by Desiree Holt
Finally, she nodded. “Okay. You’re right. I’m trying not to be frightened, but….”
“Anyone would be in this situation,” he told her. “But let’s be smart about it, okay?”
“Okay. I’ll go pack some things.”
He watched her as she walked out of the room, trying to focus on who could be behind this rather than on her very sexy ass. He wondered how long it would take before Omega got back to him with information. And how he would keep his libido in check until this was over.
Chapter Four
Hawkeye’s house had surprised her. A brick two story on a quiet street in an older neighborhood in South Tampa, surrounded by mature trees. He had obviously done a lot of work on the house. The floors were highly polished hardwood as were the moldings and the bannister on the stairwell. One of his bedrooms had been turned into a weight and exercise room. No surprise there. Everything in the house, including the meager display of photos, was set with military precision.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she had expected. Maybe bare walls, cement floors, and a cot for a bed?
And the kitchen had been a total shock. High-end appliances, expensive granite countertops, carved cabinets. It offered a view of him that was unexpected.
“I wanted a place to decompress whenever I was home,” he’d explained to her that first night. “Someplace a world away from where I am the rest of the time.”
This was their third day together, and Maddie’s nerves were stretched raw. Hawkeye never took the same route to her school twice, or the same route home. Twice, he’d thought someone might be on their tail, so he drove onto the interstate, blended with traffic, then cut across three lanes to make a quick exit.
He was also busy on his laptop while she was at work. She knew he was on the phone a lot with The Omega Team. He’d peppered her with so many questions about her life for as far back as she could remember, her head was spinning.
“I can’t imagine anything I’ve ever done or anyone I’ve known would be responsible for this,” she continued to protest. “Whatever this is.”
“It’s impossible to predict what will trigger someone,” Hawkeye told her. “And I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t look in every nook and cranny of your life. Omega takes what I send them, feeds it into their extraterrestrial computer system, and looks for the one tiny little thing that might be the clue to this.”
“It creeps me out to think this might be someone I know.” Creeped was definitely the word. She walked around with a constant sick feeling in her stomach.
He studied her for a long moment, his face implacable. At last he said, “No romantic entanglements? No boyfriends hanging around?”
She spread out her hands, waving around herself. “Have you seen anyone show up? The last one was such a jerk, I put myself on a dating diet.”
For a moment, she thought something flashed in his eyes, but then it was gone.
“One less thing to worry about, then. But the school—”
“Is nonnegotiable,” she insisted. “You’re such a hotshot soldier. Deal with it. Anyway, we have an armed resource officer if I need him.”
At the cold look on his face, she wished she could take back the words. She hadn’t meant them the way they sounded, but damn! The man put her off balance. She seemed to lose her sense of equilibrium around him.
He’d figured out a routine as far as school was concerned, one she’d accepted as the best of the alternatives. She told the key people her cousin was in town staying with her. That her car was being serviced so they were using his rental, so he’d be driving her back and forth to work. She’d left it up to him to figure out what to say if someone stopped him wandering in the halls. He had programmed her cell phone with his number on speed dial, so she only had to press one button if trouble came calling.
Most of the day, however, he spent in the coffee shop across the street, working on his laptop and keeping an eye on the school. He explained to her about the Web sites he’d been given access to and that he was checking out every detail of her life.
“I have to,” he explained. “You never know what exactly could be a trigger.”
“But my life is unexciting,” she protested. “That’s the truth.”
“Apparently not, or this wouldn’t be happening.”
At the end of the day, he’d ask her questions about certain information he’d found but even he had to admit he couldn’t find a damn thing that would set something like this off.
He monitored everything she did, every call she got on her cell phone, every contact. There had been no more incidents, probably because she hadn’t been home or driving in her car. Hawkeye was alert and vigilant every minute, always aware of what was happening around them.
When he asked if she had another picture of her parents, she told him no, but the sick feeling increased.
“You think it might have something to do with them?”
“I don’t know what it might have to do with.” He was always truthful with his answers. “But then again—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “No stone unturned and all that. Do you really think someone’s been following us from my school?”
“If they were, we lost them each time. I don’t want them to know where you’re staying, either. Although I’d love it if they made a try for you here. They’d be buying more trouble than they ever thought of.”
Since that night, they had walked around each other like two rattlers trying to decide which one would strike first. She hadn’t known exactly what to expect when Gretchen’s cousin said he was sending one of his Delta Force buddies to help out. The term warrior had certainly been created for this man. And she had to admit she felt safe with him in charge of her.
Still, it was hard not to be on edge. The security precautions alone were a continuous reminder of the lurking danger. Every time she saw a gray car close to them in traffic, she wondered if it was the one. Hawkeye had been able to use one of the many Web site links Omega had sent him to check license plates, but, of course, they all came back clean.
“My guess is they ditched it right after the incident at Gretchen’s,” he told her. “But I’ll still keep checking.”
Every phone call filled her with dread, although she didn’t think whoever this was had her number. Sudden noises startled her, and, even with Hawkeye sleeping across the hall from her and with all his security precautions, she slept fitfully. She imagined she heard footsteps in the hall or saw a shadow outside the window.
