Last Man Standing

by Julie Miller

  Tori pulled at his hands. “You’re trying to get in my pants.” She struggled, unable to get a good line on his instep or crotch. “This is some perverted form of sexual harassment.”

  “So report me,” he challenged.

  Tori stilled, her eyes locked on his, mere inches from her own. Her deep, defiant breaths pushed her breasts against the warm hand that branded her through only a few layers of silk. The heat that zapped her with each unintended caress was as fierce as it was foreign to her.

  “You’re the one who broke in,” he reminded her in a succinct, hushed tone. “You’re the one snooping. And you aren’t any damn art historian.”

  “I have a degree—”

  “Save it for someone you can fool. Now take it off.”

  Clearly overpowered and out of her league, she needed to think of an alternative tactic to get this crazy man off her case and out of her space.

  Leaving his thighs and other parts of his body pressed intimately against hers, he freed her hands with the expectation that she would finish unbuttoning her jacket. She did, buying herself time to mollify him. “Why are you doing this?”

  The voices outside grew louder. She could identify them now. Jericho. Paul Meredith. And a woman.

  “Faster,” he ordered, “or you’re dead.” Ignoring her question, he reached behind his collar and freed his hair from its band. He sifted his fingers through the sable mass, stirring a Samson-like cascade that fell around his shoulders.

  “Can’t get a woman any other way?” she taunted.

  The key turned in the lock.

  The urgency Cole exuded hummed between them. “Trust me.”

  “To do what?” He was chief of security. He thought she was a crook. This was blackmail. “Hey!”

  He swept aside a lamp and pencil caddy and lifted her onto the desk, pushing her legs apart and moving boldly between them, sliding her jacket off her shoulders and baring her arms to the elbows, cinching them at her sides. “There are only two reasons to explain why you got caught in Jericho’s office. One of them will get you killed.”

  He tunneled his fingers into her hair, forcing her head back as he pulled her to his chest. “The other is this.”

  He smothered her startled yelp with a kiss, just as the door swung open and the overhead light flashed on.

  Chapter Four

  The storm raging outside was nothing like the battle of wills going on in Jericho Meade’s office.

  Cole clutched Victoria’s long, writhing body as tightly as he dared to prevent her escape. He stopped up her mouth with his own to bring to life an illusion that had come to him in a moment of voyeuristic inspiration—or maybe a moment of madness brought on by two weeks of utter isolation.

  He was a healthy, mature male. Beneath a veneer of respectability he was a product of the working class, rough around the edges and streetwise to the core. He might not be the smoothest guy on the block, but he’d never had any complaints. She was an adult female, albeit one with that classic sort of touch-me-not beauty belonging to aristocrats and pageant queens. Their paths would never cross in the outside world.

  But she was female.

  Catching her dead to rights, breaking into Jericho’s office, gave him the upper hand.

  The ruse should work.

  He’d had no time to explain, only to act. And though their position on top of the desk would appear intimate enough to anyone passing by, a closer look would show that this embrace was all one-sided. And he hoped to hell he was the only one who could tell the sounds humming from between the art lady’s stiff, defiant lips into his mouth were protests, not lustful sounds of pleasure.

  As he captured her mouth beneath his, he bore into her emerald gaze, willing Miss High-and-Mighty to cooperate. Maybe she didn’t understand how easy it was for Jericho to punish anyone who broke the rules—and she’d already broken several—or how serious, how permanent, that punishment could be. She clearly didn’t understand his efforts to save her alabaster hide.

  Or his own considerably tougher one.

  Using the overhead light as a cue, Cole moaned in his throat and shifted his mouth over hers in his best rendition of a kiss.

  The buzz of voices gave way to a beat of silence—a silence that ultimately registered with the woman he was kissing. Victoria went still in his arms. Her startled lips caught a gasp of air from his mouth.

  Come on, lady, he silently urged, gentling his kiss. Play the game with me.

