Page 55 of Final Approach

Placing the plastic debris back into the bag and covering it with a small layer of earth, I rose to my knees and tugged one bag out of her hands, clenching the vinyl between one fist. Maintaining eye contact with my prey, I continued to rise until I stood, towering over her.

“As you wish, my captain.”

Her cheeks stained a pretty pink, but she said nothing more. She turned to give several calm orders to the surrounding survivors, but I did not hear them over the thud of blood in my ears. The things I wanted to do to this woman. The firsts I was desperate to have with her. My cock thickened painfully in my still-damp jeans, stiff from yesterday’s rainfall.

Would she try to peel them off me? Sex in prisons was not tender or timid. It was rough, bestial. Men rutted like animals to release the pain of their existence. She was different. I had no desire to treat her as a means when she was my end.

I had seen how she watched me yesterday. Cautious. Curious. Hungry.

My captain was a woman fully committed to the task in front of her. My lips twitched as I awaited her seduction.

We walked in silence around the river bend and bypassed the copse of fruit trees she’d harvested the day before. She led me deeper, guiding me toward the plane.

“Are we not getting fruit?” I went along with her pretense.

She drew a breath and filled her lungs, as if preparing for war. She let out the air in a rush, her hurried words spilling out along with it.

“Okay, so I might have lied. About the fruit. I mean—not about the fruit—we are going to get fruit, but first I need your help with something else.” She bit her bottom lip so hard it looked like it could pierce the skin.

I sucked on the candy harder, rolling it around my tongue. I would lick the blood off like an animal if she’d let me.

Raising an eyebrow, I crossed my arms across my chest and swallowed my smile. “How can I help you today, my captain?”

Her nose twitched like a trapped bunny in a snare. I loved watching my competent pilot lead us to safety with the confidence of a general. I loved watching her squirm beneath my stare even more.

“Okay, so, we need to get rid of the drugs.” Her green gaze implored me to understand. “If rescue comes today, and it might, we can’t let them discover the cocaine.”

She stepped closer to me and the scent of the borrowed shampoo wrapped around me like a blanket. “I swear, I have no idea where they came from, or how Jamie is involved in that, but we need to get rid of them, and I need to look for clues like Nikki and I tried to do the other night.”

The whispers had told me all of this.

I was prepared to hide the evidence if it would keep her safe. Of all my crimes in the last twenty years, evidence tampering was not my concern. The bundles worth millions were also my insurance. I had no intention of returning to prison, but I would burn this jungle to the ground before allowing Marley to go in my place. I would only need a few.

Slowly, I nodded. “Okay.” I dipped my head toward the plane. “Lead the way, my captain.”

“You can call me Marley, you know,” she mused before stumbling away on the softened, wet earth.

Those shoes would be the death of her. I would take a new pair off a corpse to replace them.

“Marley is your name—it says nothing about your ranking or your value to the group. As captain, you are the leader. My leader.”

We walked a good distance before she spoke again. “Is that why you hate your name?”

My birth name. Maddox Alexander Torres. A sneer formed on my lips before I could stop it.

“My name was not given to me out of love. It was assigned to me in an orphanage. Prisoner 3124 has more meaning.”

The nuns had not been kind in their treatment of a boy abandoned at birth by parents they assumed to be addicts. They’d enforced with their heavy hands and closed fists as penance for my parent’s sins before I’d escaped their prison at eleven, seven years before I landed in the penitentiary.

A life of prisons. I’d only had one small taste of freedom before this, and now—I would never be imprisoned again.

“I see.” She stopped and turned to scrutinize me with saddened eyes. “I’m sorry, Madman.”

Empathy was a rare emotion, only shown to me by a handful of people. It was easier to be seen as a madman than to be seen as a human, but with the way she looked at me …

I wanted to be seen by her. But not here or now.

I stalked forward. She needed a man unbound by the rule of law to destroy evidence, and that was what I would give her.