by Amy Andrews
The quiet scrape as the razor did its job and the splash of water as she swished it around the tumbler to clear the blades eroded his resistance. The strong scent of cardamom wafted toward him and hung heavy in the air.
She seemed oblivious, watching the telly as she worked on her legs, laughing occasionally, but all Seth could think about was grabbing an ankle and dragging her toward him, lifting it to his face, then running his nose up her calf, past her knee, and into the hem of her shorts.
Inhaling every smooth, naked inch of her scented skin.
How long would she smell like him? And how much did he want to stamp another scent all over her? An earthier one. That intoxicating combination of pheromones as two people got hot and sweaty together.
Not as fragrant as cardamom but 100 percent sexier.
The Roadrunner show came to an end and instead of flicking to another station he turned to her and said, “Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you get out of here?”
He had to say something. That razor was getting higher and higher and he was going to be hard pushed to even bother pretending he wasn’t looking in a moment. At least if they were talking it wouldn’t look like he was constantly trying to perve.
And Seth was a great believer in facing his demons.
Of course this one wasn’t his standard-issue demon. Pastel hair, pale legs, hot pink toenails, and fig leaf underwear.
Although her mouth was pretty damn sinful.
“Oh.”
She was clearly surprised by the question, her hand pausing mid-shave, her mouth parted slightly as she assessed him for long seconds before leaning forward and swishing the razor through the foamy water.
“Are you going back to the bar?” he continued, desperate for conversation. Any conversation.
The irony was not lost on him.
Water dripped off the razor as she applied it to her skin again. “No. I think I’ll just head home. I only had two weeks left on my contract and being shot at has somehow kind of dampened my appetite for bar work.”
“Yes,” he said, forcing himself to smile. “I can see how that would blow.”
She laughed and his smile became more natural in response to her easy humour. “What about you? Do you really want to go back to a place where people are murdered in the alley outside? Clearly it’s dodgy.”
Seth laughed then. “It’s always been dodgy, Ivy.”
“True. But it was only short-term for me.”
“My contract’s almost up, too, and let’s just say I think I’ll be looking elsewhere.”
Not exactly a lie. His contract with her father was up when she left the Cross Bar.
“Oh yes?” she said, grabbing the towel and wiping the remnants of foam off her leg. “Where exactly? Another bar?”
“Maybe,” he fobbed as she depressed the pump on the shaving cream and another strip of blue gel, up her left leg this time, morphed into white foam before his eyes.
“Is that wise with your tinnitus?” she asked, her attention firmly on foaming up her calf and shin. “Aren’t there other jobs around that require muscle which don’t involve ear-splitting music? Like those security guards in the armoured cars that carry around money for banks and stuff or maybe even personal protection?”
“Yes. There are options,” he said, following the path of the foam higher and higher.
The truth was he didn’t need to consider any options when he had a thriving security company to run. One that had a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies. One that was in the middle of negotiations with a huge multi-national banking corporation over a security contract that was worth millions.
Being out in the field during this time, having to leave a lot of those talks up to Kenny, his 2IC, hadn’t been the best timing, but that was just the way the cookie crumbled. The Colonel had asked for him and Seth would never have refused.
Once upon a time the idea of a desk job would have bored him to tears, but there was something about running your own show that Seth thrived on. He’d always had a good head for logistics and it had stood him in good stead. He liked being in control of everything—something that often wasn’t the case in the military.
Seth watched as Ivy ploughed the razor through the untouched foam, running his hand over the stubble on his jaw. He could do with some of that foam himself. He’d shaved this morning but with his dark coloring it didn’t take his whiskers long to push through again. It’d be easier to let it go, but being unshaven reminded him of the desert, of a different time in his life, of a different person and, in his new line of work, dealing with important clients, it paid to stay well kempt.
Of course his razor was going to be useless now she’d blunted it all to hell.
She leaned forward, swishing the razor through the water, then looked at him over her shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”
Seth tensed as he guiltily dragged his gaze off her legs.
Was it going to be a question he could answer or was he going to have to tell her another lie?
“Sure.”
“You said last night that your tinnitus was an occupational thing from bouncing in clubs.”
Seth’s jaw locked. “Yep.”
Her gaze meshed with his. “I get the feeling you weren’t exactly telling me the truth.”
“Really?” It killed Seth to act this casually when his heart was just about pounding out of his chest.
“Yes, really.” She turned back to the tumbler and gave the dripping razor a shake.
Seth didn’t know what to say to that. He had been economical with the truth last night. Ever since he’d met her. But he knew from experience that sometimes it was best not to say anything at all.
“You wanna know what I think?” she murmured, the razor scraping quietly through the foam.
“Okay,” he lied with as much coolness as he could muster, watching her downcast head.
“I think you’re ex-military. I think being English you probably saw service in the Middle East and as tinnitus is the number one cause for medical discharge, I’m guessing you got it from some kind of combat. I’m also guessing that if it’s true it’s not something you ever talk about and you’d probably rather sit here and paint my toenails again than discuss any of it.”
