Tempting trouble, p.15
Tempting Trouble, page 15
“I didn’t say I was recruited, did I?”
“You must be very good if they picked you to be trained that young,” he persisted, trying to make her own up to it.
“I was taught by the best.” Grace made her answer vague, and using her best evasive weapon, she teased the buttons of his shirt with her fingers. She succeeded to divert those eyes for a few seconds. “My turn to ask.”
“Drink.”
She tentatively took a sip.
“That’s a wussy sip. More.”
She made a face at him and obliged. She giggled. “My face is getting numb. Is that normal?”
“Only for beginners,” he drawled, his eyes dark blue slits.
She handed the glass back to him. “My first question is,” she swayed a little closer, her dark hair dangling over his chest, “what do you do in the jungle besides look at ruins?”
Lance smiled. She’d obviously prepared for this game. He wondered how she would handle reality. “I look for the truth. The jungle hides and reveals much.”
“Pfft! Don’t use fortune cookie language with me!” Grace poked a finger in his chest. “Say you were hunting if you daren’t tell me the truth!” Her face may feel numb, but her brain certainly wasn’t.
“Okay, I hunt,” Lance agreed, amused. “It’s how I live—I hunt and I get to make up my own rules.”
“The law of the jungle,” she finished for him. “You suffer from kingdom-envy.”
“Pardon?”
“Kingdom-envy,” she repeated, grinning. “You fancy yourself king of the jungle, wild and free.”
Lance laughed. “So you think that I want to be Tarzan?”
Grace shook her head, her fingers still tracing the buttons on his shirt. She wiggled her brows. “No, I think you’re a big cat.” She undid the top two buttons. “And you fancy the jungle as your domain.”
“Fascinating,” murmured Lance, finishing the wine off from the glass they shared. “Second question, then. Who is Grace O’Connor?”
The most delicious smile appeared on her lips, and he felt the blood leaving his brain and rushing to a currently more needful area of his body. The woman was a witch.
“Who is Grace O’Connor….” she repeated softly and slowly, drawing circles on the small exposed area of his chest revealed by the unbuttoned shirt. Dude certainly knew how to ask the right questions. “She is a normal, ambitious intern from Ohio trying to fatten up her resume.”
“Bull,” he scoffed.
“She is an airhead in D.C. out to date the political insiders on Capitol Hill?”
“Likely story.”
Grace tilted her head a little. “She is…an operative disguised as an intern trying to steal every other agency’s thunder?”
His laughter was rich with mockery. “Closer to the truth than the other two versions,” said Lance, watching her fingers curiously.
“Okay, last offering. Grace O’Connor is a smart woman trying not to be seduced.” She undid two more buttons.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her moving hands sliding over his chest. They felt very warm. He nonchalantly topped off the now empty glass and handed it back to her.
“Your turn,” he said.
“This could be addictive,” she remarked, as she drank from the glass, then handed it back. “Question number two. Which is more important to you—the chase or the goal?”
He stared intently at her. She was leading to something with these questions. Yet she didn’t look like she was trying to pump information. Right now, actually, with her flushed face bending toward his, her eyes slightly feverish, and her lips impossibly tempting, she looked like she had other things on her mind.
“They’re both equally important,” he answered, “but the chase is always more exciting since there are so many possibilities. The goal, on the other hand, has only one conclusion.”
Her hands traveled lower, pulling his shirt out of his pants. He sucked in his stomach as she slowly undid the rest of the buttons, the back of her fingers brushing the flat of his belly.
“You’re telling me you never fail in getting what you want,” Grace said, cocking her head in mockery, “and that foregone conclusion makes the goal less exciting than the chase.”
“Maybe less exciting is the wrong word,” Lance amended, his eyes following one tiptoeing finger with concentrated effort. He still didn’t make a move. “Let me make this more positive. What I really meant to say is the goal is a lot more satisfying than the chase. Better?”
He inhaled sharply when she laid her cheek against his chest, nuzzling against him like a contented kitten. A certain part of him hardened even more. It dawned on him she’d reversed the role of tracker and prey with the ease of a pro. He took in a deep breath.
Taking a deep swallow of wine, he said, “Last question.”
“Hmm, don’t waste it,” she murmured into his chest. A pink tongue flicked out.
His voice lowered to a low demanding growl. “When are you going to give me what I want?”
Grace lifted her head and touched her cheeks with her hands. God, she felt incredibly warm. “That’s a loaded question,” she said, her voice sounding as husky as his. “Define what it is you want.”
“I want everything,” Lance told her. Her body. Her mind. Her secrets. She was fast becoming an obsession.
Grace lay her head back onto his chest, running her fingers in the soft mat of his hair. Did he mean he wanted the information he was always thinking she had? Or did he mean something else? It would be so easy to give in to her feelings, but he would eat her alive and spit her out. That, she knew, would be the foregone conclusion.
Lance’s hand began to slowly pull up the back of her tee-shirt. “I’ll keep myself occupied while you think of the answer,” he said. He almost groaned aloud. Damn woman was braless. He smoothed his hands quickly to the sides of her slim body, only to be stopped from moving to her front when she grabbed his wrists. He obediently stilled his movements.
