Moving Target

by Kimberly Van Meter

  “It’s not that,” he cut in. “You were...perfect.” Even though he bit out the word with some reluctance, Kat warmed with delicious pleasure. Jake put his laced hands over his eyes and exhaled as if the weight of the world had just landed on his shoulders. “Kat...I shouldn’t have—”

  “Don’t say it.” Now it was her turn to interrupt. “Don’t you go saying that you regret what happened between us because that will ruin all the wonderful feelings I have right now. I know all of the ethical reasons and professional reasons why you might think you did something wrong but I’m telling you, don’t waste your energy on those feelings. I wanted this. I set out to seduce you.” At his raised brow, she nodded vigorously, owning every syllable. “That’s right. I did. I knew I wanted you to be my first. Probably from the moment I saw you. Subconsciously, of course. And I don’t feel the least bit troubled by it.”

  “Kat, you don’t understand...I’ve never lost control of myself like this. I’ve never ignored my training because of a woman. Any woman. Except you.”

  “Okay, I’m not sure if I should be flattered or insulted.”

  “Definitely flattered,” he said. “But I’ve compromised myself and the mission by giving in to your seduction.”

  “How have you compromised the mission?”

  “No personal ties. I’m not supposed to feel anything for the targets.”

  “Well, you’re not a robot. You’re a human being. It’s only natural that you would feel something for another person. Besides, this is an extreme situation. Like in Speed, when Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves fall in love after the bus incident. Extreme emotion can mimic the feelings of infatuation. I should know. Right now, I’m feeling really infatuated with you. Especially with that thing you did with your tongue.” She blushed but held his gaze. “I mean, what woman wouldn’t? That was pretty spectacular.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “But the other part was only so-so, right?”

  “Well, to be fair, it was my first time. I suspect it gets better, right?”

  “With the right partner, yes.”

  She read between the lines and didn’t like the message. “Are you saying that was a one-and-done as they say? You promised we could do it again,” she reminded with a frown. “Aren’t you a man of your word?”

  “Kat! Come on, cut me some damn slack. I’m trying to do the right thing here.”

  “And I don’t want you to do the right thing,” she snapped, irritated. “I want you to show me how great sex can be. I’m not asking you to marry me. I just want to know what it’s like to lose myself in another human being before I die. Is that so much to ask?”

  “Stop talking about dying. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, you goose.”

  “Well, I don’t know that and you can’t promise me that. So, I would rather grab hold of my opportunities as I find them.”

  “Are you saying you would’ve had sex with anyone handy during this ordeal?” he asked, offended at the idea.

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

  He sighed. Was it bad that she wanted to jump his bones again right this second? She bit her lip. Men needed a recovery period, according to her research. “Do you think you’ll be sufficiently recovered by morning? I’d like to squeeze in another romp before we have to go back on the run. Or we could try it in the car! I’m open to experimenting. I have a lot of time to make up for.”

  Jake groaned and then laughed as if she were the strangest woman he’d ever come across.

  “I can’t believe how blithely you’re talking about sex for someone who was only just introduced to it.”

  “Well, like I said, I’ve lost out on a lot and I think I have a pretty active interest in sex now that I’ve been given a taste. I might even be insatiable. Or maybe this is normal? I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “I think I have no idea how to answer that,” he said. “A part of me is in shock that we’re talking about it at all.”

  “Yeah, it’s probably a strange conversation to have with someone, particularly someone you don’t know very well aside from carnally. Tell me something about yourself that no one else would know.”

  Jake did a double take. “What do you mean?”

  “Lovers should know private details about one another. Maybe if we share information, it will make things less awkward between us.”

  Jake paused and for a moment, but he finally said, “When I was a kid, I was afraid of clowns.”

  “Isn’t every kid?” she teased lightly, and he chuckled. Kat wanted to know everything about Jake and hungered for every morsel of information tossed her way. Was this normal? This desire to climb in to someone’s life and attach yourself to it in some way? She knew the answer—it wasn’t. But there was something about Jake that felt right in every way, even before they’d been intimate, and if she weren’t so drunk on the afterglow of their lovemaking, she might’ve paused to question herself. But she didn’t want to question or examine the how or why. She only wanted to feel. “I am allergic to cats.”

  “Cats and anesthesia. Check. Anything else I should know?”

  A playful smile curved her lips. I might be becoming addicted to you. “No. Not that I’m aware but that’s half the problem with allergens...sometimes you don’t know about them until you’re puffing up and going into anaphylactic shock.”

  “Good point.”

  Kat yawned and decided it was time to catch some shut-eye. She was wondrously drowsy all of a sudden. “Sex is a good workout. And to think I’ve been wasting all that time on the treadmill when I could’ve been doing this. Good night, Jake.”

  “Good night, Kat,” he said, startling her when he pulled her to him. She smiled and snuggled against him. This was perfect, she thought as she drifted to sleep with Jake’s arms curled around her. Absolutely perfect, she thought with a happy sigh. Except for the impending death part—that part she could do without.

