He headed to the French doors that led out to the pool. Not even the slightest disturbance could be seen in the water. Not a splash, not a ripple, nothing.
Did that fucker find her and snag her right from under his fucking nose?
If so, he’d not only kill the guy, he’d never be able to live it down.
He saw how Mercy reacted after Rissa had been taken from their “safe house.” He also witnessed Hunter beat himself up when Leo was kidnapped by his abusive biological father. And recently, Ellie being snagged by a drug cartel had almost pushed Walker over the edge.
He was determined not to let that happen in this case. He whipped open the door and, as he strode out into the waning heat of the day, he yelled, “Kat!”
Heading toward the insanely large pool house as fast as his legs could take him without breaking into a run, he stutter-stepped when he heard it.
A bubbling of water, like a pot of soup on the stove coming to a boil. Or like his blood.
Oh yes.
Someone was fucking cooked all right.
His head twisted toward the sound, and, fuck him, she was in the in-ground hot tub. Her head was leaned back against the flagstone edge and her eyes were closed, beads of sweat or water beaded on her forehead.
She looked so relaxed. Oh, fuck yes, she did.
That would change in a split second.
He moved to the tub, leaned over and pushed the button to shut off the noisy jets.
Kat reacted so quickly; she almost went completely under the water. She sputtered, stood and faced him.
“If you had fucking long hair like a fucking woman, I’d drag your ass inside and teach you a fucking lesson about listening.”
She planted her hands on her hips, her face hard. “Then it’s a good thing my hair is ‘dyke’ short. But I don’t need long hair, asshole, for you to try it. You think you’re such a big badass. You don’t intimidate me.”
Steel unclenched his jaws. “Get the fuck out of the hot tub.”
“I’m not done. I still have another five minutes.”
“You’re done.” He sucked in a breath because his boiling pot’s lid was dancing dangerously. “I told you not to go outside without me, Kat. And you disobeyed. You put yourself at risk.”
“I can handle that risk.”
“You think you can.”
Her chin came up even higher. “I know I can.”
“And you call me cocky.” He reached for her. “Get out of the fucking hot tub.”
She knocked his arm away from her, leaned over and turned the jets back on. Before she could settle back into the water, he kicked his Nike slides off his feet and jumped down into the tub.
She shifted to the other side but was still within reach.
“Kat, I said get out of the tub or I’ll carry you out.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Already did,” he muttered, grabbing her arm. When he stooped low enough to throw her over his shoulder, she twisted from his wet grasp.
She fell back and the water splashed up around them and over the side. She could’ve cracked her fucking head open by fighting him. He snagged her upper arm and hauled her to the steps and onto the concrete patio that surrounded the tub.
At the same time, he tried to ignore the fact that she not only wore a bikini, it was a yellow string bikini that hardly covered anything. The top was plastered to her tits. Though not huge, they were bigger than he expected because, for once, they weren’t bound to her chest in one of those fucking ugly-ass sports bras.
Yep, he tried to ignore all of that because as she fought him, those tits bounced freely.
But as he began to drag her toward the French doors, she did a maneuver that helped her break free again.
“Asshole!” she screamed and slammed both palms into his chest, making him grunt from the force.
“Right! I’m an asshole. I told you not to go outside by yourself and you didn’t listen. But I’m the fucking asshole!”
“You don’t manhandle women.”
“You’re a goddamn fighter, woman!”
“You have no right to touch me without my permission.”
“I don’t, do I?”
Instead of backing away and heading inside since she had her freedom, she stepped forward, going chest to chest with him. Fuck, she was a piece of work.
“No.”
Fucking Christ, he loved a damn challenge and her going toe to toe with him, staring him directly in the eye with the fucking attitude she had, was better than porn. It fucking got his blood pumping, his heart thumping and his dick hard as fuck.
“You’re my responsibility and I’ll touch you when I need to.”
There was nothing he wanted more than to shove her against one of the large windows that lined the patio, rip her bathing suit off and fuck her hard and fast from behind to take off that sharp edge.
He had thought he’d done so when he whacked off in the shower, but, fuck no, seeing her in her little wet string bikini had set him right back on edge again. He was crawling out of his skin with it.
Her chin was angled up, amber eyes narrowed, and she panted.
His eyes flicked to her heaving breasts and there was one thing he couldn’t miss. Or two, to be exact. “Do I make your nipples hard, Kitty Kat? Maybe I'm wrong and you swing both ways.”
“It doesn’t matter how I swing but no matter what, it won’t be in your direction.”
He leaned in and asked the same question she had when it came to his steel balls. “Do you want me to test that theory?”
“How about you just take my word for it,” she echoed his response.
Their eyes held and neither of them moved. But their gaze broke when she swallowed, and he watched her throat lift and fall.
“I see your pulse trying to escape your neck, Kitty Kat. Does this excite you?”
“Nothing about you excites me.”
“Do you know when people lie, they have tells? Little habits that give away that they’re lying. Like their pulse quickening. Or their eyes shifting. Or even the slightest muscle twitch.”
