Secret Seduction (9 page)

“In the bathroom,” she said, indicating the direction with her head. She led him down the hallway, walking backward and pushed the door open with her tush. “Arm in the sink.”

He did as she directed.

Vanessa unwrapped the towel; blood oozed thickly from a four-inch gash, but thankfully he hadn’t clipped an artery. “What happened?”

“Packing crate nail,” Tanner ground out through gritted teeth.

Vanessa reached up in the cabinet over the sink and retrieved the antiseptic solution. “This is going to sting,” she warned.

He hissed in his breath as the yellow-brown liquid washed out the jagged edges of the laceration.

“When was the last time you had a tetanus shot?” she asked briskly, professionally.

“A year ago. Part of my annual physical.”

“That’s good.” She opened a cabinet drawer, found a pair of green latex gloves and snapped them on. “You won’t need another.” He muttered another curse as she probed the wound. “But you do need stitches.”

“You got the equipment here to do the job, Doc? I mean why waste a trip to the E.R. when I’ve got the best plastic surgeon around?”

“I can sew you up here if that’s what you prefer.”

“Please.”

Vanessa slipped around behind him, found her bandage supplies in another drawer and tore into a package of sterile gauze. She pulled up her girlie pink vanity chair. “Sit.”

His big body looked so incongruous perched on the delicate chair, she feared the thin wrought-iron legs would snap off the thing. The man was imposing, no doubt about it.

“Hold the gauze on there while I find my suture kit.”

A few minutes later she was kneeling in front of him and Tanner’s injured arm was stretched out on the counter. She threaded a suture needle with 4-0 nylon while she waited for the Xylocaine she’d injected around the lacerated area to numb his skin. She couldn’t help but notice the blond hair on his tanned arms and the strength of his muscles as she dipped the curved suture needle down to close his torn skin.

It was only then, once she had the minor emergency under control, that it dawned on her that Tanner Doyle was in her house. They were alone together. No one around to interrupt them except for Fantasia. The thought was more unsettling than Vanessa could have imagined.

“What were you doing next door with a packing crate?” she asked, although the answer was pretty obvious. She made a second stitch.

“Moving in.”

Her hand froze in midsuture and she had to fight to quell the sudden rush of panic pinching her chest. “You’re moving in next door to me?”

“That’s right.”

Her hair had fallen across her face and she didn’t dare look up. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest. First he was at Emilio’s. Then he showed up as head of security at Confidential Rejuvenations. Now he was moving in next door. One coincidence she could almost excuse, but three? No way. Something was fishy.

Vanessa’s hand trembled so hard she could barely take the third stitch. Her mind raced as she compiled a frightening scenario in her mind. After he’d been released from prison, had Carlo Vega hired Tanner to kill her?

If that was the case, if Tanner was a hit man, why hadn’t he already killed her? He’d had ample opportunity.

Could he be some kind of weird stalker?

Seriously, he’d guarded the governor. His background would have to be impeccable for a detail like that.

Still, her heart thumped erratically; she couldn’t make sense of the situation.

And while she might have been a poor judge of character in her youth, she’d learned from her mistakes. Her gut feeling told her Tanner would never intentionally harm anyone unless he was trying to protect another.

Somehow she managed to take the final stitch and tie off the nylon thread. It was only when she tried to get to her feet that she realized she’d been breathing so shallowly she’d hyperventilated. Her head spun, her knees buckled.

Tanner reached out for her.

Primal instinct had her grabbing for the scalpel lying beside her suture kit. Practice had her flipping off the protective cap with the end of her thumb without thinking twice. She jumped back, and dizzily held the blade in the air between them.

In that one moment of terror, she was jettisoned back fourteen years and she was Trudy Valdez again. Scared, skinny, alone and her life was in imminent jeopardy. She had to fight or die.

“Whoa!” Tanner raised his arms and stepped back. “Vanessa, what’s going on here?”

She put her left palm to her forehead now damp with sweat and kept him at bay with the scalpel in her right. “Who are you?” she croaked.

“You know who I am.”

“I don’t. You’re a stranger.”

“I know you intimately.”

“You might know my body intimately,” she forced through her teeth. “But you don’t know me at all.”

“I want to.”

“You can’t.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong, Vanessa?” His voice was even, logical. Already she was feeling foolish for having pulled the scalpel on him. What was wrong with her?

“You’re everywhere. At Emilio’s, at the hospital, next door. Who are you?”

“Your face is pale. Take a deep breath.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m just worried you’re going to pass out and fall on that sharp scalpel,” he said patiently.

“Explain yourself.” She wasn’t going to let him sidetrack her.

“You think I’m a stalker?”

“Are you?”

“Babe, you are gorgeous and sexy as hell, but I don’t have to stalk women for attention.”

She was definitely feeling foolish now, but she was still so knotted up inside she didn’t know how to back down.

“Emilio’s and the hospital were just coincidence,” he said. “Moving in next door is all part of my job package. Senator Garcia owns the condo. He’s letting me stay there to be near the hospital. How many other people who work at Confidential Rejuvenations live in this subdivision?”

She had to admit there were quite a few employees residing here. The condos were just a mile from the hospital and located on a hill that afforded a stunning view of the Colorado River from balcony windows on the second floor.

Before she could decide what to do, a shadow moved behind her and she felt a swish of something against the back of her calves.

Vanessa shrieked. By the time she realized it was Fantasia’s tail stroking her legs, it was too late.

Tanner leaped into action. He jumped the short distance across the bathroom floor, and quick as a striking cobra, he wrapped his hand around the wrist that held the scalpel. She tried to fight, but he was just too strong.

