5

Five

BY TIME HER FATHER LEFT, Emily was drained. She could feel the suffocating feeling that came with each bodyguard change, and the feeling of helplessness she couldn’t seem to shake.

It was worse this time, though, because Kell was more than just a bodyguard. He was a mysterious friend, a part of her life since she was ten years old, and a part of her dreams since she was a teenager. She had been half in love with him for as long as she could remember, and now, she was supposed to pretend he was her lover. That he touched her. That she knew his kiss and the stroke of his hands.

God help her, she couldn’t even write the fantasy to that one. She had no conception of how it would feel, but she knew the hunger for it. A hunger that left her shaking when she pulled herself from the dreams of his touch, always so close and yet never actually on her flesh.

She could feel it now. It rippled through her bloodstream and reminded her that Kell was part of the reason why no other man had ever measured up to her idea of the lover she wanted. Because she had wanted Kell. Wanted him with a stubbornness that didn’t leave room for other men.

“The rules in this house are simple,” she stated as she forced herself to turn and face her too-wanted houseguest.

She might as well start as she intended to finish. “Stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours.”

He stood in front of her patio doors, the lengthening shadows of evening filling the house and gathering around him like a cloak of danger.

He looked dangerous. He was dangerous. More so than she had remembered. She had a feeling that even if she had been inclined to try to run him in circles the way she had the others, it wouldn’t be possible.

“Stay out of your way?” He smiled suggestively as his gaze raked over her body. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible. Bodyguards have a purpose, Emily. They guard the body. And I take my job very seriously.”

His gaze settled at her thighs for a long second before lifting to her face with a wicked smile.

“I just bet you do, but I believe I’m safe enough in the house. The security system alone is better than Fort Knox, so we shouldn’t have any problems staying out of each other’s way. Now should we?”

She was shaking. Shaking and certain that he could read her nervousness in every move she made. She had never been good at hiding her thoughts, and hiding her desires were even harder.

Every time he had looked at her since she became a teenager she had seen the knowledge in his eyes. The certainty that he knew the hungers building in her. Of course, that was why she hadn’t seen him in five years. He had been avoiding her. And that was just damned humiliating.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he stated calmly.

There was no frown. There was no flicker of calculation in his gaze as he tried to decide how to handle her. They all had that moment of indecision, as though they weren’t quite certain what to do with a client who didn’t really want them there.

“Why doesn’t it work that way?” She kept her voice reasonable. “School starts again within another month and I’ll be busy working on class plans and so forth, as well as some writing I do. I know how to entertain myself, and I do it quite well. I hope you know how to do the same.”

“Some things are better taken care of together though,” he pointed out, pacing closer, his emerald eyes snaring hers and holding them against her will. “You made a promise to me earlier, Emily. Do you intend to renege on it?”

“What promise?” She could smell him. She wanted to moan at the scent of hard, impossibly powerful muscles and male sensuality as he began to invade her personal space.

She should retreat. Step away. But she was locked in place, staring up at him, feeling invisible bands of heat wrapping around her body.

“I didn’t promise you anything.”

“You did.” The sensual male croon in his voice had her womb clenching. “When you dampened those panties on your bed because of my breath against your sweet pussy, you made a very firm promise. One I intend to collect on. A taste I intend to take.”

Shock held her motionless.

“My panties?” she whispered desperately.

“Red lace.” His hand lifted, the backs of his fingers stroking along her collarbone as she trembled before him. “The ones lying on that pristine white bed in there. Still wet and smelling of peaches and cream. Do you know that I’m very partial to peaches and cream, Emily?”

Emily jerked back, nearly stumbling against the wall she backed into as she stared back at Kell in amazed shock. His eyes seemed to brighten while his face became darker, intent, sexually hungry.

She shook her head desperately. “It wasn’t supposed to be you,” she wheezed. “It was supposed to be a bouncer.”

“And I had to pay him well to stand back,” he murmured with a smile. “Very well. And I intend to collect on that one as well. Right in there in that big bed of yours, all over you like wild rain. Tell me, sugar, you ever had a man cover you like wild rain?”

Cajun. The soft flavor of a Cajun accent slipped into his voice and sent a hard shudder down Emily’s spine as she shook her head. A jerky movement she didn’t seem to have control of.

