Page 4 of Rebel Protector

Becca, Markov’s assistant, returned. “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?” Even her voice was sweet, like honey.

“We’re good.” He waved her away, and she left the room, but not before shooting a curious, appreciative glance in Ghost direction.

CHAPTER 2

Damn.

Becca fanned herself as she left the office. Why was she always attracted to the wrong type of guys? Outlaws, bad boys, surfer bums, you name it. If there was a badass in the vicinity, she was totally hooked. Even at school, she’d been attracted to the boy who smoked behind the bike shed or backchatted the teachers. It was a miracle she’d kept out of trouble herself. Right now, her hormones were buzzing, and she’d only served the guy tea!

Down girl, she told herself firmly.He is off limits.

That man oozed danger—she could see it a mile away. It surrounded him, from his deep-set dark eyes that held a thousand secrets, to the sharp line of his jaw. But he wasn’t just some bad boy with attitude. He dressed like a soldier—khaki combat pants and a fitted T-shirt stretched to breaking point across his hard, muscular body.

Everything about him screamed mercenary.

Then there were his hands. Strong and capable, the kind that had taken the delicate china teacup from her but were clearly more at home gripping an assault rifle or submachine gun.

She’d seen his type before. Hell, this place was surrounded by armed guards 24/7. They were all ex-military, hardened warmongers. She blew a strand of hair out of her face. Except none of them looked like Domínguez.

He carried himself like a predator on the hunt—coiled, dangerous, always ready. She got the impression that he knew just how much trouble he was capable of and didn’t care. He was the kind of man who took risks most wouldn’t dream of—and still came out alive.

This one was trouble. And God help her, she liked it.

“Panama is a dangerous place,” Markov had explained when she’d first started her job. “Many people don’t want to see me succeed. That’s why we have so much security, and why you have to live on the hacienda.”

Despite her better judgment, she’d agreed.

To be fair, he was paying her a small fortune to be at his beck and call. She managed his house, hired and fired his staff—if he didn’t fire them first—and organized his life so it ran like clockwork. In addition to playing housekeeper, she was also his unofficial secretary and tea girl. She even bought gifts for his mistress, a Colombian supermodel who lived in one of his Panama City apartments.

Becca enjoyed her job, trying not to dwell on the fact that she was, essentially, a virtual prisoner. Whenever she needed to go into town, one of the bodyguards escorted her, and she was blindfolded for the journey there and back.

“It’s for your own protection,” Markov had told her. “So that if you’re kidnapped, you won’t be able to lead anyone back here.” It wasn’t a comforting thought, but somehow appealed to her crazy, inexplicable attraction to danger.

One day she’d push it too far, she knew that, but so far, so good. Nothing untoward had happened, apart from a skirmish at the gate last month when a local man caused a fuss. He’d beenswiftly dealt with, and there hadn’t been any issues since. So, she put the risks out of her mind and focused on growing her bank account. When it came time to leave, she’d have a decent nest egg to start over with.

She watched from her office window as Domínguez was chaperoned out into the yard. He was a hulk of a man with wide shoulders and a commanding presence. Even from this angle, he sizzled with unbridled power.

Her eyes widened as Ramirez shook his hand. Now, that didn’t happen very often, certainly not with just another employee. Ramirez was Markov’s money man, and he didn’t waste time talking to the security detail. He liked to think he was above all that, when in fact, his hands were just as grubby as Markov’s.

Oh, she knew her boss was a crook. She’d have to be an idiot not to notice the shady deals, the late-night visitors, and the sleezy, nefarious characters he associated with. The official line was that he imported farming equipment from the U.S. and sold it to companies in Central and South America—but that was only a cover.

What he really did was something she preferred not to think about. It didn’t impact her job, and it was in her best interest not to know too much.

Markov had once asked her how much she knew about his organization. It had been a loaded question, so she’d smiled sweetly and told him it was none of her business. He seemed to accept that and hadn’t brought it up again.

That brute henchman of Markov’s, Carlos, put a bag over Domínguez’s head and guided him into the back seat of the SUV. She shivered at the memory of the times he’d done the same to her. He always managed to get in a grope or two once she was blindfolded—his hand brushing her breast or lingering on herback. And the way he leered at her… She knew what he wanted to do to her— not that he’d ever get the chance.

Now she took her own eye mask with her, so he had no excuse to touch her. That pissed him off, but she didn’t care. The guy was a creep.

She guessed they were taking the bad boy mercenary back to Panama City. For some inexplicable reason, she was sorry to see him go. It wasn’t just because he was a chiseled beast of a man that made her pulse race, or that when he’d fixed his dangerous dark eyes on her, her stomach had clenched with want.

No, it was something else. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Curious, she pulled up the file she’d put together on him for her boss the previous week. Markov asked her to do background checks on all the men he hired. She’d even done one on his mistress, Adriana Sanchez, who apart from dating a minor drug dealer in 2015, was disappointingly clean.

Becca gave a soft snort. Her own past was shadier than that.

Her eyes scanned the screen. Ben Alfredo Domínguez, who went by “Dom,” was an American. He’d left school at sixteen and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. His father was a dock worker from Jacksonville, but there was no mention of his mother. With some additional digging, Becca had discovered she’d died in a car accident on the Gulf Coast when Dom was ten.