Natches moved lazily to the front of the jeep and leaned against the heavy bumper. He stared at her, unsmiling, as he crossed one booted foot over the other and eased the dark glasses from his face.
Piercing green eyes tore into her senses, scrambled her brain and had her heart throbbing like a schoolgirl’s. Summer’s heat rushed around her then, stroking over her body and reminding her, always reminding her, of things she shouldn’t let herself remember.
“Busted.” He lifted his brows mockingly. “Want to tell me why you’re following my cousin and his woman?”
Her lips parted as she fought to drag in more breath. He could do that. Make her breathless. Make her want. With only a look, he made her feel like a virgin on the verge of her first kiss. And that was very dangerous. He was dangerous. In more ways than one.
“You’re not answering me, Chaya.” He was one of the few people who dared to call her by her given name rather than the name she used in the agency. Greta. It was nice and plain and unassuming. But he had to call her Chaya instead. He had to remind her of who she had once wanted to be rather than who she was.
She licked her lips again, fighting for her composure.
“You’ll have to ask Cranston.” She was not taking the blame for this. “His orders. I just live to obey them.” That was nothing less than the truth in the past few years. He controlled her. For now.
Natches shook his head, straightened, and moved closer. Standing her ground wasn’t easy. She wanted to run. She wanted to run to him, touch him, stroke all that hard, dark flesh, and let the intensity of these dangerous desires free.
She wasn’t married anymore, she reminded herself. She had been reminding herself of that for years.
She watched him, wary, suspecting the danger that lurked beneath that easy smile. Suspected nothing, she knew it lurked there. She knew she was facing a man who at one time had been a cold, hard killer. He had been taken into sniper training within six months of his enlistment with the Marines and within a year was ranked as one of their most proficient assassins.
And now he was retired. Bum shoulder. He liked to grin when claiming the injury that pulled him out of the Marines. She doubted a single cell on his body was “bum.”
“You know, Chaya . . .”
“My name is Greta,” she grated out. “Use it, Natches.” She had to find some kind of defense against him. The name Greta reminded her, kept the memories of the one mistake that had shaped her uppermost in her mind.
“Chaya.” His lips caressed the words as he drew closer, within a breath of her, forcing her to stare up at him. “Darlin’. Cranston’s gonna get you in a shitload of trouble. You know this, right?”
Oh God, if she didn’t know it before, she was finding out now. She had thought working with Cranston would make her life easier, that the team that worked stateside only would ease her slowly away from the horror of the past and allow her to step out of the world that had begun to smother her.
“Take it up with Cranston.” She forced the words from her throat as his hand curled around the side of her neck and the dark, sexual light in his wicked eyes began to gleam with intent.
That touch, just like that, the implied power and gentleness of that hold, had her knees weakening. She was a trained agent; she wasn’t supposed to let emotion or lust cloud her judgment. But right now it was clouding her entire mind.
His fingers flexed against her neck, the power and strength in his arm echoing along her nerve endings. Pleasure corrupted her normally logical thought processes and eroded the control she had fought for over the years.
Suddenly, she was in the dark, fighting to breathe through the agony of a hell she couldn’t accept, holding on to only one thing. Holding on to Natches’s touch.
She couldn’t let herself hold on to that memory.
Chaya didn’t bother to struggle. She could see the desire already burning in his eyes, and she knew she didn’t have a chance against him if those luscious lips actually touched hers. She would be lost in him, and she couldn’t afford to ever lose herself again.
“Don’t kiss me, Natches. Don’t do that to me. Please.”
He froze, those fingers contracting on her flesh, stroking cells that hadn’t known a man’s touch in so very long.
He had no idea how hard it was to turn away, to walk away. How she ached at night, tossing and turning in her bed, the thought of the promise in those cat’s eyes of his burning through her soul. She wanted him with a strength that terrified her.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t,” he said, his voice low as those fingers stroked against her flesh. “You’re not married anymore, sweetheart.”
His gaze wasn’t mocking now; it was somber, intense. The memories flashed in his eyes as well, and she couldn’t bear it. It connected them, made it so much harder for her to break away, to hold herself steady as she fought through the never-ending abyss of emotions that threatened to swamp her.
“Because I can’t handle you, and we both know it. Have mercy, Natches. Don’t you have enough women in your little stable? You really don’t need me.”
And there was no way she would survive it. He was wild, intense, the most wickedly alluring man she had ever met in her life. And he wasn’t the man for her. She wanted him until she ached with a force that tore at her soul, and she couldn’t allow herself to have him. This man, the one who fired her soul, who made her dream when she had no right to dream.
“That’s not a good enough reason.”
She gasped as his lips covered hers. Sensation exploded through her body; pleasure rippled and waved over her nerve endings and began to burn along her flesh. This kiss, this man, he was like nectar, like a drug she couldn’t get out of her system.
She gasped harder as her weapon dropped to the ground and she felt Natches’s hands tugging at her shirt, baring her, allowing the warmth of the sun-filled air to touch her flesh.
She told herself the perspiration was from the heat of the day, but she knew better. It was from his kiss.
Oh God. His kiss. She flattened her hands against his chest to push him away, but he wasn’t budging. His hands stroked up her back, beneath her shirt, then around, the pads of his fingers at the tender swells of her br**sts, covered by nothing more than lace.
Chaya struggled with the war waging within her now. Her body, eager, desperate, it knew this man’s touch, knew his possession. Her heart, her head, was screaming out in warning.