“Separately,” he added with a wry smile that didn’t manage to drive the feral hunger from his gaze. “If you want.”
She wanted to take him into her bed, to open her thighs and take him into her. She wanted to ride the waves of desire until a riptide of pleasure pulled her into its relentless undertow.
She wanted to forget the years that had passed since she last lost herself in his arms.
The sound of Isabel walking down the hallway, her footsteps clicking against the polished hardwood floor, snapped the exquisite cord of tension stretching between them. Rick pulled back, letting cool air fill the heated space between their bodies. His legs seemed to shake as he pushed to his feet to face his sister.
“Rick, I’ve been thinking about our offer to trade places.”
“And you’ve changed your mind?” He sounded disappointed. Amanda hid a smile.
“Actually,” Isabel said, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for either of us to stay there.”
Rick turned in the doorway. “Why not?”
“I know they were probably tracking Amanda through the device in her crown.” She shot Amanda an apologetic look. “Which reminds me, we need to make sure we fix that crown for you tomorrow. I know it’s got to be hurting you.”
“Not too bad, but I’ll remind you.”
“Good. But back to the tracker—if they know who Amanda is, it’s possible they know who you are, too.”
“And you think they might come looking for me at home?”
“Exactly. You’ve got your home wired with security, so we can monitor for any intruders. But I don’t think it’s smart for me to stay there alone.”
“I guess I can take the sofa.” He looked skeptically at the piece of furniture, which didn’t look long enough to be comfortable for Amanda, much less for Rick.
“Nah, you can take my bed,” Isabel said quickly. “Tonight, at least. I’m going to Huntsville tonight.”
“Huntsville? Why?”
“I’m giving a presentation at a writer’s convention in Fort Payne next month—Jesse thinks it would be good PR. I’m meeting the conference chair in Huntsville first thing in the morning to discuss what they want from me, so I’m grabbing a room at a motel there so I won’t have to worry about morning traffic. I’ve already packed a bag, and I need to head out now so I can get there in time to settle in before bedtime.” Isabel headed for her bedroom. “I’ll try to be back in time for the hypnosis session. For moral support.”
Rick’s gaze remained locked with Amanda’s. She found him hard to read, though she wasn’t sure whether it was because he was trying to hide his thoughts from her or because his emotions were in such turmoil that she couldn’t see past the chaos.
He started to walk Isabel out when she emerged from her room, but she waved him off. “See you tomorrow around eleven.”
The front door closed behind her, the lock engaged with a rasp of metal on metal and Amanda and Rick were alone.
Completely alone.
Amanda’s ears rang with the silence left in Isabel’s wake. She felt a sudden, jittery urge to fill the silence, though at the moment, she didn’t know what to say or do.
Or how to feel.
Leave it to Rick Cooper, with his characteristic blunt honesty, to get right to the heart of things. He turned to her, his eyes blazing. “I want you. You know that, right?”
She nodded, her chest aching. “But it can’t happen.”
“I tell myself that, too, but I don’t believe it.”
“Then I believe it for you. All we ever had was sex, Rick. You know it. I know it—”
“That’s all we allowed ourselves to have,” he said in a voice as rough as sandpaper. “We never tried something different.”
“We didn’t want anything different.” Feelings were messy, and Kaziristan had already been too messy a place, too volatile a situation, to allow their feelings to make things that much harder for them.
Her life was too up in the air even now for her to think about anything but two bodies pressed together in the dark. Considering more—wanting more—was folly.
“I did,” he said. “I do.”
As she rose to her feet, he closed the distance between them in a couple of steps. But he didn’t touch her. She felt the heat of him, as warm and vibrant as a caress, but he kept his hands resolutely by his side.
“You want more, too. I can see it in your eyes.”
She lowered her gaze, feeling naked.
“You can tell yourself you just want to use my body to make you forget the rest of the craziness in your life. But it’s not true.” He finally touched her, a light brush of his fingers against the bare skin of her wrist. His voice dipped to a silky growl. “I think you’re ready to stick around and see where things take us—”
“I can’t,” she whispered, the words burning like bile in her throat. She pulled away from him, her chest tightening as she scurried to the guest bedroom. “I’m sorry.”
She escaped into the bedroom and shut the door behind her, acid tears stinging her eyes. Groping her way through the darkened bedroom, she bumped into the mattress with her knees and fell onto the bed, pressing her hot cheeks against the cool sheets.
I can’t,
she thought, the words blazing a bright, hot path through the darkness behind her eyes.
I can’t I can’t I can’t—
The constriction in her chest eased, and the frantic chanting in her head finally stilled, but the ache in her soul remained. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, where moonlight played tag with shadows across the drywall.
