She chewed her lip. “This probably isn’t a wise idea.”
“I know.”
“I’m really tired of making wise decisions, though.”
“I understand what you mean, but it still has to be your choice if I stay to enjoy this shower with you or not.”
She saw the same hunger in his eyes, but he waited for her. The decision would be hers. Yet, the last thing she wanted to do now was think. She could steal this private pocket of time with him, the moment when no one would be looking for them. She was tired of living her life for others. This moment was for her and for Marc.
“Yes,” she whispered, arching up toward him, mouths meeting, tongues tangling. This need had been two years in the building.
Apparently he didn’t need any more encouragement than that lone word.
With urgent fingers, she peeled the wet, black polo shirt from his chest, the same broad expanse she’d been aching to touch this morning. His hands roved down her back. The simple touch caused her to sigh into his mouth.
He slid the zipper of her dress down in a long, slow zip that reminded her of earlier when he’d so seduced her by dressing while she kept her back turned. He gripped the hem of her dress and bunched the fabric up, up, up in his hands until he swept the clothing over her head and off, sending it flying into the sink.
“Ah, Princess,” he groaned, “I do so like your lingerie choices.”
For a man who’d claimed to like her emerald lace bra and thong set, he sure got rid of them quickly enough, soon to be followed by his own pants and boxers until they stood naked together and he plunged them into the hot shower.
Yes, that felt more amazing than anything she could recall. Although she wasn’t sure which was hotter, the sheeting water or Marc’s skin. He teased her breasts with his fingers, his mouth, the heat of him pressing against her stomach until she thought she couldn’t wait any longer.
Hadn’t they both waited long enough? Two years, after all. They could go slow the next time.
She slid her hand between them and stroked him, languorously. “No more waiting.”
“So now you command me. And I don’t mind one damn bit.” He reached out of the shower and grabbed his pants, tugged his wallet free and…a condom appeared in his palm.
Kim swiped it from his grasp and sheathed him, while his hands continued to skim over her, stir her higher and higher.
Then Marc pressed her against the shower stall wall, plunging up into her, filling her with a wonderful thickness. Her skin tingled with a sensitivity that made every bead of water dart over her with an added brush of pleasure.
She hitched her leg up over his hip. His low growl of appreciation shot a thrill through her just as he gripped her other leg and helped her lift it, locking her feet behind his back.
Their water-slicked bodies moved against each other, closer, deeper while they both whispered frantic litanies of want to each other between kisses and nips and caresses. She arched harder against him, desperate to find release. Even as another part of her wanted this to last…she shied away from the word forever. A scary word.
She scrubbed that from her brain just as he grabbed her hips and helped her find the right angle to wring…
Her head flung back. Marc pressed urgent kisses along the arch of her neck as she bit his shoulder to keep from calling out and risk bringing any guards into this steamy haven. Water sluiced over her in rippling waves that matched the satisfaction surging through her.
Her legs slid down in a boneless heap, her arms and his wrapped around each other all that kept her from falling to the shower floor. With him buried deep inside her, aftershocks of bliss still shimmering through her in microbursts, she fought reality edging in to steal these last moments before she would finally have to tell him the truth.
Because without question, this changed everything.
“YOU KNOW, THIS CHANGES everything,” Marc said, grabbing for the big fluffy robe to pass to Kim, as much as he regretted covering the view.
But he couldn’t think straight with that view in sight, and the time had come to talk. They wouldn’t have long before they had to rejoin their scheduled commitments for the rest of the day.
“I realize that. How could it not? It was…so much more than I expected.”
Thank goodness they agreed on that. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear her acknowledge that until the words passed her lips. Even if she had stuttered on the words.
Marc tugged on a pair of sweatpants. “That scares you?”
He couldn’t stop himself from pushing.
She hugged the robe closer around her. “Losing control is always a frightening thing.”
He reached to pull her onto his lap for a long and silent moment. “What happened? With the scar on your shoulder, I mean.”
She tucked her head under his chin. Dodging his gaze? “A near miss on the job. The bullet grazed me.” She paused. A sigh shuddered through her. “It hit my partner. He didn’t make it.”
Marc’s arms convulsed around her. He’d thought they had something in common, that moment with the drawn guns, searching the balcony, and when he’d thought about her surviving assassination attempts. However, he’d had no idea how very much they actually did have in common.
“I’m so damn sorry.” He held her closer. “I mean it when I say I do understand, in the way that you understood when I told you about Rubistan. My fiancée walked last year because she couldn’t deal with the stress of this way of life. No doubt, it’s tough as hell. There are just no words that will ever make it all right, but it means a lot having someone who’s there for you.”
