On the Loose (14 page)

“Because I thought it was cool, and I refused to be Walter Smith Rydell for even one more minute after I knew what that old man had done to my mom. My dad never called me Walter anyway. I'd always been Smith to him, after his mom's side of the family.”

She still looked slightly incredulous. “And out of all the names in the world, you picked—”

“Cougar.” He gave in to a grin. “Cougar Rydell. It didn't get any cooler than that at fifteen. My little brother wanted to change his name to Soaring Eagle, but Dad put his foot down and told him we only had room for one idiot in the family.”

“You're nuts.”

“It was the last wild thing I ever did. Scout's honor.” He held up three fingers in the age-old

salute.

“Liar.”

“Well, there was this one night in San Luis,” he admitted, “at the Hotel Palacio, I did a ‘wild thing' that night.”

Even in the low light, he saw a blush race across her cheeks.

“You...you're, you are such a jerk to say it like...to bring it up like that.”

Probably, but it was the truth.

Honey crossed her arms and gave him a hard look, or as hard as she could get it.

“I am so not a wild thing,” she said indignantly. “It was just...that night was just...just—”

While she tried to figure it out, he sat back and enjoyed the view—green eyes holding his own despite the blush, blond hair, soft mouth, and a tactical vest full of her survival gear—perfume, lipstick, granola bars, a credit card, and a little cash.

Smith supposed he'd seen worse tac rigs.

On second thought, no, he hadn't. No commando was ever going to find comfort by spritzing on perfume. Honey did on a regular basis.

“—just crazy,” she said, finishing the thought by tightening her arms across her chest with her chin tilted up, silently daring him to discount her version of events.

Not on a bet.

“Riots. Explosives. Car bombs. A quarter of a million in U.S. cash. Yeah,” he agreed, leaning forward. “It was pretty crazy.”

Like what he was thinking.

Oh, hell. He was more than thinking.

Reaching out, he slid his hand around the back of her neck and rubbed his thumb across her nape.

“You are not going to get anywhere with this,” she said, her tone quite firm.

But she didn't pull away.

“I know,” he said, and drew her closer.

“You are such a jerk.” They were really close now, with her eyes all flinty and no-nonsense, and her Audrey Hepburn updo coming undone, and her mouth looking like the first step to salvation.

“I know.” He'd been told quite a few times, but never by anyone who looked like her. Nobody looked like her, so perfect, and yet not quite. Being with her all day, he'd noticed a few intriguing flaws. “Two of your bottom teeth are crooked.”

“You are
such
a jerk,” she said, and he grinned. “I stopped wearing my retainer when I was twenty-one, which of course is none of your business, no matter what my teeth look like, you jerk.”

They were both sitting sideways in their seats, meeting halfway over the console.

“And you have really dark eyebrows for a green-eyed blonde.”

“I never said I was a
natural
blonde, and you never even called me, not once, Cougar Rydell.”

Cougar
. God, what she must have thought of that when she'd first heard it. He grinned again and lowered his head, brushing his mouth across her ear and down the side of her neck—and he loved it, just because her skin was so soft and she smelled so good, and because she let him.

Sure, he needed to be thinking about the mission, and what he was doing, and put it all in the big-picture scheme of things. He needed to be thinking about a truck full of LAWs careening around the mountains in a deluge without him riding shotgun on it. He needed to be thinking about what might be in the briefcase, and how he was going to use it.

Yeah, he needed to think about all those things, and he was going to—in a minute, or two, or thirty, or sixty, depending on how lucky he got.

“I had you tracked after I put you on the plane that morning out of San Luis,” he said, his lips barely touching her skin. “I knew where you were every step of the way, and I knew the minute you got home. And the next thing I knew, you were dating the underwear model again.” And that had been the end of it, he'd thought. “So I backed off. I figured your life was back to normal, and you wouldn't want to be reminded of how out of hand things had gotten in El Salvador.”