Seth would have laughed had her insight not been so damn spot on. He regarded her seriously as his brain sifted through his options. Her hair had fallen forward in a curtain, obscuring her face and he wished he could see it.
Was she bluffing, hoping to get lucky, or was she really sure?
Did he stick with his story or tell her the truth? As much of it as he could, anyway? There was certainly a lot he could tell her about his past that would have no bearing on what he was doing now or who he was doing it for.
She flicked her hair back as she washed the razor off and peered at him over her shoulder. “How’d I do?”
It was on the tip of Seth’s tongue to shake his head and tell her to try again. But. He couldn’t deny how much he wanted to tell her the truth. How sick he was of lying to her. Lying by omission every night from a distance at the bar was one thing. Lying to her face every day was much harder. And there were some truths he could share.
“Not bad.” Seth held his breath waiting for her response. How would she take it? But she just smiled and turned back to the job at hand. “That’s pretty good deducing there, Sherlock,” he pressed, his jaw almost cracking from trying to keep it light. “What gave me away?”
“You forget I grew up in a military household,” she said, not bothering to look up from her leg. “I can pick a military dude from a hundred paces. Not to mention the ninja moves with the whole kicking-the-door-in thing last night and dragging me out of the alley.”
She looked at him again as she washed the razor in the tumbler. “So, what happened?”
“Happened?”
“The tinnitus?”
Seth ran his fingers through his hair contemplating how much to tell. “An extraction that went
a little…”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Fubar?”
He smiled. Definitely fucked up beyond all recognition. “Yes. Bad intel. My team was pinned down, came under sustained fire and heavy shelling in Afghanistan.”
“So you were Special Forces?”
Seth frowned at her very accurate statement. “And how would you know that?”
“Because you said team. Not platoon or company or patrol. Team is a special-forces term.”
He smiled. “Your daddy taught you well.”
“What can I say? You pick up the lingo after a while. Royal Marines?”
“Yes.”
Droplets dripped from the razor and plopped in the water below as Ivy held it suspended above the glass. “Were you injured?”
“No. But a shell landed not far from me. Knocked me on my ass. Ruptured my left eardrum and left me with a permanent buzzing reminder.”
“Anyone die?”
Her bald question surprised him. So many people pussyfooted around asking, using euphemisms to soften their interest. “Two.”
His answer surprised him even more. He didn’t usually talk about this kind of stuff. And that day in particular was still hard to even think about. But it was surprisingly easy to tell Ivy. Maybe it was because he knew they’d never see each other again. Maybe it was because she understood, at great personal cost, the price violence exacted. Or maybe it was the compassion and understanding blazing in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
He believed her. “Thank you.”
“About your hearing, too.”
Seth shrugged. “Better than being dead.” It had been a small price to pay, much smaller than two of his team. And whenever the ringing got too frustrating he tried to remember that.
“Sure. But don’t dismiss the toll it took on you just because you lived. You were discharged, right? Medically? Something I’m guessing someone like you wouldn’t have wanted.”
“What do you mean someone like me?”
“A career soldier. Like my father.”
Seth was impressed by her assessment. “I…had planned on staying in, yes.”
“So that must have been difficult for you. I remember how hard it was for my father and he was voluntarily retiring. Well…” She smiled. “Mostly voluntarily.”
Seth smiled back at the qualification. He understood how the Colonel must have felt when faced with his decision. Seth had loved being a Marine more than anything he’d done before or since. Being discharged because of his hearing when he was still as physically capable as ever had been a tough blow. “It was a…” How did he adequately describe that period in his life? He’d felt like his family was being taken away. Again. “…difficult time.”
She stared at him for a bit longer, her lips parted, her gaze roving all over his face, then turned back to her leg. “How bad’s the tinnitus?”
“It’s bearable for the most part now. Sometimes it’s worse than others.”
She didn’t say anything for a while as the razor edged over her knee and higher. Seth didn’t feel the need to fill up the silence, the action was engrossing enough. “So what was your handle?” she asked eventually as she tossed the razor into the glass and grabbed the towel, wiping the excess foam off her leg.
“Handle?”
“Yes, you know,” she said, curling her clean, dry legs until she was sitting lotus-style on the couch, her body angled in his direction. “Your call sign, your nickname?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Lieutenant.”
She laughed. “Come on, you must have had one back in your plebe days? One that all your military buddies use.”
Seth hesitated at the cusp of spilling another titbit of information about himself. It had been such a foreign thing to do, yet somehow, with her looking all cosy and relaxed in the corner of the couch, he wanted to.
“You going to make me guess?”
He shook his head. “Hot Rod.”
“Really?” Both her eyebrows lifted, clearly surprised. “Because…you like fast cars? Or you like to drive too fast?”
Seth’s sense of contentment fizzled a little knowing he couldn’t tell her the real reason without revealing his identity. So, rev-head was going to have to do. “Guilty as charged on both counts.”
