“We fit. You don’t want to be alone and neither do I. Give us a chance, Tansy. I’m not easy, but I’m loyal, yours, all the way.”
“I’m afraid of you. Not that you’ll hurt me, but your code is—different. I’m afraid.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I’ll be gentle with you.”
He bent his head, tracking down her face with kisses, licking at her mouth until she opened for him. His lips settled over hers. Her heart fluttered. Her stomach muscles bunched. Liquid heat flooded her core. She wanted to cry that he could get around her mind so easily. She hadn’t known she could be so influenced by physical attraction.
“Kadan, is it real? Do we dare believe it’s real? I don’t want to feel things for you, to love you and have it all disappear. I finally found peace in my life. I could live the way I was living. I’d never be able to go back if I gave myself to you and lost.”
She’d been in his mind, saw what he was like. A hard-ass. Merciless. Ruthless. A warrior once sent on a mission, who would never stop until it was completed. A man who craved her the way he might sunlight and air. He wanted to consume her. And he wanted her body—was obsessed with knowing every inch of her, with giving her every pleasure he could think of and taking his own. He’d been a man who never believed he would have his own woman, a woman who would share more than his body. But she could take his mind, and she could be his. She could belong to him wholly, and now that he knew, he refused to back away from the one chance he had.
“Whitney cannot manipulate our minds. You see me as I am and you still want me. I see you and I’m desperate for you. He isn’t anywhere in the equation.”
She turned in his arms and rested her head against his chest. The way he felt about her, so completely ensnared, was both exhilarating and frightening. The fact that she could touch him, lie in his arms, make love with him, and have the added pleasure of mind-sex enhancing what was already explosive physical chemistry, was such a lure she doubted if she could resist—but self-preservation demanded she try. If she loved him—really loved him—let him all the way in, he would be so difficult to live with.
But worth it.
She shook her head. “How would you know?”
He caught her chin with two fingers and tipped her head up again, taking her mouth with much more possession this time, teasing and dueling with his tongue, sending tiny flames licking over her skin.
When he lifted his head, her eyes had gone from blue to that beautiful violet color he particularly loved. Her face flushed, br**sts rising and falling, breath coming in a ragged little telltale rush. Tansy stepped away from him, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, shaking her head at him. He could go from ice-cold to fiery hot in seconds.
“When are your friends coming?”
“We have a few hours. I’ll need the layout and security as soon as possible to plan our entry. They won’t be expecting resistance. They don’t know about me—yet.”
His tone chilled her. His eyes never seemed to blink, cold and mesmerizing at the same time. “Someone sent a couple of assassins after you and they tracked you to my mountain; maybe they do know,” she pointed out.
He shrugged. “It’s of no consequence. We’ll get your parents out.” And he intended to have a quiet chat with dear old dad before the man would ever be allowed to be alone with his daughter again.
“I want to see the game pieces. Take a shower and then we’ll see if I can find out anything that will help us before your friends get here.”
He caught her wrist as she turned away from him. “Tansy.” He waited until her gaze met his. “When this rescue goes down, don’t interfere with whatever we do. Follow orders.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“That means, on a mission, we run it the way we do a military op. Very precise. I can’t have a lose cannon running around. You agree to follow orders or you stay here and wait.”
Swift impatience crossed her face. “Oh really? And how do you expect to accomplish that?”
He dropped her wrist and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Lock you up. It doesn’t matter. I run a tight op and I’m not going to have you f**k it up because you get scared for your parents. You’ll be in on the planning every step of the way, but once we’re hot, we go by the numbers.”
“You’re so unexpectedly charming, Kadan. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
He balled the shirt into his fist and tossed it toward the laundry basket he kept beside a bureau. “No, I think you’re emotional. There’s a big difference.”
She opened her backpack. It was empty. “You put all my clothes into the wash?”
“Use my shirt. It’s long enough to cover you.”
Tansy tried to avert her eyes as he peeled off his jeans and kicked them aside. Okay, it was impossible. He was well endowed. And there were scars. Lots of them. Knives. Guns. Marks she couldn’t identify.
“Maybe you ought to learn to duck.”
A ghost of a smile teased at his mouth. “Maybe I will. It isn’t polite to stare.”
She had been staring. She was still staring. And his endowment was growing bigger by the moment, which meant she could be in trouble. She needed time to sort out what she was really doing with him, because he was too overwhelming and she couldn’t think straight.
Resolutely she went to his closet and pulled out a shirt with long tails. She dropped the towel, keeping her back to him, and shrugged into the shirt. There was no sound to warn her and she nearly screamed when his hands came around her back, drawing her against him so that there was only the thin cotton between his rigid shaft and her bottom. His fingertips brushed her br**sts as he closed the shirt, fastening one button at a time. Deep inside, her womb clenched hotly.
Kadan swept her wet hair aside and pressed a kiss into the hollow of her shoulder, the side of her neck, and then his lips whispered over her ear. “You’re so beautiful, Tansy, you make me ache.” His hand slipped down the contour of her back to shape her bottom. “And your skin is even softer than it looks.”
“Don’t seduce me.” She leaned back into him, feeling helpless under the onslaught of molten lava pooling low and wicked in her body. “Not now. I’ve got to sort things out.”
His lips skimmed her ear again. “I don’t want you thinking too much. You’ll realize I’m a poor prospect as a husband and run.”