“Completely out of hand,” she said, leaning in to him a little, her hand coming to rest on his chest, which he loved. “I've never been involved with anything so...so out of hand.”

He believed it. Shakespeare in the nude didn't come close to what had been going on in the streets of San Luis that night, or in his bed in the Hotel Palacio.

“I wrote you a letter,” he said.

“I never got it.”

“I never sent it.”

He kissed her cheek, and she tilted her head ever so slightly, granting him a little more access to the soft skin on the side of her neck.

He lightly grazed her with his teeth, and a small shiver went through her.

Yeah. He needed to be thinking about rifles, grenade launchers, and crates of ammunition, not sex.

Right.

But if this got going, it wasn't going to stop.

“I wrote you a letter, too,” she said.

“I didn't get it.” But he was damned intrigued, wondering if it had been the same sort of carefully worded, “gee, I really, really like you, and even though we have absolutely nothing in common, the next time I'm in Washington, D.C., I could give you a call, if you'd like” type letter.

“That's because when I read it over, I had second thoughts.”

Damn. The same thing had happened to him.

“What were your second thoughts?” Not that he couldn't imagine them. They'd probably run pretty much along the same lines as his—long-distance relationship; his job was hard for a lot of women to understand, let alone accept; she was one of the wealthiest women in America—stuff like that.

“Well, I knew how much I'd paid for my dress, so that was easy, but I didn't know how much to charge you for the panties. They were a birthday present.”

He stopped kissing her neck. She'd almost sent him a bill for the clothes she'd left in his room at the Hotel Palacio?

“You were going to send me a bill?”

“Itemized,” she whispered, tunneling her hand up into his hair. “Including my gun and the bullet I bought.”

Goddamn.
He grinned. She'd written him out a damn bill.

He laughed against her skin and bit her neck, just hard enough to make her giggle.

“Who gave you the panties?” They were shameless, so sheer they could only be called “see-through,” and if anything, she owed him for taking that damn gun off her hands.

“My mother.”

“I thought mothers gave chastity belts to their daughters, not see-through underwear.”

“They were on sale, in Paris, buy one, get one free, and she couldn't resist—all that luscious silk for half price.”

He grinned again. Luscious was right.

“Go ahead and send me the bill. I'm keeping them.” He wasn't a trophy kind of guy, but those panties were amazing—and he'd gotten them off her.

“Smith?” she said, moving against him, lifting herself even closer to him.

“Yes?”

“I'm wearing the other pair now.”

And that set the game. Sex won out over common sense, hands down.

It was all so simple.

Opening his mouth over hers, he took her in a drugging kiss, cupping her face in one hand, and sliding his other hand up under her shirt. When he reached her lacy, satiny bra, she made a soft sound in the back of her throat. She was so lush and full, and hearing her groan and feeling her nipple harden was enough to send a flood of heat to his groin.

He shifted in his seat, trying to get closer to her, wanting more.

God, she was sweet, such a visceral addiction, all heat, the taste, and feel, and scent of her imprinted on every fantasy he'd had in the last four months, which had done nothing but drive him goddamn crazy. He'd wanted to forget, not remember. But every time sex had crossed his mind, Honey had been hot on its tail.

Today had been such a tease, to be with her and meet the challenge of keeping his memories and his imagination in check. He'd done a pretty damn poor job of it. Every inch of bare skin had made him want to run his tongue over her to make a connection, to get her wet and mark her as his—the side of her neck, the tender inside of her wrist, the short expanse of bare leg between her rolled-up BDU trousers and her rolled-down socks. He wanted his mouth on her everywhere.

It was a conquest thing, meeting the challenge, and she was such an exquisite challenge. Yeah, he knew the goal. He understood what was happening between them.

Except for the part about practically wanting to eat her, so gently, so carefully; to somehow bring her inside of himself without leaving a mark or taking a bite. It was like he wanted to meld with her, but he wasn't a guy who “melded.” He was a guy who conquered.

