His leg brushed the back of hers, but Cam was no longer under the spell of his magnetism. She kept her posture stiff and unresponsive, hoping he’d take the hint and leave.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work and, if anything, he leaned in closer than before. “Then give me a trial period, or some kind of test. If I deliver and prove myself, you promise to stop fighting me at every turn and allow me to help you. If I fail, you can tell me to fuck off and I’ll comply.”
She was tempted, but she didn’t want to make a decision like this lightly.
The sound of a giggling couple drew closer and she poked Marco’s arm with a claw. “People are coming, and if they notice the ice around my feet, they’ll ask too many questions. You need to melt the ice. Now.”
“Not until you give me an answer.”
As they stared at one another, the giggling drew closer. Cam couldn’t afford to be caught with a first-born right now, leaving her only a few seconds to decide what to do.
He did know the language and probably had more contacts in this part of the world than she did. Playing a clueless tourist only went so far. If she did find something inside the observatory later tonight, the clue could lead her anywhere, maybe even to a remote village deep in the jungle. DEFEND had an extensive web of contacts, but she knew little about their reputations outside of the US or Europe. In the ever-changing Feiru world of political allegiances, too many former trusted allies could be acting as double agents.
Her boss, Neena, was one of the few people Cam trusted with her life, and while she hadn’t fully endorsed Marco, she hadn’t warned Cam to stay away either.
The giggling people would see them any second, so she decided to trust Neena on the issue of Marco, at least for now. “Fine, I’ll give you a series of tests. Now, hurry up and release me.”
Marco laid a hand on her lower back, sending a jolt through her body at the contact, and the ice melted away. He leaned in close and whispered. “Pretend that you adore me for the next thirty seconds.”
Marco had made a mistake.
It wasn’t the fact that Cam was still resisting him, or that he’d had to use his elemental magic in public. No, his mistake had been donning his fake playboy routine. Because trying to be suave and charming around Cam had forced him to touch her again, to lean in and smell the wildness of the jungle mixed with her own womanly scent, to notice the way her shirt clung to her breasts. In other words, he was starting to notice her more as a woman than a fellow DEFEND soldier.
Attachments were dangerous enough for someone like him, with a secret to hide, but on top of that, she wasn’t just any soldier—she was one of the few who would never see him as anything more than a young, smooth-talking recruit.
However, he’d been out of options when he’d heard the giggling couple approach, leaving him with the choice of either letting Cam run away from him or pulling her up against his side and treating her as his lover. Getting her to stay put and actually talk to him was difficult, and he needed to know exactly what sort of “tests” she had in mind for him, so he decided to go with the latter option.
He moved his hand from Cam’s lower back to her waist, and he hauled her against his side. From a distance, Cam could be intimidating to strangers, but with her frame pressed up against his muscular one, she almost appeared s
mall.
He barely had time to move his hand to Cam’s hip to get a better grip before a man and woman in their mid-twenties came around the corner of the building. Cam tucked her head against his side—probably to hide her pissed off looking face—so he smiled at the couple and said in Spanish, “Sorry, friends, my girlfriend and I were just trying to steal a few moments alone.”
The man laughed. “No worries. We kind of had the same idea.”
The man looked at the woman at his side, and Marco felt a pang of jealousy at their obvious affection. Good thing he had lots of experience hiding his emotions. “My girl and I were just leaving. But if you know of any other little secluded spots we can take advantage of, I’d love to hear them.”
Cam chose that moment to lift her head and peek at the couple opposite them. The woman winked at Cam, and unaware that Cam didn’t speak Spanish, she said, “Get your boyfriend to take you to a secluded cenote at night. You haven’t tried anything until you’ve been naked in a sunken waterhole with the moonlight streaming down on you.”
Marco nearly choked. A naked Cam, floating on her back with the moonlight caressing her breasts, was not the image he needed right now.
When Cam merely stared at the couple, the other man saved him from sputtering some half-assed reply. “Ah, she doesn’t understand us. That might work in your favor, my friend, because now you can surprise her. No doubt the sudden ‘romance’ will score you some extra points.”
Marco forced a grin and wink. “Thanks for the tip. I think it’s time for me to go look up cenotes and plan a big evening.”
The pair laughed and walked past them.
Cam hated not understanding what had just happened. The man and woman had been laughing with Marco, and her inner control freak desperately wanted to know why.
Still, the experience had only reinforced her decision to accept Marco’s help. She loathed admitting it, but his language skills alone would no doubt make her mission easier, provided he was honest with her.
When the couple finally left, she’d expected Marco to let go, but if anything, he tightened his grip on her hip. She gave a quick check to make sure the couple was gone before she hissed, “Let me go.”
He merely smiled down at her, which only irritated her more. “Not until you tell me what kind of tests you plan to put me through.”
“I need some time to think them through, unless you want some half-assed impossible task, like asking you to take out all of the security guards here tonight without getting caught.”
“I doubt even you could do that.”