Rogue Alpha (Alpha 7) (6 page)

“It doesn’t.” His mouth tilted up at the corners. “Maybe I would prefer the cocksucking as payment?”

“That’s too bad.”

“Sure?”

No, Diana wasn’t
sure
at all.

She
did
know she wanted to wipe that knowing sneer off Seth’s lips. To tell him to go to hell. To call him the bastard he was currently being.

And if she did, what then?

Who else was she going to ask for help if Seth Armstrong turned her away?

Chapter 4

“Well, it would seem none of this was only your imagination, after all.”

Diana was too shocked at the state of her hotel room to be able to answer Seth’s dryly drawled comment as he stood in the doorway.

The room was a mess.

The few clothes she had brought with her had been taken out of her bag and were now strewn across the floor, including everything from her toiletry bag. The pillows and bedclothes were thrown off the bed, the mattress half on and half off the firmer base. The empty drawers in the dressing table and the bedside units were all left open, the wardrobe doors flung wide to reveal it contained only empty coat hangers. Even the generic pictures on the walls were all askew.

As if someone had been searching the room for something specific.

Diana still had no idea what that something could be.

In spite of the mess, she felt a certain satisfaction in knowing Seth had no choice now but to believe her—

“Unless you’re just a slob?”

Diana turned to glare at him as he came fully into the room and closed the door behind him. “Or maybe I wrecked the room before coming to find you yesterday, so that if you came back to my hotel with me, this might help to convince you I’m telling the truth?”

He raised dark brows. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

“No?” she challenged.

He half smiled. “Maybe for a second or two.”

“That’s what I thought.” Diana stepped farther into the room and began to gather her belongs from the floor.

She had been too angry with Seth, and too stunned by what happened between the two of them, to even attempt to make conversation on the drive to her hotel. Seth had seemed equally as lost in his own thoughts. Thoughts that seemed to have put a permanent scowl on his brow.

Only for the two of them to discover this mess once Diana had unlocked the door and entered her hotel room.

Obviously someone had broken in during her overnight stay at Seth’s house.

Tears blurred her vision as she collected her things, knowing she was never going to be able to wear the bra and panties again, especially when some unknown person had touched them. Her nightgown and robe either, or her spare sweater. They could all go in the bin.

“What’s this?”

Diana turned to look at Seth and the sketch pad he was holding in his hand. “I draw.”

He shot her an impatient glance. “I can see that.”

She shrugged. “I’m not good enough to be professional, but I enjoy it anyway.”

Seth flicked through the dozen or so sketches. An older couple, the woman still beautiful and bearing a strong resemblance to Diana, so probably her mother, the man white-haired with a beard, obviously her father. Several Parisian winter scenes. A—

He flicked back to the previous sketch of the Champs-Élysées. The same man, dark and swarthy, was in the background of this drawing as was in the later one of a water taxi. “Is this him?”

Diana looked up with a frown before walking over to look at the sketch he indicated. “Yes,” she sighed, “that’s the man I’ve thought was following me.”

The same man Seth had seen sitting in an armchair in the busy lobby of the hotel when they entered a few minutes ago.

It was second nature to Seth to always check out his surroundings, to note the people, as well as possible exits. There had been nothing about the man downstairs that stood out as being unusual as he sat reading a newspaper, but Seth had committed his face to memory anyway, as he had everyone else in the busy lobby of this London hotel.

The likeness to that man in Diana’s sketch pad was very good.

The several likenesses, Seth discovered as he looked at the rest of the drawings and saw the same man in half a dozen of the Parisian sketches. As proof the man had followed Diana to London, as she’d claimed he had.

“Why the hell didn’t you bring this with you last night and show it to me then?” Seth demanded.

She shrugged. “Those sketches could just be a coincidence. Prove nothing.”

Not now they couldn’t. But last night, when he had thought she was paranoid? Maybe. Definitely not now he had seen the man downstairs in the lobby. Although he doubted the man would still be there now that he knew Diana hadn’t come back to the hotel alone.

What might have happened to her if she had?

Would the man have followed her up to the room, impatient over not finding whatever it was he was looking for, and possibly beaten the answer out of her? Whatever that answer might be.

He studied Diana through narrowed lids as she moved about the room collecting her belongings. What the hell did she know—have—that someone was willing to go to these lengths to retrieve it? Diana claimed she didn’t know or have anything someone might want.

Which brought Seth straight back to Jeremy Moore.

What could the bastard possibly have been into during those few months he’d worked in Colombia? The obvious answer was drugs. Buying or selling? Or maybe
carrying
? Moore’s position as a British diplomat, his visits back to England in the course of his job, would no doubt have helped in that enterprise.

Except there was no way the other man could have carried enough drugs to warrant someone looking through Diana’s meager luggage for it.

Although
this
mess was certainly a distraction from what had happened between the two of them earlier. Which, as far as Seth was concerned, was another mess. One of his own creation.

The more time he spent in Diana’s company, the more attracted he became, but he shouldn’t have allowed it to get as out of hand as he had this morning.

Because the memory of it, and the conversation afterward, was there between them now, below the surface of every word they spoke, every glance they gave each other.

An acute awareness.

A
desire.

An
acute
desire.

“I would have thought to show you the sketches eventually,” Diana continued distractedly. “Yesterday I was more interested in convincing you to help me, than showing you sketches of a man who may or may not be following me.”

