Hot Ice (A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 7)

by Lynn Raye Harris

  Hearing her say fuck a minute ago had driven him insane—this was even better.

  When she came this time, he came with her, his balls tightening almost painfully before the pressure exploded and left him blinking and groaning and wondering where the hell he was for about two seconds.

  As he came back to himself, he could hear his phone ringing in the other room where it was still attached to his jeans. It was Cammie’s tone, and his heart sank even while he turned and grabbed a towel. He jumped out of the shower, wrapped it around his waist, and left Grace standing in the shower alone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GRACE WAS SPENT. Her body trembled and ached, but in the best ways possible. Little lightning bolts of sensation buzzed through her, aftershocks of the amazing sex she’d just had with Garrett. Nothing had ever felt so good before, so hot and illicit and addicting.

  What a revelation to know sex could be that amazing, that shattering.

  She finished washing, then turned off the shower and dried off. She didn’t have anything to put on, so she wrapped a towel around her body and went back into the bedroom. Garrett wasn’t there. She went out into the living room. He was standing by the back sliding glass door, staring out at the darkness, his phone to his ear.

  “Cammie, sweetheart, I love you more than anything in this world. Your mama is wrong about that.” He blew out a breath. “No, baby, I don’t know why she would think such a thing. Go back to sleep, honey, and I’ll call you tomorrow. Daddy’s on a job right now and—honey, don’t cry. Yes, I might have to go silent for a while, but don’t I always call you? And you know you can call your grandmama and grandpapa anytime, okay? I’ll never leave you, baby. Never.”

  Grace’s heart hurt listening to him. She thought maybe she should turn and go, give him some privacy, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move. He was a good man who loved his daughter, and apparently his ex-wife was in the business of making his life hell.

  “I love you too, baby. Go to sleep. … All right. … Good night.”

  His hand dropped to his side and he stood there, breathing hard and staring into the distance. Then he turned and put his fist into the wall as calmly as if he were taking a carton of juice from the fridge. Grace yelped in surprise. He looked up to see her standing there, but his expression didn’t soften.

  After everything they’d just done together, he looked at her like she was a stranger. And she guessed she was, but that didn’t mean she didn’t care that he’d just put his fist into a wall. There was a hole in the sheetrock where he’d punched it.

  “You better let me look at that,” she said, all business as she walked over to where he stood.

  He didn’t say a word as she picked up his hand and examined his knuckles. “Just some scrapes and a little bleeding.” She felt her way around the bones of his hand. “Nothing broken, though it’s going to hurt when the bruises start to form tomorrow.”

  “Grace.”

  She looked up then. His eyes were filled with anger and sorrow and so many emotions she couldn’t even name them all. He reached up with his other hand and brushed his fingers against her cheek.

  “You’re sweet. But my life… my life is complicated. Best to forget any of this happened tonight.”

  Her heart squeezed. “I can’t do that,” she said softly. “And I don’t want to.”

  He shook his head, his hand dropping away. “I can’t give you anything… You don’t even know who I am, what I do. You don’t know me at all.”

  She pulled in a breath. And then she put her hands on her hips. “You are one arrogant man, you know that? I haven’t asked you for anything beyond tonight, have I? Am I so pitiful to you that you think I can’t have uncomplicated sex, that because we’ve been intimate that must mean I think we’re going to get engaged or something? Do you really think so little of me?”

  “No.”

  It was a curt answer, but she didn’t care. “Then please don’t treat me like I’m fragile, okay? Do me the courtesy of allowing me to make my own decisions. I’ll deal with the consequences.”

  “You are an amazing woman, Grace Campbell,” he finally said after a long silence.

  “I’m pleased you think so.” She reached for his hand, tugged gently. “Now come to bed and let’s get some sleep.”

  She wanted to talk to him about his daughter, his ex-wife, about who he was and what he did, but she knew he wouldn’t want that intrusion into his life tonight.

  He didn’t resist her as she pulled him back to the bedroom. She stripped his towel off before removing her own, then pushed the covers back and climbed beneath them. She wasn’t sure what he would do, but he finally climbed in beside her. Then he took her in his arms, his hands gliding over her naked flesh. She shuddered, because that’s what happened when Garrett Spencer touched her, and dropped her mouth to his shoulder to bite the hard, smooth muscle there.

  He sucked in a breath as she sank her teeth in. It wasn’t a hard bite, no way, but it was meant to make him notice. He turned his head and captured her mouth, kissing her with a hot desperation that ignited the fire in her veins.

  Grace would have sworn she was too spent, too sore, to make love again. And even if she’d thought she was able, she would have sworn that Garrett couldn’t possibly get it up so quickly after that session in the shower.

  She would have been utterly, utterly wrong.

  *

  Breakfast was a simple affair of eggs and toast, served around ten a.m. after a lazy morning in bed. Garrett said he wasn’t much of a cook, but it turned out he was the better cook out of the two of them. Grace could microwave a frozen dinner or put together a bagged salad mix, but she was pretty hopeless when it came to anything that involved a stove.

