Once she had a new digital key, Olivia asked the night clerk, a tall, thin man in his late forties, with hollow cheeks and sagging jowls, to escort her to her room. She halted in front of the first sentry they came across and asked the clerk to translate for her.
Via the night clerk she explained to the guard her predicament—that she had just been questioned by Serrano and Ibarra and that the two sergeants who were to escort her to her room had abandoned her at the foyer. She needed safe conduct to her room, as the curfew was still in effect.
Her appearance must have sold her story for her more than her words, along with the rumors that must by now have circulated the hotel. The sentry looked her up and down and glanced at the night clerk. “She is the one they took?” he asked the clerk. He thought he was safe speaking Spanish and Olivia schooled her face, keeping it expressionless.
The night clerk nodded. “Look what they did to her. You have doubts?”
“Why did the guards dump her with you?”
“They didn’t. They wanted to fuck her. She ran away from them. She’s too embarrassed to tell you that.”
Olivia battled hard not to react to the night clerk’s insightful observation.
The guard grinned. “Who can blame them?” He hefted his rifled over his shoulder and looked at her. “Come,” he said in accented English. “Where is your room?”
She told him. She and the night clerk fell behind as the guard strode along the corridor. Olivia glanced at the night clerk. “What did you tell him to make him agree?”
“I put him in a good humor,” the night clerk told her in an undertone. “I had to be crude, but it worked.”
“Thank you,” Olivia said with deep gratitude.
The guard made getting to her room uneventful, even though they passed a dozen more sentries and check points. With the night clerk there, even the guard could not misbehave.
By the time she slid the keycard into the lock on her door, Olivia felt the stresses of reaching her room had been more grueling than the questioning Serrano had put her through.
She shouldered the door open and nodded at the night clerk and the guard. “My thanks,” she said.
The guard turned and walked away. The night clerk glanced over his shoulder at the guard as he strode back down the corridor. Then he gave her a small smile and pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to her.
She looked down at the small elongated triangular piece of wood. Its purpose was incomprehensible to her.
“For under your door,” the night clerk explained. “The chains, the locks, they are no good now, you understand? Too many people, they have keys, have too much strength. This little thing, it is much much stronger than they are. Will hold against many.”
Understanding flooded her. He was giving her another sort of protection. A basic, old-fashioned kind. Another sort of lock.
Tears stung in her eyes.
The night clerk lifted her hand and curled her fingers around the wedge. “You must go on being strong, no? This will protect you at night when you can’t be.”
She nodded mutely.
“Go. Sleep,” he told her and patted her shoulder. He turned around and walked away.
She shut the door, but didn’t put the wedge in place, or the chain. Not yet.
Then she stripped the remnants of her clothes from her. By the time she was done, she was trembling badly.
It took her twice as long as normal to disable the microphone under her bed, but until it was done, she wouldn’t allow herself to cry. She held the sobs in, even though they were threatening to shake her apart.
As she was finishing, one of the ceiling tiles above the bed shifted and lifted up, making Olivia stagger away, holding her hand over her mouth. It was just one shock too many. She crumpled slowly down to her knees on the carpet by the end of the bed, as Daniel dropped down from the space above the ceiling. Her vision swam, as gray sickness washed over her.
His hands were on her arms, lifting her.
“No,” she tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come. She couldn’t speak. Something was blocking her words. The world was starting to spin.
“You’re hyperventilating, sweet one,” he said softly. “You must breathe. It takes an act of will to override the gasping, but you must. Slow and steady, Olivia. Take it slow and all will be right. Trust me. Take a deep breath. You’re safe now. You’re safe. I have you.”
His arms were around her. His chest against her back. Heat and the solid softness of his chest settled against her back. Daniel’s unique scent stole over her.
She knew then that she could take the first deep breath.
She breathed.
Oxygen rushed in. She could feel it flow through her, cool and fresh.
She took another. Now she became aware of details. Daniel had her on his lap and was rocking her gently backward and forward, like a child. She wanted to protest. She was naked and so filthy dirty, she could pass as a homeless person, or worse.
She breathed, letting the oxygen do its work.
Daniel was whispering to her, just as one would a scared child or animal. Had he been doing that all along and she just hadn’t been able to hear? It was a mishmash of Spanish and English. Reassurances that she was safe, that everything was all right. Over and over.
She took another breath. The sobs that had been tearing at her chest had gone. There were tears drying on her cheek, but the adrenaline and hyperventilating had taken care of any crying she had been about to do.
It was clear that Daniel didn’t mind the filth. So Olivia turned on his lap, wrapped her arms around Daniel’s neck and held on.
His arms tightened convulsively around her.