She didn’t tell any of this to Hawkeye. She didn’t want him to think she was a nut, jumping at shadows. The one place where she felt safe was at school, and they’d argued over how to handle things there. She refused to let him say anything to anyone at the school about the situation.
“They’ll think I’m a danger to the students,” she pointed out. “And they won’t let me come back to work until whatever this is gets resolved.”
“Not a bad idea,” he agreed.
“My job is everything to me,” she cried. “It’s the most important thing in my life.”
As if she wasn’t on edge enough, the unexpected sexual pull between the two of them had them walking around each other like nervous cats on a high wire. Tonight, sitting as usual at the island counter working on the next day’s lesson plans, every nerve and molecule of her body was tuned to high frequency, waiting for him to change and come back to the kitchen.
“I’m thinking of cooking tonight, instead of takeout. Any preferences?”
She startled, her hand jerking on the paper. He walked so softly, she hadn’t heard him come into the room. He wore his usual outfit of sweat pants and cropped T-shirt. She couldn’t help noticing the way the sweat pants hung on his lean hips. Then her eyes were drawn to the narrow strip of abdomen between the cutoff T-shirt and the waist of his pants. Drool actually collected in her mouth, and that throb at the core of her sex pounded so hard she had to squeeze her thighs together.
Stop, stop, stop!<
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“Maddie?” Hawkeye’s voice broke into her reverie.
“What?” She blinked and forced herself back to reality.
“Dinner,” he repeated. “Cooking. Preference.”
“You cook?” She raised an eyebrow. Somehow, it didn’t fit her image of him.
He waved a hand around his space-age kitchen, with its granite counters and top-of-the-line appliances. “I didn’t put this all in just to look at it. It relaxes me.” He said the word with an almost hostile tone. “A lot of men do.”
“Of course! I didn’t mean— It’s nice. Better than nice.” Could she sound any more like an idiot? Maybe if he’d relax a little, she could, too.
“So, food, Maddie.” Exasperation edged his tone. “Are you okay? Did something happen you aren’t telling me?”
“No. Sorry. Whatever you make is good. I’m not fussy.”
“Fine.”
Maddie blew out a breath and brushed a stray hair from her cheek. She watched him take steaks out of the fridge and place them and large potatoes on the counter, then tried to concentrate on the project on her laptop. She wondered if the tension in the house could get any thicker.
But the sizzle of electricity, whether either of them wanted to admit it, had been there from the moment he’d walked into Gretchen’s house. He was all male, so powerfully masculine she didn’t know how women kept their hands off him. Lying in bed at night, she kept imagining how he’d look with his clothes off. That was so not like her. Not even a little. Had he looked at her with those hard green eyes and bewitched her somehow? Was he as attracted to her as she was to him? Was that what she saw in his eyes when he gave her those hooded looks? Riding back and forth to work in the car with him didn’t help the situation, either. Or was he inventing ways to keep her from throwing herself at him and making a fool of herself?
All this ran through her mind again as she stared at the screen of her laptop. It seemed her brain had taken a vacation, giving way to her hormones. Water, that’s what she needed. Ice water. With lots of ice cubes, to cool down the raging inferno her body was fast becoming.
She slipped off the barstool and headed to the cupboard where he kept the glasses. At the moment she turned with one in her hand, Hawkeye turned also, toward the refrigerator. Their bodies collided, literally. She froze, unable to move, so close to him not even a sheet of paper would fit between them. Her nipples pressed into the hard wall of his chest, and she could feel the swollen thickness of his cock barely camouflaged by the sweat pants. Oh, yes, he was as affected as she was.
She was at once exhilarated and afraid, unsure what to do.
Hawkeye solved the problem for her. He took the glass from her hand, set it on the counter, and cradled her head in his hands. Holding it steady, his mouth descended and claimed hers. This was no gentle kiss, no soft press of lips. He stroked his tongue over her mouth once, twice, then….
“Open for me.”
It was a command, and she didn’t have the will to disobey. Obediently, she parted her lips, and his tongue swept in like a marauder, hot and powerful, stroking through every area of her mouth. Coaxing her tongue to dance with his. When they broke the kiss, she was out of breath, panting, thrown completely off balance by the power of it.
Hawkeye still held her head in place, his breath a warm wind drifting across her face. The power of the kiss had left her shell-shocked. Hawkeye still had his gaze locked with hers, as if waiting for some signal from her, but she was frozen in place. Then, as if her very lack of movement was the signal he was waiting for, he lowered his lips to hers again. This time, however, the touch was gentler, softer, the sweep of his tongue more sensuous as he tasted every inch of her mouth.
The kiss was like a drug, banishing reason and stimulating all her senses. This time, she met his tongue with her own, dueling, dancing, giving as good as she got. She’d never had a kiss this erotic or electric, and she never wanted it to end. When he lifted his head, he studied her face for a long time, stroking his thumbs over her cheekbones.
“This is a big mistake,” he said at last.
