BAD to the Bone

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  By the look in her brown eyes, he could tell she wasn’t buying it. “Yeah, right. I don’t—”

  He pressed the trigger for another remote explosive. Marianne took the bait. She cringed in his arms. “Are you serious?”

  “Baby, I never lie about minions out to get me.” At least not when it was helpful and not when it would keep her in his arms.

  “Is this for real?”

  He triggered another explosion. “We have to get moving,” he said, letting just a hint of an edge into his voice. “It’s going to get ugly if we don’t.”

  Marianne swallowed at that. Part of her still doubted that this could be real, but the look on Brad’s face had been sincere. The man wasn’t that good an actor. He’d had no idea that Kyle was going to show up.

  Any more than she’d known.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry. I have a safe place.”

  Not sure if she should trust him, but having no other choice, she followed him through the woods until they came to a sheer drop-off near the crashing waves.

  Kyle gave her a heated stare. “Feeling adventurous?”

  “I can’t go down there.”

  “Sure you can, love. I won’t let you fall.”

  I must be insane .

  She hated heights. She hated the thought of falling into the ocean below, and yet something inside her trusted Kyle implicitly. Not to mention the fact he seemed to know what he was doing while she had no clue whatsoever.

  With him helping her, they carefully slid down the steep side of the cliff and moved across the beach until they came to a small cave.

  Marianne looked at it skeptically. “You know, I have a really nice room back at—”

  His peeved look interrupted her. “And it’s just as likely to be riddled with bullet holes. Trust me, being shot hurts.” He gave her a devilish grin. “Don’t tell me my little teacher has lost her sense of adventure.”

  “No, but…” She paused as his words sank in. “How do you know I’m a teacher?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but how did you know that?”

  He hesitated before he answered. “The way you dress.”

  Marianne looked down at her khaki shorts and white button-down shirt. There wasn’t anything to mark her as a teacher. She looked just like anyone else out for a stroll on the beach. “My clothes don’t say anything.”

  “Sure they do,” he said, moving closer to her.

  Closer and closer until his large muscular body overwhelmed her with desire.

  He unbuttoned the top button at her throat, making her entire body instantly hot with sexual anticipation. When he spoke, there was a deep, erotic timber in his voice. “Only a teacher would have her collar buttoned all the way up to her chin. What? You afraid of driving your students wild?”

  “Hardly!”

  He smiled down at her as he unbuttoned the next one. “I’ll bet the guys you teach spend hours in your classroom staring at your ass while you’re at the chalkboard, trying to imagine what you’re wearing underneath all this conservative dressing—”

  Marianne cut his words off with an outraged squeak. “Stop that. You’re skeeving me.”

  “Skeeving?” he asked with a laugh. “What kind of word is that?”

  “A perfectly good one that means I don’t want to even think about what you’re describing.” She narrowed her gaze on him. “You’re trying to get me off the topic, aren’t you?”

  Yes, he was. Damn, she was good. If he didn’t know better, Kyle would think she really was a special agent. “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kyle couldn’t keep himself from touching her lips with his thumb. She had a mouth that had been made for long, hot kisses, and the memory of her taste was still fresh in his mind. Under his skin.

  Simmering in his blood.

  “You are beautiful,” he breathed.

  She actually snorted at him.

  “What was that?” he asked with a light smile.

  “Disagreement. They must be paying you a lot to do this.”

  “No one’s paying me for anything where you’re concerned,” he said, lacing his hand through her hair. “I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, Marianne, but I would never toy with someone’s emotions. I’m not that cruel.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers.

  Marianne sighed as his arms tightened around her. This man had more magic in his touch than every member of Harry Potter’s school. She’d never seen anything like Jungle Jim.

  He was incredible, and the woman in her was completely captivated by him and his powerful touch. His sensuous taste. His warm, male scent.

  His mouth blistered a trail from her lips to her neck, where his breath scorched her. She buried her face in the soft locks of his dark brown hair and inhaled the warm, manly scent of his shampoo and skin.

  Goodness, but this man set her on fire.

  He pulled back to stare down at her with those captivatingly blue eyes. He rubbed gently at her face, letting her know he must have gotten some of his camouflage paint on her skin. “Have you ever made love to a stranger before, Marianne?”

  “No,” she said, her voice weak. In truth, she’d never before wanted to.

  But she did now, and the depths to which she wanted him scared her.

  He was truly irresistible.

  Kyle took her hand into his and led it to the swollen bulge in his pants. She could feel the whole outline of his cock in her palm. Feel it straining toward her hand as if as eager for her touch as she was to touch him.

  She should be offended by his actions.

  She wasn’t.

  “Would you like to take a walk on the wild side with me, Little Teacher?”

  This was insane. The very thought of it was…

  Heavenly.

  Decadent and frightening.

  Dare she?

  He trailed her hand up to the top button of his pants, where he lifted his shirt ever so slightly so that she could touch that hard, warm skin of his lower abdomen. He curled her fingertips into his waistband, then released her hand so that he could cup her face with his large hands.

