“No kidding?”
A reluctant chuckle shakes out of him, but he quickly sobers. “And Peter Sanchez is more dangerous than we realized, too. I don’t like it, Penelope. When it comes to how far he’s willing to go, this stuff with Lola is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Titanic again. I’m starting to get tired of that ship. This one, too.
“So tell me what you want me to do,” I say, leaning forward—or as much as I can lean, anyway. “Your Hijack theory is questionable, but I can play along with it for now. What else? Do you want me to throw Eden off your scent? Try to convince my father to lend his aid? Steal the tiara?”
There’s no mistaking the way my voice grows hitched with anticipation at that last one.
“No, no, and most definitely no,” he says, his hands moving upward on my thighs. “I already told you what I need. I wasn’t kidding about that. The best thing you can do for me right now is play poker and keep a close watch over Lola. Not,” he adds when my legs flex convulsively, “because I’m using her as bait, but because I have reason to believe Peter is.”
“You think he’d go that far?”
Grant grimaces. “I think we have to consider the possibility that we aren’t the only people on this boat with a hidden agenda.”
I can’t help but agree. It’s starting to feel like everyone we’ve met wants something more than just a twenty-million-dollar piece of jewelry. What a bunch of greedy bastards.
“Okay,” I say. “If that’s what you need, then that’s what I’ll do.”
He hesitates. “But?”
“But nothing. You asked, and I shall provide. That’s the whole point of this, right?”
He stares at me for a long, drawn-out moment. “That’s it?”
I incline my head in a majestic nod. Even though I’m in a highly undignified pose, seated and bound and at my husband’s mercy, I’ve never felt more powerful. “I don’t like a lot of things about this mission. I think you’re playing a dangerous game making Kit O’Kelly such a public figure. I think being so close to Peter Sanchez is going to end up hurting you in the end. And I most definitely wish you’d spend more time sleeping and less time gallivanting about with Eden St. James.”
A slow smile spreads across Grant’s face at that last one.
“But—” I say, refusing to let that smile turn my limbs to liquid. It’s a close thing, though. “We work best when we work as a team. If you need me to watch Lola, then that’s what I’ll do. Let’s finish this, Grant. Let’s find this guy so we can go home. Alive. Together.”
His coffee-black eyes, always so dark, turn even darker. “Together,” he echoes.
“And I think you can go ahead and cut me loose now,” I say, straining against my bonds. “I’m plenty interrogated now.”
Grant must not agree with me, because he doesn’t, as expected, let me go. He stays exactly where he is instead, those dark eyes never leaving mine.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask, a slight waver in my voice. “We’re done now. We should head back upstairs.”
“But Kit O’Kelly is a man who likes to take his time, remember?” he asks with a quick glance at his watch. “By my estimation, we have a good fifteen minutes before anyone starts to ask questions.”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” I jerk against my bonds again, but it’s no use. “You’re supposed to be doing less activity, Grant. Not more. Not—Ohhh.” The moan escapes before I can stop it, and I jump as one of his fingers slips underneath the hem of my skirt. The legs of the chair give a small leap from the ground with me.
“You’re the one who said we need to make this look convincing,” he taunts.
And I regret it. I regret everything. “Maybe you should just rough me up a little instead.”
“I’m going to have to do a lot more than that.” His voice is a low croon. “Nothing but torture will satisfy this bloodthirsty crowd.”
“Grant, you sneaking, traitorous—”
“And nothing but torture will satisfy this bloodthirsty man,” he adds with a deepening grin. “Unless you want me to stop? It could be days before we’re alone together again…”
The firm and insistent movement of his hand up my skirt stops as he awaits my answer. Which is silly, because we both already know what I’m going to say.
Touch me, tease me, take me.
Grant Emerson, FBI agent and mule-headed guard dog, always has been and always will be my biggest weakness.
Fortunately for us both, he’s also my greatest strength.
“I hope you have a lot more in mind than just tying me to a chair and smirking at me,” I say, tilting my chin up in a gesture of defiance and acceptance. “You won’t break me that easily.”
“Don’t rush me,” he says. “There’s a fine art to intimidation. It’s all about the anticipation, the slow reveal of the intended instruments of torture, the promise of what’s to come—”
“Yes, well, I’ve just been given a very important top-secret assignment,” I say. “So if you could speed things along…”
He doesn’t.
He begins by slowly rolling up his shirtsleeves. That man’s forearms are a gift to womankind, all ropey sinew and hard swells of muscle that he reveals one glorious inch at a time. He also loosens the tie at his collar, completing a look of dishevelment that has me breathing harder.
“You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.” Since it’s the only movement I can make, I give a disdainful sniff. “You’re going to have to work harder than that.”
“I haven’t even warmed up yet,” he warns as he kicks off his shoes.
That part I do find slightly alarming, mostly because the second his shoes come off, all chances of me tracking his movements disappear with them. This room is loud, and he moves so silently when he walks—rob him of that piece of rubber between sole and floor, and it becomes virtually impossible to know when and where he’ll strike next.
