“What are you doing?” she demanded, stiffening as she put her hands up against his chest, pushing him away from her. “I guess your leg is feeling better.”
Afraid of dropping her, Joshua stopped walking. “Only way I knew how to get you out of the truck and into the inn,” he told her tersely, knowing what was probably going through her mind. As if he needed to force himself on any woman. What kind of men did she know, anyway? “You sleep like a rock.”
Maybe she believed him, maybe she didn’t. But she knew that she didn’t want to stay in his arms like this. It felt much too much like a tender trap and she wanted to keep her wits about her. Ever since she’d kissed him at the Wakefields’, something odd was going on inside her and she refused to give it free rein.
“You can put me down now,” she ordered.
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” he told her, setting her down so abruptly, she stumbled as she tried to get her footing.
She shot him an annoyed glance, then turned to look up at the building he’d brought her to.
With its peeling paint and sagging wood trim, Robin’s Nest had definitely seen better decades, she thought. And the southern end looked as if it was in the middle of some sort of renovation that had been abruptly abandoned. From the look of it, business was not too good. The place was far from inviting.
Pru caught his arm before he took another step. “Maybe we should sleep in the truck.”
“We’re already here,” he pointed out, although his tone seemed almost gentle to her. “Might as well see if there’s anyone around.” And then he said exactly the right thing to get her moving. “Not afraid, are you?”
She raised her chin and a look came into her eyes. The same kind of look he suspected her kidnappers had seen when she fought to get free. “No.”
“Didn’t think so,” was all he said. Joshua walked into the building ahead of her.
The front desk was a few steps away from the entrance. There was a long, tall candle in the center of the desk, lighting a basket of snack bars, and it appeared to be the only source of illumination. Behind the desk was a clerk. They saw his bald head first. He was resting it on his crossed arms and appeared to be very soundly asleep.
Joshua shook him. When nothing happened, Joshua looked at Pru. “He sleeps like you.” Pru made no reply. It took several attempts before the man woke up. When he did, he stared at them bleary-eyed.
And then it was as if a light bulb went off in his head. “Welcome to Robin’s Nest,” the man mumbled, saying the greeting as if he was trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles.
“We’d like a room,” Joshua told him.
“With two beds,” Pru interjected quickly. “No point in you sleeping on the floor,” she said to Joshua.
The clerk shook his head. “Sorry, all our rooms come with one bed.”
“That’ll be fine,” Joshua said before Pru could protest or walk out the door.
The man nodded. He turned around and took a key off the hook, holding it out to Joshua. But when the latter moved to take it, the clerk drew the key back just out of reach.
“That’ll be sixty for the night. Don’t figure you’ll be staying on much longer than that.”
“You figured right.” Joshua took out his wallet and paid the man in cash rather than risk using any of the cards that he’d tucked away for emergencies. Money left no trail to follow. He took the key out of the desk clerk’s hand.
“First door to your right at the head of the stairs,” the clerk mumbled, settling back to continue his interrupted nap.
“He didn’t look surprised that we didn’t have any luggage,” Pru observed as she followed Joshua up the stairs.
Joshua laughed shortly. “He probably deals with that a lot. He doesn’t exactly seem like the type to have any regular interaction with a first-class clientele.”
“This day just keeps getting better and better,” Pru murmured under her breath as they came to the landing. There was debris in the hallway, a greasy bag from a fast-food restaurant left crumpled in the corner, cigarette butts here and there. The oppressive smell of sweat and cigarettes hung heavily in the air. It made her long for the rain.
“Doesn’t he have anyone in to clean this place?” she demanded, annoyed, as she pushed aside the remnants of the cobweb she’d just walked into.
“I don’t think the people who come here are really interested in the ambiance,” Joshua commented.
He was right, she thought, looking around the room she had just walked into. The dark wallpaper made it seem that much smaller and drearier. There was a faint smell she couldn’t place and had a feeling she was better off that way.
She’d slept on the ground in huts, she could do this. But not happily.
“Ghosts and prostitutes. This place has a lot going for it,” she murmured, closing the door behind her.
But when Joshua brushed up against her to secure the lock, Pru forgot all about how objectionable the room was.
Chapter 11
“Sorry,” he apologized, flipping the lock and securing the bolt above it before stepping back away from her. “Just want to make sure that no one’s going to come in without effort.”
She stared at the door. Short of succumbing to dynamite, it looked pretty impenetrable to her. “What do you mean, without effort?” She turned to look at him. It was too dark, she decided, crossing to the bureau and lighting one of the candles that appeared to be standard fare. Did these blackouts occur often? “You just locked the door. Shouldn’t that keep people out?” she wanted to know.
“Should,” he agreed, watching her. Noting the way the light from the candle seemed to caress her face. “Run-of-the-mill people at any rate.”
Her eyes met his. She was trying to brazen this out, but she was feeling a great deal less than brazen right now. For a number of reasons. “And you’re worried about a superrace barging in, or people who are—?”
“Super determined,” he said, completing her sentences.
