He barely cocked his head to the side. “They smell nice, I’ll give you that. But you look like a head floating on a sea of foam.”
She bent her knee then straightened her leg high in the air with her foot arched and pointed to the ceiling. Lazing her ankle in a slow circle, she couldn’t believe how wicked she felt. “You never know what’s lurking beneath.”
Slowly, she lowered her leg back beneath the bubbles.
“Well, that was something. Got any more tricks?”
She backed up in the tub, stopping where the bubbles continued to cover her breasts as she slid her arms on the edge of the rims. “That’s it for now.”
“So there’s hope for later?”
She swished her palm across the top of the bubbles, pelting him with the spray.
Glancing at the bubbly mess mingling with the dark hair on his chest and twining pathways downward, he smirked as if everything was going as planned. He held up the bottle of wine. “I thought you might want something to drink. Says it’s a Riesling that goes with about anything. Doesn’t say anything about bubbles, but why not?”
Balancing the two wineglasses in his hand, he poured them each a glass and set them on the outer rim of the oversize tub. He held his hand in the air to stop any comments then headed to the doorway. Returning quickly, he balanced two small plates on his palms, setting one within her reach and taking one with him.
A whiff of his cologne caught her senses. “That looks like an awfully close shave there.”
“Glad you noticed.” He raked his fingers through his wet, tousled hair, then crouched beside her, setting his plate on the tile.
Bracing against the side of the tub, he eased his gun from his jeans and laid it on the floor beside him as he sat down. Something about the ease of his movement made it seem as natural to him as breathing.
He leaned back against the towel cabinet and closed his eyes, sighing long and easy as if he were a man home from a long day at work. “This is nice.”
The minutes ticked by as they each sipped their wine. She nibbled on the cheese and peaches on her plate. He gulped down the cheese and salami on his. Maybe this was what life was all about. Just enjoying the foods and scents and feelings of being completely at peace. She could do this forever.
“You ever been to the pyramids?” His relaxed tone belied the intensity in his eyes as they opened, watching for her reaction with their scrutiny.
“No.”
“Asia?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“South America?”
“I’m more of the European side. England? France?”
This time he shook his head.
“How about Holland or Sweden? I went there last year.”
“No. Can’t say I have.”
He poured them a refill of the wine that went with anything, but something in his expression had dimmed during the question and answer.
She couldn’t read Agent Slater like she could Josh, but there were still a few tells. Right now, he was testing the waters, so to speak, but which waters she wasn’t sure. “Why all the travel questions? What are you searching for?”
Blowing out a cheek-puffing breath, he intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms out in a hands-backward movement. Then he braced his hands on the floor as he glanced at her, at the gun next to him, and then at the doorway. For a second, she thought he was getting up. She let him be until he leaned back against the cabinet again, until he seemed comfortable with whatever was going on in his brain. This time when he looked at her, she didn’t turn away or make a joke or smile—only waited for more questions.
Downing the last of his wine, he rimmed his fingers around the edge of the crystal. “What did you do last Christmas Eve?”
Christmas Eve? That should be a safe subject. “Uncle Drake and I shared dinner with the staff here at the hotel. Helped serve dinner at a couple of the local food pantries on Christmas Day, then flew to Hawaii for a week of vacation.” She felt as if that wasn’t a good enough answer for him. “Why? What did you do?”
“Drake assigned me and Mitch, another agent I work with sometimes, to a special case on Christmas Eve.” Josh shook his head. “About noon that day, I burrowed in through a makeshift tunnel to rescue a five-year-old girl who’d been kidnapped. They’d planned to make a hell of a lot of money off her family.”
She felt the crease in her brow. “I thought OPAQUE was all about saving people who’ve been targeted by Coercion Ten as leverage.”
“We take on other cases, too. Some with people who need out-of-the-norm protection for whatever reason. Sometimes we’ve been referred, so to speak, by law enforcement. This family needed help in…uh, creative retrieval.”
