Tyler cupped her chin and eased her face back toward his as Jack cleaned out the wound. “Yes. He liked the winters. He liked to brew his own beer, too. Best I ever tasted.”
“Sounds like an interesting guy.”
“He was. The beer and the long winters were the reasons he was so good at storytelling. Want me to tell you about Thor’s hammer?”
“Jack’s about to stitch it up and you’re trying to distract me, right?”
“Yes. You don’t need to watch. He knows if he makes you so much as flinch I’ll have to hurt him.”
“That goes for me, too,” Duncan said, moving past Tyler to stand at Emily’s left. “You did well tonight, ma’am. We couldn’t have done the job without you.”
“I wish I’d spotted El Gato sooner. Then maybe no one would have been hurt.”
Duncan rested his hand on the back of her chair. “If you hadn’t spotted him, he would have worked his way to the envoy before he opened fire. He could have taken out the president and most of his cabinet, too. We’re not the only ones in your debt.”
Jack tapped his fingertip against the edge of Emily’s wound. When she didn’t react, he inserted the tip of the needle into her flesh.
Tyler did his best to keep his own reaction from showing on his face, but he felt every suture as if he were the one getting them.
“Is Helen okay?” Emily asked. “She got away before the shooting started, didn’t she?”
“The envoy’s fine,” Duncan said. “So’s the president. The major and the palace guard only needed a few seconds head start, and you gave it to them.”
“And the woman who was being held hostage?”
“Shaken up, but unharmed.”
She looked past Tyler to the shambles of the ballroom. “How many people…didn’t make it?”
The bodies of two women and four men, not counting El Gato, had already been taken away. A few of the critically injured weren’t expected to last the night. This wasn’t the right time for her to hear the details. “Don’t think about it, Emily,” Tyler said.
“I can’t help it. They thought they were coming to a party. They’d done nothing wrong, any more than the gardener or that poor construction worker. It’s not fair. They weren’t the assassin’s target. They were only in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
As Emily had been a week ago. “The important thing is that it’s over,” he said. “He’ll never hurt anyone again.”
Her fingers trembled within his. “It’s hard to believe how fast the end came.”
He guessed from the tremor in her hand that she was remembering the final moments of the standoff. He’d known he would get only one chance to finish it. He wished that he’d had the presence of mind to warn her not to look. “I’m sorry that you had to see that.”
“You had no choice, Tyler. You had to kill him. Otherwise, more people would have died. With all the bullets that were flying, it’s a miracle that anyone survived. He was shooting everywhere.” Her chin trembled. “I can still hear it.”
“It’ll fade, Emily.” He squeezed her hand.
“I was still a little drunk the last time I was shot at. It was already over by the time I got scared, but this…” She looked from him to Duncan and then to Jack. “How do you do it? How can you keep putting yourselves into situations where you know you’ll be risking your lives?”
Jack had finished stitching her wound. He spoke for all of them as he smoothed on a bandage. “We think about how much worse it would be if we hadn’t been here.”
Emily clutched her bag to her chest as she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The walk back to her room had seemed endless, and not only because she was barefoot. Time was playing tricks on her, slowing down or jumping ahead without warning. It was like her pulse. Just when she thought it had settled down, she’d feel another punch of memory and off it went again.
“How’s the arm?” Tyler asked.
She tried to shrug, but the tug of the stitches beneath the bandage stopped her. Whatever Jack had used to numb the pain in her arm was wearing off. “Just great. No problem.”
“You should try to keep the dressing dry for at least a day.”
“Yes, Jack told me. I guess that trip to the beach I’d been hoping for is out. On the other hand, swimming might not be that good an idea, anyway. There are probably sharks in the water. I’ve heard they’re more common in warm regions. What do you think?”
“I think you’re wired, and the sooner you get some rest the better you’ll feel.”
She glanced toward the other end of the corridor. Kurt and Gonzo were back on duty, standing outside Helen’s suite. That was no surprise. Even though El Gato was out of the picture, they would continue to act as the envoy’s bodyguards until she was safely on her way to the States. The two men gave her a friendly wave, as if there was nothing unusual about the sight of a shoeless woman in a bloodstained evening dress being escorted by a man in a rumpled tuxedo with no shirt.
She focused on Tyler’s chest and felt another punch of memory, along with a flutter of sexual awareness that had nothing to do with the danger they’d confronted. Or perhaps it had. The reason he was half-naked beneath that tux was because he had used his shirt to immobilize the crystal fragment in her arm while they’d waited for Jack. He hadn’t left her side throughout the whole endless aftermath.
But she wouldn’t have expected any less from him. She already knew he was a nice guy. “Thanks for walking me back,” she said, opening her door. “And for holding my hand while I got stitched up and all that, but you don’t have to feel guilty because I got hurt. It was a fluke.”
“I know that.” He held out her shoes. He’d been carrying them by the straps so they dangled in midair between them. “Maybe you can get these fixed.”
