The kitchen and dining area was down another level, with a small atrium between it and the living room. She peered down at the view of the private courtyard below. She had walked in there that first night, had enjoyed the quiet privacy, but hadn’t known its beauty could also be shared from above.
“Does it meet with your approval?” He waited for her at the bottom of the stairs.
“It’s not what I expected. The architect knew what he was doing,” she said, making sure there were a few feet between them.
“Yes, he was into balance.” There was a light mockery in his voice, and his eyes told her he knew.
“Yes, he was,” she agreed, as she went down the last few steps. He didn’t move out of the way. “He made everything count, gave thought to every square foot of living space, and he had beauty as his goal.”
“That’s quite a conclusion from taking a short walk from the living room into my kitchen,” Rick said. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he watched her like a cat out on a hunt. He paused a few seconds, then moved. He pulled out the chair from the dining table and she sat down. “Tell me more while I get you a balanced meal.”
She wondered whether he knew his dry sense of humor didn’t add up to his image as Hard-On. Like the apartment, the
internal makeup of Rick Harden was interesting and different from the outside image. She suspected that this was a view that very few people were allowed to see. Her gaze settled on the silk purse; he had set it beside his plate. She swallowed.
“I don’t know—it’s just how I feel about things. Maybe another time.” She looked down at her own plate, forcing her eyes away from the purse. “I…didn’t know you were going to feed me.”
He sat down across from her and picked up the bottle of wine. “I liked watching you eat.” His reference to their meeting at the restaurant brought back her earlier thoughts. Of why she was here. Of what he was thinking of as he watched her. Her gaze helplessly returned to the silk purse. She knew the slow rising heat on her face didn’t escape his notice. “You seem to sense so much in so little, Nikki. I wonder whether you see what others see in you. Do others know how you feel inside?”
She was grateful for the cold tartness of the wine. “I thought I was supposed to do my interview first,” she said.
He refilled her glass. “By all means.”
She stared into his green eyes. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. His hand rested by the purse, cradling the wineglass. He hadn’t touched it. Hadn’t opened it. Hadn’t even looked at it. She picked up her own flute, drank from it again.
“After you feed me,” she told him. Food was fortifying. Food was reprieve.
Rick had never sat back and watched a woman eat as a prelude to sex before. This was the second time he had gotten aroused while looking at Nikki Taylor enjoy a meal. It was hard to explain it. Maybe because she always presented herself in such a minimalist, calm, and quiet manner, he hadn’t expected her to have such an appetite for food.
The contrast was amazingly sensual. At least it had that effect on his libido. He had the sudden fantasy of tying her in his bed for the weekend and feeding her himself. Hell, he was hungry, too, had been since he met her. And not for food.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the bright yellow chrysanthemums of the silk purse lying close to his hand. He had placed it there to make her nervous, of course. She refused to look at it, but he knew she was very aware of its presence. He wondered lazily whether she was going to run out on him. Whether he would let her. Or whether she was really going to let him open that purse and use whatever it was she had chosen.
He didn’t care to analyze why he had set her up this way. Something inside had urged him to. He wanted her in his home; he’d fantasized her in his bed. Now she was here, skittish as a wild bird. But she had come to him anyway.
He wasn’t going to rush it. He planned to stir her up, get to understand what made her the way she was. It was obvious she didn’t like what she felt for him—yet. But he could make her want him. He knew for a painful fact that he wanted her in every way imaginable. Maybe taking her to bed would stop those nightly dreams of her.
The easiest way was to answer her questions, of course. What was one more bad report on him? She wouldn’t find out anything he didn’t choose to give away.
For some reason, he didn’t want her to make it too easy for him. He didn’t intend to have Nikki Taylor on her back, compliant, just because she was doing her job. He wanted her to know sex with him would mean giving him all of the parts of her she was hiding from him, that he was going to fuck her till that serene façade fell away to show the food-loving, sensual creature inside. Till all her calm defenses disappeared. And just maybe, he would stop then.