“Your dick is hard, Steel. That’s a tell, and I bet that’s twitching, too. Does it get you excited when you try to intimidate women?”
He leaned in even closer, so close her ragged breath washed over his lips when he said, “No, Kitty Kat, it’s when they’re not intimidated that gets me excited. I like a woman who can give as good as she gets.”
“Give as good as she gets? So, you like to take dick, then? You like a woman who knows how to work a strap-on?”
“Figures you’d know about strap-ons.”
“I like the real thing, Steel. But I prefer a dick on a man who isn’t one.”
Steel grinned and Kat narrowed her eyes at that grin. When she moved to step back, he snagged her wrist and held her in place, still toe to toe. Faces inches from each other. Their bodies a hairsbreadth apart.
He watched a bead of water roll down her temple from her hair. Her eyelashes were still spiky from being wet. Her eyes held fire.
Oh, fuck yes. He was getting to her.
She didn’t try to pull from his grip, instead she demanded, “Let go of me.”
“You expect me to listen to your demands, when you don’t listen to mine? Here’s a little lesson for you, Kat. I’m not here to make your life miserable. I’m not here to make you like me. I’m only here to keep you safe.”
“Then why are you touching me?”
“Because you’re making my job difficult by going against my orders.”
“That’s not why you’re touching me.”
“No, it’s not,” he murmured, dropping her wrist. Before she could get a chance to step away, he grabbed the sides of her face and took her mouth.
Or tried to.
Her hands came up and grasped both his wrists, her fingers flexing against him but not pushing him away. However, she also wasn’t opening her mouth to let him in.
He was getting mixed signals.
&
nbsp; Without much effort, he broke one of his wrists free, and slid his hand from her jawline to the back of her neck, where his fingers curled, holding her tightly. His other hand slipped down her neck, across her chest, barely brushed over one of her pebbled nipples, down her ribs, along the curve of her waist until he dug his fingers in at her hip.
But she still had her lips pinned closed.
She wasn’t fighting him; she wasn’t trying to break free.
But he could feel her battling with herself.
Her breathing still came quickly and he swore he detected a tremble run through her.
Fuck yes, she wasn’t immune to him. She was trying to deny it and she might be strong enough to do it, but she still lingered. Hesitated.
Keeping their lips connected, he turned and pushed her backwards with his chest against hers until she was pinned against one of the posts that supported the upper deck. He slid the tip of his tongue along the seam of her mouth, asking her to let him in.
Fuck, he wanted to taste her. There. And other places.
He hadn’t met a woman like her in a long time. If ever.
And he knew he was playing with fire. But he was pretty fucking sure it would be worth getting burned.
He tilted his head slightly and licked along her lips again, hoping she’d open them this time. He wasn’t forcing his tongue inside, because he was pretty fucking sure he’d lose it.
And that would be a damn fucking shame.
She wasn’t melting against him; she wasn’t stiff, either.
She was driving him nuts.
Suddenly her mouth was open and he was in.
Her tongue clashed with his in a fight they could both enjoy. She’d give an inch and then take it back. The struggle continued, turning it into the hottest fucking kiss he ever had.
His cock was throbbing between them, her diamond hard nipples pressing into his chest through his damp tank top.
But she still hadn’t melted against him. She wasn’t clinging to him, weak in the knees. Fuck no. The only thing she was giving him was her mouth. That was it.
He wanted more.
So, he took more.
He slid the hand at her hip back up until he was brushing his thumb back and forth over the hard nub beneath her damp bikini top. He deepened the kiss, digging his fingers harder into the flesh at the back of her neck.
And he finally got it. A reaction.
A noise bubbled up her throat and he took that as a sign she wanted more, just like he did.
Capturing that nipple between his fingers, he tweaked it, causing her to jerk. She shoved his tongue out of her mouth and before he could stop it, she chomped down on his bottom lip, grabbing hold.
He grunted and tried to pull away but that only made the pain worse, so he stayed perfectly still.
After a few seconds, she finally released him and pulled her head back. “Let me go.”
He released her neck and took a step back, wiping the back of his hand along his mouth and seeing bright red.
She fucking bit him.
He studied her, with her back still against the post. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, her face flushed, but her eyes a little wider than normal.
She was surprised by her own reaction to him. That was clear.
“If you think biting me will discourage me, you’re wrong. I eat that shit up, Kitty Kat. And I didn’t do anything you didn’t want. So, if you don’t want to do something you’ll regret later, go inside. Because you might be warring with yourself, but you want this as much as me.”
“No, I don’t.”
He shook his head, though that didn’t help his throbbing lip. “Get inside now. Before I prove you’re lying.”
She quickly moved to the French doors off the kitchen.
“Kat,” he called, staring at the blood on the back of his fingers. He didn’t bother to look up, but he knew she hesitated. “You like to get rough? You’ll get that chance. I already talked with Berger. I’m your sparring partner tomorrow.”
The only answer he got from her was the door being slammed shut.
“Fuck,” he muttered, gingerly testing his lip with his fingers.
