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Shark was here, and Juan. They wouldn’t let Easy die, but she could still hear the beating.
He stared at her, and she could see the yearning in his eyes, his need for her to reciprocate his advances. He wanted her body, but he wanted it willingly. “No tricks,” he growled, the lust blinding him.
“No, I promise you. I’ll be yours any way you want.”
He removed the knife and dragged her up to her feet, then headed back to the clearing. Easy was hanging in those men’s grips. His face was bloody.
“Tovar!”
The man stopped, and Jack could see the ecstasy in the man’s eyes. Her hand went to the knife in her pocket, fingering it, she tried to tamp down her hatred. “We give him a fair fight.”
“With you,” Jack said. “That’s the deal.”
Ramos laughed, then widened his arms as the men moved into a circle around them. Someone pressed to her right side, and she looked up to find Juan, and to her left, Shark. He was talking to someone. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Easy was on his knees, breathing hard against the pain he must be feeling, his head down. Then he raised it and met Ramos’s gaze. There was death in his aching blue eyes—cold, hard death.
Ramos masked his brief uneasy look. “Get him to his feet.”
* * *
He couldn’t lookat Jack. His complete attention had focused down to one face, one man who meant her so much harm. Easy waited, just staring at Ramos as blood ran down his face. Ramos lunged at him, and Easy simply moved his body and punched Ramos, who folded at the waist. Ramos got in a shot to his jaw, snapping his head to the side, but Easy didn’t feel it, his rage not for himself, but for Jack.
Ramos swung widely and staggered, but again, Easy wasn’t there. Blood dribbled from Ramos’s mouth.
Ramos, rage suffusing his face, drew his knife. Easy knew the look of a bully. “I’m going to fuck her, then give her to my men.”
Easy said nothing, waiting for Ramos to strike. When he did, he blocked it, driving his fist into his rib cage, then gripped his wrist and forced it backward. Ramos pounded on him, trying to loosen his hold, but Easy peeled the knife out of his hand and threw it aside. Then everything was a blur.
Ramos swung and hit Easy in his motherfricking bullet wound. It momentarily stunned him. Pain, white hot, washed through his raw nerve endings. Stars flashed in front of his eyes. He went down to one knee, and Ramos chuckled and rushed him, but Easy rotated on his knee and blocked, then executed a half dozen successive hits. He heard ribs crack under the pressure. He didn’t let up, but Ramos was mindless with rage, and each hit Easy delivered angered him more, throwing off his balance.
Easy quickened his speed, one strike breaking Ramos’s nose, the next relieving him of a couple of teeth. It cut open his knuckles, blood welling with each punch. Ramos landed a right cross to Easy’s jaw, snapping his head to the side. Blood flew in a spray.
Ramos pressed forward, lunging for Easy. But Easy grabbed his hair, then drove his forehead into Ramos’s. Ramos stumbled back, dazed. Easy pivoted, took out one of the guys who had been holding him, grabbed his sidearm and shot Ramos cleanly through the forehead. Ramos pitched backward and lay still.
From out of the jungle, Tex and his team emerged. Eight of Ramos’s men went down. Tovar pulled his weapon, but Juan shot him dead.
Behind him, he heard the stealthywhop, whopof a helicopter. He turned, feeling dizzy, then the world spun off its axis, and he collapsed to the ground.
Jack was safe.
He stared up at the black sky, the stars reeling up there in a kind of slow-motion swirl and knew that what he felt for Jack was themorehe’d been looking for since Jeri’s betrayal, that this complicated woman with the kind of courage that awed him had given herself to him, trusted him with her life. He could do no less and trust her with his heart. All those flashbacks suddenly made sense.
He could hear her calling his name, and he turned his head. Shark was holding on to her as the team sorted out the mess. Twister was running full out toward him, moving like the stars. He looked back at Jack, her face distorted by fear, and something he recognized filled him with sunlight, warmed him deep inside.
She loved him. It was there in her face, in her eyes, in her frantic attempts to get to him.
Yeah, he loved her back. “Jack,” he rasped out, but his voice was so low, he could only whisper. “I love you.”
Yeah, Jack was safe, and he loved her. Everything else was just not important.
He looked at the sky and dropped into that star-studded darkness.
* * *
Jack satin the careening helicopter watching one of Easy’s teammates, Twister, work on him. Checking his vitals, his eyes, and slipping an IV into his neck and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. He removed his vest, and cut off his T-shirt, exposing his chest and abdomen. Jack could see the blood on his side, his torn stitches, and he was bleeding again. Her head pounded, her heart pounded, and she could barely catch her breath.
No one in her life but Easy had fought so fiercely, so fearlessly for her, with his life hanging in the balance, the odds against him. Her feelings for Easy washed over her like a tidal wave—love, so much of it, gratitude, protectiveness, terror, and the fear of losing him.