She had been ten years old when she’d walked into her mother’s bedroom in the middle of the night after a bad dream and realized all those uncles her mother brought home to visit were really just men she had sex with. It hadn’t been long after that she’d walked in on that gory scene in the kitchen.
She lost her virginity at sixteen in the back of a football player’s car. She lost the last of her romantic illusions the next day when every guy on the team knew what had happened, and her gridiron Romeo let her know in the cruelest terms possible that she was nothing more than a warm, willing body to him.
After that, she’d set her own terms. She had sex when she wanted to, with whom she wanted to, and she walked away whenever she was good and damned ready. What she didn’t do was pretend two bodies creating friction in the night had anything to do with love and commitment and forever.
Forever was for other people. She was lucky if she made it through right now.
Only Rick had ever made her believe sex could be something more. And even he had left her when she’d most needed him to look past her bravado and cool logic to see the hunger for forever that burned in her soul like a wildfire.
For almost three years, she’d buried that fire beneath layers of stony determination and constant fear.
And buried was where it would stay.
Chapter Twelve
“How are you feeling? You still okay?” Alicia sounded distant, almost like a voice in the back of her mind. Amanda knew she was supposed to be in a hypnotic state, knew she probably was, but it just felt as if she were very relaxed, as if all the stresses and worries that had haunted her for the past few years had taken a vacation, leaving her clearheaded for the first time in a long time.
They had gotten past her initial abduction, which had turned out to be much less painful in the reliving than she’d thought. They were talking about her primary captor now.
Amanda had told the CIA everything she could remember about The Tiger at the time of her escape, relating her fears about his possible goals. Her handlers had sworn to look into everything she’d told them.
She had no reason to doubt they had, did she? She couldn’t imagine Alexander Quinn, for all his secrecy and manipulations, would turn his back on the possibility of a high-value terrorist target who posed a threat to the U.S.
But Quinn hadn’t been at that debriefing, she realized. He’d been on an assignment.
“Are you remembering something?” Rick’s voice jarred her concentration, making her jump. She clung to the thread of focus, keeping her eye on The Tiger, whose calm brown eyes seemed locked with hers in a deadly stare-off.
Did he remember her as clearly as she now remembered him?
“I can identify The Tiger if I ever see him again,” she said aloud, not voicing the sudden flicker of doubt she’d just had about the CIA. “I never could before.”
“What about the others?” Rick asked this question again, his voice closer.
Amanda gave up trying to stick with her focus. He was too close. She could feel the heat of his body, smell the masculine essence, unique to him, that had once been as familiar to her as the sound of her own voice. She opened her eyes and found him only a few inches away from where she sat on the sofa, his worried gaze tangling with hers.
“They’re not important,” she said with conviction, suddenly certain she’d found an important key to unraveling the mystery behind the recent attempts on her life. “The Tiger is. And the sooner I speak to a sketch artist, the better.”
“I’ll call Cissy,” Alicia said, already on the move. “She’s home on spring break.”
Rick pulled up the ottoman and sat at Amanda’s knees, reaching out to curl his hand around hers. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said. She couldn’t describe it, not aloud, but she could still sense The Tiger’s gaze, locked with hers in a battle of wills. She’d spent the past three years running from the battle, too weary and injured and raw to arm herself and enter the fray.
But The Tiger had never laid down his arms. She felt it, bone deep. He saw her as a threat, and for some reason, at this point in time, he’d decided to end the battle—end the threat—once and for all.
The ruthless, soulless MacLear rogues who’d tried to kill her might be the blade of the sword, but she was now thoroughly convinced it was The Tiger who was wielding it.
RICK’S YOUNG COUSIN Cissy worked with Amanda for a good half hour, listening carefully to Amanda’s directions while she sketched. Finally, Amanda said, “That’s him.” She turned to Rick, gesturing for him to join them. “Do you recognize him?”
Rick studied the sketch his young cousin had drawn. The man pictured was average-looking. Pleasant, ordinary features. He supposed the fellow pictured would be considered a moderately attractive man. But there was nothing noteworthy about him. Rick could have passed him on the streets of Tablis dozens of times and never really noticed him.
He met Amanda’s watchful gaze and shook his head. “I’m sorry. No.”
“There’s an intensity about his gaze that is impossible to capture unless you’ve seen it.” Amanda smiled at Cissy, who carefully tore the page from her sketch pad. She handed the sketch of The Tiger to Jesse, who stood nearby, watching the proceedings with quiet interest.
“I’ll get this photocopied and pass it around the Central Asia section at the office.” He slanted a quick look at Amanda, who looked ready to protest. “I will, of course, come up with a story that has nothing to do with you.”
She subsided against the sofa cushions, remaining silent but still looking worried.
And tired. Stressed. The antibiotics had already wiped out her fever and were sending the infection into rapid decline. But the constant pressure on her must be exhausting.