She didn’t answer, a slight sniffle the only sign she’d heard his words, but it was enough, because yes, he did understand. So he kept right on holding her and letting her hold him back until her muscles relaxed against him again.
Kim eased away, looked up at him and caressed his scarred jaw. He expected to see a smile. Too bad life never seemed to dish out what he anticipated.
She had a huge frown on her face. “There’s a problem, though.”
“Problem.” Of course. He should have seen it coming. “Fine. If you want this to be a one-night stand kind of thing, just say it now. I’m not in the mood for a repeat of my engagement where she drew things out.”
“No. No! It’s not that kind of problem.” She slid off his lap and plowed her hands through her tangled hair. “Things are complicated.”
“Aren’t they always in relationships?”
She stopped in the middle of the room and waved her hands around her face. “Ting and I truly do look so very much alike. When we were little we used to get such a kick out of confusing people by swapping places.”
“The princess and the pauper,” he prompted, trying to follow her conversational leaps.
“Sort of, except there was no pauper, more of a cousin who didn’t have quite as much money and power.”
“You don’t seem the kind that it would matter to anyhow.”
“I’m not.” She paced restlessly. “We only had our grandparents alive because of an avalanche during a skiing trip that took our parents when we were ten.”
“Damn. I’m so sorry.” Where was she going with all of this? “I can see why you would want to leave a place with so many sad memories.”
“Me, yes, but not my cousin. She lived for the attention, the jewels, the pageantry. The money.”
“Then I guess it’s luck you were both born as you were.”
She stopped pacing, the frown gone, the regality there for him to see.
There for him to see.
The truth hit him between the eyes so clearly he couldn’t believe he’d never guessed before. He only had one question left unanswered. “When did the two of you decide to switch places, Princess?”
“I switched from being Princess Ting to being the royal cousin Kim at fifteen and never regretted it for a minute.”
He exhaled hard. The rest of the truth gut-kicking him. He’d falle
n for a princess.
Fallen hard. As hard as the furniture that crashed to the floor in the next room.
Someone had broken into their suite.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KIM JOLTED. “DAMN IT,” she whispered. “I left my gun in the next room.”
Marc snagged his from the bathroom vanity. “Stay behind me, then, for backup if we get into a close fight.”
“Got your back.” She appreciated that he hadn’t tried to relegate her to the closet or under the bed. She could grow quite attached to a man who respected her strengths, because no way could she have let him go out there alone.
He meant far too much to her. Wasn’t that why she’d really pushed him away before? So nobody would shoot at him the way people shot at royals? Except people did shoot at him no matter what, and wow, things were a tangle in her mind at an inopportune time.
Marc eased the door open, gun poised and ready. He peered around her into the sitting area…and shook his head. Nothing there.
Her heart pounded in her ears. She knew intellectually that no one could hear it but her. Still it almost drowned out her ability to hear what went on around her at this critical time. She refused to allow flashbacks from her past to distract her even more—the sickening showdown that led to her partner’s death.
She pointed to the connecting door to her bedroom that sat propped open an inch. The intruder could have moved into that room. In fact, he or she very likely could have if Kim was the target.
He nodded. Padding slowly across the carpet, he made his way toward the door while she followed closely, wishing she had her gun so she could sweep around and enter from the other door. Wishes were a waste of time.
Like wishing she had told him sooner about being the real princess. And like wishing there had been time to hear his response to her revelation, because it chewed at her insides wondering if he would reject her now, after they’d made such amazing love together. She’d run from the life of royalty—the paparazzi, the materialism and, yes, the obligations. Might Marc be put off by the possibility those could still bleed through into their lives?
She needed to shove aside these distracting thoughts and focus on the moment.
Marc creaked the connecting door open and stepped back, waiting for the reaction from the room….
“Kim?”
Sun’s voice echoed from the other bedroom.
Kim exhaled and stepped around Marc into her room. “Sun? You scared me to death, creeping in like that.”
Her fellow undercover cop stood by the king-sized bed with two costume boxes, her PDA resting on top. “Sorry. You were gone so long, I was starting to get worried. The costume ball dinner is due to start soon, and you and Marc hadn’t picked up your outfits.”
Kim couldn’t help but feel the curious scrutiny of Sun’s gaze sweeping over the robe and Marc’s sweats.
Marc strode boldly into the room and took the two stacked boxes. “We were going over some points about the investigation before changing. Thank you for bringing these up. We’ll be down shortly.”
Kim stifled a smile. His take-charge attitude came in handy sometimes. She slid her costume box off the top, passing Sun her PDA. “Anything new from the precinct?”