  She sat across from Garrett and ate her eggs, trying not to stare at him as she did so. But after last night—oh, all she wanted to do was look at his beautiful body and let herself remember how much of it she’d explored.

  He was wearing a T-shirt, much to her dismay, and his jeans. She’d put on the yoga outfit from her gym bag. Her body ached, but in a good way. She definitely knew she’d been having sex—wild, hot sex with a man who knew how to make her crazy for him.

  She was tender, but if he wanted to go for another round right this minute, she’d spread her legs happily.

  After they’d gotten back in the bed last night, they’d ended up having another frantic round of sex that made her heart pound and her body crave even more. Then, much later, he’d woken her with the kind of soft, tender sex that she would have sworn they were incapable of having.

  But there’d been something intense about those slow, deliberate strokes, about the way her body responded to his in those moments, that was somehow even more exciting than the frantic sex they’d had earlier. And more frightening too.

  “So how long do we stay here?” she finally asked when the silence had stretched too tight.

  His head came up. “Until someone tells me it’s safe to go.”

  “What about the conference?” She had a plane to catch in five days, and while the thought of presenting her paper to a crowd of onlookers made her stomach sink and flip again and again, it was also important that she do so.

  “I don’t know. Your safety is top priority, so whatever keeps you safe is what will happen.”

  “I need to be at that conference, Garrett.”

  His gaze was steady—hard but not indifferent. “You have to trust that the people I work with know what they’re doing. And if they say it’s too dangerous, then it is.”

  “Then I guess we have to hope it’s not too dangerous.” Because she didn’t want to think about not being there. It was a big moment for her, a defining moment. Finally, she’d shine on her own instead of being the nerdy Campbell daughter who lived in the shadow of her famous family. She forked another bite of eggs and tried not to worry about something that hadn’t happened yet. “So who are these people you work for anyway?”

  His expression didn’t chan
ge, but she sensed a tightening in his demeanor. A certain wariness. “We’re an elite security firm. We provide personal security, rescue hostages, that kind of thing.”

  “Were you ever in the military?” Because he had that air of a former military man about him. There was a certain way they moved, a lingo. Her father had done military service once upon a time, before she was born, and he’d dealt with the military quite often over the years. She’d learned to recognize the signs.

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and she sighed. “That’s it? Just yes? What branch? How long did you serve? What did you do?”

  “Grace.” His voice was a growl of frustration. And then he blew out a breath. “I’m not that interesting. You want interesting, ask me how I got this assignment. Ask me what the defining quality was that separated me from my… associates.”

  She put her fork down and eyed him. “Okay, I’ll play. What made you the best candidate for the job?”

  He leaned toward her, and her breath shortened. For a moment, she thought he might kiss her, but he didn’t. He grinned.

  “My mother teaches Junior Cotillion in Paris, Georgia. I am her longest-serving pupil. My manners are impeccable.”

  She put a hand over her mouth to stop a giggle. Really, she was not a giggler. But Garrett and Cotillion… oh my. He was so raw and ruthless, with his tattooed body and dirty mouth, that she couldn’t imagine him as the perfect boy learning to waltz or perform introductions.

  “Your manners?” she finally managed. “Did someone expect Emily Post to jump from behind a bush somewhere and attack the way I held a fork? Oh, the horror.”

  He smirked. “Your father is a senator, and a potential nominee for the presidency. I suppose it was thought you might need to attend some events—and the man at your side ought not to make a faux pas like asking for lemon and milk in his tea.”

  Which would, of course, curdle the milk and make the tea undrinkable. Still, she tried to imagine Garrett with a china teacup and a scone—and it just didn’t work. Though, come to think of it, he’d been perfect at the banquet the other night. Her mother hadn’t even raised an eyebrow at him when they’d been introduced. Because he hadn’t offered his hand, she remembered. He’d been taught to wait until a lady offered hers.

  Well, who knew?

  She stared at him for a long moment, processing this information. And then she reached out and touched his hand. “And has it been an odious job for you? Would you rather be watching a fat banker or something? You could scratch and belch, and no one would care.”

  His gunmetal eyes met hers. “Definitely not odious. And if I need to scratch or belch, I’ll find a private corner.”

  She should have laughed, but the look in his eyes was too intense. It brought up the night and everything they’d done together. She dropped her gaze when the heat in her belly swirled too high. His knuckles were darkening with bruises, and she thought of him standing so quietly and calmly putting his fist in the wall.

  “Is your daughter okay, Garrett?”

  He dragged in a breath. “Yeah. But she’d be better if I could get her away from her mother.”

  She could hear the pain in his voice, and she wrapped her hand into his good one and squeezed. He didn’t pull away. “Tell me about her. Cammie, I mean.”

  She wasn’t sure he would, but then he started to talk.

  “She’s a good kid, smart and funny. But she’s emotional, like her mother—and when the two of them fight…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, and she found herself scooting her chair closer to him even though she knew she shouldn’t dig any deeper into his life. They’d already had amazing sex, and she already didn’t want that to end. She liked him. But what if she started to like him too much? What if hearing about his life made her care more than she should?

