Accidental Commando (17 page)

She would have cherished the compliment if he hadn’t sounded so angry about it. “You seem to think that was a problem, too.”

“It was. It is. My duty should be my priority.”

Under normal circumstances, she would have accepted the distance he was trying to put between them. She’d pushed people away often enough herself. Instead of admitting that she didn’t want to be alone, she’d make a joke or a cynical remark and pretend she didn’t need anyone. She didn’t risk chasing after any man, because it was so much easier to reject them before they rejected her. Emily didn’t wait to be knocked down before she’d come up swinging. That was the pattern of her life.

Yet there already had been a lot of firsts with Tyler. Her relationship with him was unique. There had been nothing normal about it, from the way they had met to the way he kept doing or saying things that slipped right past her defenses. They’d bypassed the preliminaries. They hadn’t had time to grow closer gradually. It had simply happened. She
knew
he wouldn’t hurt her, and the knowledge was empowering.

She moved behind him and placed her hand on his back. “You’re not on duty now, are you?”

“No.”

“Help me with my zipper.”

He straightened.

“My arm’s stiff and I don’t think I can manage it myself. You want me to take a bath. I can’t very well do it in my clothes.”

He turned to face her. The steam had dampened his hair to a dark gold. Moisture dotted his forehead and gleamed at the base of his throat. A vein throbbed in his neck. Without the white shirt to temper it, the black tuxedo jacket that had made him look so handsome earlier now made him look dangerous. It framed the hair on his chest and the swells of muscle above his belt, contrasting the civilized with the primitive. Tendons ridged his forearms as he fisted his hands.

Emily could sense his battle for control and it thrilled her. Challenged her. Keeping her gaze steady on his, she lifted her left arm over her head and turned to expose her side.

The zipper had been sewn into the seam. It was concealed beneath a fold of fabric. Tyler ran his fingers along her side until he found it, then slowly lowered the tab. “What you’re feeling is only a reaction to being shot at.”

“Then why do I feel it every time you touch me?”

“Emily…”

“Don’t stop yet.” She moistened her lips. “There’s another few inches to go.”

The dress began to part. His fingertips brushed the skin at her waist.

“The other side’s stuck to me because of the dried blood,” she said, lowering her arm. “Could you help me peel it off?”

He dropped his forehead against hers. “Dammit, Emily.”

“You say that a lot, Tyler.”

“You are the most maddening, contrary, frustrating woman I have ever met.”

“Don’t blame all of this on me. Why did you walk me back to my room?”

“You were injured. I was worried.”

“You could have let Duncan do it. Or Jack.”

“You’re my responsibility.”

“You can protest all you want, but given our history whenever adrenaline is involved, you can’t tell me that you didn’t have the slightest clue that something like this was going to happen as soon as we got alone.”

He rolled his forehead along hers in a slow negative. “I thought I’d be stronger.”

“Or maybe you thought I’d be weaker.”

“That would have been my first mistake.”

She used her left hand to slide the dress off her right shoulder, stopping when it caught on her bandage. “I could use some more help here.”

He took her hand, brought it to her side and finished lowering her dress to her waist himself. He inhaled deeply a few times. His breath puffed over her cheek and feathered across the tops of her breasts.

Her nipples tightened instantly, pushing against the black lace teddy that covered them. It had been the only undergarment she’d packed that didn’t have straps that would show with her dress. She hadn’t planned on anyone seeing it when she’d put it on tonight, but now she was glad that she’d worn it. The clever underwiring gave her cleavage. She guessed by the ragged edge that had crept into Tyler’s breathing that he’d noticed the effect, too.

He lifted his hand. He held his palm a quarter inch from the black lace.

“There are hooks down the center,” she whispered. “I’m going to need your help with those, too.”

He muttered a curse and pulled back to yank off his jacket. He tossed it beside the tub, then grasped the folds of her dress and leaned over to shove it to her feet. As he straightened, he scooped her into his arms. Then he carried her to the bedroom, laid her in the center of the bed and sat on the edge to tug off his boots.

