CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (15 page)

             
Not that he wanted his guys to know that.

             
He glowered for a moment, thinking of when she blew off his nuts by winning an argument about the education bills in the Senate. He never had been a good loser, although he wasn't stupid enough to think he won that one. But a moment later a crooked little smile curled the edge of his mouth. Maybe for Kate he could become a good loser. She could argue him right into the sheets.

             
After hearing his qualifications in security, Kate's gym had let him take over the kickboxing class. Every morning he worked with the ladies on their self-defense skills—and he liked them. He'd never really dealt with American women in their natural habitat. He'd seen them on the streets in Brownsville. He'd guarded them when they were wearing their best diamonds. He'd dated them when they wanted to walk on the wild side. But he'd never hung around long enough to hear them brag about their kids, complain about their husbands and their jobs, tell each other how good they looked with that extra ten pounds. They were really nice people, and Kate fit right in.

             
In fact, Kate fit right in everywhere. She had the gift of adapting, making herself welcome wherever she went, empathizing in a way that made everyone like her. Even Linda Nguyen seemed to tolerate her, and Linda had a personality like an Uzi.

             
He turned the corner and caught sight of Kate.

             
So while he'd been playing house with her, apparently he'd convinced her he was as harmless as a fixed old tomcat because here she was, prancing around the corridors of the Texas Capitol with no panties. "Kate!"

             
She turned at the sound of his voice and smiled. Smiled as if she were pleased to see him.

             
He was damned pleased to see her, too. Too damned pleased, and still way too relieved that she didn't sidle away. "Come with me."

             
She hurried to his side' and followed him to the smallest surveillance closet. In a low voice, she questioned, "Did you see something?"

             
"I sure did."

             
"About the stalker? So this is over?"

             
He stopped before the door and looked at her in exasperation.

             
She stood with her hand on her chest as if she were relieved. Glad their time together was over.

             
"Hardly that." With his key card, he opened the lock.

             
His men would see them go in. They'd know what he was doing. They'd laugh and nudge each other.

             
Teague didn't care. Someday he would, but right now he needed to know what Kate wore under her skirt. Everything about Kate called to him, and he needed to see, to taste, to know. . . .

             
In a fury at his own lack of control, and in a frenzy of desire, he gestured her inside.

             
There, monitors gazed out on hallways and computers hummed, and she walked from one to another, her hand flexing on her briefcase.

             
He shut the door behind him, the definite
thunk
of a reinforced door against a metal frame.

             
She turned to watch him, her head tilted as if sensing something of his turbulence. Yet her eyes were puzzled. She didn't understand the cause of his mood.

             
He stood, back against the door, his chest rising and falling as he stared at her . . . and lusted.

             
Three nights ago she had seen the killer in him.

             
Today she obviously saw a different sort of beast, for she flushed. Her gaze dropped. He saw her and realized that this was the moment that proved whether he had frightened her beyond all possibility of desire. This was the ultimate proof—would she let him touch her intimately? Would she trust him not to hurt her?

             
A hesitant smile trembled on her lips. When she lifted her gaze once more, her eyes were heavy, slumberous. "Is it news you have for me? Or something . . . else?"

             
She wasn't afraid. She wanted him, too.

             
He advanced so quickly she didn't have time to retreat. Didn't have a place to retreat. He pushed her against the bare wall, pressed her there with his body against hers. Taking her face in his hands, he kissed her. Penetrated her mouth at once, without taking the time to soften her with gentle touches of his lips and murmured words of admiration.

             
He didn't understand himself. With her, he lost all finesse, becoming a primitive, overcome with lust and half mad with need.

             
Maybe that was what the guys had seen in him.

             
But Kate answered him as if she felt the same madness. Her mouth opened beneath his. She grasped his head, sliding her hands into his hair and holding him

still
as he held her. And they kissed. God, how they kissed! His tongue ravaged her mouth, and she sucked on it so passionately he thought she must want to be taken as fiercely as he wanted to take.

             
Like a narcotic, the taste of her filled his senses, making him want more. She smelled of soap and amber and lavender, clean, warm, and expensive. He nibbled on her lower lip, slid his tongue along the smooth ridges of her teeth. With his eyes closed, he sampled the skin on her cheeks and her eyelids, and as he smoothed his lips over her brow, his hands glided down to her shoulders and settled on her breasts.

             
He loved boobs, all shapes, all sizes, on any woman and every woman.

             
But Kate's boobs . . . as he cupped them, weighed them, those two lovely round globes, he found them more magnificent than any he'd ever held. She wore a bra . . . why the hell did she wear a bra when she wore tiny panties, or none at all?

             
But he didn't pretend to understand women, and certainly not this woman with her intelligence and her wit.

             
She leaned her head against the wall, distracting him with the sleek length of her throat.

             
              He nuzzled the softest place, sinking his teeth in the skin over her vein.