Grace kissed his chest, then moved up sinuously against his hard body until their faces were inches apart. Every part of her body was on fire, and her heart was clamoring in the quiet of the apartment. He didn’t attempt to move his hands from where she’d stopped them, seemingly content to let her make the calls. Except for that seductive glimmer in those blue eyes.
She felt reckless, like a gambler on the last the roll of the dice. “You can’t have everything you want all the time,” she whispered, her breath mingling with his.
“Is that your answer?” he whispered back.
“Yes.”
“You’re wrong, you know,” he told her, moving his hands again.
She impeded his progress by squashing her front against his chest. He smiled at her then, a dangerous raffish smile that tempted her to give him a thorough kissing. For a moment, she thought he was going pull her shirt off.
Instead, he put his hands to the back of her head, and added, “I always get what I want.”
She stared into those eyes. She was playing with fire. There would come a time, she was sure, when this man’s control would reach an end, and then—she shivered slightly at the dark fantasies that intruded her wine-filled mind. His smile widened. Grace narrowed her eyes.
“I still have one question,” she reminded him.
Having her so near, it was a challenge not to ravish her right there and then. “Fire away,” he drawled slowly, “but only after you finish the wine.”
Grace turned to look at the glass on the table nearby. “But it’s almost half full!”
“So?”
“I’ve a feeling you have lecherous plans for me when I’m totally incapapated, I mean, incapacicated. No, I mean…” She started giggling hard. “See, it’s happening.”
Then it’s already too late,” Lance pointed out logically. “Finish it, sweetheart. I promise I’ll take care of you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said. “Oh, hell, why not?” She sat up astride his chest, leaned over to pick the glass off the table, and drank the wine down slowly. “Satisfied?”
“Uh-huh. Now, what’s your question, O Drunken One?”
“Don’t mock me,” Grace warned, glaring down at him, then bursting into giggles. “You have two heads.”
Nothing like seeing a controlled intelligent female tipsy, Lance thought in amusement, as he watched the woman astride him push her hair out of her eyes. He wondered whether she understood how vulnerable she was at the moment, even though he’d allowed her to be in charge. That was just reverse psychology on his part, of course. The more she thought herself still in control, the more he could lead her where he wanted to take her.
“The better to outthink you with,” he drolly said, enjoying the sudden alertness dawning in her brown eyes. She did have an amazing ability to still think logically even when under the influence. He frowned. Extensive training.
Grace wondered at what he was thinking. A part of her knew what he was attempting to do, but she didn’t panic; she was confident she was good enough to submerge her secrets if she were in danger. But the attraction pulling her to him was out of her scope of experience, and all she wanted was to give in to the urge to make passionate love with the handsome devil, lying there with that Mephistopheles smile, seducing her with his sexy eyes.
“When you find out that you can’t have what you want,” she started, licking her lower lip, “what will you do?”
Lance blinked. As a man used to getting his own way, the thought of failure had seldom crossed his mind. He met resistance with the weapons available to him—with his easy charm, or his determination, or with force. As a tracker, giving up was never an option, not even when he was assigned the toughest missions, like that challenging one that took him almost a year.
“I have several options,” Lance told Grace truthfully, tracing her lips with his forefinger. “I could release you. Or, I could take you anyway, or,” he lowered his voice, “I could destroy you.”
He carefully studied her reaction. She surprised him by laughing.
“I’d be scared, if you didn’t have four eyes,” she blubbered in between peals of laughter. She bent her head and kissed him hard on the lips. “There, I accept your challenge.”
“Kiss me again,” he demanded.
She did so, touching his lips with first her tongue, then teasing them with her own soft lips, giving him a kiss soft as the flutter of butterfly wings. Lance growled at the taste of her, wine and desire mixed with her uniqueness, and without warning, he put a hand to the back of her neck and applied enough pressure to deepen the kiss.
She was dangerous, he thought, as his cock painfully protested its restriction within his pants. She turned the tables on him, becoming the seducer, without seeming to even try. What was Grace O’Connor? Whom did she work for? Why did he want her so much? These thoughts scattered when she responded to him as demandingly as he did her.
Grace finally came up for air, panting. The warmth was making her eyes heavy. With a sigh, she buried her face in his neck and yawned indelicately.
“I’m falling asleep,” she declared sleepily.
“Then go to sleep, babe,” he told her.
His voice was like warm honey. Everything was heating her up—his hands, his skin, even his voice. “No, you’d just take advantage of my poor body,” she said, but she obediently closed her eyes. Wine was not for her, she belatedly concluded.
“But of course,” her seducer admitted. “Wasn’t that the point of the whole game? You’re going to stay in my arms all night. There, now you can rest easy, knowing I’m staying with you.”
“I’ve never been carried to bed inde…” she struggled with that elusive word again, “indecapidated….” Pouting at the failed attempt, she added, “I don’t like wine!”
Grace felt his smile rather than saw it.
“Try love words, babe,” he teased. “Wine and love words flow together. Say something sexy.” He bent his head and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Say ‘Make love to me, Lance.’ Go on.”
