“There’s no inside entrance?” Alex asked behind her.
“Only in my dreams.” She felt like groaning. She hated walking these stairs every night.
Alex watched her walk, watched her cute, tight little ass bunch and her h*ps sway. He was rock hard; images of taking her, seeing the innocence in her eyes as he filled her, were torturing him.
She was right; he should have been turned off. The thought of a virgin should have him running for the hills. The hell if he should be following her to her apartment like an obedient hound.
He could have sat in his truck and watched her to the door.
But, he told himself, that wouldn’t mean she was safe. Someone could have gotten into the apartment.
Yeah right. Sitting in the truck wasn’t going to get him under that skirt of hers. And knowing she was a virgin wasn’t helping things.
It sent a shaft of possessiveness burning through him. And that, he didn’t want to feel. He didn’t feel possessive about women. It wasn’t allowed and it wasn’t part of his life.
So why the hell was he standing on her balcony now, watching as she unlocked the door and stepped inside? She disabled the security, closed the door behind them, and flipped on the lights.
He watched as she kicked off her shoes; spiky black heels, they made her legs look sexier than hell. She dropped her purse on the little table just beside the door and moved into the wide living room before turning on a lamp and turning to face him.
“See, I’m safe.” She lifted her arms out to indicate the room, the apartment.
Alex shook his head slowly. Safe from everything but him. “You know what I want, don’t you, Janey?”
Her arms dropped to her side. For a second, just a second, she lost that unemotional, cool expression she had worn every time she had seen him in the past month since he had returned home. He saw her eyes flare with interest, with need, a hint of fear. Then, just as quickly, they were gone.
“No, I don’t know what you want, Alex.” There was a thread of anger there now. “Do I owe you something? Is there something here that belongs to you?” Her lips quirked mockingly. “I don’t think there is. I don’t think there’s anything here that you want to do more than play with.”
And she wasn’t a toy. The implication was there, and he knew, son of a bitch, fury searing his guts, he knew what Nadine had done to her. How she had asked Dayle to let her just “play” with Janey for a while.
The doctor’s report, Janey’s recollection of it—it had all been in Chaya’s report to Timothy Cranston, the agent in charge of that investigation last year.
Alex had read it. He had forced himself to read it. To look at the pictures the hospital had taken of the bite marks on her br**sts. Janey wouldn’t tell them if the bitch had touched her anywhere else. For months Alex had dreamed he had killed Nadine slowly, slow and painfully, rather than the quick death he had given her.
“There’s many different kinds of play, Janey,” he told her softly. “There’s nothing vindictive or painful in what I want. You know that.”
She turned away from him, one hand propped on her curvy hip, the other lifted. From where he stood he could see her chewing on her thumbnail, and he almost smiled. That was a “Janey” trait. It wasn’t a good sign. She was trying to hold back, anger, pain—whatever emotions Janey didn’t like to deal with.
He knew her. Sometimes he thought he knew her better than Natches did. Because there were times when he hadn’t been on assignment but had watched Janey, wherever she was, instead.
From that day on the lake, six years before, when Janey had teased when she shouldn’t have teased.
When she had awakened a hunger he hadn’t known lived inside him, though she had always brought out a possessiveness he hadn’t known he had. And he had worried about her. Worried to the extent that
several times a year he had shadowed her, watched her, kept tabs on her when he wasn’t there. Until this past year. Shit had gone to hell with the operation in Somerset, and he’d let himself get distracted. He’d pulled the tail off her to gather intel on other subjects instead. And this was what had happened.
Janey had nearly paid with her life.
She turned back to him.
“Leave.” Her mask was back. That cool, professional, I-don’t-feel-a-fucking-thing mask. She was protecting herself and her emotions, and no one understood the need to do that more than Alex did.
Alex grimaced and nodded. “I can do that.”
But his feet weren’t moving. He wasn’t turning and heading for the door. Because he couldn’t. Because he had waited too long, wanted for too many years. Walking away now seemed impossible.
“So why aren’t you?” Her gaze flickered again.
She wasn’t nearly as cool as she wanted him to think. Emotions seethed inside Janey; he could see them, feel them. He wanted to taste the hunger he had glimpsed in her eyes; he wanted to feel it burning him.
“I want that kiss, Janey.”
Her green eyes seemed to darken, almost. Just a shade, maybe. And it wasn’t anger.
“What kiss?” Her breathing was heavier now, deeper. Her br**sts lifted and fell, pressing against her white blouse with tempting promise. And her ni**les were hard. The sight of those tight little peaks held him entranced.
“That kiss you teased me with the day I pulled you out of Nadine’s.” He moved toward her, stepped behind her.
Alex let the scent of her wash through his senses. An essential smell of feminine warmth, of sweet heat.
The smell of a woman, mixed with the peachy scent of soap and the delicate fragrance of shampoo. The scent of her shouldn’t have been as arousing as it was.
She had cut her hair. It was straight, tamed, framing her face like black silk ribbons, instead of long and filled with the riotous curls that tempted his hands. This hair was tempting, too, though. So damned tame and restrained that it made him wonder exactly what she was trying so damned hard to hide within herself.
The pulse was throbbing at the side of her neck, almost as hard as the pulse in his dick, and the urge to taste her sweet flesh was nearly overwhelming. He wanted to lick her from head to toes. He wanted to taste her, grow drunk and wild on her.
“You kissed me.” Her voice was weaker now. “I remember it.”
“Do you call that a kiss, Janey?” He lowered his head. He didn’t touch her any other way. Not with his hands, or his body, just his cheek against her hair. “That wasn’t a kiss, baby. That was a tease. You owe me a real kiss.”