He looked hard at her, searching her face from eye to eye, clearly judging the whopper she’d just told him. “Okay,” he said. But she couldn’t tell from the frown on his face if he believed her or not.
“Cole, you will pay me, right?”
His scowl deepened. “I don’t remember a place called Cade’s.”
“He said it’s new,” she said. “You go there. You’ll find him.”
“And you’re not going to see Vlitnik tomorrow?”
She shook her head, finally honest. “I don’t want to go. I want you to find Alec and get money. What should I do, though? Vlitnik thinks I’m going to tell him.”
“Yeah, just call that number and tell him you were wrong.” He stepped back to the door, doing one more visual sweep of the counter tops, his gaze falling on the People magazine opened to a picture of the future Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Ivory at the posh resort where they’d be married soon.
Robyn literally felt her heart stop.
“God, Robyn, you shouldn’t waste your money on that shit,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, I know.”
He went to the door and stepped out, obviously dying to get out as fast as he could.
“Cole?”
He turned and looked at her. “What?”
Guilt pressed down on her chest. I’m carrying your baby. She should tell him. She was supposed to tell him. This baby was half his. Not telling him was so, so wrong. Maybe—
“What, Robyn? I gotta go.” Impatience made his voice sharp.
No, he’d have no love or concern for a baby. It was always about looking out for number one with Cole. “You sure they’ll leave me alone?” she asked.
“Probably.”
Probably not. But if he didn’t work for them, then how would he know? “’Kay. Bye.”
She closed the door and quietly locked it, grateful now that she wasn’t sleepy. She could start the drive by midnight and be in Florida in, what, eighteen or twenty hours?
If Alec Petrov was paying anyone, it would be her. After all, she’d just saved his ass. And she had a feeling that if she didn’t show tomorrow, Vlitnik—and maybe Cole—would be back for hers.
She had to get out, fast.
Chapter Eighteen
It wasn’t enough. And, holy hell, that terrified Kate because…what would be enough?
As if she didn’t know.
She closed her eyes, but the view she’d been staring at stayed burned in reverse behind her eyelids, the crescent moon black instead of a slice of white, a star or planet burning bright right next to it. Those celestial beings shed very little light, but Kate had been out on the dark patio long enough to have her night vision and still be able to see the sands and water of Barefoot Bay.
She’d cautiously avoided Alec all afternoon and evening, studying in her room—well, trying to study. Each of them ate, alone and separately, a delicious and spicy lasagna Poppy had left in the fridge. It wasn’t a truce or anger or even an uncomfortable silence that kept Kate from her bodyguard.
It was the fact that she wanted more of him and too much time with him and, well, it was so tacky to beg. But she might beg for more. More of his mouth and hands. More of his hard body. More of his…
And not just that, she thought with a little splash of adrenaline. She wanted more of what was on the inside. She wanted to know what made him tick. Why did he seem so strong and commanding one minute and so vulnerable the next? Why was he scared of touching her, yet his fingers had been beyond capable of bringing her right to orgasm on his lap?
She just wanted—
“I don’t suppose you’d want to take a walk.”
She turned from the blackness of the night sky to see Alec’s powerful silhouette in the open doors, lit by a single light in the living area. He wore a T-shirt and shorts that came just below his knees. He must have changed and even sneaked one of his pool baths while she was hiding out, because he seemed fresh and clean and…hot.
After her shower, she’d changed into a thin linen skirt that skimmed her ankles and a loose sleeveless top, skipping a bra she barely needed anyway. But maybe she should put one on before walking barefoot in the moonlight with him.
Or maybe not.
“I’d love to,” she said, surprised at how huskily her voice came out.
He reached out a hand, silent.
And, God help her, she walked to him, took his hand, and let him lead her to the door. As he opened it, he brushed her bare shoulder with his knuckle, making her shiver involuntarily.
“It is a little cooler when the sun goes down,” he said. “You need a sweater or something?”
Something like a bra. “I’m okay.” Her gaze moved to the entry table where she’d dropped the sheer red fabric she’d taken from the massage cabana. “This will work,” she said, grabbing it as a wrap.
“Your Superwoman cape,” he teased.
“It did the job,” she agreed, then caught the inadvertent double entendre. “I mean, of covering your hands in front of Madame What’s-Her-Name.”
“My hands…” His voice drifted off, the thought unfinished, or kept intentionally silent, as they walked side by side to the path and followed it toward the first bridge to the beach.
If his silence was intentional, it wasn’t because anyone was around. Late on a weeknight, Casa Blanca was dim and quiet, its well-attended residents and efficient staff tucked away or out of sight. The beach was deserted, too, with all the umbrellas and cabanas removed and no wedding or outdoor event to fill the sand with tiki torches or the air with live music.
Tonight, everything was still. Except for Kate’s heart, which had pretty much pounded at double time since their session with the “breathwork” specialist.
“What about your hands?” she asked after a minute.
“You know.”
She laughed softly. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“I hate them,” he said simply. “Always have, always will.”
