Secret Agent Heiress

by Julie Miller

  “You never cried?”

  He shook his head. “Had to grow up. Had to deal with it.”

  “How?”

  He looked over to Whitney, anxious to know if he was making any sense. She held the badge reverently between her hands, listening without a word. But she was looking up at him in such a way that the soft glow from the lamp caught and reflected in her eyes. A sheen of moisture sparkled amongst the quicksilver there. Something inside him tightened, then did a crazy flip-flop that left him short of breath.

  “I moved past it by trying to make sense of what he had done. Understanding the gift he gave that girl. He reunited her with her family. Saved his partner’s life that day, too.”

  Whitney blinked. Tears squeezed out and trickled down her cheeks. He felt those tears deep inside him. He felt the salt prick his own eyes, the pain well up from his soul. Those tears were his tears. The ones he had never shed.

  “I was so proud of him. I am proud of him.” He reached out and clasped the badge, swallowing both of Whitney’s hands within his own for a moment before replacing the wallet in his pocket. “I carry it with me to remember what kind of man he was. To know what a good man should be. I’m trying to keep you safe. Like he would. I’m trying to be that man. For him.”

  “You don’t want anyone else to hurt the way you did.” His gaze locked on a crystal teardrop that clung to her auburn lashes. “Do you still hurt?”

  She blinked, and that tear joined the others staining her sweet, translucent skin. Something inside him unclenched and freed itself.

  For an instant in time he was too shaky to stand. But then Whitney walked up to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He stood there mute. Amazed. The damp warmth of her tears soaked through his shirt and burned his skin. What had he done? How could just talking about…? How could a simple plan backfire so completely?

  And then Weston and terrorists and presidential orders didn’t matter. Finding a release of his own in her free-flowing tears, Vincent caught her up in his arms and hauled her in as close as a man and woman could be without being one.

  She laughed. She argued. And now she cried as the mood possessed her. She was so open. So honest. So in tune with the humanity he had somehow lost along the way.

  And because she could feel those things, he felt them, too. He buried his nose in the crown of her clean, baby-sweet hair and rocked her from side to side. She wept for him and he held her close. He allowed a bit of her emotional courage to nudge open a dark corner of his soul. The light swept in and surrounded his heart. Vincent breathed easier as a huge burden lifted from his chest, carried away by Whitney’s tears.

  Some time later—moments, maybe minutes, maybe more—his strength spent, and her tears drying on her freckled cheeks, it was Whitney who spoke. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I know talking about personal stuff isn’t easy. Talking isn’t easy for you, period. It means a lot that you did.”

  He needed to say something, to thank her for the gift she had given him. He’d meant to use his father’s example to persuade her not to put herself in danger. To see the pain losing someone could cause—even if the reasons for sacrifice were noble. But as always, Whitney turned the tables on him.

  But Whitney seemed to understand his confusion. With her arms still forming a protective circle around him, she leaned back and offered him a beautiful tear-smudged smile. “I think he’d be very proud of the man you are.”

  Vincent slipped his hands up to frame her face. “Thank you.”

  And then, because he had no more words, he bent his head and kissed her. Her skin felt cool between his hands, her lips soft beneath his. It was a gentle kiss. A healing kiss.

  With the tip of his tongue he found each dry tear along her cheeks and jaw and beside her eyes. He soothed each wound with his lips.

  And as her cool alabaster skin heated beneath his touch, the kiss became something more.

  He plunged his fingers into the silken fire of her hair and guided her mouth back to his. She opened beneath him and welcomed him, inviting him in with the same incendiary passion with which he claimed her. Their tongues mated in an impetuous dance. Joining. Retreating. Tasting. Then gliding together once more.

  A fuse ignited within him as her hands began to move. She drew circles on his back, pressing into him with palms and fingertips. She found a sensitive spot near the base of his spine. She came back to it time and again after the first shudder. She touched him through his shirt, then snuck beneath to tease the spot with her fingernails, sparking convulsions of shimmering heat that zapped straight to his groin.

