Amy's Advantage (7 page)

The shower started and Jordyn
focused on the weather report and not the mental images of the naked, wet woman
in the next room that formed as soon as the water turned on. He’d made the
mistake of touching her again. Though he’d known it for the mistake it was at
the time, when the heat flared in her eyes and she licked her lip, he couldn’t
help but let his fingers skim down her soft skin. This was the second time he’d
crossed the line. There couldn’t be a third. Tomorrow morning, Cirryc would be
back and soon after, Chloe and Amy would be home.

Roughly, he rubbed a hand over
his face and ignored the knife-in-the-gut feeling at the thought of Amy being
any farther from him than the next room. He glanced toward the bathroom.
Sometimes even that felt too far away. He was still ignoring that feeling when
Amy came out of the bathroom less than ten minutes later.

He’d thought she’d been
irritated when she went in, but when she came out, she looked livid. And
indescribably gorgeous. With her eyes flashing green fire and her hair curling
damply around her face, the closest comparison he could come up with was to a
landed sea goddess. In baggy sweats.

“So,” she said, turning toward
him with her hands on her hips, “what did you want to talk about?”

She wasn’t wearing a bra under
the sweatshirt. Beneath the soft cotton, her nipples were well defined as her
stance pulled the material tighter across her chest and her full breasts swayed
slightly with her movements. It took him a moment to bring his eyes up to her
face because his thoughts had taken a sharp detour, wondering if she weren’t
wearing panties either. The glower she was leveling at him should have seared
the flesh off his face.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

Her eyes narrowed. “Seriously?
You’re going to ask me that?”

Before he could decide how to
respond to her using a question to answer his question, she turned and started
tidying up around the hotel room with irritated, jerky motions and talking more
to herself than to him. All he could do was sit and watch with an odd mixture
of fascination and astonishment.

“Is something wrong?” she hissed
as she picked up Chloe’s socks, one of the few items that had escaped the
applesauce onslaught, and folded them together.

“No, of course not,” she said
with an exaggerated shake of her head. “I regularly spend my days with my
daughter, running for our lives from freaks and crazies. What could be wrong
with that? I’m going to get to jump into another world any day now. Who
wouldn’t want that? Throwing my life into the hands of perfect strangers,
finding out that I’m an alien and being hunted by other aliens who seem to have
escaped from Dr. Moreau’s island. Nothing wrong with that. Of course not.”

She’d made her way around the
hotel room, working her frenzy higher as she straightened the desk, zipped up
the diaper bag and stacked the dinner plates. When she picked up the tray of
dishes and headed for the door, he got up and cut her off. When he started to
take the tray from her, she refused to let go of it for a moment, trying to tug
it out of his hands before glaring up at him.

“I can handle putting dishes out
in the hall.”

“I never doubted it. But it’s
safer for you if I’m the one who opens the door.”

Her glare heated, but she
released the tray. After he’d set it out in the hall and relocked the door, he
turned back to find her, arms crossed and hip cocked, scowling at him darkly.
“What?” he asked.

Apparently, that was the wrong
question. “What? What do you mean
what?
” She dropped her arms to fist
her hands at her sides and advanced on his position. When she was within inches
of him, she stopped and poked him in the chest. Hard. “You. That’s what.”

“Me?”

“Don’t you dare pretend you
don’t know what I’m talking about.”

He frowned down at her. He
didn’t have to pretend. He had no idea what she was talking about. It didn’t
help his concentration having her close enough to smell on her skin the herbal hotel
soap she’d used in the shower. He’d been in a losing battle a time or two, but
dealing with this woman damn near defined the term.

She jabbed at his chest. “See?
You’re doing it again.”

The woman was starting to drive him crazy. He’d been doing
his level best not to do
anything
. To not respond when she stomped past
him and the thin sweats molded around the curve of her ass. To not think of
how, when she shoved her hair out of her face, those same curls would wind
around his fingers if he used it to tug her head back and kiss her neck. She
might be having a hard time explaining what was on her mind, but she was doing
one hell of a good job turning him on.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“Looking at me like you want to kiss me and then ignoring
me.” She shook her head. “Maybe it’s just the stress getting to me. I could
just be imagining things. It’s been awhile since I’ve had sex, so who knows?”

