Hunt Me (Love Thieves #3) (15 page)

He glanced over at Kit’s slumbering face. Despite her mother’s rejection, she still took care of the woman. The second screen told him exactly why they came to Bakersfield. Her grandfather resided in a long-term-care facility and suffered from congestive heart failure. He wasn’t expected to live much longer. But the name gave Jarod his second real jolt on the mission.

Sebastian Kant.

Kant had served two terms for petty larceny in his youth, but not an hour more despite a very lucrative career as a jewel thief in the sixties. The man virtually fell off the map after his last job went horribly awry. Jarod thumbed the phone off. He didn’t want to read any of the details. Not when the last job Kant took had involved
The Fortunate Buddha
.

“Kit Kat.” He brushed a hand over her hair and down her cheek. She stirred and blinked at him. Dusk gathered outside the car, the sun hovering low over the western horizon. “We’re at a hotel. I’m going to get us a couple of rooms.”

“You don’t need to get two,” she murmured, rubbing her face and straightening.

“You sure?” His chest tightened at the implied invitation.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Okay. You want to come in or wait here?”

“I’ll wait here. I don’t think I’m really fit for public consumption.” Her yawn split the sentence into a garbled mess, but he understood it. Keys in hand, he went inside, checked in, and returned in ten minutes. Cash moved a desk clerk quickly. Fifteen minutes later, he led her into their room and carried the box over to slide into the closet.

“You’re really not going to open it and look, are you?” She stood in the doorway to the bathroom.

“No.” He shook his head. “Not for another…twenty-two hours.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you.” She pulled her sunglasses off and tossed them onto the bathroom counter.

He needed to move away, order some food, and put her in the shower—at the very least create some distance between them. “Is that a good thing?” He narrowed the gap separating them. The red splotch on her cheek remained a violent reminder of the lengths others were willing to go to take control or use her.

“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “A really good thing.”

He hooked a finger into the waistband of her shorts and tugged her away from the wall. “I’ve never known anyone like you either.”

“I don’t know if I should ask if it’s a good thing.” She gave him a hesitant smile, smoothing her hands over his chest. He ached to strip the fabric out of the way. He wanted her to touch him.

“It’s…it’s an amazing thing.” The confession should have cost him, but it didn’t. He’d avoided personal entanglements for years because he never knew when a call would come in or what third world country he would wake up in the next day. After he left to make a life for himself in the IAAR, he hadn’t made a life for himself—he’d made one for Walter Curry, divorcing Jarod from personal commitments.

One foot out the door and always ready to go. He could walk away, disappear, and his employers and assets would have no idea where he went.

His foot wasn’t out the door with Kit. The last place he wanted to go was away, to disappear and never see her again. “We’re playing this for real, now, Kit Kat. Not a game, not a test for score, not a challenge to be overcome.”

“I know.” The two words quivered in the air between them. “After tomorrow, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“I only need to know one thing.” He didn’t care if the box held a priceless artifact. He didn’t care why she stole it. He didn’t care what she did last week or last month. He studied her gaze, the unflinching, brilliant pair of green eyes saw everything and gave so very little away—until a person could see beyond the surface to the startlingly brilliant woman beneath. The depths of a woman he wanted to spend decades exploring.

“What do you need to know?”

“Yes or no?” He didn’t miss the slight catch to her breath or the way her cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink or the way the pupils in her eyes dilated.

“That’s it? That’s all you want to know?”

Jarod nodded once. “That’s it.”

Her teeth scraped over her lower lip. “One answer.”

“Only answer,” he confirmed.

Fisting his shirt into her hands, she tugged him the last inch closer, mouth bare millimeters from his. “Yes.”

He closed the distance. One gentle brush turned into a fusion reaction, rocketing explosive need through his body.
She said yes
.

She was all he needed.

Chapter Nine

She wanted him out of his clothes, but, instead, she stood under the shower jets and scrubbed her hair. He’d kissed her until she was breathless and given her the tiniest of pushes into the bathroom. “Shower,” he’d murmured. “I’ll order the food.”

