Her Enemy Protector (16 page)

She snuggled a little closer to him but said nothing.

He continued, “Before I met you, I thought you were stunning to look at. But now that I’m starting to know you, you absolutely take my breath away.”

Her
breath hitched on a little gasp and he dropped a kiss, little more than a light touch of the lips, just below her ear.

“You’re a miracle,” he whispered.

And that did it. She turned in his arms to face him, flowing into him like silk, all but offering herself up for the taking. God, he was a bastard. Here he was romancing an innocent young woman to get her to work for him. How despicable was that?

He started as her mouth captured his in a hungry kiss. She still tasted faintly of the orange she’d peeled and eaten earlier in a sticky, drippy orgy of pleasure that had left him hard as a rock. Just thinking about how she’d sucked on the juicy sections made him hard again.

He tilted his head to better fit their mouths together. He slid one hand behind her neck under her hair, savoring the warmth beneath his fingertips. She tasted like an orange Creamsicle bar, all sweet and smooth. He could eat her up until he was drunk on her.

Her hands roamed his chest and she moaned in the back of her throat. He swept his tongue into her mouth, searching for the source of that delicious sound, breathing it into his chest like pure oxygen.

She came to him with her whole body, flinging herself against him in abandon, breasts smashed against his chest, her thigh wedged between his and rubbing parts of him that didn’t need any encouragement at the moment. He tried to resist her. Tried to hold himself separate. But, dammit, she was all tropical heat and steamy nights, the roar of the ocean and pounding of the surf. Hell, sex on a beach.

And he was the biggest jerk in the world. Here he was, letting her drape herself all over him,
enjoying
her draping herself all over him. He didn’t want to hurt her, to damage her self-esteem, to turn her off sex or men. He shouldn’t be doing this. He…should…not…be doing this.

Aw, hell. He wrapped his arms around her, gathering her into him, kissing her like there was no tomorrow. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her ears, her neck. He sucked her lips, laved her tongue with his, hauled her up against him more tightly, her breasts pressing against him, her thighs giving against the hardness of his. Oh, yeah. He could do this nonstop for a couple of lifetimes.

Her fingertips crept underneath his waistband, hot against his skin.
Hello.
Parts of him that were already alert zeroed in on those questing fingers. He ripped his mouth free, groaning, and grasped her wrists.

“Slow down, baby. You’re killing me here.”

She laughed against his mouth. “I know the feeling. Kiss me.”

He tried to take it easy, tried to be delicate and tender with her, but then she bit his lip.

He growled deep in his throat and she matched him with, swear to God, a purr. She sounded like a damned tigress as she licked the spot she’d nipped. An extremely self-satisfied tigress.

So she wanted to play rough, did she? He could definitely give as good as he got in that department. He stood up, dragging her with him, shoving his hands under her shirt and reaching between her shoulder blades for her bra hooks. And then a movement high on the wall of the house caught his eye. He swore viciously.

Cari reached up to pull his head back down to her, but he resisted. Reluctantly.

“Sorry, princess. We’re on
Candid Camera
.”

“I don’t care,” she mumbled against his mouth, arching into him.

He closed his eyes. Lord, he could smell the lust on her skin. And he could bloody well feel the lust raging across his. If that camera were a few feet closer, he’d rip it off the freaking wall.

As it was, the interruption was probably just as well. He needed to get his mind on business, and he certainly didn’t need to go making this a real marriage. A real—

Well, hell. And wasn’t
that
thought a big bucket of cold water on a guy’s libido?

“It’s cold out here, honey. Let’s go inside.”

Still draped around him much more than he could safely ignore, Cari dropped her head against his shoulder and mumbled, “While I appreciate your gentlemanly urges, next time could you not find them for a little while longer?”

He laughed ruefully. “I’m no gentleman, darlin’. I just don’t like the idea of giving Gunter and Rico a free peep show.”

“Screw Gunter and Rico,” she grumbled.

He grinned but wiped the expression off his face fast as she glanced up at him.

“And I’m
not
cold,” she stated forcefully.

“Neither am I,” he replied regretfully. “But we’ve got places to go and things to do.”

