Dangerous to Love

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  “I’m all right,” she insisted, thinking for once about self-preservation and her battered pride.

  “No, you’re not.”

  He tugged harder on her hand, more insistent this time. Her throat tight, her eyes burning, she let him bring her against him. Curled into his side, she put her head against his chest and sighed wearily. His arms, strong and sure, came around her, enfolding her in a wealth of warmth and comfort, a luxury beyond belief.

  “I’m sorry,” she said miserably, hating the idea of him seeing her fall apart.

  “And I’m a jerk,” he said bluntly.

  But his arms tightened around her, and she felt the side of his face pressed against the top of her head. She snuggled against the hard muscles of his chest, feeling it rise and fall with each breath he took, hearing his heart thundering beneath her ear. It was amazing to have him sitting here holding her in the dark. No arguments. No sarcasm. Nothing but soothing warmth and strong arms anchoring her to him.

  It was so nice, so unexpected.

  She told herself she should move away from him, that she should forget about him. She was still furious at him, after all. She still wanted to smack his smugly handsome face for claiming there was nothing between them, except for the fact that he was willing to have sex with her, casually and briefly and with no strings attached.

  She wanted to believe it was a blatant lie, too. Because somewhere deep inside her heart was a little spark of hope that she and Dan were meant to be together. No matter what he did or what he said, that little bit of hope simply wouldn’t die. It meant he crept into her thoughts at all hours of the day, no matter how often she resolved to forget all about him. It meant she lay in bed at night dreaming of a single kiss from what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Those same feelings made it nearly impossible, when she finally stopped trembling and she wasn’t so very cold, to ease away from him, retreating to her corner of the sofa. Dan stared at her with those wonderful dark eyes of his. She couldn’t tell if he was relieved or if he regretted letting her go.

  “Tell me about your brother,” he said finally.

  Surprised, she considered the request. “I don’t know if I can talk about Rich.”

  “Then tell me about the one who jumps out of planes too low to the ground.”

  “Sean.” She concentrated until she could see her oldest brother’s face from happier times, when all of them had been home and safe. “He’s always had a basic misunderstanding of the concept of gravity.”

  Dan laughed softly. Sean would like him, she decided. Her whole family would like him. Even more, they’d respect him and understand him. She wondered if they could show him he didn’t have to be so alone in the world.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Sean was one of those little boys who always wanted to fly?”

  “He did fly. Off the roof, more than once. Off the top of the bleachers at the high school football field. Out of trees. Anything. The third time he broke his arm, one of the doctors told my parents they should consider getting him psychiatric help. They finally gave in and let him have flying lessons instead, and he hasn’t broken his arm since. Just nearly ruined his knee. He’s at the Pentagon now, a desk jockey if you believe what he says.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I believe him about as much as he believes me when I say I work for a division of the Commerce Department,” she said.

  “I see.” He smiled.

  Jamie nodded. “We have an unspoken agreement in the family these days. We strictly adhere to the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. I don’t ask Sean if he really sits behind a desk all day at the Pentagon, and he doesn’t tell me what he really does, although I’m sure it’s more handson than he admits. I suspect he’s with the JSOC.”

  That was the Joint Special Operations Command, a unit inside the Pentagon that controlled the military’s top-secret counter-terrorism units, such as Delta Force and Seal Team 6, units with missions not unlike Division One’s. If she knew Sean, his neck was on the line every day.

  “You worry about him?” Dan asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  “So it was you and three brothers?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re the youngest, right?”

  “Maybe,” she hedged.

  “Pampered and indulged from the day you were born?”

  “With a general for a father? I marched the straight and narrow.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “I was saluting his photograph before I could walk. His version of a bedtime story was a tale about his days in Korea or Vietnam.”

  “You must have lived all over the place.”

  “We did. It was hard in a lot of ways, but it made us that much closer, too. No matter where we went we always had each other.”

  She looked at Dan, thinking of what she knew about his family. His brother had been here briefly after the shooting, but Jamie hadn’t seen him. Obviously, they weren’t close. His mother was dead, and his personnel records didn’t have the name of his father. He’d been divorced for years. As far as she knew, a few of his friends from various branches of the service had dropped by to visit him here, but that was it. It was as solitary a life as she could imagine.

  She wondered if it made him happy to live this way, if anyone could be happy being so alone in the world. And then she thought of what he was facing.

  “You threw me offtrack,” she said. “We were talking about you and rehab.”

  He gave her another one of those indulgent half smiles. “What about me and rehab?”

  “Sean spent a month in a rehab place in Maryland after he wrecked his knee. There were people from all branches of the service there. Real tough guys and they all agreed that fighting to get back on their feet and back to active duty after a severe injury was the hardest thing they ever tried to do.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “And I thought it was going to be a picnic.”

  She glared. “Is it just me? Or do you get a perverse pleasure from irritating any woman who gets too close for comfort?”

  A slow, sexy smile spread across his face, this one genuine. She’d bet money on it.

  “I think I’ll take the Fifth on that,” he said.