“Dad’s used to be Cuba because he always carried a cigar on his person. Still does.”
Yes. Seth remembered. The Colonel’s men had referred to him as that when Seth and he had first crossed paths in Afghanistan fifteen years ago during a joint op with the Australian Special Forces. It had been Seth’s first tour.
The extraction had been a success, but the enemy had recovered quickly and had closed in on them as they rendezvoused with the chopper. Seth had been shot in the leg, the shock and the pain crumpling him to the ground. Under fire, Captain Danforth, as he’d been then, had jumped out of the chopper, hauled Seth’s ass out of the godforsaken dirt and dragged him to the waiting bird.
The injury hadn’t been too serious—nothing broken, missed the artery, but if the enemy had gotten to him first… Ivy’s father had saved his life that day and Seth had never forgotten.
“Probably been a while since anyone called him anything other than Colonel, I would imagine.”
She grinned. “Oh yes. I call him it sometimes, though, when he’s at his most irritating.”
“I’m sure he appreciates it.”
“Someone’s gotta keep him grounded.” She smiled as she folded her arms, pushing her breasts together. Which was totally frickin’ hot. “You know, we should tell the cops.”
Seth dragged his gaze off her chest as he tried to switch from his little head to his big one to figure out what she meant. “About what?” Her father being a retired Colonel?
“About your special ops history.”
Seth’s heart rate spiked. Christ, no! The last thing he needed was the cops digging around too hard in his past and finding out he wasn’t who he said he was. “I don’t think that’s necessary. They’re doing an excellent job. And it could be detrimental if we do.”
“Detrimental how?”
“I’d hate them to pull resources off us if they think I can do their job for them. I may have skills, but they’re privy to a lot more intel about this case. If it was just me then I’d make the case, but it’s not.”
He couldn’t let anything to happen to Ivy. And not just because her father was paying him or he owed the Colonel. Because she was Ivy and he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone hurting her.
The bruise on her hip still made him want to throw up.
He’d do this for her regardless of who her father was.
“Besides…I don’t think you can ever have too much protection.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “If you think so.”
She unfurled her legs and swung them onto the ground. “You want a coffee?”
“Sure.” Seth was used to charging his system with caffeine, but it had been a long time since he’d drunk so much coffee in just a few days.
He watched her flick the jug on and reach up into the overhead cupboard for mugs. The raggedy hem of her shorts that barely covered her butt lifted as she stood on her tippy toes and he could see two half-moons of ripe ass. At any other time in a hotel room with any other woman he’d get up and go fill his hands, press his cock into her, whisper in her ear to come to bed.
But…she wasn’t any other woman. She was his protectee.
She was the Colonel’s daughter.
Chapter Nine
Ivy poured boiling water over the coffee granules in the bottom of the mugs. She could feel the heat of his gaze and her hand shook as she picked up the spoon to stir. Her heartbeat quickened.
Something had shifted between them this afternoon as they’d talked. She was sure of it. The look in his eyes when she’d mentioned punishment had been compelling. She’d never been a fan of BDSM storylines in her reading, but that look had made her realize that, with the right man, she’d be willing to experiment.
>
She’d definitely caught him staring at her a couple times. Sure, he’d pulled his gaze away quickly from her legs and her breasts when she’d clocked him, but he’d definitely been checking them out.
And now he was doing it again.
She was becoming more and more convinced that he was interested in her. Which was too mind-blowing to even wrap her head around. Sure, he’d rejected her kiss outright the other night, but maybe he was just exercising some of that honor Special Forces dudes were known for. Maybe a guy like Dean was never going to try anything in a forced situation where there was a gap in age and experience.
Maybe it was going to have to be her who made the first move.
Ivy didn’t want to get her hopes up, but the fact that he’d opened up to her a little was encouraging. “Your family must be very proud of you,” she said casually as she picked up the mugs and made her way back toward him, keen to know even more.
She put his mug down on the table in front of him and he leaned forward and swooped it up. The way his shoulders moved under his T-shirt did funny things to the base of her spine and Ivy sat before she fell on her ass.
“I don’t have one.”
“None?” She remembered that his mother was dead but…no one?
“My mother died when I was six, I never knew my father, and I have no siblings.”
A surge of compassion heated her chest. “I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is.” He shrugged.
Maybe. But Dean being all alone in the world gnawed at her gut. “Well, now you’ve started, you might as well tell me everything,” she said, keen to strike while the iron was hot.
Who knew how long his sharing mood would last?
“From the beginning,” she insisted, “starting with where in England you’re from.”
He sighed and put down his mug, and for a second Ivy thought he was going to refuse, but he turned toward her instead. “It’s very convoluted,” he warned.
She shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll keep up.”
“Okay, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He paused before continuing as if he was waiting for her to change her mind. Fat chance.
“I’m not from the UK originally. My father was English. My mother was half-French, half-Portuguese.”
