover nun. Thus, the outfit. Which, by the way, was a good suggestion.”
Had she changed at his suggestion? Somehow, he felt she was a step ahead, not behind, him. He wished he could trust her. Damn, why did he feel like she’d manipulated him?
Everything in him told him she was not a nun—she didn’t move like a nun, didn’t act like a nun, sure as hell didn’t kiss like a nun. And, yeah, mind-altering desire clouded his judgment, but logic also told him her being a nun made no sense.
He’d done research into the group she’d claimed to be from, and though it was possible, it was unlikely.
Still, he hadn’t had the time to disprove it. So, for now, he’d have to take her at her word. Which meant that she was a nun.
And he was a heathen.
With a, “Seatbelt, Sis—Dee,” Sion headed onto the highway, toward the forty-acre property that his research told him the coordinates fell in the middle of.
#
It was nearly midnight when they reached as close to the coordinates as they were going to get. Sion pulled over to the side of the dirt road, parking over scrub and brush. His Cadillac had done okay on the dirt highway, but no way could it make it over the brush and large stones that blocked them from the exact coordinates.
Dada reached into the bag on her lap, and he flinched as she pulled out a gun. Hands tight on the wheel, it took him a moment to understand that she was explaining the weapon to him. “I’ll not be carrying that.”
“But—”
“No, luv. Put it away. I won’t touch that thing.”
Her eyes dropped to his leg. “Oh. I hadn’t considered.”
He gnashed his teeth together. “Don’t consider it. Please. Don’t.”
She put the gun back into her bag and went silent. He waited for the questions or sympathy—Does your leg hurt? I’m so sorry, how tragic, or something else that tried to lay claim to his injury or dismiss it.
But she said, “Do you remember that game in the FAA Cup when you scored three goals and single-handedly defeated a team in the Premiere League?”
An uncontrollable smile rolled across his mouth. “Best game of my life.”
Her eyes swung to him, pinned him. “I watched the whole thing online. Me, cross-legged on my bed, laptop in front of me, a pillow hugged to my chest, and...” She licked her lips. “It was so early in the morning, I kept burying my mouth into my pillow, biting it, screaming into it while I watched you. Oh, you were so beautiful.
“The way you slashed madly down the field, glided and spun and bulldozed. I was captured. When the game was over, I was shaking. Heart full and heartbroken all at once. I never thought to see the likes of that stunning performance again.”
She paused, shook her head, then lowered her lashes. “But then, years later, you walked into a soup kitchen, and my heart leapt, and everything I had felt that day happened all over again. And my heart was full and broken all at the same time.”
His throat closed up and his heart pounded. She saw him. Him. It made no difference to her if he was sprinting with all his pre-injury skills down the pitch or limping down the cafeteria line waiting to be served free food.
“When you asked why I don’t see you as a nun, I had tidy answers. None true.” He shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t; it wasn’t right. “But the truth was—is—I can’t see you as a nun because that’s a role, an identity that slips from my eyes every time I look at you. I see fire and grace, a woman—black and beautiful, sexy and determined, gentle and fiery. And it doesn’t matter what costume you put on, what’s on your head, hands, or your feet, I will always see that woman when I look at you.”
An unspoken, boiling need lit her eyes, lit his body. They leaned across the seat toward each other.
Heaven be damned. Give Satan his due.
Their lips met in a wild joining that exploded in an instant and intense, throwing-caution-to-the-wind fire.
The heavy tangle of their breaths, the magnetic pull of their bodies, had him reaching under her shirt, delighting in her tender and full breast. Had her fumbling for the button on his jeans, running a hand over his aching hardness, moaning into his mouth.
A howl from a coyote, close enough to raise the hair on his arms, arrested their movement. They threw themselves back at nearly the same instant, with nearly the same brutal force, bumping into their seats.
Breath heavy, as loud as his heartbeat, he adjusted himself. And for that one moment all that existed between them was unapologetic heat.
When their breathing was more even, she said, “Are you ready?”
His affection for her ratcheted up another notch. Or seven. “Born ready.”
Chapter 12
Armand dragged the girl down the basement stairs. The puta fought like a panther. She swung, missed, tried again, and scratched his arm.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “My son needs me!”
“He does not need a whore,’ Armand said, kicking her legs out from under her.
She fell against him, unbalancing him as he dragged her across the room.
Her gaze took in the room with the metal chains embedded in the walls, the bloody mattresses, the knives, the drill. “What is this place?”
“It’s a funhouse, puta,” he said, grabbing her by the hair and raising her to face him. “If you didn’t look just like her, I’d show you how much fun it can be.”
“No. No,” she said, still wrestling against him, dragging her feet against the bloody cement floor. “You took me, because I look like another? That is why?”
“The accident of your birth,” Armand said, kicking her again. “Like mine, like all of us. It defines the destiny of every person on this planet. Though some would tell you otherwise. They lie.”
“Let me go. Please. My son. He is alone.”
“That is your fault. I sent men with money, but you let a whore buy you a room.”
“Do you mean Sister Dee?” She jerked away, swung. “She is no whore!”
He hit her in her face. She put up her hands to protect herself. He punched again. “Your room was paid for by a whore and with whore’s money.”
His knuckles slammed against her hands, the strikes and her muffled cries sending desire surging through him. It wasn’t until blood dripped through her fingers, until her broken hands dropped from her face that he stopped.
He let go. She fell onto the slab floor and laid still. He spit on her, handcuffed her to a water pipe. This was all Dada’s fault.
Merde. What a mess.
He checked her pulse. Still alive.
He wiped the blood on his pants. Hands shaking, he pulled out his phone and texted Walid to let him know his “merchandise” had been found and that it would be shipped to the buyer in a couple days.
The text came back. “Two days.”
> Armand sighed and stared at the blood-stained woman. Things had been so much easier before Dada came. She was a curse. One that he desperately needed to get rid of. His hands ached with the need for a revenge that had been decades in the making.
He texted his partner. “Do you still have eyes on her? Is she still asking after the girl?”
A few moments later the response came. “She left the city with the forger.”
The forger? Fury rolled up from his stomach as thick and heavy as acid. He spat it out with a curse, texted with rage filling his skull. His thumbs pounded each key. It was time to end this.
He hit SEND.
Chapter 13
Dada gathered her backpack and NVGs, then stepped from the car and surveyed the area. What she could see of it. It was flat. Stars brighter than any she’d ever seen and a glorious, partial moon.