She let out a long breath, running her hands along her arms even though it was far from cool in the room. Stuffy was more like it. “Really know how to make a girl feel at ease, don’t you?”
Somehow, although he wasn’t really sure just how, he was standing next to her again, despite the precautions he’d taken to create space between them. Space that seemed to have melted away of its own accord.
“Actually,” he confessed, “I’ve never been accused of that.”
The slight, sensual curve of his mouth told her exactly how he meant that. And she had to admit, being around him, when she wasn’t completely focused on outrunning would-be kidnappers, did tend to raise her body temperature.
More than a little.
There was something sensually physical about this secret agent man. She’d seen better-looking men, but none who were more compellingly attractive in a magnetic sort of way.
“Maybe you should take classes, then,” she suggested, trying to sound breezy and nonchalant. Trying to concentrate on anything other than the memory of the kiss they’d shared at the Wakefields’ house and how it had brought her to the brink of a meltdown within thirty seconds. “Isn’t that part of your job?” she pressed, desperate to keep talking, to keep her lips moving in the air rather than against him. “To make your subject feel at ease? Safe? Protected?”
Each word dripped from her lips in slow motion, like drops of water caught in a freeze-frame. Her eyes never left his. Damn, but her skin had to be about five degrees hotter than it had been a second ago.
“My job,” he told her, standing so close now that a breeze would have to request space to pass between them, “is to protect you, to make you safe. And if that puts you at your ease, all well and good, if not, it’s not important. Being safe is.”
She’d felt safer standing on the edge of a cliff with a sheer fifty-foot drop inches away from her feet. “And am I, Secret Agent Man? Am I safe?” she breathed, looking up at him. “Here and now, am I safe?”
Joshua swallowed discreetly before answering. His throat had suddenly gone dry for no reason that he was comfortable exploring. But he held his ground. He never lied unless he absolutely had to.
“The truth?”
She slowly nodded, her eyes sealed to his. “Nothing but.”
“No,” he told her honestly.
But the danger he was thinking of wasn’t coming from any outside source, wasn’t due to some unseen, unknown high-ranking puppeteer located somewhere behind the scenes. The danger he was thinking of came from within. From him. And from the way he caught himself feeling as he took in a long breath only to have her scent fill up his head.
“Maybe I should be armed,” she suggested, the words still coming in slow motion and in direct contrast to the way her heart insisted on beating this very moment.
“I’d say,” he began, running his hands slowly along her bare arms, as if to somehow anchor himself to what was real, to his surroundings rather than what he was experiencing, “that you already are armed, Prudence.” She really was beautiful, he caught himself thinking. “More than enough. Much more than enough,” he whispered.
Cotton. The inside of her mouth had turned to pure cotton. “Then I should be safe, shouldn’t I?”
“Should be,” he agreed softly.
How was it that her heart hadn’t broken through her chest yet? And why was it beating so hard? She wasn’t some blushing vestal virgin who’d never been alone with a man. There’d been lovers. Not a squadron, but enough.
And for the life of her, she couldn’t remember the name, or the face, of a single one of them.
“But I’m not,” she concluded out loud in a husky whisper.
“No.”
For one sweet, sultry moment, she thought Joshua was going to kiss her. He was still holding her arms and he’d bent his head, giving every indication that full body contact was imminent.
And then he took a long breath and rather than bring his mouth down to hers, he used his hands to move her back, away from him. If lightning had struck her, she couldn’t have been more surprised. Or disappointed.
“I’ll take the floor and first watch,” he told her, dropping his hands.
Dazed, Pru felt as if she was coming out of a wild tailspin, disoriented and unable to tell which was the ground and which was the sky.
Was the bastard toying with her? Seeing how far he could push this before she came unglued and jumped his bones?
Embarrassed, humiliated, Pru doubled up her fist and punched his arm as hard as she could. Which was considerable.
Joshua saw it coming. He tensed his arm a split second before contact was made and thus her fist pretty much met rock. At least it certainly felt like it. It took everything she had not to grab her knuckles and give voice to the pain that was slicing through her.
“All right,” he said evenly, as if he knew why she’d just unleashed a right cross at him, “you can have first watch.”
“That wasn’t about ‘first watch’ or the damn bed,” she snapped. Turning her back, she moved away from him and toward the window.
Joshua was less than a step behind her, drawing the curtains so that her image remained locked within the room instead of being broadcast outside. He was taking absolutely no chances. He wasn’t about to be caught napping again.
“Then what is it about?” he wanted to know, facing her.
Instead of answering him, she asked a question of her own. “How have you managed to remain alive all this time, Secret Agent Man? Why hasn’t some woman skewered you yet?”
“Why?” Unable to help himself, Joshua found the distance between them melting again. Found himself gently pushing back the hair from her face and looking into eyes the color of shamrocks. Mesmerized. “Is that what you want to do?”
She raised her chin, a bantam weight ready to go the distance. “It’s on the list.”
