Page 8 of Colombian Chemistry

How was this guy even real? Not only had he managed to save my life with fighting skills that made me feel like I’d been dropped into some Jackie Chan movie, but he looked like a straight-up movie star with his chiseled face, close-cut soft brown hair, and a body I was pretty sure lacked even an ounce of fat. If any producer in Hollywood had ever laid eyes on him, they’d have sold their soul to the devil just to get him on the big screen.

Or if he wasn’t a movie star, he certainly could have been a model. More specifically, he could have been one of those models from the art class I had to take for undergrad that sat unmoving for hours while we sketched them. John had a face of stone that had barely changed since the first time I’d seen him. Cold. Hard. Rigid. That square stubble-covered jaw may as well have been soldered shut since he’d barely opened his mouth on our drive.

Terrifying. The man I’d been forced to trust with my life was even more terrifying than the men who were inexplicably hunting me down. But at least I didn’t think John was going to kill me.

I hoped.

We hit another bump and I groaned.

“Sorry it’s not the plush leather seats of the private jets you’re used to taking, Princess,” John said, and they were the first words he’d uttered in over an hour.

I looked over and saw the not-so-apologetic smirk lifting those freakishly perfect lips of his. The perfect lips that matched the perfect face they sat on.

“It’s fine. I just appreciate the ride.” While hiding my grimace, I shifted onto my right cheek to give the left one a rest from the assault.

The movement didn’t go unnoticed, and it elicited a snort. “You gonna make it there, Sweetcheeks?”

“At this rate, my cheeks aren’t going to be very sweet by the time we get to Bogotá.”

For the first time since I met him, an honest-to-goodness laugh erupted out of John’s mouth. He glanced over at me, and his brilliant white smile sucked the air straight outta my lungs. Or maybe it was the glimmer in those eyes that had me struggling to take my next breath. His eyes reminded me of a lion, golden and menacing. They were so intense that I couldn’t look into them for more than a second without having to look away. Like he was some male Medusa, and if I stared into them too long, I might turn into stone.

I looked away from the intensity of his gaze, but when my eyes roved out over the jungle below, my stomach plummeted again. I snapped them shut for a beat before opening them and focusing on my feet.

He turned his attention back to the narrow, muddy road, and he rested his hand on the shifter. “About five hours left, give or take. We’re nearing the top of our climb now, and then we’ll start working our way back down soon.”

“Thank God,” I whispered, then took another stilling breath.

“Scared of heights?” he asked.

I peeled my eyes open and glanced over at him. “Yeah. Not a fan. And my ears refuse to pop.” I opened and closed my mouth as I tried to get some relief.

“If that’s not working, try the Toynbee maneuver.”

“The Toynbee maneuver?”

“Tip your head forward, pinch your nose, and swallow. That one worked the best when my ears got messed up in airdrops.”

I did as he said, and almost instantly, my ears popped. “Oh, thank God,” I breathed. “It worked.”

“Never fails.”

Feeling a little more at ease now that my ears had popped and the stoic man beside me had spoken a few sentences, I decided to attempt to start a conversation.

“You mentioned drops? Do you mean like military drops? Is that where you learned all that fighting stuff?”

The moment the word ‘military’ came out of my mouth, he stiffened up straight as a board again and fixated his eyes on the road.

Note to self: Don’t bring up the military.

But it did answer my question, as there was no other reason for him to react so abruptly to my inquiry than if he had served in the military, but perhaps he had some bad memories from his time served. I’d known a few vets in my life that struggled with the memories of their tours. My uncle had been in the Army, and he’d developed a severe case of PTSD after the war. Luckily, thanks to my time spent with him growing up, I knew better than to push the subject with John. Instead, I settled back into my seat and started humming in my head to calm my nerves.

“Is that Smoke on the Water you’re humming?” he asked.

Okay, I guess I wasn’t just humming in my head.

Heat crept up into my cheeks. “Um, yeah. Sorry. I thought I was doing that in my head.”

“Didn’t take you for a Deep Purple fan.” He grunted out a half-laugh.