by Alison Kent
Equally disconcerting was how her long dormant attraction, having surfaced, now felt like so much more than a simple appreciation of blue eyes and a very fine ass.
But the most disquieting of all was the way her heart refused to leave her throat for fear that the evening's inevitable end would be just that. An end.
She couldn't accept that when their time tonight had stirred her blood so fiercely.
Finally, Kelly John shook his head. "Sorry. I'm still recovering from being totally blown away by the, uh, show at the theater."
She set her elbows on the table, laced her hands, rested her chin in the webbing of her fingers, and considered him. "I'm not sure if I should take that as a complaint or a compliment."
"A compliment definitely. It's just—"
He stopped as the wine steward arrived, presented the bottle, uncorked it, and poured with a subdued flourish suited to the flavor of the room.
Once he'd left them alone again, Kelly John studied the liquid in his glass as if waiting for it to turn into sacrificial blood. Her heart sank at his expression.
"Listen, Emma," he began, and she sat back and groaned. "Don't get me wrong. What happened back there at the theater . . ."
His sentence trailed, and she waited. She was not going to put words into his mouth or facilitate this confession that she didn't want to hear.
He lifted his glass, met her eyes over the rim. His expression was wary when he simply said, "It wasn't what I expected."
"You didn't enjoy it?"
"That's not what I said. It's just not what I'm used to."
"Which part would you not be used to?" she raised a brow to ask.
He leaned forward, spoke quietly. "A woman wanting sex for herself, instead of getting naked because she wants to get to me."
Now that was a strange admission. "Get to you how?"
He looked down to where his thumb rubbed over the grain in the table. And then he laughed to himself. "Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of women?"
Okay, this was too cute. Big bad Kelly John Beach was shy or embarrassed or both. "Watch it, mister. I've got one of those evil minds over here, and I'm not afraid to use it."
He chuckled again, but she sensed a hollowness to the sound, as if his thoughts had taken a solemn turn.
His words confirmed her intuition. "No. I don't think you will."
"So, then, if you don't think I'll use my mind . . . are you calling me an airhead?"
He collapsed back in the booth. "Jesus. A guy can't win for losing."
She grinned, loving how easy he was to disarm. "It's all about the battle of the sexes, sweetie."
"Yeah, well, I like to keep the war games out of my personal life," he said, and drank deeply of his wine.
She did no more than sip at hers, thinking. "You said earlier that you don't have girlfriends."
He nodded. "That I have sex."
"Right. Is that why? Because it's easier to bed a woman than to have to talk to her?"
He leaned forward and signaled her close with a crook of his finger. For the first time since this charade began, she felt threatened. Not by his intimidating presence, but by the truth of who and what he was.
By the beast inside him that was able to live on the periphery of involvement in order to do what he needed to do. The one she'd welcomed into her body, and now found herself embracing with her heart.
So when he spoke, she did more than hear his words. She listened.
"Talking to a woman means getting to know her, enjoying her as a friend, as a lover, falling in love, then coming home to her in however many body bags it takes to hold all the parts. And I'm not going to do that to any woman. Ever."
That said, he cupped the back of her head and he kissed her.
Eight
Women. Had to get all hepped up about relationships and ruin a good physical thing.
He'd been officially introduced to Emma less than six hours ago, and she was already judging him because he preferred his sex without strings.
No matter how many times or in how many ways he explained why things had to be the way they were, she would never understand. Not when she couldn't know what it took to do the things he did. The things he had to do.
Things that ripped him up so goddamn badly at times that he would rather die than ever share the brutality with a woman he loved. No woman deserved having his fucked-up shit dumped in her lap.
He shared it with Tripp, and with the other Smithson Group members to a lesser extent. But the truth went no further. Neither did his trust. It couldn't.
He'd learned his lesson in Nicaragua and wasn't about to put himself in such a bad place again.
He climbed behind Emma into the backseat of the taxi that rolled up then, and slammed the door. The driver pulled away from the restaurant. At Kelly John's side, Emma sat silent, much as she had during their meal.
He'd never have thought he could shut her up with a kiss, but once she'd managed to stop tickling the back of his throat with her tongue, they'd talked of next to nothing.
All they'd done was order and discuss insignificant crap, though the conversation had gotten a bit more personal, had felt a bit more comfortable, more natural, than any of the others they'd shared.
After what had gone down between them in the theater, that hardly came as a surprise—though he had to admit the aftermath had caught him off guard. Sex with Emma hadn't been the sort that ended once he'd pulled up his pants.
And that was a new experience, the fact that he hadn't wanted to hit the door running before she could beg him to stay.
He slouched back, spread his legs, stared sightlessly out the window at his side, hoping Tripp's hack into the restaurant's camera system had captured the kiss at least. Otherwise .. . hell.
There was no otherwise. He'd completely blown it. No seizing the opportunity. No focusing on the endgame. Oh, no. None of that.
He'd been too weirded out by the tension to think straight, to step up the plan. His balls were in a vise, and he'd just ratcheted the damn thing up tight.