This time, the surge in Emily’s pulse wasn’t due to a memory. It couldn’t have been. Because she’d never experienced anything like Tyler’s lovemaking. Once he’d made the decision, he committed to it fully. Enthusiastically. He made short work of the hooks on her teddy. She barely noticed when the rest of their clothes disappeared. But she felt every moment of the pleasure as he joined his body to hers.

He filled her completely. There was no room left in her mind or her heart for anything but sensation. When he began to move, she was ready, oh, so ready, that she trembled around him. The climax came swiftly, neither of them wanting to prolong what they both needed and had waited so long to have.

Yet before Emily could catch her breath, Tyler flipped her over and set about making good on his promise.

He tasted every inch of her.

“Careful of that arm,” Tyler said, reaching past Emily to reposition the towel on the edge of the tub. He lifted her elbow on top of it, then settled her head in the crook of his shoulder.

Now she understood why this tub was so long, Emily thought, snuggling back between Tyler’s thighs. It must have been designed with two people in mind. Aside from some delightful crowding, even a six-foot-four hunk managed to fit in here quite nicely.

Being naked with a man in the heat of the moment in order to have sex was one thing, but bathing together was somehow more personal. More intimate. Oddly, Emily felt no shyness with Tyler. She wondered whether it was an aftereffect of adrenaline.

Or it could have been a consequence of the orgasms—the
spectacular orgasms
—he’d just given her. Pretending modesty at this stage would be absurd. She smiled and scooped a handful of water over his knee. “You were right.”

“That’s good to hear. What about?”

“A bath was a good idea. Why didn’t you suggest it earlier?”

He lowered his shoulder so that her head dropped back into the water.

“Hey,” she said, coming up dripping. “What did you do that for? Now my hair’s going to corkscrew.”

He pushed aside a handful of sodden curls and kissed the back of her ear. “I happen to like it when your hair corkscrews. It makes me remember how I first saw you.”

“Oh, God. Don’t remind me.”

He slid his hand over her shoulder and flattened it above her breasts. “I noticed something that morning I’ve been wondering about.”

“Underwire,” she muttered.

“What?”

“The reason my boobs looked so perky tonight. I don’t want to give you any false hopes.”

Laughter rumbled through his chest to her back. He slid both his hands beneath her arms and cupped her breasts to bring them above the water. “These little beauties don’t need any enhancement. They are perfect just as they are.”

“
Little
beauties? Well, it’s all a matter of proportion, you know. On a smaller woman they wouldn’t look so—” She gasped as he rolled her nipples between his fingers. “Mmm.”

“That’s not what I was talking about.” He ran his index finger up her breastbone. “I meant the hives on your chest. Was it from the champagne?”

“Oh, that. No, it was from the strawberries.”

“Ah.”

“I knew I would break out, but they were chocolate-dipped.” She lifted his hand to her mouth and licked his fingertips. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“Sometimes it’s tough to keep away from things we want, even though we know there’ll be consequences.”

She pinched his arm. “Don’t start.”

“What?”

“Don’t think about your duty or your honor or whatever it was that made you try to talk us out of this. I know the mission ends tomorrow.”

And I’m going to miss you. I don’t want to say goodbye.

She swallowed the words before they could come out. It wasn’t love, she reminded herself. “I’m not asking for a commitment. In case you forgot, I’m not exactly the poster girl for lasting relationships. Let’s just enjoy the moment.”

“I intend to, Emily. Back where I come from, we have a saying about not bothering to close the barn doors after the horse gets out.”

“Horse, huh?” She slid her buttocks against his groin. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, but I wouldn’t call it a
little
beauty, either.”

Chuckling, he crossed his arms beneath her breasts. “Once you take your armor off, you’re a generous, passionate woman, Emily.”

“Only with you, Tyler.”

He nuzzled his face against her hair. He didn’t respond.

An ugly thought flitted through her mind. Could his initial resistance to sleeping with her have been about more than his job? She should have considered the possibility that someone as gorgeous and as good at sex as Tyler wouldn’t lack for women. “You said your sisters are all married.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Have you ever thought about settling down, too? I started to ask you that before but you never said.”