  Then something happened. Lightning outside flickered like a strobe light throughout the room, charging the atmosphere with electrons and standing the hair of his arms on end. The universe shifted on its axis and Cole’s well-guarded world was thrown into chaos. Seconds ticked by into aeons, as if counted down on an arrested clock. The three interlopers standing in the doorway, staring with an assortment of expressions, faded into the decor.

  Electrons weren’t the only thing charging through his system.

  The woman was kissing him back.

  And it looked—and felt—damn real.

  Lush lips softened their paralysis beneath his and his whole body flamed in response, abruptly awakening from its self-imposed sleep to the scents and softness and shape of her.

  Though he’d allowed her arms no room to move, she’d twisted her fingers into the ends of his hair, sending tender prickles across his scalp with a series of urgent, questing tugs. The perfume she wore was something light and elegant that drifted past his nose with the shift of her body as she arched against him, lifting her mouth into his.

  Good God. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples stood at pert attention as she rubbed against him, and Cole unwittingly hardened in response. She might give a visual impression of cool gentility, but he was discovering a hidden side to Victoria Westin that matched the fire in her coppery shock of hair. Built long and lean, there wasn’t much to her in the curves department. But everything about her was sleek and toned and crackling with an energy that tingled along his skin.

  Cradled between her silky, thoroughbred thighs, everything about him that was male lurched at the heat he felt there. He softened the assault on her mouth, let her take the lead as her tongue darted out to touch his. Her lips traveled a cautionary expedition at first, then grew bolder, as if testing the sincerity of his unexpected and overwhelming desire. Then accepting it. Matching it.

  Her fingers clenched in his hair, dragging him closer. Her mouth opened, hot and moist and seeking beneath his. She squirmed against him, right there, crumbling walls of self-preservation with an intense fiery pleasure that was building to the brink of no return inside him.

  Cole battled the urges of his hungry body at her brazen response. He wanted to free her hands to touch him at will, but couldn’t risk it. He wanted to stroke those thighs, caress that skin, but he didn’t dare release her.

  It had been forever since he’d allowed himself to think about a woman in a sexual way. Weeks since he’d reacted to anything except the threat of danger. Now, his crotch seemed to be leading all his thinking regarding this fire-and-ice woman.

  But the needs of survival were too deeply ingrained to be completely ignored. Passion distracted. Lust betrayed. This kiss was for show, he reminded himself. No matter how good, how real, it felt. It served a purpose that had nothing to do with his libido. He was counting on Victoria Westin to save his life. By blackmail, if he couldn’t gain her cooperation any other way.

  But like a hungry man set before a banquet, he couldn’t seem to make himself stop.

  TORI IGNORED THE WARNING siren going off in her head. There was something crazy wrong with this picture. She was kissing this man. She should be going for his gun or his groin and her freedom. Instead, she was soaking up his passion the way the parched earth craved the rain. She was reveling in his attention, coming on to him as if his caveman seduction technique had been some kind of turn-on instead of an insult to every feminist bone in her body.

  The Bureau hadn’t trained her for this. Growing up a ski
nny tomboy in her mother’s fussy society world hadn’t trained her for this. But here she sat clinging to a man who smelled like money and danger. A man who was solid and warm and incredibly strong beneath the tactile layers of nubby wool and starched cotton. A man whose unspoken hints of genuine need shot around her icy defenses and melted her down to a puddle of untapped femininity.

  She felt fluid inside, prickly outside. Every touch was both torment and reward. There was a wildness to this embrace that matched the storm outside.

  She’d played the role of femme fatale a time or two, had acted as girlfriend or decoy on assignment. She knew things to say to a man, knew how to tease. But she didn’t know about this. This all-consuming fire. No one had ever demanded passion from her like this. And she’d never risked offering it.

  When Jericho Meade’s chief of security had caught her and called her a thief, she’d known a moment of panic at the possible repercussions. The danger of revealing her identity. The ignominy of failing her mission. The frustration of being bested by a man.

  Fear had turned to anger. Anger to indignation. And when he moved between her legs, self-doubts had turned it all back into fear again. But with the demand of his handsome mouth—as if he had every right, every wish, to touch her like this—Cole Taylor had turned all those volatile emotions into passion. He seemed to want nothing less from her.

