Perfect Stranger (12 page)

Jericho chuckled low, the deep richness of
his voice sending electrifying quivers though Chloe. He reached to
brush the side of her face with his palm, and his hands quickly
deepened into her hair, tangling his fingers at the back of her
nape as he pulled her to him.

"If that’s the case," he
said against her lips, "then we should do a
kiss
justice." Jericho dragged her
body against him, enveloping her in his strength. His lips sealed
over hers.

Chloe gasped at the sharp little spasms of
pleasure shooting through her core at his touch, at the feel of his
lips on hers as his tongue darted into her mouth.

Chloe kissed him back hungrily, her tongue
tangling with his.

There was a magnetism between them so strong
in that moment, Chloe thought they might not ever separate. She
melted into Jericho, meeting his tongue with her own as he invaded
her mouth. She gasped when his hands pressed all the way down to
her backside, and he ground his hardened loins into her.

Jericho dropped his lips to her neck,
trailing a searing path down to her collarbone. He pulled her shirt
down at the neck, mouthing the cleavage above her breasts, growling
against her skin as he made his way back up. He nipped at her neck
along the way, her chin and lips, too, before he slanted his mouth
back over hers. His tongue swept inside her mouth, and Chloe
moaned. He found her breast and filled his hand with the plump
mound.

They slipped down the base of the tree,
Jericho rolling Chloe over him. The hot assault of his mouth had
her heart thumping madly. She pressed her body into his, delighting
in the sensations.

She ached so strongly for him, and sought to
show him how much, running her fingers through his hair and down
his body. She stopped just before the hardened ridge under his
pants, her fingertips inching just within the waistline. Did she
dare go further?

Jericho made a sound of pleasure, emanating
deep in his throat.

Just when Chloe thought she might lose
herself in the jungle to a near stranger, Jericho pulled away,
panting hard.

Chloe stilled atop Jericho's body.

They stared at one another a long
moment.

"That wasn’t just a kiss," Chloe said. Her
eyes fell down him, and she could honestly swear she had never seen
a man look so undone.

Jericho considered her a moment, looking
from her eyes back to her lips. There was a hostility storming
within him, and she sensed his warring emotions as strongly as she
did the lust he had caused her. A pained expression crossed him
then.

"That ex of yours is a damn idiot," he
muttered, and stood quickly, spilling Chloe from his embrace.
Without another word, Jericho stalked off beyond the camp.

Chloe watched him go, but when he
disappeared, she threw her face into her hands.

What had she done? What had she been
thinking?

She groaned quietly. She
hadn't meant to upset the man. Hell, she hadn't meant for
that
to happen! Not like
that anyway. She'd never dreamed….

Chloe picked her head up
and stared into the darkened jungle. This was one of those rebound
things, wasn’t it? There was no way she should be having such
feelings for a man she hardly knew. Maybe her inclinations toward
Jericho were from the intensity of this extreme situation they
shared, but
this
was crazy.

She began to panic at what Jericho must
think of her now.

****

Every fiber of his being warned against this
newfound distraction. All his training told him letting himself get
caught up in a moment like that was a lethal risk—but every part of
him distinctly male urged him on uncontrollably. He couldn't
remember ever wanting another woman so badly as he did Chloe.

His hands shook as he put them on his
hips.

What in the hell had
happened back there
? he asked himself,
raking his hands through his hair, then back and over his face. He
could only imagine what Logan would say to him now if his friend
knew.

Jericho groaned. He listened to the jungle
sounds around him, but none of them did anything to help calm the
raging storm within.

He growled and kicked a fern, tearing the
young plant from the ground as he headed back to his and Chloe's
spot against the large tree.

He didn't even know what in the hell to say
to her, or much less how to excuse his behavior.

She had asked for a kiss to erase the bad
memory of that fool she'd nearly married, not to be fucked in the
damn jungle! Which, if he'd allowed himself a second more, would
have surely happened, right there with her back against a tree.

He was so angry with himself, Jericho didn't
know how to control the rage or what to do with it.

He was such an idiot.

Jericho came to an abrupt stop, staring at
the empty spot at the base of the twin kauri.

His blood ran cold.

Even in the inky darkness, he could tell
Chloe was no longer there.

"Chloe," he called loudly. "Chloe, where are
you?"

No answer.

"Chloe!" His shout reverberated throughout
the jungle.

As the echo faded, the area around him went
dead quiet.

There weren’t many times Jericho had prayed
and honestly hoped for, or really needed, divine intervention, but
he did so just now.

Chapter Ten

0500 hours, Monday

Somewhere in the Cerrado

Chloe moaned and almost instantaneously
jerked herself up as she came to. She winced, sucking in a gasp of
pain. Her head spun as pain knifed at her skull, and her stomach
turned sickly. All at once, she realized she was bound at the
wrists and ankles, and gagged.

She fearfully forced her eyes open to look
around, but her vision was foggy and blurred. From what she could
discern, she had been slumped in a corner of a musty shack.

Chloe shuddered. She closed her eyes and
fought to clear her head.

When she reopened her eyes, she struggled to
take in the surroundings closest as they came into focus. Moss and
mold grew on the wooden interior, and the thick base of a tree had
grown through the back wall to her left, not three feet away, where
a hole had been made. The sizably damaged spot had probably been
there for some time judging by the rot around the tree growth. The
tree had spiraled upward to where the trunk pushed away a corner of
the ceiling and continued on to most likely tower over the cabin
outside.

The more Chloe forced herself to see,
squinting, the more her vision cleared.

There was only one door, closed, to her
right. Sunlight beamed onto her lap from a window, dust floating in
front of her. Chloe slowly turned her neck, a sharp pain shooting
through her head again, and she winced, blinking to clear her
vision. She heard a noise in the center of the room.