For long minutes he just held her. His body heat let her relax by slow degrees, each muscle in her body loosening.
Contrariwise, as she unwound, she grew aware of a building tension in Daniel. It was beneath the surface. He was trying to hide it from her but she could feel it anyway. His muscles were tightening, his breath just slightly quickening. He was trembling. It was so subtle she might have missed it, except that she was so extraordinarily calm herself.
“What is it, Daniel?” she whispered.
His hand tightened in her matted hair. “Dios, what were you thinking, Olivia?” he said, his lips against her neck.
“I did what I had to do.”
“No one sane does something like that.”
She pulled away from him enough so that she could look him in the eye. “Yes, they do, Daniel. They do it all the time. Where have you been living all your life? On Mars?”
An emotion chased across his eyes. Fear.
Olivia found she was on her feet and didn’t remember getting to them. She could feel the urge to start hyperventilating pushing at her. “I’m taking a shower before I vomit again.” She hurried away before she said more. Before she said something that she would regret later.
* * * * *
Daniel made himself get up off the floor and follow her into the bathroom, even though every instinct was yelling at him to leave, now, before the vault doors clanged shut on him and he was locked into the dark cavern with the unknown contents, fumbling around, lost and without a light.
Instinct? Fuck. It was habit, pure and simple. Only, everything about Olivia was about breaking with the pattern, wasn’t it? So he opened the bathroom door she had slammed just as the shower turned on and was in time to see her pull the curtain closed. She glanced at him through the closing veil. Anger pulsed in her sapphire blue eyes.
He shut the door more gently than she had and leaned against the sink, opposite the now-closed shower curtain.
“Explain it to me,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Why would anyone do something so insane, so self-sacrificing, for someone else? Why do so many people do such things? Pretend I know nothing and explain it to me.”
“Not through a shower curtain, I won’t.” Her voice was stiff, hard with fury.
Disappointment touched him. She wasn’t going to back down. He’d damaged the tenuous link between them. The idea that he might have ruined that connection touched him with fear that he had to mentally beat back down.
Why fear? That was a question to be considered at another time.
“I’ll wait outside then,” he said, standing up.
The curtain was shoved aside roughly, making the rings scrape with a metallic squawk across the rail. Olivia glared at him. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” She grabbed the front of his shirt and tugged. Hard.
Daniel slid off his shoes before she dragged him into the shower with her, but that was all. It was either get wet, or use force against her. Olivia was strong for a woman.
She slid the curtain closed again and moved around the cubicle so they were both under the jet. Olivia had one of the bigger rooms that came with a separate shower and bath. The shower was a generous size but with both of them in it, the space seemed small.
“Your clothes had to be rinsed off after I’d been sitting on them, anyway,” she told him and turned so the water slid through the back of her hair, wetting down the tangles.
Daniel looked down at the front of his shirt and trousers. They had grime stains from the dirt that had been smeared all over her body. He carefully didn’t think about how the dirt had got onto her body in the first place. From personal experience and from processing the accounts of agents reporting to him, he could guess, but he didn’t want to. Not right now.
He clamped down the temptation to speculate and brushed at the stains instead.
“Use my shampoo,” Olivia told him. “It’s better than soap. Put a tiny bit in your hands and get it to lather, then rub it onto the marks. Rinse it well. We can hang your clothes up to dry for the night and there won’t be any soap scum.”
Daniel didn’t voice the other positive aspect of the suggestion; his clothes would smell of Olivia and her hair.
He washed away the dirt quickly, rinsed off and shrugged out of the heavy, cumbersome garments. “Wet clothes just don’t cooperate, do they?” he grumbled, turning away from the flow of the showerhead to wring them out.
“You do seem to have far more finesse removing dry items.” Her tone was light, almost as if she was laughing. Daniel glanced at her, startled.
She was washing her hair. Eyes closed. Face like marble, giving away nothing. The trained diplomat.
His gaze ran down the length of her wet, gleaming body. The up-lifted breasts. The sharp indentation at her waist and the trim hips.
Just like that he was aroused enough he wanted to slam her up against the wall and take her.
As she moved to rinse her hair, her thighs brushed together then separated. Her hips swayed.
He swallowed. He could pick her up, wrap those thighs around his waist and slide into her. Or turn her and push her up against the wall….
Olivia bent her head back to let the water cascade through her hair, extending her throat, her chest, her breasts, her torso. Offering herself up.
Daniel drew in a breath that hitched.
He realized that he was standing stock still, his shirt still in a hard corkscrewed bunch in his hand. A sloth showed more animation than him right now.