And that broke the mood, dammit. He had to be some sort of Class A idiot to walk away from Cari’s obvious willingness—hell, eagerness—to engage in some seriously gnarly sex with him.

He shook his head and reached for the French doors, holding them open for her. And as he followed her inside, he turned quickly, grinned and flipped his middle finger at the camera, which was still pointed right at him.

Cari sagged on the foot of her bed, tingling from head to toe. Damn him for stopping! How long had it been since any man had treated her with enough respect to stop of his own volition? a tiny voice in her brain argued back. Hmm. That would be…never. God, how pitiful was that? What did it say about her self-esteem? Some shrink would have a field day with a revelation like that.

“Are you okay?” The deep murmur made her look up at him in the faint moonlight filtering into the room.

She sighed on a half laugh. “I’ll live. But it’s not nice to let a girl get all dressed up with nowhere to go, if you catch my meaning.”

He smiled wryly. “Yeah, I get your drift.”

Without warning, he leaned down and kissed her swiftly, his mouth pressing hard against hers. “Soon, princess, soon. When there are no cameras.”

And then he was gone, moving across the room, stripping off his shirt as he went. Faint moonlight played across his back, highlighting the bulges and dips of a glorious set of deltoids and lats. He stopped in front of the chest of drawers that held most of his clothes. She started as he dropped his shorts, revealing a pair of black Lycra shorts cupping arguably the best butt she’d ogled in as long as she could remember. He turned slightly and the moonlight caught him just right.
Thank you, God.
The fabric clung to him in all the right places, outlining long, powerful thigh muscles, the deep cut up the side of his leg to his narrow hips and another bulge….

She tore her gaze away.

Well, okay, so she cheated and peeked a little. What girl wouldn’t with a hunk like that changing in her bedroom? He pulled on black trousers cut like fatigue pants and a black long-sleeved turtleneck. In the dark clothing, he suddenly became difficult to see in the shadows playing across that corner of the room.

He glanced over his shoulder at her and paused, apparently arrested by the realization that she’d sat there the whole time, watching him change. Far from reacting with embarrassment, his eyes blazed so hot she could see the fire in them from here.

“Go change out of your clothes,” he said roughly. “Put on something black for me.”

Right. Clothes. She stumbled to her feet and across the room to her closet. She stepped into the dressing area, although she was half tempted to change out in the main room in front of Joe. The silk turtleneck she pulled on irritated her sensitized skin. She wanted hands on her body, not this damned shirt! The black cotton jeans weren’t much better against her legs.

She tore her mind away from the things she couldn’t have right now. Ah, but later…

Right now, she had to concentrate on helping Joe spy on her father’s meeting. And the very thought sent cold shivers through her. This was not a good idea. Even if Joe could get past all the cameras and guards and other security measures, it was still a dicey stunt to pull off. And why was Joe so interested in who came to Eduardo’s meeting, anyway? Was he thinking about contacting one of tonight’s guests and asking for help? Surely, he knew better than that. Possibly the only more vicious, more violent criminals in this part of the world than her father were the men he did business with.

She stepped out into the bedroom. Joe was untangling a jumble of rope and thick wooden dowels. Her fire escape ladder. The same one she’d used to flee her room the night Tony was murdered. She’d been surprised Eduardo hadn’t taken it away from her after she’d gone over the balcony and headed for the ocean. Maybe Gunter had convinced her father that it was better to just give her the ladder because she was wild enough to jump from the balcony without one.

She followed Joe outside to the balcony, where the noise of the ocean would mask their voices.

He moved over next to her and muttered in her ear, his mind apparently firmly on business. “We’ll wait here until the meeting’s started, then climb down and work our way over to the windows. You can point out to me anyone you recognize and I’ll take pictures of the rest.”

She nodded, the misgivings piling up in her gut. It was one thing to try to leave her father. It was another thing altogether to actively help Joe do something awful to him on the way out the door.

