by Amy Andrews
“If I’d known that you were…that you had no…” Fuck. He sucked at this.
“I said its fine.”
“I thought someone was…attacking you. I guess the whole hit-man thing has made me a little…jumpy.”
Seth was okay with Ivy thinking that Kade had him rattled. She didn’t need to know that his reflexes were lethal and he was trained to react with killer precision. That he could go from deep sleep to instant alertness in the blink of an eye.
“I’m very sorry that I caught you…the way I did. If I’d known I’d never have burst in like that. I’d also like to apologize for…staring the way I did.”
She didn’t say or do anything for what seemed like ages. Finally the sheets ruffled and she rolled over onto her elbow facing him.
“It’s really okay,” she said with a sigh. “And as soon as I get over my embarrassment I’m sure I’ll be grateful for your heroic actions in trying to protect me, but in the meantime do you think we can just forget that this happened? And never speak of it again?”
Forget that he’d seen her in nothing but her fig leaf underwear? Well, they could try, but he, for one, was never going to be able to get that image out of his head. It was going to be with him long after Ivy had gone back to daddy.
But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. And what was one more lie? “Absolutely,” he said. “It’s forgotten already.”
She didn’t look particularly relived or happy at his confirmation, but her brief nod and her soft “Thank you” seemed genuine enough.
She brought her arm down by her side, resting her head on her pillow. “Are you going back to bed?”
Seth nodded. “Soon.” Not that he had a chance in hell of sleeping.
“Don’t forget to switch the telly off when you do? It was still on when I got up.”
He glanced down at the remote control. He definitely wouldn’t get any shut-eye in a silent room with the low continuous buzz in his ears making sleep impossible. He expected it’d improve again over the following weeks now he was away from the nightly dose of deafening music, but that didn’t help him in the short-term.
“Actually…do you mind if I leave it on really low? Will it bother you?”
She lifted one delicately arched eyebrow. He’d never noticed how perfectly shaped they were until now. “Afraid of the dark?”
He smiled. “No, I…” Seth paused. What should he tell her? What would she be satisfied with? Telling her he preferred the dark would probably scare the bejesus out of her. “I get tinnitus from time to time, having background noise helps to block it out.”
His breath stuck in his chest as she assessed him with her sleepy green gaze for long moments. “How’d you get that?”
Seth was surprised at how much he wanted to tell her the truth. About Afghanistan. The mission. But he couldn’t. Not without blowing his cover. “It’s a…work-related thing.”
“A bouncer thing? From working in loud clubs?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t an outright lie. The music aggravated the hell out of his tinnitus. One of the reasons he never done bouncer jobs.
Except when the Colonel asked him, of course.
Her eyelashes fluttered open and closed a couple of times as she continued her assessment of him. As if she wanted to ask him more. “I don’t mind it being on,” she murmured eventually. “I can sleep through anything. I was just thinking of the ozone layer.”
A small smile touched that sexy mouth and Seth laughed as he picked up the remote and turned the volume down to a lower setting. “It thanks you.”
She smiled bigger. “Goodnight.”
…
Ivy slept surprisingly well until eight the next morning. She’d felt sure mortification would keep her awake until sun-up, but the painkillers she’d taken worked their magic and granted her relief from both the pain in her hip and the embarrassment of what had happened in the bathroom.
The aroma of coffee hit her as Dean’s back and shoulders filled her vision. Her cheeks flooded with warmth as the whole debacle replayed in her head. No doubt one day in the distant future she’d be able to laugh about it, but right now it was a little too fresh.
His hair was damp. He must have had a shower.
And she’d slept right through it.
Probably just as well. Thoughts of him wet and naked weren’t good for her sanity. Although she wouldn’t say no to a bit of quid pro quo.
He turned and Ivy thanked God the man couldn’t read minds as he said, “Morning,” in his smooth, sexy accent.
“Morning.” Ivy kicked off the sheets, her hip much better this morning, and swung her legs out of bed, her hair swishing around her face to hide the heat in her cheeks.
“Coffee?”
“Sure,” she said as she rose, avoiding his gaze as she pushed her feet into her flip-flops and headed for the bathroom. “I’ll just use the loo first.”
Ivy shut the door after her, grateful for the refuge. Not that it was much of one as Dean’s scent surrounded her and she sucked in a huge lungful of the intoxicating air. His spray deodorant was sitting on the vanity. She picked it up and sniffed. Fresh clean linen.
Another accent spiced the air—sweet but earthy. The one she’d smelled that night in the alley. Ivy reached for the nearby can of shaving cream. She squirted a small amount onto her finger, it came out as a dot of blue gel but expanded into white foam before her eyes. She rubbed it between her fingers and lifted it to her nose, inhaling deeply.
Sweet and spicy. Like Dean. Like…cardamom.
Before she even registered what she was doing she was stroking it against her own neck, rubbing it in until she could smell him on her. Like maybe she’d spent the night in bed with him.
Something inside her shuddered at the illicit thought.
Shuddered thinking about them twisted up in his sheets together.
Finally surrendering control.
She glanced at herself in the mirror. Her nipples were hard little points brazenly tenting the front of her shirt.