  * * *

  Dumb-ass rookie mistake, Jake berated himself as he listened to Kat’s soft, even breathing. But he couldn’t deny that Kat fit quite nicely up against him. Everything about her called to him with a siren’s song that he couldn’t fathom but ultimately couldn’t resist, either. What was he doing? Losing his edge. How was this possible? Not a clue. But what was the point of denying that he was strangely—recklessly—attracted to Kat? How was it possible that she got prettier each time he looked at her? And now that he’d taken her cherry? He suppressed an all-over shudder of awareness and tightened his hold on her. He’d never felt so damn possessive in his life. He’d always thought the whole primal urge thing was a crock of shit. People who couldn’t control themselves were simply weak. It was a hard pill to swallow that he’d suddenly fallen into that category.

  But he’d do it again. In a heartbeat. Feeling Kat beneath him, swallowing her cries in his mouth, being the first man to know her carnally...it wound his clock in the worst way. Had he ever in his life been so reckless with a woman? He searched his memory and came up empty. In fact, a different memory came up that was the exact opposite.

  “Relationships slow you down, make you vulnerable,” Nathan had advised him, shortly before he’d split for good. The two had been down at the creek, staying out as long as possible to avoid running into their father, who was likely drunker than hell and ready for a fight. Nathan, at seventeen, was always a good target. Jake had asked why Nathan had broken up with his girlfriend, Darla. Little had Jake known then that Nathan had been cutting ties so he could bail without attachments. “Besides, there’s no sense in sticking to one when there’s plenty others out there to take their place.”

  “I thought you liked Darla,” Jake said. “She seemed pretty cool and she’s hot.”

  “Yeah, well, I ain’t looking to find a wife. There ain’t a girl out there smart enough to find a way to put a ring
on this finger.”

  “It might be nice to have someone who’s always on your side, you know?”

  “There ain’t no one out there like that. Given the right circumstances, everyone is willing to stab you in the back if you let them.”

  Jake didn’t want to believe that. He knew his parents had a rotten marriage—likely because his mom and dad were both rotten people—but surely not everyone was like that.

  “Are you saying that you’d stab me in the back?” Jake asked Nathan.

  “Brothers are different.”

  Relief flooded Jake’s chest. His brother was all he had in this world. “Well, I kinda like Lily Frazier. I was thinking of asking her out. What do you think?”

  “That the redhead?” Nathan asked, and Jake nodded. “She’s cute enough, I guess. You know you can’t bring her around Mom and Dad, right?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Jake answered with a snort. “I ain’t dumb.”

  “Good. Just checking. If you like her, go for it. Have fun but don’t get attached. When you get attached...they can be used against you as a weakness. You get me? Especially if Mom and Dad find out.”

  Jake nodded at the solid advice. “I’ll keep it on the down low.”

  “Good.” Nathan closed his eyes, swinging his feet off the rock they were lying on, his toes skimming the water. Then he sighed. “I guess we better head back.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Think he’s passed out yet?”

  “Let’s hope,” Nathan replied grimly. “Go around the back and enter through the kitchen. Chances are he’s passed out in his recliner by now with Mom sacked out in her bed.”

  “Yeah...hopefully.”

  But luck hadn’t been on their side. In fact, their old man had been waiting for them both. Jake still had a scar on his back from where the belt hook had dug into his skin and ripped it wide-open. Nathan’s scars went even deeper. Jake wondered if Nathan’s girl, Jaci, knew half the crap that had gone down in their childhood. No child should have to live through what Nathan and Jake had.

  And just as one memory faded, another intruded.

  “You think you’re so smart,” his father had sneered to Jake one night, so drunk his words slurred. Their mother was out and, although she was never much help, at least when she was around their father seemed to tone down his attacks. Nathan’s theory was that the old man didn’t want anyone who could testify against him in court if by chance one of his kids died from his “punishments.”

  Jake, eleven and still scrawny, was no match for his father, and the familiar tremble of fear had begun to quiver in his belly. “Get over here, boy. I’m gonna wipe that look clean off your stupid face,” his father had demanded, but Jake had refused, knowing that to get within grabbing distance of his father would mean ending the night with possible broken bones. Sometimes their father seemed eaten by a rage that he could only assuage through violence. And for some reason, he delighted in taking out his rage on his boys. There’d been no mercy—ever.

  That night Nathan had been gone. There’d been no one to protect him. And no one to hear his cries.

  And when it was all over? No one to take him to the hospital.

  Just the recollection of that night managed to cause sweat to slick his skin. Jake tried never to think of those memories. He buried them deep with the express intention of never giving them air. It’d been a long time since he’d thought of those days, but since Nathan had returned to his life, all sorts of buried pain had started to resurface. And now on top of that, he had Kat to contend with. As his commanding officer in the army, Colonel Ralph Rangdon, used to tell his troops when they went on leave, “Men, think with your heads—not your peckers!”

  Good advice then, good advice now.

  And yet...unlike then, today he’d completely done the opposite.

  What was he going to do? He supposed he’d have to get it figured out before someone got hurt—someone like Kat.