Her eyes filled with tears as she took the shoes from his hand. Seeing the broken heel put the finishing touch on the evening. They weren’t glass slippers, that was for sure. And the clock had already struck midnight. This wasn’t a fairy tale. People had died tonight.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I can’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“You’re probably expecting me to make a crack about whether the major will compensate me for those shoes or my dress. Or I could say something about how President Gorrell won’t ask us back to another one of his parties since we did such a bang-up job ruining this one.”
“Why would I expect that?”
“Because that’s what I always do when I’m trying to deal with feelings I don’t like. But I don’t need to tell you that. You already figured it out, didn’t you?”
He guided her into the room and closed the door. She’d left the lamp on the bedside table burning. It filtered through the rose-colored tulle that framed the bed to create an island of light in the darkness, warm and inviting.
Emily bit her lip as she felt another sexual flutter.
Tyler bypassed the bed and walked to the bathroom. “Stay there,” he said. “I’m going to run you a bath.”
She dropped her bag and the shoes and followed as far as the doorway. “Why?”
“Because you need to relax.” He switched on the lights above the sink, pushed his jacket sleeves to his elbows and bent over the claw-footed tub.
“You just finished saying I need to keep my bandage dry.”
He waited for the water to start steaming, then adjusted the temperature and straightened up. “You can keep your arm on the rim of the tub.”
“Oh, great.” She leaned her back against the door frame. “Now you’re issuing orders again.”
“I want to help you.”
The tenderness in his tone brought another spurt of tears. She rubbed her face. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Just because I’m a bit off my game right now doesn’t mean I need your pity. Save it for the real victims of that maniac.”
“Of all the things I feel for you, Emily, pity isn’t one of them.”
“Good. B
ecause it’s not a bath that I need.”
“Then what? Ask me anything.”
“You were touching me all evening. You’ve hauled me around and knocked me down too many times to count.”
“That’s true.”
“So would it be too much to expect that a guy who seems to have no problem with physical contact might realize I need to be held a lot more than I need a bath?”
He left the water running, walked where she stood and placed his hands on either side of her waist. Taking care not to touch her right arm, he drew her away from the door frame until she leaned against his chest. It was a gentle embrace, compared to what he’d given her in the past. “You’ll feel better after you get some sleep.”
She turned her face to his neck. “I doubt if that’s going to happen. Not unless Jack put more than novocaine in that shot he gave me.”
“Your body’s still going through the fight-or-flight response. When it wears off, you’ll crash.”
“It took you a while to calm down after you defused that bomb.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s why you kissed me in the stairwell.”
“One of the reasons.”
“I guess you don’t want to kiss me now, huh?”
His grip on her waist tightened. “Emily, if I kiss you, I’m not going to stop until I’ve stripped off that dress you’re barely wearing and whatever racy scraps of lace you’ve got underneath and tasted every inch of you.”
Her heartbeat went off the scale. She curled her fingers around the lapels of his jacket. Her knuckles tingled as they brushed his bare chest. “Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea to me. Would it be a problem for you?”
“Damn right, it would. You don’t really want me. You just want a distraction. You’re not thinking straight, and we both know it.”
“What if I don’t care?”
“You’ll care tomorrow.”
“Your mission ends tomorrow.”
He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “Exactly. I’ve got enough on my conscience without taking advantage of your mental state. I don’t want to give you another reason to hate me.”
“Tyler, I don’t hate you. I—” She stumbled over the word. What on earth had she been about to say? He was right. She wasn’t thinking straight. Being hot for his body was one thing, but she knew better than to let her emotions get involved. Didn’t she?
She kissed his neck.
He straightened his arms, easing her away from him. His chest heaved. “We have to stop.”
“Why?”
“For starters, there’s the water.” He stepped back and leaned down to shut off the taps. He stayed where he was, his hands braced on the rim of the tub. Wisps of steam rose from the surface to wreathe his head. He spoke without looking at her. “I wasn’t completely honest earlier.”
“Okay. Which time?”
His jaw hardened. “At the reception. When Kenyon was talking to you.”
“What about it?”
“I didn’t rush you away only because he seemed suspicious.”
“Ah.”
“You were the most beautiful woman in the room. It didn’t matter why we were there, I just wanted you to myself.”
She would have cherished the compliment if he hadn’t sounded so angry about it. “You seem to think that was a problem, too.”
“It was. It is. My duty should be my priority.”
Under normal circumstances, she would have accepted the distance he was trying to put between them. She’d pushed people away often enough herself. Instead of admitting that she didn’t want to be alone, she’d make a joke or a cynical remark and pretend she didn’t need anyone. She didn’t risk chasing after any man, because it was so much easier to reject them before they rejected her. Emily didn’t wait to be knocked down before she’d come up swinging. That was the pattern of her life.
Yet there already had been a lot of firsts with Tyler. Her relationship with him was unique. There had been nothing normal about it, from the way they had met to the way he kept doing or saying things that slipped right past her defenses. They’d bypassed the preliminaries. They hadn’t had time to grow closer gradually. It had simply happened. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, and the knowledge was empowering.
