For a minute, she thought he might not answer.
“I guess,” he said finally, speaking slowly, “I was looking for something I could do better than anyone else. I come from a big family of superachievers,” he explained, his tone a blend of affection and irritation that she suspected was an accurate reflection of his attitude toward them.
“Growing up it seemed as if everything I wanted to do had already been done by one of them and done perfectly. My brothers were all-state basketball and football. Tough acts to follow. Now one’s a doctor and one’s a lawyer. Another one has become richer than Midas by managing other people’s money. My sister writes children’s books, very successful ones, I’m told.” He mentioned the name of an author Cat recognized instantly.
“But none of them lived life close to the edge, so you set out to prove yourself by doing exactly that. Is that it?” she asked, as perplexed as she had been all her life by what drove a man to spend his days risking his life for causes that seemed to her to be constantly shifting.
“More or less.”
“From what you told Buchanan today, it sounds as if you were very good at it.”
“There was a time when I thought so,” he said shortly.
Cat entered the hotel lobby through the door he held for her. It was late and there weren’t many people around. She turned toward the elevator.
It was impossible not to sense how Bolt had become increasingly more curt and remote as their conversation progressed. Yet curiosity made Cat persist.
“I couldn’t help noticing how you sidestepped Buchanan’s questions about your final mission,” she remarked.
Silence, but the reflexive stiffening of his shoulders was reflected clearly in the shiny brass elevator doors.
“I take it that’s another thing you don’t talk about,” she ventured.
“That’s right.”
She risked slanting him a grin. “Not with Buchanan, not with me, not ever, right?”
He glared at her reflection in the doors, the set of his full lips forbidding until a smile slowly claimed them as he realized he’d been lampooned with his own words. “You’re a pretty fast learner,” he drawled.
“For a girl?”
“Yeah.” His lips curved even further upward. “For a girl.”
The bell above their head sounded the arrival of the elevator and the doors slid open.
Cat hesitated before stepping inside. “Just one more question.”
His eyes narrowed warily. “What is it?”
“Your sister...does she by any chance have a library?”
Chuckling quietly, Bolt shook his head and gently shoved her into the elevator. “I’ll ask her.”
“Thanks.”
Somewhere around the third floor, Cat began humming once again.
Bolt cleared his throat meaningfully.
“Oops,” she said. “Sorry. It’s one of those songs that sort of sticks in your head.”
“Exactly.”
She stared at the indicator light above the door, tapped her foot, fixed the strap of her dress, which kept slipping down over her arm. She looked up to see Bolt staring at her shoulder with a strange expression. Around the seventeenth floor she did it again without thinking. The damn song had a life of its own, Cat decided as she caught sight of Bolt moving forward, a determined look in his eyes.
“That’s it,” he growled. “Looks like there’s only one way to get you to stop.”
He swung around so he was facing her, his back to the doors, his open hand aiming for her mouth to cover it and silence her. Cat knew that was his intention.
What she didn’t know was why, in the instant before his hand reached her, she tossed her head back, lifted her chin and said, “Oh yeah? What way is that?”
Her words, her look, the way she waved the daisies under his nose, it was all a challenge. She knew that, too, just as surely as she knew that a man like Bolt would never be able to ignore a challenge, especially not one coming from a woman.
She just didn’t know why she had to go and do it.
If she’d had time for second thoughts, she might have taken it back or else laughed and tried to pass it off as a joke. But Bolt didn’t give her any time, just as he didn’t give her any room to escape as he dropped the bags he was holding to the floor and put both hands on her shoulders to push her against the back wall of the elevator.
“This way,” he murmured in a husky tone, and then his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her and suddenly Cat knew exactly why she had challenged him.
She had done it so that he would meet her challenge. So that he would kiss her.
She wanted this, she realized, even as her arms lifted to circle his neck. She had been wanting it all day, longer, even. She’d been wanting him to kiss her again ever since she had stopped him yesterday.
She shouldn’t be doing this. Nothing had changed, she reminded herself, as his tongue explored her hungrily. He was still all wrong for her. This couldn’t go anywhere. Certainly it could never lead to where his hands, moving feverishly over her back and shoulders, told her he thought they were headed. She had to tell him so, and fast.
And she would, she assured herself, as he kissed her chin and her closed eyelids, the rough scrape of his whiskers unbelievably exciting to her senses. Any second now the elevator doors would open and he would have no choice but to back off. Then she would catch her breath and tell him exactly how things were between them. But in the meantime, what was the harm in one little kiss?
Too late she understood that what Bolt was doing to her bore as much resemblance to a little kiss as a tricycle does to a locomotive. That was what he was like, sleek and powerful, moving relentlessly forward, sweeping her along for the ride.
Again and again his mouth wandered from hers, to nibble at the tender spot behind her ear, to bite, none too gently, at the side of her neck. Cat trembled and shivered and clung to him, her whole body shimmering with a kind of excitement she’d never before felt.
The tequila, she thought helplessly. But it wasn’t the tequila making her feel this way, and she knew it.
