It felt weird to be wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants with nothing underneath. Trying not to think about that, she turned to get a look at herself in the mirror. The room was too dark to see much, but she used the towel to dry her hair as best she could, then finger-combed it back from her face, thinking that what she looked like when she was escaping from trained killers shouldn’t matter. But apparently she wasn’t strictly using logic.
Conflicting emotions surged through her. She wanted reassurance that everything was going to be all right. And at the same time, she wanted Shane to know that the current danger had made her admit that her feelings for him ran deep—as deep as she’d suspected.
Which left her where—exactly? She’d been taught all her life that good girls waited for marriage to sleep with a man. Now she thought that was asking too much, given the circumstances. She and Shane had almost gotten killed. Maybe they still would.
Back at her apartment with Alesandro, she’d told herself she had no future with Shane. Probably that was still true, but they had now. She focused on that thought as she returned to the stateroom.
When she didn’t see Shane there, she went stock-still.
Then she heard footsteps behind her and turned.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Setting up an alarm system. If anyone tries to come through the tarp, they’re going to ring the bell I hung there.”
“Okay. Good.”
He gestured toward one of the windows. “It’s a tight squeeze, but we can get out that way.”
She nodded, switching her attention back to him. He had put on the other pair of sweatpants, but he was standing bare-chested at the side of the room, wiping off his gun with another T-shirt.
Probably he’d gotten rid of his wet briefs, the same way she’d discarded her own bra and panties. Knowing she shouldn’t be thinking about his underwear or her own, she focused on the gun.
“Will that fire now?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“But you don’t know?”
“I can’t be sure, but it will be more reliable when it dries off.”
She came up behind him, trying not to think too much about what she was intending to do. She’d tried to turn herself into a real American woman. And in many ways she’d succeeded. But a lot of her mother’s values had stuck, which meant she didn’t have a lot of experience with men, the way most women her age would. And what her father had taught her about the value of a son versus a daughter wasn’t exactly reassuring.
Maybe Papa had thought he wasn’t broadcasting his preferences, but the way he favored her brother had been obvious to her. Alesandro had picked up on it, too, and had always acted superior, even when he’d come to her demanding that she find what Arnold Blake had stolen. Both her father and her brother had little regard for the person she was. But Shane had seemed different from the first. She’d been attracted to him, and she hadn’t known where that attraction was leading. Or she knew what she wanted, but she wasn’t sure he had the same goals.
But if you stuck to the moment, she was surer of his feelings. At the end of their date, he’d aroused her with his kiss. Then later he’d saved her life, because she had no doubt that those men intended to kill her after they found out where Blake had hidden the information they wanted. Just the way they’d killed him. Maybe that was what they were planning for her brother after they got what they wanted.
She didn’t want to think about that now. She wanted to focus on the man in front of her. She’d had a vivid dream of making love to him. The dream had embarrassed her when she’d seen him the next day, and she’d tried to deny what she felt for him. Not tonight. At the safe house he’d held her in his arms. That had to mean something. Now she was alone with him after their perilous escape, and she was going to take advantage of that.
“Shane?”
When he turned to face her, she reached for him, pulling him close. She felt him go very still.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I almost went too far with you earlier in the car. Well, not in the car, exactly. I was thinking about taking you in to your apartment.”
The frank words shocked her, but she managed to laugh.
“If you had, we would have stumbled over my brother, and we could have prevented a lot of chasing around.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about that earlier. He wasn’t going to tell me why he was there.”
“But you would have seen from his face that something was going on, and you would have gotten him to admit what it was.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“You’re very persuasive.”
She heard him swallow. “You’ve just had a bad experience, and you’re reacting.”
She kept her voice low. “And you’re trying to protect me from myself.”
Although she was clasping him to her, he kept his hands at his sides. His voice sounded gritty when he said, “I’m trying not to do the wrong thing.”
She didn’t let herself examine that too closely, even though she was rather sure she knew what he thought was wrong, under these circumstances.
Instead she said, “Maybe the bad experience has let me admit what I truly want.”
Chapter 16
Elena had never thought about seducing a man. She wasn’t even sure of her moves. But she knew that Shane wanted her, even if he wasn’t prepared to admit it. She also knew he felt protective of her, which was probably part of the conflict he must be feeling.
Before he could come up with another objection, she cupped the back of his head with her hands and brought his face down as she raised her own head toward him.
She hadn’t been sure what would happen. Or perhaps she’d been afraid that he’d wrench himself away from her. But the danger must have affected his emotions as well as her own. When their lips met, it was as though someone had tossed a match into a pile of gasoline-soaked kindling. Invisible flames rose as heat flared between them.
She heard him growl her name and felt him gather her closer as he kissed her with purpose, running his hands up and down her back.
The heat coming off him made her dizzy. She should be afraid, but she kept kissing him, letting him feel all the passion that she’d held inside herself for so long.
Opening her lips, she invited him to explore her mouth, then did the same with him, absorbing his taste and the way the mouth-to-mouth contact sent shock waves to every part of her body.
His hands slid down her back, cupping her bottom, pulling her against him so that she could feel a hard shaft pressing against her middle. When she realized what it was, her breath caught.
He must have wanted her to understand where they were headed. When he caught her reaction to his arousal, he dropped his hands and lifted his head, looking down at her with a mixture of smoldering passion and icy control.
“You know that you’re playing with fire?” he asked.
“I know what I want.”
“You want that inside you?” he asked, and she knew he was trying to end this encounter by making her aware of reality.
Her mouth had turned so dry that she could hardly speak, but she managed to say, “Yes.”
“Then take off your clothes.”
Again, a dose of reality. Was she ready to get undressed in front of him? Or was she going to back away—the way he hoped she would.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of scaring her off. Not because she was trying to score any points, but because what she wanted hadn’t changed, even if he was trying to make her take a step back.
She did step back, but only a few feet. She kept her gaze on him as she reached for the hem of the T-shirt and pulled it over her head, then let it drop on the floor so that she stood before him naked to the waist, her nipples puckered and her eyes defiantly on his.