His fingers curled into her hair, lightly grazing the outline of her ear. Desire stirred. “What else is on that list?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Her heart was hammering in her throat. She desperately wanted to hit him again. And keep hitting him so that she didn’t make a fatal mistake and fling herself into his arms.
Or worse, kiss him.
The way she wanted to with all her soul.
“Yes,” he told her quietly, so quietly that the breath that accompanied the words lightly moved along her skin, “I would.”
The next moment, the decision to kiss or not to kiss was taken out of her hands.
If errors were going to be made, they would be his to initiate, Joshua thought. He brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her. Kissed her hard, with all the barely reined-in feelings that were threatening to erupt within him.
Rather than bringing her to her senses and making her back away, fleeing for her life, his kiss had the opposite effect. It made all sorts of sensations explode within her. Made her recall that it had been a very long time since she’d felt passion even close to this level.
Maybe this was malaria, she thought, desperate for an explanation. Or some rare, tropical disease, making her hallucinate. Making her feel things that she wasn’t really feeling. She had no idea, no explanation for what was happening to her. All she knew was that she didn’t want this to stop at any threshold. Not with a kiss, not with an embrace.
Not for a very long time.
Damn, she was trembling, Joshua realized. What’s more, almost perversely, her reaction was turning him on in a way he couldn’t even begin to describe or to understand. All he knew was that he wanted her, wanted her with a vast, deep, belly-gnawing hunger that left him reeling and unable to do anything but continue what he was doing.
He was going straight to hell after this.
But somehow, the journey—and the eternal stay—would be worth it. To his way of thinking, he was trading eternity for something very precious, something he’d never experienced before. A passion so great, it created a pocket of fear within him.
Because it was in control of him, he was not in control of it and that, he thought, any way you looked at it, was a very bad thing.
But he’d think about that later, later when the wee hours of the morning crept over him on tiny feet, scratching his soul and making him repent for every wrong he’d ever done. This, he knew, would be at the head of the list.
Knowing it didn’t stop him.
He moved his hands along Pru’s taut, firm body as if to reassure himself that she was real, that this hallucination that had spun out of the depths of his wanting was real for the moment.
Her skin was like cream, her flesh as hot as his.
He couldn’t remember every detail, although he wanted to. She was dressed, then she wasn’t. Within a heartbeat, her firm, slim body was against his, setting a match to his soul.
She was tugging urgently at his clothing as he pushed her back against the bed, moving with her as she fell against the covers. He shrugged off the borrowed shirt, shucked the borrowed pants. His naked body pressed against hers as an urgency filled his veins, begging for quick, satisfying relief.
But that would be satisfying himself on the basest of levels and it had never been about that for him. That would have made him like his father and Joshua would have had himself castrated before he ever allowed that to happen.
So rather than thrust himself into her, he held back and made love to her with his hands, with his mouth, with his very breath as it moved along her skin. Beginning with her toes and working his way up slowly.
She twisted and turned beneath him, sounds escaping her lips that told him it was not anguish that governed her but ecstasy.
It made holding back possible.
With skillful touches, he discovered places that made her whimper. Places that made her bite down on her lower lip to keep from crying out. Places that brought her from one climax to the next. He almost experienced one of his own, just stroking her. Holding himself in check was taking more and more effort.
But her passivity lasted only as long as her stunned awe did. And then, without warning, Pru moved and took up the dominant role.
She was making his body sing. She was pressing warm, openmouthed kisses along his flesh, teasing him with her tongue, hardening him so that it took almost superhuman strength to keep from taking possession of her and sealing himself within her.
She made his head spin, his blood run hot as it surged within his veins.
And then, suddenly, his strength threatened to desert him.
A man could only hold out for so long.
With a guttural cry that bordered on the primal, Joshua switched positions, rolling her back flat against the bed. Parting her legs with his knee, he lowered himself onto her and sheathed himself within her, doing his best not to let the almost overwhelming urgency throbbing within him spill out. He wasn’t going to let her think of him as some rutting animal.
The moment he was within her, it was a struggle not to take her within a heartbeat. With the last thread of control, Joshua orchestrated his movements. The tempo grew fast quickly. He began to move hard and with an urgency that took both their breaths away.
Pru lifted her hips, trying to sustain the rhythm he created, trying to let it continue rather than sweep them away. But each pass brought them closer to the top of the summit.
And then it was reached.
The next second they fell over the side, clinging to one another, wrapped in an exhilarating moment that made their blood pound as one.
When it was over, when the sensation had ebbed back like the retreating tide, Joshua all but collapsed against her, exhausted beyond words.
Were he a normal man, with a normal life, he would have gladly just fallen asleep that way, sheathed in her as well as ecstasy. But he wasn’t a normal man with a normal life and indulging himself would have left them both vulnerable. Especially her.
And whether the prime minister’s daughter realized it or not, Joshua thought, for the duration, his life was pledged to protect hers.
It took him a moment to catch his breath as he rolled off Pru and gathered her to him. It bothered him that he felt as if he barely had enough strength for that. Closing his eyes, he prayed that no one would choose this moment to attack.
My Spy Page 11