  Jamie knew it was time to back off, but she couldn’t resist making him one last offer.

  If she was feeling a little more confident where he was concerned, she would have told him she was a very strong woman, that it was all right for him to lean on her a little. Of course, he’d probably never leaned on anyone in his entire life, especially not a woman. Still, she had to try.

  “You know,” she said as casually as she could, “You may actually find yourself needing a friend in the next few months. You could call me.”

  “Jamie—” he began, turning away, shutting her out.

  Too far, she realized. Too fast.

  It was like handling a witness who thought he’d be taking his life in his hands if he talked. Push too far, too fast, and he’d immediately back off.

  Jamie decided her time was up. If she didn’t go now, he’d throw her out or pick a fight to get her to go, which would ruin what had been a pleasant few moments with him. She got to her feet, reached for her coat.

  “No strings,” she promised. “No great expectations. And I promise not to sit by your bed and weep.” He’d been talking to Geri when he said he would truly hate being surrounded by a bunch of weeping women, but Jamie knew he meant her to hear it, too. He despised any and all displays of sympathy, and he obviously wasn’t ready to accept an offer of friendship and support.

  “Jamie, I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I should never have said that.”

  “No.” She tried to shrug off the old hurt. “It was the truth. It would have made you crazy to have anyone do that. Still, we could be friends. You could let me do that, at least. I really do want to help, if you’ll let me.”

  “Why?” he asked. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  She didn�
�t remind him that he’d made it clear on two separate occasions that he didn’t want her anywhere near him. Nor did she mention that she’d sworn a half-dozen times that she was going to forget him, that she’d cried her last tear for Dan Reese. Still, they had a history together that went back years, and she was grateful to him for a lot of things.

  “I owe you a lot,” she said. “You’ve seen me through the worst things I’ve ever faced on the job.”

  “Jamie, we haven’t worked together in a very long time.”

  “I’m talking about everything you taught me. Everything you drilled into my head,” she explained. “It’s like I’m carrying a little bit of you around inside me. When everything gets crazy, and I can’t think for myself, when everything’s happening too fast and there’s nothing but instinct to go on, I hear your voice. You’ve kept me alive more times than you can imagine. So, yes, I do owe you.”

  A little embarrassed by the admission, she took her time about looking at him, found an expression on his face she couldn’t begin to decipher.

  Looking oddly off-balance, he said, “I didn’t realize.”

  “Well, now you do.” She shrugged uncomfortably, tried to smile, and told herself to get out of the room. “Before you misconstrue everything I just said, I’m not offering to help because I owe you. I’m offering because I want to. Because—” She fell silent, saving herself just in time. “I’d better get out of here,” she said, turning to leave.

  It was the smart thing to do. Because if she stayed, if she let herself finish what she’d started to say, she’d tell him everything.

  I’m offering because of all these foolish dreams I have about the two of us. Because I’m afraid so easily I could fall in love with you.

  Chapter 7

  She’d taken three steps when she heard him say, “Jamie?”

  Turning back, she said, “Hmm?”

  He caught her hand in his, for just a moment, squeezing it before releasing it. “Be careful.”

  There was something in the way he said it that made it feel like goodbye, the kind of goodbye people said when they weren’t going to see each other for a long time. It worried her, had her thinking he was up to something, something she wasn’t going to like.

  That odd tenderness in his voice, the brief touch of his hand, gave her the courage to take the next step. She leaned over him, one hand braced against his shoulder, and touched her mouth to his in a brief, soft kiss.

  “I will. I’ll be careful,” she promised. “And I’ll miss you.”

  He made a strangled sound of protest as she pulled away, and his eyes were burning with an intensity she’d never seen in him before. She thought he was going to let her walk away this time. But his hand, lightning-fast, found the back of her neck and pulled her mouth back down to his.

  “You just couldn’t let it alone, could you?” he muttered.

  Thrown off-balance, Jamie fell heavily against him. He groaned. She worried that she’d hurt him, but he never took his lips from hers, kissing her greedily. She jumped a little when she felt his hand slip beneath the hem of her skirt and slide along her thigh, the heat searing its way through the thin silk stockings she wore.

  “Come here,” he muttered against her mouth.

  She let him pull one of her legs across both of his and tuck her knees into the sofa cushions on either side of him. His hands slid higher, brushing the material of her skirt aside, pulling her to him. He wasn’t satisfied until he had her straddling his thighs.

  She gasped as she sank down on his lap, feeling a delicious array of muscle and man beneath her, panicking for just a moment when she realized the intimacy of their positions. She could feel the heat radiating off his body, felt an answering warmth flooding her own.

  He kissed as he did everything—with a passionate intensity, a brash confidence—and it shouldn’t come as any surprise if he made love just the same way. Jamie had only the briefest flickering of doubt, mostly that she was way out of her league with this man. But she didn’t care. She still wanted him, didn’t make the first sound of protest when his hands slid beneath her long, loose button-down sweater that doubled as a jacket. He grumbled when he encountered the material of her blouse. His hands retreated to her waist, dug beneath the fabric and slid up once again. With a contented sigh, he found bare skin this time.