Rick narrowed his eyes as he watched and waited. The woman wanted him, but feared sex. That itself would make any man a little crazy from wanting to go after her, but he was also very aware that she had a handler who understood what she could do to a man like him. He had never hidden his sexual appetite from those he dated, and the fact that his training had never been a secret brought along many eager women who wanted to try Hard-On. And there were the Denise Lorenses.
So many women since…the wine tasted bitter in his mouth. There were a few whose names he still remembered. Maria, who was now living near Chicago, married to a postman. Mel, an operative who had transferred to Paris. None had been able to fill the void inside. He had become so dissipated that he would use fear to get what he wanted. He looked at Nikki, quietly enjoying her filet mignon, totally unaware of his plans for her. Well, perhaps not totally, he acknowledged with a touch of cynicism. She only seemed able to put it out of her mind when there was food around.
It clicked in his head that there was a connection here somewhere, but he wasn’t interested in delving into it tonight. He watched her wash down the last of the steak, enjoyed her sigh of satisfaction. Then he pounced.
“Let me show you the rest of the apartment. Maybe you can tell me what is out of balance. Suggest some improvements.”
It occurred to Nikki that he remembered everything she had told him. He hadn’t laughed at her yet. His voice still held that lazy drawl he had adopted since the beginning of dinner.
“You have an excellent memory,” she said as she put the dishes into the sink. “Most people can’t repeat my job description back to me.”
“Since you tell so little about yourself, Nikki, it’s easy to remember. Besides, who could forget the way we met?”
It might be the wine, but she felt warm. She averted her face as she walked past him, glad to have her hair as a veil. His touch at her elbow stopped her in mid-step. His fingers burned through the sleeves of her thin blouse. It was just a light touch, but her whole body honed in on him with an eager, energetic rush. It was inexplicable. He was like a drug.
He tipped her chin up and she had to meet his eyes. “There’s a bit of gravy on your lips.”
She wiped one side of her mouth with her hand, but he shook his head. Tilting her chin higher, he bent down and gently licked the other corner of her mouth. A shiver ran up her spine, and her lips parted tremulously. He didn’t let her go.
“It tastes better from your lips,” he murmured. He dipped
down, kissed her full on the lips this time, then lifted his head a few inches. She could see the black that circled the green of his eyes. “Even better.”
Nikki wanted his lips on her again, wanted him to kiss her the way he had done earlier, but he just continued the butterfly kisses until she couldn’t stand it any longer, till she finally reached up by standing on her toes. Instead of taking advantage, Rick straightened, eyes gleaming.
Comprehension dawned. “You’re doing this on purpose,” she accused.
“Doing what, little bird?” When she didn’t reply, he squeezed her chin gently. “Say it. Doing what on purpose?”
He seemed determined to use that against her. She couldn’t utter the word. “You’re teasing me,” she finally said.
“No, say the right word, the one you’re thinking of,” he mocked. “It’s seduction, Nikki. I’m seducing you, even when you’re fighting it.”
“Why?” It had to do with her similarity to a certain someone, of course. She hadn’t made any sexual advances toward him at all.
His lips lowered to a mere breath above hers. The scent of wine and man was seductive. The promise in his eyes was seductive. With a few kisses, he had opened a hole inside her that needed filling.
“Because I want you willing,” he said. “I want you thinking about me when you least expect it. It’ll make that interview more interesting because I know you’re getting wet and needy while you try to pry my secrets from me.”
She blinked at his words, shocked that she was doing exactly what he was priming her to experience. She felt the wetness. Felt the warm need that bunched in her loins.
“I thought I’d be fair one last time—let you know what’s happening, what’s going to happen,” he continued in that lazy, knowing drawl. His fingers holding her chin were still gentle, but the look in his eyes had turned predatory. “Each time you come to me, you’ll get what you want—the information for your report…book…but it won’t be just that. I’ll have you coming back for me. You’ll give me what I
want—the truth—and I’ll give pleasure, Nikki. Fear or no fear, you will come to me for pleasure.”
He kissed her hard this time, then released her. Nikki stared at him. Why did she still want him to kiss her after what he said? But she did.