Always, just when she thought she might surface from the bottomless pool of her own wakening desire, he returned to claim her mouth all over again, making protest impossible.
His lips were smooth and firm, by turns coaxing and demanding. He leaned into her, pinning her against the wall with the heat and weight of his body. The daisies were crushed between them, releasing their faint scent, a heady perfume to be inhaled with each labored breath.
It was madness. His tongue at her ear, making her whimper, his hard hips rocking against hers, his hands moving under the loose skirt of her dress, pushing it higher and higher so that she felt the air fed from the vent above on her bare legs, its coolness a sharp contrast to the warmth of his touch. Madness, all of it.
Worst of all was the slow ebbing of her determination to put a stop to it once and for all. In this area, at least, she’d always had all the self-control required to stop things from going too far. Now she understood that her strength had been more a result of the company she kept than of character. It wasn’t hard to be good when you had no urge to be bad.
She had the urge now, though.
She opened her mouth to Bolt’s kisses, using her tongue to caress his lips and the soft flesh inside, letting instinct be her guide where she was lacking experience. When he kissed the curve of her bare shoulder, nuzzling her with his stubbled jaw, she arched with the fierce pleasure that ripped through her. He stroked the back of her thighs and her hips twisted restlessly against him. With each stroke, every heartbeat, the urge to surrender pulsed harder inside her.
Still, resistance was a lifelong habit. Cat clung to the knowledge that the elevator doors had to open soon as if it was a lifeline. In a way it was. She held out no hope that Bolt might stop of his own accord, and she was rapidly losing confidence in her resolve to call a halt.
His fingers reached the bottom of her panties, the only thing
she was wearing under her dress. He toyed briefly with the leg band, slipping one finger beneath it, then another. When he had worked his whole hand inside, he cupped her soft cheek and squeezed.
Cat gasped and her eyes opened wide with shock and delight.
Directly in front of her was the floor indicator. The number twenty-six was lit, she noted, indicating they were at their floor, but the doors remained tightly shut.
While she dazedly pondered that, Bolt slid his other hand inside her panties, as well, and pulled her against him. His warm breath dampened her throat, his chin scraped her delicate flesh.
She felt her knees quiver and the earth tilt, and still the doors remained shut.
“Bolt,” she said as his fingers moved higher, playing at the top of the sensitive cleft at the base of her spine. A sensation as electrifying as lightning shot through her. She grabbed his shoulders tightly, shook her head and repeated his name.
Bolt caressed her lightly in the same place. “Mmm?” he murmured against her throat. “Is that okay?”
“Yes. No. The elevator. It’s stopped.”
“I know,” he replied without lifting his head. “I stopped it.”
“You did? You can do that? How?” Amazing man, Cat thought. She hadn’t even seen him move.
He drew back just enough to meet her gaze with a heavy-lidded expression of amusement. “By hitting the stop button.”
“Oh.” She glanced at the control panel an arm’s length away and the red button labeled Stop at the bottom. “Then why aren’t the doors opening?”
He smiled at her, his amusement turning to something closer to fascination, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Because I hit the stop button,” he said again. “Not the door open button. I thought you’d prefer privacy. Was I wrong?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He tipped his head; his mouth was damp and reddened, sexier than ever. She watched his lips part slightly as he lowered them to hers.
Gathering her senses, Cat planted a hand firmly on his chest, in the process delivering the fatal blow to her poor daisies.
“No, wait, Bolt, please. We have to stop.”
He smiled and her heart turned over. “Why?”
“Because...” It was hard to think of all the reasons with him rubbing the small of her back the way he was. “Because...”
He touched her lips with his tongue.
“Bolt, please. We have to stop before this goes any further and you get the wrong idea and think I’m leading you on or—”
“If this is leading me on, keep it up. I’m more than willing.”
“No, please, you don’t understand.” She tried to wiggle free and only succeeded in moving his hands from her backside to her hips. “I’m trying to tell you that we have to stop because...because I’m a virgin.”
He peered down at her. It was as if, for a moment, he didn’t believe her. Then he nodded as if that made perfect sense. She couldn’t tell if his grim expression reflected annoyance or regret or a combination of the two.
“Okay, we’ll take it slow then. I promise I won’t hurt you, Tiger, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His hands moved on her hips, echoing the promise with an appropriately mild caress. “I’ll be gentle, and real slow, and I won’t take you in a damn elevator no matter how badly I want to right this minute.”
Cat shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. Bolt, I’m a virgin and I intend to stay one until the right man comes along.”
He cocked his head to the side, his gaze dark and seductive. “Maybe I’m the right man. How will you know unless you give it a chance?”
“I know,” she said as gently as possible. “You’re not.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re serious.”
Cat nodded.
He laughed roughly as he yanked his hands from under her dress. She self-consciously smoothed it over her thighs.
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “You’re feeling the same thing I’m feeling right now. I know you are, and I know you want it as much as I do, so don’t deny it.”
“I’m not denying it. I don’t understand the way I’m feeling, but I’m not denying it.”
His smile was nasty. “Shall I explain it to you?”