“I’m not hungry.” She refused to be ordered around and traced the line of rippling muscle beneath his shirt. He captured her hands and pulled himself free, the lust on his face dark and full of tantalizing promise.

“I didn’t say the food was for you.” He’d closed the door on her outraged “oh” and left her to stew for ten seconds until his low laughter softened the rejection. A rejection she didn’t quite appreciate until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

She looked terrible.

A minute later, she’d thrust herself into the shower and didn’t care the water hadn’t quite warmed up. She soaped her hair three times then conditioned it. Her stylist would kill her when—if—she got back to him. The water had come to slow boil by the time she scrubbed soap over her breasts and down her arm. The curtain pulled back, and Jarod stood leaning against the cool tile, gloriously naked.

“Did you order dinner?” She pivoted on one foot, facing the spray and letting it splash over her breasts and sluice away the soap.

“I did. I hope you like steak.” A brush of air against her back was the only warning he’d slipped into the shower behind her. Awareness skittered through her as his chest glided against her back and his erection bumped her butt. He trailed fingers down her arm to claim the loofah she’d been using, all the while guiding her to turn until he slid under the spray.

The water danced over his skin—all lean hard-corded muscle. The brief glimpses she’d seen earlier didn’t do him justice. The black tattoo engulfed his left shoulder, painted like a warrior. His abdominals were a fixed, hard six-pack—chiseled as though carved from teak. He ducked his face under the water, and she leaned back against the wall. His cock jutted up toward his belly, thick and aroused. His thighs rippled with each little step, and the muscles in his calves flexed as he stretched past her to claim the shampoo.

“You were shot.” She ran her fingers across his abdomen to the scar puckering his right side, a scant inch or so above his hip.

“More than once.” He nodded, twisting away to show her his back. She explored the tightly packed muscle stretching across his shoulders. She found four more scars, one so close to where his heart beat beneath his ribs her own slammed in painful sympathy.

Every question coming to mind, she banished without asking, choosing to lean forward and press her lips to each puckered reminder of the wounds he’d endured. Slipping an arm around his waist, she hugged him. She wanted to feel his heart beating, and the steady cadence of its rhythm soothed her.

“How long?” The only question she allowed a voice to.

“About seven years in the field, two behind a desk.” He sidled under the spray, and she went with him, enjoying the slippery way the water slid around the parts of their bodies touching. He twisted again, pulled her against his chest, and tucked his finger beneath her chin, nudging her gaze to his. “I left on good terms but had tired of the long game. I wanted—I needed something else.”

“And you found it with Walter?” She didn’t know him, but she understood the loneliness of an existence built upon fabrication. The house of cards may deceive others, but they could also fool the person building it until the fiction became fact.

“No.” He cupped her face in his hands, the strength gentle and caring. His mouth slanted over hers, a slow, possessive kiss sending electricity zinging through her system. She forgot about the shower, the questions, and the journey to understand and reveled in the way she fit against him, his muscular body so hard to her leaner, softer frame.

When he lifted his head, she stared at him—almost dazed. He kissed her cheek then her eyelids and, finally, the tip of her nose. “Walter provided a means to an end. He is useful and resourceful and has cultivated a number of contacts, but he wasn’t what I needed.”

A knock at the door, and someone calling room service interrupted. Jarod stepped out and held her hand until she stood on the floor mat next to him. Slinging a towel around his hips, he opened the bathroom door. “Stay in here for a moment.”

He shut her in and the moment elongated as though he’d needed to pause before opening outer door. She toweled herself off. Her nipples were almost achingly sensitive, and her body hummed from the contact with his. She wasn’t interested in food, but she did take the time to run a comb through her hair, blow dry, and brush her teeth. She still looked too pale, and the red splotch too angry when she finished, but a little bit of the hotel lotion helped her feel prettier.

Opening the door, she found Jarod waiting for her, the towel wrapped around his hips and his arms folded over his chest. She peeked at him around the edge of the door. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Ahh.” He tugged his towel loose and handed it to her. He seemed even more magnificent in the sterile hotel room with its cheap art deco knockoffs and cream-colored furniture. Raw. Real. Masculine. The words didn’t do him justice.