For a moment, she glared up at him, both anger and desire
hot in her gaze. Then her eyes cleared and he could almost see her mind
working. She swallowed hard and her eyes widened as a red blush started
creeping up her neck. Dropping her hand, she said, “Shit, now I’m really making
a fool of myself.”

Flustered, she paused and covered her reddening face with
her hands. “Sorry about that. I tend to get worked up sometimes.”

The woman switched gears faster than anyone he’d ever known.
“Amy, you’re not making a fool out of yourself.” He kept his voice low and
tugged her hands down.

She wouldn’t look at him when she spoke. “Here you are,
putting your life on the line for me and my daughter and I’m accusing you of
coming on to me. Jeez. I’d be great fodder for a movie of the week. Ultra-horny
mom chased across the country by homicidal psychos takes out frustration on
sexy hunk assigned to protect her.”

Her face blazed a deeper shade of red and she let out a fast
breath that puffed out her cheeks. “Hell, we don’t even know each other and
here I am wanting to jump your bones. Just hand over the Mother of the Year
Award now,” she said.

The woman baffled him and kept blindsiding him with her
comments. Absently, he rubbed his thumbs across her palms. “Do you always say
exactly what’s on your mind?”

She grimaced. “Way too often, apparently.”

He wondered if she were this vulnerable and open about
everything, a thought that ushered into his mind an unbidden image of her
vulnerable and open in an entirely different manner. “Honesty isn’t a bad
thing,” he said.

Her disgruntled expression made it clear she thought
differently. She looked up at him and was apparently about to contradict him
when she stopped and narrowed her eyes at him.

“See?” she said, pulling out of his hold. “It is you.” She
jabbed him in the chest again. “You’re doing it right now and it definitely
makes me crazy.” Taking a step forward, she tilted her head up to hold his
gaze. “So do you want to kiss me or not?” she demanded.

Suddenly, the desire he’d been trying to ignore slammed into
him. Since the attack on the River Walk, he’d known he was wading into
dangerous territory. The attraction had been immediate and ruthlessly primal
and every second he spent with her only intensified the feeling.

He was no young buck who had trouble keeping it in his
pants. He was an experienced and disciplined soldier who’d not let emotion
cloud decisions for the last decade or more. He’d been the voice of reason to
the Royal heirs when one by one they fell off the deep end as they retrieved
their mates from the maze of this world. And now with the mission’s end in
sight and only days to go before life went back to normal in Ilyria, a tiny
little spitfire with big green eyes was threatening his equilibrium.

Amy was the last unmated, full-blooded Mystic they’d been
able to find and she was Siriyn’s to claim, since he was the only heir yet to
find his mate. He had no right to want anything from her.

There were other considerations, of course. Nothing was ever
as cut and dried as it first appeared and he knew better than most that life
was messy—Prophets, Elders and a generations-old prophecy notwithstanding. But
whatever considerations may or may not lie in the future, right now she was a
Mystic and he was in charge of bringing her back to take her place beside her
foreordained mate.

“Well?” Amy’s glare moved down to his mouth and his body
instinctively reacted to the blatant sexual hunger he saw in her face. The
woman had not a disingenuous bone in her body and had no idea what she was
doing to him. She licked her bottom lip and moved her gaze, shining with carnal
temptation, back up to meet his eyes.

Then again, she might have a very good idea how she affected
him.

“No,” he said, wrapping his hand around her smaller one that
was still poking him in his chest. “Kissing you is a really, really bad idea.”

“But you want to,” Amy said, stating the obvious.

“Yes,” he said. There was no other possible answer. Not when
he was looking into endless green eyes that held him wholly enthralled. At his
answer, Amy’s lips curved into a slow, provocative smile that decimated the
last of his resistance. She leaned in as he removed her finger from his chest
and used her hand to pull her forward until her breasts brushed up against him.
Sliding his other hand around the back of her neck, he lowered his head until
his lips hovered barely a breath above hers. ”Tell me no.”

