Enigma: Prologue to Live Wire (3 page)

No, there wasn’t.

He felt his jaw tighten as he fought back the need to go to her, to push her back along the leather cushions as he came over her.

Five seconds, he thought. He could have her laid on the couch, that piece of nothing gown she wore pushed to her hips and his dick buried between those luscious thighs in less than five seconds.

And he would be making the biggest mistake of his life.

She was, essentially, a co-worker. He was her superior, even though the Ops were, for the moment, disbanded. She was a woman that needed more than he could give her, more than he could allow himself to give any woman.

“Jordan, if you don’t stop standing there staring at me as though you’re ready to strangle me, then I just may begin to worry.”

She didn’t sound in the least worried. She sounded irritated, restless, a bit frustrated. But worried wasn’t in there.

“Do you need help packing?” he finally asked.

He wasn’t ready to walk away. Come dawn, the transport detail would be here to load her belongings and ship them out. She would be following behind in whichever of the expensive, fast little sports cars was still parked in the base garage. He’d given her a choice of the vehicles, where he hadn’t made the offer to the other members of the unit.

“I don’t need help packing.” There was a snap to her voice now, a sense of impatience and frustration that threatened to light a fuse to his already short temper.

“You’ll leave it to the last damned minute and have the transport detail packing boxes and running late while you bark out orders,” he ground out as that frustration began to eat at him, to get the better of him. “Dammit, Tehya, they’re on a schedule.”

“As if I’m ever late getting anything done.” Her eyes narrowed, an assessing, curious light glittering in them as she watched him.

He hated it when she stared at him like that. As though she suddenly glimpsed something in his gaze or in his expression that was another piece of a puzzle she was putting together.

He wasn’t a damned puzzle. He was a fucking horny man and he was trying damned hard to keep a handle on the lusts raging through him.

What the hell did she expect from him?

“Do you want me to help you pack?” His arms went over his chest as he glared at her now, channeling all the frustrated lusts into irritated anger.

Anger was a hell of a lot easier to deal with than a redheaded little rogue determined to drive him crazy inside.

“No. Actually, I don’t need your help.” She came to her feet slowly, like a cat slowly unwinding from a favorite bed.

She didn’t stretch, but she didn’t have to. Laziness wasn’t a part of her demeanor at the moment.

“You need someone’s help,” he growled as he stared around the living area once again. “What about the other rooms? Are they ready to load?”

Her eyes narrowed further. “Everything but the living room. Would you like to check, daddy, and make certain I’m following orders?”

The sweetness of her voice almost had his balls shrinking. Intimidation from a five foot four piece of dynamite? It shouldn’t be possible.

But he knew this little piece of dynamite could pack a whallop when it wanted to.

Unfortunately, common sense didn’t seem to be his forte tonight.

“Don’t call me ‘daddy’, Tehya. I’m well aware of your feelings when it comes to fathers.”

She distrusted them. She even watched the men she had worked with for years with a suspicious gaze once they’d become fathers.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jordan,” she replied with a cute little drawl that in no way detracted from the danger glittering in her gaze. “I have no feelings one way or the other where fathers are concerned. I never had a father, so how should I know how they’re supposed to act. Sperm donors don’t count.”

She had little more than a sperm donor. One that kidnapped her mother, impregnated her, then attempted to raise Tehya to become a brood mare for her half brother.

“You’ve had weeks to prepare for this,” he reminded her. “You should already be out of here.”

Something flashed in her eyes then, something he could have sworn was grief.

If it was, then it was the same grief that seemed to be growing inside him as well. A well of furious denial when it came to walking away from her. She cast him one of those cool little looks of warning retribution as she stood, facing him.

“I dare you,” she suddenly stated, her eyes narrowing as she stared back at him.

Every muscle in his body tightened dangerously.

God no. Don’t let her dare him, not where he could sense that dare was going.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you not hearing so well, Commander Jordan?” A red-gold brow arched slowly as her arms crossed over breasts, pumping the delicate mounds up, making them so damned tempting his mouth almost watered.

