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Five
Christ!The past two days had cost her every shred of dignity she’d ever possessed. She’d never considered herself a vain or prideful person, but damn it all if she wouldn’t rather die than let this jerk-off listen to her pee…again. It was bad enough she couldn’t even stand on her own. This guy had to rub it in by watching her every handicapped move. He’d even tried to feed her soup; actually held the damn spoon to her mouth like she had the dexterity of an anteater. Now she wished she’d told him where he could put that spoon. Sweat beaded on her clammy skin, the heated ache in her leg screaming to a boil as she pushed herself from the ramshackle mess of a mattress the asshole passed off as abed.
“I got it!” She shoved Grant’s hand away as soon as she was able to shift her weight off her screwed up leg. Her teeth popped as she clenched her jaw, biting back an even more humiliatingscream.
Thalia stopped to regain her balance, a long wisp of her hair billowing out from the frustrated breath she forced past her lips. God, she needed space. She didn’t know which was worse–the damn monkey watching her as if she were a freak show, or the oversized baboon besideher.
“You ready to go see that doctor yet?” Grant, if that was even his real name, stood towering over her, with less than three inches between them. His arms and hands floated in the air around her, waiting for her to fall on her ass like a toddler learning towalk.
“You ask me that one more time and you’re the one who’s going to need a doctor.” She hopped a step and dragged her injured leg along, her toe picking up splinters as it slid along the shabby wood floor. She couldn’t stop the groan that billowed from the pit of herstomach.
“Fuck this,” Grant cursed before he swept her off her feet. Her hands clutched at his shirt as he cradled her against his broad chest and stomped towards the opendoor.
“Put me down, asshole!” She kicked out her uninjured leg and twisted in his arms, gaining absolutely nothing for her efforts but a sharp sting in her side from the pull on her stitches. “I need to walk, dammit!” If she didn’t push herself beyond this, it could take her weeks to recover. She didn’t have weeks to waste; not when she was so close to hitting hertarget.
She’d pieced together enough information to know she’d already lost four days. She’d been scoping out the location where she would meet Jauhar with the thumb drive when she was jacked by that dog, Hamisi. That was Wednesday. She’d washed up onto this godforsaken island the next morning, which meant today was Sunday. She had four days to pull herself together and get to thatdrop.
He’d told her they were within an hour’s boat ride from Madagascar. It would take her at least a day, if not more, to procure passage back to the mainland and get back to Nampula. She couldn’t miss this meeting. She owed it to her uncle, and she couldn’t take the chance of Hamisi finding her again. She needed to get back on her feet,literally.
“No you don’t,” Grant said as he marched her to the makeshift outhouse he’d constructed nearly two hundred feet from his shack. “What you need is a damn doctor.” He pulled open the flap at the front of the green tarp he’d strung up around what she could only describe as ashithole.
Thalia jerked away from his hold the moment her foot touched the ground. “Why don’t you go screw your monkey friend and let me pee in peace?” She hated that monkey. No, that wasn’t true. That thing frightened the life out her. She’d never been an animal person. She couldn’t understand why it was always staring at her. It also had this incessant habit of pounding its fists against its stomach anytime it came near her.Talk about slapping your monkey.And what was with the name Winston? “I’m in someCastawayspoof film…nightmare fromhell!”
Grant backed away, his hands held up in surrender as she jerked the tarp closed. “You’re all rainbows and lollipops when you wake up,huh?”
Ignoring his jibe, she turned and nearly gagged at the smell rising from the hole at her feet. Thankfully, he’d thrown together a planked bench with a space between the slats for her to sit on. She could hear him shuffling around outside the curtain as she untied the braided rope that held up the shorts he’d given her to wear.Damn.She knew she was being a bitch. He owed her nothing, yet he’d been nothing but kind since that first day she’d awoken…tied to hisbed.
She hadn’t wanted to fight him, was crazy to even try. If the last year and a half on the streets had taught her anything, it was letting someone know she wasn’t an easy target. If she somehow managed to kill him, or at least escape in the process, all the better forher.
The instinctual lethality that lurked behind his golden eyes made him the scariest man she’d ever met. Hamisi was a clown compared to this guy. The only thing that scared her more was her body’s reaction tohim.
Locked beneath the mass of lean muscles and sun-kissed skin, his sweat fusing with hers, their heated breaths mingling as they fought for control, she felt an unfamiliar warmth rush over her skin. Her body burned to unite with his, her nipples straining to feel his bare skin. A longing ache contracted and stretched through her pelvis and thighs, sending a raw need for his touch singing through herveins.
