To the Edge (22 page)

"Occupational hazard," she said, oblivious to the heat in his eyes. "It's what makes me a good reporter."

There was nowhere to go here. Jillian Kincaid and her unending questions pissed him off to the point where he could cheerfully throttle her, and yet he couldn't stop thinking about her breasts. And that incredible mouth. God. She was chewing on her lower lip, looking at him like he was a puzzle she was trying to figure out. He wanted to do a little chewing, too. Start with her mouth, work his way to her nipples, then delve between her thighs and just feast until his tongue was so saturated with her taste and texture—

"Snooping into other people's lives makes you a good reporter? In my book," he said, countering with as much anger at himself as with her over the way he always teetered on the brink of self-control around her, "it just makes you stupid."

She blinked, amused. "Stupid?"

"You're tiptoeing into territory where you don't want to tread, and yeah, you're too stupid to realize it. Just like you're too stupid to have figured out by now that you're making yourself way too accessible and way too vulnerable to attack."

"Whoa. You're movin' too fast for me, cowboy. From nightmares, to my questionable intellect, to accessibility. You wouldn't be trying to change the subject again now, would you?"

"What I'm trying to do is rattle your cage hard enough to open you up to seeing the light. I've bided my time, thinking you'd come to your senses, but all you want to do is play games. So let me lay it out for you. You need to take some time off. Go home to Golden Palms. Let the police find your stalker while you lay low."

And get the hell out of his sight.

"Lay low? What happened to 'Don't let them get you running'? 'Don't let them get you scared'?"

"There's a difference between running and protecting yourself. There's a monumental difference between fear and common sense." And there was a difference between a death threat and the threat he represented. One could leave her dead. The other could leave
him
dead. If her father didn't kill him, he'd do himself in for being such a dumb fuck.

"Why don't you just make it easy on everyone involved and hole up until this all blows over? For once, use your head."

She tilted the head in question, shot him a pinched frown, and with that one look made it apparent she had no intention of taking his advice.

He shook his head. Stubborn damn woman. "Oh wait, listen to me. Suggesting you use your head. I forgot. You have a tendency to not always use the best judgment anyway, right? Take Steven Fowler, for example."

Crap. He hadn't meant to hit her with that one again. But she ticked him off, dammit. Evidently, so did the idea of her and Fowler together, because the thought lay like a slug in the back of his mind—until he burped it out again.

"What I meant to say was, maybe some of your past mistakes should clue you in that you don't always make the best decisions and you ought to be listening to well-intended advice."

Her frown worked its way into a glare. "Well-intended? There isn't a well-intended bone in your entire body, and that crack just proved it."

She studied his face for a long time, then, instead of blasting him, asked what he was soon to discover was a very calculated question.

"Why do you keep bringing up Steven Fowler?"

Because he was jealous of the bastard, that's why. And because it bugged the hell out of him that she'd slept with a married man. "He's a suspect. So is his wife."

"Really? I think you bring his name up a little too often and then back away."

Straws. He had nothing left but straws to grasp. Which was what he'd been doing when he brought Fowler into the conversation. "Bothers you, does it, to think your ex-lover could be responsible?"

"What bothers me," she said, looking like she'd just had a blindfold lifted from her eyes, "is that you can't admit the truth."

All-knowing and infinitely pleased with herself, she sat back in her chair, considering him.

With a smug smile, she picked up her glass and wiggled it at him. "Why didn't I see this before? You've been so certain that I—oh, how did you put it?—
want to get in your pants
that I totally underestimated how badly
you
want to get in
mine.
It bugs you to think Fowler's been somewhere you haven't."

When she laughed—evidently in response to the look on his face—he wondered if he was really that transparent.

Evidently, he was.

"Oh, this is too rich. Mr. Big-bad-nobody-messes-with-me Garrett has his tail in a knot because his hormones are giving him fits."

He sneered. "Hate to break this to you, princess, but you've got an inflated opinion of your sex appeal."

She looked him up and down. Her eyes told him that she knew she was flirting with fire. Just like her smile told him she was feeling reckless enough to strike the match anyway. "Is that a fact?"

His heart double-pumped when she rose and, never taking her eyes off his face, skirted the table and walked up beside him. Close. So close, he could see the pulse quicken at her throat, feel the heat radiating off her body. Smell the erotic scent of rain forest and wine and woman.

"So I don't do anything for you, is that what you're saying?"

He swallowed, fought to appear unaffected by her nearness, as her warm breath whispered against his ear. "You piss me off. Does that count?"

He sat ramrod straight, told himself to think about the weather, the fact that his steak was getting cold, anything but the way Skippy was happily swelling with hope and primed for action. But she generated a little too much heat, moved a little too close, and shot his concentration all to hell and back.

When she ran an index finger in a slow, sensual glide along the side of his clenched jaw, then skimmed it lingeringly down his throat he swallowed back a groan.

When she spread her fingers wide across the skin exposed just above the round collar of his shirt his mouth went dry and he stopped breathing.

And when she flattened her palm against his chest and eased it slowly downward he felt himself slipslide down the rocky slope toward a bottomless pit of disaster.

When Garrett's hand shot up and manacled her wrist just as she reached his belt, Jillian didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed. She was stunned by the speed of his action. The feel of his hand capturing her wrist made her tremble with anticipation. And fear. And a little too much longing to keep this at the level where the stakes in her game had been all about his control.

