Easily? Hands on hips, Elizabeth jutted her chin out as she enunciated every word slowly. “He could have tried.”
Damn it, why was she being so stubborn? MacFarland was a large man, as wide as he was big. And she was this delicate little thing. Bravado only went so far. “And how would you have stopped him?”
She took off her earrings and left them on the bureau beside the pins. “In so many ways I don’t want to waste my time talking about it.”
Big talk, Cole thought. Maybe what she needed was someone to make her see that she wasn’t the superwoman she thought she was. He moved so that he blocked her next move. “Show me.”
Elizabeth cocked her head, trying to comprehend why he was behaving this way. She would have thought he’d be happy and be done with it. Why were men so difficult?
“Why?” she asked him.
“C’mon, show me,” he urged in the voice of a disbeliever. “Show me what you would have done if he’d tried to take you against your will.”
Even before he finished egging her on, Cole had grabbed her roughly, still angered by what he had almost allowed to happen.
The anger quickly left him as, less than a heartbeat later, he found himself flat on the ground, his arm twisted in an unnatural position, shooting slashes of pain up through the very roots of his hair.
Holding his arm captive, her heel at his throat, Elizabeth bent down until her face hovered over his. There was a smug look there that he would have given his soul to erase.
“Exhibit A,” she told him complacently. Letting his arm go, she stepped back, keeping him in her line of vision.
Cole was quick to get to his feet. “I didn’t see that coming.”
Her eyes met his. “Neither would he.”
He lunged at her then, just to bring his point home. The quick movement managed to catch her between his body and the wall. Elizabeth sighed, wilting just a little as if in surrender, and he knew he’d been right in being concerned.
The next moment, as their positions were somehow almost magically reversed and his arm was being jacked halfway up his back, Cole realized that maybe, just maybe, his concern might have been misspent.
Her face was less than an inch away from his. She let the moment sink in before releasing his arm. “Would you like me to continue? Or have you seen enough examples for one night?”
Cole rubbed his arm, working the circulation back through the limb. Okay, so maybe his fears about her safety were groundless. “Who taught you that?”
“The man I work for.” Jeremy had been adamant about her ability to defend herself in all situations. He was that way about everyone who worked for him. “Or more accurately, he had someone teach me.” Exhilarated and more turned on than she thought possible, given the situation, she took in a long breath and then released it. “He makes sure all his people are properly prepared for any eventuality.”
His people. The phrase echoed in his head. Was she part of some kind of organization? “So there’s more like you.”
He wasn’t asking, she realized, he was drawing a conclusion. “We are each individuals,” she informed him. “Something else he taught me.” Elizabeth deliberately kept referring to Jeremy by pronoun rather than by name. To the world, Jeremy was a man who took in desperate kids. Only the small band who were housed there knew what actually went on. And even when the times were rough and they might chafe to get out, loyalty to Jeremy was never a subject for question. It was a given, like the air they breathed.
Straightening his clothing, Cole found himself less than a breath away from her. The perimeter of the room was fading away.
The immediate circle around them tightened.
“So, how does one get the drop on you?”
“One doesn’t.” She could feel her heart begin to accelerate. Elizabeth raised her eyes to his. “Unless I want one to.”
“I see.”
They, or rather he, Cole silently amended, had just gone through a hell of a rousing example of foreplay. Without looking, he pushed the door closed. Then, crossing to her, he tilted her head back with the crook of his finger against her chin.
“Should I brace myself?” he wanted to know, his mouth close to hers.
Her heart was making the journey up to her throat. She needed to answer before she couldn’t make a sound. “Oh, I’d say definitely.”
He felt her smile against his lips a second before they were sealed to hers.
Everything he’d been feeling this very long evening, sitting in his car, listening for sounds, waiting to leap into action if she needed him, shot to the surface, bubbled over the top and then exploded.
Even before the kiss deepened, Cole was wrapping his arms around her, holding her close to him, knowing that tonight there was going to be no holding back. He couldn’t. The ropes were far too frayed and the seals were all warped and broken.
The kiss grew in intensity, dragging him down to its core. Lighting him on fire.
It felt as if he’d held himself in check a thousand years. He felt that pent up inside, that volatile. That explosive.
She made him want to race, to feast on her as if she were a banquet that would be over all too quickly, whisked out of his reach like some impossible dream.
Or like Brigadoon rising out of the mists, to exist only for a little while before retreating back into shadows of another world not seen, to remain there for the next hundred years.
He needed to take all he could, to absorb all he could, before he woke from this dream.
A sense of urgency swept over him, coupled with an eagerness to touch her, to feel her before it all disappeared. Before his common sense stepped up to the plate to stop him.
He wanted her with a mind-numbing desire that brought him to his knees and made him afraid. Afraid to continue because this was a side of him he’d never seen before, and he didn’t know where it would take him. More afraid to stop because he didn’t know if he could stand the feeling of deprivation if he did.