As if to prove this, he slips behind me.
That’s when the slow reveal of torture instruments starts to happen. The first is a breath of warm air on the nape of my neck. There’s something haunting about that sensation coming from a virtually undetectable source, especially since the pattern of his movements is familiar. Up and down over the gentle slope of my shoulder, lingering painfully long over the sensitive spot behind my ear. I twitch but don’t move, though at considerable cost to my self-control.
“Bo-ring,” I claim in a singsong voice. “It’s just air.”
His lips are the second torture device. They land unerringly on my pulse point, the soft pressure sending my heartbeat into overdrive—especially since he follows up that first gentle kiss with a succession of decreasingly gentle kisses. Each press of his mouth against my skin is its own kind of agony.
“You won’t leave here until I get what I want from you,” he mocks in a low voice as his lips reach my ear.
He doesn’t wait for a response before continuing his assault. Under my chin, down my neck, along the delicate ridge of my clavicle… By the time he reaches the upper swell of my chest, I’m breathing heavy and seeing stars.
“Is it a confession you’re after?” I manage to ask. “Because I have nothing to confess. For the first time in my life, I’m completely innocent.”
“No, not a confession.” He continues moving further downward, landing more of those kisses on the line of my bra. Inadvertently, I arch closer, mentally willing him to flick a tongue inside the fabric. He anticipates my desire and stops himself short.
That’s the first rule of surviving an interrogation, I guess. Never show your captor your weaknesses, or he’ll use them.
“Do you want my secrets?” I ask, a low moan escaping my lips as he continues ignoring my body’s pleas for more. He opts instead to stroll casually in front of me, pure masculine arrogance glinting in his eye
.
“For the first time in my life, I don’t have any of those, either,” I add. “I’ve been too busy trying to ferret out yours.”
“No, not secrets.” His lips lift in a smile that crinkles all the way up to his hairline. “You’ve never been as good at keeping those as you like to think.”
Rude. There’s plenty about me that he doesn’t know yet. Just this morning, Lola showed me a trick for converting decimal points to fractions in my head. I’m a trove of hidden mysteries.
“Well, out with it, then,” I say. “We don’t have all day.”
I try not to let his stare intimidate me into saying more, but it’s hard—mostly because his stare is concentrated a little too closely on the spread of my legs. His gaze has the ability to turn my insides to fire under almost any circumstances. In these circumstances, the fiery feeling is rapidly taking over every other sense I have.
“What I want is for you to beg.”
I laugh. In all the time we’ve been together, that’s the one thing he’s never been able to get from me. “No way,” I vow.
His smile deepens until I swear it’s the only thing in the room. “We’ll see about that.”
That’s when he breaks out the third and most effective torture device in his arsenal—his hands. I knew it was coming, all his playful manipulation leading to this, but the reality is so much worse than I expect.
He begins, as he so often does, by landing his palm on my cheek, cupping my face in a gesture of affection. He’s so sweet, so loving, so tender.
The sadist.
From there, he moves his hands over my body in a manner than can best be described as an assault. I’ve never had acupressure before, but I know the basics—there are certain points in the body that, when pressed, restore balance to the body. What Grant does is the exact opposite. He knows all the points of my body that, when pressed, makes me lose control. Face and shoulders and breasts. Calves and knees and thighs. He moves slowly and with deliberation over some parts, quick and efficient over others.
It’s when his hand starts snaking a very careful upward path between my legs that I really start to worry.
“Are you ready to beg yet?” he asks. He looks to be in control of himself, eyes dark and movements assured, but I can tell from his labored breathing that he’s not as much a master of this situation as he’d like. “I can make this quick and painless on you, but you have to say the words.”
“Never,” I manage once again, but I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold out. I can’t help it. I miss him—miss our playful lovemaking, this give-and-take battle that defines our life together.
I also can’t help but think about what awaits us on the decks above. If anything were to happen to this man, this other half of me, I don’t know what I would do.
Yes, I do. I’d take down this ship and all the people on it. I’d seek vengeance on every last person who put him at risk.
I might even beg.
“Suit yourself,” he says in a singsong voice that does dangerous things to my heartbeat. “Just know this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me.”
He means every word. The stroke of his fingers up my thighs and between my legs is an agony. He hits all the spots that drive me to distraction but none of the ones that push me over the edge. The slick slide of his thumb and forefinger against my core has me growing hot and biting down on my tongue, but I don’t give him what he wants.
Nor does he give me what I want. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so close to release, every nerve ending straining for him to move a fraction of an inch and end my miseries, but I don’t do it.
“Sorry, my love,” I say, throwing his favorite term of endearment right back in his face. “I’m sticking to this one. You can deny me all the orgasms you want, but this girl doesn’t beg for anything. Or anyone.” I can’t help feeling inordinately proud of myself for holding out. “Turns out I’m pretty good at this secret spy stuff, aren’t I?”
Grant releases a shaky laugh, looking none too comfortable himself over there. The tight pants he’s wearing outline every inch of his lower half, including the part of him that has been enjoying this torture session in ways I should probably worry about. “The problem with you, Penelope Blue, is that you live to thwart me.”