She'd been teasing, tempting, letting the wine do a little too much talking, and banking a little too heavily on the notion that she could also use it as an excuse for playing fast and loose with her hands. But he'd just turned the tables on her. The game was no longer just about his control... suddenly it was also about hers.

No way was she going to let him in on that little revelation. And no way was he going to best her at a game she'd initiated.

"What's the matter, Garrett? Am I getting a little too close to the truth?"

"What you're getting a little too close to is a spanking."

She blinked at him, wasn't aware that she'd wet her lips until his gaze tracked her tongue there and he groaned.

"Well, my, my, doesn't that sound kinky."

Blue eyes glared up at her. All heat and fury and pure animal lust.

She'd just crossed a dangerous line. And she liked it. How could she be so annoyed by this man and so excited by him? And how could she have let herself believe she could hold her own in any physical contest with him?

Maybe, just maybe, she'd better back a step away from the fire before she got good and truly burned. And she would back away ... in just a moment. There was something she wanted him to understand first.

"For your information, Steven Fowler is a liar and a cheat, but he's not violent. And to ease your troubled mind: he was never my lover. He never will be.

"And, Garrett," she added silkily, meeting his angry gaze and holding it, "neither will you."

She wasn't sure what she saw on his face—satisfaction relief, anger, or all three—before the hard line of his mouth turned up in a smirk. "Well, that takes a load off."

Before she could wind up to get royally ticked, he tugged and she tumbled, and the next thing she knew, she was on his lap. His arms banded around her, pinning her arms between them.

She glared into the blue eyes looking down from mere inches away, told herself she was more surprised and angry than she was excited.

She lied.

He smiled. A study in male arrogance and insight. "For the record ... you're not even a little bit curious?"

She tried to form the word, to say,
No,
but she was too occupied cataloging the scent, the heat, the hardness of him to manage even that one necessary denial.

She must have shaken her head, though, because he laughed. "Me, neither."

Then he lowered his head to nip lightly at her bottom lip. And got down to the business of making liars out of both of them.

Instant arousal. Electric heat. That such a hard, maddening man could have such soft lips and employ such gentle skill that elevated what for all practical purposes was a fairly chaste kiss to a level that went beyond erotic was beyond her comprehension. But he did and more when he covered her mouth with his.

Innocence
was not a word she would ever associate with Nolan Garrett, yet the way his mouth touched hers brimmed with it. She'd expected relentless aggression. Ravenous dominance. Instead, he gave her time, gave her a chance to get accustomed to the taste and the feel of him, to experience the tightening of his body beneath hers and prepare for what came next.

With each dip of his head, each buss of his nose to her cheek, each exquisitely tender caress of his lips, he drew out the anticipation, built the urgency until she was squirming in
his lap, wishing her hands were free so she could pull him hard against her and take this gentle introduction to a fullblown exploration of lips and teeth and tongues.

It wasn't that she didn't like what he was doing. She
loved
what he was doing. The slow and silky touches belied his rugged strength. The skillful give-and-take was at odds with
his aggressive nature. Such gentleness clashed with the image of the hard man she'd come to know. Such tenderness opened him up to emotions he'd tried to convince her he would
never feel... and yet she was the one who felt raw around the edges.

So raw that when he lifted his head and drew slowly away she followed, silently asking for more, begging for more, needing so much more than this gentle mating of their mouths.

Stone-silent, he watched her face, closed his eyes, then lifted her off his lap.

"Go to bed," he ordered. "Go to bed... and stay there."

15

Jaw set with steely resolve, Nolan ignored
the confusion and hurt flicking across Jillian's face. He made himself dig back into his steak.

Like the world hadn't just rocked.

Like the sky hadn't just fallen.

Only when he heard the last of her hesitant footsteps and the sound of her bedroom door closing behind her did he let out the breath that had backed up in his lungs.

Keep it up, shit for brains. You might just dig a hole so deep, you'll never find your way out.

What the hell had he been thinking? How had he let things get so out of control?

Because she'd made it into a contest, that's how, and stupid fuck that he was, he'd decided he was going to win it. She'd issued a challenge. She'd told him flat out he wasn't getting in her bed. Well, hell. No real
Hooah
backed away from that kind of a dare. What could he do but make her understand that he made that call, not her?

So, he'd set out to teach her a lesson. To make her aware that if he wanted her between the sheets, he could damn well have her begging him to take her there. But the minute his lips touched hers ... ah, God... he forgot about lessons and contests and lost himself in the wonder of her mouth.

Kissing Jillian Kincaid was everything he'd ever imagined and many things he hadn't. He'd expected the heat, but not such sweetness. He'd expected the burn, but not his own meltdown. He'd expected a fight, but she'd responded with guileless invitation.

Defenseless. She'd been absolutely defenseless. This woman who wouldn't run from death threats and tackled corporate corruption had been 100 percent defenseless against him. And it had stunned him into backing off, taking it slow, giving her the time to remember they were at war here. That this kiss wasn't about anything but power and positioning and proving who had the upper hand.

He'd wanted to make her understand that he wasn't anyone she wanted to be messing with. That kissing him had nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with sex. Just sex, because that's what he was about when it came to women. And that's what he'd thought she was about when it came to men.

Fowler was never her lover.

It was the last thing he'd needed to hear and the one thing he'd hoped for. It had been a helluva lot easier to steer clear of personal when he thought the worst of her on that count. In fact, it had been the final barrier and he'd used it to foster animosity and keep his distance.