She moved behind him and placed her hand on his back. “You’re not on duty now, are you?”
“No.”
“Help me with my zipper.”
He straightened.
“My arm’s stiff and I don’t think I can manage it myself. You want me to take a bath. I can’t very well do it in my clothes.”
He turned to face her. The steam had dampened his hair to a dark gold. Moisture dotted his forehead and gleamed at the base of his throat. A vein throbbed in his neck. Without the white shirt to temper it, the black tuxedo jacket that had made him look so handsome earlier now made him look dangerous. It framed the hair on his chest and the swells of muscle above his belt, contrasting the civilized with the primitive. Tendons ridged his forearms as he fisted his hands.
Emily could sense his battle for control and it thrilled her. Challenged her. Keeping her gaze steady on his, she lifted her left arm over her head and turned to expose her side.
The zipper had been sewn into the seam. It was concealed beneath a fold of fabric. Tyler ran his fingers along her side until he found it, then slowly lowered the tab. “What you’re feeling is only a reaction to being shot at.”
“Then why do I feel it every time you touch me?”
“Emily…”
“Don’t stop yet.” She moistened her lips. “There’s another few inches to go.”
The dress began to part. His fingertips brushed the skin at her waist.
“The other side’s stuck to me because of the dried blood,” she said, lowering her arm. “Could you help me peel it off?”
He dropped his forehead against hers. “Dammit, Emily.”
“You say that a lot, Tyler.”
“You are the most maddening, contrary, frustrating woman I have ever met.”
“Don’t blame all of this on me. Why did you walk me back to my room?”
“You were injured. I was worried.”
“You could have let Duncan do it. Or Jack.”
“You’re my responsibility.”
“You can protest all you want, but given our history whenever adrenaline is involved, you can’t tell me that you didn’t have the slightest clue that something like this was going to happen as soon as we got alone.”
He rolled his forehead along hers in a slow negative. “I thought I’d be stronger.”
“Or maybe you thought I’d be weaker.”
“That would have been my first mistake.”
She used her left hand to slide the dress off her right shoulder, stopping when it caught on her bandage. “I could use some more help here.”
He took her hand, brought it to her side and finished lowering her dress to her waist himself. He inhaled deeply a few times. His breath puffed over her cheek and feathered across the tops of her breasts.
Her nipples tightened instantly, pushing against the black lace teddy that covered them. It had been the only undergarment she’d packed that didn’t have straps that would show with her dress. She hadn’t planned on anyone seeing it when she’d put it on tonight, but now she was glad that she’d worn it. The clever underwiring gave her cleavage. She guessed by the ragged edge that had crept into Tyler’s breathing that he’d noticed the effect, too.
He lifted his hand. He held his palm a quarter inch from the black lace.
“There are hooks down the center,” she whispered. “I’m going to need your help with those, too.”
He muttered a curse and pulled back to yank off his jacket. He tossed it beside the tub, then grasped the folds of her dress and leaned over to shove it to her feet. As he straightened, he scooped her into his arms. Then he carried her to the bedroom, laid her in the center of the bed and sat on the edge to tug off his boots.
This time, the surge in Emily’s pulse wasn’t due to a memory. It couldn’t have been. Because she’d never experienced anything like Tyler’s lovemaking. Once he’d made the decision, he committed to it fully. Enthusiastically. He made short work of the hooks on her teddy. She barely noticed when the rest of their clothes disappeared. But she felt every moment of the pleasure as he joined his body to hers.
He filled her completely. There was no room left in her mind or her heart for anything but sensation. When he began to move, she was ready, oh, so ready, that she trembled around him. The climax came swiftly, neither of them wanting to prolong what they both needed and had waited so long to have.
Yet before Emily could catch her breath, Tyler flipped her over and set about making good on his promise.
He tasted every inch of her.
“Careful of that arm,” Tyler said, reaching past Emily to reposition the towel on the edge of the tub. He lifted her elbow on top of it, then settled her head in the crook of his shoulder.
Now she understood why this tub was so long, Emily thought, snuggling back between Tyler’s thighs. It must have been designed with two people in mind. Aside from some delightful crowding, even a six-foot-four hunk managed to fit in here quite nicely.
Being naked with a man in the heat of the moment in order to have sex was one thing, but bathing together was somehow more personal. More intimate. Oddly, Emily felt no shyness with Tyler. She wondered whether it was an aftereffect of adrenaline.
Or it could have been a consequence of the orgasms—the spectacular orgasms—he’d just given her. Pretending modesty at this stage would be absurd. She smiled and scooped a handful of water over his knee. “You were right.”
“That’s good to hear. What about?”
“A bath was a good idea. Why didn’t you suggest it earlier?”
He lowered his shoulder so that her head dropped back into the water.
“Hey,” she said, coming up dripping. “What did you do that for? Now my hair’s going to corkscrew.”
He pushed aside a handful of sodden curls and kissed the back of her ear. “I happen to like it when your hair corkscrews. It makes me remember how I first saw you.”
Accidental Commando Page 13