“And the problem with you,” I retort, “is that you love it.”
It’s true, and he knows it—a fact proven by the movement of his thumb the necessary fraction of an inch to bring all my agonies to a shuddering, spiraling halt. The delayed gratification—of my orgasm and of us finally being alone together—work in tandem to send my head whirling and my body screaming.
I don’t think I actually scream, though—or if I do, the sound is swallowed by the engine room’s constant clanging. Funny that I ever thought this room was unpleasant. I think I could grow to love the scent of marine fuel oil.
It takes a moment for my head to clear, another to realize that the clanging appears to be coming from the door. Alarmed, I glance at Grant and am immediately reassured by what I see. He doesn’t look scared for our safety; he bears the frustrated look of a man interrupted with his panting, sated wife. This is borne out when Riker’s voice sounds through the thick metal.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Lola’s asking for you, Pen,” he calls. “Are you done being tortured yet?”
Grant’s groan clearly indicates what he thinks of Riker’s not-so-timely arrival, but I can’t help laughing. This is what he gets for trying to get the best of Penelope Blue. No one beats me at my own game.
“Not a single word out of you,” he says with a raised finger in my direction. “And try if you can to look at least a little less pleased with yourself.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promise and try for a frown. “How’s this?”
“Terrible,” he says and drops a quick kiss on my mouth. He lingers just long enough to press his forehead against mine, the gesture familiar and comforting and, because I honestly have no idea when I’ll be able to feel it again, heartrending. “Thank you, Penelope.”
“For what?”
“For not begging. For never giving in. For being you.” His breath is warm on my lips. “I’m afraid things are going to get worse before they get better.”
“I figured as much.”
“But you understand that it has to be this way,” he says, his words not so much a question as a plea. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s just for a few more days. You know how much I love you, right?”
The answer is, as always, “I do.”
19
The Villain
The last person I expect to find at Lola’s bedside is her father.
As soon as I round the corner into the infirmary where she’s resting, I catch sight of that perfect salt-and-pepper head bent as if in prayer. Since I highly doubt that’s what he’s doing, I stop and prepare to step back, bowing out unseen and unheard.
“Come in, Penelope,” Peter says in his mild voice.
“Oh, um.” I swallow and hesitate in the doorway. I’ve suffered enough torture today—I lack the stamina to confront this man, too. Especially since I doubt his methods are quite so…satisfying. “I don’t want to intrude. I can come back later.”
“There’s no need to worry yourself. She’s asleep.”
And therefore can’t serve as a witness to my death. It’s not a comforting thought, but I don’t see what other choice I have. When Peter Sanchez summons you, I get the feeling you follow, even if it’s over the side of a cliff.
Resigned to my fate, I step inside the dimly lit room. I allow my eyes a moment to adjust before asking in a soft voice, “How is she?”
“Better, now that I’ve had her tranquilized.” He pats the seat next to him. “Keep me company a while.”
“Tranquilized?” That doesn’t sound like g
ood medical care for someone who needs to focus all her energies on breathing.
“It’s a very light sedative,” Peter says.
It’s also a very convenient sedative, but I don’t say so out loud. If Lola was asking for me, I presume she had something she wanted to say. She may have even seen her attacker. Forcing her to lie in a sickbed all day would be one way of keeping her mouth shut.
I shudder to think of the others.
Some of my fears must show on my face, because Peter adds, “It’s not what you think. My daughter has always been high-strung in moments of stress. I felt it would be best if she got some rest.” His smile, if you can call it that, appears wistful. “She’s not like you.”
I sit perched on the edge of a nearby chair, poised for flight. “Like me?”
“Naturally.” He bows his head in a brief acknowledgement. “There aren’t many people who would so calmly share a room with just me, my daughter, and a twenty-million-dollar piece of jewelry everyone already suspects you of having attempted to steal.”
“I wasn’t aware I was being given a choice.”
Peter’s laughter is surprisingly soft. “You’re not. But I appreciate that you’re willing to play along.”
“Yes, well.” I shift in my seat, relaxing enough to put one whole cheek on the cushion. It’s not that I’m comfortable being in a dark, secluded room with a man like him, but he doesn’t appear to have any murderous intentions toward me. Yet. “I have my father to protect me.”
“Do you?”
I don’t care for his implication. “Of course I do. My dad and I try not to get in each other’s way, especially when it comes to things like enormous diamond tiaras”—and late-night visitors by the name of Eden St. James—“but I know he’ll come to my aid the second I need it. All I have to do is say the word.”
“It’s such a comfort, isn’t it?” Peter asks. “The father-daughter bond?”
As he doesn’t look down at his daughter even once, I find myself bristling. I resent the implication that my father and I are anything like these two. I mean, he didn’t show up to watch me play poker today, and he hasn’t unlocked the adjoining door between our rooms yet, but that’s hardly evidence of villainy. He’s just trying to enjoy his vacation, that’s all.
Seeking Mr. Wrong Page 22