Her intake of breath vibrated through him, and he pressed his hips against
her, trying to relieve the pressure in his loins.

             
Nothing could do that except to have her.

             
She moaned as if he'd brought her to ecstasy. Her lips were softly open. Her eyes were closed. She looked like a woman in the throes of climax.

             
The sound, the scent, the view drove him to satisfy the curiosity that had brought him in here.

             
Gently, so gently, he cupped her buttocks. The material slipped smoothly beneath his grasp. So soft. So feminine. "Am I hurting you?" His voice was a husky rasp.

             
"No." Her eyes opened. She pierced him with glorious blue desire. "No, you're not hurting me at all."

             
He could be gentle. He could be . . . hers.

             
Once again he kissed her.

             
Or tasted her, she wasn't sure which. It was an investigation, a questioning, as if he wanted to know . . . all kinds of things. Like whether she wanted to kiss him back, and how their bodies meshed together, and if the two of them could remain vertical when the biggest magnet in the world was trying to knock them off their feet and into bed.

             
The answers were yes, nicely, and God she hoped so.

             
Because as their bodies melded together, and adjusted, and melded again, and as their lips touched, and turned, and touched again, she wanted nothing so much as to push him onto the floor, rip off his clothes, and screw him silly. The offer he'd silently made the first time she'd seen him—to pull her into a maelstrom of sex and show her pleasure until she reeled from delight—sprang to life in a blaze so hot she felt singed, wicked, glorious.

             
My God. As if she didn't have enough complications in her life, this one had to come up now.

             
Vaguely she was aware of the pun, for what had come up was pressed tightly to her belly, and when she rolled her hips against it, Teague pulled her up onto her toes. His fingers explored her. They found the waistband of her thong.

             
And he gave a husky laugh. It sounded as if he were speaking to himself when he said, "Wouldn't you know it?"

             
"Know what?" Languorously, she watched him from beneath lids that felt too heavy to lift.

             
"That you would always be a lady." He caught her chin in his hands. His voice was a husky murmur. "When you want me, when you're ready to submit to me, all you have to do is leave your panties off. And tell me, darling, let me know what you've done. When you tell me, I'll be yours for as long as you want me."

             
He had always been a handsome man, but now, with his lips damp and his smile flashing, he wore the face of a lover.

             
Yet he was ruthless.

             
She was still catching her breath when he delivered the ultimatum. The kind of ultimatum that required working brain cells, but in fact Teague and his magic kisses had ruined every cognitive function.

             
She stared at him and tried to think, but her reaction was more instinct than intellect.

             
It didn't matter that Teague looked as if he would fit in her life. That was an illusion.

             
It didn't matter that she suffered an infatuation so acute it felt like love.

             
He was dangerous.

             
She knew it in her bones, just as she knew he wanted her. She'd seen it in his face. She knew, too, that if she gave in, landed in his bed, found ecstasy in his touch, she would be the one hurt when he walked away.

             
And he would walk away. He was the kind of man who left every woman, every time.

             
Without moving, he watched Kate. He saw the moment she decided against him, and he said, "You're probably right. I was unprofessional. We should never have touched. Catching your stalker is a job, and I don't screw my clients. But we would be so good together." His voice dropped to a heated whisper. "So good together."

             
All too aware of the cameras and the eyes that were fixed on her from every angle, Kate walked down the corridor. Her face was hot, her fingers trembled, but she managed to maintain her dignity right up to the time she entered the ladies' restroom.

             
Thank God it was empty, for her knees buckled, and she used the sink for support.

             
The woman she saw in the mirror had swollen lips, rosy cheeks, a febrile sparkle in the eyes. This woman looked as if she perched on the edge of orgasm. And perhaps she did.

             
It had been only a kiss. Or two.

             
From Teague Ramos.

             
She moaned softly.

             
Her reltionships had been with middle-class and upper-class white guys because those were the guys she knew, the guys with whom she had stuff in common. Backgrounds, schooling, religion. She didn't have a single thing in common with Teague Ramos.

             
She looked at herself again, wet a pad of paper towels, and blotted her face.

             
His expensive clothes fit him perfectly, and he wore them as if he'd been born to them. His voice was deep, cool, and smooth, like blended whiskey over ice, and he used words with precision. His hands . . . his hands were a seduction: broad-palmed, long-fingered, nails smoothed and clean. The kind of hands a woman imagined giving ecstasy with each intimate touch.

             
The water did nothing to cool her thoughts. In fact, she was surprised steam hadn't fogged the mirror. She wished it had. She wished she didn't have to look at herself and know . . . know she would have jumped his bones right there in the surveillance closet without any attention to comfort, birth control, or safety.

             
She had obviously lost her mind.

             
Teague hadn't been born to the wealth or the privilege or the accent or the cleanliness. When he wished, he looked like a thug, and he did such a good enough job of it that he had fooled her.