Hot Ice

by Cherry Adair

  She drew a breath, exasperated. “I’m not playing this game,” she told him flatly as she felt for the wall behind her and spread her hand on the cool surface for balance. She held out her other palm. “Hand over the soap and get out.”

  “Despite your platinum invitation, I’m not going to have sex with you,” he told her flatly. “Nor do I have the time or inclination to wait while you fumble around trying to get clean on your own. It’s more expedient for me to do i—”

  “I beg your pardon?” Taylor’s jaw locked. “What platinum invitation?”

  “Your skin’s flushed, your pretty nipples are hard, and I can smell your arousal.”

  Taylor’s temper throbbed behind her eyeballs. The arrogant, egotistical—ass. She could feel his erection pressed against her stomach. She wasn’t alone in this hormone haze. “Do you have a death wish?” she asked indignantly, fully prepared to give his demise her best shot.

  “Lady, if you were capable of killing me, I’d rejoice. Right now you aren’t even capable of bathing yourself.” He pulled her toward him with a jerk, ignoring her shout of rage and the hand she was using to try and bat him away. “Close your eyes, I’m going to shampoo— Bloody hell!”

  Her heart skittered. Oh, God. “Now what?”

  “Your eyes are the most—I’ve never seen eyes quite that shade of blue.”

  Damn it. What else could happen? She’d obviously lost the brown contacts somewhere along the way. Her eyes were her most distinct feature. Pale blue and creepy-looking. And something she hid behind assorted colored lenses. Always. “Contacts.”

  “No, as stunning as your eyes are—no. Contacts couldn’t produce that incredible shade of pure, brilliant blue. They’re the real deal. My God, the color is incred— No, don’t close them.”

  He lifted her chin with the tip of his finger. She could practically feel his gaze travel across her features. Since his touch, even one this light, sent shock waves directly to her very core, she gave him a glare from sightless eyes, then let a shudder of a sob slip through. It wasn’t totally fake. Her emotions were on full overload. It had been a long, trying day, followed by a long, trying night. She was spent. Done. Exhausted. And at the frayed end of her emotional resources. She didn’t have the energy right now for this verbal volley.

  Apparently he felt the same way. “I’m letting go. Can you stand by yourself?”

  Taylor nodded, then felt ridiculously bereft when he released her.

  “Five more minutes. If you aren’t out of here by then, I’m coming in to finish the job. Clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  “I’ll leave the door ajar. Call if you need me.”

  “I won’t.”

  Six

  Taylor waited until his footsteps faded before running a hand down her wet skin, checking as much to make sure the soap was rinsed off as to reconnect with her traitorous body. She’d never reacted that way to anyone. She’d been ready to throw herself at him.

  Disgusted with herself, Taylor knocked her shin against the spigot. “Ow!” One more bruise. She fumbled around and finally managed to turn off the water, then stumbled out of the tub.

  “You okay in there?” he called.

  “Peachy, thanks for asking.” Taylor grit her teeth. Hunt. What an appropriate name for him. The man had stalked her and played her like a lion in the savanna.

  She grabbed the towel and buffed her skin with the cheap threadbare cotton. Codes? What was he talking about?

  She’d retrieved a necklace.

  And why did she get the feeling he didn’t work for Theresa Smallwood? That meant two people, or two organizations, wanted something Morales had.

  If only she’d had time to really look at the items she’d shoved into the silk bag. Damn. She was playing blind. Literally and figuratively.

  “Finished?” He stood in the doorway; she could smell him, and feel the heat radiating off him in waves.

  “Yeah.” Taylor felt him move behind her and propel her into the main room. “Could I have some clothes?” She’d felt around the bathroom and not come across the pile she’d dropped.

  “Sure.” He didn’t move.

  “Now?”

  “No.”

  Fine, she could be naked. She loved naked. He wasn’t using this situation against her. Taylor crossed her arms and hoped for a nonchalant pose.

  “Give it up, Lady,” Hunt growled.

  “What?” Taylor kept her tone even. Even a few feet of space helped her equilibrium settle.