Sex to Thalia was purely mechanical when the rare occasion warranted it. She wasn’t above using sex as a tool to disarm her would-be attackers or distract an unsuspecting bystander while she lifted his car keys. And when she did indulge in a little play she was always in control. Being trapped under a man for whatever purpose, pleasure or otherwise, was suffocating. A few talented lovers had managed to get her off once or twice, but she truly hadn’t been all that impressed with the results. Not enough to seek out an encore performance. A sexual relationship had never been at the top her agenda,if on the list at all. And certainly not within the last year and ahalf.
Never once had her body responded as it had when Grant was lying on top of her. She could sense the suffocating feeling hovering just out of reach, but the panic she usually felt with so much crushing weight had never surfaced. Her body craved more of him. That, above all else, was the scariest thing about the man standing on the other side of that curtain, listening to her pee.Howembarrassing.
“You writing a book in there? I can always come back at lunch.” Thalia rolled her eyes. Holding back a groan, she pushed to her feet and retied her shorts. She’d never wanted to hurt someone as much as she did at that very moment. Considering her past, and what drove her toward her future, that was saying alot.
She pushed back the flap, and any thought of hurting this man was shoved right back into the shithole behind her. Grant, six feet three inches of golden god, stood before her holding out two wooden poles shaped mercifully like a pair of crutches. She clung to the dirty, green tarp as her mind swirled withconfusion.
“These ought to help you some,” he said and held them out for her to take. “I can cut them down if they’re too long. You’re pretty tall though, so I think I got itclose.”
She felt her stomach tighten into an angry knot. Why would he do this for her? She’d been nothing but a bitch to him. “What do you want from me?” The accusing words slipped past her lips before she could stop them. She’d learned in her first week on the run that people didn’t do nice things for other people unless they wanted something. At least not for her. Not people likehim.
“Helping me, stitching me up, giving me clothes, and—and food. Now this?” Thalia could see his eyes cloud over as her voice got louder. She couldn’t help it. None of this made sense. “What is this supposed to get you? Who do you work for? Jauhar? Hamisi Morsai, the bastard who cut me up? What, he couldn’t beat what he wanted out of me so he sent you to…to what? I don’t know…somehow…”
Grant’s thick fingers wrapped tight around the tops of her arms, the makeshift crutches thrown carelessly to the side. With little effort he lifted her to her toes and pulled her to his chest, his face a mere inch from hers. “I’m trying to benice!” he growled, his expression fiercely twisted, his eyes blazing with the color of fire. “It’s something I apparently have little understanding of and Ithought—Iwouldtry it—withyou.” His eyes strayed to her lips, and for the second time in two days, God help her, she thought he was going to kissher.
Her whole body tensed in his hands, the strange, warm feeling that came with being so close to him washing over her skin. At that moment, to her absolute disbelief, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to kiss him back. Her eyes lingered on his lips, the masculine angles of his face. She wanted to trace the line of stubble on his jaw with the tips of her fingers, to taste the outline of his bottom lip with the tip of hertongue.
Just as she’d decided not to deny him, he uncoiled his hands, dropping her to her feet as he backed away. “I sure as hell hope you know how to swim, lady. Because if the police aren’t here to collect your crazy ass by the time I get done eating dinner, I’m loading you into my boat and dropping you off at the nearest channel marker. You can wait for them or swim the forty miles to shore. Either way, you’re leaving my islandtoday.”
Grant forced himself to ignore the stupefied look on her face as he turned and stomped back to his camp.Hell if I’m putting up with that ungrateful woman one more day.It wasn’t the names she’d tossed out like familiar calling cards; names he’d long ago committed to memory as human garbage distributors. Hamisi Morsai was mid-level fish chum working for the Don of the Mumbai underworld, Kahan Lalia. Don Lalia ran real estate scams and dealt in extortion and bribery. Kafeel Jauhar represented a whole different galaxy of human bile. Drug and slave trades, espionage, terrorism, you name it. If it was high level and expensive, Jauhar was involved.Who the hell is thischick?
As bad as they were, Grant didn’t flinch at hearing those names from her otherwise innocent looking lips. Hearing them together was a little off balance, as they ran in completely different circles. Being lumped in with them made his skin crawl a little, but no, it was the woman herself who was driving himmad.
He’d cleaned her up and cooked her food. He’d even brushed her goddamn hair! He honestly hadn’t expected a thank you or even a smile, but damn if he was going to bend over and let her shove her foot up his ass just because she felt likeit.