  Maybe it was the challenge she couldn’t resist. Maybe Cole Taylor was simply the first man in too long a time who registered on her sex-starved radar.

  Or maybe she would always be that idiot who never learned to read the difference between a man who wanted her and a man who wanted something from her.

  “Stop,” she whispered, or perhaps she only thought the word. She sensed his withdrawal an instant before the memory of past mistakes dashed her to her senses.

  “Please, stop,” she breathed against his lips. Passion waned as surely as the heart of the storm’s fury was subsiding into a dark, steady rain.

  She’d heard voices earlier, somewhere in the haze of hormones run amok. They had an audience. And though she couldn’t see them, she could feel their curious stares from the doorway behind her.

  First, she’d been caught trespassing. Now, she’d been caught…what exactly did she call this out-of-control response to a virtual stranger?

  Someone cleared his throat. Great. Heat radiated through her cheeks. She had a sinking feeling this piece-of-cake mission had just become very, very complicated. And she had no one to blame but herself.

  “If it was anyone else, Cole Taylor…” The gravelly voice from the doorway reprimanded them with indulgence. She heard a tongue tsking against teeth. “Anyone else.”

  Jericho Meade.

  Not good.

  Untangling her fingers from the mahogany silk of Cole’s hair, Tori flattened her palms against his chest and forced herself to breathe. One deep, stuttering breath in through her nose, one shaky, cleansing breath out between her sensitized lips.

  Though he still had her perched on the desk, Cole, too, was making a visible effort to slow his breathing and ease his grip on her. He peppered her face with tiny kisses, drawing out the last sparks of her combustible reaction to him.

  He rested his forehead against hers and sighed with audible regret. “I guess we got carried away, hmm?”

  After all their whispers, the normal volume of his voice jarred loudly in her ears. Tori lifted her questioning gaze to that sea of deep, dark blue in his eyes. They focused intently on hers, demanding a comprehension that finally dawned on her.

  Not good at all.

  He wanted something from her. He wanted to be caught in a compromising position. With her. But why?

  Humiliations, past and present, cleared her head as nothing else could. Tori sorted her thoughts and calculated possibilities, trying to regain the upper hand, which she feared she’d lost for good. She raised an eyebrow and challenged his high-handed behavior.

  “I don’t know what kind of kinky game—”

  “Believe me, sweetheart, this is no game.” His deep voice dropped back to a whisper for her ears alone. He smoothed his palms up and down the bare expanse of her upper arms, raising goose bumps and placating her for the benefit of the witnesses behind her. He brushed the warning against her ear under the guise of yet another kiss. “Follow my lead and we’ll both walk out of here.”

  Tori’s entire body went rigid with protest. “You want me to pretend—? You’re threatening me?”

  “Better than Jericho killing you.” She clamped her mouth shut beneath the final press of his lips. “And I expect you to be a very good actress.”

  Jericho’s hoarse cough demanded attention. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Cole took a measured breath and looked beyond her shoulder. “Mr. Meade. Paulie. Lana. Did you need me?”

  “I came to my office to get a cigar for after dinner. Why are you here?”

  “We needed a little privacy.” Cole’s hand slid to her knee in a possessive grasp. Was that part of following his lead? Or just another way to keep her trapped? Either way, the sudden suffusion of heat where his palm branded her skin was a distraction she didn’t intend to fall prey to again.

  Tori primed her nails to attack Cole’s hand. But when she saw how many inches of silk-clad thigh were showing beneath her hiked-up dress, she shoved at his chest instead. He retreated a step, helping her down with the panache of a gentleman. Needing room to think as much as to reclaim her modesty, Tori swatted his hand away and scooted some distance between them. She faced the trio at the door.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Meade,” she said, smoothing the hem of her silk dress to a line just above her knees and buttoning her rumpled jacket. Oh damn. Tori clutched at the jacket’s slack lining. Her picklock! “Mr. Meredith.” She scanned the carpet, visually retracing her path to the doorway as she acknowledged the bulky man looming like a shadow behind Jericho’s right shoulder. She cringed at the unabashed humor in his grin. She hoped he wasn’t laughing at anything more than a little indecorum.

