One Kiss More (15 page)

“I guess I am.” Crawford stood and came at Landon head-on, poking a finger at his chest. “But if you step even a toe out of line, I’ll have your badge, McCabe.”

He might have been ready to throw down with Crawford earlier, but this was a completely different game now. Too much was at stake for him to be anything less than one hundred percent from here on out. “Not a toe, sir. You won’t have to worry about it.”

Chapter Twelve

Emma spent the drive to Landon’s hotel, the walk across the parking lot to the back entrance of the hotel, the short ride up the elevator, and the long—
oh so long
—walk down the hallway to his room contemplating the many downfalls of her current situation. One of which being how she was going to handle being locked up in close quarters with a certain deputy U.S. marshal for God knew how long.

Landon closed the door behind them, and Emma reached to pull the obnoxious blond wig that Crawford had made her wear from her head. It itched like crazy and made her entire skull feel as though it were encased in flames. Humid flames. Humid, itchy, hot, annoying flames.
God, how do women wear these things?

“Hold up,” Landon said as he crossed the room and pulled the drapes closed. “We can’t run the risk that anyone will see you. You’re dead, remember?”

His harsh tone was salt in an open wound, and Emma didn’t appreciate it a bit. After Crawford’s come-to-Jesus, it had been another two hours’ wait for his people to get Emma a change of clothes, shoes, and a wig—which made her stand out even more in her opinion—before they let Landon take her to the hotel. She checked the clock on the bedside table, a little past one in the morning. It would be a miracle if she slept at all tonight, and though her mind raced with innumerable thoughts, her body was ready to go down for the count.

“I don’t know why you’re so bent out of shape, McCabe.” His attitude was getting on her nerves, all growly with his brows drawn sharply over his bright blue eyes. She didn’t like the Crankypants version of McCabe in the least. “You wanted to know the dirty details of my dad’s escape. Well, you got them. It’s not my fault the story wasn’t the one you wanted to hear.”

“Yeah,” he scoffed. “There was no escape. Javier was kidnapped because you stole millions of dollars from arms dealers.” Landon flopped down on the armchair in the corner of the room. “No wait, not
just
arms dealers.
Terrorists
. Do you have any idea what you’ve done, Emma?”

“I wasn’t going to keep the money.” Did he think she was stupid?

His eyes widened with disbelief. “This has
nothing
to do with the money!”

“I didn’t know they were arms dealers.”

Landon gave her a pointed look.

“Okay, so maybe I didn’t dig deep enough. But in my defense, I didn’t know what I was looking for.”

“Emma.” Landon’s frustration stifled the air, stole the breath from Emma’s lungs. “You shouldn’t have been looking at all!”

Jeez, why the sudden hostility? If he didn’t stop shouting at her, someone was going to call in a noise complaint. That’d help her keep a low profile. “You know, I’m starting to think that you’re just pissed off that I took your precious case away from you,” Emma spat. “Does it rankle the great Landon McCabe to know that you were
wrong
when you arrested my dad six years ago? That you were
wrong
when you rolled into town thinking you could scare me into giving him up? And that you were
wrong
in thinking that you were the biggest, baddest, most intimidating federal cop around?”

McCabe shot up out of his chair and crossed the space between them in a few long strides. Emma’s heart thundered and her stomach wrung itself into an anxious knot as she backed away from him, stopping only when the wall gave her nowhere else to go. She shouldn’t have tried to get under his skin, but he was so far off base in chastising her that he didn’t even have a foot on the damned bag. Did he not realize how scared she was? How utterly ashamed that she’d endangered not only her own life, but her dad’s? She already felt like crap. She didn’t need McCabe to bring her even lower.

His large frame seemed to take up all of the available space, crowding her until Emma found it difficult to focus. Her head swam with his masculine, outdoorsy scent, and his breath feathered across her cheek, prompting her to look him square in the face. “You think that’s what this is about?” McCabe caged her in with one arm, bracing it on the wall behind her. His voice was low with a dark edge that heated Emma’s skin. “My
ego
?”