  He squeezed her hand. “She calls me when they fight. Her mother tells her things like I don’t love her and I’m never coming back. Melissa tells Cammie that I left because she was a bad girl. That we divorced because of her.”

  Grace’s heart throbbed. And her blood boiled. She wanted to wrap her hands around that woman’s throat and squeeze some sense into her. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He pulled his hand away and raked it through his hair. “I never talk about this. It’s too painful, and there’s nothing I can do. Her mother is perfectly sane when the courts are involved. If I tried to get custody, she’d act like the most perfect mom since Carol Brady or June Cleaver.”

  “But Cammie knows differently. Her testimony would mean something to a judge.”

  His eyes glittered with anger and maybe even a little bit of hate. “I won’t put her through that. She’s been through enough. If I just reassure her, stay in her life, and stay out of Melissa’s, then maybe it will calm down once there’s been enough time.”

  She wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but then she’d never been in an acrimonious relationship. And she was the product of a happy marriage, so she had no experience to offer. But still, she thought it was a futile hope that everything would work out okay. “Do you get visitation?”

  “Yes. I go as often as I can—but that’s difficult with my job. I’m often out of the country. Still, my parents get her when I can’t. She’s loved, and I intend to make sure she knows it.”

  “Have you thought of doing something different? Getting a different job?”

  His jaw hardened. “It’s not that easy. I have a… commitment to keep.”

  She sensed from his tone that he wasn’t about to share what that commitment was. “Then maybe someday, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Where’s Paris, Georgia?”

  “Nowhere.” He sighed. “It’s a small town about an hour from Savannah. That’s where Melissa—my ex—lives with Cammie, so it’s good for my parents. They can see Cammie often. She’s their only grandchild.”

  She wondered if he was the only child left since his brother had died, but she didn’t want to ask that. He’d already shared so many emotional things with her. And what had she shared with him?

  Well, there had been that moment when her ex-boyfriend informed her he was getting married and going to work for her father. That had been pretty emotional for her. And Garrett had been there when she’d been sent home from work, so there was that too.

  Still, neither of those things seemed as intense as losing a brother and a marriage. It almost made her feel selfish for being upset and hitting the wine yesterday.

  “How did you meet her mother?”

  “College. She was a psych major. Too bad I didn’t realize it was because she was so fucked-up she needed the self-analysis.”

  “Not all psych majors are crazy.”

  “No, but I got one who was. And I couldn’t see it because we were crazy hot together. Then she got pregnant.”

  “And you did the right thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked unhappy, and she wished she could take that unhappiness away. At the same time, she felt a little spear of jealousy that he’d had great sex with his ex. Or with anyone besides her.

  And just what is that about, Dr. Campbell?

  Grace stood and gathered their plates, then took them over to the sink and washed them. In truth, she didn’t quite know how to behave now that they’d been intimate. He’d told her it was one night of sex, and she’d accepted that.

  But she wanted more. She’d only just realized how incredibly addictive good sex could be, and she wanted more of it. It seemed unfair to have the best orgasm of your life only to be told that was all you were getting.

  She put the plates on the drying rack and turned. Garrett was still sitting at the table, but he was watching her with hot eyes.

  “You understand why we can’t have a relationship? Why this could never be about more than sex?”

  She leaned back against the sink, affecting a casual stance that belied the way her heart throbbed in her chest.

  “I didn
’t ask for a relationship, Garrett. I asked for sex. You said one night, and you gave that to me. So I guess we’re done.”

  “Yeah, I guess we are.” But he stood and stalked toward her anyway. And when he snaked an arm around her waist and tugged her against him, she gasped at the evidence of his arousal.

  Her hands spread over his chest, her gaze tangling with his.

  He lowered his head to hers. “But maybe we don’t have to be just yet…”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HE WAS BREAKING ALL HIS RULES, but goddamn if he couldn’t help himself. Garrett stripped Grace naked right there in the kitchen, then picked her up and fucked her against a wall because he couldn’t take the time to make it to a horizontal surface. Fortunately, he’d put a condom in his pocket, though when he’d done so he’d asked himself why he bothered.

  This was why, he thought, as he poured himself into Grace’s hot body with a broken groan and a curse. Grace felt so damn good in his arms. So electric and alive, not at all the buttoned-up scientist she seemed at first glance. Her eyes were closed and her skin glistened with sweat. Her legs gripped him hard, and she was making noises that turned him on even more.

  He’d told Brandy when his teammate had admitted to being in love with Victoria Royal that there wasn’t a woman alive with a pussy golden enough he needed to keep going back for more. So why then did he feel this incredible urge to keep going back to Grace? And why did he think Brandy would be laughing his ass off if he could see Garrett now?

  He’d only just crossed over to the dark side with her last night, here in this cabin, but he was already so fucking addicted it was unreal.

  Though maybe it was the fact he’d been busy lately and unable to indulge. Grace was much-needed stress relief. And he had a lot of stress to relieve.