“I dare you to actually touch me,” she explained, that note of anger in her voice causing his jaw to clench in determination. “You’ve been a complete prick for six years now, alternating between ignoring me and ordering your men away from me until it’s made me ready to pull my hair out. Be a man Jordan. See if you can handle it. See if you can handle me.”

There were some challenges a man couldn’t ignore no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he wanted to. This was one of those challenges.

Be a man?

She had no idea the man she was tempting.

“Don’t push this,” he warned her, his fingers curling to fists at his sides. “You may not like the consequences.”

“Or you may not,” she replied with an edge of pain-filled mockery. “What’s wrong Jordan, afraid you can’t walk away from me as easily as you’ve walked away from the little bimbos you’ve been fucking for the past six years?”

That flare of contempt that lit her gaze had his jaw tightening, but it was the pain, in her voice, in her gaze, that tore at him. He hated hearing the pain, even that blurred edge of it. He’d seen that aching need, that hunger for something more, for years now. Too many years.

“I can walk away from any woman, Tehya.” He tried to keep his tone soft, gentle. God knew he didn’t want to fray those ragged edges further.

Soft lips tightened as the sharp blade of her nose tightened. Emerald green eyes sharpened to a gem brightness, not from tears, no, Tehya didn’t cry easily. Hell, had he seen her cry at all in all the years he had known her? Definitely he hadn’t seen her cry for herself.

“Can you really?” Her head tipped to the side. “Isn’t that nice, Jordan, to be so certain you need nothing, no one. How superior you must feel to the rest of us mortals.”

Sharp, biting, her voice cut straight through the icy disdain he would have shown any other woman. The problem was, with Tehya, there was simply nothing but raw lust and shadowed emotions. That was the reason he stayed as far the hell away from her as possible.

He couldn’t project an icy disdain that simply wasn’t there. What he did have was a dick so damned hard he could pound iron with it.

“I don’t feel superior, Tehya.” Frankly, he felt lacking. In the past years, watching the happiness that filled men who had once been cold, hardened warriors, he’d finally realized what he’d lost in his life.

It was a loss he had accepted long ago, he reminded himself. He couldn’t make the mistakes he had made in the past. The blood and rage that stained the darkest days of his life were never forgotten.

“The hell you don’t.” Anger filled her voice, but naked need filled her eyes. “You stood above your men daily staring down that sharp, arrogant nose of yours as though they were recalcitrant children in need of discipline for actually daring to love. You were mockingly amused at the lot of them.”

Surprise started inside him. Was this what his men thought? What his nephew thought? That he felt himself better than they because they loved?

He’d be damned if that were the truth. He knew the choices he had made, just as he knew that his men were in a far better position than he. They had someone to hold onto at night, someone to ease the aching loneliness.

“Is that what you really believe, Tehya?” He took a step forward, feeling blistering need and offended anger crowding inside him.

He promised himself before coming here that he wouldn’t touch her, that he would simply tell her goodbye.

Goodbye wasn’t going to be enough.

“Why don’t you just go ahead and leave, Commander Jordan,” she sneered, those tempting witch’s eyes flaring back at him as the fiery red of her lashes seemed to blaze around the iridescent color. “There’s the door, don’t let it hit you in the ass. Isn’t that what you Americans say?”

A whisper of French, that alluring little accent that only came out under the most extreme situations whispered across his senses as it always did.

It may have whispered across his senses but it seemed to wrap around his cock and squeeze. His balls tightened, the tormenting ache filling them increasingly.

She did this to him. She made him crazy like this and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop it. It traveled through his bloodstream like poison, like a potent drug, stripping away the control he prided himself on and leaving him grasping at the threads of decency as he tried to force himself away from her.

“You don’t want to keep pushing this,” he warned her.

“Well hell, you must be enjoying it, Commander, you’re still standing here.” Her breasts were heaving, the nipples so hard beneath the silken material he swore they were going to pop right through the threads.