It had been a long night and Emma had reached her threshold. Any more stress and her brain might explode. McCabe’s face loomed above hers, his blue eyes sparking with anger. A muscle ticked at his cheek as his jaw clenched tight. Holy mother of God, he was the most beautiful man Emma had ever laid eyes on. Even in his anger, he was magnificent. Emma balled her fists at her side, resisting the urge to reach up and stroke her fingers along the strong line of his jaw and the rough stubble that shadowed his cheek. “Look, we’re both tired and wound up.” A shiver traveled the length of Emma’s body as his gaze all but devoured her, and she was shaken by the memory of how good it had felt to have his hands on her bare skin, his mouth, soft yet unyielding, on hers. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

He reached up with his left hand and braced it on the wall right above her waist. She couldn’t move if she wanted to and they were standing so close, Emma could feel the heat from Landon’s body brushing against her, igniting all of her nerve endings to a state of hyperawareness. Her breath caught in her chest. Silence stretched out between them; the only sound in the quiet room was Emma’s own pulse racing in her ears. “McCabe . . . I . . .” Stringing two words together to form a sentence became a struggle as Emma’s mind clouded with erotic images. His hands groping at her flesh. His mouth, hot and urgent, as he kissed her. A rush of warmth spread between her thighs, and Emma’s stomach clenched tight with lust as she imagined what it would feel like to have his hard length buried deep inside of her. She shuddered. “I know this situation didn’t turn out the way you wanted, but—”

“Landon.”

Emma’s brow furrowed. “What?”

He leaned in closer and Emma inhaled deeply taking his scent into her lungs. “My name. Is Landon. Not McCabe. Not Deputy.
Landon
. Say it.”

Emma tried to swallow and found that her mouth had gone completely dry. The sensual undercurrent of his voice dizzied and addled her, made her excited and deliciously drunk all at the same time. “I . . .” She was at a loss for words. Well, for the one word he wanted her to say anyway. She’d never been tongue-tied. Not once in her entire life. But Landon McCabe could bind her in knots with nothing more than a look and the low, sensual thrum of his voice.

He leaned in even closer, if it was possible, his mouth hovering over hers. Emma’s breath came in shallow bursts of air as she tilted her chin up toward his face, and her heart pounded in a staccato against her rib cage.

“Say it.”

“Landon.” The word rushed out in a breathy whisper that ignited something low in her belly, and Emma found that she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his no matter how she tried. She felt like that eighteen-year-old girl again, dazzled by the stunning, confident U.S. marshal. The man her father made her promise not to harbor any ill will toward despite the fact that he was taking her sole support system away from her.

He put his mouth next to her ear, and Emma held her arms tight at her sides to keep from reaching out to touch him. “Again.”

“Landon.”

This was thin ice to tread and he knew it. Landon’s entire body vibrated from the effort it took to keep his arms braced against the wall and his mouth at Emma’s ear and not on her lips. She smelled like heaven, delicate and sweet, warm vanilla and honey. He wanted to lick every inch of her, for no other reason than to see if she tasted as good as she smelled. The way she said his name, all breathy and soft, was enough to make his cock hard as stone, and he yearned to hear his name on her lips when she came. Would it sound the same, or would passion infuse the word with heat and intensity?

Fucking hell
.

Landon bent at the elbows, fully prepared to push himself away from the wall. His chest brushed against her soft breasts and he stifled a groan. It would take an act of God to move him at this point. Hurricane-force winds or a bolt of lightning. Once again, he considered that Emma was a powerful magnet and he was nothing but useless metal. He couldn’t pull away from her if he tried.

“Goddamn it, Emma.” His own voice was ragged in his ears. Each word strained. Tortured. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be this close to you? The things I want to do to you right now?”

Emma reached up and grabbed the fabric of his shirt in her fists. She tilted her head up until her silky lips brushed his cheek and murmured in his ear, “What’s stopping you?”

Those three simple words were all it took to crumble his resolve.

Landon pressed his body against hers, forcing Emma tight against the wall as he slanted his mouth across hers in a ravenous kiss. He didn’t trust himself to touch her, not yet. Not when the very thought of having her carried him over the edge of reason. Her arms snaked around his neck, holding him to her as Emma’s tongue flicked out at the seam of his lips, a slow, sensual caress that Landon felt from one end of his body to the other.

