Man of the Hour

by Diana Palmer

  Lang’s face went hard and he actually flinched. “No, she shouldn’t have,” he agreed. “I’m chief of security here, and I thought he’d given it up. My mistake.”

  “It could have been a fatal one, for her,” the older man said brutally.

  Lang’s eyes were anguished. “Don’t you think I know that?” He gritted out the words.

  Something in his expression made the other man leave it alone. He apologized once again to Kirry and left with his partner.

  “I have to drive it home,” Kirry said dully.

  “You do not. We’ll lock it and leave it. For one thing, it will have to be cleaned before you can drive it again.”

  “Oh. Yes, I see, I hadn’t realized…” She went to lock it, feeling numb from the brain down.

  Lang helped her into his car and drove her back to her apartment. “I’m sorry,” he said through his teeth.

  “It isn’t your job to watch just me all the time,” she said patiently. “You have lots of people to protect.”

  “I really thought he was through. It’s been almost two weeks since we’ve even seen him. I acted like a green agent, not like a professional. I heard the call over the city band on my scanner on the way back to the office. I had no idea what I’d find when I got here. I should have known!” His hand hit the steering wheel hard with impotent rage.

  His pride was hurt, she decided. He’d fallen down on the job because his mind had been on Lorna. He didn’t have to say so, but Kirry knew it. She stared out the window until he parked the car, and then she followed him inside the building and up on the elevator without a word.

  She turned to him outside her apartment, feeling haggard and worn-out. “Thanks for bringing me home.”

  He scowled. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Of course. I’m not bric-a-brac,” she chided. “I won’t break.”

  “Keep your doors locked,” he said. “And don’t stand near any windows.”

  “You’re getting paranoid,” she muttered. “He isn’t going to come at me with a high-powered rifle.”

  “I don’t know what he’s going to do,” he said grimly, running a hand through his thick hair. “But we’re not going to get careless again. Got that?”

  “I wasn’t careless. I looked, and I didn’t see anybody anywhere in the parking lot,” she said angrily. “I didn’t see him until I was standing right next to the car. I didn’t go close enough to get grabbed.”

  “What if he’d had a gun, Kirry?” he asked in a haunted tone.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, he isn’t going to shoot me!”

  He didn’t answer her, or smile. He was seeing her lying facedown on the pavement, her eyes open, her body broken from gunfire. He’d seen other agents go that way. He knew, as Kirry didn’t, how unpredictable people like Erikson were.

  “I’m all right,” she said, driven to reassure him. “Don’t go off the deep end, Lang, I’m fine.” She hesitated. “And if you want to move out, I’ve already told Lorna it’s all right with me. I’m not afraid….”

  He frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Lorna told me that you were getting tired of having to live next door to me,” she said. “She must be insecure, because I get every little detail of what you do with her.”

  “I didn’t say anything to her about moving out of here,” he told her angrily. “I wouldn’t even consider it until this Erikson situation is resolved, one way or the other.”

  That made her feel light-headed with joy. Lorna had lied. He didn’t want to get rid of her!

  “I didn’t know that she was having that much contact with you,” he said curtly.

  “I’m having to handle her account,” Kirry told him. “The others jumped out windows and hid in rest rooms until I got saddled with her. She’s a perfectionist and she doesn’t like me, but we get along. I let her think she’s killing me with her tales of doglike devotion from you. Works like a charm.”

  He didn’t like that. “Doglike devotion isn’t what she gets from me.”

  “Oh, I know what she does get from you. She tells me that, too,” she added, and this time she couldn’t keep the sting it caused out of her face.

  “There isn’t anything to tell,” he said through his teeth. “I’m not sleeping with her!”

  She shrugged with majestic acting ability. “Don’t deprive yourself on my account,” she said carelessly. “I’m certainly not nursing any hopes in that direction. When I marry, and I will someday, my husband is going to be my first lover.”

