“You’re not wrong, but… that’s a problem for another day. Let her rest a bit longer. We’ll load up the truck, see what we can find for fuel and food. Be ready to go in about thirty.”
He watched the medic slink out of the room they’d been provided, and then he turned his attention back to the woman sleeping in his arms.
While she was definitely doing better, she was by no means out of the woods. If they had to head through the Darién Gap, the dangers of that place could easily cause infection to set in again. Or the wildlife could scent her blood and make her vulnerable to attack. Or she’d become too weak from exertion and die from the travel.
A ghost trail of terror developed at all the things that could go wrong. Nothing good would come of going into that place.
CONFESSIONS OF THE SOUL PART 1
Glennon
When she awoke next,they had already passed through Jujuy at the northern tip of Argentina. Her back was killing her from lying down so long, and her neck was going to need serious chiropractic help from bouncing around. She knew Triumph was doing everything he could to make her comfortable, including being a human pillow, but he could only do so much.
They were an hour out from reaching the border into Chile, where they would pass through Paso de Jama, and it was time to take some countermeasures for one of the more dangerous portions of the drive. They stopped so they were sure to make the border at its most crowded time of the day. Demon and Steel stopped the truck and helped Triumph and Glennon, then hid them in a special compartment under the bed. She tried to stretch a little bit, but the pull of her stitches was just on the other side of comfortable still, and she was weak from not walking for a few days. She was thankful, however, for the short reprieve of getting some fresh air in her lungs.
When she expressed concern that Guillermo would have his form of a BOLO out to the border patrol, whom he had in his pocket, Steel assured her they had that contingency covered. She watched as Steel exchanged the original license plates with another pair he seemed to magically produce from his backpack. But it was Demon who provided the bigger surprise. While Steel made the switch, Demon peeled off the wrap on the truck, changing it from black to a rusty brown. And since the men following them never got a good look at who else was in the truck, they had no idea who was helping her flee; therefore, they were hopeful they’d pass over the border without incident.
After nearly an hour of sitting in line, the two men from Tribe were able to drive on. One hour past the border inspection, they pulled off the road and released Triumph and Glennon from their tungsten-lined hiding space.
The time spent in the hidden compartment had been hot and cramped, so other than being stuck close to Triumph, their bodies pressed up against one another, there wasn’t much positive to say about the comfort of those three hours spent in hiding. The man was deceptively built under his clothing, and she couldn’t help but wonder if his abs would look and taste as good as they felt through his shirt.
Now safe, or as safe as could be expected, they continued on their trajectory to Colombia, the two deadmen switching off driving duties every six hours to let the other one sleep.
Now that she was awake, she felt compelled to strike up a conversation. That was unusual because she was used to being ornamental in Guillermo’s world—seen, not heard. But Triumph had done a lot of work to get her this far, so she wanted to show him she was grateful beyond thanking him repeatedly. Getting to know him would be a step in that direction.
And she was curious by nature, but she was extra desperate for more information about the first man she’d met who made her feel this glorious tension.
“So M stands for Mason?”
He flashed her a confused look.
“Tripoli called you that on one of his check-in calls.”
His face relaxed. “Yes, but no one ever calls me that. I’m surprised he used it. Maybe because you knew me as M and not by Triumph.”
“Why do you use a nickname? You weren’t in the military.”
“The name came from my high school years. I’ll tell you the story sometime. As to why we keep using it, my friends and I belonged to a… club where everyone used nicknames to protect their identities.”
“Like a motorcycle club?”
“No. It was… a BDSM club.”
Okay. That she had not expected. Her pulse kicked into a rapid tattoo, and it felt like her blood rushed to the surface, especially in her cheeks. Was her fever returning? Or was the thought of Triumph belonging to a kink club a turn-on? Over the past ten years, if there was one good thing about the undercover assignment, it was that she’d learned a lot about what aroused her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it, given who she’d been with, but there hadn’t been anyone to talk to about it, either, so she’d never examined it too closely.
Now the thoughts exploded back to the surface.
An image blipped into her brain. Triumph in leather pants and no shirt. Her in a leather dress, laced up the back like a corset. He put his hand to the nape of her neck and forcibly bent her over, flipped her skirt over her ass, and began fucking her from behind. She could almost feel the heat of the club, the slap of his flesh against hers, the physical stirrings of an orgasm approaching.
Holy hell. She shifted her position, hoping it hid her thoughts and the tightening of her core, which caused a reflexive clenching of her thighs. A clenching of everything, actually.
Quickly, she shoved the image to the back of her mind. Thinking about Triumph that way was pointless. She felt the stirrings of attraction to him, but her injury, the two men traveling with them, and the precariousness of their situation did not lend themselves to sexy times.
Dammit.
Besides that, she didn’t have the first clue about how to seduce a man after all these years with Guillermo. She hadn’t even tried to seduce him in the first place. He’d approached her before she even had a chance to put a plan together once she found him through her connections on that first assignment. What had turned him on—submissive behavior, revealing clothes, and the fact that other men coveted what he possessed—wasn’t by her design. It was just there. She was pretty sure that didn’t qualify as seduction.
Dating never happened in high school, and any attempts in college quickly petered out because she was constantly having to ditch dates or cancel altogether due to Joey. And when she began working with the CIA, things didn’t improve a great deal in that area because of her responsibilities. That meant that the night before officially allowing herself to be drawn into a relationship with Guillermo, she’d hurriedly given her virginity to a co-worker so it wouldn’t draw suspicion from him.