Her fingers combed through his hair from the base of his neck upward, and Landon groaned into her mouth as his teeth grazed her bottom lip. As though she couldn’t get close enough, Emma molded her body to his, her fingers curling into fists in his short hair, pulling the strands just hard enough to drive Landon crazy. He kissed her as though he were starved for her, his tongue thrusting into her mouth, his hips rocking against her in tandem. Emma’s taste, her scent, her very presence enveloped Landon in a cocoon of sensation until he felt her in every pore of his skin, every inch of his body. His want of her overwhelmed anything else he’d ever longed for in his life, and tonight, he was going to have her.

“Landon?” Emma’s voice was tentative as she pulled away, her brow furrowed.

He studied her for a bare second before lunging at her, greedy to taste her mouth again. She put her palm between them, her brow arched curiously and a bemused smile curving her lips.

“The phone?” He looked at her, confused. Logical thought was impossible at this moment. All the blood had rushed from his brain a while ago, and like a caveman, he was pretty sure he was only capable of unintelligible grunts. “Landon,” Emma said again. “The phone’s ringing. Don’t you think we should answer it? It could be important.”

Phone? Ringing? “What?”

“Landon.” Emma’s voice transformed from soft and sweet to agitated in an instant. “Answer the phone. Please.”

The worried expression marring Emma’s features was like a bucket of ice water cooling Landon’s lust.
Get your shit together, man
. The whole point of forcing his way into Crawford’s operation was to keep an eye on Emma. An
eye
. Not his hands and certainly not his dick. If he let his focus wander . . . his gaze drifted to the swell of her breasts just visible above the V-neck of her shirt. He needed to get his head on straight. Now.

With more effort than he thought possible, Landon shoved himself away from the wall and turned his back on Emma. The phone continued to ring, the sound drilling into his skull like a thousand sharp screws. He rolled his head back from one shoulder to the other.
What a night.

He strode over to the bedside table, jerked the phone off the cradle, and brought it to his ear. “This is Landon McCabe.”

“I think you and Galen are trying to force me into early retirement,” Chief Deputy Curt Monroe remarked with less than good humor. “Why in the hell aren’t you answering your phone?”

Landon pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and let out a measured breath. Wasn’t there a rule somewhere that said you didn’t have to talk to your boss while sporting a raging hard-on? “I left it at the scene of a shooting earlier tonight. I haven’t had a chance to get it back.”

“Was that before or after you tried to flee the scene of a crime with a person of interest in an active investigation?” The accusation didn’t go unnoticed and Landon cringed.

“That would be before, sir.” No use trying to bullshit his way out of anything. Crawford had obviously ratted him out.

“Ah, I see.” A moment of silence passed, and Landon wondered if Monroe was too busy filing his release papers to speak. “And when was it that you brought Kelly into this? From what I understand, he’s had a busy night calling in favors to a few politicians, not to mention the U.S. ambassador to France and Jim Daniel with SOG ops down at Camp Beauregard. Have you lost your goddamned mind, McCabe?”

He chanced a glance to his side, where Emma was still leaning against the wall. He was waist fucking deep in it, that was for sure. “Crawford and the SOG hijacked
our
case. Our person of interest. And refused to share information. As the original lead deputy on the Ruiz case—”

“The SOG has every right to hijack whatever the hell they want,” Monroe snapped. “Including our person of interest. Unless you’ve forgotten, McCabe, there is no them or us. We’re all on the same team. You bullied your way into Crawford’s operation and I’m the one taking heat for it. Do you know what time it is, McCabe?”

Landon leaned to his right to get a good look at the digital alarm clock and swallowed down a groan. “It’s almost two
A.M.
, sir.”

“Yeah. And I’ll tell you what, I’d be a hell of a lot happier if I was asleep right now and not tracking one of my deputies across Seattle. Get your damned phone back. As soon as possible. And McCabe, if I get one more report—just one—that you’re fucking up over there, you’re on suspension. Understand?”

“I understand, sir.”

“All right then. Get some sleep.”