He continued. The choice really wasn’t his. It had been made for him way before he’d ever gotten to this point.
Lips still slanting over hers, Cole felt along her back for a zipper. He felt like a man in a blindfold, searching for his way.
There was no zipper.
He felt her laugh bubble up against his mouth. And then she silently raised one arm. She took his hand and pressed it to her side.
Flesh met metal.
It was a strange place for a zipper, but he wasn’t in any frame of mind to discuss location or what the designer had been thinking. He just wanted the zipper undone. Wanted Elizabeth’s dress to be on the floor. Along with the rest of what she was wearing.
He took to his task with relish.
So this was it, she thought. This was what it was like to be on fire, finally on fire with desire, with anticipation.
With expectations.
Every inch of her, outside and in, was throbbing wildly. As he slowly slid her dress off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor, she all but ripped his shirt from him. The beat of her heart echoing every movement, she quickly went to work on getting rid of his slacks. Her palms slid along his thighs as she dragged down his underwear along with the trousers.
Warm, seeking, openmouthed kisses commemorated every movement, every shred of fabric as it left their bodies. Excitement reached a fever pitch within her.
The room was spinning as he slid her panties off, then sealed his hands along the tender flesh of her buttocks, molding her to him.
Her breath, what was left of it, caught in her throat, lodging there.
She could feel the heat from his body searing her. Could feel his hard desire as it pressed against her, growing more demanding.
Suddenly she found herself tumbling backward, pressed against his hands as they cushioned her until she was against something soft. The bed. They were making love on the bed.
She’d envisioned a wide, luxurious bed when the first time happened. A suite in an outrageously expensive
hotel. All those were fantasies for a young girl, she realized. Because it didn’t matter where, it didn’t matter when. All that really mattered was with whom.
And she had chosen this man. Chosen him from that very first moment in the gallery.
Their limbs tangled, breathing became audible, echoing in her head. She felt as if she was running toward something, reaching for something. And only being with him would get it for her.
The fire in her veins went up another notch.
She couldn’t get enough of his mouth, would have been happy feasting on his lips the remainder of the night. But just as the thought whispered along her brain, she felt him moving elsewhere. He was kissing every single place he’d touched. Moistening it with his tongue, nipping at her with his teeth. Suckling until she was certain she’d lose her mind.
Twisting and turning her body, she tried to drink it all in. Sensations grew so demanding, the throbbing in her loins was so urgent, she bucked against him, not to move away but to have him sink deeper against her.
All of it. She wanted all of it.
Because this was her first time. And it was for all time.
Her hands slid along his body urgently, supplicating. She felt as if she was going to snap. Release, there had to be some sort of release. And yet, she wanted it to go on forever. She could die this way and it would be all right. As long as it was with him.
Cole couldn’t hold himself back any longer.
Maybe with someone else, he might have been able to prolong the foreplay until she was reduced to some mindless puddle of undulating flesh, and then he would take her. But the trouble was, whether or not he was reducing her to anything at all, she had completely done him in. Made him her prisoner.
The soft whimpers, the eager movements, the sultry flesh that tasted of sin and temptation, all of it had undone him until he had no choice but to take her. Restraint was no longer part of the equation.
His mouth sealed to hers, he moved himself into position. Parting her legs with his own, Cole slid himself in, then stopped as something in a distant haze came to him.
There was resistance.
Not from her, and yet—
He opened his eyes and saw that she was watching him. Was that fear in her eyes? Or was it something else?
Second thoughts?
And then, before he could ask, before he could gather his thoughts in order to even form a question, she had wrapped her legs around his and raised her hips so that she rammed against him. There was a muffled squeal of pain and then she began to move. Move so that it stole every thought out of his head, everything but the need to join her in the last step.
He fell into rhythm with her, then took the lead until they were racing faster and faster to a summit he was well acquainted with.
He felt her nails digging into his back, raking over him as she arched and moved urgently. All thought stopped. He drove himself in further.
Finally the moment had come, and it was everything he knew it could be. Too soon it was over.
Paradise receded into the mists along the horizon, taking its unique brand of euphoria with it. Something else came in its place. An ominous feeling that he’d done something wrong, misread signs. Taken something precious that he had no right to.
Cole began to roll off her, then stopped. He felt Elizabeth’s hands still pressed against his back, holding him where he was. Instead of rolling off, he pivoted himself on his elbows, raising up just enough to look at her.
A mass of confusion was running riot within him, as what he had done became clear to him.
“Gypsy?”
She heard it all in that one utterance, in that one name. Heard the questions, the confusion. Was that disappointment, too? She didn’t want to think about that, only about how he’d made her feel.
As if she could touch the sky without ever leaving earth.
Before he could ask, she beat him to the punch. “You’re my first.”
Her first? That made absolutely no sense at all to him. They weren’t living in the middle ages. Even then…
“How is that possible?” he asked.
“That you’re my first? Because there’s never been anyone else before you,” she replied flippantly.
