by Lora Leigh
"You're certain?" She breathed in deeply, drawing in the fresh scent of vanilla that filled her home.
This was going to be an imposition, no doubt about it. Besides the fact that it was frankly terrifying. She didn't remember much of the kidnapping, but what she did wasn't pleasant.
"We're very certain, Miss Stanton." Tall, black-haired, eyes as gray as thunderclouds, one of the men stepped forward. "The Fuentes cartel is serious about this as well. They seem to think you may have seen or heard something that could threaten them. In addition, your father is determined to catch the Fuentes mole within the government, and Fuentes has to ensure that that doesn't happen."
"Emily, this is Commander Reno Chavez. He's the SEAL in charge of our protection."
"'Hello, Mr. Chavez." She gave him a trembling smile. "I nope you're watching over Daddy well. He can be hard to keep up with."
The man's smile was pure sex appeal. "I'm doing my best, ma'am." He nodded. "He's more worried about you now."
"Behind Reno is Lieutenant Commander Clint McIntyre, and coming out of your bedroom," her father cast the third man a disapproving frown, "you should remember Lieutenant Kell Kreiger."
Emerald-green eyes, predatory and liquid hot, sliced into her as Emily finally gave the man her full attention. She felt the breath leave her chest as shock slammed through her system. Those eyes. Something about them almost held her mesmerized, sent heat curling through her and had her cringing at the thought that he had been in her bedroom.
Where the red lace underwear was thrown over her bed, the panties carrying the scent of her previous arousal. Mortification flamed beneath her cheeks as she fought to cover her embarrassment.
"Mr. McIntyre. Hello, Kell." She cleared her throat as she fought to swallow past the nerves now rioting through her body.
"Emily. I need you to do me a favor," her father said then, drawing her attention back to him. "Kell will be staying here with you. He'll be your personal bodyguard until this investigation I've begun is over. I need you to cooperate with him."
"I always cooperate, Daddy," she reminded him with a smile. "But I promise, this time, I'll make an extra effort not to cause him to quit. I'd hate to run a friend off."
Oh hell. Damn. She was in trouble. Kell, in her home? Sleeping beneath her roof? She could already feel the overwhelming heat that had begun building in intensity between her thighs. This was the wrong time for this. This wasn't good.
Her father winced. "There's more to this one, sweetheart. No one can know he's your bodyguard. You just fired your bodyguard because your lover was jealous of him."
Oh. Shit.
Her gaze swung back to her father. He was kidding. He had to be kidding.
But he wasn't. She could see it in his eyes, feel it in the tension emanating from him.
Her eyes swung back to Kreiger and she felt the world drop from beneath her. That mocking smile. She had seen it before. Just as she had seen that particular shaggy cut of hair, that hard, muscular body. No sunglasses now. No leather chaps. And he had shaved that rough, day-old growth of beard from his face. But it was him.
Sweet heaven. She had come in his face less than five hours before and now he was going to pretend to be her lover?
He had disguised who he was. He had to have been following her. It was her fantasy lover all along and she had come in his face.
This was so not good. This was the Twilight Zone. She could hear the theme music playing in the back of her mind.
"This isn't a very good idea." She tried to fight back her shudder of impending pleasure and doom as she turned back from her father. "Why don't I just move back home for a while?"
That was the perfect solution. He had been wanting her back in the house ever since she moved out anyway. She could just go home. She would have to cancel some activities she had planned, put aside the research she still had to get into for the new book.
One being the live sex show she had been playing with viewing. But she was sure her agent would give her some extra time for this book. Most of it was research anyway. It wasn't like she didn't know what to write. She just didn't know how to write it.
But her father was shaking his head slowly. Damn, of course it couldn't be that easy.
"Sweetheart, these people can get to you there as easily as they can here. I'm not even staying at the house. I'm staying in an apartment close to the Capitol instead with my own security detail. This is the only answer."
Oh no. There had to be another answer. There was never only a single way to do anything. Wasn't that what she tried to instill in her students, the ability to try new things in different ways. Of course there was an answer to this, she just had to find it.
"I could move in with you—"
"That's not possible, Emily." Kell's voice was firm, determined. "We need to maintain the impression that the senator knows nothing about this threat for reasons of security. If you come to D.C. and go into hiding, they'll suspect."
She stared back at her nemesis. The bad boy in leather. God, she had to get rid of him. She could already feel her reaction to him blooming once again, heating her body, reminding her of the outrageous dance she had performed for him. Wanton, sexy. Letting the inner slut free hadn't been hard, and she was terribly afraid there was no way to keep it locked up if she had to actually live with him.
"Emily. You can't tell anyone why he's here." Her father sighed heavily, drawing her gaze back to him. "We have to maintain the secrecy of the information. You have to convince everyone he's your lover."
