Unmasking Kelsey (8 page)

“I think that, for a while, I got some kind of satisfaction out of defying death. I became a danger junkie. I just didn’t give a damn what happened. I took the most insane chances.”

Elizabeth found that she was softly kneading his shoulder, instinctively trying to ease taut muscles.
Her eyes were burning and there was a lump in her throat.

Kelsey shook his head a little. “God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t had the luck of the Irish and several outstanding partners over the years. My luck held long enough for those partners to straighten me out.” He looked up at her then and forced a small smile. “I’ve been an agent almost fifteen years.”

Elizabeth hadn’t realized she was standing so close until he looked up at her. She was, she realized then, standing between his knees. Too close … too close. But she couldn’t move away, couldn’t break the hold of his slate gray eyes. She cleared her throat. “Why did you tell me?”

He shrugged. “You said you didn’t know me. Now you know more about me than most of the friends who’ve known me for fifteen years. Maybe that’ll count for something.” He sounded almost tired, and his face had the strained look of something held still for too long.

She didn’t know what to think. Trust him—or not trust him? Which was the real Kelsey? This
quiet man with pain in his eyes, or the one who would lightly charm and passionately seduce? Unaware of the confusion in her voice, she said, “I don’t trust you, Kelsey.”

“I know you don’t. But I wish like hell you would.”

“You confuse me. You say you want to help. But you also said that this weekend we would—”

“Be in your bed.” He sighed softly. “I didn’t count on this, Elizabeth. I didn’t count on you. In my business, you don’t get close to anyone involved in the situations you’re investigating, because it puts you in danger. In danger of losing your objectivity. In danger of caring too much about the ‘wrong’ things. In danger of forgetting all the training and years of experience.”

He released her hand, finding her waist and gently pulling her down until she was sitting on his thigh. His voice became lower, deeper, his eyes intent as they searched her face. “A good agent has to be virtually autonomous, able to act instantly and think only of resolving the situation. When you’re … self-contained, nothing can hurt
you. You do your job and walk away. But when you lose that autonomy, when there’s someone involved who means too much to you, it makes the job harder. It makes you doubt yourself.”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” she managed.

“I think you do. You’re too much a woman not to.”

Elizabeth was very conscious of his hard thigh beneath her, of the latent power of his arms, one around her back and the other lying still across her bare thighs. “I can’t help wondering if you’ll—”

“Walk away from this job when it’s finished?”

She nodded mutely.

“No,” he said, and felt again that inner shudder, that rumble of warning.

Shaken, Elizabeth protested, “How can you know? You said that you found your work exciting, dangerous. Once this job is done, there won’t be any danger here, Kelsey. It’s a small town in the back of beyond; there isn’t anything here!”

“You’re here.”

Elizabeth swallowed hard, and she was only distantly aware that she was speaking at all. “You can’t catch the wind,” she whispered. “Chain the lightning. And you’re as elusive as those elements. Somehow, I know that.”
So many faces. So many men he had shown her
.

Kelsey understood what she was saying; the problem was that he wasn’t entirely certain if she was wrong. Some rational part of his mind just didn’t know for sure.
Would
he be content without the harried dangers of fifteen years? Could he step out of Hagen’s world where he fit so well and into Elizabeth’s where he might not fit at all?

His hesitation was telling. “I—I don’t know, Elizabeth. I won’t willingly walk away, I know that.”

“What do you want from me?” she nearly wailed.

He hesitated again, torn between agent and man, wondering if there was, after fifteen years, any real boundary line between the two. “Trust me. Let me help you. Let me help Jo.”

“And that’s all?”

“You know it isn’t.”

Elizabeth tried to draw away from him, but stopped when his arms tightened. “It can’t be both,” she said tautly.

“It is both.” He could feel his iron control slipping, and there was a raw sound to his voice. “Dammit, Elizabeth, I want you! I can’t just turn that off.”

Bewildered as much by her own feelings as by him, she let anger shape her words. “I imagine it’s happened before in fifteen years, hasn’t it? Autonomous or not, I’m sure there’s been a little sexual tension here and there. We’re both adults; why not call a spade a spade? Blaine has the same problem, I’m afraid. But at least
he
pretends to love me.” She wasn’t really sure, but she thought she heard Kelsey curse bitterly just before his lips captured hers.