This wasn’t happening. And she wasn’t responding. She wasn’t hot. She wasn’t getting horribly wet between her thighs. And dammit, her nipples were not pressing tight and hard against the shirt she wore.

“Never?” His voice lowered as he moved forward again, caging her in, restraining her. His hard body within a breath’s distance of her and the wall at her back.

“Stop!” She meant the word to be forceful. God, she meant to sound as outraged and furious as she knew she should be. “I haven’t seen you enough in the past five years to recognize you when you walk into a bar and you think I’m going to just jump into bed with you?”

Her body was more than ready to do just that.

“Stop?” His head lowered, his lips touching her brow.

She was going to choke on her own breath. Pleasure swamped her just that quickly, a weakness that had her knees giving out and tremors suddenly shaking her body.

“Please stop.” She closed her eyes as she pressed her hands tight against the wall, using the last amount of strength to keep from touching him. If she touched him, she was going to humiliate herself further. She would moan and arch against him. She would beg him for things that she knew would ultimately destroy her independence.

“Sure, sugar?” His hands whispered down her bare arms. “Are you sure that’s what you want? I could make you come again. Instead of a little ripple, I’ll make you explode with pleasure. Wouldn’t you like that?”

She would love it. She ached for it. She was dying for it.

“No!” In a move she couldn’t believe she had made, her hands slammed into his chest, pushing him back as she threw herself from the wall, staring back at him in fury.

He was laughing at her. It was there in his eyes, in the smile on his face. Laughing at her and daring her. Trying to control her.

“You bastard,” she choked. “You have no right to molest me in my own home like this.”

“Molest you?” He was clearly laughing now. The amusement on his face slid into her gut like a knife, and burned through her mind with the shameful realization that he might be aroused, but nothing like she was. He was playing. Nothing more.

“Stay the hell away from me,” she ordered harshly, blinking back her tears. “I don’t like your games and I don’t appreciate your damned lies. I can do without both.”

She turned, intent on racing away from him, on locking herself in her bathroom and trying to wash the shameful embarrassment from her mind.

“Hold up there, sugar?” His hand wrapped around her arm, turning her to him firmly as he frowned back at her. “This is no game. And this sure as hell isn’t.”

Before she could stop him, he forced her palm to the bulge beneath his jeans, pressed it close, and his gaze flared with brilliance again. “I might enjoy playing with you a little bit, but trust me, I know how damned serious I am about touching you. I will be in that bed with you, the only question is when.”

“When hell freezes over.”

“Really?” His smile was gentler now, but still filled with humor. “I hear global warming is coming fast, cupcake. You sure it ain’t already froze over?”

“I’m quite sure,” she snarled back. “Because if it were we sure as hell wouldn’t be standing here and your master would have called you back to chip ice. Now let me go!”

He released her, but his amusement had her pushing a strangled scream from between her teeth. She whirled away from him, stalked to her bedroom, and slammed the door with enough force to rattle the frame.

Shaking with rage she stomped to the side of the bed, jerked the phone off its cradle, and dialed her father’s cell phone number with jabbing stabs of her finger.

“Emily?” His voice came over the line, concerned, questioning.

“He’s fired!” Her voice was shaking. Her heart was racing hard enough to choke her. “Do you understand me? Right now. Get back here and get him, he’s gone.”

Silence filled the line for long moments.

“Did he hurt you, Emily?” he asked quietly.

She wanted to lie. For the first time in longer than she remembered she wanted to lie to her father.

“He’s crazy,” she bit out instead. “Certifiable. I will not stay here with him.”

“Has he hurt you, Emily?” The demand in her father’s voice became stronger, firmer.

“No, he hasn’t damned well hurt me,” she cried out. “But if you don’t come collect your bulldog I swear I’m going to hurt him.”

Silence again. She hated the silences.

“Daddy, I’ve never asked you to do this,” she suddenly whispered. “I’ve always let your boys stay. I’ve always let them follow me around like the guard dogs they were. I’m asking you this one time, please, get someone else.”

She hadn’t begged her father for anything in years. She had tried to be independent, tried to be self-sufficient and reasonably responsible.