He was the only man who had ever brought up her fear as a challenge to her. Of course, she had never been part of a seduction before. There was a certain irony in the exchange. She needed him to tell her his darkest secret, to extract the truth of what had happened in his past. In return, he would take her where she most feared to go, and perhaps expose her own past to him.
Balance, wasn’t it?
A part of her mocked her.
And she had never fought balance as much as she did now.
“Kiss me,” she said.
“Later. Think of what we could be doing while you ask your damn questions,” he said.
Rick gave her some breathing room. He let her go back up to the living room alone while he made some coffee. He had the amenities in the small bar upstairs, but he understood how a little tension could go a long way when it came to seduction. So he told her where the rest room was, if she needed it, and he dallied a few minutes in the kitchen, torturing himself with thoughts of her making an escape.
It wouldn’t surprise him at all if she were gone by now. After all, he had done his damnedest to scare her away. He couldn’t even explain it. He had her where he wanted, and then he released her; he had her again, and then chose to give her another reprieve.
What’s the matter, Harden? Lost your touch?
When he returned to the living room, he was prepared for the worst but that didn’t stop his heart from skipping a beat at the sight of the empty leather sofa. She was gone. He swept into the room, carelessly holding the tray with the coffeepot and cups, about to curse out loud. Then he stopped.
Nikki was on the rug by the fireplace, examining his pile of books. Relief gushed through his system, and he had to
take a deep breath to gather himself. She was here. That meant she wanted him to continue. She glanced up as he approached, and his heart skipped another beat at the smile she gave. It reminded him of—
“You look funny with that tray,” she said, still smiling.
“Careful, it’s hot,” he said, but she took it away from him. “You think it’s funny for me to serve my own coffee?”
She placed the tray on the low table by the fireplace and knelt down before it. Her hair pooled around her like a gleaming cape. He caught his breath and fought the urge to slip behind her and feel that hair against his face.
Unaware of her own precarious situation, she poured hot liquid into the two cups. “Ricardo Harden, cook. Ricardo Harden, balancing a tray, serving coffee. What next? Scrubbing the floors? Cleaning the toilets?”
She laughed at her own teasing words, a joyous sound without feminine wiles. It had been years since someone had dared to tease him to his face. And longer still since a woman had served him a cup of his own coffee. Taking the cup, he sat down on the nearby armchair. Nikki settled back on the rug, tucking her legs sideways under her.
She cocked her head to one side as she looked up at him. “I want to make it very clear before we start that I have nothing to do with Internal Investigations, that I’m not another Denise Lorens sent by them.” Her voice was soft, modulated.
“I intend to find out about everything,” Rick told her.
She nodded. “I don’t expect any less from you.”
“Who will ask you questions about me?”
She smiled and shook her head. “You agreed to me asking the questions first, remember? I’m assuming you will cooperate after I have done everything you’ve told me to do?”
Cynicism returned regarding the woman sitting so close to him. “Pardon me, but you sound like someone from EYES.” The look of distaste on her face almost made him believe her. She also was very familiar with the fact that EYES was departmental lingo for I.I. “If you’re not from them, then you’re from somewhere else. Which department?”
“You won’t find me in any departmental files.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“No.” She ran an absentminded hand over the fur rug, smoothing it one way, then the other. “Rick—”
It startled him to hear his name on her lips. He couldn’t remember if she had ever done that before, but it sounded unbearably intimate in this setting, with her on his favorite rug, at his favorite reading spot, at his feet.
“Rick, at least hear me out. You can always refuse to answer. I’m not forcing you to answer anything you don’t want. I haven’t even threatened to tie you up.” She paused. “Yet.”
He stared at her for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. Oh, she was good at this. He was intrigued. When his laughter subsided, he took a sip from his coffee as she waited expectantly.
Long, flowing hair. Same height and build. The similarities weren’t coincidental. They went to too much trouble looking for an Asian woman to just conduct an investigation or do a report. There was a reason she had been sent to him, and even if she was telling the truth, that it wasn’t an I.I. ruse to get at him, this interview had to do with his past. A secret he had buried with a wife he had loved. Why was this coming back now?