Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (33 page)

He dropped his dark gaze to hers, letting a finger slide along her jaw, trailing shivers. “So easy to forget the beautiful cat is lethal.”

“What? I’m helping you. We’re working together.” But of course, her skills were threats, too.

He hoisted the pack over his shoulder. “Come on.” He slung an arm around her shoulders and they set off like lovers exploring a city.

They stopped at a café full of foreigners and headed as one to the just-right table, seating themselves at a dark bench along the wall. They didn’t even need to discuss it; when you were hunter and hunted, you saw the sight lines and the exit options.

There were times, being with Hugo in this, that she felt her old confidence.

It felt amazing.

They sat and ordered. Beans, rice, eggs, and vegetables with hot
aji
sauce. The food was plain and good.

He played with her hair as she finished her rice. “We need to dye this. There’s a
farmacia
up there. I want you with brown hair.”

Her heart beat fast. She told herself he hadn’t meant it sexually. “Okay.”

He slid his rough fingers to her chin.

“What are you doing?”

“Playing the dutiful boyfriend.” He picked up a last morsel of tomato from her plate. “We wouldn’t want people to think I’m a dark killer with his prisoner. Open,” he whispered.

“You’re not a dark killer.”

“Open.”

“I can feed myself.”

“Open, somebody’s watching.”

“I don’t believe you.” But still she parted her lips.

He slipped it in, pinning her with his eyes, letting his fingers stay inside her mouth, invading her.

Unruly heat surged through her. She closed her lips over his fingers and sucked in his fingers, running her tongue around them.

His only movement was a quick intake of breath.

She was the one invading him, now. The trust and love and danger built thick between them; they were killer and prisoner, hammer and anvil, alive against each other. It was a dangerous game that they could play forever.

“Zelda,” he growled, yanking out his fingers and forcing his attention back onto the crowd. She turned to get a better view, curling her feet under on the bench. He pulled her legs over his lap. He was such a natural partner. He pulled off a shoe and began to massage her foot. She tried to pull away, but he kept her.

“Stop,” she said.

“What?”

“It doesn’t feel good. Just don’t.” She grabbed her shoe but he wouldn’t let go of her foot. He looked down at it now, running fingers over the angry scars between her toes, the mottled skin where the tips had been cut off. She closed her eyes, flooded with shame.

“What happened?” he asked hoarsely. “Who did this?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Say more.” Hugo always wanted more. Always more.

“He’s dead.”

“You killed him?”

“No. He died, that’s all.”

“Say more.”

She sighed and inspected the side of her shoe, knowing he wouldn’t stop pressing. “It happened while I was in the agency. Things don’t always go right.”

He traced his finger to the last cut, the puncture between the Achilles tendon and the anklebone. He examined it, reading it. “It is good they did not continue with this trajectory. It would’ve hobbled you.”

“Enough.” She pulled away her foot. “It’s over. Who was watching?”

He looked thoughtful. She prayed he wouldn’t press. “It was just a prickle,” he said finally.

She narrowed her eyes, playfully, as though he hadn’t touched her secret shame. “I’m not prickling.” She set her chin on his shoulder, surreptitiously scanning the crowd. “At all.”

A trio of impoverished-looking Aussies sat next to them. They ordered a meal to share and gobbled it hungrily.

Hugo asked them for lodging recommendations on the way out.

At a
farmacia
down the way they stopped for bottles of water, new clothes, and brown hair dye. It would have about nine hundred different toxins, but it made sense. There was a display of reading magnifiers with sturdy plastic frames.

“Men’s glasses,” Hugo said.

“If I can get the right magnification I could ditch the contacts.” She put them on and smiled.

“Sturdy,” he said. “Good.”

When they got out onto the street that she, too, felt the prickle of being watched.

Zelda didn’t believe in intuition. The prickle of being followed had nothing to do with a sixth sense, and everything to do with a wrong pattern of movement, something so subtle that the subconscious picked it up and set off the alarm without the details ever rising to the level of the conscious. Something out the corner of the eye.