Okay, it was a little crazy how much he'd thought about her, how much he wanted her, and there was nothing about the fact that had made him happy. His life was all about control, and wanting something he couldn't have did not fit the paradigm.

But here she was—in his arms, and he'd gotten hard by simply touching her breast, holding her in his palm, feeling the weight and softness of her. And he knew she'd gotten wet, because as close as he was trying to get to her, she was trying to get to him—something they were going to have a damn hard time doing in bucket seats.

He kissed her deeper, and unsnapped her bra, and wished they were in a bed for one simple reason: access.

That's what he wanted. That's what he needed.

“I don't think—”

“I don't, either.”
Geezus.
How could he think with one of her hands sliding up his thigh and the other one sliding under his shirt?

“We need to—”

“Yes.” They needed to bail out of this impossible front seat into the back cargo area.

“Oh,” she breathed softly, when the hand she had between his legs finally slid those last few inches home.

Yeah.

Oh.

Suddenly, bailing into the cargo area dropped a few rungs on his priority list.

Staying put had hit the number-one slot.

Staying put and getting his pants off.

“Oh,” she said again, running her hand up the length of him, but it was even more of a breath, less of a word.

Their mouths were touching, but the only movement between them was her hands unbuttoning his pants.

God, he loved a girl who knew what she wanted, especially if she wanted him. Every move she made kept him riveted in place with anticipation. Every breath she took he felt on his lips.

“In San Luis, we didn't really get the chance to—”

“I know.” But in his fantasies, they did it all, every time.

“I like...” She let her words trail off, finishing it with the slow glide of her fingers up his cock and then down.

“Yes.”
Yes. Yes.
He closed the kiss between them and sucked on her tongue, letting her know exactly what he liked, and he lifted his hips to push his pants down—and he kept kissing her, again and again, while she drove him a little bit crazy with the softness of her palm and the sweet teasing of her fingers going over the top of him, circling him, priming him for a release he didn't want to happen too quickly.

This was a game he wanted to play with her all night long.

Moving his hands to her shoulders, he started taking her clothes off, dropping the tac vest into the seat, tossing the BDU shirt into the cargo area. Her T-shirt came off over her head, and her pants went down next, and then his hand was there, between her legs, his fingers sliding into her soft folds.

Wet. Silky. His.

He lowered his head, parting her with his fingers and taking her with his mouth, and she melted against him, her soft, hot body molding itself to him, her hands tunneling through his hair, holding him to her.

“Smith,
oh, Smith
...”

God, it was incredible, and totally impossible to get enough with her half dragged over the console and him doing his Cirque de Soleil impression in the front seat with the steering wheel jabbing him in the hip.

Kissing her softly, he worked his way back up to her mouth.

“Last one into the back gets to take the rest of the other one's clothes off,” he murmured against her lips, then bodily lifted her toward the cargo area. “You first, sweetheart.”

The back seats in the Land Cruiser had all been put down to make room for his rucksack, a case holding a submachine gun, one of her small suitcases, and the black briefcase marked with a
Z
. The rest of their gear had gone on the deuce-and-a-half with the pallet. But even with all the cargo stacked around, the back of the Cruiser beat the hell out of the front.

Shoes went one way, socks went another, and when he finally got her right where he wanted her, naked and on top of him, he started feeling, for the first time in months, maybe years, like everything was right with the world for a change.

It didn't happen very often in his line of business. Guys like him thrived on conflict—and on having beautiful women they liked more than they should sliding down between their legs and taking them in their mouths.

A thousand pounds of tension lifted off him with the first glide of her tongue.

He closed his eyes, and threaded his hand through her hair, and drifted with the pleasure.

Yeah. She liked it, he could tell, and he loved it. The wet heat of her mouth surrounding him, her hand stroking him, her body a warm and lovely weight on his.

He wanted it to go on forever—right up until he wanted her to finish him off. She'd hit a rhythm it was impossible to resist, but whatever he wanted, he needed something else more.