  She swallowed at the sensation of the short, crisp hairs that led from his navel downward.

  “It’s entirely up to you, Marianne,” he whispered. “Do you have the courage to live out your fantasy?”

  Did she?

  How many nights had she lain awake dreaming of this? Dreaming of a some hot man saving her from something bad and then taking her madly into his arms and making love to her in some wildly erotic location?

  More times than she could count.

  Seize it or leave it.

  Woman or weasel?

  I’m a weasel I’m a weasel. I’m a weasel.

  No, her days of weaseldom were over.

  Taking a deep breath, she undid his pants.

  Her heart stopped beating as she saw the size of the swell of him underneath the thin white boxer briefs. He was huge!

  His smile was tender, warm, and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear she saw relief in his gaze.

  This time when he took possession of her mouth, his kiss was demanding. Bold.

  His kiss literally made her dizzy. He pulled back long enough to jerk his olive green T-shirt over his head. He took a moment to wipe the paint off her mouth and then his, but ended up only smearing it more across his face.

  Marianne laughed as she took the shirt from him and carefully removed the paint from his skin. “I suspected there might be a human somewhere underneath all of this.” She’d meant the words to be light and funny.

  He didn’t take them that way.

  Instead, he made an odd noise in the back of his throat. “Not really. Once I don the garb and assume the mission, the human in me was trained to be shoved deep into the background.”

  With his chin in her hand, she paused while wiping a particularly stubborn bit of camouflage from his temple.
The sincerity of those deep blue eyes scorched her. “You were trained?”

  “What they didn’t kick out of me from birth, the military finished.”

  His words tugged at her heart, and she felt strangely close to him, as if he had just shared something with her that he didn’t normally share with others.

  As gently as she could, she wiped his tawny skin clean.

  He watched her with a hint of suspicion behind his eyes as if it were more habitual than anything she’d done or might do to him, and at the same time she felt his trust. It was a heady contradiction.

  And as she toweled the last of the color from his face, she let her gaze roam his hard body.

  Her breath caught at the sight of his wide chest and broad shoulders that tapered down into a narrow waist and lean hips. He was built like a professional athlete.

  Every single muscle in his chest was discernible.

  But what caught her attention most was the sight of several scars over his ribs and the two in his chest which looked vaguely like healing bullet wounds. Or at least what she thought healing bullet wounds might look like.

  Having never seen a real bullet wound, she didn’t have a basis for comparison. Still, those scars looked authentic, not like makeup or window dressing.

  Before she could ask him about them, he picked her up, cradled her against his chest, and took her deeper into the cave. He laid her down on a pallet that was made up of several military blankets and an air mattress.

  He turned on a small battery-operated lamp.

  “What is all this?”

  “Boy Scout motto. Always be prepared.”

  She trembled as he slowly unbuttoned her shirt. Her heart hammered in anticipation as she felt trapped between her common sense, which told her to run, and her lust, which told her to rip the pants off him and have her wicked way with all that lean, masculine strength.

  “Are you always prepared for a tryst in a cave?”

  “No, ma’am. But I was hoping you’d take me up on my offer.”

  “Because you were bored?”

  He paused his hand at the last button and gave her a hot, intense stare. “No, because I happen to think you’re sexier than hell.”

  She had a hard time believing that, but there was no doubt he was sexier than hell. He had a body that had been torn from her dreams.

  He undid the last button.

  Marianne gulped for air.

  Kyle slid his large, callused hand through the opening of her shirt to cup her breast through her white lace bra. She moaned at the feel of his palm against her swollen nipple. Even with the fabric of her bra between them, his hand was scorching.

  It had been way too long since she’d last made love to a man.

  For that matter, it had been a long time since she’d really wanted to make love to a man. Now all that repressed sexuality thrummed through her, wanting him desperately.

  But with that desire came the fear that he might think her lacking from her inexperience. She wasn’t the kind of woman who played the field, and in spite of what she’d done with Kyle, she’d never fallen into bed with strangers.

  What was he expecting from this?

  He pulled back from his kiss to smile down at her. His eyes were blazing and hot.

  “Say the word, Marianne, and I’m out of here.”

  She answered him with a demanding kiss of her own.

  Kyle closed his eyes as he inhaled the scent of her hair combined with the sweet scent of some kind of womanly perfume. But it was the earthy smell of woman that made his heart race even faster. Made his mouth water for more.

  He’d never been with a woman like her before, and for the first time in his life he was nervous.

  As a teenager, he’d run with the worst sort of New York gang. At fifteen he’d lost his virginity in the backroom of a run-down slum in the Bronx to a woman in her mid-twenties who was on the make and looking to nail any handy dick she could find.

  He’d fought his way out of the streets to enlist in the Navy. At age eighteen he had done his best to turn his life around and not become another statistic of urban poverty and bad parenting. Even so, he’d never dared dream a woman like this would want to be with him.

  Someone soft and gentle. A teacher. Not a woman on the make. Not an operative out to blow his cover or a criminal wanting a fast lay before she blew his brains out.