He'd seen Emma before, of course. He didn't walk into Hank's office wearing blinders when he had business there. He'd seen her, and he knew she'd seen him.
But it was that shared sort of seeing that had nothing to do with looking at each other and everything to do with the air in the room being impossible to breathe.
Hank's suggestion to bring her in on this scheme had caused a hitch in his side for more reasons than not wanting to put her in danger.
Spending up-close-and-personal time with the only woman in a long time to snag his interest outside of his pants scared the holy hell out of him.
When he felt her shift at his side, felt her sidle up closer and slip her arm around his neck, his antennae popped. He glanced over, found her lips inches away, leaned his head down so she could whisper into his ear.
"Don't look now but I think we have a rapt audience."
"How's that?" he whispered back.
"I've caught the driver using his rearview mirror a lot more than seems necessary."
He straightened, catching the driver's dark-eyed gaze from beneath his turban almost immediately, waiting another two, three, four heartbeats before turning his attention back to Emma.
He crooked his finger, teased her over, stroked the column of her neck from her chin to the hollow of her throat, and brushed his lips to her ear. "Taking this spy business to heart, are you?"
"Just call me Mata Hari," she said, turning so that her lips hovered near his.
He pulled her closer, cutting his gaze back to the mirror where again the driver's interest seemed way more than casual. Seemed too sharp, too interested.
The possibility that the man was Spectra flashed briefly through Kelly John's mind. They'd had the same eighteen hours to get to him that he'd had to throw them off track.
The plan was that he and Emma were dating, that their sex tapes were recorded last night. A second night spent doing
the hot-and-heavy made perfect sense as a continuing cover.
Or so he tried to rationalize as a way of getting his hands on her again. "Hmm. Mata Hari used seduction as a tool of the trade, right?"
Emma nodded. The tip of her tongue darted out to tickle the edge of his mouth. "If you want me, all you have to do is tell me."
"God, Emma." Wanting her the way he did should've made it easier to gear up for another show. But it didn't. Because what he wanted was to have her all to himself. No cameras, no observers, no scenario to play out.
Nothing but the two of them alone in her bed.
He nuzzled her neck, breathed her in, thought about retiring and living to a ripe old age and never again dealing with misplaced trust. "I want you, Emma."
"I want you, too."
"But what we do here is for him. Not for me. Later it will be for me."
She sighed with a breathy shiver. "Oh, Kelly, it's about damn time."
He chuckled, drawing her body across his lap. Her backside settled between his spread legs. "What's that supposed to mean, about damn time?"
She wiggled close to him, laced her hands behind his neck. "I've had the hots for you for years."
His cock began to swell. But the swelling he really felt was happening higher. Right in the center of his chest. "The hots, huh?"
She nodded, reached up and sprinkled kisses over his neck. "This was all before I knew that you shared Pat Benatar's take on things."
"Come again?" he asked, on his way to another superb hard-on.
She dipped her tongue beneath his shirt collar. "Thinking that love is a battlefield."
Love. That helped put a damper on things. "Isn't it?"
"I like to think of it more as a contact sport. Besides, this is more about lust than anything, isn't it?"
"It's more about something," he said because he was pretty sure it wasn't only about two hot and horny bodies.
She pulled back to look at him. "Oh, that's very definitive."
"What do you want me to say? We just met."
"Right. And this is just about me helping to save your ass."
It had started out that way. Or so he wanted to convince himself. Now it was all about how he seemed to have met his match. How much he was suddenly thinking out of his short-term box. How much he wanted to kiss her.
And so he did.
His hand on the back of her head, he lifted her to meet his descending mouth. And then he kissed her like all that mattered was losing himself in what she made him feel. In the way she made him forget.
He knew nothing but her touch, the stroke of her tongue, her taste. He felt as much as heard her desperate whimpers, swearing he could smell her arousal when that much was no doubt imagined.
Imagined and anticipated because he knew her amazing way of letting go, the mind-blowing response of her body.
She was unlike any woman he'd known at any time in his past, and that got to him in ways he should've been beyond being able to feel.
It was a feeling he wanted to explore. A feeling he wanted to trust when his idea of trust had long ago ceased to exist.
What he felt now was her hand inside his jacket, her fingers smoothly releasing the buttons of his shirt, threading into his chest hair, working down toward his belt buckle. He stopped her before she got that far. The theater had been iffy; this definitely was not the time or the place.
Besides, right now? All he wanted was her kiss. Or so he told himself until she stroked her tongue over his in a motion that had him thinking how it would feel with her lips loving him elsewhere.
He groaned, and she chuckled, easing back to kiss the barest edge of his mouth. "You amaze me. Every time you kiss me, it's like the first time."
"Yeah, well, I aim to please." Lame, but he couldn't think of anything else to say.
She smoothed down and patted his jacket's lapels. "Your aim is perfect. It's your attitude needing an adjustment."
"That so?"
She nodded and this time caressed his jaw. "I'll see what I can do about that."
He snorted, but only meant half of it. God, she couldn't keep her hands off him; how could he possibly be of a mind to argue? "Think you're the woman for the job?"
