Page 176

“No one is taking you back to that compound,” I said against her hair. “Ciro is dead. Rafael got you out. Marcela is bleeding, and I’m getting you home. I can’t promise the rest of this mountain will be easy, but you’re not facing it alone.”

She hugged my hand more tightly against her chest.

“Cry if you need to, Mouse. No one’s getting through me to get to you.”

“Don’t let go.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

Whatever daylight brought, I’d deal with it. For now, no one was taking my Mouse out of my arms.

Chapter twenty-four

Warmth surrounded me before I opened my eyes.

A heavy arm lay across my waist, holding me firmly against a broad, bare chest. That was when my mind caught up to my new reality. I was on the run from the remnants of a cartel led by God knows who now, somewhere on the mountainside of San Vicente Volcano.

Yet I felt safer than I had since I was a little girl.

My head still rested on Lachlan’s bicep, but sometime during the night, our fingers had slipped apart. His other arm remained draped across my waist, his hand resting on the ground in front of me and loosely caging me against his chest.

For a few moments, I stayed perfectly still, listening to the slow, even rhythm of his breathing. His body, curved around mine, held none of the tension I’d come to expect from him.

Then I became aware of the unmistakable hardness pressed against my backside.

A smile tugged at my mouth before I could stop it.

Apparently, being half-starved, tortured, chased down a mountain, and forced to sleep beneath a shelf of volcanic rock had failed to interfere with at least one of Lachlan Byrnes’s bodily functions.

I found that oddly reassuring—and considerably more interesting than it should have been while armed men were searching for us.

I shifted my hips the tiniest amount and immediately decided that had been a terrible idea.

The hard length of him now pressed more firmly against me.

Well.

That answered any lingering question about whether yesterday’s attraction had been mostly desperation and adrenaline.

Mine certainly hadn’t gone anywhere.

Neither, apparently, had his.

Carefully, I lifted my head and turned in his arms until I was facing him.

Lachlan didn’t stir.

He looked different asleep, though certainly not harmless. I doubted this man had ever looked harmless a day in his adult life. His jaw remained hard beneath several days of scruff; a fading bruise marked his temple, and the cut on his cheek had only begun to heal. But the constant alertness had disappeared. His brow was smooth, and his mouth, usually ready with a threat, a curse, or something dry enough to make me laugh when I had no business laughing, rested without tension.

My attention lingered on his lips. I’d already lost my mind and stolen one brief kiss from him when he was blindfolded. Later, he’d been looking straight at me, his attention fixed on my mouth, but we’d been interrupted before either of us could close the distance. Now I couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like to have a man like Lachlan take hold of me and kiss me the way he did everything else—with complete confidence, no hesitation, and far more intensity than was probably good for me.

I was becoming rather preoccupied with this man’s mouth and wasn’t a bit ashamed about it.

My gaze drifted lower, over the broad expanse of his chest and the bruises and red marks scattered across his skin.

“You should probably scare me a lot more than you do,” I whispered. “Instead, I keep finding reasons to like you. I’m beginning to think there may be something wrong with my judgment.”

I couldn’t quite reconcile this man with the furious Irish prisoner Ciro’s men had dragged beneath my bedroom. The filthy-mouthed stranger who had insulted everyone near him while chained to a chair was now wrapped around me as though keeping me close had become something normal.