  “You know what.” She heard him sit down.

  Back to the codes. What damn codes? Taylor cocked a hip. “Why should I give you anything?” she demanded.

  “Because,” he said softly, “you owe me.”

  She blinked. “Right. I owe you for the shower and trying to seduce me into submission.” She snorted. “I’ll write you a check.”

  “You owe me and you damn well know it.”

  “For what?” Taylor liked everything completely spelled out.

  “For breaking you out of that San Cristóbal hellhole, for one thing . . .”

  Hmm. Okay, he had something there. “Hey, I said thank you. I did appreciate it. But be honest. You didn’t do it for altruistic reasons. You wanted those—codes, which you knew I had, and you thought the only way you’d get your hands on them was to spring me. So really you were doing yourself a fav—”

  He kept going like she’d never interrupted him. “. . . for hauling your ass to a safe place—”

  “A true gentleman. I especially liked the ‘being treated like a sack of potatoes’ thing.”

  “For not calling the authorities and having you arrested—again.”

  Shallow reason at best.

  “A veritable prince,” she said tartly. “Of course, if you had called them, you would have had to explain your part in breaking me out.” She heard him move, the rustle of his clothes, the moment before his hands shackled her wrists.

  What was he going to do? Rape her? Not likely this late in the game. Taylor opened her mouth to argue—

  His fingers tightened a little more around her wrists. Ow! “Then who are you?” Taylor asked flatly. “Her muscle?”

  His tone sounded at once intrigued and uncertain. “Her who?”

  “You know her who,” she snapped, then frowned because, really, they sounded ridiculous. “I appreciated her offer, and you be sure to tell her that. But like I told her, I work alone. Always have. Hey, even in grade school I got detention for not working and playing well with others.”

  She felt the subtle tension in his muscles. All the way down her body. It felt good, but she was sure it didn’t bode well. Clearly, this information was news to him. And not good news.

  The calluses on his hands did amazing things to the inside of her wrists. She wished she could see him.

  “Imagine my surprise,” he murmured, shifting his weight. “Who was this woman, and what—specifically—did she want you to do?” He had a way of speaking ordinary words that made them sound ominous and threatening. He pushed her down onto the bed and draped himself across her. He seemed deceptively relaxed.

  Space. She needed space. “We didn’t become best friends.” Taylor’s brain spun as she tried to figure out exactly where this man fit into the picture. If he wasn’t in with the woman who’d tried to hire her to do the Morales job, then who was he? When the hell had she become so popular? Geez, couldn’t a jewel thief get any privacy anymore?

  “I’m assuming other people wanted a piece of my action. And you know what?” She arched her hips in an attempt to shove him off her body. She couldn’t even raise her hips a millimeter off the mattress. She drew in another calming breath. They couldn’t stay glued together forever. Sometime in the next—however long—this man was going to have to move. Dear God make that sooner rather than later. Already she could feel the heat pooling in her groin. It was only a matter of time before he accused her of overtures. She didn’t want him. Dammit.

  “Stop trying
to get a rise out of me,” he snapped. “And finish the bloody thought!”

  She relaxed, as best she could, meeting his gaze head-on, at least where she hoped his gaze was. Ho, boy. Never let them see you sweat. Or pant. She’d be damned if she’d be the only one turned on around here. If he could stand it, then so could she.

  Glaring up in his direction, she said flatly, “I don’t know what she wanted, and I didn’t give her a chance to ask. I told her no, and news flash, bubba—I’m telling you no too. If you’re not working with what’s-her-name, then tell whoever you do work for that I work a single act. I don’t do partners, and I don’t pay off muscle.”

  As she said that, his arm flexed. Too bad. “So if that’s it, let’s let bygones be bygones, and you can trot off to wherever you came from, and tell your friend, boss, mistress, gun moll, whoever—that I’m still not interested in taking on a partner. And by the way, I don’t like being fol—”

  Hunt covered her mouth with his hand. He needed to think. Did the woman ever shut up?