Fear escalated as the image of three men
swam into focus.

She had their undivided attention.

Sick grins at the sight of her horror
twisted their mouths under beards.

Chloe tried not to, but she whimpered again
as she scooted herself up the corner, using her feet together. She
struggled to sit up better. Her breathing was hard, her heartbeat
staccato, but she could hear the jungle on the outside of the
shack.

Maybe they haven't taken
me far,
she hoped.

She tried to remember what had happened, but
her memory was disjointed.

Did they have Jericho,
too
? She panicked. Her protector wasn’t in
the one room, wooden, cabin-like dwelling, that was for sure. God,
she hoped they had not killed him. Jericho was her only
chance.

The dark-skinned, bearded men all returned
their attention elsewhere. One sat at a shabby, unbalanced table
and fingered the blade of a knife. Another leaned against the wall,
his foot propped up against the boards. His eyes were closed, yet
he talked in a murmur to the others in a language she did not
understand, nor did it seem familiar. The third man, he waited by
the window, a rifle in hand as he looked out pensively.

She remembered the window above her head and
glanced at the men before edging up to sneak a glance outside,
craning her neck backwards over the seal.

"
Kahlass
!" one of them yelled,
slamming his fist down onto the table.

Chloe jumped, turning back
to the room, wide-eyed in fear. She screamed against the gag when a
knife
thunked
into the wall, imbedding beside her ear.

The man from the table laughed heartily at
her, speaking to the others. The one leaning back in his seat
berated him, though not too sternly.

Halas?
Chloe wondered. She couldn't think of anything in Portuguese
that could mean.

"
Tahat
," he said.

Chloe looked at him strangely. Her look must
have taunted him because he swept himself up from the table and
crossed to her in a few angry strides.

Chloe screamed against her gag again,
backing herself into the wall as he grabbed her up with one hand
and pulled the knife from the boards with the other. He brought the
blade up to press against the tape covering her mouth.

He ran his tongue over his lips, edging
against her.

Chloe cringed at the feel of him and his
smell.

He began threatening her in his strange
language, slowly and quietly, but the more he said, the more Chloe
realized he was definitely not Brazilian. An Arab, maybe? Her stare
riveted on him as he spoke.

He continued murmuring and lowered his lips
near her ear. Chloe's pulse leapt as he lifted his knife to her
cheek, running the sharp end down her face to her throat. She shut
her eyes tight just as he flicked his wrist, and the warm blade
nicked the delicate skin at the base of her neck. Chloe flinched
into the wall, her breath escalating to shallow pants as she felt a
bead of her blood drip down to her clavicle. She forced herself to
look at him again, and then wished she hadn't.

He laughed darkly. His obsidian eyes
glimmered with amusement over her pain and fear.

Her heart gave a lurch. Chloe followed the
blade with her eyes, unable to do anything else. She cringed as the
man brought his hand to grasp her face, his fingers spread wide
over her cheek and jaw, holding her in place against the wall. He
trailed the blade over her breasts, across her stomach, and down
her thigh.

Chloe swallowed hard, reclosing her eyes,
fearing what he might do next as the blade stopped near the apex of
her thighs. She fought to take in a shuddering breath.

He said one last thing she didn’t
understand. The men all laughed then, and the one holding her
yanked her off her feet into him only to sling her back against the
wall in a mighty shove. Her head knocked against the wall, and
Chloe cried out into the gag, cringing there. Her head began to
swim again, but she swore she would not give them the satisfaction
of seeing her cry since they seemed to thrill so much at her
slightest terror. She slunk back down, her legs weakly sliding out
as she sat. As their humor died away, the others began to ignore
her again.

Chloe gained very little from all that, but
she now knew there were two other men patrolling outside, and there
was no sign of Jericho.

She wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

Her stomach flip-flopped, and Chloe squeezed
her eyes closed, praying he was alive and on his way. If these men
began to torture her, she didn’t think she could last. She had
never been so terrified as she had been only moments before.

Chloe shuddered against the wall. She tried
pulling at her bonds, testing their strength. There wasn't even a
little wiggle room. The zip-tie cut into her wrists, and though her
pants saved her ankles from the same torture, her feet were bound
just as tightly.

She tried to recall what had happened again,
why she hadn’t screamed out for Jericho when they had taken her the
night before. She had been sitting at the base of the tree,
embarrassed over being so brazen as to kiss Jericho. Jericho had
left and hadn't returned.

A memory flashed to her then. A cloth had
come over her nose and mouth from behind. There had been an arm.
She had grabbed it as it snaked around her shoulders, pulling her
backwards over the large tree-root. She remembered thinking to
scream, but too quickly everything had gone black.

Chloe rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. She
thought of many things then. Of her botched trip to Rio. Her
sisters, her mom. How they would never see her again.

She thought of Jericho.

Chloe closed her eyes and hoped against hope
that he would find her and soon.

****

0700 hours, Monday

Somewhere in the Cerrado

Jericho crawled on his elbows up the
embankment, into the thick grasses and lay flat on the ground. He
peered through the tall grass and vines at the outside of the old
cabin. The place was grown up, a tree sprouting through the
backside of the house, and the area surrounding was thick with
crushed down brush. The yard, for lack of a better word, looked as
if a vehicle had driven in circles to make access to the cabin.

His gaze burned hotly on the two men
outdoors.

He had tracked the Hajjis all night.

Jericho took the SCAR, pulling back on the
charging handle and a round chambered. He waited for them both to
move away from the cabin so his shots wouldn’t go through the thin
walls and possibly hit Chloe.

Following these bastards had become easier
as the sun rose, rays slivering onto the forest floor where the
bumbling idiots had left very obvious tracks. By his estimate,
there were five of them. One had carried Chloe. She must have been
unconscious because there had been no sign or sound of a
struggle.