She just bet she had.
“Why was I there, Travis?” she asked, barely able to push the words past her lips. “Why wasn’t I home?”
No one else seemed willing to answer that question. Would he?
“It had something to do with what you saw the night your father was killed.”
Now, her surprise turned to shock.
She hadn’t expected him to answer her. She blinked back at him, wondering at the quiet expression on his face as he continued to watch her closely.
“What happened that night?” She didn’t remember it. The last thing she remembered was the party that night.
Travis stepped to the large, marble-topped kitchen island and stared back at her with a heavy frown. “You said your father suspected someone of embezzling money. You said he had been acting strangely that night and then he disappeared from the party. You went looking for him and when you walked into his study, he was already dead.”
Lilly fisted her hands at her side and fought against the rage and the pain. Her father had died that night, and she had been unable to help him. Unable to do anything but run, apparently.
Shadows tangled together in her head. Like a fast-forward that went much too fast to make sense of, images raced through her mind.
“So I didn’t see who killed him?” she asked. “I did nothing to save him?”
Travis shook his head. “We think you were knocked unconcious. And you suspected, but never told me either way. You had issues trusting people, especially with your secrets.”
“I did nothing to prove my suspicions?” She heard her own voice roughen, felt the agony of failure tearing through her.
“I didn’t say that, Lilly,” he retorted gently. “You’ve investigated. At times I’ve helped you, but you always ran into a dead end. That doesn’t mean you haven’t tried.”
She swung away from him, fighting her tears.
“You were working covertly with MI5 before that night,” he continued. “You couldn’t risk going to them, though. You trusted no one.”
“But I trusted you enough to tell you that?” She swung back to him, the anger and fear eating at her now.
“We were close, Lilly,” he stated softly. “There were many times you trusted me. And there were times you didn’t.”
At least he was admitting there were times she hadn’t trusted him.
“Where did we meet?” The question was a whisper, as she fought to put together the puzzle of her life.
“We met in Israel. I was your trainer for a while.” With that statement he turned, opened a lower cabinet door, and tossed the empty bottle away.
He moved with a predatory male grace, a sense of preparedness and yet casual laziness. She couldn’t pinpoint the type of man he was, or even how trustworthy he was, and she considered herself a rather perceptive person when it came to others, but she couldn’t read him well.
She watched as he moved across the room to her. Silently. He was even more silent than she was, and he was much heavier. There were muscles packed on that body.
“What sort of trainer?” she asked breathlessly as he came closer, brushing against her, staring down at her with his heated gaze.
What did she want? Information or that hard, hot body moving against her, over her? Her body was screaming for sex, her mind demanding answers and she was having trouble deciding exactly which she wanted to give in to first.
“Hand-to-hand combat and weapons.” His head lowered, his lips brushed against her ear.
“You were a very good student too.” One hand gripped her hip and jerked her against the steel-hard wedge of his c**k beneath his pants as his fingers tangled in her hair to draw her head back. “Teacher’s pet, actually.” His lips brushed hers.
Lilly caught her breath. She wasn’t a virgin, and if she had been this man’s lover then she knew damned good and well she wasn’t inexperienced. But she felt innocent, caught in a web of seduction and pleasure that was sensed rather than remembered, as she held her breath, waiting for his kiss.
“Why are you here, Lilly? Information, or this?” He asked the question that raged through her mind, but he gave her no chance to answer.
His lips pressed against hers, parted them, sipped from her as though arousal were an ambrosia and he was dying for more.
His tongue stroked over her lips then slipped inside, caressed her tongue, licked, tasted. A hum of pleasure left her as she felt her hands moving slowly up his hard arms. Over muscle and flesh, tough, invincible, as he pulled her closer and lifted her tighter against him.
The hard proof of his erection nudged at her pu**y. It pressed against her clit, rubbed the material of her silk panties and the silk lining of her own leathers against the dampening folds between her thighs.
Sexual need, excitement, and a rush of emotions that made no sense crowded in on her. Her flesh heated, burned. Wherever he touched, wherever the warmth of his body caressed her, triggered such a rush of pleasure racing through her that she felt dizzy.
Her knees were weakening. Didn’t that only happen in books and movies? Not in real life?
A moan whispered from her lips as her hands pushed into his hair, gripping the long strands, feeling the coarseness of it, the cool, achingly familiar touch of it.
So little in her life was familiar anymore. This, though, this rocked through her system with an awareness that she had been here before, that she had missed this, needed it. There was also an assurance that she hadn’t had enough of it. Not yet. Perhaps never.
His kiss was black magic, there was just no other word for it.
“Travis.” She whispered his name as his lips slid to her cheek, the curve of her jaw, to her neck.
Nerve endings tingled with a rush of pure sensation, white hot and intense as it washed through her body.
Callused fingertips moved beneath the snug top she wore, caressed up, cupped . . . Jerking her head back, Lilly fought to hold on to a sense of balance as the pad of his thumb raked over her nipple while pressing beneath the lace of her bra.
It was exquisite.
As she arched against him her legs parted further for the hard thigh pressing between them, lifting her, forcing her to ride the hard contours of his thigh as she ground her pu**y against him.
She ached. Oh God, she ached as though sex were more than a want, as though it were imperative to her very being. A cascade of heated sensations flooded her body, dampening her sex, clenching the intimate muscles as she fought to catch her breath.