He shook out the shirt and tossed it in the hand basin and quickly dealt with his trousers the same way. By the time he was done, Olivia finished rinsing her hair and slicked it back. Her eyes were open. There was a hard light in them. A warning he understood clearly and instantly. Whatever had happened to her tonight, it had included sexual elements. Hardly a surprise—most hardcore interrogation techniques for civilian targets did, regardless of the gender.
If Daniel tried to push her in any way at all tonight, the damage he’d feared had happened a moment ago would become real.
So.
Daniel deliberately leaned back against the warm, wet tiles of the shower wall, despite his thundering heart. It placed him even farther away from her and made him less of a threat. Right now, she needed the least threatening space possible. “You were going to explain sacrifice for the sake of others to me,” he said softly.
It was a deliberate change of subject. They had not spoken about her interrogation aloud but it was almost a physical presence between them, pulsing with black toxic gizzards and deadly fumes. There would be time later to speak of it. When Olivia was ready, she would tell him.
Olivia reached for the conditioner and poured some into her hand. She took her time with it and Daniel knew she was marshaling her thoughts. The diplomat was looking for gentle words. It irritated him and he wasn’t sure why, but before he examined the irritation or the wisdom of reacting to it, he spoke. “Just talk, Olivia. I don’t want politically correct niceties from you.”
She glanced up at him from under a damp lock of dark blonde hair, startled. “Since when did masks start bothering you?”
She had nailed it exactly.
Daniel took a deep breath, striving for calm and falling short by a fraction of an inch because Olivia was so right it scared him. Outside of his job, when had he started caring about the truth beneath the superficial bullshit?
She was already busy applying the conditioner. He had a reprieve, a moment to regather. He took it, pulling himself together.
What the hell was going on with him?
It didn’t matter that Blanco was dead and he had no direct communications with his chain of command at the moment. He was still technically on duty and with a mission to complete. Yes, it was true, no one could ever have expected the assignment to take this turn, or to last this long, but that was part of the job. His training included dealing with the unexpected and bringing missions that go sour and off the rails back on track again. He was expected to cope with snags.
In a situation like this, general orders were to stay on mission until he could reconnect with someone in his department and get fresh orders but his experience and seniority also gave him the insight to know that if he continued on with his mission orders after all this time, there was a possibility he might screw up the delicate political situation for the leaders in the big house in Acapulco.
More and more, he needed to plug back into the chain of command and reassess the loyalist position and needs before taking any further action but that just wasn’t going to happen with the situation here at the White Sands.
It was a crappy scenario. Despite that, over the last few days he seemed to have lost sight of the fact that he was a loyalist army officer first and foremost and everything else came second.
At least, that was the way it had been for the last fifteen or so years.
Her hand touched his chest, the fingers spreading. Daniel opened his eyes. Olivia was looking up at him, concern rich in her face. Her hair was slicked back again, the conditioner rinsed out. “Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?” His voice was hoarse and that shocked him, too.
“You’re beating up on yourself because you think you’ve been neglecting your duties as an officer and a gentleman,” she said softly. “You’re not being fair on yourself.”
His breath pushed out in a rush. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Your lips were moving. Spanish. You switch to Spanish when you’re thinking in officer mode or when—” She shrugged. “Well, when you’re in your Vistarian mindset.”
Stunned, he could find no words to respond. He just stared at her.
Olivia stepped back under the water. She picked up the soap and lathered it.
“Or when what?” he prompted, realizing she had been about to say something else. He felt a prick of guilt for pursuing the opening she had clearly tried to close. Only, he needed to find out for sure if it was just Olivia who could read him so damn easily.
Either she knew him so well he was a sheet of newsprint to her, or he had become lax and undisciplined. Was it just her, or had the entire hotel figured out he was more than a British businessman? Ernesto had been suspicious enough to tag him for Serrano. Who else suspected?
That was the problem with being in one place for too long. People got to know you. They got under your skin.
Daniel stretched his shoulders as an uncomfortable ripple ran down his spine. “I speak Spanish when I’m in officer mode and when else, Olivia?”
She was concentrating on washing the rest of her body, a small furrow between her brows, making a real job of it. He could feel her unease almost like heat radiating off her.
He let the silence stretch a bit longer. “Olivia?”
“When you…during sex.”
She had been about to say “make love”, he realized with a start. Then he stood up from the wall with jerk.
He was speaking Spanish when they made love?
“When?” he demanded. He reached for her arm, then remembered and forced himself to drop his hand. “When did I start speaking Spanish?” He could feel the sweat at his brow even though he was already wet and standing in a steamy shower cubicle. Christ.
She stood upright, too. Soap lather washed off her body in waves, just like foam at the seashore. Her eyes were wide. “You didn’t know. You weren’t aware of it.”
He closed his eyes, turning his head away. Sickness was pooling in the bottom of his gut. “No,” he confessed.