And Elizabeth was bitter herself, furiously bitter, because her mind and body, for the first time in her adult life, seemed jaggedly separate. Confusion, mistrust, and anxiety were a jumble in her mind, but her body responded with instant flaming
desire to his searing kiss. Her hands moved slowly up corded forearms, touched the short sleeves of his shirt, slid over the smooth material until she could feel the muscles padding his shoulders and back.

She was feeling with every sense, aware as if all the nerve endings of her body were sensitized by his touch. But, even more, she felt
his
feelings; with a powerful empathy she had never known before, she could
feel
his anger and his need, feel some terrible battle taking place inside him. And she had the strange, overpowering impression that Kelsey himself wasn’t completely aware of that inner war, or if he was aware, that he was fighting to ignore it.

His lips left hers finally to trail down her throat in a hot demand, and Elizabeth spoke huskily without even thinking about it. “No. You’re angry.”

“Yes, I’m angry,” he said thickly against her throat. “I’m angry because I’ve got no business staying on this job. I should leave, let another
agent take over. But I can’t leave. You matter too much. Dammit, Elizabeth.”

She was aching all over, fighting a mad desire to give in to the emotions storming through her with frightening force. But her mind could no longer control the separate entity that was her body, that hungering, splintered part of herself that wanted him beyond all else. Her fingers tangled in his thick hair and her head fell back, allowing him more room to explore, and the heat of his mouth on her flesh sent a wild tremor through her.

“Kelsey …”

He murmured wordlessly, a raw sound, and one big hand cupped the back of her head as he abandoned her throat to fit his mouth to hers again. He kissed her with a hard, driven passion, exploring her mouth, taking it fiercely. And when that devastating kiss ended, Elizabeth couldn’t even reclaim the breath he had stolen from her.

“You belong to me,” he said flatly, hoarsely.

She looked at his hard face through dazed eyes. “No,” she whispered, distantly terrified of losing herself in the elusive complexity of this man. How
could she belong to him when she didn’t know who or what he was? How could she risk the most vulnerable part of herself by placing it in his keeping? No. She couldn’t.

He held her eyes with his own, knowing he walked a knife’s edge, knowing he was moving too fast. But he had no choice. There was no time, no time for the patience and rituals of courtship. “You belong to me,” he repeated. “You know it, and I know it. Say it, Elizabeth. Admit it.”

She swallowed hard, caught in the slate gray of his eyes. She was confused, aching, frightened by the intensity of his demand and by her own instinctive urge to admit what he demanded. “I … No, I can’t … I won’t.”

“You have to,” he said ruthlessly, driven by the impersonal ticking of his inner clock. “Stop thinking, Elizabeth, and
feel
. Your body knows you belong to me. Do you want me to prove it? If I carry you up those stairs, will you be able to say no?”

She closed her eyes, a ragged sigh escaping her. “Damn you. Oh, damn you.”

T
HE ADMISSION, DRAGGED
from her totally against her will, was too devastating to let stand alone and vulnerable, and Kelsey knew it. Quietly, he said, “Feel me shaking, Elizabeth. Feel what you do to me. There hasn’t been a moment since we met that I haven’t been on fire with wanting you.”

She looked at her fingers, still tangled in his thick hair, and forced her hands to move downward. But they would only move as far as his shoulders where they rested, feeling the hard padding
of muscle over bone. And she could feel his hands, one still at her waist and the other at the back of her head, gentle fingers moving in her hair almost compulsively. She could indeed feel him tremble.

“It’s just physical,” she said finally, almost inaudibly.

The muscles in his jaws tightened, but his voice remained quiet. “Is it? Whatever it is, it isn’t going to go away.”

Elizabeth had never felt so torn. She wanted the man and mistrusted the agent—if that was what he really was. And, whatever he was, he had made her no promises, nothing she could hang on to. Was he using her to get information? Whatever his body felt, was his mind coldly calculating, probing the strength of her resistance? Why else would he have forced her to admit she couldn’t say no to his desire?

