Mission: Irresistible (16 page)

Cassie grinned at his unintended pun. She tilted her head and lowered her eyelashes for another peek at his fly. “Oh, I don’t think you’re gonna have any problem with that either.”

Harrison flushed the color of ketchup. “I . . . er . . . um . . . sorry. I don’t drink much, and it goes straight to my . . . er . . .”

He caught himself this time before he made another accidental pun. Poor guy knew next to nothing about sexual innuendo. She gave him a break and went to retrieve her knapsack from the foyer where she had dropped it when they’d come in. She slung it over her shoulder and padded into the living room.

“Okay,” she called to him. “What are the sleeping arrangements?”

“I have a sleeping bag.” He came into the living room to stand behind her. “I’ll stretch out on the floor in my office. You take the bed.”

“Thank you.” She beamed at his chivalry. Her twin sister, Maddie, would probably have argued with him, insisting on taking the sleeping bag, but Cassie wasn’t the type to bed down on the floor. She appreciated Harry’s courtliness. A girl should accept considerate gestures graciously.

She went to kick off her heels, but misstepped and lost her balance. Harry reached out to keep her from tipping over and she fell hard against him.

He wasn’t built like an Adonis, but he wasn’t half bad. His chest muscles were firm, and the arm he wrapped around her waist was strong and comforting. Her knees weakened and she just melted into him.

“Are you all right?” His breath was warm against her ear.

“The schnapps made me a little woozy, I guess,” Cassie admitted.

“Here. Sit down.”

Holding her securely, he guided her to the daybed. She sank onto the mattress, and Harry perched anxiously beside her. He kept glancing around as if searching for an escape hatch.

What? Did he think she was going to rape him?

Yeah, well, he was the one with a boner. Can’t rape the willing, buddy.

She sneaked another quick peek at his crotch. He was even larger than before. That was why he was so nervous. It wasn’t because he didn’t trust her, but rather because he couldn’t trust himself with her.

Cassie hiccuped and slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oops, sorry,” she apologized. “Sweet liqueurs sometimes give me the hiccups.”

And then she promptly hiccuped again.

“I know how to stop them.”

“How?”

“Rub your diaphragm.”

“I use those birth control patches, not a diaphragm.” She giggled. “And I carry condoms. Never leave home without ’em. That’s my motto.”

“Ha-ha. Funny. Does pretending to be an airhead really work on guys?”

She grinned. “You have no idea how well. The condom line is one of the most popular, usually countered by an American Express joke. I learned a long time ago that a woman gets a lot more mileage out of being sexy than she does out of being smart.”

“That’s a sad commentary.”

“Hey, I don’t make the rules.” She shrugged and spread her hands. “I just play by them. Intelligent women scare most men.”

“Not me.”

“You say that now.” She wagged a finger. “But I bet if a woman you were dating challenged you on something about ancient Egypt and she turned out to be right, you’d dump her in a heartbeat. It’s just the way most men are.”

“I’m not most men.” He glowered.

“I’d puzzled that out already.”

“You don’t have to pull that dumb-blonde act with me, Cassie.”

“At this point, it’s something of a habit.”

“Habits were made to be broken.”

She hiccuped again. “Oops.”

“Rub right here.” He placed three fingers in the center of his abdomen just below the level of his rib cage and stroked in a circular motion. “Like this.”

Cassie leaned over and placed three fingers on his belly and stroked him in rhythmic circles.

Blame it on the schnapps, but oh, she was acting wicked bad!

“What are you doing?” He sounded scandalized, but she noticed he did not move away.

“You said to rub right here.” In all honesty, where she ached to rub him was a bit lower.

“Now you’re just causing trouble,” he said.

“That’s my middle name.” Her eyes met his gaze and held it, but she did not stop massaging him.

“Cassie . . . you’ve been drinking.” He forcefully took her wrist and removed her hand from his body.

“So? You’ve been drinking too, and we’ve only had one shot of schnapps, so it’s not like we’re snockered.”

“I won’t take advantage of you.”

“Not even if I wanted you to?” She fluttered her eyelashes seductively.