  “Whit—” He begged her to stop. Begged her not to stop.

  She laughed seductively beneath his mouth, torturing him with thoughts of her hands all over him, skin to skin, touch to touch, fire to fire. Her hands slid down, cupped his buttocks and squeezed, drawing him closer to her feminine heat. Closer to her elusive spirit. Closer to her generous heart.

  A defensive wall crumbled within him and he felt himself swell with need, with desire, with a thing much too complicated for him to name.

  Instead of analyzing the new emotions kindled by her adventurous hands, he mimicked her moves, skimming the sleek curve of her hips and clasping a handful of her sweet little butt. With something like a growly laugh himself, he picked her up and leaned back, throwing her off balance.

  “Vincent!” Her squeal of delight became his as she snaked her arms around his neck and held on for the short ride to the edge of the bed. He set her on her knees facing him, letting her tower over him for a change. At this particular level, with her hands braced on his shoulders and her hair falling down around his face, he was afforded a most exquisite view.

  “Say it again,” he breathed, before catching the tip of one small breast in his mouth. Beneath a layer of silk and a whisper of lace, the feverish peak beaded against the stroke of his tongue. Her instant response stoked the flame already burning inside him. “Say my name.”

  Her fists butted against his shoulders, then raked in handfuls of his shirt. “Vin—” He suckled at the delicious curve, loving the hiss of breath in his ear. “Vin—”

  So this was the way to silence her. He smiled at her struggle and turned to explore the other breast. Her long, supple fingers clutched the back of his head and held him there, demanding the same attention he was more than happy to deliver.

  She pressed kisses to his forehead, nuzzled and nipped around the shell of his ear. While his fingers worked the buttons of her blouse, her hands slipped beneath the neckline of his shirt, pushing it aside to brand his skin. She moaned in frustration as the material caught in the band of his holster. He moaned along with her and shrugged his shoulders, encouraging her to rip the damn cloth if that’s what it took to have her hands on him. Her fingers kneaded, but the leather refused to budge.

  Then all at once, she pushed herself away. Vincent sucked in an almost painful rush of air. He was a man on fire, and the means to cool the throbbing heat had suddenly been denied him. But like a lifeline to conscious thought, he anchored his hands at the curve of her waist, not yet willing to surrender his hold on her entirely.

  The lack of oxygen in the sweltering room seemed to affect Whitney, too. She raked her fingers into her hair and dashed it back behind her head into wanton disarray. God, she was a wild, wonderful beauty. Sexy, yet innocent. Young, yet instinctively wise to the touches and tastes that could make a man ache until he forgot everything but the thought of making her his.

  Vincent pulled himself back from that brink and watched her passion-drowsy eyes come into focus. Her tongue darted out to lick her kiss-swollen lips, and his body pulsed in rhythm to the unconscious movement.

  But it was the downcast turn in her quicksilver gaze that cooled the inferno still raging in his veins. Her sure fingers were now working the cotton of his shirt, tucking it beneath his holster, straightening it around his neck, smoothing the puckers against his chest.

  “Vincent—”

  He c
aptured her hands between his and stilled their nervous tidying up. “What?”

  “This isn’t just…” For a woman who had just heated his blood into molten fire, her fingers were like ice. Her gaze dropped to their hands as he began to rub them and give back some of her warmth. “This isn’t just some really crazy way to keep me in line, is it?”

  And then her eyes met his. That same caution he’d seen when her brother said that her parents weren’t coming to see her after her kidnapping haunted her eyes. That bracing for disappointment clouded her gaze and triggered his considerable protective instincts. “Are you on duty right now?” she asked. “Or are you here because this is where you want to be?”

  Only Whitney MacNair would stop the most passionate chemistry lesson of his life to have a conversation. But she needed to talk. She needed to understand. She needed to believe that she was the reason he was here.