Her stomach tightened. “Why?”
“For one thing, you’re under my protection. Never screw with the subject of an op. That’s a rule.”
She tried to get a read on him, but his face gave away nothing. “Is that what I am? An op?”
“Practically speaking. You’re also a good friend of Ghost’s cousin. He’d chop my balls into tiny pieces if he knew.”
She managed a tiny smile. “But he doesn’t have to know, right?” Maddie wondered where she was getting all this courage. She’d never been an aggressive lover, in any situation. But maybe, she thought, because no one had ever turned her on the way Hawkeye St. John did.
“But I know,” he pointed out. “And I have a conscience, believe it or not.”
“Would it matter if I told you I fully expect you to walk out of my life as soon as this is over?”
“Do you? Because that’s what will happen.” He touched his mouth to hers. “I’ll be back on full active duty before long. I’m away for long periods of time. I—”
She pressed her fingertips to his lips. “None of that matters in the here and now.”
“Yeah?” He quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t seem like a here-and-now type of woman.”
“Here and now someone I don’t know is after me for something I’m not aware of and something could happen to me any minute. So, here and now is what’s important to me.” She paused then gave him a tiny smile. “Here and now.”
He studied her again, this time for so long she had no idea what to expect. She knew he was waging some kind of battle within himself. If he decided this would compromise him too much, she’d live with that, although not too happily. She didn’t expect to have anything more than this with him, but she wanted it to pull out and hold tight after he walked out of her life.
At the moment she was getting ready to push herself out of his arms, he lifted her up and carried her out of the kitchen. “I may go to hell for this,” he muttered, “but I’m damn sure going to make the trip worth it.”
He carried her up the stairs to his big master bedroom, pausing only to rip back the covers from the huge king-sized bed. He stood her on her feet, cupped her cheeks again, and gave her a penetrating look. Maddie help her breath, waiting to see what he would say.
“Last chance to change your mind.” His voice held a deep, guttural tone to it.
She sure wasn’t going to let him back out of this. It had taken most of her courage to get this far. Now, she wanted the full ride. Hawkeye St. John was more man than she’d ever been with.
“I’m not changing my mind.” Her words were almost a whisper.
In the next moment, he took her mouth in another ravaging kiss, stealing her breath and sending every pulse point pounding with need. Without breaking the kiss, he slipped his hands around and beneath her shirt. Then she felt their heat as he cupped her breasts, squeezed them gently, and rubbed his thumbs back and forth over her now hardened nipples. When he pinched them, a moan drifted in the air and she was startled to realize it had come from her. He broke the kiss with obvious reluctance but then coasted his mouth along the line of her jaw and down her neck, setting off torrents of sensation wherever he touched her.
“Off,” he murmured against her skin, tugging up the bottom of the T-shirt.
She hadn’t even realized he’d unclasped her bra until he removed it along with her top. His hands were magic, clasping and squeezing. The pressure of his fingers and thumbs on her oh-so-sensitive nipples sent shards of pleasure through her. She closed her eyes against the incredible sensation then gasped as his wet, hot mouth closed around one aching, pebbled tip. When he moved to the other nipple, the cool air on her damp flesh made every nerve tingle. The walls of her sex spasmed, hungry for the feel of his cock inside her. She squeezed her legs together and clutched his rock-hard biceps to steady herself.
His skin was warm and taut over hard muscles and
carried the slight outdoorsy scent of whatever soap he used. She wanted to touch and lick every single inch of his incredible body. He lifted his head at last, and Maddie opened her eyes to look at him, stunned by the intensity of the dark hunger she saw in his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat.
“You make me lose my mind,” he growled.
“Me, too,” she whispered.
He stepped back only long enough to rip his T-shirt over his head and toss it to the side. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her close to his body, the curls of fine hair on his chest touching her sensitive nipples like little sparks of fire. Maddie ran her hands up and down his back, loving the feel of the steel muscles beneath the warm skin.
Hawkeye cupped her breasts again, licking first one then the other, before once more taking a step back.
“You have too many clothes on. I want to see every inch of you.”
She trembled as he undid the button and zipper on her shorts then pushed them down her legs. She kicked them aside, leaving her only in a lacy pink thong. He ran his gaze over her, taking in every inch of her one slow look at a time. With the tip of one finger, he traced the edge of the lace on the upper edge of the thong, back and forth, back and forth, teasing, teasing.
“Jesus.” He blew out a breath. “You should be classified as illegal.”
Warmth rushed through Maddie at his words. None of the men she’d been in relationships with had ever looked at her this way or made her feel as desired. She was willing to bet Hawkeye St. John could make her come with his words alone.
“You still have your sweat pants on,” she pointed out.
“Damn right. Once I take them off, it’s all over but the shouting, and I’m not nearly ready for that yet.”
The words had barely left his mouth before he nudged her backwards until she was on the bed, bracing herself with her hands. Hawkeye knelt between her thighs and placed a string of kisses up the inside of one leg and down the other. Even as sensations began to cascade through her, Maddie had one moment to be thankful she’d kept up with her wax appointments.