  His pride felt as if she’d lanced it. His face felt hot as he glared down at her. “He’ll have to be something special, to settle for a virginal wife these days,” he said icily, striking out.

  “Maybe he’ll think he’s blessed,” she countered, refusing to allow his words to bother her. “It takes an intelligent woman not to risk her health and her future husband’s for the sake of not standing out in a crowd.”

  “You puritan,” he accused coldly.

  “My morals are my own affair, and none of your business. You’re just the security chief for my company!”

  His dark eyes slid over hers. “Try again.”

  “You have no right to…Oh!”

  He pulled her close in his arms, and his mouth was hard and hungry over her soft lips. She stiffened and tried to reject him, but his arms only closed more firmly, enveloping her against his big, powerful body while his mouth nudged and coaxed and teased until her lips finally parted.

  Even then, he didn’t take immediate advantage of it. His open mouth brushed lazily over hers, tormenting it until she moaned and began pushing upward, trying to capture his elusive mouth against her own. It was yesterday, and she was in love and aching for Lang, all over again.

  “Tell me what you want,” he coaxed. His hands were on her hips, now, pulling and dragging them against the hard male thrust of him, so that she could feel the evidence of his need.

  “Lang.” She choked out his name.

  “Come on,” he said, daring her, “tell me what you want me to do, Kirry.”

  “Not…fair,” she stammered.

  “Is life?” His hand slid into the thick short hair at her nape and contracted, tilting her face at just the angle he wanted. His eyes were vaguely frightening as they glittered down into hers. “Now,” he breathed, lowering his head, “now, open your mouth and taste me inside, and let me taste you. Make me forget…”

  She felt his mouth, warm and moist, burrowing slowly into her own. The contact with his body, the strength of his arms, took her own strength away. She yielded, melting into him, unmindful of the past or the future while she savored the intimate touch of his tongue sliding into her mouth.

  The erotic symbolism of the caress made her body go taut with sudden desire. She shivered, and he laughed, then deepened the kiss with a slow, teasing rhythm.

  Knots coiled in her lower belly. Her legs trembled helplessly and she moaned as the fever burned higher between them.

  His other hand dropped to the very base of her spine and began to move her against him. She made a sound that went right up his backbone, and his mouth echoed it in the stillness of the hallway.

  Only the steady hum of the elevator broke them apart. He stepped back from her just as an elderly couple got off the conveyance, glanced toward them indulgently and walked hand in hand down the other end of the hall to their own apartment.

  Lang felt too drained to move. He heard the door close in the distance and only then did he look at Kirry. She seemed to be as devastated as he. She was leaning back against her own door, and her soft mouth was swollen and red from his kisses.

  “I could have you right now,” he said. His voice was deep with feeling. “You know it, too.”

  “Let’s not forget Lorna,” she said through the maelstrom of emotions that were buffeting her mind.

  “Damn Lorna! I want you!”

  She had to drag her eyes away from his. “You’ve overheated, that’s all,”
she said stiffly. “A nice cold shower should fix you right up.”

  “Lorna wouldn’t send me into a shower,” he said in a soft, threatening tone.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Then why don’t you go and see her, dear man?”

  Her lack of cooperation made him furious. “Thanks for the suggestion,” he said. “I might do that.”

  He whirled on his heel, in a furious temper, and stalked to the elevator. He jabbed the Down button furiously, and as if the elevator knew his mood, it appeared promptly from the floor above. He got into it without even darting a glance at Kirry.

  She could have screamed. She wasn’t going to go to bed with him just to keep him away from Lorna, and if he thought she was, he still didn’t know her very well.

  She unlocked the door and slammed it firmly behind her. How could he! Why had he kissed her in the first place? Now she was going to toss and turn all night, sickened by images of Lorna nude in his big arms in bed. She hated him! How in the world had she ever imagined that she could love someone as cruel as Lang? She was going to have to get herself together. Lang was no longer her concern. The sooner she realized it, the better.