She pushed her palms hard against them. She couldn’t go out there like this. But the sensation only seemed to embolden them and Ivy bit back a moan at the erotic friction.
What would Dean do now if he burst in and saw this? Would he be more embarrassed than he’d been last night or would he look for longer than was strictly necessary again?
Ivy tore her hands away, sucking in a ragged breath, shocked at the dilation of her pupils and the way her teeth dug into her bottom lip. Her crush on Dean was escalating out of control. It had been such a distant, almost romantic thing until a few days ago. Now it was…freaking alive!
She’d never been this horny in her entire life.
She should have grabbed the opportunity presented to her last night. When she’d been practically naked and he’d been staring at her like he wanted to eat fudge sauce off her breasts.
Why hadn’t she seized the moment?
Because he probably would have rejected her and that would have been beyond humiliating. Stepping back from a chaste kiss was one thing. Rejecting her in that state was another thing entirely.
But…what if he hadn’t?
“I’d kill for a croissant,” Ivy said as she sat on the end of her bed eating a bowl of sugary cereal watching yet more cable news.
She had to say something to get some level of normality between them. Dean seemed perfectly happy to let cable TV be the buffer between them, but being locked in a hotel room with twenty-four-hour news was already sending her stir crazy.
“I’m sure we can ask the detectives to bring us some of those frozen ones we can defrost in the microwave,” Dean said from his usual position on the couch, his legs stretched out on the coffee table, the remote in his hand.
He’d never really struck her as the couch potato, remote-control-driving man. But it wasn’t like there was much to do.
Well…she could think of plenty, but he was decidedly not going there.
Ivy screwed up her nose. “That
is blasphemy. Croissants should only ever be eaten fresh from the patisserie.”
His low chuckle surprised her so much she glanced at him. “You’re a croissant snob.” His voice flowed even silkier when he teased.
“Hell, yeah. Those six months in France when I was fifteen completely ruined me for anything other than the real deal.”
“So it wasn’t all bad being dragged around by the old man?”
“No. Not all.”
“Just think how sweet they’ll taste when you finally get out of here,” he said. “It’ll give you something to look forward to.”
“Good point.” Ivy nodded. Because God knew there was going to be a very definite downside—no more Dean. She stood, walking her empty plate over to the sink.
“So…” Dean’s rich voice oozed down her back and shoulders as she washed the bowl and set it to dry on the drainer.
“What should we watch today?”
Ivy put the cloth down and joined him on the couch, careful to sit down her end. “What’s on?”
“Usual crap,” he said, flicking through the channels at a dizzying speed. It was like watching the history of television flash before her eyes. Crap sixties black-and-white reruns, eighties sitcoms, weird reality television shows, cartoons…
“There!” she said. “Stop.” It was too late, of course, Dean had gone straight past it. “Go back a few to the cartoons.”
He looked at her. “You want to watch cartoons?”
“Sure. Why not.” She rolled her head to the side along the back of the couch. “You said that as a boy you’d wanted to live in a hotel so you could ride the lifts and watch cartoons all day.” She shrugged. “We not allowed outside to ride the lifts—”
“It’s single story. They don’t have any lifts,” he reminded with a small smile playing on his lips and a quirk of his eyebrow.
Her belly flip-flopped. “Tiny detail.” She smiled. “So let’s watch cartoons.”
“You wanna watch cartoons all day?”
She nodded. “There are about four channels of them, I reckon we can find something to amuse us, don’t you?”
“I’m not a kid anymore.”
He’d gotten serious again and Ivy suppressed her snort. No kidding.
“I won’t tell anyone we watched cartoons. I promise.” She crossed her heart, her belly tightening as Dean followed the action. “No nail painting. No cartoons. Your big tough-guy rep is safe with me.”
He held out the remote for her to take. “Okay, fine. Just nothing with singing princesses, all right?”
She shook her head with a grin, refusing to take the remote. “I suppose you wanna watch the Transformers?”
“Do they blow shit up?”
Ivy laughed. “Pretty sure.”
“I could probably stand that for a while.”
“Okay. Let’s do a deal, you choose one then I’ll choose one and we both have to agree to watch it no matter what.”
“Oh God, you are going to make me watch singing princesses.”
She shot him a mysterious smile. “Choose first and then we’ll see.”
“Good manners dictate that I allow the lady to go first,” he said, trying to pass her the remote again
Ivy deliberately sought his gaze before she shook her head. “I’m no lady.”
Chapter Eight
It took quite a while for the cartoon Seth had chosen to distract him from Ivy’s loaded comment.
I’m no lady.
As if he needed to be reminded of that. Holed up in this room with her he was excruciatingly conscious she was a woman.
But. She was a woman under his protection—whether she was aware of it or not. A woman whose father was not only paying him, but trusted him implicitly to look after her, to be professional.
And he did need to be reminded of that with her tiny denim shorts and bare legs in his peripheral vision sending every brain cell he owned into meltdown.
Thank God for the distraction of animated explosions! Soon enough he was immersed in the action and laughing at the television. Ivy was laughing, too, as they engaged in a funny running commentary on all the things that were wrong.