“Sounds like you saved a little girl. Got her home for Christmas with her family. That’s wonderful.” She couldn’t imagine how worried those parents must have been. “I hope the kidnappers got what was coming to them.”
“Yeah. They got exactly what was coming to them.” His breathing intensified, along with the clench of his jaw, his look focused on a distant thought through suddenly steely gray-blue eyes. “From the looks of the place, they had no intention of ever releasing her.”
Neither spoke for the next couple of minutes. The expression on Josh’s face told her everything she needed to know.
He twirled the goblet stem between his palms. “She was a cute little girl with big brown eyes. Once I took care of business in that room, she wrapped her arms around my neck in an air-sucking grip. Wouldn’t let go till her dad opened the door at their estate, and she jumped in his arms.” He paused, swallowed. “I never saw a man so happy in all my life.”
Mackenzie had no words to compare with that memory.
“Before I left, he handed Mitch and me each a bottle of…well, let’s just say those were the oldest bottles of scotch I’ll ever see in my life.”
“Bet you spent the night with a bottle of scotch and a pretty lady?” She teased him with raised eyebrows, for some reason hoping that had been exactly the release for him.
“Nope. Mitch needed to leave for another assignment, so I had him drop me off by a park with a bunch of homeless men staking out their spot around the fire can. That ragtag group and I opened that century-old bottle of scotch and passed it around. We toasted every damn thing we could until there wasn’t a drop left.”
She couldn’t change the difference in their holidays, but she wasn’t the one who had to get past that. “If you hang around here till Christmas, we can make some new memories.”
“Hang around? Make new memories? By then I’ll be on another rocket-to-hell assignment where some other rodent of society gets what they’re due.” Harsh. His tone had been harsh and matter-of-fact. Josh jumped to his feet, grabbed his gun, and started for the door. “We’re done here.”
“What’s wrong? Where are you going?” She felt him slipping back inside himself. “Come back and explain to me what the hell you’re getting at with all these questions.”
True, she couldn’t save him from himself, but surely there was some rope, some lifeline, she could toss him. Something like the round life preserver people threw to swimmers floundering in the water. A buoy that all the person had to do was reach out and grab.
He jerked his jeans up high on his hips and stepped back to the side of the tub. “Don’t you see? We have nothing in common. Nothing at all.”
“What does that mean to you?”
“Means we can’t do this. Because if we have nothing in common, then this is only about sex, and I won’t do that to you. You deserve better.”
“And I won’t accept just sex, either. We can’t change the past.” She touched his fingertips with her own then tugged the side of his pants leg, inching the jeans lower on his hips. “Only the future. Think about it, and sit back down. Please.”
He narrowed his eyes, but he sat back down, once again placing his gun on the floor beside him.
Her future hung in the balance, and she just needed to gi
ve him time to realize they were about more than the past. About more than all their arguments since he’d been sent to protect her. About more than just sex. Although right now, sex sounded damn good to her.
“What’s your favorite kind of cookie?” She downed the remainder of her drink.
He leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “That’s silly.”
“What’s your favorite kind of cookie?”
“Big, plump oatmeal cookies loaded with raisins and walnuts. Satisfied?” He rattled the response fast and to the point.
She gasped inwardly. Oatmeal? Did it have to be oatmeal? Every time she had ever tried to eat one, she’d gagged on the consistency. And raisins? Raisins were not on her fruit list.
“Oh my gosh. Me, too!” She rounded her eyes in a show of excitement, trying to remember how people who loved oatmeal cookies ate them. “Sometimes I heat them up in the microwave for breakfast.”
“Me, too.” He grinned. “And there’s nothing like two of them with marshmallow cream for a middle.”
“Oh, so, so good.” She was going to need to do penance after these fibs. “See? We do have something in common after all. Right?” She popped the last bite of cheese in her mouth. “Cheese. Riesling. Oatmeal cookies.”