“Daniel, look at me.” Her hands were on his face, turning it.
He forced his eyes open.
Olivia gave him a small smile. “You’re safe. You haven’t been whispering Spanish endearments into the ears of every woman you’ve bedded. You’re fine. You only starting doing it with me after you told me who you really were.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded.
He couldn’t help it. He had to lean back against the wall again, so great was his relief. He was shaking with it.
Olivia was staring at him. Her expression was odd, her full lips quirked, as if she was puzzled. She pushed her wet hair back over her shoulder and it slapped her back. “You really didn’t know, did you? You had no idea at all that you were doing it.”
He tried to explain. “Well, you think in English, don’t you?”
“You’re telling me you think in Spanish, even now?”
“Not when I’m using English all the time, after all these years. Only it seems, now, when I’m truly relaxed, I revert back.” He tried to smile and couldn’t quite make it. “I’m not aware of it because I’m at ease in both languages.”
“Don’t you mean that when you truly have your guard down, you switch back?” Her gaze was pinning him against the wall. Not sparing him an inch.
Daniel slowly nodded. “Yes, that’s what I mean,” he agreed. The last of the fear and sickness left him, like the water draining at the bottom of the cubicle. God, she was relentless, but she had a way of placing her finger on the truth that took the sting from it.
Olivia moved through the spray of water and gently, slowly, rested her body up against his, one soft inch at a time. “You have such courage,” she murmured, resting her head against his shoulder. “I don’t know if I could do as well, if I were in your position.”
He looked down at her, shocked. He was tempted to laugh but knew she would take his laughter as scorn. She thought he was brave, this woman who had defied Serrano to protect him?
He wanted to wrap his arms around her. His arms and his entire body. Only, she must reach for him. She had to call the shots this time, even if it was just for comfort.
She lifted her head to look up at him. Her arm moved lazily up to slide up into his hair. There was a look in her eyes… His heart accelerated as he realized Olivia wasn’t seeking comfort at all.
She pulled his head down to meet her lips as they turned up toward him. They were the softest, sweetest lips he’d ever tasted. Why did she always taste of peaches? She was still in the shower, had not even stepped out to clean her teeth or apply cosmetics of any sort. This was just her and she was luscious.
Her small tongue thrust into his mouth, demanding. He struggled not to take control of the kiss, to hold her against him or to dominate her in any way, even though his body was as taut as a piano wire with arousal, strumming each time her fingers stroked the back of his neck, or her tongue flickered against his. Her breasts were soft cushions against his chest.
“Olivia…” he breathed into her mouth.
She pulled her lips from his and her hand from his hair. Her eyes were dark with arousal.
“I want you to make love to me, Daniel. You think you can do that?”
“You know I can.”
She shook her head. “I’m not just talking about sex.” She licked her lips. “They tore my clothes off me in that room. They tore my clothes off and threatened to let the guard have me. Serrano said he would shove a submachine gun into me and a pistol up…as well. That’s what he told me. At one point he spread my legs and let the guard have a good long look. A preview, he told them.” She let go of him and clutched her arms about her chest and shuddered. Her eyes grew haunted.
Daniel could feel tightness in his chest and a dull, growing, helpless fury. He wanted to kill them all. Tonight.
Why not? The small voice was cool, dispassionate. Logical. He had the ability. He knew all the sightlines and where the sentries would be. Serrano was in the hotel. This was a priceless opportunity. To get rid of the leader of the Insurrectos!
Only, Daniel would never leave the room alive where Serrano’s assassination took place. He would die right along with Serrano.
Besides, those were not his orders and Olivia needed him right now.
Daniel clenched his hands into fists. He stayed silent so she could keep talking. Above all, she had to keep talking.
Abruptly, she refocused on him. “I want you to cancel all that out.”
“By making love,” he repeated carefully. He wasn’t sure he understood.
“Not just sex. I want you to do everything that Serrano threatened. I want it all wiped out in my imagination by you doing it in fact. Your body. Your mastery. Your domination. Everything. I want to be so completely taken by you that nothing else is left. I don’t want to sleep until the major highlight of this day—this very long day—is you and what you do to me.”
His body and soul leapt, liked a coiled dragon roaring to life. His heart, too, soared. That his heart leapt over the fact that she wanted him to be the highlight of her day he shoved into the inner recesses of his mind to consider later. He knew there were far too many big questions like this he was shoving onto that shelf marked “later” but was not about to pause to consider them right now.
Olivia stepped back from him, squeezed the excess water out of her hair and pulled the curtain aside enough to step out of the shower. “Don’t drip on your shoes when you get out,” she told him. “Take your time.”