It had to be a lie, Cole thought. Yet, there’d been that initial resistance, and he knew pain when he encountered it and she’d made a noise that sounded very much like someone experiencing pain when she’d forced him to go further. Not that it had taken much doing on her part.
Rolling off her, he thought he saw what looked like uncertainty in her eyes. Cole gathered her into his arms. He kept coming back to the thought that it just didn’t make any sense. “How can a woman who looks like you be a virgin?”
“It’s called being selective.”
“And you selected me?”
He wasn’t sure just how to take that. He didn’t want to feel responsible, had spent his adult life trying to avoid just that because, being who he was, he never knew if women were drawn to him or to his wealth, his position. Having worked hard at building his empire, he wasn’t about to lose it because of hormones. Not even to someone as unique as this woman.
“Let’s just say we selected each other.” She saw the wariness in his eyes and immediately reverted to her blasé, flippant persona, not wanting him to see just how much this had meant to her. “Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly handcuffed to me. You’re still free to work and play with others.”
He didn’t know if he liked the way she was just dismissing this, even though it made things a hell of a lot simpler for him. She’d all but blasted the foundations out of his world. Hadn’t he affected her in kind? “That’s not what I meant.”
The wariness had left his eyes, replaced by something she couldn’t begin to fathom. She only knew that it was melting down the steel fences she was trying to lock into place. “Then what did you mean?”
With each breath she took, she aroused him. He was having trouble thinking again. “How old are you?”
It was hard maintaining this facade around him when all she wanted was to kiss him, to have him kiss her. “Old enough to be lying here, nude, talking to you.”
He needed to understand this, to make sense of it. And to figure out how he really felt about it. “You’re what, twenty-six?”
Elizabeth smiled in response. Every woman liked looking younger than she was. “A little more.”
“Okay, a little more than twenty-six,” he echoed. Hell, he could have seen her being hit on in kindergarten by some cocky little five-year-old. “And in all that time, no guy’s ever…”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. They’ve ‘evered.’” Elizabeth laughed, amused by the way his voice trailed off. Was that to spare her feelings? “They just didn’t get anywhere.”
He began to trail his fingertips along her throat. “Because you tossed them across the room?”
He was doing it again, making her crazy. Making her want him. “Didn’t have to. I had a very protective brother.”
He pressed a kiss to her earlobe. “And where is this very protective brother now?”
She was definitely having trouble thinking. “Don’t worry, he’s out of the protection business, at least as far as I’m concerned.”
He kissed the point of her chin. “Does he know this?”
She found herself beginning to squirm again. Was this normal? Did it happen this way between a man and a woman, that they wanted each other more after it was over than before? “Afraid you’re going to have to start sleeping with a gun at your side?”
He pulled her beneath him. “I’d rather start sleeping with you at my side.”
He was flirting with her, she told herself, nothing more. He didn’t mean anything by it. So she played along, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “Does this mean we’re going steady?”
“It probably means I’m going straight to hell,” he murmured, beginning to kiss her again as the heat, the desire, began to roar through his veins again.
/> She laughed, threading her arms around his neck. “At least you’re already dressed for it.”
Chapter 11
He’d had to endure three meetings in the morning and another in the afternoon, as well as quelling one potential crisis before he had a chance to be alone with his thoughts for more than half a minute.
Now, sitting in his office, Cole wasn’t sure he wanted to be alone with them.
He’d never made love to a virgin before and, if he were honest with himself, he didn’t quite know how he felt about the fact. Being first had never mattered to him. What counted, what had always counted, was being good. Being the best.
A hint of a smile curved his lips. In the absolute sense, he supposed that in this particular case it didn’t really matter if he’d been at his best since Elizabeth had nothing to compare him to.
Best or not, he’d never felt so compelled before, so completely wrapped up in the act.
They’d made love once more that night, and he hadn’t slipped out to his own room until well past the witching hour.
It seemed rather appropriate, seeing as how Elizabeth had completely bewitched him.
He sighed, threading his fingers together behind his head as he rocked in his chair. When he got right down to it, he still didn’t know who she was.
As if some power higher than he was accustomed to dealing with was reading his mind, the door to his office opened less than a split second after a perfunctory knock. Hagen was in his office, closing the door behind him.
The man had obviously slipped by his secretary. Not an easy feat, Cole thought. Evangeline was going to be angry when she found out.
Hagen was holding a folder in his hands.
Dispensing with any polite chitchat or so much as a greeting beyond a nod, his chief investigator dove into the heart of the matter. “Finally got a clue.”
Surprised to see him, Cole said nothing. The private investigator, who hardly ever garnered a second glance on the street, seemed to be dwarfed by his office, Cole thought. Short, balding, with an average face that tended to fade from memory before it ever properly registered, Hagen was good at his job precisely because he was so unmemorable. He wasn’t one of those people who owned a room when they walked into it. He merely borrowed it on the sly, finding out what he needed to know before leaving again.
Immovable Objects Page 12