“No!” he exclaimed, but she heard amusement in his voice. “Besides, I think you’re just bluffing. You don’t really want me to make love to you. You just like to tease.”

Oh, really? Is that what he thought of her? That she was all come-on and no substance?

They stared at each other, eyes locked.

Her need for him was building faster than she could have imagined. Who’d have thought she’d be all hot and horny for ol’ mismatched Harry?

But dammit, she was.

The glimmer in his eyes sent goose bumps marching up and down her arms, and she was wetter than a Slip’N Slide. Need for him, for his kiss, his touch, was a wild thing inside her, sending her heart thrashing wildly against her rib cage, throwing out all common sense.

“You think you have me figured out?”

“I do, or at least as much as anyone will ever have you figured out, Cassie Cooper.”

“Go ahead. Get it off your chest. Let’s hear it.” She jutted out her chin, daring him.

“You sure you’re ready for this? You might not like what I have to say.”

“Go ahead.” She raised a hand. “I’m all ears.”

“Remember, you asked for it.”

“Just shut up and analyze me.”

“Here goes. You act like you’re not afraid of anything. You hide behind your charm and your sex appeal and your gregarious talk. You have a hopscotch mind that often gets your body in trouble.”

“Oh yeah?” she said, because she did not know what else to say. It was true.

“Yeah. But in spite of your plucky personality, you really have a fear of exploring anything too deeply. You keep everything on the surface, which you mask by a fascination with many subjects. Your flirtation with pleasure is actually a flight away from pain. Ergo, your attempts to get me into bed are in reality nothing but a bluff.”

“‘Ergo’? Who in the hell says ‘ergo’? It’s little wonder you get called Poindexter.”

Cassie knew she was being defensive, but she was unnerved that he had figured her out so easily. Not even her own twin sister, Maddie, understood her motivations the way Harry did. It was amazing and a little disturbing.

She didn’t appreciate being dissected so accurately, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

Cassie knew it was impulsive. She recognized that she was tipsy and that she was still vulnerable over her apartment break-in. And yes, maybe she was using pleasure to cloak her fears. She was on the verge of not only losing her job but potentially going to jail for the theft of a priceless artifact she didn’t even steal.

But something deep inside her whispered that this time was different. Harry was an impulse worth acting on.

“Go ahead,” she teased, reaching for the hem of her long-sleeved T-shirt. In one swooping motion she pulled it over her head. “Call my bluff.”

CHAPTER 12

P
ut your shirt back on.” It took every morsel of self-

discipline Harrison possessed to say the words, but he had to stop Cassie’s insane seduction.

He tried not to look at her breasts, but damn him, they were so
there
. The thin material of her skimpy black-lace bra barely supported them, and from where he was sitting they looked solely God-given, not bestowed by a plastic surgeon.

“What’s the matter, Harry?” Cassie gave him a deadly wink. “Scared?”

Oh, hell yeah. His knees were knocking and his heart was rocking, but he wasn’t about to let her know.

She reached out and walked two fingers over his arm. “See anything you like?”

What didn’t he like!

Cassie had been blessed with full, round curves, a thick head of blonde hair, and luscious lips just made for kissing. She was the richest truffle at the confectionery, the fastest car on the showroom floor, the poshest vacation resort in the Caribbean.

Whereas Harrison ate low-carb, drove a ten-year-old Volvo, and when he’d visited St. Lucia, he had camped out in a pup tent on the beach.

She was uninhibited about her body and quite obviously sexually experienced. He was outclassed and out of his league, and he knew it. His last few relationships had been with colleagues. Calm, studious women who could either take sex or leave it, with no particular feelings about it one way or the other.

The gleam in Cassie’s eyes told him she cared about sex and cared deeply. How could he ever hope to measure up to her expectations? Or to satisfy her? She flourished on thrills and excitement.

Face the facts, you’re not an exciting guy.

Besides, he had been studying her over the course of the past ten days, and he was slowly starting to figure her out. If he made love to her after her apartment was ransacked, he would just be feeding into her habit of using pleasure in order to avoid dealing with a painful experience.

Ha!

