by Nadia Aidan
She stilled. “I am taking this seriously, but I’m ready to go home, and I see no reason to wait for you.”
She shook her head when Seth opened his mouth to protest. “The nice thing about being the boss is that I am the one who gives the orders and I always have the final say.” She stepped around his muscular frame. “Good night, Seth.”
* * * * *
Katherine Higgins was a world class, Grade A bitch, but damned if that didn’t turn him on. He let her walk out of her office because it was better that she think she’d won. He then phoned both Aaron and Joshua as he left Taboo. Satisfied that the matter of the threatening note was being investigated, he turned his thoughts to his lovely but infuriating boss.
By the time he got to his car she was gone, but her SUV was no match for his sporty convertible. When she finally pulled into her garage, he was already sitting on her couch, his legs stretched out before him.
He heard the door to the garage slam shut with a violent thud. She was pissed, but that was her problem. She’d hired him to fill that vague role of bodyguard and assistant, which meant he had keys to just about everything—her home, her office, even her vacation spot in Saint-Tropez. If she didn’t want him to do his job then she needed to fire him, which he was sure she was on the verge of doing when she stormed into her living room where he waited.
“I told you I didn’t need an escort.”
“And since you were gone by the time I got to the garage, you didn’t get one.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here?” she fumed.
“I’m here to make sure you’re safe—which is my job,” he said patiently, as if he were talking to a petulant child. Some days—many days—Katherine could be trying, but he knew her well enough to know her tough-girl attitude was necessary in her line of work and was more a façade than anything else.
She’d had to fight tooth and nail to build Taboo from the ground up into one of the hottest, trendiest casino resorts in Vegas. Katherine had a reputation for being cold as ice, and she didn’t easily let people behind her steely armor.
He stood. But she’d let Joshua in. She’d also let her guard down around her secretary, Michelle. There were probably only a handful of people who could say they knew the real Katherine, but he wasn’t one of them. For two years he’d been by her side, spent more time with her than anyone else, and during that entire time she’d never once let her walls down around him. It had taken him up to a few months ago to figure out why that was.
Seth ambled to his feet, towering over Katherine. The mocha-skinned beauty stood before him with her hands on her rounded hips, her caramel-brown eyes flashing, the smooth skin of her cheeks blooming red and her full breasts jiggling as her chest heaved from anger. She was all masculine bravado rolled into the sexiest, shapeliest, most feminine package he’d ever laid eyes on.
“You can go home now,” she said, her chilly words breaking through his thoughts.
He snorted. “I’m not going anywhere.” To emphasize his words, he peeled off his blazer, carefully watching her.
Her gaze followed his every move, her breath quickened and the flush in her cheeks turned redder.
He hadn’t set out to draw her attention, but now that he had it, he relished it. He bit back a smile of triumph—the icy queen wasn’t so cold after all. Of late, Katherine was doing a poor job of hiding her attraction to him, as if something had changed that made it hard for her to keep her desire for him out of her wandering gaze.
She wanted him. Good. At least he wasn’t alone in this intense attraction that pulsed between them, hidden beneath the layers of their animosity toward one another. With her taste in men, he hadn’t realized she was attracted to him until recently, until there were moments like this when he caught her watching him, her eyes burning hot with lust. It had taken him some time to figure it out, but now he understood why she fought so hard to keep her guard up around him. Her attraction to him scared her, and the only way she knew how to deal with it was to push him away. But the desire radiating from her was impossible to ignore, even harder to withstand. If she wasn’t careful, one day he might just demand that she fulfill the promise of passion burning in her honey-brown gaze.
He’d wanted her for a long time, had been attracted to her from the moment she’d hired him, but he’d kept his thoughts and feelings to himself. He liked his job, was good at it—he had no desire to fuck things up with an ill-fated affair. And that’s exactly what it would be.
As much as his body desired her, as much as he was attracted to her feisty and fiery personality, he’d soon come to realize Katherine lived for power, thrived on being in control, which he was content for her to have at work, but not at home, not in his bed, and he wasn’t certain she could relinquish her authority even there.
The men she dated—if he could even call them that—were wimps, puppies, boy-men who had no backbone. If those were the type of men she wanted then he stood no chance.
Seth would never, could never be that type of man. He knew he didn’t always have to be in control to hold the power. She could be the boss lady all she wanted, but if he ever took her to bed, he would take her, master her, brand her until she was so thoroughly dominated that when he made love to her, she wouldn’t even dare to come without his command.
“Seth?”
He stiffened, remembering where he was. “Hmm?”
“I asked, what are you doing?”
He glanced over at his discarded jacket. “That should be obvious.” He stepped closer toward her, drawing in a ragged breath to ease the lust that his wayward thoughts had conjured. “I’m going to be glued to your side until we catch whoever is doing this.” He shook his head when she parted her lips to speak. “You hired me to be your bodyguard. Now if you have a problem with that, then you’d better fire me.” He waited for her to say something, but she said nothing. Instead, she snapped her lips shut and pursed them into a tight line. “All right. Since you’re not going to fire me, then I’m headed to your kitchen to make dinner.” He shot her a wry glance. “Because we both know you can’t cook.”