  Lang, meanwhile, was driving aimlessly around town, and nowhere near Lorna’s apartment. He should never have touched Kirry that way. Now he was going to spend hours remembering her soft warmth in his arms, the hunger in her kisses. She wanted him; she couldn’t hide it.

  But he’d let her throw him off-balance with those stinging comments she made. She was jealous of Lorna and afraid to trust him. That was the crux of the matter. He’d just have to learn to keep his temper and try harder. But meanwhile, there was Erikson to deal with. The gas grenade had shaken Lang as much as it had Kirry. He had to do something about Erikson while there was still time.

  The next morning, Lang was more cautious than ever. He buzzed Kirry’s doorbell thirty minutes before she was due at work. She dragged herself out of bed in her short nightie and looked through the peephole before she reluctantly opened the door.

  “Don’t stare,” she told him irritably, her hair tousled from sleep, her green eyes half-closed with it. “I’m not a peep show.”

  “Darlin’, I never said you were,” he drawled, smiling at the exquisite tanned length of her legs and the soft thrust of her breasts against the thin fabric. She had a devastating figure. “But in that rig, you could turn a blind man’s head.”

  “I don’t want to turn your head. I just want to get dressed and go to work. There’s some coffee in the kitchen. You can drink it while I get changed.”

  “You’re sure you wouldn’t like to go in like that?” he asked, smiling at the pleasure she gave him in the skimpy outfit.

  She put her hands on her rounded hips and glowered at him. “It’s only a body. Lorna has one just like it, as I’m sure you found out all over again last night!”

  His eyebrows lifted and he smiled. “Jealous?”

  “Of Lorna? Hah! Why should I be jealous? I don’t want you!”

  “You did last night,” he reminded her.

  “I won’t dignify that statement with an answer. And I did not want you!” She whirled and went into the bedroom, pushing the door almost shut. She stripped off the nightie and was standing there in her lacy pink bikini briefs, fuming with bad temper, when the door opened and Lang’s eyes froze on her body.

  7

  Kirry couldn’t even breathe. The way Lang was looking at her made her go hot all over. “Don’t panic and start leaping for cover,” he said quietly. He put his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the door facing. “I can’t help staring—you’re unbelievably pretty like that—but I promise I won’t touch until you want me to.”

  She felt hot and cold all over, and there were swellings in her body that were familiar, left from the days when Lang made soft, slow love to her without ever crossing the line.

  She should get dressed, she told herself. She was brazen, standing there with her body open to him, letting him look. Oh, but it was sweet to feel his eyes! They made her throb with forbidden pleasures.

  He saw the need in her face, in the faint trembling of her legs. With a soft sound in the back of his throat, he jerked away from the door and moved toward her.

  Run, her mind said. But her legs wouldn’t work. He came closer, filling the room, filling her hungry eyes.

  He still didn’t touch her. He searched her face in silence. After a minute, a soft smile flamed on his mouth. His hand went to his tie and slowly unfastened it. He tossed it aside. He slid out of his jacket, and it followed the tie into a chair, while Kirry shivered at what she saw in his face.

  “I don’t…want to…now,” she whispered when his hands went to his shirt. But she still wasn’t moving.

  “Neither do I,” he replied quietly. “But some things are fated, I suppose.”

  His shirt was unbuttoned, removed, baring a broad, bronzed chest thick with black, curling hair. He brought her hands to his belt.

  “Take it off,” he whispered.

  Her hands trembled on the buckle and her wide eyes sought his for reassurance.

  “I’ll take care of you. We won’t take risks,” he said, reading the apprehension. He saw her relax, despite the traces of guilt that remained in her soft green eyes. He bent and brushed his mouth over her closing eyelids, hiding the accusation in them. “I’ll take a long time,” he whispered. “Do you trust me not to hurt you?”

  She moved closer, drawn like a magnet to the feel of his hair-roughened chest against her bare breasts. She shivered as the nipples went hard when she pushed into him and let her arms encircle his waist. “I trust you,” she stated.

