Page 35 of Mercenary

I gasp at his choice of wording. No. There was no need to kill them. He simply stopped them from hurting me.

He was protecting me.

He pauses to turn off the faucet and wring out the patch of afghan he’s carefully soaped and rinsed clean. “Listen, Madelyn. Stop asking questions and you won’t be disappointed,” he snaps.

I grit my teeth. “I deserve answers. You don’t understand what’s happened to me since you dropped me off in San Diego . . .” I suck in a breath, the memory of the brutal events in Cabo playing out in my head.

He moves across the clean tiled flooring, folds my afghan, and sets it on top of my bag. “You survived.”

I frown. Does he mean this as a question, like “How did you survive?”

“My best friend was hurt. Her friend dead. Murdered. It should have been me.”

“But it wasn’t.”

A statement, not a question. My frown deepens with confusion. “No.”

I bite my lip, considering all that’s happened. The horrible bloodshed in Cabo. My best friend, Luciana, who’d been spying on me for her brother, Diego. My stranger, who knows about Cabo. Kylie. I draw a mental web of all these loose bits of information, searching to classify everything to one commonality, and despite the blood coating my skin, despite the stranger staring down at me, my mind comes to rest on a single undeniable conclusion.

Him. A man who showed up on your cement stoop and told you he was a friend of your sister’s?

“How well do you know Kylie?” I ask.

He ignores my question and instead asks, “You contact the Mexican police?”

“No.” I study him carefully but he’s as easy to read as an empty slate. “So you don’t deny you’re aware of what happened in Cabo? Was it Diego who filled you in?”

He shakes his head ever so slightly. Reluctantly.

I pause as mental dots connect. “It was you keeping tabs on me through Luciana.”

“Yes.”

I gasp as he turns away from me, his confirmation like icing on what is a growing stack of unanswered questions and sprinkled with ridiculous, irrational bits of glee. He hadn’t forgotten me.

“Damn it.” I hear him mutter, then in a firmer tone say, “How well did you know the guy who was killed in Cabo?”

“I didn’t. He was just a guy my friend brought back.” An unlucky guy. Now part of her kill count. Another layer to this twisted pile I’m trying to gel together. “Don’t you think I have a right to understand what the heck is going on? Why you’ve been keeping tabs on me?”

“Jesus Christ. Like I said, don’t ask questions and you won’t get hurt.”

“You said disappointed not hurt.” My eyes widen with alarm. “Who exactly wants me hurt?”

Is that why you’ve had Diego’s sister, Luciana, spying on me? To protect me?

He removes his leather jacket and hangs it on the rung on the wall over the bench. I watch in stunned silence as he kicks off his shoes, unfastens the top button on his dark-washed jeans, and then God help me, takes the zipper between his fingers.

The zipper drops, his pants drop, and despite everything that’s happened to me, my gaze drops.

Oh my God. He’s gone commando.

I feast on the baby-fine line of hair that leads from the indentation left by his jeans button down along the lower half of his stomach toward his groin. Like an arrow leading downward.

Go this way, Madelyn.

He steps out of his jeans, then turns his back to me as he folds them up neatly and place them besides the duffel bag. Unaware of the change sweeping over me, the crazy irrational lust I feel every time my fear subsides enough for me to tap into the dark, raw emotions I hold for this man. Unwarranted. Unwanted. Inexplicable. Unwavering in the naughty depths of them.

His broad back narrows at the hips. His ass is firm, tightly muscled like the rest of him, perfect in form and shape. So hard. So impeccably male. The sight of him makes me nervous in a whole different way.