He bit back a smile when she stuck her tongue out at him and rolled her eyes.
Brat.
“Since I came straight over, I didn’t have time to stop by my place to get a change of clothes, so Joshua is going to drop by with some of my things. I suggest you take a bath and relax. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”
With that, Seth brushed past her into the kitchen, leaving her standing there in the middle of her living room, fuming mad.
She hated being dismissed, hated taking orders, but until he caught the creep threatening her, he was the one in charge, not her, so she’d just have to get used to it. He bit back a sigh.
That was easier said than done.
* * * * *
Katherine’s stomach rumbled at the tantalizing aromas wafting down the hall as she strolled toward the kitchen. Even after a relaxing bath in her Jacuzzi tub, she was still furious with Seth.
No one dared boss her around—except him, apparently. He didn’t do it often, but when he did it had a curious effect on her. It rankled her, but somewhere beneath her irritation it stirred something within her, something she didn’t want to examine too closely.
“How was your bath?” Seth asked as she walked into the kitchen.
She sat down at the table and reached for the glass of wine sitting there. “Relaxing, although I probably would have relaxed more had you not been here.”
He arched one brow with a cocky grin. “What? Don’t tell me my presence unnerves you.” He leaned down to set an empty plate before her, his body just inches from hers, so close that with every breath she drew his masculine scent mixed with the spice of his cologne deep into her lungs.
She stared up at him, her eyes meeting his, and the flash of sexual awareness she glimpsed within his gaze made her heart skip a beat and her breaths uneven. She didn’t want to be affected by his intense gaze, she fought against it, but it was n
early impossible. She drowned in the golden depths of his eyes, her nipples tightening, pushing against the thin fabric of her white tank top.
She stood abruptly, putting as much distance as she could between them.
“I’ll grab the food,” she mumbled hastily, relieved that her voice didn’t shake. She busied herself with bringing the plates of food over to the table until he stopped her.
“I’ll get the salad,” he said, taking the bowl from her, “you sit down and eat.”
She nodded, still ruffled from the tense moment just minutes ago. What had all that been about? He’d simply been ribbing her, but then it had quickly changed into something more. The way he stared at her, as if he knew his words had hit their mark. And he was right—they had. He did unnerve her. Every time she looked at him she had to suppress a shudder, all the while fighting to ignore the sexual heat that clawed at her. Her intense awareness of him had begun the night she’d spied on him at the Red Velvet Rope and it was getting worse by the day.
“You look tense. Have some more wine,” Seth insisted as he topped off her glass. She reached for it desperately, nearly downing the entire contents in a single gulp. The wine would help her relax, take the edge off the lust that now burned through her veins, or so she thought.
* * * * *
One and a half bottles later, Seth was starting to seriously regret offering Katherine any wine. He’d had a few glasses, while she’d had so many that he’d grown tired of counting. In the two years he’d known her, he’d never seen her drink so much, but maybe this whole business with the menacing notes was finally starting to get to her. Whatever it was, who knew his buttoned-up, uptight boss was such a lush—or a flirt—and possibly a tease.
After dinner, they’d moved into the living room to watch the evening news and she lay stretched out on the couch across from him. Her hair, which had been in a tight and prim knot before dinner, now hung in soft waves over her shoulder. She propped her head up with one hand while she let the other one roam absently along the bare skin of her long, shapely legs revealed by terry cloth shorts. Shorts which, since she was now feeling the effects of the alcohol, were riding higher and higher up her thighs by the second. She was killing him, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think she was doing it on purpose.
She reached for the glass of wine on the coffee table between them and the swells of her breasts pushed dangerously against the scoop of her tank top until he swore they would tumble out at any moment.
A spike of molten desire caught him low in the gut and he shot to his feet, struggling to hide the obvious bulge in his pants with one hand.
He couldn’t take this anymore. He wanted to drag her into his arms, strip her out of her clothes and ride her lush, sweet body until neither of them could walk in the morning. Since that wasn’t going to happen, the longer he spent in her presence, the more he just tortured himself.
“Oh no you don’t.” He swiped the glass off the table before she could pick it up, ignoring her cry of protest. “You’re drunk and with your long day tomorrow you need to be at full speed.” He walked into the kitchen and dumped the contents down the sink. When he returned to the living room she was on her feet with her hands folded across her chest and a sexy pout on her lips.
“You didn’t have to throw it away,” she said with a slow smile, “I could have drunk it later.”
He shook his head, the corner of his lips curled into a small grin. “I bet you would have. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
Katherine turned toward the hallway, but after two wobbly steps he didn’t trust her to make it much farther without hurting herself. In a single motion he lifted her into his arms.
“Put me down, Seth,” she protested. “I can walk.”
He quirked a single brow. “Sure you can.”
With an exaggerated sigh, she flopped her head against his shoulder, as if the notion of arguing with him further exhausted her. She burrowed into his warmth, her arms lazily draping around his neck.