Oh, Seth had no doubt now that Diana was being followed.

It was his job to find out why.

“That was…comfortable.” It was one word Diana could think of to describe the private jet she and Seth had used to fly to a private airfield near Paris. Decadent, luxurious, and indulgent were three others.

When Seth told her he had made arrangements for the two of them to fly to Paris that afternoon, she assumed he had booked himself a seat on the same flight as her own. It hadn’t even occurred to her it would be on the private jet owned by Grayson Security.

When she had questioned who was paying for it, Seth had dryly told her she could consider the flight to Paris as being “on the house.” A reminder of the payment he had extracted for his services so far.

Diana still cringed with embarrassment every time she thought of the two of them together earlier today. Of the way she had allowed Seth to touch her so intimately. Of her total loss of control, not once but twice.

And she had balked at having thought she might sound
needy yesterday!

Allowing Seth Armstrong to make love to her so intimately, didn’t only sound needy, it
was
needy.

Having him talk to her so crudely afterward had been humiliating.

As well as dousing any desire on her part ever to want to repeat the experience.

Had that been his intention all along? His way of telling her he might find her sexually attractive, but that was all it was or ever could be?

As if she could ever have imagined it as being anything else.

Seth was obviously a solitary man. He lived and worked alone. He didn’t have a single Christmas card on display in his home. He had told her himself there was no special woman in his life. Diana hadn’t seen any family photographs in his study last night either, not of his parents or any siblings. A lack of personal photographs that she found unusual.

His parents would surely still be alive, at least?

Seth was proving to be a man with more secrets than answers.

And a man Diana responded to with unprecedented sexual abandon.

She clenched her thighs together at the memory of having his fingers stroking her clitoris and along the wetness of her folds. Of having those fingers thrusting pleasurably inside her as they sought and then found the knot of nerves inside her that would send her over the edge into climax.

Damn it, I have to stop thinking about it
.

Reliving it.

Becoming sexually aroused, merely from looking at the lean strength of Seth’s hand, as it rested on top of his thigh while he sat beside her in the back of the private limousine driving them into Paris itself.

A privacy glass was raised between them and the driver, who had been waiting for them beside the limousine when the plane landed. The other man had dealt with their bags while Seth ensured their transition from plane to car was achieved with the minimum of fuss from the authorities.

This was the reason she had gone to this man, Diana reminded herself sternly. The only reason. Because when Seth Armstrong took charge, things happened. People jumped to do his bidding. Quietly. Efficiently. Or he wanted to know the reason why not.

It had been the same at her hotel in London earlier. Diana had wanted to finish tidying the room after disposing of the clothes she would never wear again, Seth had refused to let her. Instead, they had gone down in the lift together, and then Seth had disappeared into the hotel manager’s office with him.

Diana had no idea what Seth said to the manager, but the other man had been pale and sweating by the time the two of them came out of the office again five minutes later, the older man apologizing to Diana profusely and assuring her there would no bill to pay after the “inconvenience” she had suffered. She could only assume he meant having someone break into her hotel room.

Once they returned to Seth’s house, he had offered her the use of his DVD collection before disappearing into his study for a couple of hours. Whatever he had been doing in there—besides organizing the company jet to fly them both to Paris, and possibly passing on any work he was involved in to someone else at Grayson Security—it hadn’t pleased him. His expression had been grimly uncommunicative when he rejoined Diana in time for them to prepare a cold lunch together before leaving for the airport. He had remained that way during the flight here too.

She broke that silence once again. “Where to now?”
 

“I’m guessing you want to go to your apartment.” He didn’t even glance at her as he answered her tersely.

“I do, but… You intend staying at my apartment with me?” Diana tensed merely thinking about it.

He did look at her now. At least he turned his head in her direction. The dark sunglasses he wore prevented her from seeing if Seth was actually looking at her. Completely unnecessary sunglasses considering it hadn’t been a sunny day to start with and was already starting to get dark.

Except, as the eyes were reputed to be the windows to the soul, the sunglasses prevented Diana from being able to discern any of Seth’s thoughts.

“Do you have a problem with that?” he prompted dryly.

“I…We…It only has one bedroom.” Diana’s cheeks burned hotly.

“So?”

“So it’s my bedroom.”

He gave a mocking inclination of his head. “I’d assumed so as it’s your apartment.”

“There’s only one bed.”

“I’d assumed that too.”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

Dark brows rose above the sunglasses. “Where would you like me to sleep?”

At a hotel.

Or in another room in her apartment.

At least in a separate bed.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Seth muttered his obvious impatience with this conversation. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. I’m not about to ask for sexual favors in exchange for helping you,” he explained as she eyed him questioningly.

Her chin rose. “You would be wasting your time if you did.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” The look she gave him dared him to contradict her. To even mention her lack of control earlier.

“Fine.” He nodded tersely. “But how the hell do you expect me to protect you if I don’t stay at your apartment with you?”

Good point, Diana acknowledged with a wince. She had been so intent on having Seth believe her, in enlisting his help, she hadn’t thought this far ahead. But, of course, it was stupid to expect—or want—him to stay at a hotel. The whole point of his being here was so that he could protect her while he helped her unravel exactly why these things were happening to her at all.