Then he smiled. Even though it hurt like fuck.
Kat’s heart was racing as she paused just inside the kitchen and glanced over her shoulder through the multiple panes of glass that made up the fancy double door.
Lifting her shaking fingers, she wiped away some blood that clung to her lip.
She needed a shower and a few minutes with the hand-held shower head. Hopefully that would wash away her thoughts because they had turned dark and dirty when he kissed her.
Steel now had his back to her and was standing out in the sun at the edge of the pool.
In a powerful surge of motion, he ripped his soaked tank over his head and whipped it to the concrete where it landed in a wet splat. Then he ran a hand through the longer hair at the top as his head dropped forward.
Kat held her breath when he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his just-as-damp shorts and shoved them down until they dropped to his ankles.
The man wore nothing underneath them.
Kat closed her eyes for a split moment in her fight to keep from checking him out, but she lost that battle.
She let her gaze roam from the top of his head to his broad, muscular back. She had gotten peeks of the large tattoo there because he wore tanks often since regular T-shirts were probably tight for him in the shoulders and arms. She could pretty much figure out it was a military insignia that took up all that landscape. But she was too far away to get a good look at the detail.
His hips were lean, of course, but his ass...
Fuck. They were two perfect globes of smooth skin over muscle. And before she could rip her eyes from it, those muscles flexed as he pushed off his toes and did a perfect dive into the pool, hardly making a splash.
He disappeared below the surface a few times, each time coming up and shaking the water from his face and hair. Most likely trying to clear the same thoughts filling her own head.
She needed to go upstairs and get away from the door and stop gawking at him. But before she could make her feet move, he was pulling himself back out of the pool. Not using the ladder or steps. Hell no. He used his powerful arms to easily haul himself out of the water and onto the concrete.
The afternoon sun caught the gleam of his wet skin and the two metal dog tags that hung on a chain around his neck.
Just below that was what was left of his earlier erection, because there was no way he was that large when he was completely soft.
She had felt how big he was when he had her pinned to the post. She guessed he might be above average but not by much. The size of his cock was as perfect as his ass.
However, she would not be experiencing it. Not anytime soon.
Hell, not ever.
She was not getting involved with her bodyguard just like in the movie with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston.
Especially when he proved himself to be an asshole time and time again.
No, she needed to keep him at arm’s length and keep things between them to business only. Because when her stalker was finally caught, he’d head back to Pennsylvania.
With her stalker and him gone, she’d finally be able to breathe again.
Chapter Six
Steel kept his hands up and concentrated on both her right leg and fist. He finally figured out Kat’s pattern when it came to punches and kicks. What she was most comfortable with and what she was most effective with, too. He was now successfully blocking both, but a few had slipped through in the beginning and, for a woman, she packed a fucking wallop. Just like yesterday’s bite.
The faster his heart beat while they sparred, the faster his lip throbbed.
He had also taken her to the mat twice in the last twenty minutes. And they were soon going to have to break for the day. He’d been going hard at her that whole time, keeping her on her toes and while he held back some force when
it came to his punches and kicks, he still gave about eighty percent. Enough to injure her, which he wanted to avoid.
But he also wanted Kat to expect Calamity Jayne going full out to take her down. Jayne was bigger and stronger and wouldn’t give Kat any mercy. In fact, the videos he watched on YouTube last night showed she could be totally vicious. She liked to make her opponents bleed. She liked to hurt them, but she somehow pulled it off without any penalties. She toyed with them, even when she had the ability to take them out quickly. In all the fights he watched, Jayne reminded him of a cat playing with her captive mouse. She didn’t want to eat her catch, she just wanted to torture it. For fun.
She was a sneaky bitch. Even so, Steel was impressed with how the woman won her fights because everything she did in the cage was legal, but he worried for Kat.
Kat needed to get the upper hand with her in the first round. Otherwise, he was afraid that Jayne would wear her down and easily win the fight.
But now, here on the mats at The Strike Zone, neither Kat nor Steel wore any protective gear except for MMA gloves with the open fingers. That had been her choice, not his, and he wondered why she decided that since she’d worn shin guards the past two days with her other partners.
Maybe she needed to prove her toughness with him. Why? He didn’t know.
But what he did know, it was soon time to take her down one last time and get some time in grappling. He wasn’t used to ground fighting since he preferred boxing and kickboxing. That was what he did in the ring with Slade when they sparred and what he did in his underground fights.
Most of his opponents never made it past the first few punches and kicks, or even some of his choke holds, for the fight to go to ground. He didn’t know a lot of wrestling moves, but since he outweighed Kat by about seventy pounds, he was pretty fucking sure he could figure out how to get her to tap out.
However, getting her down to the mat was proving to be difficult. Every time he tried to grab her, she ducked and moved quickly. Much quicker than him since she was much lighter on her feet in comparison. He normally liked to keep two feet solidly planted to keep his balance and use the power of a twist behind his punch to knock someone the fuck out. And if that didn’t work, a good kick to the head would.
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