He grabbed her chin with his other hand and held her steady. “Vanessa, calm down, you’re safe. Look at me.”

She didn’t want to look at him, but he wasn’t letting go. She stared into his piercing blue eyes.

“I am not going to hurt you.”

She squirmed, trying to get free.

He put added pressure on her wrist, forcing her to drop the knife. “Attagirl,” he murmured, releasing her wrist and confiscating the scalpel. He slid the protective cover back over the blade and tossed it in a drawer.

When he turned his attention back to her, his eyes had darkened. “You’re one helluva fighter,” he said, and there was no mistaking the admiration in his voice. “But I’m not the enemy.”

She was staring at him and he was staring at her. They were breathing in tandem. Rough, jagged gulps of air.

His lips were so close to hers, hard and angular and masculine. From her peripheral vision she could see the navy-blue stitches in his arm. He smelled of antiseptic and toothpaste.

The tugging pull of pleasure-pain burned deep within her. She’d never felt such intense arousal, such raw, aching need. She needed relief and he was the salve.

The next thing Vanessa knew she’d flung her arms around his neck and was kissing him as if it were Armageddon.

He kissed her back fiercely. She’d angled her butt up against the counter. Raising her legs, she wrapped them around his waist and clung on for dear life.

They were like wild things, going at it in primeval mating. He was holding her head between his palms and thrusting his tongue inside her mouth as if he could never be sated no matter how long he drank from her.

Vanessa pulled up the back of his shirt with both hands, and he sort of carried her, sort of danced as they bounced from the bathroom wall to the hallway wall like a pinball.

It was hormonal insanity. That was the only excuse she had for what was happening. She was lust driven and the excitement of the unknown threw fuel on the sexual fire.

Her sex contracted tightly, begging for him.

“I’m so hard for you,” he rasped.

As if she couldn’t tell. The bulge behind the zipper of his jeans felt like concrete.

She kissed him frantically.

He came back at her like an explosion.

His fingers kneaded her ass, pushing her firmly against his pelvis. When she slipped her tongue into his mouth, he slid his hand underneath her shirt and beneath her bra to pinch an erect nipple lightly.

They slid to the floor and it was only when she saw the beige tiles that she realized they’d somehow made it to the kitchen. The cool ceramic against her back felt both exciting and strangely safe. Smells of onion and garlic and stark human need filled her nostrils, filled her brain, launching her to a whole new height of passion.

“You make me so horny,” Tanner said.

She nipped at his bottom lip with her teeth and murmured the same thing back to him, only in Spanish.

“Say something else in Spanish,” he said. “It drives me wild.”

She complied, telling him in her native tongue just to shut up and do her.

He groaned. “You are so damned sexy,” he said, and captured her mouth with his once more.

They were writhing away on the floor when Vanessa noticed Fantasia sat perched with her tail wrapped around her on top of the curio Vanessa had found on her trip to Madrid. She watched them with a detached feline eye.

Vanessa knew if she had to look at the cat for one more second she would burst into a fit of giggles and kill the mood. So she slid half her body out from under Tanner, turned him over on his back and rolled atop of him.

Straddling him, Vanessa unbuttoned his fly and yanked his jeans down below his hips. Heat swamped her when she realized the stud was not sporting any underwear.

She licked her lips at the sight of his flat, rippled abdomen. Tanner was more magnificent than she remembered. His penis jutted up, hard and straight and tall. Throbbing for her.

How she wanted every inch of him inside her!

She stood up to slide her pants and panties down to her ankles in one gliding motion. Then she resumed her straddle, reaching a hand down to touch herself the way she wanted him to touch her, while Tanner watched wide-eyed.

She put her damp fingers over his face and lowered her head to his steely erection. While she ran her tongue around his moist head, he gingerly licked her fingertips, tasting her.

He wrapped his lips around her thumb, down to her knuckle. She sucked him hard, all the way to the bottom of his shaft. She could feel him pulsating against her tongue and she imagined hot ejaculate coursing through his penis. The image thrilled her all the more.

His thigh muscles tightened, his abdominal muscles turned to pure marble. He gripped her wrists tight when he let go. He cried her name hoarsely as she swallowed down his hot male come.

Her feminine core was squeezing so tight she could hardly breathe. She shuddered with desire.

With his sense of urgency spent, Tanner began to tongue her with amazing tenderness, making a slow glide from the sensitive spot behind her knee, around to her kneecap and up her inner thigh until she was rolling in ecstasy.

He kissed lazy circles of heat around her navel and she was transfixed. Finally he edged to the spot where she wanted him to be, at the sweet V between her legs.

When his full, wet lips locked onto her, she imagined she was a succulent summer peach, ripe for the taking.

He sucked at every fold, lapped at her ridges and lifted her buttocks to deliver his meal. An electric flash of brilliant energy lit the inside of her head and all the air rushed from her lungs.

Vanessa’s ears throbbed, obliterating all other sounds. She thrust herself against his mouth, gripped the sides of his head with her thighs, letting her juices flow.

Tanner released his hold but wouldn’t remove his tongue from her twitching clit. His tongue danced with it, wriggling nimbly around and around until she moved from easy chacha to frenetic tango in no time.

Her skin was incredibly sensitive, her body tingling and tender. She tried to push him away—it was simply too much pleasure—but he stayed put, pushing his tongue deep inside her, then out and down to the region beyond.

This new sensation drove her crazy. He sucked and lapped and swirled in a fury, wetting her down with his saliva and her own juices. Then, when he sensed her second climax, he dived his index finger into her aching behind.