  He let out a savage breath. He hadn’t dreamed that it would happen like this. Years of wanting her, waiting, hoping…And she was giving in, without a single protest.

  The stillness in the bedroom was haunting. Above it, he could hear faint street noises in the distance. Closer, he could hear Kirry’s tortured breathing, feel the warmth of it against his chest where her lips touched.

  “Will you hate me?” he asked heavily.

  She lifted her misty eyes to his. “Will you think I’m cheap?” she asked with equal concern.

  He smiled. “You?” he whispered tenderly.

  She pressed closer, resting her cheek against his warm chest. She clung, trembling, as the finality of it trespassed into her mind.

  His big hands smoothed over her bare back, savoring its silkiness. “There’s a condition,” he said through a tight throat.

  “What?”

  “Afterward, you have to put the ring back on.”

  Her eyes opened. She could see the heavy vibration of his chest. “The ring?”

  His mouth brushed hungrily against her hair and his hands pulled her closer. “The engagement ring, Kirry,” he whispered, and his mouth quickly worked its way down her flushed face to her mouth. He took it hungrily and felt it open, felt her body quicken even as he heard her helpless moan of pleasure.

  He interpreted her response as an agreement, a sacred oath. After that, nothing on earth would have stopped him.

  He lifted her, his mouth still covering hers, and carried her to the bed.

  She looked up as he laid her gently on the covers. “Are you going to close…close the bedroom door?”

  “Who’s going to see us, my darling?” he whispered. He slid down beside her, letting his eyes caress the soft thrust of her breasts before his mouth lowered to tease and torment them into rigid peaks.

  Kirry couldn’t have imagined the pleasure. It was frantic, all-consuming. She let him remove the final barrier and then lay trembling, watching him with hungry eyes while he undressed for her. She’d never seen him totally nude. She looked at him now without embarrassment, glorying in the perfection of his powerful body.

  He lowered himself against her, smiling at her expression. “We can’t have secrets anymore, can we?” he asked gently. His mouth touched hers, and then roamed over her face while his hands began to learn her with infinite
patience and tender caresses. He felt her tremble, heard her soft gasps as he went from one intimacy to another in the rapt silence.

  She’d never imagined making love in broad daylight. Now it seemed natural, perfect. She led where he followed, awash in pleasure so intense that she had no control left when he finally paused for a moment to protect her, and then moved down. She felt his body slowly invade hers and she shivered, her hands clutching with anticipation and a little fear.

  His mouth was at her ear, his breath hot and quick. His tongue teased inside her ear. His hand slid down her belly and he touched her, laughing with intimate tenderness when she gasped and her hips arched up to accommodate him.

  “Lang!” she cried out.

  “Yes, isn’t it shocking?” he breathed with joyful conspiracy. “Shocking, earthy…” He pushed down and heard the breath leave her body. “And now you know it all, don’t you?” he whispered, as he possessed her completely. “You know me. All of me. And I know all…of…you.”

  His body was moving. She felt him around her, within her, felt a tension that made her reach up to him, move with him, searching for the right pressure, the right rhythm. She swallowed, gasping. She felt the heat and dampness of him with wonder. She heard his rough breath at her ear, felt his control give way at last.

  His lean hand gripped her thigh and the rhythm grew ruthless. She was beyond caring about how he held her. It was there, the pleasure was there, and she was…about…to touch it…!

  She was sobbing. She heard her own voice with a sense of disassociation, as if she was no longer in her body at all, but sailing around with Lang in a miasma of golden heat and throbbing satisfaction. She cried out something and arched her back to prolong the exquisite sensations that rippled over her in waves of pleasure.

  For a few seconds, there was nothing else in the world except Lang, who had become completely part of her.

  Far away, she heard ragged breathing and felt a crushing weight the length of her body. She opened her eyes. The ceiling was there, with the sunlight reflecting on the light fixture. She moved her fingers experimentally and felt the cold silk of Lang’s thick hair. She remembered then, and smiled.