  He needed her to believe it, too.

  Apparently the sealed orders hadn’t been enough to convince her that he’d stayed in Montana by choice. That he couldn’t quite trust himself to let her loose on the world without him. Whitney had given him a gift earlier. Making peace with his father’s death had been a long time coming. It had taken her openness and generosity to lead him toward that light.

  He could do no less for her.

  Vincent released her entirely and walked to the door, needing the distance between them to think clearly and say what needed to be said. When he turned around, she had sunk onto the bed, sitting with her legs curled under her. She’d crossed her arms beneath her breasts. Her blouse gaped open. The white silk of her bra had become a translucent sheath beneath his wet mouth, hinting at the coral tips inside.

  The fever inside took hold of him again. But he was made of stronger stuff. “You are so beautiful.” Words seemed weak. He needed to show her how he felt. Linking his gaze to hers, he unstrapped his gun and laid the holster on her desk. He pulled his badge from his pocket and set it beside his father’s. “I’m off the clock as of right now. I’m here because I want to be here. With you. Whitney.”

  He waited.

  The shadows in her eyes gradually lightened from doubt to hope. But he didn’t blink, didn’t move until she lifted her arms and reached out to him.

  “Well.” Her tenuous smile became a temptress’s invitation. “Seeing how you have the night off…”

  With a precision of movement, Vincent peeled off his shirt and gathered her into his arms. Their lips touched and the conflagration reignited between them.

  Soon, the fire blazed out of control. In a flurry of grasping hands and flashpoint kisses they tumbled, skin to skin, onto the bed. The delicate mounds of her breasts seared his chest. Her hair fanned across the pillow, a visual flame that drew his hands and his lips to its irresistible fire.

  No words were spoken, no promises made.

  But when Vincent buried himself inside her, he crossed a line. Her legs wrapped around his hips, her fingertips wicked down his spine, and drove him straight to the edge. Her consuming heat detonated around him and there was no turning back. She bathed him in fire and he finally, willingly, surrendered his control. He caught his name in her mouth and demanded her kiss as he found his own release.

  Whitney’s light blazed through him, surrounded him, became a part of him. She brought sunlight to the shadowy recesses of his soul, and cracked open the lonely confines of his heart.

  Afterward, his body replete with the gifts of her body and spirit, Vincent crawled beneath the covers and tucked Whitney close to his side. Using his shoulder as her pillow, his beautiful fireball of energy promptly fell asleep.

  Those same tender feelings that had snuck around his defenses in the cabin up on Beartooth Mountain kicked in. He lifted a handful of her red-gold hair to his nose and inhaled the sweet female scent of her. How could one skinny bit of a woman turn his life so completely inside out in just a few short days?

  As he, too, drifted off toward sleep, he thought of his father’s brave sacrifice. He thought of Melissa Stamos and her claim that the dangerous world of an agent and a personal life would never mix. He thought of Dimitri Chilton and his thugs manhandling Whitney, stripping her of her dignity and hunting her down like prey when she dared to escape. He thought of Ross Weston, a man of power and mystery whose presence in Montana raised suspicion amongst every man on this ranch.

  He thought of Whitney, willing to die for a misguided need to prove her worth to the world.

  Vincent pressed a kiss to the crown of her hair and wondered if he had just made the biggest tactical error of his life.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  Sleep made Vincent’s voice crackle at a deliciously low pitch.

  Whitney grinned with the secretive smile of a woman well loved and scrolled the cursor to the next page on her tiny computer screen. “Shopping.”

  She sat at the desk with her legs tucked up to her chest and her laptop resting on her knees. Whitney huddled with plenty of room to spare inside Vincent’s discarded shirt.

  The only light in the room came from the screen itself. But it glowed brightly enough to illuminate the ripples and hollows of Vincent’s warm olive skin as he sat up in bed. The sheet and blankets pooled around his hips, exposing the broad expanse of crisp black hair that spread across his chest and curled in a narrow trail down to his… Well, she had discovered firsthand where that path led.