She heard him sigh wearily. “I can’t do that, Em. Your life is more important to me than your wants right now. He stays.”

Shock raced through her, increasing the shaking in her body, the fear that began to cloud her mind.

“You can’t mean that,” she whispered.

“If he hasn’t hurt you, if you’re not scared of him personally, then yes, I do mean it. Now, I’ll ask you one more time, has he hurt you? Are you afraid he’s going to hurt you?”

He was going to break her heart. He was going to rip her soul from her body.

“I’m sorry I bothered you.” How she managed to control the shaking in her voice, she didn’t know. But she did. Pride firmed it, chilled it, and drew her upright as she stared at the wall across from her.

“Emily—”

“Goodbye, Daddy.” She hung the phone up softly as she blinked back her tears and realized that she never should have called him to begin with.

“Scared, Emily?”

She swung around and there he was. He had opened the door soundlessly and now leaned lazily against the frame, one ankle crossed over the other, one broad forearm leaning against the doorframe.

“Of you?” she asked with a sneer. “Not hardly, Kell. Not ever. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a shower.” She began to move around the bed when she saw the panties, crumpled at the end of the bed rather than lying in the middle where she had tossed them.

She picked them up gingerly, stared at them then turned and tossed them to him coldly. And of course, he caught them, with one hand, with no effort.

“You can have them,” she stated harshly. “And enjoy them, because it’s the closest you’ll ever come to that particular part of my body again.”

Turning on her heel, she forced herself to move slowly to the bathroom, to enter it and close the door softly before locking it behind her and swallowing her scream of fury.

Kell Krieger wasn’t a man that a woman played with. A little light teasing, harmless kisses, or whispers in the dark. He was a male animal in the truest sense of the word and she suddenly felt helpless, like a prey.

What was it she had wished for earlier? A man she couldn’t control? A man who didn’t whine but took the reins?

She had to have been insane.

KELL STARED AT THE CLOSED bathroom door and let a frown work across his brow. She was scared. He had seen it in her eyes when she ran from him, had heard it in her voice. But it wasn’t the fear of a woman who sensed physical danger, it was the fear of a woman facing something unknown, something uncertain.

He shook his head, his lips tightening at the memory of her voice when she had begged the senator to take him off the assignment. The cry of a child to its father, a plea for understanding, and evidently the senator hadn’t bothered to heed that cry.

The senator had never heeded her cries though. He had told her to “buck up,” he had encouraged her to dry the tears and work harder. He was proud of her. Confused by her. But in the end, he did as he wanted, not as Emily needed.

SHAKING HIS HEAD, HE STEPPED back from her doorway, closing the door gently behind him as his hands clenched around the silk and lace panties. He had to fight to keep from bringing the soft material to his face, to restrain himself from drawing the scent of peaches and cream into his head. If she thought she was getting them back, she was wrong. But he would see her in them again. And he promised himself he would pull them off with nothing but his teeth and devour the silky sweet flesh they covered.

As he moved through the living room the cell phone at his belt rang demandingly to the tune of AC/DC’s “Hells Bells.” Grinning, he pulled it from the holder, checked the number coming through then flipped it open.

“Good evening, Senator,” he answered.

“What the hell is going on?” the other man snarled into the phone. “You haven’t been alone with her an hour and she called me nearly in tears begging for a replacement. What the hell did you do to her?”

“We’re just getting our ground rules established, Richard,” he assured the senator calmly. “She’s a little upset over it.”

“Don’t try to pull shit over my eyes, son, I’m not a fool.”

“No, you’re not,” Kell answered firmly. “You’re a father answering to your daughter’s anger. If you want me off this assignment I understand that.” Like hell. “But as long as I’m on it, then I’ll protect her as I see fit.”

“Did you hurt her?”

“Do you really need to ask me that question?”

He could hear the silence in the background, he could practically hear the senator’s mind churning.

“Emily is an intelligent, cunning woman. We both know that,” Kell said then. “She twists her bodyguards around her little finger as easily as she would a ribbon. She’s frighteningly brave, as she proved today at the strip club and in the excursions she’s dragged her bodyguards into. I won’t be conned, twisted, or convinced to let her endanger herself needlessly. It will take us a few days to establish the ground rules, but once we do, she’ll settle in fine.”