She didn’t know what to do!

In the same still, quiet voice, he said, “I could carry you up those stairs, Elizabeth. I could make you mine so completely you’d never doubt it
again. We both know that. But you’d hate me for it, and fight me all the way. Not physically, but emotionally. I don’t want that.”

“You want information,” she said dully.

Kelsey hesitated, then swore softly. “Yes, I do. But that’s apart from us, apart from what we feel.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Elizabeth—”

“I’ll tell you.” She broke away from him with an abruptness that caught him off guard, moving to a window on shaking legs and staring out blindly. Would she be putting Jo into even greater danger? She didn’t know, couldn’t know. But she did know that she could no longer bear being torn by the question of whether Kelsey was bent on seduction simply to get the information from her.

She had to know!

Several hundred miles away in a high-rise office building in Manhattan, the weekend quiet of a
certain floor was broken by Zachary Steele’s disgusted voice.

“That’s it. Far as I can take it.”

Of the several people quietly watching his labors on the computer, only Raven spoke up. “And?”

“And nothing.” Zach sat back, looking at the others thoughtfully. “I just ran head-on into a military code lock.”

Josh Long, sitting close beside Raven on a vacant desk, frowned at his security and electronics expert, and friend of more than fifteen years. “Military? Now, that’s a bit … unexpected, isn’t it?”

Raven looked at her husband, worried. “What on earth has Kelsey stumbled into?”

Lucas Kendrick, chief investigator for Long Enterprises, turned away from another computer and shook his head at their inquiring looks. “No dice. Blaine Mallory’s so clean he squeaks. Personal bills paid off or current, business accounts up to date. An A1 credit rating, and a pillar of his community. The IRS has no complaints with
his returns, and if he’s living above his income, he’s hiding it very well. He hasn’t put a foot wrong. Not even a traffic ticket.”

Kyle, who was sitting on a low counter beside Luc’s computer, looked baffled. “I don’t get it. Mallory comes up clean, Meditron is protected by a military code lock, and Pinnacle turns out to be a nice little Southern town. What gives?”

Teddy, assuming her usual position in Zach’s lap, said definitely, “Something fishy. Zach, why
would
the military restrict access to information on Meditron?”

“Only one reason I can think of. If Meditron’s under contract to produce something for them they’d rather not let the public know about, they’d lock the data away and restrict access. Given the time, I could probably get access without asking, but if I trip one of their hidden security alarms, they’ll know somebody’s in their system.”

Josh shook his head a little. “We’ve a good relationship with the military to date; I’d rather not annoy them. I can call General Ramsey and find
out what he knows. Maybe he’ll give me the access codes.”

Rafferty Lewis came into the computer room just then with his wife, Sarah. Both looked troubled.

“You couldn’t get it,” Raven said.

“No.” Rafferty glanced at the others, seeing no surprise. “I gather you’ve all had the same problem? If a floor plan for Meditron exists at all, nobody’s talking about it.”

Raven sighed. “Figures.”

Sarah, Rafferty’s wife, gazed around at the thoughtful faces and said, “Nothing at all?”

Zach shook his head. “Damned little. On the surface, there’s some tame information about Meditron—all of it neat, clean, and apparently aboveboard. When I dug deeper, I found a military code lock.”

Sarah glanced at Raven. “And Kelsey doesn’t want Hagen to know about this?”

“No. He was definite—if a bit incoherent—about that.”

“I’d give a lot to see Kelsey in love,” Rafferty
murmured a bit wistfully. “It really ought to be something to watch.”

“You might get a chance,” Josh said in an absent tone.

Zach looked at him for a moment, then said mildly, “We can’t all go tearing down there, no matter what we find out. It’s a small town.”

“Granted.” Josh studied his companions one by one, his rather hard blue eyes considering. “First, I’ll call the general and see what I can pry out of him. We can’t decide much until we have something more to go on.”

“It’s commando time,” Teddy murmured.

“They can’t stand it,” Raven agreed dryly.

Josh lifted an eyebrow at his wife. “We can’t stand it? You know very well that you’re wild to get down there and see what Kelsey’s involved in.”

Raven smiled innocently. “Who, me?”