Emily cringed. He had said it again. Her father had said lover in regard to her and a man? Especially this man.
Wide-eyed, filled with shock, she stared back at him.
His lips twitched in sudden amusement. "I'm not that old, little girl," he told her. "And I'm smart enough to know you likely know what the words mean too."
Like hell. Geeze, how do you tell your father you're still a twenty-five-year-old virgin? Especially when he was constantly sending big tall muscular agents and bodyguards to protect her and, hopefully, inhabit her bed?
She knew why he never sent female bodyguards. Just as she knew that each man he had sent had been personally vetted and handpicked as son-in-law potential.
Think, Emily. There has to be an answer here. No way could she live with a man she was dying to get her hands on. Especially this man. A man she had already dubbed the baddest of the bad boys. A man she knew she could never have yet had never been able to stop wanting.
"I could go stay with Aunt Betha," she said then. "Only the devil himself would dare mess with her."
Betha Alderman was a Boston lawyer with enough temper to scare even her father.
He was shaking his head. Okay, it wouldn't be nice to involve Betha.
"You're serious about this," she said weakly.
"I'm afraid so, baby," he said. "But don't worry, Kell is a professional. This isn't his first private security job. He's protected presidents and foreign nationals. I'm sure he can keep up with you."
Yeah, but how the hell was she supposed to keep up with him? She turned her gaze back to him, fighting to keep from revealing the fact that she had been up close and personal with him in ways she was certain her father would use to force the poor man to the altar.
How was she supposed to get out of this one, now? She couldn't refuse the protection. Her father would never have planned this if he weren't genuinely convinced she was in linger.
"I understand." It was all she could do to push the words past her lips and to paste a friendly smile on her face as she glanced back at Kell Kreiger. "If I remember correctly, he eats a lot though. I'll have to stock up."
Kell smiled. It wasn't a smile for the faint of heart, it was pure male challenge, and that glimmer in those emerald eyes wasn't just amusement, it was heat. Sexual heat. And she was woman enough to shake in her sandals.
"Emily." Her father drew her gaze back to him. "I want you to promise me you'll listen to Kell. No running off on you
r own for the hell of it. No strip clubs or dance clubs. Promise me you'll let him keep you safe."
She met his gaze straight on, letting him see the suspicion in her eyes that she could feel rising inside her. She didn't know as much about the armed services as she probably should, she admitted, but some things weren't adding up for her.
"Why are Navy SEALs involved in this instead of the Secret Service?" she finally asked as she rose to her feet and walked to the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen, then turned to face him. "I thought SEALs were a strike force."
"We're that as well," Reno answered her. "We have the most experience with the Fuentes cartel, how they strike, and the men they use to strike with. We're working with the Secret Service in D.C. with your father's security, and there will be two Secret Service agents assigned as backup here. But this is an investigative operation as well as protection, hence the cover story."
That made sense. She knew from the few things she had overheard from her father when she was younger that a SEAL team could follow a single investigation for years. It wasn't a common occurrence, but it happened.
"Since when have I ever lied to you, Emily?" Her father rose from the sofa, a heavy scowl creasing his features as Reno finished his explanation.
"I didn't say you were lying to me, Daddy." She lifted her chin defiantly. "But we both know that you never tell me the whole story or the truth about the danger involved. Nine times out of ten you put those stupid bodyguards in my house based on nothing more than rumors and a hope of keeping me from doing whatever it is you've heard I'm about to do."
She saw the surprise flicker in his gaze then. He thought she was so dimwitted that she had no idea what he was doing.
"You like to get into trouble," he muttered, glancing at the three SEALs with ill concealed discomfort.
She hated that accusation.
"I don't get into trouble, Daddy." Emily kept her voice smooth, even. She didn't want to fight with him.
"You give lap dances to strange men," he bit out. "What do you call that?"
She flushed in embarrassment. "Fun," she snapped back. "Just think, Daddy, that could have been the son-in-law you've been pushing so hard for."
She clamped her mouth shut the minute the words left her lips. Angry words. Accusations. Dammit, her nerves were just about pushed to their limit and he expected her to keep her mouth shut and just accept his condemnation once again. And he expected her to do it in front of the man assigned to protect her.
She shook her head abruptly, turning her back on him and lifting her hand to forestall the chilling response she knew would cut into her soul.
"You'd have to get off your high horse and give him the time of day first." The words came anyway. They stabbed into her, causing her to flinch in shame because the man she had given that lap dance for was watching, listening.
She inhaled roughly, blinking back her tears, determined that she wasn't going to be hurt this time.
"So." She turned back to him. "How long are you allowing Kell to stay?" She glanced at Kell's thoughtful expression, striving to keep from meeting his gaze. "Two weeks? Four?"
