“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I am, okay?” Seth knew what a killer looked like, could see that death in their eyes. He saw that look in his own eyes every time he glanced in a mirror. Diana’s eyes had shadows, yes, but not from the sort of memories he lived with every day. He could see Diana shooting Moore in self-defense because she couldn’t take his abuse any longer. But in cold blood, in the middle of the street? No, she just wasn’t the type. “You aren’t a killer.”
“I could have hired someone to do it.”
Yes, she could. But again, Seth knew she hadn’t. Because, whether she pulled the trigger or not, Diana would still have been responsible for the death of another human being. “You didn’t do that either,” he dismissed confidently. “But someone did.”
She tensed. “You don’t think it was merely a random shooting like the officials at the embassy did?”
“No.”
She drew in a shuddering breath. “Do you think Jeremy’s death could also have something to do with my apartment being broken into and the feeling I have of being followed?”
Seth looked at Diana with appreciation; not only beautiful and intelligent but intuitive too. “I think how he spent his time in Colombia is worth a second look, yes.” Including this woman’s kidnapping. If Diana had told Moore she was leaving him and getting a divorce, something that could have been detrimental to his career, then there was no telling how he might have reacted. What he would have done to stop that from happening.
Including arranging to have his own wife kidnapped for ransom?
A ransom Stephen Baxter had willingly paid, but Diana still hadn’t been released. Which was usually the time Seth, or someone like him, was called in to go and get them out.
Now that he knew more of the facts, Seth found it interesting that Diana was one of the kidnap victims who hadn’t been released even though the ransom had been paid. She had been a woman about to leave and divorce her husband. A husband whose career might have suffered as a consequence. Moore would have been so much more deserving of sympathy as a widower, than as a man who was being divorced by his wife because he had physically abused her.
But maybe Seth was jumping ahead of himself. There was still the possibility that Diana’s work at the museum was at the root of this particular problem. If there was a problem.
Nothing Diana had told him so far had convinced Seth she wasn’t imagining things. Her marriage had been traumatic, the kidnapping even more so, the cause of her widowhood shocking. Who could blame her for being a little paranoid after all that? Hell, he might have felt a little paranoid himself in those circumstances.
The fact he wasn’t wholly convinced didn’t mean she wasn’t telling him the truth.
Plus Seth had this niggling itch.
A feeling.
And he knew better than to ignore his own feelings, that to do so could get someone killed. In this case, that someone might be Diana Moore.
“Are you going to fly back to Paris with me later today or not?”
Seth had never been a sucker for a sob story. He had seen too much, been involved in most of it, to underestimate what human beings were capable of doing to each other.
But Diana hadn’t attempted to tell him a sob story. Her eyes had teared up a couple of times, but she hadn’t actually cried, not once, through any of the things she had confided in him last night or today. Some of them things it seemed even her own parents didn’t know about her.
Seth was reacting to this situation purely on instinct. An instinct that had never let him down in the past, and he was relying on it not to fail him now either.
“I am, yes—” He didn’t get any further as Diana launched herself into his arms.
“Thank you. Thank you. Oh thank you!” She clung to him, her face and eyes alight with her relief.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Seth’s voice was a guttural rasp.
She stilled, her brow creased in puzzlement. “Thanking you—”
“That’s not thanking me. This is thanking me.” Seth’s arms tightened about her waist and his hands cupped her bottom as he made her aware of the reaction of his body, both to her kisses and her close proximity. A reaction he’d been fighting since he’d kissed her in the bar yesterday evening. A reaction that hadn’t lessened in the slightest in the hours since, despite his having pumped his cock to release in the shower last night and again this morning.
This woman pressed every one of his arousal buttons without even trying.
Diana’s breath caught in her throat as Seth’s mouth came crashing down on hers, bruising her lips as he forced them apart with the probe of his tongue, even as he ground the hardness of his long and aroused erection against her.
Her response was as instantaneous. A hot gush of desire between her thighs, her nipples engorging, aching to be touched, caressed, pulled.
It had been so long since she had been physically close to someone. Since she had allowed anyone to be physically close to her. And Seth was like no other man she had ever met. Big. Rough. Dangerous.
She groaned low in her throat as she returned the heat of his kiss, tongues dueling, entwining, Diana asking, wanting everything this man had to give her. Wanting the complete oblivion the roughness of his desire promised. She wasn’t able to think of anything else when Seth kissed her. Didn’t want to think, only wanted to feel.
She felt now, as the warmth of one of his hands moved beneath her sweater to cup her swollen, lace-covered breast, finger and thumb unerringly finding her nipple through that thin material before squeezing just enough to cause her to gasp.
He broke the kiss to trail the heat of his lips and tongue down the column of her arched throat, at the same time as he continued to cup her breast and squeeze her nipple, nudging the lace material aside so that he could grasp her bared flesh.
Diana whimpered softly in her throat when Seth pushed her jumper up before pulling the cup of her bra completely out of the way and his mouth latched on to her bared flesh. He suckled deep and hard, elongating her nipple as his tongue rasped roughly over that sensitized nubbin. Again and again, harder and deeper, until he had the whole of the areola in his mouth as he suckled greedily.