His laughter filled her with its sound. “Okay. I’ll give you that one. We do have something in common. Not much, but it’s a start.”
He edged closer and closer to where she leaned against the tub. With each movement, she felt him change back to the man he’d been when he walked into her bathroom. When he was close enough, she brushed her hand across his, leaning her head and parting her lips to wait for what she saw in his expression.
As if reading her need, he lowered his mouth to hers, tangling his fingers in her hair until she released to his hold. His tongue had its way with hers as she clutched at his shoulders, his face, any part of him she could hold on to for even a second. Afraid that if she let him pull away, she’d never taste him again. And he tasted so damn good. All she could do was wallow in the pure pleasure of feeling his touch.
He grasped her hands in his and pushed away just a bit. “Slow down. I’m not going anywhere.”
“A minute ago, you almost left.” She listened to her breathing as it slowed. Had she been so desperate for his touch she’d lost control and become the drowning person who needed the life preserver herself?
“Yeah, well I didn’t, did I?” He lowered his forehead to hers.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Sometimes I’m a stubborn-headed man. Just needed a little space to get my act together.” He slid his gaze over her body in the tub. “Now that’s interesting.”
“What?”
“Evidently, bubbles disappear after a while.”
She glanced down, slapping her hands across her breasts. He laughed for a moment as he nibbled his way down her neck to her collarbone to her shoulder tip and the waterline. Then gently nudging her hands aside, he made one long pass of his palm down and up the middle of her body. She straightened in the tub, arching to his touch as he cupped her breast, teasing his thumb across the tip.
When his hands left her body, she ached for the warmth and seduction to return. She wasn’t finished. She wanted more. Suddenly, she heard the click of the drain being released and the rush of water down and out of the tub. Unable to keep her gaze away, she watched him as his hand caressed the arch of her foot, teased with an upward stroke of her ankle, across the back of her calf, her knee. When she bent her knee in tickle-reflex, he kissed the top as if kissing her lips.
He smiled. “I saw a picture of you in your sailboat once. Your hair all tangled in the wind and your long legs stretched out on the rail. Every time I’ve been on a boat, that image has been somewhere in the back of my mind.”
“See, that’s something else we have in common. We both like sailing.”
“I didn’t say I liked to sail.” He quickly paddled the water, returning a burst of small bubbles as the final vestige of water drained from the tub, then he tapped a dollop of the foam on her nose. On first one breast, then the other. Finishing with her belly button.
Still wearing jeans, he stepped into the tub, straddling her as he knelt, bracing his knees on the bottom of the tub and holding her in place with his thighs. She rolled her lower lip against her teeth, in and out, in and out, as he brushed his palm down the wet hair clinging to her cheek.
“Do you have any idea how sexy you look lying in this tub? How beautiful?” He kissed her cheek. Her neck. “Your hair all wet and dripping? Little droplets of water sliding across your skin, telling me to follow their lead.” He kissed the corners of her eyelids. “Your eyelashes glistening.”
The darkness of his eyes sucked her into his need, and she felt the hum of lady-bits she’d never felt before. She’d give up everything she owned if it meant she could stay in this moment forever.
He carried his gaze to her mouth. “And those lips…those plump…soft…pink…” With one finger, he traced the outline of her lips. “Lips perfect enough they could—”
She closed her lips around his finger, twirling her tongue against his skin. Then, she softly bit. He stopped his movements. Tensed.
Sudden and fast, he raked his fingers into her hair, cupping his hand against the back of her head as he pulled her to him and crushed his mouth against hers. She clawed her fingernails into his biceps. From the way his kiss accelerated the nerve impulses straight to her core, she was either one sex-starved broad or one damn sexy woman.
Gradually, they parted. She gasped for air. He quirked the side of his mouth, then gave her one final peck of a kiss on her lips.
“You’re…not playing fair, Agent Slater.” Her voice quivered.