That was his story and he was sticking to it.

The senator remained silent. Kell followed suit. He checked the patio door locks, then the windows, working his way through the house and into the room he had been assigned.

“She’s a good girl,” the senator finally said softly. “Her feelings are easily hurt. Don’t run roughshod over her, Kell. You could hurt her more than any of the others. She’s always been infatuated with you.”

And strangely enough, the senator had never pushed that infatuation and he had never pushed Kell toward her.

“I don’t run over anyone, Richard. I simply convince them of my way.”

Senator Stanton grunted at the comment. “If she calls me again, I’ll consider her request. Whatever you’re doing, fix it.”

“You promised no interference,” Kell reminded him.

“That was before the woman who’s already halfway in love with you called, nearly in tears, begging for something she’s never begged for before. Fix it, Krieger, and do it gently. Or we’ll have words. And you don’t want that.”

He would prefer to avoid them, but he could handle it.

“That’s your choice, Richard,” he finally answered as politely as he could. “Just let me know when I need to pack and I can be ready to roll. Until then, please refrain from calling to take me to task over your daughter’s anger. It’s detrimental to the assignment and creates a tension neither of us needs.”

“Lieutenant Krieger, you are testing my patience.”

“And you should remember how well I excel at testing everyone’s patience,” he pointed out. “I guess you’ll just have to forgive me for it again.”

“You better hope I do,” he snapped. “Now fix this. And that’s a damned order.”

The call disconnected as Kell shook his head on a wry smile. Dealing with the father might turn out to be more trouble than dealing with the daughter.

He laid the lacy panties on the dresser by the door, turned to the duffel bags, and began to unpack. The weapons went close to the bed, with the holstered back-up weapon strapped to the top of his lace-up work boots and the legs of his jeans covering it.

The Glock he normally carried on his belt was tucked into the bedside table, the automatic rifle and extra ammo pushed beneath the bed.

Clothes were hung in the closet and pushed into the dresser. Within minutes he was unpacked and staring around the room with a vague sense of discontent.

What was it about Emily Stanton that had always called to him? From the day he’d realized what a beauty she was growing into and how the fire was barely banked within her, she had made him hard. Hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to scare the hell out of him and keep him running in the opposite direction for the past five years. There was something fresh about her, something wild and untamed. But it was restrained. Driven down and simmering beneath the surface as it fought to survive amid the life her father, loving though he was, was trying to force her into. Emily was never going to give her father what he needed from her. Senator Stanton wanted a pretty little dress-up doll who followed his commands and never thought to question them or her own happiness.

The problem as Kell saw it was that the two of them were too much alike. If Emily had been born a man, she would have made a hell of a Navy SEAL. But she hadn’t been born a man. She had been born soft and gentle, easy to break and easy to scar.

He knew exactly how easy it was to break something that soft and delicate. Fuentes had already destroyed one woman in Kell’s care. He wasn’t going to let the drug lord destroy another.

He felt something twist inside him at the thought of his wife, Tansy, and the son he had never known. Tansy hadn’t been wild. She had been gentle, ethereal, as though her body knew she would be on this earth for only a short time.

She had made him laugh. She had made him see himself as something other than the heir to the combined Krieger and Beaulaine fortunes though. She had opened his eyes and taught him how to begin maturing when his family would have continued to convince him he was perfection and that everything in his life had to be the same.

He could barely remember her face now. He hadn’t dreamed of her in years, and the burning lance of pain had dimmed over the years. He felt regret. Fury at the evil that had taken her away from him and the knowledge that Emily had the power to hold him with a strength that he now knew Tansy never would have.

He had loved Tansy as a boy. If Emily stole the man’s heart, then the risk to his soul could be that much greater.

He would never survive losing her.

She was like the little fox he always compared her to. Inquisitive. Stubborn. Sensual.

She was determined. She might not always know what she wanted, but she was working her way there, and Kell intended to become what she wanted. All those wild impulses, all that heated hunger was going to be his.

A man learned young that he couldn’t tame the wind, so instead, he learned to become part of it, to channel it. That was the key to Emily. Channeling all that frustration and pent-up need for adventure. Like a vixen, like the wind, there was no taming her. But he could enjoy her. And that he definitely intended to do.