Page 16 of Javier

Missy had no trouble negotiating the terrain, but the older women walking ahead of me slowed our pace. We might as well be worms crawling in the mud. Exiting the theater would’ve been much faster if I hadn’t taken on extra passengers, but it wasn’t as if Missy had given me the option.

I had other problems to deal with. Military patrols spread out, blocking the roads at every turn. It didn’t take a genius to know they’d arrived at the compound and found my kills stacked up in the well. They were looking for the nuns. Perhaps they were also looking for someone just like me.

I also knew from experience that the New World Order mercs were as relentless as a bad case of diarrhea. Every time we’d faced them, they’d always had backups to their backups. My bet? The turds only got paid upon completing the job.

This is why I had to assume that the four mercs that now rested at the bottom of the well would have reinforcements nearby. By now, the backup crew was probably aware of their personnel losses and on the hunt for Missy Astor.

What was better than one bunch of blood-thirsty assholes chasing us inside hostile territory?

Twobunches of assholes.

To make matters worse, while I trampled on with my senses at full alert, I couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss thatMissy had given me.She’dkissedme. How was that for a shocking development?

I was usually the one initiating the shenanigans, and only as a prelude to a few lusty hours. For a second, I’d wondered if she’d lost her mind when she first kissed me. Then I’d settled in nicely, enjoying the perfect fit of her smaller mouth beneath mine. I’d never been one to pass on a kiss or two from a pretty lady. I wasn’t gonna start now. Who was I to refuse such an awesome gift?

Then the impossible happened.

Mindwipe. For a few, precious seconds I forgot everything, including my name. All I could do wasfeelher; her tentative lips, yielding beneath mine; her fresh citrusy taste and her quickening breaths; her fit and soft body coming alive in my arms.

Hot damn. Shit like that had never happened to me before.

I’d forced myself back to alert mode quickly, but it had been a dangerous gamble to continue to kiss her. Truth be told, I hadn’t had the self-discipline to stop. I had no idea why she’d kissed me, but I knew one thing for sure. That kiss? It’d been the sweetest of my life.

It’d felt different—all-consuming, powerful, real, as if it had always been meant to happen. Recalling the rightness of it, I now pawed the spot beneath my vest where my heart had joyfully ballooned until my ribs could barely contain it.

The kiss had also set my blood sizzling like oil in a frying pan. At first, the heat had traveled beneath my skin like a whisper, getting louder as it sifted into my veins and headed south, turning into a scalding need that made me hard as rock. Right there, in the middle of the mission, no less. What the fuck was that about?

Keeping the women in front of me, I tackled the next hilland shook my head. The way my body had reacted to her had been feral. When I’d first looked into her eyes, I’d felt tipsy, lost in the depths of those chestnut irises. And when her little tongue prodded my lips and slipped into my mouth, I about lost it. The old cliché came to mind. She’d stolen my breath away. At the same time, somehow, she’d breathed new life into me. She’d felt right in my embrace, as if my arms had been built to hold her form and my mouth had been shaped to kiss her.

The touch of her lips hit me like a double shot of whiskey. Given that it took a lot to get me drunk, the sensation was completely unfamiliar. It was odd, but even now, as we walked, I longed to hold her again, to verify or negate the strange sensations that touching and kissing her unleashed in me. How fucked up was that?

Shake it off, Marine. Head in the mission.

An hour into our escape, when we’d put enough distance between us and the soldiers, Missy paused at the top of the hill and stared at the black clouds billowing from the spot where the compound had once been located.

“Can I borrow your binoculars?” she asked, so quiet and shy I could barely hear her.

“Are you sure?” I kept an eye on Sister Janet, who was guiding Sister Elsa a few steps ahead. “It’ll be a hard thing to watch.”

“I need to see for myself,” Missy whispered, veiling her moist eyes from me.

I’d dealt with her kiss. Then I’d dealt with the absence of her lips on mine and the crisp taste of her, lingering in my mouth. After that, I’d dealt with her stubbornness and her Astor pride. And yet I felt incapable of dealing with her tears.

I handed her the binos. “Sixty seconds.”

She aimed the glasses at the burning orphanage. As she adjusted the magnification, her lips pressed into a white line.Her throat bobbed, but she didn’t cry. She was stronger than people gave her credit for.

“Time to go,” I reminded her at a murmur.

“Yes, of course.” She sniffled and handed me the glasses. “Exactly as I dreamed it.”

“What did you say?” I asked, wrangling the binoculars back to their place in my vest.

“Nothing.” Her face flushed, and she whirled around and followed the nuns.

She tried to hide her emotions from me, but I caught a glimpse of the grief that haunted her eyes. I didn’t know why, but it punched me smack on the nose. She looked as pale and terrified as if she’d seen a ghost. I couldn’t explain why her sorrow clawed at my throat and left me hurting for her. Empathy had never been my forte. Experiencing it now felt new and not a little terrifying.

We spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon skirting around roads and towns, keeping out of sight. We detoured several times to avoid soldiers. The women were silent. The burning of the orphanage had chastened even Sister Janet’s sharp tongue.

---