By bringing her to this beach house, his private killing ground, Eduardo had already hinted at doing her harm if she didn’t cooperate with him. Rumor among the servants was that her father had ordered Julia killed a number of weeks back. A couple of the whispers had him pulling a gun on Julia himself in some big confrontation between the two of them. And, Lord knew, Julia was a lot more important to her father than she’d ever been. If he’d kill Julia for disobeying him, he’d certainly kill her, too. And she was going to help Joe and expose herself to this additional risk?
Why?

Memories of Joe’s hands on her skin, his mouth on hers, his body against hers, of what else she wanted from him skated through her head. It was a lousy reason to spy on her father. But it was a reason, at least. The faster they got done checking out this stupid meeting, the faster they could get back to what they’d been doing before.

She shook her head in disgust. She was smarter than to do something dumb or dangerous in the name of impressing a guy. But here she was, blithely agreeing to this insanity. Apparently, she’d decided sometime during the last twenty-four hours that she was going to ignore the inevitable pain of losing Joe in favor of wallowing in their current mutual infatuation.

At least, she hoped he shared her infatuation. He could just be putting on a big act for the cameras and bugs. Now that she thought about it, the surveillance devices always seemed to be around whenever he laid a hot kiss on her. She frowned. And still she wanted him. How lame was that?

As Joe hooked the ladder onto the side railing, tucked close to the wall of the house in a deep shadow, he said conversationally, “I’m surprised you and your sister didn’t figure out how to sneak out at night when you were kids.”

“We didn’t spend much time here, especially after our mother—”

Joe blinked. “She died here?” he asked quietly.

She nodded. “He does most of his killing here. He likes to toss the bodies to the sharks. No messy evidence, you know.” She thought of Tony and her voice broke on the last sentence.

“You really cared for Tony, didn’t you?” Joe asked quietly. “What a jerk I’ve been. It’s too soon for you to have another relationship and here I’ve been coming on to you.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Christ, I’m sorry.”

She stepped near him, capturing his restless hand in hers. “It wasn’t like that. Tony didn’t have those kinds of feelings for me nor I for him.”

“He had enough feelings to risk his life for you!” Joe retorted.

“Tony was gay,” she explained gently. “Not-the-slightestbit-interested-in-girls-except-to-borrow-their-clothes gay.”

“Oh.” Joe’s jealous anger deflated in an instant. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? For being jealous, or for being sensitive to the fact that I might not want a new relationship so soon after losing someone I cared about?”

He frowned. “I’m not jeal… What the hell. I’m just sorry, okay?”

“Okay,” she smiled. “Look. A light just went on in my father’s office.”

Joe glanced at his watch and frowned. “It’s not time for the meeting yet.”

“Gunter will go in first and sweep the place for bugs. Then he’ll lock the door and only open it again when it’s time for the servants to take in the refreshments. He’ll stay in the room with them until the meeting begins.”

“Thorough.”

She was silent as Joe reached into one of his pockets and pulled out an average-looking digital camera.

“Planning a sightseeing trip on the side, are you?” she quipped.

He grinned. “You didn’t think I’d come in here to rescue you without a few cool toys, did you?”

“How’d you get them in the door?”

“By giving the thugs who searched my suitcase exactly what they were looking for. Average, everyday items. Like this camera. Looks like a middle-of-the-road model, but it can store up to a hundred high-resolution pictures taken under extremely low-light conditions. The pictures can be blown up to ten times their regular size with no appreciable loss of detail.”

Wow. That was a whole lot of pixels crammed into a single image.

“What else did you sneak in here in your little bag of tricks?” she asked.

Darned if he didn’t choose that very moment to wax evasive on her. “A little of this and a little of that. Of course, I wasn’t able to bring in a weapon or any obvious surveillance gear. But I’ve got enough doodads to jerry-rig almost anything we might need to get out of here.”

“You hope,” she retorted.

“I hope,” he amended with a boyish smile that just about knocked her knees out from under her. She gulped and tried to catch her breath as he moved with the grace of a tango dancer to one side of the porch and peered below.

She moved up behind him and stood on tiptoe to murmur in his ear, “You’re almost too pretty to be a mortal man.”

He mumbled indignantly, “I’m not
pretty
.”