  She felt him smile against her lips as he used his hands to pull her closer, until they might have been fused together, her breasts crushed against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck, let her fingers slide through the thick, soft hair she’d always wanted to touch.

  “Kiss me,” he ordered, holding her effortlessly, playing her body with the skill and ease that could only come from experience, taking her so far, so fast she was ready right then to simply come apart in his arms.

  It had never been like this before, never gotten so out of control so fast. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own, needing him, straining to get closer to him, wanting him so desperately.

  She felt one of his hands slide between their bodies, felt his knuckles brush across her breast. It wasn’t until she felt cool air against her skin, then the heat, the slight roughness of his hands, that she realized he’d unbuttoned her blouse. He groaned, frustrated again, when his fingers found the fabric of her bra. His hand withdrew, found the bottom of her blouse and tried to tunnel up that way instead. But her blouse was caught beneath the weapon she wore holstered beneath her left arm.

  With a deftness she should have expected from him, he withdrew the weapon, then loosened her holster and slid a hand beneath her shirt and over the quivering skin of her belly. His other hand shifted against her back, and she felt the fabric of her bra give way, leaving no obstacles between them. One of his hands slipped beneath her bra, to cup her breast. “Mmm,” he muttered.

  Jamie could have wept from the sheer pleasure that went shooting through her as he simply took the weight of one of her breasts and held it in his hand. She felt him draw in a deep breath, felt his chest expand with the effort it took. If there was any justice in the world, he was every bit as aroused as she was. When she pressed her mouth to his, she felt him brush his thumb gently back and forth across her nipple, sending heat spiraling to the spot between her thighs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t wait, couldn’t do anything but beg.

  “Dan, please.”

  “Please... what?”

  “Kiss me.”

  “Here?” He brushed his thumb past her nipple once again.

  “Yes,” she begged.

  He arched her backward, holding her with an arm at her waist. His lips landed first at the side of her neck and slid downward, trailing fire as they went and leaving her shivering as he made a warm, wet path with his mouth to her shoulder, over her collarbone and down. His hand still held her breast, pushing it up to meet his waiting mouth. He nosed the fabric of her blouse out of his way, and his mouth, warm and moist, opened, drawing her nipple inside, sucking on it, laving it with his tongue.

  She shuddered, able to do nothing more than cling to him and let him do what he would, her only worry that he would stop. The feelings were so powerful, so intense. If she’d known it could be like this....

  He fussed over her breasts, first one and then the other, as if he meant to devour her whole. When his hands cupped her hips and he shifted her even closer, she realized there was nothing but a few bits of cloth between them. Jamie wriggled her hips impatiently, seeking some relief from the throbbing emptiness in her body, found the proof that he was indeed every bit as aroused as she was, and any embarrassment she felt was forgotten.

  His hands were beneath her skirt once again, sliding higher and higher, finding a thin strip of bare skin between the top of her stockings and the edge of her panties. She heard an odd hitch in his breath.

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Stockings.”

  “Where’s the rest of them?”

  She smiled. “That’s all there is.”

  He still looke
d puzzled. She decided to let him find out for himself. Closing her eyes, she let her head fall to his shoulder as his hands traced the top edge of her thigh-high stockings.

  He swore as his fingers skimmed the ring of material and bare skin all around her thigh, pausing between her legs, coming tantalizingly close to finding out just how aroused she was. If he so much as touched her there, he’d push her right over the edge.

  Maybe he knew that, because she felt him shudder. His hands slid beneath her panties, cupping her hips and pulling her ever closer. She let her thighs spread wider, arched her back and her body came down hard on top of his, heat to reckless, relentless heat.

  She would have done anything he asked then, would have given him anything just to have him end this, to have him fill all the empty places inside her. His fingers were digging into the soft flesh of her fanny, pulling and easing her back, again and again, showing her what he wanted from her, making her ache.

  “Dan,” she said, her voice pure need now. She was going to explode.

  Then she felt it, felt the hair on the back of her neck tingling. The air in the room changed inexplicably, became oddly thick and heavy. Dangerous. For some reason, she suddenly knew she should watch her back.

  Dan froze, his hands holding her still. Her instincts were screaming by then; she’d been an agent too long to ignore them. He felt it, too. She saw it in his eyes a split second before he shoved her to the left, until she was facedown and pressed against the sofa cushions. He fell to the side as well, landing heavily half on top of her, knocking the breath out of her, but moving unmistakably to shield her with his body. Overhead, the glass skylights and windows rattled ominously.

  Then there was a brilliant flash of light that illuminated the entire room. Jamie heard faint crackling, popping sounds and then the explosion. Repercussions from the blast moved through the building like a wave, shaking the floor beneath her as the room went pitch-black and absolutely silent, except for the mingled sounds of their quick, shallow breaths.

  She tensed as she heard another explosion split the sky in two, then realized the building had lost power when she heard the emergency generators kick in and noticed the red Emergency Exit signs were illuminated once again.