Look who’s talking
, accused a voice in the back of his head that sounded a whole lot like Adam.
You hide your fears behind the acquisition of knowledge. How come it’s okay for you to cloak your fears, but it’s not okay for her? That sounds like a double standard to me.

He had to stop thinking about this. They had no future together whatsoever, and he wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of guy. And there was the time crunch. Even if he could bring himself to let go of all his doubts, he simply couldn’t afford the distraction.

“Put your shirt back on,” Harrison croaked.

He picked up the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d dropped on the floor and handed it to her. He was careful to keep his eyes averted from those mesmerizing breasts.

“Are you that prudish? Or are you just not attracted to me?” Cassie asked.

“How on earth could you possibly believe that I’m not attracted to you?”

“You’re not taking advantage of a primo opportunity. There’s gotta be a reason why. Is it me?”

“Are you that insecure?”

“Well, if it’s not me, I don’t get what it is with you.”

“Woman, I have a Godzilla-sized boner and sweat is dripping off my forehead.”

“So, what are you waiting for?”

“I just can’t handle this right now, okay? I’m worried about my brother. Imagine if it was your twin sister who was missing.”

“Oh. I see your point.”

That was good, because if she didn’t cover up soon he didn’t know what he was going to do. The pressure was building inside him, low and scorching hot. His penis ached and throbbed. If he wasn’t so adept at detaching from his emotions, he would already be pumping into her.

And getting yourself tangled in an intimacy that you can’t handle.

Cassie, with her verve and her zest for living, would quickly drain him of his resources. If he couldn’t even master his own libido, how could he hope to master anything else? If he lost control with her, he risked losing control in other areas of his life.

And if he lost control in other parts of his life, he would end up looking incompetent, useless, and incapable.

He couldn’t take that gamble. He had to stay emotionally distant and mentally on top of things. His ability to disconnect from his feelings had served him well for thirty-two years. No point mucking around with success at this stage of the game.

Cassie, however, was not cooperating with his plan for self-domination. Not only was her chest still bare, but she was audaciously undoing the snap on her pants.

Whoa!

“What are you doing?” he exclaimed. If she took off those Cadillac pants right here in his living room in front of him, he was done for.

“Oh, settle down, Harry. I’m merely headed for the bathroom. I’m just going to take a shower and then pop into bed.”

“Really?” He opened one eye, feeling both relieved and disappointed.

“I’m not going to jump your bones. I just unsnapped my jeans to scare you. You can stop sweating. I get the message loud and clear. Your body might want mine”—she flicked a sly smile at his crotch—“but your brain won’t let you do the wrong thing, no matter how much fun we might have in the process.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“No need to explain.” She shrugged, hopped off the daybed, and reclaimed her backpack from the floor. “Long as you know, it’s your loss.”

“Button-pusher,” Cassie mumbled into the darkness as she lay on Harrison’s sofa. “Instigator, rabble-rouser, agitator.”

But she wasn’t talking about herself and the way she had tried to provoke Harrison into making love to her; rather, she was thinking about the way
he
had inflamed her without even being aware of what he was doing. The man was chock-full of untapped potential. If he ever decided to intentionally use his masculinity to his advantage, heaven help her.

He’d gotten to her so thoroughly, she’d wanted him so darned badly, she’d brazenly ripped off her shirt in front of him. She’d never done anything that inflammatory—and she’d done a lot of inflammatory things.

But she hadn’t lit his fire. At least not all the way.

Just thinking about her behavior made her cringe.

She’d stared him right in the eye and practically begged him for sex, and he’d turned her down cold. What was the matter with her?

Or rather, what was the matter with him? Most guys would have been octopuses. But not Harry.

He’d been a complete gentleman. Drat him.

In her mind’s eye she saw him as he’d looked, perched stiffly beside her on the couch. The man was graced with a razor-sharp mind, dark intelligent eyes, and an enigmatic way about him that commanded her attention. He was the trustiest horse at the stable, the wisest insurance policy at the agency, the calmest lullaby in the songbook.

Whereas she rode motorcycles, carried only liability insurance, and when she sang, she belted out rock and roll.