Page 59 of Final Approach

Tiny dew drops sat beneath her eyes. I glared at them, my anger building at seeing my captain in pain.

The jungle foliage was getting heavier, the overhanging vines impossible to get through without cutting them down. There was nothing else to be found—a dead end.

“Perhaps he’d retraced his steps back to the river. Come.” Grasping her hand in a tight grip, I tugged her to follow me back to where we’d come from. “We will find nothing else today. Not here.”

She complied, stunned into a stupor. Once we reached the small ledge to the riverbed, I leaped down the four feet and held my arms open to catch her, beckoning her to jump.

She landed between my biceps in a soft thump, her brows heavy with worry. I held her tightly to my chest, inhaling the scent of her hair and the soft musk of her sweat.

“We will find him, ángel. Perhaps not today, but he has not gone far.” I released her to the ground, brushing my hands up her ribs as she dropped. She shivered at the contact, but her troubled eyes struggled to meet mine. She rolled the bottle between her fingers, anxious energy clanking against the steel hull.

She needed a diversion to bring temporary peace. I could give her that.

“We are still in need of fruit,” I commanded, wrapping one arm around her shoulders to steer her back toward the plane. “Show me where the best trees are.”

Wide green eyes glanced up at me in surprise, as if remembering her secondary mission.

Seduction. Her sexy body for my stolen gun. Would she go through with it as her conversation with Nikki had promised, or had the camp sighting changed her intentions?

My heart held hope, and my cock twitched to attention when she licked her lips nervously. Her concerned frown molded into a pained smile, as if her muscles had frozen between a smirk and a wink.

I did nothing, said nothing as she contemplated her direction. If she wanted to go through with this, she needed to make the first move. A crimson flush bloomed across her neck and cheeks in the silence as a different, charged energy rolled between us. The mask of a killer remained in place, but behind it, I fought the urge to grin. How adorable my competent pilot was.

I hoped she blushed this hard when I made her come.

She held up a palm and tentatively rubbed it down my chest, petting me in stilted pats like I was a Rottweiler puppy. My cock thickened further, enjoying the simple touch of a woman.

Not just any woman. Her.

“Let’s get some fruit,” she said, securing my compliance to her every desire. Her patting grew into long rubs down my torso, shuffling awkwardly to get closer to me.

This woman was as sexy as Ana Patricia, the real-life version of my wettest dream. But she flirted like Big Bird.

She snuggled into my side, dragging one of her bountiful, heavy breasts along my ribs. Rising on her tiptoes, she dragged her hot breath along my ear, chilling my skin in its wake. I shivered at her touch, the longing in my body ready to give her anything she requested.

Her hand stopped at my waistband, hovering just above the button. I stood deathly still in anticipation, a canvas waiting for paint. The lips I’d spend a life in prison waiting to kiss opened against my ear and whispered the words that would become my final downfall.

“But first, why don’t you give me a taste of your banana?”

I’d withstood torture, solitary confinement, drugging, and attempted murder, and in every instance, kept my composure. The laugh that erupted from my chest could not be contained—the chuckles bouncing above our heads in disruptive snorts.

My captain was not Big Bird at all. I was instead enamored by Curious George.

Nikki, for the love of all that is holy, I am going to kill you.

If I hadn’t already been blushing from the sheer thought of trying to seduce this man in front of me, his laughter at my admittedly terrible attempt turned me purple. I’d be humiliated entirely—bury me in the ground and let me die—if I hadn’t felt the thick outline of a hard cock under my hand when my fingers brushed his zipper.

How the fuck was I this bad at flirting? I’d picked up before, many times in fact, without this level of effort.

You haven’t tried to seduce convicts, Marley. In a jungle. Wearing the same pair of panties you’ve worn for three days.

His laughter wasn’t cruel, at least. It was boisterous, loud and aggressive, and the way it lit up his whole face … he was beautiful.

Crisp blue eyes, normally cold and calculating, radiated a boyish joy so at odds with his intimidating exterior. His crooked smile widened with each round of chuckles, revealing a perfect set of teeth, save for one small chip in one of his incisors.

He was still the brutish convict, all hard lines, shaded tattoos and riddled with the faded white scarring of a violent man, but he held me captive with the way his amusement opened up his whole body, the weight of the world dropping from his shoulders for this one small moment in time.

An inappropriate sense of pride filled me. How many people in the world could make a dangerous man laugh so uninhibitedly?