She was so aroused, so lost in the pleasure, she was barely aware of Seth unfastening the button to her jeans, or the soft rasp of the zip as it was lowered. “Oh God, yes,” she gasped achingly when the heat of his hand slid beneath the lace of her panties, palm cupping her mound, his fingers dipping into the profusion of wetness gushing between her thighs, before those fingers moved higher and he began to stroke her swollen, throbbing clit.
The pleasure began to swell and surge inside her in waves that grew higher and then higher still, Diana’s hands moving upward and her fingers becoming entangled in the heavy thickness of Seth’s hair as she held him to her, pleading, demanding more. He gave it to her, the pleasure-pain of those straight white teeth biting down on her nipple sending her over the edge as she was claimed by the explosion of her release.
Seth continued to suckle and bite her nipple, his thumb stroking against her clit and two of his fingers entering her to thrust deeply, quickly taking her to that edge again, and then over. Her second orgasm was even stronger than the first, causing Diana to buck and arch her hips into the rhythm of those thrusting fingers.
Seth stilled as he wondered what the fuck he was doing.
The woman he now held in his arms, caught in the throes of her second orgasm, had suffered through more in the last year than most people did in a lifetime, and now he couldn’t keep his fucking hands off her. Or his mouth, for that matter.
And he wanted more. Wanted to pull her jeans and panties down and put his mouth where his hand was, to taste between her thighs, to lick and drink her down as he brought her to climax after climax, until she begged him to stop. Seth knew he could make it so good for her that she became so lost in pleasure she never wanted it to end.
He didn’t want it to end. What he di
d want was those lips tasting and then wrapping about his cock as Diana took him to the back of her throat and sucked him deep. Then he wanted her to straddle his hips and take him inside her—
Jesus, he was on the edge of coming merely thinking about having all that luscious heat wrapped around the throbbing of his cock.
So much for his precious rules. So much for never becoming involved with a client. So much—
Oh fuck it.
Fuck, fuck, fuck it.
Dragging himself back from the edge of release was agony. Sheer fucking agony.
His cock jerked in protest and his balls ached when he pulled his hand out of her panties and released her red, distended nipple from his mouth. He placed his hands on the tops of her arms to put her away from him.
Diana’s eyes were still closed, her lips parted and swollen, her cheeks flushed, her clothes in complete disarray and revealing her bared breast. Her jeans and panties were pushed down far enough to show the top of the damp, silky red curls between her thighs.
She looked gorgeous.
Totally fuckable.
Her lids fluttered open to reveal eyes of deep unfocused blue. She blinked several times, as if trying to get her bearings, to remember where she was. Who she was with. Who she had allowed to finger-fuck her into not one orgasm but two.
She had been married to a man who looked like an angel but inside was a monster, and now she had been kissed by a scarred man who sometimes killed people for a living.
Seth could see all that in her eyes as she gazed at him in horror, her cheeks paling as she quickly turned away and began to straighten her clothing.
He shouldn’t have kissed her. Certainly shouldn’t have touched her. And kept on touching her.
It had to stop. Now. He didn’t have the luxury of allowing his cock to rule his head. That sort of distraction could get them both killed.
It stopped now.
“Maybe we should consider that the first payment for services rendered.”
Diana froze, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she frowned at Seth. “What do you mean…?”
His mouth turned back in a sneer. “You can consider what we just did as being your down payment on my fee. I’d appreciate a little cocksucking next time, though. I like to come as much as you obviously do.”
“You want… You expect…” She gave a shake of her head as she lifted her chin. “That’s not going to happen.”
He folded his arms. “No?”
Her jaw tightened. “I have the money to pay you whatever you think your services are worth.”
“Don’t you mean Daddy does?”
“No,” she bit out. “I have money of my own.”
“From Moore’s life insurance policy?”
She appeared startled. “How do you know about that?”
He shrugged. “The two of you took out life insurance policies on each other when you married. A sort of poor man’s prenup agreement,” he added derisively.
Her nostrils flared. “I have the money to pay you. It shouldn’t matter to you where it came from.”
“It doesn’t.” His mouth tilted up at the corners. “Maybe I would prefer the cocksucking as payment?”
“That’s too bad.”
“Sure?”
No, Diana wasn’t sure at all.
She did know she wanted to wipe that knowing sneer off Seth’s lips. To tell him to go to hell. To call him the bastard he was currently being.
And if she did, what then?
Who else was she going to ask for help if Seth Armstrong turned her away?
Chapter 4
“Well, it would seem none of this was only your imagination, after all.”
Diana was too shocked at the state of her hotel room to be able to answer Seth’s dryly drawled comment as he stood in the doorway.
The room was a mess.