Sun shook her head. “Sorry. We’re on our own here to figure this thing out with what we’ve got so far.”
“All right, then.” Kim clutched the box. “What will you be wearing tonight?”
“I will be dressed as a barmaid.”
“Got it. See you there,” Kim said, walking her toward the exit.
Once the door closed behind her, Kim sagged against the wall and looked at Marc. “Do you think it’s just coincidence that she was in my room?”
He spread his hands. “You know her better than I do.”
“And I barely know her at all.” Not a reassuring notion at all, especially when they had to go back downstairs into a huge gala of masked guests where anyone could show up.
The image of that security nightmare barely formed before her earlier tangle of thoughts about assassination attempts and her fears for his life threatened to unravel in her mind. What a time to realize she—a woman who could stand down crooks on the street—had been holding back from committing her heart out of fear. She’d told herself she needed to stay out of relationships, because she was really a princess and that wouldn’t be fair to bring all that baggage into a relationship.
But the real baggage was her fear. Her fear that someone she loved might die—of an assassination attempt or of a fluke avalanche. Throwing herself into her job and new life was so much easier. How crummy to figure out she wasn’t any better than his fiancée who’d walked a year ago.
Because Kim knew right here, right now, she was totally and completely in love with Marc.
MARC WASN’T MUCH FOR COSTUMES. He knew his Joker call sign came about because of his lack of a sense of humor and he was all right with that.
He wasn’t all right with wearing a Zorro costume. Marc touched Kim’s hand in the crook of his arm as she stood beside him in her pink fairy-tale princess attire. They’d been in this damn receiving line for over two hours. How this advanced the investigation, he couldn’t see.
No wonder Kim had wanted to check out on the royal lifestyle. There must not have been a minute to call her own growing up.
A waiter tapped Marc’s shoulder and motioned for him to step back to make way for a food cart. His stomach rumbled. He’d bet there was no peanut chicken on the menu tonight.
He wished they could have five minutes to talk so he could figure out why she’d avoided him right after Sun had brought their costumes. He vowed right then and there he would make sure to find that time. No more running from relationships.
When he got back to his home base in Charleston, South Carolina, he would put in for a transfer here to Las Vegas so he could be near Kim and pursue her for real. He would make time. Damn straight what they’d shared earlier had changed everything.
He reached to pat her hand on his arm again…and her touch was gone. He started to call for her and remembered at the last second to use her undercover name, oddly enough her true name. “Ting?”
Marc looked beside him, but she wasn’t there. Where the hell had she gone? She wouldn’t have just left without telling him.
He searched the crowd for Kim—he could never think of her as Ting—in her princess mask and gown. He saw just about every costume known to womankind, even one that looked remarkably like that cross-dressing cop from the police station yesterday. Still, no Kim…
Then wait. He caught a glimpse of the poofy skirt heading toward an exit door. The body size looked right, the piled-up hair, the curve of the face. Yes, the costume seemed perfect…except wait.
That fairy-tale princess wore blue and he could have sworn Kim’s costume was pink.
“WHERE IS YOUR GOWN?”
Her gown? The raspy whisper echoed in Kim’s head, as well as the stairwell she’d been hauled into by a lady pirate with a gun. The ammonia scent of freshly mopped tile threatened to gag her.
Just as Kim had feared, the melee of the costume ball had provided too good a cover for someone bent on snatching her. She didn’t dare fight against the biting grip on her arm, not with a gun pressing deeper into her side by the lady pirate. Just her luck, a waiter had distracted Marc for a split second and turned his body out of her reach.
Apparently the lady pirate had been waiting for that instant.
How had the gun even gotten past all the metal detectors? There had to have been a breach in security—or this was one of their own. The hoarse whisper did a decent job at disguising the woman’s voice, but Kim had the sneaking suspicion already that Sun hadn’t dressed as a barmaid after all.
However, letting the knowledge slip would sign Kim’s death warrant, considering they’d already used lethal force on her informant. She had to play this smart. Calm.
“What gown?” Kim asked, trying to buy time as the woman dragged her down the stairs, her
high heel catching as her captor wrenched her arm higher behind her shoulder blades.
She shoved Kim toward an exit sign glowing in the dimly lit stairwell.
If they made it outside, that would be the end for her. Kim walked as slowly as she dared while working to sort through the questions.
“The one you were wearing the first day?”
“I put it in a box and I assumed the cleaning staff took it. It had a hole in it, anyway.” She scanned for possible escape routes. If she could get free, maybe she could reach her gun strapped to her leg, but the bulky costume made it a difficult reach at best.
Bet Me Page 13
