Kick A** Heroines Box Set: The UltimatumFatal AffairAfter the DarkBulletproof SEAL (The Guardian)

by Karen Robards

  “My goodness, is it—Mickey?” Her eyes widened in fake astonishment even as her smile mocked.

  “Good memory. And here I was thinking you might have forgotten.”

  “Yes, well, some things are unforgettable.” She reached up to give his cheek a playful pat. It was shadowed with maybe half a day’s growth of stubble and felt warm and faintly rough even through the lace of her glove. The blatant masculinity of it made her fingers curl in an unexpectedly sensual reaction as she withdrew her hand. The displeasing discovery of how that small contact affected her put a little extra snark in her tone as she added, “Such as the sight of you twitching on the bathroom floor.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Probably not smart to remind me of that.”

  “I doubt you needed reminding. Like I said, some things are unforgettable.” She gave her arm a tug. “Let me go, please. I have somewhere I need to be.”

  “An urgent appointment with your confederates?”

  She lifted her chin. “Confederates?”

  “The gang you came here with to steal our Mr. Sturgeon’s newest acquisition.”

  Bianca felt a chill slide down her spine. So he knew. Well, she’d suspected as much. She thought about saying, I have no idea what you’re talking about. But that was clearly a waste of breath. Anyway, something about this guy made her want to get all up in his face.

  She batted her lashes at him in exaggerated flirtation. “If I tell you where my confederates are, will you summon your confederates and hurry off and arrest them? Or do security guards actually have the authority to arrest people?”

  “Security guards have the authority to do whatever they need to do.”

  “But you’re not a security guard, are you? You’re just posing as one. What are you really, some kind of undercover cop?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  She nodded as her tangled thoughts on the ramifications of his presence here started to unknot themselves. “I don’t think Sturgeon has any idea who you really are. He wouldn’t have you around if he did. What, are you here to bust him and catch a thief? A two-for-one deal?”

  “Depends. Would that thief be you?”

  She laughed, a throaty, deliberately sexy sound. “Let’s not forget my confederates.”

  “Not even going to try to lie your way out of this?”

  “Why should I?”

  “To save your beautiful ass?”

  “Believe me, it’s not my beautiful ass that needs saving.”

  His eyes widened in surprise, and then to her annoyance he looked amused. “A woman who appreciates a nice set of buns. I like that! Just between you and me, kumquat, it’s all in the squats.”

  “Kumquat?” she repeated, revolted.

  “Beautiful fruit, slightly sour.”

  “I know what it is.” Recovering from the unexpectedness of his little foray into stupid humor, she got back to the business at hand: figuring out how best to get away from him and make off with the prototype. “What do you suppose would happen if somebody told Sturgeon that one of his security guards is actually a cop looking to bust him?”

  “About the same thing that would happen if somebody told him that one of his party guests is actually a thief looking to rip off his newly acquired merchandise.”

  They exchanged measuring looks. Silent, mutually acknowledged message: touché. His gaze dropped. She stiffened with indignation as she realized that he was giving her a slow and comprehensive once-over.

  “What I want to know is, what’s under that pretty pink dress.”

  “What?”

  “You had that stun gun on you somewhere. From what I recall of those sexy little scraps of lace you were wearing the last time we met, there weren’t too many places you could have concealed it.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to—”

  Before she could finish, she was knocked into from behind by a couple bumping and grinding past to the beat of the pounding music. The girl of the pair called out, “Sorry!”

  Thrown off balance, staggering slightly, Bianca cast a startled glance over her shoulder to discover that the couple who’d hit her was just one of dozens in the room who were gyrating to the throbbing beat of “Love Is Strange.” She’d been so intent on Mickey she’d almost forgotten they weren’t alone. Trying to regain her footing, she pitched into something solid—Mickey, she discovered as her attention refocused in a hurry—and grabbed hold. His arm clamped around her waist, pulling her all the way up against him. She thought it was to steady her, but then he didn’t let go.

  “Hey,” she protested. He held her so tightly that they were practically fused together. For all his leanness, he felt as solid as a stone wall. Her breasts tingled from being flattened against the firmness of his chest. She could feel every tiny detail: the hard nubs of his shirt buttons, the protrusion of his belt buckle, the long, powerful muscles, the heat of the hard body beneath. And yes, the man was aroused.

  As she made that discovery, her body gave a deep throb of instinctive—unwelcome!—response.

  It occurred to her that if she could feel the fine points of his body, he could feel the fine points of hers. Then she felt his hand moving over her, down her back, across her ass, sliding around to her thighs—

  He was searching her.

  “Stop that!” She grabbed his wrist. And fought the urge to break it.

  “Loving the garter belt. Sexy.”

  “Let me go.” She dropped his wrist to shove at his chest. He didn’t let go. He did stop feeling her up, which was the point.

  “Pure self-protection, kumquat.”

  Her lips thinned.

  “If I had a stun gun on me, you’d know it by now, guaranteed,” she said, lying through her teeth.

