Page 35 of Rebel Protector

“Becca?”

She froze. “Yeah.”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

Her stomach dropped, and her heart clenched. Oh, no. Here it comes. The part where he tells her it was a mistake. Or that he’s married. Or has a girlfriend. She braced herself for the excuses, the same ones she’d heard a dozen times before, already shrinking away from the blow.

“What?”

“Turn around.”

Reluctantly, she did, watching as he bent to pull up his jeans, fastening the zipper with deliberate slowness. She breathed a silent sigh of relief. Thank goodness. It was too hard to look at him naked. Too raw. Her mind kept replaying what had just happened, her body still buzzing from the way he had touched her, held her, the way he had wrecked her. “What did you want to tell me?”

Dom hesitated, his gaze searching hers for something. He opened his mouth, then closed it, his jaw ticking like he was trying to figure out the right words. Finally, he spoke. “I’m not who you think I am.”

Her stomach twisted. Oh, God. Here we go.

“You’re married, aren’t you? I knew it. There had to be something.” She threw it out there, hoping to get it over with, to cut through the tension.

“No,” he shook his head, a bitter smile tugging at his lips. “You’re safe on that front. It’s my job I lied about.”

“What?” Becca stared at him, the words not quite sinking in. His job? “You can’t get much worse than a drug-smuggling mercenary.”

Dom snorted, but there was no humor in it. “That depends on how you look at it.”

“Dom, you’re worrying me. What is it?”

He exhaled sharply, his jaw popping again. Whatever he was about to say, it was hard for him to get out. She could see that.

“I’m still in the Marine Corps,” he finally said, his voice low, almost ashamed. “I never left. I’m undercover.”

She blinked, the weight of his words taking a moment to register. Undercover… still in the Marines?

“You didn’t go AWOL?”

He shook his head. “I was recruited by someone in Suarez’s organization. They were poaching soldiers to use as mercs, so I went undercover to find out what was going on. Once I was inside, the DEA got wind of it and asked me to feed them intel on his drug trafficking network.”

"Alberto Suarez?" She swallowed, a lump forming in her throat. He was as infamous as Pablo Escobar in these parts.

"The one and only," Dom admitted.

"Didn’t he get caught? I remember reading about it a couple of months ago." Then it clicked, and her eyes widened. "Wait a minute, was that you?"

"Indirectly. My intel is what got him busted. He walked right into a DEA sting operation."

Becca gripped the counter as the pieces fell into place. "And now you're undercover in Alek Markov's organization?"

Dom nodded.

"Oh, shit."

She ran a hand through her hair. All this time, she’d thought he was a violent gun for hire, a mercenary working for her boss, when really, he was... a good guy?

Somehow, the bad guy had been easier to accept.

"Are you going to bust him too? For smuggling guns to Colombia?"

Dom's chest rose as he exhaled. "I'm going to try. But right now, we don’t have much. Markov doesn’t put his name on anything official. He uses dummy corporations for all his illegal transactions. On paper, he’s squeaky clean." He studied her, his gaze intense. "That’s why I need your help."