  Marianne was just a nice, average lady from a small town in the Midwest.

  She was safe. That word alone was so alien to him that it made him ache even to think of it.

  He’d never known safety. Never known unconditional acceptance.

  He could vaguely remember his mother once telling him that sometimes the best dreams were simple ones. He’d never understood that.

  Not until this moment.

  He didn’t crave the excitement that was his life. He craved the slice of normality Marianne offered. The simple taste of wholesome woman.

  The simple taste of Marianne Webernec.

  Marianne was breathless as Kyle moved down her body to unlace her shoes and pull them from her feet. She couldn’t believe she was doing this with a complete stranger.

  It was so out of character for her.

  And yet she couldn’t stop herself.

  “Tell me something about you, Kyle.” She needed to know something so that she wouldn’t feel so self-conscious.

  He pulled her other shoe off and massaged her sensitive arch with his thumb. Oh, but it felt sinfully wonderful as it made her stomach tight. She felt a rush of moisture between her legs.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked, his deep voice intoxicating.

  Everything. There was nothing about him she didn’t want to know.

  “What do you do for a living?”

  He tossed her socks by her shoes and gave her an impish stare as he nibbled the arch of her foot.

  She moaned in ecstasy.

  He blew a stream of warm air over her skin before he spoke again. “Honestly?”

  She nodded, unable to breathe from the pleasure that rippled through her.

  “I’m a federal agent.”

  For a second she couldn’t move as his words sank in. Then she laughed at the absurdity. “Can you break out of character for one minute and be serious?”

  “I am serious,” he said earnestly.

  But she didn’t believe it. It was too perfect to be real, and what were the chances of a federal agent being here with her right now when that was her fantasy?

  He was just one of the men playing on the island. She didn’t want that. She wanted to know about him. The truth. “Who do you work for?” she asked skeptically. “The CIA?”

  “The Certified Idiots Association?” he asked, as if offended by her question. “Hardly. We eat those wannabes for breakfast. I’m with BAD, the Bureau of American Defense.”

  She scoffed. “There’s no such agency.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  Part of her wanted to believe him, but the rational part of her knew better. She’d never even heard of such a thing. “And what part of D.C. are you located in? The White House?”

  “We’re not. Our offices are in Nashville.”

  She laughed even harder at that. “Oh, please. What kind of agency would have their headquarters there?”

  His look was devilish. “The smart one. If D.C. gets wiped out or bombed, we’re still able to function. No one’s ever going to take out Nashville. It’s barely on the terrorist map. Besides, we don’t do anything by the book. Hell, our director is so whacked, he put us on the ground floor of the bat tower just for shits and giggles.”

  She arched her brow at that. “Ahh, the bat tower. Let me guess? Your director is Commissioner Gordon.”

  She groaned as he sucked her toe into his mouth and used his tongue to gently massage it. He nipped her large toe, then pulled back. “Trust me, BAD would make mincemeat out of Commissioner Gordon, Sergeant O’Hara, and Batman combined.”

  “BAD, huh?”

>   “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

  “Have much luck with that line?”

  He laughed gently as he crawled up her body like a languid panther and pressed his lips to her belly. His breath tickled her stomach as he parted her shirt more. “Sp far it’s working.”

  Yes, it was. Much better than it should be. Who would have ever thought that she could be seduced by some cheesy little line?

  No, she realized. She wasn’t seduced by a cheesy line, but rather by his stunningly blue eyes. His tender lips.

  Oh, who was she fooling? It was that sinful body that she wanted.

  All of it.

  She’d never made love to a man who looked like this.

  One who was so handsome he should be on the cover of a book or in a movie.

  One who set her blood on fire just by being with her.

  She stared down at him while his hot mouth skimmed the flesh of her stomach. He lay between her spread legs with his chest pressing against the center of her body.

  Oh, how she ached for him. Marianne ran her hands through his dark hair, letting the swirls of his tongue sweep her far away from what they were doing.

  She arched her back as he sat up slightly and pulled her shirt off. Then he reached behind her and unfastened her bra.

  “Mmm,” he breathed as he bared her. “What have we here?”

  “Breasts,” she said simply as she fought the urge to cover herself. “Two of them.”

  He laughed at that. “Good, ‘cause I was afraid you might have three.”

  “Nope, no Anne Boleyn here. Just two, like any other normal woman.”

  Kyle smiled at her teasing and her intelligence. He couldn’t recall ever being so at ease with a lover. It didn’t feel as if they were strangers to him.

  There was an odd sense of belonging with her. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Tell me something, Marianne,” he whispered in her ear. “Tell me what schoolteachers dream about when they’re all alone at night. Tell me what fantasies keep you awake while you lie in bed, wanting to feel someone inside you.”

  Her face went flush.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said, teasing the corner of her mouth with his lips.

  He’d always wondered what “good” girls dreamt of. The scenes in the romance novel he’d read had shocked him more than the first time he’d read a Penthouse letter. He still had a hard time believing Marianne read such things.