She took the towel from him and pulled the door wide, not bothering for any false sense of modesty. He’d seen her in the shower. Hell, he’d already caressed her breasts. Her nipples tightened almost painfully at the memory, and she took a moment to fold the towel and set it on the counter behind her.

The room temp cool, almost too cool, against her overheated flesh. She walked out and stared at the table he’d ordered up with their dinner set with the silver toppers still in place over the meals, a bottle of wine, four bottles of water, two empty glasses, and a single white rose.

So sweet.

Desire mixed with a wave of tenderness, the potent and heady combination far more devastating than the need to wrap around him and explore what brought them both pleasure. She wasn’t supposed to get attached. She’d had her share of one-night stands and brief, albeit fun, affairs through the years. Dalliances with men who wanted something from her—or her father. Using them as they used her, she always walked away with her heart unbattered and unbruised.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the warmth in his stern face, the unfettered confidence in those deep-brown eyes. Understanding and something more—trust—resonated through his expression. He stared at her steadily, almost gently, and when he pulled the chair out for her to sit, her insides went liquid with need.

Again, she wasn’t supposed to get attached. She never did. He circled the table and sat in the chair opposite her, his legs stretching out to tangle with hers. It amped up the need and the sense of power flowing through her, but she didn’t own the power.

Jarod shared it with her. “Wine?”

“No thank you. I haven’t had enough sleep to be able to hold my liquor tonight, and I think I very much want to be awake to see what happens next.”

He nodded slowly. “We’ll save it for later.”

“If you like.” She smiled. She couldn’t help it. He brushed his calf against hers, and first date goose bumps rippled over her. God help her, she was twenty-nine, not nineteen.

He opened the water bottles and poured out drinks for each of them. Removing the plate toppers, he revealed a smorgasbord of skewers with steak, chicken, shrimp, and veggies. She laughed. “Appetizers?”

“Yep. I don’t want to be too full for the main course.” Any other man would have made it sound like a line, but his gaze swept over her in a raw caress. Her sex dampened, and she curled her toes into the carpeting as though trying to keep her ass planted on the chair—but why the hell was he sitting all the way over there?

He stroked her calf again. A light brush of his leg on hers and the caress ran a riot of sensation up her leg until her sex clenched tighter, as she imagined what it would be like to tangle their legs together, his body driving into hers.

“Kit Kat.” His whisper teased her ears. Her eyes were closed, and she let out a shaky breath when forcing them open to stare at him.

“Yes?” It was the best she could do. She wanted to devour him. Dark, mysterious, sexy, dangerous, and thoughtful—he was all those things. She wanted to explore his body, snuggle up to it, sample it and hold him.

“Appetizers are meant to tease the palate.”

She didn’t know which one of them stood first, but she almost fell in her unsteady haste to stand. He caught her, easily sweeping her into an open-mouthed kiss which ended with them landing on the bed in a reckless tangle of arms and legs. His hands seemed to be everywhere, cupping a breast, pinching a nipple, delving between her thighs, and when he pressed his thumb to her clit, the world erupted in pleasure. She convulsed with the orgasm, clinging to him and riding his hand with fevered abandon.

He caressed her through the first orgasm and laved a wet, sucking kiss to one nipple before trailing another damp kiss over to the other. She bucked against his hand, the sweet tension snapping and throwing her over again as a second orgasm shook her. She’d rarely experienced two in one night, much less two so close together. He rolled away, and she let out a little whimper, but he murmured something.

Foil tore and he returned, covering her body with his and taking her mouth in another hot, wet invasion. His tongue tangled with hers as he seemed intent on devouring her. She surrendered to the passion, desperate to taste him. He slid his hands down to her thighs and urged one up, angling her leg, and then his cock glided against her clit, wrenching another wave of pleasure. She barely had time to grasp it before he slid into her sex and thrust to the hilt.