“I don’t know what you mean.” He sucked the tender part at the edge of her neck and collarbone, brushing his chest against the fullness of her breasts.
Tensing with need, she arched toward him. “We need to get those jeans off.”
“Oh, so you want my jeans…” He grinned, his eyes sparking with mischief. “Maybe later.”
Tracing the curves of her body with his hand, he collected the remaining bubbles with his fingers. “Wonder where I could find to have a little fun with these?”
Heaven help her, she wanted him more than life itself. Wanted to wrap her legs around him as he leaned into her. Wanted to take those bubbles and…and… Heck, she could think of a lot of places for that foam, but first she wanted him out of his damn jeans.
She grabbed at his hands for the bubbles. He jerked aside, and she missed. She grabbed again, but he held his hand just out of reach. Lightly, she grazed her fingernails across his pecs, down his rib cage.
Faster than she could react, he had her hands in his grasp as he nipped at the side of her neck until she turned her face in his direction, then took her lips with his mouth, tender and tasting and tempting as he steadily trailed his palm down her body, shifting his to give him access.
At some point along the way, she closed her eyes, tempted only by the feel of his hand on her flesh. She stretched to free her hands from his hold, and he released her. But when she tried to steer him back to her lips, he nudged her away, continuing to trace his path from her neck to her shoulders and downward.
Slowly, oh so slowly, his fingers caressed the inner part of her thigh until they brushed lightly against her parting and found her core. Taking her just to the edge, he stopped. Shifting back to his knees, he straddled her once again then stepped from the tub. She didn’t have the strength to move. She wasn’t sure she could stand on her own.
He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a handful of foil packets, and laid them on the edge of the tub. Then unbuttoned, unzipped, and pushed his jeans to the floor, before holding out his hands to her.
Heaven help her, there he was in all his manhood. Hard and sexy and hot. Hers for the taking. Hers for the asking. Hers.
“Come on, Macki. Time to rinse off in the shower.”
She took his hand and a
s she rose to her feet, her other hand teased up his thigh, his side, his chest. He throbbed in need as she trailed her kisses across his chest, tasting the salt of his skin with her tongue.
“I don’t think we have time for a shower.” She pointed at the thick fluffy rug covering the middle of the bathroom’s marble floor then looped her arms around his neck. “How about we start there?”
He wrapped his arms around her and scooped her out of the tub then turned and knelt. Laying her gently back on the rug, he braced his elbows beside her while his kisses sizzled against her neck, her collarbone, the hollow of her throat. Finally, he lowered his mouth to hers, and she thought she’d gone to heaven. He sheathed himself, then slow and to the point, he pulsed against her core.
Once… Twice…
She palmed his face in her hand. “Oh, how I missed you, Josh.”
“I missed you, too. Really. Really. Missed you.”
…Three times.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Josh opened his eyes to make sure he hadn’t dreamed the past hours. The ones involving Macki and him, bubbles and wine, a rug, a bed and— Hell, he felt good. Felt the way a man should feel who’d just spent the night making love to the woman he loved.
He shifted closer to her warmth and slid his fingers over her breast. She sighed. Then, stretching like a lazy cat who’d lain in the sun too long, she wiggled herself into the mold of his body. God, he was one lucky man. Waking up beside her was all he ever wanted for the rest of his life. That, and a little morning sex.
“You gonna sleep all day?” He smoothed his hand down the curve of her hip as she slid up enough to kiss his lips.
She smiled at his touch. “What are you doing in my bed, Agent Slater?”
“Couldn’t quite seem to crawl out of the covers. Some woman kept pulling me back all night.”
“Really? She must have been one crazy broad.”
“Oh, she was crazy, all right.”
She giggled as he popped his head under the covers. The muffled sound of his cell phone ringtone made him stop and shove back the covers as he rolled out of bed. He grabbed his gun from the nightstand then ran to the master bath where he’d left his phone the night before. Life had rushed back in a flash.
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