“No,” she replied, focusing her gaze on the elevator floor.
“No, of course not,” he drawled angrily. “You’d rather go on waiting for some knight on horseback to come riding along...some damn Prince Charming you’ve never even met, right?”
She lifted her head defiantly. “Yes.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” he asked quietly, reaching out to cup her chin in his hand so she couldn’t look away, “that no man is ever going to come along who’ll be able measure up to your fantasy?”
“Yes, he will. Eventually he will. He has to,” she continued, her emphatic tone edging toward desperation, “because I have no intention of settling for second best.”
“I see,” he snapped, releasing her to punch the button marked Door Open. The doors responded instantly and he wasted no time getting out, barely glancing at her as he added, “Thanks for the warning.”
* * *
Stupid damn starry-eyed kid. That’s what she was. And he was even worse.
After all, Bolt fumed as he lay alone on his bed, not even bothering to turn back the covers or kill the lights, he’d known all along that she was too young and too naive and too much trouble, and in spite of that he’d let himself be...attracted. Attracted, hell—mesmerized was what he was. Was, past tense. He might be to blame for what had happened in the elevator, but he never made the same mistake twice.
He’d come damn close tonight, however. He should never have gotten carried away like that. Besides being too young, she was also Hollister’s niece. Add that to the inconvenient fact that he was supposed to be looking out for her, not compromising her virtue in an elevator, and any fool would come to the only sane conclusion possible...that Catrina Amelia Bandini was strictly a hands-off proposition.
He’d known that, he thought, cursing himself again while he was at it. Even before he kissed her the first time, he’d known it was a mistake. The speed and intensity of his response to that very public kiss had only reinforced his resolve not to let it happen again. From that moment on he had been committed to playing it safe for the duration of the trip. Or so he’d thought. The problem was that he’d never been very good at playing it safe, and when he was around Cat that was truer than ever.
He wanted her.
There was no denying it. He wanted her and he couldn’t have her. It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.
It was also a new position for him to find himself in, he reflected with a large measure of irony. New and not at all pleasant. Not that he was such a Don Juan, he thought with a self-derisive grunt. It was simply that as a rule he wasn’t interested in women who weren’t interested in him. As far back as he could remember, he chose women who made it clear up front that they would be receptive to his attentions.
Even Angelina had approached him first. Bolt braced for the inevitable wrenching in his gut as he recalled her coming into his room in the middle of the night, wearing something bare and lacy that did next to nothing to hide her ample curves, whispering to him about how she was afraid to sleep alone.
He gave a harsh laugh. What goes around, comes around. With a vengeance. Now he was the one who was afraid to go to sleep, afraid to descend alone into the Netherlands between dream and memory. And all because of Angelina. No, he thought sharply, redirecting the blame and bitterness to where it rightfully belonged. It wasn’t Angelina who was to blame for his messing up. She was what she was. He was the only one to blame for what had happened. He was the one who had forgotten what he’d been sent to Colombia to do, the one who had put desire and something he’d mistaken for love ahead of responsibility. He was the one who had let down his guard and caused the best friend he’d ever had to pay for the mistake with his life.
Bolt jumped f
rom the bed and stalked outside, trying in vain to escape the memory of that night and the always hovering echo of the explosion that had killed his friend and, for all intents and purposes, ended his career in the military.
It would be hard to escape anything on a balcony as small as that one, he thought. In spite of the fresh air and the stars overhead, he felt closed in. Trapped. He let his gaze slide to the adjoining balcony and the room beyond. He was trapped, all right, between a rock and a hard place. With a hell of a lot of miles to go before he was free.
It was a long night, but at least he managed to get a few hours of sleep. Frustration must be a hell of a sedative, he decided in the morning, because the hours of sleep he’d gotten had left him feeling a whole lot better. Physically, at least. The rest was something he chose not to dwell on.
He showered and dressed, deliberately not shaving. His beard had marked Cat’s soft skin the night before. He’d winced at the sight of the red lines and smudges on her delicate skin and had made a silent vow not to let it happen again. He hoped the whiskers would be a physical reminder to keep his hands off her.
He ordered breakfast from room service and placed a quick call to Cat’s room to make sure she was up and advise her to do the same. He wasn’t in the mood for chatting over croissants and coffee this morning. He wasn’t in the mood for chatting, period. Something he made clear to his chipper little copilot within a few miles of hitting the road.
She seemed determined to act as if nothing had happened between them last night and he wasn’t buying it. Something had happened, damn it. And neither one of them could afford to forget it. When she finally got the message that strained politeness was to be the order of the day, at least on his part, she gave up trying to make conversation and reached for her junk bag with an exasperated sigh that Bolt found particularly rewarding. No fun being frustrated alone. After doing her usual rummaging routine, she pulled her book from the bag, shot him a defiant look and proceeded to read in silence, leaving Bolt to his own thoughts.
He’d been so sure that was what he wanted. To be left alone. It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that his thinly disguised sulking had backfired. When he was sitting this close to Cat, his thoughts made for dangerous company. Especially when she was dressed the way she was.
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