“Yes, I’ve thought about it. Someday, I’d like to have a marriage like my parents’. They’ve been together for forty-three years and seem to be more in love every time I visit.”

“The only good marriages I saw when I was growing up were the ones in fairy tales. No, on second thought, those stop at ‘I do.’”

“My mom and dad didn’t have a storybook life. There were plenty of troubles, but they got through them as true partners. They set a good example for all their kids.”

“Yet you’re still single?”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s no special girl waiting for you back in Miller’s Hole?”

“I’m unattached, Emily,” he said firmly. “Tonight wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t, no matter how hard you tried to seduce me.”

She pushed the ugly thought back where it belonged. Of course, he wouldn’t be cheating on anyone. He was too honorable a man to deceive a woman. She shouldn’t let her experience with Christopher’s dishonesty taint what she had with Tyler.

“And the truth is,” he said, “there’s no special girl back home because none of them would have me.”

She was surprised into a laugh. “Very funny. A hunk like you? What’s the real reason?”

He was silent for a while before he replied. “I had a hard time getting dates when I still lived at home. I was the proverbial runt. It’s why I first got into the habit of wearing cowboy boots. I needed every extra inch I could get. I didn’t start growing until I was seventeen and then I was as liable to trip over my own feet as my own tongue.”

She realized he’d been serious. She tried to picture Tyler as a boy, but it was impossible to get past the image of him as he was now. He was simply too much…man. “I had no idea.”

“Being puny in my formative years wasn’t my only problem. I was a loner. I preferred the solitude of the range to The Hole and wasn’t comfortable doing much talking.” He rested his chin on her shoulder. “Things changed when I moved away. Besides filling into my height, I mean. People saw me for what I was instead of what they expected me to be.”

“That’s when you joined the Olympic biathlon team,” she said.

“Right. I had some great coaches. They believed in training the mind as well as the body. That continued when I joined the army. It gave me skills I’m proud of and the opportunity to be part of the bigger picture.”

“You’re good at your job.”

“It’s important to me. It’s where I belong.”

She took a few moments to digest what he’d said. The self-confidence he displayed now had been hard earned. They had more in common than she’d guessed. Perhaps it wasn’t that surprising. Only someone who had experienced repeated rejection would understand the need to develop armor. That’s why Tyler
got
her. It was more evidence that the bond they’d developed over the past week went beyond the physical. She rubbed her foot against his calf. “Want to know why I wrote my first newspaper article?”

“You said you were in the ninth grade?”

“Our school’s quarterback wanted me to write his English assignments for him. Like an idiot, I’d assumed he had been paying me all that attention because he liked me, but he set me straight. No jock like him would take a second look at a red-headed beanpole. So to save my pride I wrote an article about the systemic cheating that was going on with the entire football team. They all got suspended a week before the regional playoffs.”

“Whoa. You had guts.”

“Needless to say, that didn’t make me Miss Popularity in Packenham Junction.”

“I would have liked you.”

“I would have liked you, too, Tyler.”

He kissed her cheek through her hair. “My family would like you.”

“My family would eat you alive.”

“That reminds me.” He lifted her right arm off the tub rim and turned her so that she faced him. Water sloshed to the tile floor. “I seem to recall you once made a threat about biting.”

Emily laughed and opened her mouth for his kiss.

And in that moment, all logic, caution and experience to the contrary, she realized she could far too easily fall in love with a man like Tyler Matheson.

Chapter 9

B
lack-and-white images were flickering across the monitors in fast-forward as Tyler entered the briefing room. There was another hour to go before sunrise, but Esposito and Duncan were already at work. Or more accurately, judging by the weariness on their faces, they were still at work. He poured a mug of coffee and went to stand behind them. “Are those the surveillance tapes from last night?”

“What’s left of them,” Esposito replied.

“What happened?”

“According to palace security,” Duncan said, “the equipment malfunctioned.”