  Where the hell did I lose—? Thank God. She spotted them on the desk. Scattered among the pencils were the two toothpick-size gadgets of stainless steel that worked in tandem to override a locking mechanism. They must have fallen out when Cole stripped the jacket from her shoulders. Or pulled her into his arms. Or… Hell, if he’d held her at gunpoint and turned her over to Jericho, she couldn’t be more rattled.

  It was just one stupid kiss!

  Paulie was teasing Cole about something now. Tori made a show of bending over to adjust her heel, gripping the desk for support. She stretched her fingers, slid the tools off into her hand and stood. Both men laughed at some remark. Clenching the pick in her fist at her side, she breathed a cautious sigh of relief.

  A large hand closed around hers and Tori tensed behind the smile she’d plastered on her face. Dammit. Did the man have eyes in the back of his head? Cole thrust his thumb between her fingers and pried loose the lock-pick, his strength overpowering hers, all under the guise of holding her hand.

  “Do you know everyone here, babe?” he asked, the sappy endearment a mild irritant compared to the riptide of impotent anger surging through her.

  To hell with blind obedience. Tori wanted to know what the security chief was up to before she started playing by his rules. She’d sacrificed enough pride by kissing him. She wouldn’t sacrifice her mission as well. She jerked her hand free.

  “I know this doesn’t look very professional, Mr. Meade. I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

  “That depends on whether or not you’re wearing that same perfume, sweetheart,” Cole drawled, teasing her with a lover’s tone. In one smooth move he dipped his head and nuzzled the hollow beneath her ear, and slipped the pick into the pocket of his slacks. “I’m not willing to make any guarantees.”

  Tori’s cheeks flooded with heat that was half temper and half fear of the flutters of awareness that radiated along each nerve at his sensuous t
ouch. “Mr. Tay— Cole,” she said, catching herself. She pushed against his shoulder and chest. “We need to stop now.”

  “You didn’t want me to a minute ago.”

  He had the nerve to bend his head to kiss her again, but she stiff-armed him, digging her fingers around the strap of his holster through layers of wool and cotton. It afforded her a solid grip, but it also reminded her that her own weapon was locked up at home in her bedside table.

  Everything about Cole Taylor was hard and dangerous and sexy and controlled.

  And she was at his mercy.

  Ooh! One kick. To something vital. That’s all she asked for, a chance to even the playing field against the stealthy giant who’d forced her into the untenable situation of not being able to defend herself without risking her cover. Jericho was clearly upset by their presence here. But claiming she and Cole meant nothing to each other would raise even more questions. If she wasn’t here to seduce the chief of security, then what was she doing in the office? They might question why she was at the Meade mansion in the first place. Tori pulled her hands away and seethed in silence, refusing to acknowledge Cole’s taunting smile.

  “Isn’t this cozy?” The third member of their audience, the platinum-blonde Tori had seen arguing outside with the butler, had a proprietary arm linked through Jericho’s. In diamond earrings and an evening suit of silver satin, she looked as cool and sophisticated now as she’d been hot under the collar earlier. “We’ll have our discussion about rescheduling the European shipments at another time and place, Jericho. Seems the new girl is making herself right at home. I guess she’s, uh…familiarizing herself with security protocols.”

  New girl? Familiarizing? And what shipments? To Sir Lancelot?

  Already bristling with tension, Tori jumped at the brush of Cole’s fingers against her back.

  “Easy, babe,” he crooned. “You’re among friends here. I’m sure Lana didn’t mean to imply anything.”

  Yeah, right. She wasn’t anybody’s babe, and nothing about this confrontation felt friendly. But the pitch of his voice soothed each frayed nerve ending, calming the instinct to fight or flee. And though she resented his ability to shift roles from blackmailer to champion so quickly, Tori realized she’d already foolishly responded to it. Her charging heartbeat had slowed to a manageable pace. She wasn’t just reacting, she was thinking. And reluctantly playing her part.