The urge to lick his lips was almost overpowering. The need for her was almost overpowering.

“I could fuck you,” he growled then. “It’s what you want, it’s what we both want, but have you considered what would happen the morning after?”

“Will there be a morning after?” she questioned him roughly. “Aren’t you the one who said you could fuck me, but then you would have to kill me? Double O Seven has nothing on you, does he, stud?”

Stud? She did not just call him Stud?

Damn her, the woman didn’t have the good sense to know when to keep her smart mouth shut or her tender heart safe.

Before he could stop himself, his hands were on her. His fingers curled around her upper arms as he jerked her to him, watching as her eyes widened, her hair seeming to flow around her as the pure silk of her flesh met the calloused roughness of his hands.

And then he froze. Because her skin was so fucking soft. Beneath his palms felt as heated, warm and soft as a cloud itself.

Spreading his fingers apart he touched her with his palms only, watching as he let the inner part of his hand cup the curve of her shoulder.

Hell, he wanted her. He wanted to fuck her until he was mindless with it, until nothing or no one mattered but Tehya.

She would be the death of him.

That was but a distant thought as he let himself relish the feel of his palms. He swore he could feel the sizzle of heat just below the flesh, drawing him, surging through his pores and washing through his system.

“Bad idea.” Swallowing tightly, he stared back at her, so focused on the strength of the need surging through him that all thoughts of pulling back evaporated.

The emerald green of her eyes darkened, glittering with need as he watched her lips tremble.

“Six years,” she whispered. “I waited…”

He didn’t want to hear it. He couldn’t hear it. The words she was about to whisper would be words she would regret the moment she realized that it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been twenty years.

To hold back the words he covered her lips with his, because he couldn’t let himself hear it.

And everything in the fucking world exploded.

Son of a bitch.

He would have froze if every lust cell in his body hadn’t risen in revolt. Because by freezing, he would be stopping. Hell no.

He tasted her.

His tongue slipped over her lips, licked at them, and before he could retrieve his basic common sense, he gave into this one hunger.

It wouldn’t go any further. He wouldn’t allow it.

But this one pleasure was incredible.

Tehya was terrified to breathe, to whimper in hunger, or to moan in pleasure. She was entranced by the kiss she hadn’t really expected, held enthralled by a hunger that suddenly exploded through her system. His tongue stroked against hers, exciting that feminine, sensual part of her that went deeper than she had ever imagined.

But oh God.

She could feel herself trembling, shaking against him. Her hand lifted, fingers outspread, not really touching him. She wanted to touch him. Desperately. Feel him.

He was warm, so warm. The feel of his lips moving against hers, over them, his tongue stroking against hers sent pleasure racing through her as she lifted, strained to get closer without gripping his arms and pulling herself straight into his embrace.

His fingers curved around her shoulders, held her to him. Her fingers curled and before she knew it she was gripping the material of his shirt, feeling the rolled sleeves beneath them.

Okay, maybe he wouldn’t feel her hands shaking through the material of his clothing. Maybe he wouldn’t sense the incredible need that, there seemed, there was no escape from. A need that had tormented her since the day she had met him.

“God. Tey.” His hands slid down her arms, gripped her hips and jerked her closer, pulling her against the hard, heated length of his cock.

Behind denim, thick and hard, the heated flesh of his erection was a wedge of temptation, a promise of satisfaction, and it was pressing into her lower stomach. She could feel the promise of satisfaction within her grasp. His hands gripped and kneaded her ass, lifting her, the silk of her gown falling, pressing between her legs as she felt his thigh wedging between hers, the rough denim rubbing the silk against the swollen, sensitive flesh of her sex.

She had never deemed herself a romantic person, but she saw starbursts.

His teeth nipped at her lips as she gasped, fighting to draw in oxygen as his lips tore from hers, the rasp of the day’s growth of his beard scraping against her jaw in a caress that had her arching closer.

It was exquisite. It was better than she had ever imagined it could be, and her imagination was damned good.