Her soft breasts pillowed against his chest and her subtle feminine scent combined with her rose petal perfume made him suddenly lightheaded as arousal coiled dangerously in his belly. He didn’t need to be a genius to figure out where all the blood had gone. Seth bit back a low groan as he quickened his steps toward her bedroom, and didn’t stop until he laid her down atop her bed.
She began to chuckle softly, just as he released her and straightened to his full height.
He frowned. “What’s so funny?”
He didn’t mistake the direction of her gaze, which was focused on his bulging groin, and when her lips curled into a Cheshire Cat grin his gut clenched.
“Seth, always so stoic, so unflappable, nothing gets to him,” she taunted softly, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Until now. What is it, Seth? Is it me?”
Her words stirred him and heat surged through his veins, but his expression never changed. “You’re drunk.”
She smiled. “In the two years I’ve known you, no girlfriend, no lover. What is it? Are you gay?”
His frown deepened. He didn’t like the direction this conversation was headed at all. “Not since the last time I checked, unless you know something I don’t.”
She smiled wider. “Sarcasm—you do that a lot.” She pinned him with her warm brown eyes as if she was searching for something written on his face. He remained stoic, unflappable, just as she’d described him. “So what is it? You don’t do commitment?”
He sighed. It was too late and he was too tired to have an esoteric conversation with his drunk boss about his love life.
“You’re tired and you need to get some sleep.” He turned to leave.
“I know all about you, Seth Kyoto.” He stopped then. There were a lot of skeletons in his dark past. He wondered which ones she’d dug up. “I overheard you and Joshua. I know what you like to do to women. That’s probably why you can’t find a girlfriend.”
He glanced at her from over his shoulder, his eyes revealing nothing even as his body pulsed with a heady combination of tension and desire. “Who says I’m looking for one?”
She shrugged as if she couldn’t care less, which infuriated him. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t have brought it up. He wanted to grab her, shake her, wipe that silly little drunken smirk off her face. But another part of him, his darker, more primitive side, demanded that he crush his lips to hers and punish her for careless and hastily spoken words that probed too deeply into a life he wanted to keep private.
He held her gaze, every darkly provocative thought he’d ever had of her, every primal emotion he fought to leash revealed in his eyes, and when she gasped, her lids fluttering in surprise, he knew she saw it too.
“You have no idea what I do to women,” he growled out in a dangerously low voice.
“Don’t I?” The challenge in her eyes was unmistakable. He clenched his jaw tight, fighting the urge to do to her what he’d longed to do to her ever since they’d met—tame her.
“No. You don’t,” he said firmly. He turned to walk out while he still had the strength.
“But what if I want to know?” Her voice was soft, a teasing whisper, and the breathy sound threatened to buckle his knees.
A weaker man would have caved, given her what in her naiveté she begged for, though he knew she wouldn’t have if she had any idea what he would do to her, but he wasn’t weak. He kept walking until he reached her open door.
“Good night, Katherine.” Seth closed the door behind him and kept walking until he reached her living room, where he would spend the night on her couch.
He let out a deep breath and closed his eyes. For the life of him, he didn’t know what had gotten into Katherine, what had prompted her to say those things, to challenge him like that. He just hoped that she was so drunk that she wouldn’t remember what she’d said in the morning. Because if she did remember, he knew she wouldn’t let this subject go, just as he wouldn’t be able to ignore her challenge.
For both their
sakes, he hoped this night would fade from Katherine’s memory with the first light of dawn. If it didn’t, they were flirting with something very dangerous, something that, like a raging wildfire, once ignited could not be stopped nor controlled.
Chapter Two
Katherine glanced up at the knock against her doorjamb.
“Hey boss, you busy?”
Joshua Diaz leaned casually against the doorframe, his tall, muscular body easily filling up her doorway. A lock of his coal-black hair fell across his forehead and his liquid brown eyes twinkled as he flashed her a flirtatious smile, his tiny dimples winking at her. Joshua had been her employee for almost five years, ever since he’d finished up at UNLV in criminal justice. He was a fast learner, smart as a whip and always had a ready quip to make her laugh. Joshua was also devastatingly attractive and possessed a lethal, sensual charm. And yet she wasn’t attracted to him, not in the least. Often, she’d decided that was pretty sucky for her, that her body craved Seth and not Joshua.
Joshua was a straightforward man, relatively easy to figure out, while Seth was a winding labyrinth, a puzzle that was ever changing. She sighed. Just her luck to want the one man she could never seem to read.
With a slight shake her head, she pushed thoughts of Seth aside because they made her head hurt, and smiled up at Joshua. “Of course I’m busy, but I always have time for you. What you got for me?”
He stepped inside, but stilled as soon as he glimpsed the shadowy figure in the corner.
“Don’t mind Seth. He’s taking this bodyguard thing more literally than figuratively these days.”
Joshua grinned. “I would too if I was guarding your body.”
Katherine couldn’t help but laugh, even as Seth growled behind her, “Get to the point, Diaz.”
“Right.” He cleared his throat, his expression sheepish though not apologetic, which made Katherine smile wider. “I’m glad you’re here, actually,” he said, glancing toward Seth. “Aaron called a few minutes ago. As suspected, no prints, and then he told us what we already knew, the letters are from the same person.”