He wanted to hear her talk sexy to him, like she meant it. Her expressive almond-shaped eyes deepened to almost black when she lifted her head to look at him. Slowly, she licked her lower lip.
Lance’s jaw dropped at the string of sexy sentences that flowed dark and suggestive out of her mouth. All in Malay.
“Malay,” he voiced unnecessarily.
“For a Malaysian Big Cat,” she saucily pointed out.
“I didn’t know that you could speak Malay.”
“Never assume anything, Lance,” she said, smothering another big yawn, “especially about me.”
“I won’t,” he said, promising to get into her head and learn her secrets, one by one. It would be easier if you first gained her trust.
“Lance?” she sleepily interrupted his reverie.
“Hmm?”
“One freebie question for me?”
“Okay.”
Grace yawned again, trying to focus. “Why me?” she asked.
There was a short silence and she bit him in the neck, trying to hurry him. She was getting very sleepy.
“I don’t know,” he finally replied softly, his sigh gentle against her forehead. “Shhh….”
Grace fell asleep in his arms. He stroked her hair back and adjusted her so she was lying beside him, with one arm protectively around her. He studied her for a long while, desiring her with an urgency that brought up all kinds of questions to his mind.
“I don’t know,” he repeated, his eyes roaming possessively over the sleeping girl. “You’re a puzzle. I just know that I have to have you. All of you.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Goddammit, you have him for almost a week, and still can’t get a stupid piece of information from him?” Senator James Richards barked at the speakerphone on his desk. His usually smooth composed face was lined in irritation, and his voice was higher than normal. “I thought you were trained to do stuff like this! We don’t have much time left!”
“He’s been preprogrammed to stand the kind of pain you wanted me to use on him.” The voice over the speakerphone was blurred by static. “You specifically disallowed any scarring or blood, Senator. He has a strong mind.”
“Sleep deprivation can break minds of any strength!” Richards said curtly, crumbling a piece of paper in disgust. “Has he said nothing at all besides the fact he was supposed to meet with…what the hell is that name—”
“Big Cat.”
“Yes, that ridiculous name. What good is that information for me? I want the list of names! I want to know who else is in their pockets, do you hear me?” The senator’s frustration was very evident as he shoved his notes in front of him, almost knocking over his glass of wine.
“Big Cat may not mean anything to you, Senator, but it’s of significance to me.” The speaker crackled for a second. “If they sent the Big Cat to search for our prisoner, we have to get him out of our hands as soon as possible.”
“Afraid of him? That’s a first. I never thought your kind would be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid, Senator,” the voice came back calm and confident, “but I’m wary. Big Cat is synonymous with the tracker business, and that tells me that this scholar is very important to certain people. He may have more information than we thought.”
“Spare me the details. Who is this Big Cat?” Richard demanded. “Can’t you get rid of him if he gets too close? Can’t you go behind his back, like you’ve been doing all along?”
“Senator, even my agency keeps secrets from its own.” The man said sardonically. “As for getting rid of him, I just told you, he’s a tracker. It’d be difficult to get rid of a tracker, much less one of his caliber. However, finding out his identity might be worth quite a bit to me.”
“Don’t you dare get sidetracked from your job!” Richards yelled into the speaker, pounding his hand on the cherry wood desk. “If we return the man on Tuesday night without the information, I stand to lose supporting votes when we meet for the trade deals when Congress reconvenes. I need the names to hold over the Committee, damn it!”
“There is one bloodless way left, but it could be dangerous to the health of our scholar.”
“What is it?” At this stage, Richards was willing to give anything a try. That list was worth it.
“It’s a new experimental drug similar to truth serum. If administered in the right dosage, we ought to be able to get him to recall certain events. On the other hand—”
“Well, do it!” Richards ordered. “Just don’t get him killed or our Chinese friends won’t be too happy. I gather they want him to reveal his associates, which is none of my business. I only want those other names, do you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Senator, but the drug is experimental, like I said. A wrong move and our guy may go into a coma or suffer from brain damage.”
“Then it’s up to you to make sure you give him the right dosage, isn’t it?” What was the matter with these people? They were supposed to be professionals. They should know how to handle these things without even consulting him. The senator wished he could be there in person to question the Chinese man, but it was too risky to be anywhere close.
***
Despite urgent demands from his body, duty called. Lance thought about the scholar and picked up his cell phone.
“Dan, Lance here.”
“Where is here?”
“I’m at Grace’s apartment,” Lance replied, the phone cradled under his chin as he shrugged off his shirt. He dropped it over the back of the sofa.
“Uh, huh. I see,” came the dry reply. “Did you meet with the senator?”
“Yes, everything is set. I want extra bodies for Tuesday night. I want more firepower and cowboys.”
“No problem. I’ve contacted Homeland Security so they know what’s going on. They’ll probably alert the Agency.”
“Damn it, why do you have to let them know this soon?” Calling Homeland Security was standard operating procedure and Lance didn’t have to like it, but getting the CIA involved was another matter. Sure, they couldn’t do much, this being a federal case, but with international entities like the Beijing Butcher involved, they’d make sure to send someone. He’d spent enough time in tough positions when the guns at the CIA, wanting the loot for themselves, had sent their boys out to play their own games.