She looked up at him. Caught his eye and looked away. They agreed. Followed.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“Unless you alerted your people.”

Her stomach sank; she felt guilty even though she hadn’t alerted anybody. When had guilt become an automatic reflex? “I didn’t alert anybody.” Shit. Dax wouldn’t spook and send somebody to follow her, would he? Override her so completely? Treat her like the enemy?

“Best to split up,” she said.

“So you can run?”

She raised an eyebrow. If somebody good was following them, splitting up was the best way to lose them. They walked on the shady side of the street to avoid the merciless sun.

“I haven’t
alerted my people
.”

“So you say.”

“I gave you my word. I won’t let you down.”

He took her hand and gripped it. “It’s one of yours, it has to be.”

“I haven’t alerted my people.”

He pulled out a gun and let it hang down by his side and sped up, nearly dragging her now. “Keep up.”

She practically ran beside him. Maybe she deserved it. Maybe Hugo understood the state of her feet all too well—that she’d been tortured and that she’d done what it took to make the pain stop. Those feet—like a scarlet letter.

His movements changed. He pulled her into a crowd and
he
seemed to change, to melt. He was good—as good as she’d ever been. He pulled her into a store, but instead of going through it—that was the technique she expected, he grabbed a hat and bounced right out with a threesome, holding her so high and tight, he was practically carrying her, allowing then to move as one.

It was nearly mystical, the way he moved. She thought of the way he’d been in the battle, hearing, seeing, moving in that fluid way. But it crushed her. He’d taken over; they were no longer partners. When they turned a corner, he broke off and pulled her up some steps and into a shadowy doorway. It was then that he finally put her down.

“Fuck you.” She hit him, hard, punched him. He caught her hands. “I can pull my weight. You could’ve trusted me.”

“Could I?”

The throng streamed past, rushing on their errands, but all she could feel was her grief and guilt and frustration.

“Let me be a partner,” she said. “Hear me. We’re united to get this formula.”

He stared grimly out at the street.

“Goddammit!” She needed him to trust her—desperately. It was stupid, but she needed it. And then, much to her horror, she began to cry.

He looked at her wildly. “What are you doing?”

She hit him. “Fuck you. You could’ve trusted me. I’m with you.”

Again he looked at her, differently this time.

“Just watch the goddamn street,” she said, hating that he’d seen her tears.

He pulled her to him, looking out over her head at the street. “Stop it,” he said.

She sniffled.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” She wanted desperately for him to trust her. To trust herself. To like herself.

He held her tight, holding her in the circle of his warmth, his musky scent. Was somebody really out there? It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to. They both knew that.

Her heart beat slow and steady. He would be able to regulate even that; the best agents could. It was then that she felt his cock, steel hard. Some things a man couldn’t regulate.

His eyes changed; he was flustered. The great Kabakas. She watched herself calculate this new variable. His new vulnerability. Fuck it, she was Zelda Pierce. She ran agents.

She shifted, let him feel her differently. His breath hitched.

A second later she had his gun shoved in his ribs.

“Don’t move,” she whispered. “You’re fast and good, but not this fast.”

She couldn’t believe she’d actually gotten the upper hand on him.
Kabakas
.

She looked into his eyes. So many bad decisions to make now. “I’m telling you it’s not one of my people. I’m telling you to trust me.”

His eyes sparked. Again she had that feeling of him as a bear on a silken leash. She had him. If it were her people out there, there would be no better time to pull him in.

“And indeed I’m not that fast,” he said, breath warm on her neck. “But I
would
take you along.”

“I know.”

She thought about what Dax had said about her guilt, her wish to be obliterated.

She felt his contours; not just those of his cock, but also the contours of his strength, his danger, his desire, his unpredictability. He was the superior fighter even now; only a stupid agent wouldn’t stay keenly aware of that. The gun merely brought things to fifty-fifty.

And she wanted him even now. Because below it all was their dance, strange and wild. Always escalating in its way.