  He wanted Morales. He was this close to having him. And by God, nothing, nothing, would stand in his way. Especially not this woman.

  Morales’s Mano del Dios had been around for more than twenty years. They targeted their interpretation of sin, whether that was people or places. The Mano del Dios ranked number two on America’s Most Wanted List. Mano had a religious agenda. Something T-FLAC followed closely 24/7. Morales’s group adhered to an extremist interpretation of Christianity that justified violence against civilian targets to achieve political ends.

  Morales planned to take over the United States and then the world. His combination of religious righteousness and his ambition were a toxic and dangerous mix. Over time, the Mano del Dios had emphasized the imminence of the end of the world and stated that they would initiate Armageddon by starting World War III unless transgressions were stopped and people started leading righteous lives. The man was a religious zealot with an agenda. A bad combination.

  Under Morales’s leadership, the terrorist group had assassinated religious leaders worldwide, bombed nightclubs, theaters, movie houses, liquor stores, pharmacies, and abortion clinics. The group had raised its operational profile in 2000 with two attacks against international targets. It had been involved in clashes in Northern Ireland in December 2004, and carried out a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Russian Embassy in Beirut in January 2005.

  She was trying to gnaw his hand.

  She didn’t have the market on frustration. Jesus. The woman had a potent effect on his dormant libido. Ten seconds after seeing her naked, he’d wanted to be inside her. A heartbeat after touching her soft skin, and it was all he could do not to crush her beneath him right there in the fucking bathtub and push himself deep inside her until they were both begging for mercy.

  Hunt looked down at her. Her brilliant eyes were narrow with anger and frustration as she glared at him over his palm. She was a witch. Bruja— “Bloody hell!” He rolled off her and cradled his hand. “You bit me.”

  “You put your hand in my mouth.” Hell, she sounded reasonable except for the heaving chest and wild eyes.

  “I wanted you to shut up.”

  “Well, I wanted your hand off my mouth.”

  Her face was pink and shiny from the heat of the shower and he suspected, temper.

  Hunt shook his hand. He’d asked to be bitten, which pissed him off. Hell, he’d bite too. He leaned over the bed and grabbed her neatly folded pile of clothes.

  He tossed them at her. “I checked. Nothing in them.”

  She fumbled for her clothes like a drowning woman grabbing a life ring. “No kidding. I don’t keep anything of value on me, Hugh.”

  “Hunt.” It needled him that she didn’t remember his name.

  “Hugh. As in Grant. As in bumbling guy with a British accent.”

  Hunt hadn’t a clue who the hell she was talking about. She redressed in her own clothes and combed her wet hair back from her face with her fingers.

  “Feel better?”

  “Dandy.”

  He almost smiled at the edge in her words. “There’s a chair to your right three paces.”

  She found it and sat down like a queen about to give an audience. The lamp beside her illuminated her milk white skin, making it look like porcelain. “No bright lights or bamboo shoots?”

  “Not my style.” Neither was intimidation by caress, but it had almost worked. And he felt almost ashamed at how much he’d enjoyed it. Fortunately, his legendary control had kicked in to prevent him from making an ass of himself. “You cleaned out a state-of-the-art safe.”

  She smiled, and Hunt glanced away for a second from the potency of those pale, incredible eyes, alight with pleasure. “The unbreachable Faulkner KS796? I certainly did,” she said with unassailable pride.

  “There were other things in that safe. Keep everything?”

  She shrugged. “If they were in there. Maybe. I had a bad feeling all night. I just wanted to go in and get the hell out. So yes, I took everything.”

  “What did you do with the take after you left Morales’s house?”

  “I told you!”

  Her bravado was impressive, but downright dangerous right now. Those codes were an integral part of an act of terror Mano del Dios had scheduled for October 13. Just two months from now. They had barely sixty days to get their hands on the launch codes and then locate the missile.

  Sixty days to unravel a crisis and avert disaster. Hunt hoped it was long enough, but he was tired of playing guessing games with Annie Sullivan.