"As long as he can control you," he snapped back.
Her lips thinned. "Then you might as well take him with you when you leave, because no man controls me, Daddy. You should have figured that one out on your own by now."
Chapter Five
By time her father left, Emily was drained. She could feel the suffocating feeling that came with each bodyguard change, and the feeling of helplessness she couldn't seem to shake.
It was worse this time, though, because Kell was more than just a bodyguard. He was a mysterious friend, a part of her life since she was ten years old, and a part of her dreams since she was a teenager. She had been half in love with him for as long as she could remember, and now, she was supposed to pretend he was her lover. That he touched her. That she knew his kiss and the stroke of his hands.
God help her, she couldn't even write the fantasy to that one. She had no conception of how it would feel, but she knew the hunger for it. A hunger that left her shaking when she pulled herself from the dreams of his touch, always so close and yet never actually on her flesh.
She could feel it now. It rippled through her bloodstream and reminded her that Kell was part of the reason why no other man had ever measured up to her idea of the lover she wanted. Because she had wanted Kell. Wanted him with a stubbornness that didn't leave room for other men.
"The rules in this house are simple," she stated as she forced herself to turn and face her too-wanted houseguest.
She might as well start as she intended to finish. "Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours."
He stood in front of her patio doors, the lengthening shadows of evening filling the house and gathering around him like a cloak of danger.
He looked dangerous. He was dangerous. More so than she had remembered. She had a feeling that even if she had been inclined to try to run him in circles the way she had the others, it wouldn't be possible.
"Stay out of your way?" He smiled suggestively as his gaze raked over her body. "I don't think that's going to be possible. Bodyguards have a purpose, Emily. They guard the body. And I take my job very seriously."
His gaze settled at her thighs for a long second before lifting to her face with a wicked smile.
"I just bet you do, but I believe I'm safe enough in the house. The security system alone is better than Fort Knox, so we shouldn't have any problems staying out of each other's way. Now should we?"
She was shaking. Shaking and certain that he could read her nervousness in every move she made. She had never been good at hiding her thoughts, and hiding her desires were even harder.
Every time he had looked at her since she became a teenager she had seen the knowledge in his eyes. The certainty that he knew the hungers building in her. Of course, that was why she hadn't seen him in five years. He had been avoiding her. And that was just damned humiliating.
"It doesn't work that way," he stated calmly.
There was no frown. There was no flicker of calculation in his gaze as he tried to decide how to handle her. They all had that moment of indecision, as though they weren't quite certain what to do with a client who didn't really want them there.
"Why doesn't it work that way?" She kept her voice reasonable. "School starts again within another month and I'll be busy working on class plans and so forth, as well as some writing I do. I know how to entertain myself, and I do it quite well. I hope you know how to do the same."
"Some things are better taken care of together though," he pointed out, pacing closer, his emerald eyes snaring hers and holding them against her will. "You made a promise to me earlier, Emily. Do you intend to renege on it?"
"What promise?" She could smell him. She wanted to moan at the scent of hard, impossibly powerful muscles and male sensuality as he began to invade her personal space.
She should retreat. Step away. But she was locked in place, staring up at him, feeling invisible bands of heat wrapping around her body.
"I didn't promise you anything."
"You did." The sensual male croon in his voice had her womb clenching. "When you dampened those panties on your bed because of my breath against your sweet pussy, you made a very firm promise. One I intend to collect on. A taste I intend to take."
Shock held her motionless.
"My panties?" she whispered desperately.
"Red lace." His hand lifted, the backs of his fingers stroking along her collarbone as she trembled before him. "The ones lying on that pristine white bed in there. Still wet and smelling of peaches and cream. Do you know that I'm very partial to peaches and cream, Emily?"
Emily jerked back, nearly stumbling against the wall she backed into as she stared back at Kell in amazed shock. His eyes seemed to brighten while his face became darker, intent, sexually hungry.
She shook her head desperately. "It wasn't supposed to be you," she wheezed. "It was
supposed to be a bouncer."
"And I had to pay him well to stand back," he murmured with a smile. "Very well. And I intend to collect on that one as well. Right in there in that big bed of yours, all over you like wild rain. Tell me, sugar, you ever had a man cover you like wild rain?"
Cajun. The soft flavor of a Cajun accent slipped into his voice and sent a hard shudder down Emily's spine as she shook her head. A jerky movement she didn't seem to have control of.
This wasn't happening. And she wasn't responding. She wasn't hot. She wasn't getting horribly wet between her thighs. And dammit, her nipples were not pressing tight and hard against the shirt she wore.
"Never?" His voice lowered as he moved forward again, caging her in, restraining her. His hard body within a breath's distance of her and the wall at her back.