  She combed her fingers into her hair and let it fall across her cheek, hiding a blush of remembered passion.

  “It’s three in the morning.”

  “That’s the beauty of Internet shopping. Whenever I get the urge, I can indulge myself.”

  “How often do you get the urge at 3:00 a.m.?”

  Whenever she couldn’t sleep. Whenever nightmares plagued her. Whenever she couldn’t resolve her mind to what her heart told her to do.

  “I’m shopping for you, in a way.” She needed to talk, needed to focus on a silly, mindless project like this. She didn’t want to think anymore about the horrible guilt that had awakened her in the protective circle of his arms. “I’m trying to decide whether you’re more the satin camisole kind of guy, or if you’d prefer the sheer-peignoir set.”

  “I don’t think either one is me.”

  She giggled at his dry humor and scrolled to the next page. “It’s for me, Romeo. Of course, there’s a baby-doll set. Ooh. Here’s a sweet little teddy. One hundred percent cotton.”

  “I like you naked.”

  Whitney jumped in her skin at the deep, rich voice right next to her ear. She’d been so intent on ignoring his slumberous charm that she hadn’t heard him climb out of bed.

  And now he stood right beside her, a magnificent sculpture of classic male proportions. A living, breathing work of art.

  Helpless to do more than stare at the controlled precision of his movements, she made no protest when he closed the laptop and set it on the desk. He scooped her up from the chair and carried her back to the bed.

  He made good on his word and stripped his shirt off her. When he lay down beside her, Whitney felt the faint stirring of guilt edge its way in between them. She flattened her hands against his chest. “Romeo—”

  “Vincent,” he insisted, peppering her nose and cheeks with featherlike kisses. “When it’s serious, call me Vincent.”

  “This kind of serious?”

  Whitney dug her fingers into his shoulders and pushed. Together they rolled over. She landed on top, straddling him in the most intimate of ways. His hands settled at her waist, binding them together. She felt his power beneath her. His brawny strength. His illusory control. His beautiful onyx eyes gazed up into hers, patiently waiting for her to speak.

  But now, when it counted most, she didn’t know what to say.

  So she took a cue from the pro himself. Maybe she didn’t need words to express everything she was feeling. A tremulous fear shuddered inside her. And then she listened to her heart.

  She leaned over him, letting her ha
ir fall forward. The curls teased his nipples. His lips compressed as he struggled to lie still, and Whitney smiled. In this, at least, he would let her follow her own will.

  He was a chained beast, docile beneath her for now. From her superior position, she trailed her hair along every part of his body, generating a teasing friction that soon had him squirming beneath her. She followed the same trail with her hands, feeling the quiver in his flanks as she stroked down his sides.

  The beast was gathering strength beneath her hands, responsive, yet restrained each time she touched him. A muscle jerked here. His fingers clenched there. She heard her name on a low, guttural growl in his throat. A raspy caress that hummed along her sensitized nerves.

  As Vincent stirred, she grew bold. She leaned over farther and traced the same pattern with her tongue and her lips, tasting the salt on his skin and inhaling his musky scent. His hands squeezed her hips and anchored her tight as he rose against her.

  Whitney squeezed her eyes shut and rode the broiling heat that pooled at her very core. Her breath came in stuttered gasps as she strove to regain equilibrium. Somehow, in the midst of her seduction, she had become the seduced. The wild animal had freed his spirit and now she was the one to be tamed.

  Vincent’s hands were on her breasts, her buttocks. He wove his fingers into her hair and pulled her mouth down to his. He rolled her beneath him and entered her swiftly, his mouth claiming hers in a fierce kiss.

  “Vincent—”

  She breathed his name as he swept her into his hands, his mouth, his unleashed need. He drove into her once, twice, again. She sailed to the stars and then drifted slowly, sweetly back into his strong, sheltering arms.