  “That’s actually oddly comforting.”

  His hand that had been gripping her arm slid along it to grip her hand instead. He brought her hand up so that it pressed against the smooth white shirt just above his heart and held it there, his fingers wrapped around hers. He’d held it that same way before, and once again the memory of how they’d kissed crowded into her head, unwanted but impossible to shake.

  She looked up, met his eyes. What passed between them caused her lips to part and her breathing to quicken. It was, she realized with an inner shiver, an arcing of electricity, a flare of heat.

  What was even scarier was, it was mutual.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Her tone was sharp.

  She asked because he’d started to move, walking her backward whether she wanted to go or not. His knee pushed into the space between her legs, his thigh parted her thighs, his pelvis tilted against hers as he pulled her even tighter against him—

  Her senses went a little haywire then as she confirmed that he was now majorly aroused.

  She felt all hot and flushed suddenly and didn’t know whether she wanted to kick herself or him more for what she considered her over-the-top response to what he was doing. Luckily the darkness and the weirdness of the blue light almost certainly concealed what had to be her shell-shocked expression. She was wary of him, she didn’t like him and yet she somehow found herself wildly attracted to him.

  Her skirt was hiked up too high for decency, she feared. She could feel the rasp of his trousers against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and the hardness of his leg beneath the trousers. Then he leaned her backward and rocked into her. As her body clutched and pulsed in unexpected, charged reaction, she made up her mind: the kick was definitely destined for him.

  “It’s called dancing. I’m surprised you don’t recognize it.” He straightened with her but kept her locked against him as he took a few more gliding steps that, courtesy of his leg that was still positioned between hers—letting that happen was an error, the rocking pressure of it against her was making her feel things
she absolutely did not want to feel—had her moving backward against her volition again.

  She would have put him on the floor, but she wasn’t quite ready to let him know she could. Besides, this wasn’t the right place. What she had in mind for him required privacy. Somewhere in the middle of all those sexy feelings he was engendering in her, it had occurred to her that Mickey was the only person who knew who she was and why she was on that boat. And as long as she kept him occupied, he wasn’t telling anybody. If she could put him out of commission, she could steal the prototype and be gone with no one to interfere.

  Cue Operation Spider to Fly, Part Two.

  “I don’t want to dance with you.” But she hooked an arm around his neck and hung on as he swung her around and dipped her again. All around them other couples were dipping and swaying, too. She realized that they were dirty dancing just like everybody else, which made them practically indistinguishable from all the other couples on the floor.

  Good to know. Just in case anybody came looking.

  “Better than other things we could be doing. Well, most other things.” He bent over her, his mouth warm as it just brushed her cheek.

  Her breath caught. Her heart sped up. Her body melted. It had been a long time since she’d found herself getting turned on like this. Since she’d let herself get turned on like this. Under the circumstances, with him—bad, bad idea.

  But it couldn’t be helped.

  “I’m hot. Let’s go outside,” she said.

  CHAPTER 18

  “In a minute. They’re playing our song.” Mickey’s mouth skimmed the side of her neck.

  Bianca shivered. This time, though, she didn’t bother to try to hide it.

  “Our song?”

  He lifted his head. The pulsating blue light made his chiseled features look like they were all hard angles and shadows. His pupils had dilated until his eyes appeared black. The look in them was intent—and sexually charged. The unexpectedness of what he’d said threw her a little as she tried to make sense of it.

  He said, “Keep listening.”

  She moved with him automatically now, her steps the reverse of his, then found herself practically riding his hard-muscled thigh as he bent her backward over his arm once more. Arching up against him, she clenched her teeth in an effort to keep her focus on the big picture in the face of all that quaking, burning heat.

  When he pulled her upright again, she was weak at the knees. Also, she probably wasn’t thinking clearly, but as far as she could tell, the song was nothing special. It had a wailing bluesy edge and the singer was moaning something about her baby and sweet lovin’ and all Bianca could think was that it was about as fifties generic as it could get and definitely in no way qualified as “their song.” Not that they had a song or ever would have a song, because they were barely even acquaintances and in any case their acquaintance wasn’t friendly and wasn’t destined to go beyond the brief period of time it was going to take her to rid herself of him again.

  Then she heard it: the semispoken lyrics made her eyes widen.

  First came her name. Well, her fake name: Sylvia.

  Then it went on to say something about calling your lover boy, but by then she was beyond listening. Because she remembered the names of the singers—the fifties R & B duo whose hit this was, whose names were even spoken in the song, who called to each other in the song.

  Sylvia. And Mickey.

  She froze—well, she froze, while he kept moving, pulling her upright, swaying with her as she hung like a coat hanger from his broad shoulders, which meant she actually kept moving, too, but without any cooperation on her part at all as she processed what she’d heard with growing indignation.

  Her eyes shot to the ID badge clipped to the breast pocket of his jacket.

  She had to squint to make sure, but…beneath his picture was the name Zane Williams.

  Not Mickey.

  Her gaze collided with his.