“I guess the obvious question is why, but”—she held up her hand to keep him from interrupting her—“I know you better than to expect anything but a monosyllabic response.”
He gave her a side-eye. “You and your words.”
“See? You and your words. All one syllable,” she said.
“My favorite kind.”
“What is your last name? Is it one syllable?”
He chuckled at the not-so-sly trick question. “Carlson.” He didn’t miss a beat as they put their bare feet on the sand and sank in a little. “Just like yours, Tilly.”
She elbowed him. “Come on.”
“Come on?” He chuckled and put a hand on her back. “That’s the best you have, counselor? Come on?”
“I’ll rephrase.” She thought for a moment. “Mr. Carlson, can you tell the jury where your parents came from? Please don’t make me remind you that you’re under oath.”
He laughed again. “I am, am I?”
“Answer the question.”
“St. Petersburg.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No, never. Never been to Russia. Have no interest in going.” There was just enough vehemence in his voice to tell her this wasn’t a casual decision.
“No relatives there? No other…what was the family name again?”
He just laughed.
“All right, I give. No more interrogation. Can we just have a conversation? I want to know more about you. Anything. Nothing incriminating, just anything.”
She heard him sigh in resignation. “Like what?”
“Like…” Given the open door, she wasn’t sure exactly how to go through. She grabbed the first thing that came to mind. “When did you start learning the martial arts?”
He hesitated and shook his head. “I’m really not supposed to tell you anything, Kate.”
“And you’re not supposed to call me Kate,” she fired back. “Look, Alec, we’re in such close quarters. I don’t want to be strangers.”
“The sk
y is not close,” he said, looking up at the stars. “The gulf is at low tide. The sand stretches for a mile or two. Don’t interrogate me out here in this piece of paradise.”
She swallowed, the poetry of his words sweet in her ears, and the honesty in his plea hard to ignore. Maybe later, he seemed to say. “Okay,” she said quietly.
He put his arm around her, gentle and warm. “You’re so much nicer when you agree with me.”
“Typical man,” she muttered, but the comment lacked her usual bitterness.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
She looked up at him, breathing in the salty air that clung to him, taking in his rugged features in the moonlight. “No, you’re not,” she agreed. “A typical man would have never let today’s, uh, activities end when we got back to the villa.”
He stopped walking, staring at her. “Is that what you want?”
Her insides tilted, and she almost swayed on the beach. She wanted more, that’s what she’d been thinking all day. But…not sex. Well, not just sex.
“What I want is for you to tell me something about you. Something I don’t guess or drag out of you one syllable at a time. Tell me your last name. Or something about your life. Or…why you hate your hands. Tell me something.”
He looked at her for a long time, searching her face as though he was really considering her request, making her hold her breath for the answer.
But he didn’t say a word, silently continuing their walk toward the hard-packed sand left from the tide that was far, far out now. They walked along the sand to the water’s edge, the low, frothy waves threatening to submerge their feet with each ebb and flow, but running out of steam before they did.
A full five minutes passed as they walked in complete silence, the only sound the splash of water and the light breeze in her ears. He dropped his arm, and Kate pulled her sheer makeshift wrap around her shoulders, letting it float behind her like wings.
Maybe she’d asked for too much. Sex would have been simpler. Even a kiss would—
“They’re ugly. They’re marked. They’re scarred. And they were really only made to do one thing well, and that is to inflict pain.”
It took a second for her to realize he was talking about his hands. And another for her to come up with ten reasons he was wrong. That wasn’t pain his hands inflicted on her today.
But gut instinct told her not to interrupt.
“I was born with these giant paws.” He held out his left hand, fully open to demonstrate how huge it was. Huge. His fingers would easily extend an inch and a half past hers. “My dad was a butcher, and I had to help him, so I got my first knife scar before I was six.” He pointed to a nearly invisible scar on his index finger, and she tucked away another tiny piece of information about him. Dad was a butcher.
“These hands have bad memories,” he said.
“Tell me one.”
He thought for a few seconds, then, “My dad was holding my hand when he died,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Oh.” She touched his shoulder in sympathy. “That’s sad.”
“It was, but he wasn’t that young. He was almost twenty years older than my mother, but still, it hurt.”
And she knew exactly how much it hurt. Her mother died while in a coma—a coma Kate had caused. She would have loved to hold her mother’s hand and say good-bye. And I’m sorry.
“Then there was this tattoo, which I got at thirteen.”
The new tidbit pulled her from a dark memory. “Wow, that’s young.”
“Against my will.”
She stopped walking, remembering how he and Gabe had both referred to it as a mark. “You were forced to get a tattoo that says… How do you pronounce it?”
“Like oo-bah,” he said.
“Kill,” she recalled.
“Actually, it’s more like a demand that you should kill, or at least that would be the closest translation in English. Like saying, ‘You will do that,’ as opposed to ‘Do that.’ Does that make sense?”
“It’s the imperative tense.”
He smiled. “You would know that.”