The few clothes she had brought with her had been taken out of her bag and were now strewn across the floor, including everything from her toiletry bag. The pillows and bedclothes were thrown off the bed, the mattress half on and half off the firmer base. The empty drawers in the dressing table and the bedside units were all left open, the wardrobe doors flung wide to reveal it contained only empty coat hangers. Even the generic pictures on the walls were all askew.
As if someone had been searching the room for something specific.
Diana still had no idea what that something could be.
In spite of the mess, she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing Seth had no choice now but to believe her—
“Unless you’re just a slob?”
Diana turned to glare at him as he came fully into the room and closed the door behind him. “Or maybe I wrecked the room before coming to find you yesterday, so that if you came back to my hotel with me, this might help to convince you I’m telling the truth?”
He raised dark brows. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“No?” she challenged.
He half smiled. “Maybe for a second or two.”
“That’s what I thought.” Diana stepped farther into the room and began to gather her belongs from the floor.
She had been too angry with Seth, and too stunned by what happened between the two of them, to even attempt to make conversation on the drive to her hotel. Seth had seemed equally as lost in his own thoughts. Thoughts that seemed to have put a permanent scowl on his brow.
Only for the two of them to discover this mess once Diana had unlocked the door and entered her hotel room.
Obviously someone had broken in during her overnight stay at Seth’s house.
Tears blurred her vision as she collected her things, knowing she was never going to be able to wear the bra and panties again, especially when some unknown person had touched them. Her nightgown and robe either, or her spare sweater. They could all go in the bin.
“What’s this?”
Diana turned to look at Seth and the sketch pad he was holding in his hand. “I draw.”
He shot her an impatient glance. “I can see that.”
She shrugged. “I’m not good enough to be professional, but I enjoy it anyway.”
Seth flicked through the dozen or so sketches. An older couple, the woman still beautiful and bearing a strong resemblance to Diana, so probably her mother, the man white-haired with a beard, obviously her father. Several Parisian winter scenes. A—
He flicked back to the previous sketch of the Champs-Élysées. The same man, dark and swarthy, was in the background of this drawing as was in the later one of a water taxi. “Is this him?”
Diana looked up with a frown before walking over to look at the sketch he indicated. “Yes,” she sighed, “that’s the man I’ve thought was following me.”
The same man Seth had seen sitting in an armchair in the busy lobby of the hotel when they entered a few minutes ago.
It was second nature to Seth to always check out his surroundings, to note the people, as well as possible exits. There had been nothing about the man downstairs that stood out as being unusual as he sat reading a newspaper, but Seth had committed his face to memory anyway, as he had everyone else in the busy lobby of this London hotel.
The likeness to that man in Diana’s sketch pad was very good.
The several likenesses, Seth discovered as he looked at the rest of the drawings and saw the same man in half a dozen of the Parisian sketches. As proof the man had followed Diana to London, as she’d claimed he had.
“Why the hell didn’t you bring this with you last night and show it to me then?” Seth demanded.
She shrugged. “Those sketches could just be a coincidence. Prove nothing.”
Not now they couldn’t. But last night, when he had thought she was paranoid? Maybe. Definitely not now he had seen the man downstairs in the lobby. Although he doubted the man would still be there now that he knew Diana hadn’t come back to the hotel alone.
What might have happened to her if she had?
Would the man have followed her up
to the room, impatient over not finding whatever it was he was looking for, and possibly beaten the answer out of her? Whatever that answer might be.
He studied Diana through narrowed lids as she moved about the room collecting her belongings. What the hell did she know—have—that someone was willing to go to these lengths to retrieve it? Diana claimed she didn’t know or have anything someone might want.
Which brought Seth straight back to Jeremy Moore.
What could the bastard possibly have been into during those few months he’d worked in Colombia? The obvious answer was drugs. Buying or selling? Or maybe carrying? Moore’s position as a British diplomat, his visits back to England in the course of his job, would no doubt have helped in that enterprise.
Except there was no way the other man could have carried enough drugs to warrant someone looking through Diana’s meager luggage for it.
Although this mess was certainly a distraction from what had happened between the two of them earlier. Which, as far as Seth was concerned, was another mess. One of his own creation.
The more time he spent in Diana’s company, the more attracted he became, but he shouldn’t have allowed it to get as out of hand as he had this morning.
Because the memory of it, and the conversation afterward, was there between them now, below the surface of every word they spoke, every glance they gave each other.
An acute awareness.
A desire.
An acute desire.
“I would have thought to show you the sketches eventually,” Diana continued distractedly. “Yesterday I was more interested in convincing you to help me, than showing you sketches of a man who may or may not be following me.”
Oh, Seth had no doubt now that Diana was being followed.
It was his job to find out why.
“That was…comfortable.” It was one word Diana could think of to describe the private jet she and Seth had used to fly to a private airfield near Paris. Decadent, luxurious, and indulgent were three others.
When Seth told her he had made arrangements for the two of them to fly to Paris that afternoon, she assumed he had booked himself a seat on the same flight as her own. It hadn’t even occurred to her it would be on the private jet owned by Grayson Security.
Rogue Alpha (Alpha 7) Page 4