  “Made the connection, I see,” he said and smiled that cocky smile of his at her.

  “Funny.” Amazing how much bite could get crammed into a single word.

  “Hey, if role-playing’s your thing, I’m into it. You be Sylvia, I’ll be Mickey, and—”

  “Really funny.” If her tone was short, it was because he was annoying the life out of her—and also because she was annoyed with herself for not making the name connection sooner. Her only excuse was that she wasn’t all that familiar with obscure fifties songs—and she hadn’t expected the dark and dangerous man she’d bested in Bahrain to be prone to making idiotic jokes at her expense.

  He said, “You look mad.”

  “Is your name really Zane?”

  “You tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Cara.”

  “Thomas.”

  Sway, turn, dip. He rocked his thigh right up against her crotch. The resulting wave of desire made her catch her breath.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said when he pulled her upright. And did her best to keep her rising temper out of her voice.

  This time he went for it.

  Steadying her with his hands on her waist as she found her balance—being plastered against him like jelly on bread took a moment to recover from—he grabbed her hand and pulled her behind him toward the door she’d been making for before he’d stopped her, the one that led to the outside stairs.

  The rush of fresh, salt-tinged air as they stepped out onto the narrow walkway that led to the stairs went a long way toward clearing her head. This outside area was strictly utilitarian and completely private, which was why she’d chosen to head for it in the first place. As the door closed behind them, cutting off the tail end of “their” song, Bianca curled a hand around the white iron rail. The motion of the yacht was as smooth as a rocking chair, but it was still motion, and without not-Mickey’s support, she needed a moment to rediscover her sea legs. They were on the uppermost deck, three stories above the surface of the bay. Looking down, she saw that the walkway was directly over the water and she could see a line of white froth as the hull cut through it at speed. The sky was midnight blue with a frosty sliver of moon and what looked like thousands of twinkling stars. The bay was an even darker blue, its surface reflecting the stars and the lights from the bridge and the other boats that were out there flitting around like fireflies. The buildings on the shore glowed through the night like dozens of Japanese lanterns. White ruffles of surf framed what she thought had to be Treasure Island maybe a couple of hundred yards off the port side, which was the side they were on.

  Music and laughter from the parties on the decks, the churn of the engine, the slap of waves against the hull, made it necessary for her to raise her voice as she turned to him, smiled a lovely, charming, completely false, prey-lulling smile and said, “It’s a beautiful night.”

  He didn’t say a word. Instead his hands came up to cup her face and he backed her up against the smooth fiberglass wall of the cabin behind her and kissed her.

  His lips were warm and firm and way too expert, clearly the man was no novice when it came to women, and as they slanted over her mouth her heart lurched. She’d had firm intentions about what she meant to do when she got him outside—knock him out with a chop to the side of the neck was at the top of the list—but the kiss caught her by surprise and took her out of her game. Electricity shot through her, making her pulse race and her body tighten and her toes curl.

  Chemistry, that’s what this is was her last rational thought as she closed her eyes and clutched at his trim and toned waist and kissed him back with an intensity that she never would have expected to feel.

  Not for somebody like him. Not for anybody, really. Until now, the only kind of chemistry she’d believed in had been of the science lab variety. When she got involved with a guy, it was because she liked him, beca
use he was cute, because he satisfied a need, not only sexually but for normalcy. Normal girls had boyfriends. Thus, so did she.

  She didn’t feel sparks. Didn’t get swept off her feet. Never had. Until this moment she would have said she was constitutionally incapable of it.

  But…his kiss was making her dizzy. It was making her stupid.

  He leaned into her, pressing her against the wall with his not-inconsiderable weight, covering her body so that she could feel the entire muscular length of him, and kissed her some more, like it was something he’d been waiting to do all his life. His kisses were deep, sexy, arousing. They ignited a hot flare of passion that had her kissing him back every bit as hungrily as he was kissing her. She molded her lips to his, licked into his mouth, slid her hands up over the wide, firm contours of his chest to lock around his neck, arched up against him as his grip shifted and he slid a hand down to caress her breast.

  Oh, God. She thought her bones might melt from the heat.

  By the time he broke it off, she was aching with need. She wasn’t sure she could stand without support. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Her breathing was uneven. She felt all soft and shivery inside.

  He took her right hand and tugged it down from around his neck and she opened her eyes just to check out what was up with that. Silvery moonlight streamed over the pair of them. The star-studded sky, the bay and the boat and the darkness, the handsome, impossibly sexy man who was looking at her with—was it tenderness? Yes, she thought it was. The newness of this, of him, of them, was almost…dazzling. It was the stuff of every romantic dream she’d never had.

  Because she didn’t believe in romance. Romance wasn’t something she did. But her heart was beating way too fast, and as she watched him carry her hand to his mouth and press his lips to the back of it she found that she was holding her breath.

  When he lowered her hand, she could still feel the imprint of his lips on her skin. She smiled at him. A little tentative, a little—really? So unlike her—shy.

  Then he snapped something cold and hard around her wrist.