But what she didn’t know—and wanted to—was why someone would force him to be marked or demand that he kill. She wasn’t going to hold her breath for that confession.
He fisted his hand and turned his knuckles to face him, like he was going to punch his own nose. “This is an order, in more ways than one.”
Or maybe he would tell her. She took a step so she was face-to-face with him, his fist between them. “Who made you get that?”
He slammed shut, his body tensing, his jaw clenched, his mouth a straight, tight line of silence.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re safer if you don’t know.” He scanned the darkness and put his arm around her. “Kate, remember, I made a promise to guard you in any and every way. That means not sharing more, no matter how badly you want to know. Or how much…”
“How much what?”
“How much I want you to know.”
The admission silenced her, even satisfied her briefly, as he walked them far from the ambient lights of the resort to a group of graceful palm trees that formed a protected, shadowy, secret place on the beach.
She took the sheer wrap off and let it fall like a filmy blanket on the sand. “Sit on my Superwoman cape,” she invited.
He did, taking her hand to pull her down next to him so they could look out at the moon slice over the water. He stared straight ahead, his legs up, his elbows propped on his knees, deep in thoughts that Kate yearned to know. She reached over and touched his joined fists.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think your hands are ugly.”
He snorted a laugh.
“They were…lovely today.”
He drew in a slow breath, not answering.
“Another thing you don’t want to talk about?” she asked.
Even in the darkness, she could see his smile was wry and sweet at the same time. “It’s awkward.”
“That you made me lose control? If it isn’t awkward for me, the lover of control, why would it be for you?” She leaned into him a little. “I have to be honest. It was amazing.” Almost scary, it was so perfect.
He shook his head slightly, the infinitesimal move crushing her spirit. But then, the experience had been pretty one-sided.
“It wasn’t amazing for you, I guess,” she said.
“That’s not why…yes, it was…” He worked to find a word, slowly turning toward her, then placing his hand—his so-not-ugly hand—on her cheek. “No woman has ever said that to me.”
Said what? “It was amazing?”
“Not like that. Not like it was real.”
How could that be? “I have to believe that, even without some tutoring from Madame V, you know your way around the bedroom.” And a woman’s body.
“I’m not much of a lover, Kate. I’m a…” He stroked her chin with his thumb, dragging the blunt fingertip lower, leaving a wake of chills on her skin. Finally, he settled his thumb in the hollow of her throat, where he could surely feel her pulse race. “I’m more of a fighter,” he finished.
Without thinking, she reached up and closed her hands around his powerful neck, spreading her fingers, easing his face even closer to hers.
How could she expect him to bare his soul if she wouldn’t do the same?
“I think you would be an incredible lover,” she whispered. “Kind and thorough and tender.”
He looked at her for a long time, unable to hide the wonder in his eyes. “What do they call it when a prisoner falls for their captor? I bet you know that, Smarty-Pants.”
“Stockholm syndrome,” she answered with a smile. “And you’re wrong. That’s not what’s going on.”
“Then what is?” he challenged. “Because I don’t believe for one minute you’re attracted to some guy who was raised in Little Russia by a butcher, not when that guy has a face that’s been hit more than it’s been kissed, a shitty vocabulary,
and an even shittier future.”
She stared at him. “That’s not how I see you.”
He didn’t answer, obviously waiting for more.
“When I see you, I see a strong, protective, intelligent man with a quietly wry sense of humor and a lot of pain in his past.” She touched his cheek. “I see a man with his soul shining through gorgeous blue eyes and a smile that gives me butterflies when it’s aimed at me.” She dragged her hand down his arm and closed her fingers around his hand. “And when I look at your ‘giant paws,’ I see a man’s hands that could probably make me come with one tender touch.”
She saw him swallow and try to breathe. “Show me how to do that now,” he said gruffly, circling his thumb over her knuckle. “Show me how to be tender with you. I want to, Kate. I want to so much.”
She had to fight for air, the words punched so hard. Every inch of her responded to the request, her body getting warm and soft and ready for him. “You are tender,” she assured him.
“You make me that way.” He closed the space between them, putting his lips over hers. “You make me want to be better.”
A tiny whimper of helplessness escaped her throat, her head hammering as blood rushed. “Kiss me,” she said. “Easy and slow and sweet.”
He did exactly as he was told. So easy, so slow, and so damn sweet. His lips molded to hers, parted just enough that she could taste the tip of his tongue. He deepened the kiss, covering half her face with a hand that felt anything but tentative.
Feathering more kisses on her jaw and throat, he eased her onto her back. Hovering over her, he looked up and around, scanning the empty beach and silent night.
“We’re alone,” she assured him.
He still looked, narrowing his eyes, then returned his gaze to her. “Teach me more,” he said.
She wet her lips, looking up at him with a heady sense of power she’d never really experienced before. Who was the captive here? Who had control? Who cared? She’d never felt like this—completely under a man’s spell, yet utterly free. She hadn’t even known a woman could feel like this.
Barefoot With a Bodyguard (Barefoot Bay Undercover) (Volume 1) Page 16