  T-FLAC had averted Mano’s last attack—a nerve agent scheduled for release during Mardi Gras in New Orleans last February. There had been nothing overt from the group since. But Morales, religious zealot that he was, hadn’t been idle.

  He gave her a cool look. “It’s no sweat for me to deliver you back to those goons exactly as you are right now. Blind and exhausted. Try again, sweetheart.” If T-FLAC could have done this without her, they would have. God knew, they’d tried.

  “I have a partner. He took everything.”

  She was lying through her pearly white teeth. “And this convenient partner of yours didn’t give a damn that you were caught and tossed in that hellhole of a jail?” Hunt walked closer to her.

  She shrugged. “Apparently not.”

  Hunt had an urge to put his fingers around her throat and squeeze. Except he did not want to touch her. Because he realized with dawning fury that he couldn’t touch this woman in anger. One brief contact would turn into a caress. The caress into hard, fast sex. Sex into—

  Hell. She’d drive any poor, stupid bastard crazy with that innocent tone and a look from those big beautiful eyes. “And you’re meeting up where?” he demanded, at the edge of his temper.

  He never lost his temper. Not ever. It was all a matter of control. He considered himself a master of control. Yet his jaw ached from clenching his teeth.

  “Rio.”

  “When?”

  “Thursday.”

  “What’s this person’s name?”

  She hesitated. Thought about it. He could almost see her roll through a list of names and pick one. “Toby.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. God, she was a piece of work. “Toby—?”

  “Now why would I tell you? Okay, fine. For God’s sake. I’m exhausted, and I’ve answered your questions. Toby Blackman.”

  He didn’t believe her for a second. Yet he’d never met anyone, male or female, who lied with such panache. It was not a trait he admired. “Lover?”

  She crossed one long jean-clad leg over the other and leaned back in the chair. “Uncle.”

  Her hair was starting to dry about her shoulders. It was slightly curly, and a silky chocolate brown. Touchable. Striking, with those ice-blue eyes and cream complexion. He rubbed the flat of his hand on the rough texture of the blanket beneath him. “So this is a family affair?”

  “You bet.” She paused and said lightly, “You don’t r
eally think simply because you ask, that I’m going to hand my diamonds over to you, do you?”

  He didn’t give a continental fuck about the diamonds. “How much?” Fine. He’d pay. He had the resources.

  “How much what?”

  His jaw was about to shatter from gritting his teeth so hard. “How much do you want for the contents of Morales’s safe?”

  She didn’t even blink. “Forty million dollars.”

  “Greedy girl.” God. He had to put an end to this before he did something incredibly stupid. “Street value’s approximately four point eight mil.”

  She shook her head. “Five point two to be exact.”

  “I’ll give you four mil. Cash. U.S. currency. For everything you took from Morales’s safe.” Hunt would pay her in kittens if that’s what it took.

  “I’ll think about it.” She looked at him, her expression as guileless as a baby’s, and yawned. He’d never seen anything as sexy in his life. He almost groaned out loud.

  “Can we discuss this in the morning?” she asked, sounding frail and weak. It was a nice touch, but he didn’t believe it for a second. She looked wide-awake and revitalized. And she wasn’t the frail, weak type. She was cunning and clever and heartbreakingly beautiful and trying to play him like a violin.

  She was as dangerous as hell. “What’s your real name?”

  She tilted her head, chin up. “I told you—”

  “Cut the crap, lady. Give me a name. The one on your birth certificate will do.” He’d touched that milk pale skin. Skimmed his fingers over that gentle swell of her breast. Could almost taste that flush riding her high cheekbones. A fire of lust burned in Hunt’s belly as he watched her. He was rock hard, and destined to stay that way, it appeared, for the duration.

  “I’m hurt, I really am.” There was a smile in her voice that she was smart enough not to show him. “After all this, you still don’t trust me?” She sounded like the victim in this mess.

  “No.”

  “Life’s full of little disappointments. I’ll live.”

  “Come to bed.” Hunt tugged her toward the oversized mattress, feeling feral.