She captured his gaze, arched one brow. The light was dim, but enough for him to see the twinkle beneath. "I knew that even before you hired me."
The car began to slow. He had no time to respond to her comment—a very good thing because he was clueless on how to react. The same cocky attitude in another woman would've had him on a fast boat to as far away as he could get.
But Emma wasn't any other woman. For now, she was his.
She scooted out of his lap, straightened her hair and her hemline while the driver eased the car to the curb in front of her place.
Kelly John sat forward on full alert. If the driver was working for Spectra and was doing more than observing, now would be when he'd make his move. But he did nothing more than wait for his fare, allowing Kelly John to breathe easier.
None of their conversation had been loud enough to be overheard, though being picked up by a parabolic mike wasn't out of the question.
Emma had followed his lead and said nothing beyond what a lover might say. She'd played her part perfectly, given him the alibi he needed.
What happened now, once upstairs in her apartment, was off the books.
It wasn't until after he'd paid the fare and the taxi pulled away that he snapped to the fact that more than a few things were off.
The driver had no beard, but wore a Sikh's turban with what looked like dreadlocks snaking out from beneath. But it was the single diamond stud in his earlobe that gave Kelly John pause.
Dreadlocks and diamonds . . .
Jesus H. Christ. Standing in the middle of the street, his heart thundering, he pulled out his satellite phone and dialed, making a connection the NSA would kill to listen in on—if they could track it down.
In the ops center, Julian Samms answered. Kelly John gave him time to do no more than identify himself before saying, "Your Spectra assassin. From Miami? He's here."
"Ta ma de wang ha dan. What? Where?"
"On Bank Street. In the West Village. Behind the wheel of a taxi."
Nine
Emma tossed her bag on the entry table in what served as her apartment's foyer, kicked off her shoes as she walked through the living room, and welcomed the cool tile on her stockinged feet once she reached the kitchen.
She heard the catch of the front door echo behind her and braced herself for the inevitable. She had no idea what had happened out there in the street, but this evening would be coming to a quick end if Mr. Strong-and-Silent didn't get with the program.
Whether he liked it or not, she'd left her need-to-know basis behind the moment she'd sat in his, lap and opened herself to him body and soul. What she feared was that he was stuck on the body part and hadn't snapped to the fact that making love wasn't a case of taking one for the team.
She'd made love with him because she'd known from the moment of walking into Hank's office and finding Kelly John there she would not be waking up in the morning to the same life she'd lived for the past five years.
It was time to find out exactly what she'd gotten herself into. And where she was headed after tonight, since there was no going back.
She poured filtered water and measured chocolate truffle decaf into the coffeemaker's basket, listening for Kelly John, assuming he'd join her once he took care of business.
A business that had seemed a novelty when she'd signed up for a crash course earlier tonight. A business she now realized wasn't a business at all.
It was his life.
It wasn't play-acting, or an on-again, off-again adventure to seize. Kelly John's blood pulsed red with danger. He breathed it in the way she breathed in air.
The realization humbled her. That he took on so much, sacrificed so much, with no compensation or praise? Her throat ached at the thought.
The cof
feemaker started in with its hissing and steaming and gurgling. She breathed in the brew's sweetly earthy aroma and swore again that, decaf or not, coffee was the nectar of the gods.
With a cup in hand, she could face anything. Even the man behind her now, filling the room with his bulk and an equally large wave of tension sending nerves to flutter between her legs in tender anticipation.
"Smells good," he said, sounding as sincere as most efforts at making pleasantries.
"It'll probably smell better once you splash it with Kahlua." She turned and leaned back against the countertop, her hands at her sides and curled over the edge. "Unless you prefer not to drink on the job?"
He grunted, crossed his arms, faced her. "I'm pretty sure I didn't kill that bottle of wine at dinner alone."
"True. But with whatever it is that's come up now"— and she hated how he'd pushed her into the building while he handled his issue with the driver of the cab—"I thought you might need more of your wits about you."
"Whatever it is that's come up now has been taken care of."
No. She wasn't going to let him off that easy. He wanted to share her bed, he needed to know more about who she was. To realize she wouldn't be satisfied with pat answers.
"Tell me something, Kelly."
"Shoot."
"The work you do. Is it really ever taken care of?"
He paused, responded, "Are you pissed about something, Emma? Because I sure as hell can show myself to the door."
Avoidance had to be the man's fourth name. "Is that what you want? To go?"
"No. It's not what I want."
She offered him a small smile. "Good. I don't want that either."
"But you do want something." His blue eyes flashed with a brutal challenge. "Besides coffee and Kahlua."
She considered him, nodded. "I want to know you. In more than the biblical sense."
"There's not a lot to know."
"Spoken like a man."
"Argued with like a woman."
"And so the war games begin."
He dropped his head back, closed his eyes, breathed deep. "This was a mistake."
"What? Coming here? Or thinking that shortcutting the steps to intimacy meant we wouldn't have to back up and deal with the parts that aren't quite so much fun?"