Instead, she pushed up on her toes to meet his lips. Their
mouths pressed together briefly in a simple, almost innocent touch. Innocent
save for the inferno of desire it sparked to roaring life inside him.

Jordyn didn’t have to be a Prophet to know that this kiss
was anything but simple. If the conflagration that single, quick brush set
aflame was any indication of what could be between them, this woman just
complicated the hell out of his life.

For a long moment, he couldn’t think, couldn’t move. Not
with her eyes looking up at him, wide, dark and wanting. Her pulse was
threading a rapid beat at the base of her neck and she licked her bottom lip
again. This time, she caught it between her teeth as she waited for him. He
started to pull back, needing to get away before he was completely pulled
under. Amy threw her arm around his neck to hold him in place.

“Just one more,” she whispered next to his mouth, “and then
I’ll quit.”

With a harsh groan, he released her hand so he could wrap
his arm around her and anchor her body to his. There was nothing innocent about
the second kiss. He devoured her mouth with blatant carnality. Her mouth opened
and he filled it with a deep thrust of his tongue. When she opened her mouth
wider and wound her tongue around his, he damn near fell to his knees.

The kiss continued hot and fierce and swept through him as a
wildfire across a drought-laden land as he took what had become more than a
need for him. As much as he took, Amy forced him to give more. She didn’t balk
at his aggression, but met each kiss with passion and intensity.

Amy arched her back and pressed her breasts against his
chest. The layers of clothes between them didn’t conceal how well her body
molded to his. When she shifted again, the gentle give of her stomach against
the hard press of his erection sent a lightning bolt of lust straight up from
his cock through the top of his head.

His heart slammed in his chest and he wanted more.
Instinctively, his hand pushed under her shirt and skimmed over the smooth skin
of her back.

Time became a long silk ribbon unwinding from the heavy
wooden spool of eternity, spinning itself out in a slow release around Jordyn.
There was something about her that drew him in, captured him. He tightened his
hold on her, pulling her closer. All the worlds he’d lived through faded into
the blurred images of a watercolor washed by the rain, leaving the woman in his
arms standing in bright relief against all else he’d known. Her warmth and
willingness filled an aching void deep within as her kisses took on an urgent,
demanding edge.

Moving his hand upward, he traced the line of her spine
before splaying his fingers and bringing his hand forward to brush over the
soft, sensitive curve of her breast with his thumb. A low murmur of pleasure
came from Amy and fire spread under his skin. He pressed his hand in further
until the pad of his thumb rubbed over the tightened nipple.

Throwing her head back, Amy gasped and dug her fingers into
his shoulders. He moved his hand from her breast to her back as she arched
away, instinctively supporting her as she caught her breath. With her eyes
closed, her dark lashes lay in a thick fringe at the tops of her cheeks and her
hair curled in a tangled riot around her face. The deep breaths she was taking
kept lifting her aroused breasts toward him, their fullness outlined under the
soft fleece of her sweatshirt.

She was making it damn near impossible for him to remember
why it had been a really, really bad idea to have kissed her in the first
place.

Languidly, Amy opened her eyes, desire still burning in
their depths. “Wow,” she whispered. “If Chloe weren’t in the room, I’d have to
throw you down and have my wicked way with you.”

As hard as he was mentally trying to backpedal, it took a
moment for her words to sink in. The meaning clicked and she slipped under his
guard again, surprising a small smile out of him. “Throw me down?”

Her hands slid forward until they splayed over his chest.
With a mischievous glint in her eyes, she plucked at his shirt. “What? You
don’t think I could take you?” An impish grin lit up her face as she tapped her
palms against his chest. “You may have some major muscles working for you, but
I have a few ninja moves of my own.”

Though her touch was playful, it shook him with how much he
wanted it. Wanted her. Shook him hard enough to force back the tide of lust
rising again to engulf him.