Page 55 of Vaquero
It had to stop. Shivering, she sucked in a shallow breath and closed her eyes.
“I’ve got you,” Julio said simply. His thighs clamped around her ass, his arms two iron shackles around her arms and torso. “Relax, Meg. You’re hyperventilating. Slow and easy wins the race.”
Her entire body was a quivering mass of jelly by then. No pectin. All juice. There was no way he could hold onto her much longer. Her spine had gone weak and untrustworthy. Her limbs weren’t rubber, more like limp spaghetti noodles. Her mind was all over the place. Sludge. The last forty-eight hours had finally caught up with her. Meg was afraid, very soon, she would ruin everything by proving, without a doubt, that she—the only woman in this tree—was the weakest link.
Hotrod’s voice came quietly from his tree. “You see anyone moving over there?”
“Too much smoke,” Julio answered. “Do you see any life across from us, Meg?”
She had to open her eyes and lift her chin then. A wave of dizziness hit. There was nothing beyond the blurry leaves of their tree. Even they had suddenly turned from vivid green to oily gray. “N-n-no. Did we get them all?”Please, say yes, so I can close my eyes again.
“We did,” Julio murmured in her ear, his breath warm and low. His body solid and hard and... Any other time, she would have used that male weakness of his to her advantage. But she’d just had one very long day, and the adrenaline still coursing through her system had taken its toll.
The steady warmth coming off Julio was Meg’s undoing. His sweat commingled with hers, and his strong warm breaths with her short panting bursts. One second, she was determined to shove off, scramble back onto her feet, laugh at her moment of weakness, and dive right back into action.
But the next? Those pesky black dots invaded every last space between those ugly gray leaves. Like the worst kind of black magic, the leaves pixilated into mist. She couldn’t breathe.
Trusting Julio’s hold with her last conscious breath, Meg lost the war. She had no choice. She let go.