He was actually having fun.
Seth couldn’t remember if he’d ever had fun with a woman outside of the bedroom. Vague memories of his mother and clearer memories of his grandmother told him he had, once upon a time.
But that was a different kind of fun.
The truth was, he much preferred hanging out with the guys. Having been immersed in male environments for a large portion of his life, it was where he was most comfortable. He’d never known his father, but that had been more than adequately compensated for by his all-boys boarding school then joining the military and, in the last few years, immersing himself in the male-dominated arena of the security industry.
And he had made several very strong friendships with guys that he’d served with over the years. Guys he’d lay down his life for. But they were guy friendships, built on shared experiences, televised sports, poker, and beer. Not a lot of talk. Or expectation. Absolutely no prying or anything deep and meaningful.
Women were an entirely different force altogether. A complete enigma. Sure, he loved everything about them. How well they were put together, the way they smelled and laughed and took such good care of themselves. Their legs, their asses, their tits. Their tattoos. Their toenails.
But they were chatty. And he didn’t know how to do that.
The bedroom stuff he knew how to do. The other stuff not so much.
So it was surprising to learn he could laugh and have fun while hanging out with a woman—with Ivy—with absolutely no ulterior motive.
Sure, he wanted to yank her down the couch and rip her right out of those shorts, but that wasn’t going to happen and the fact he enjoyed doing something else with her was a revelation.
When an hour of Transformers ended Ivy chose My Little Pony. “You’re kidding me,” he said, looking at her face. Not her legs. Not her toes that seemed to be making it their mission to taunt him ever since they’d massaged his cock.
“Not a singing princess to be found,” she said.
Her voice wasn’t as husky today after a couple days rest from the bar but her gorgeous, insanely luscious mouth was the same as always. It was hard to believe it had only been the day before yesterday when she’d given him the briefest of tastes.
“Just rainbows and prancing ponies,” he grumbled.
“Is there something wrong with a land where everyone is good and kind to each other and they all live in harmony?”
“Yes.” Seth nodded. “No explosions.”
She tucked her legs up underneath her. Seth did not move his gaze from her face. “Are you backing out on our deal?”
“We should have talked about veto power.”
She snorted. “We should have talked about punishment for reneging.”
Punishment.
Their gazes locked for a few beats. Seth knew she hadn’t meant it that way but his rapidly swelling dick didn’t seem to care. Nor did it care that the kind of punishment he was thinking about was hardly entry-level sexual activity. Definitely not suitable for virgins.
Unless you were an insanely rich billionaire.
“Fine,” he said, dragging his gaze away and his mind off silk ties and hot wax.
She grinned at him. “You’re going to love it.”
“I doubt that very much.”
But again he was wrong. Seth laughed his ass off the entire way through the hour, poking fun at the pastel cartoon, and Ivy joined in good naturedly. Then it was his turn to pick again. He chose SpongeBob SquarePans. She countered the next hour with Powerpuff Girls. Again, not something he would have chosen but man, those little girlies kicked some serious ass.
Before he knew it was late afternoon and Roadrunner was meep, meeping his way across the screen. The cops had called in with Chinese takeout and another we’re closing in update around lunchtime and they were currently munching the
ir way through an entire packet of salt-and-vinegar chips.
“Do you mind if I use your shaving cream and razor to do my legs? They’re in a really bad way.”
Seth glanced at her, startled. She had her legs stretched out on the coffee table and was inspecting them with a frown while she sucked salty chip residue off her fingers. For sanity purposes his gaze dropped to her legs. Which turned out to not be such a sane decision.
There was nothing bad about Ivy’s legs.
“Dean?”
“Ah, sure,” he said, dragging his gaze away from temptation and back to the Roadrunner.
It was a relief when she rose immediately and headed for the newly vacuumed bathroom. Seth planted his forehead in his palms and gave a silent groan. Why was she doing this to him? They’d been having a perfectly enjoyable day. And then she had to go and fill his head with visions of her shaving her legs.
With his razor. And his shaving cream.
Legs that were hard enough to ignore now. Add silky smooth into the mix and he wasn’t sure he could be trusted around them.
Much to his surprise, Ivy reappeared carrying a towel, his razor, the can of cream, and the one remaining glass tumbler filled to about the three-quarter level. She sat herself back on the couch again and shoved everything on the coffee table.
What the fuck was she doing? She propped her right leg up on the table, her hot pink toenail polish taunting him. She leaned forward and sprayed a strip of shaving foam up her leg, moving a lot easier today than she had yesterday.
Thank Christ. There was no way he was shaving her legs for her!
“You’re going to do that here?” Seriously? This could not be happening to him.
She put the cream back on the table. “Yes? I don’t want to miss out on all the fun. And I can prop my legs up on the table so it doesn’t hurt my hip. Would you rather that I didn’t?”
“No, no,” he assured, even when he wanted to say yes, yes, hell-fucking-yes. “Shave away.”
He turned his attention to the television although his concentration was shot. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t shut down his peripheral vision as she first lathered the foam right up to mid-thigh, then set about removing it in neat, methodical rows.