  Chapter 12

  Kat awoke to an empty bed—not the reception she was hoping for after their intimate night together—but she wasn’t entirely surprised, either. While she was happy as a clam throwing caution to the wind, Jake had clearly been eaten up by their lack of control. Kat had never met a more wound-up man with control issues than Jake. Was it weird that in spite of this, she found him wildly alluring?

  She climbed from the bed, wincing at the inevitable soreness in private places as well as within muscles that had never previously been exercised, and padded from the bedroom to find Jake doing push-ups in the living room. From the sweat glistening on his back, Kat surmised he’d been out here for a while.

  Hello, excellent male specimen. She leaned against the door frame, waiting for him to finish and enjoying the show. Every muscle stood out in relief against his bronzed skin and she envisioned with startling clarity how she’d love to give him a tongue bath. Instead, she said from the doorway, “I know I’m new to this but I was surprised to wake up alone this morning. Is everything okay?” she asked.

  Jake finished two more and then popped to his feet. His gaze flared with raw hunger the moment he saw her standing there in her birthday suit. He grabbed the small towel off the sofa and wiped the sweat from his face. “Please get dressed,” he said, but there was definite interest glimmering in his eyes. “I already told you why this wasn’t a good idea.”

  “And I already told you why I don’t care.” She smiled sweetly. “If you want me dressed...come and dress me.”

  “Damn it, Kat, this isn’t a game. Now get your ass inside that bedroom and put some clothes on,” he said, gesturing angrily to the bedroom. “I’m trying to keep you alive. We’re not playing games here. How am I supposed to deliver you in one piece if I can’t keep my head on straight?”

  Kat suddenly felt very foolish and exposed. Here she was, standing naked and available, and he could barely look at her. Maybe she’d misread the signs. Totally possible, she realized with a sinking heart. She was a newbie at this particular social dance and not entirely graceful as it turned out.

  She lifted her chin and hoped it didn’t wobble as she spun on her heel and returned to the bedroom. This was the epitome of mortification. Offering yourself like you’re filet mignon and realizing you’re actually those junk pieces of meat the butcher gives to the dogs—yep, mortifying. She slipped her clothes on as quickly as possible and then covered her face with her hands, wondering what she’d been thinking—how could she have been so bold as to think that one night would make a difference in how Jake acted around her. She’d been so sure that things would be different. She’d envisioned waking up to Jake’s fevered kisses—particularly that kissing action in the “down there” region—and they’d spend the morning learning each other’s bodies like two heathens worshipping an ancient fertility goddess. But no. That’s not how it had happened and she should’ve taken that as a clue to how things would progress. It’d always amazed her that she could be so book-smart and yet when it came to social interactions in the game of life, she was such a damn loser.

  Okay, put your game face on, she told herself. Embarrassing situations were not new to her. High school had been one bad experience after another, filled with higher and higher levels of agonizing mortification. She could handle this. Looking at it objectively, she was still the winner. She’d wanted to lose her virginity to someone other than a nerdy bookworm and she’d accomplished that. It hadn’t been a wretched experience—the exact opposite actually, so what was she moping about? Because he didn’t want to lounge around like lizards in the sun together? Pshh. Whatever. This was just fine.

  She’d waited a long time to become a full-fledged woman. And she was going to make the most of it while she still could. Game face on, she marched back into the living room and faced Jake, only this time he was doing crunches and for a long moment, Kat was mesmerized by all those lovely hard ridges of muscle tha
t would’ve made a model cry with envy. Coming to her senses, she said in a clear voice, “Jake, I’ve come to reevaluate my position as your temporary lover and, while I was interested in having more sex, I respect your decision to decline my offer of continued coitus—”

  “Kat,” Jake interrupted, his breathing heavy as he continued to do his crunches. “What are you doing? This isn’t necessary. We can just agree to let what happened remain in the past so we can both focus on getting to D.C. alive.”

  “Oh. Of course.” She waited a minute then added, “However, I just want to add my thanks for your thoughtfulness with the mechanics of the act. It was truly very nice.”

  At that he stopped. “Very nice?”

  “Oh, yes. Far better than I expected it to be. Of course, being my first time I really don’t know how much better it could be. I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out. But now that I think about it, my current situation is going to make dating very difficult. I don’t know of many guys who could handle the potential threat of being whacked—is that the right term for it?—just for taking me out to dinner. Maybe you could introduce me to someone like you? Someone with protection experience?”

  Jake stopped and his thunderous expression told Kat exactly how he felt about the conversation. “I am not introducing you to anyone. I’m not a dating service. Besides, the last thing you need to be worrying about is dating.”

  “Says you. I disagree. If you’re not willing to educate me, then I will have to find someone who will. Now that I’ve tasted the forbidden fruit, I can’t go back to not knowing what it’s like to be touched. I liked it. A lot. And I want more.”

  Jake climbed to his feet and wiped his face again. “I can’t believe we’re having this ridiculous conversation,” he growled, stalking past her. “I’m done talking about you dating other people and continuing your sex-ploration mission.”