“Right here,” he said. His tone was different. He wasn’t talking about death anymore. “Or perhaps we could fuck again. Turnabout is fair play—isn’t that what they say?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I could take you right now. Against the wall. I’d put you in that corner and press you there. I’d push down your pants and hold you there perfectly still,
señorita
. You could hold the gun and I would move into you so completely that the street would disappear.”

He shifted closer. But he didn’t go for the gun. He knew not to do that.

“I would take you so completely that even the moon would disappear. You would feel only the brick behind you. And me filling you.”

Heat built between her legs. It was turning her on.

It was turning him on.

“Everything would disappear but us,” he whispered, whiskers warm against her face.

Everything would disappear.
It sounded a little bit like a prayer. For everything to disappear. He wanted the world to disappear.

She wanted it, too.

“Is this how it felt in the kitchen?” He bent down to kiss her, nipping her lip. “To have death and fucking twined together?” He kissed her again. “Is this how it felt?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He kissed down her neck.

Was this a trick? She should never forget she was walking a bear. She shoved the gun harder into his ribs, emphasizing its proximity to his heart. “Here’s what’s going to happen—you’re going to meet me at the hotel.”

“I would prefer to have you against this wall,” he whispered, “here in the darkness. When you sucked my fingers, I wanted to take you right there in the café. Now, Zelda.”

Her name again. He knew what it did to her, for him to say it.

He trailed his lips up the side of her neck. “Do you want me to wear the mask? It’s in my pack.”

Oh, God, he’d guessed about her Kabakas thing.

He settled a hand onto her hip. It was Kabakas seducing her now. She pulled away. “Don’t.” She needed him to take her seriously.

He kissed her neck again, lips sucking in the tender skin at her jugular.

“When you’re in trouble,” she whispered, “any shift is good, isn’t it?”

“Not the mask, then?”

She pushed her other hand into his pocket, feeling around. “The mask isn’t my thing. The gloves, however…” She regretted it instantly. He’d hear the truth in it.

She pulled out a few bills without looking at them. “We’ll split up. We’ll meet at the hotel the Aussies recommended. Whoever gets there first checks in under the name Martinez. We’ll stay until dark.”

A smile played on his lips. “Is that enough money? Perhaps you should count it.”

“I’m out of practice, not stupid.” She knew how much he had. She saw everything, just as he did.

He smiled wearily.

“I’m going to walk away. You’re going to trust me to meet you.”

The
or else
was implied. Or else she would shoot. She would draw attention. He had much more to lose out here.

“We will come back together because we’re both interested in saving those plants.”

“And you contact your people?”

“I give you my word that I won’t. I can’t make you trust me, Hugo. But I give you my word.” She cast a glance over her shoulder as a knot of people approached. “I’ll melt in and melt out.” She wanted her word to be enough. Desperately. She had the idea that if she could get him to trust her, it would change things somehow.

He had no choice but to let her go.

She pushed away, pocketed the weapon, and headed down the steps, toward the people, melting in, matching up. He was back there somewhere, tracing a parallel path, or maybe the same one, if he felt compelled to watch her. She backtracked and turned, walking all around until she was sure nobody could be following her, and finally arrived at the modern-looking two-story hotel, barely a step up from a youth hostel.

The lobby was bright and barren with a colorful straw mat stretched out across the floor in front of the counter. There was a rudimentary coffee counter and some tables and chairs. She got a private room under the name Martinez, second floor, corner with access to adjoining rooftops. “One other person will be joining me,” she said.

“
Quiere dejar una nota
?” The clerk asked.

Yes, a note would be good. She took the offered pen and paper and paused. There was so much she wanted to write.
I came. Trust me. You can fucking trust me. I’m not a horrible person.
In the end she folded the blank paper and slipped it in an envelope.

She’d showed up, that was all the communication she’d need. Even then it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough, though. It made her feel so tired.

She went up.

It was a hundred degrees hotter on the second floor, but the room was bright and clean with traditional style artwork and a hand-woven bedspread. She checked it over and then she took out the itchy contacts, put on the glasses, and set to reading the directions for the hair color.