Seducing the Bachelor (The Bachelor Auction Returns Book 3) (9 page)

She wanted to be back where she’d been last night, to continue where they’d left off. And as she walked beside him in the sunshine, Talon had never before been so aware of the differences between men and women. The quick, furtive experiences in high school and her first year of college had been absolutely nothing like this.

And they were wearing clothes.

“How long are you in town?” she asked.

Oh, God, was that even her voice? It sounded so much deeper, huskier, uncertain, like she was asking him how much longer until they could strip naked and she could jump him. And there was Parker, running, dodging through the stand of evergreens, broken stick in hand while he feinted at the trunks and reaching branches like a character out of Star Wars.

“Not sure,” he said. “My leave is thirty days.”

“So you have time.”

Silence.

Awkward! All he owed her was a Lady’s Choice date, and he probably felt like last night he’d more than delivered. Oh, God. Was that why he’d kissed her? Duty? Her skin crawled with shame and as Parker continued to run ahead and back and exhort them to hurry, Talon stumbled over a rock and Colt caught her.

“Easy.”

Nothing about this man was easy.

“Colt, why did you kiss me last night?”

The intensity of his gaze seared her and made it almost impossible to breathe.

“Why are you asking?”

“Hurry up!” Parker called, circling back.

“Coming.” Talon said automatically and Parker ran through the trees again.

“Look at you!” She waved her hand wildly around. “I’m studying to be able to stick my hands up animal parts when their babies are stuck, and you must have women throwing themselves at you all the time. In every country. I can barely remember how to talk to a man, yet you just have to look at me, and my body experiences twelve levels of tantric sex, if that even exists.”

“Was there a question in there?” he asked.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” She nibbled on her lip.

“No girlfriend,” he said. “And I think level twelve is a myth, but I’m happy to make a hero’s quest with you.”

Talon could feel herself blush like a teenager. “So you can joke,” she said.

“I never joke.”

Talon felt her heart flip over in her chest. Colt was so masculine, so sexy and he just seemed deadly serious, but when she’d catch a glimpse of his more playful side, well, then she really was a goner.

“Here it is. Here it is!” Parker called from up ahead. “Hurry up!”

*

Colt scrubbed a
hand over his face. Thank God the kid was here. He didn’t know what he would have done if they’d been alone. He’d wanted to pull that band thing out of her hair and sink his hands into all those curls. They just looked so soft and tempting. And the fragrance that wafted off her when she walked did something to his insides, almost making him dizzy. He wanted.
Wanted
. Ached to do things he shouldn’t, all the things he’d wanted to do to her last night before he’d come to his senses. But the two icy cold showers and the list of why he shouldn’t get physical didn’t make a dent in the desire that hammered his skull and yelled in his blood.

Telling his cock no was like spitting into a tornado.

He tried to swallow the knot of want that had lodged in his throat like a cancer. Metastasized in his gut. Tried to kill off the desire that had his fingers twitching, wanting to know with a curiosity that burned if those sunshine-colored curls that tumbled down her back like a sunlit waterfall were natural.

What the hell was she doing to him? Why her? Why here? Why now? Because he was finally considering leaving the army? Maybe making a different life? He knew he should get the hell away from her. She had a kid, but watching her walk beside him, the erect posture, gentle sway of her hips, long legs eating up the ground, he knew with a certainty that walking away wasn’t going to banish her memory and that if he were going to go back to hours of waiting for a mission, traveling the globe, lying in wait, every nerve in his body ready for that one second of perfect view and timing and the “go”, he wanted, for once, to have something good to hold on to.

“Ta-da!” Parker had skimmed up a tree and was now standing on a small, weathered platform, straddling an area between two trees. “This is my fort.”

“Parker.” Talon called out. “Come down right now. You don’t know if that’s safe. That’s not one of the places on the list where you can go without me. Climb down.”

“Mom, it’s totally awesome!”

“You don’t know how old it is,” she said, her voice taking on a desperate edge. “It could be rotted. Oh, God, was it yours?” She asked Colt. “Is it steady?”

Colt felt everything inside of him still. The platform he’d found in the sky. The thrill of discovery, until his uncle had found him there, trying to make improvements. It had been the first time his uncle had hit him. He still remembered the first shock like his brain couldn’t comprehend. How his body wouldn’t respond properly even though he was screaming at himself to run.

He hated this place. He kept getting stuck in the past. But he had to stay focused in the present so he dragged himself forward and focused on Talon’s blue eyes, long lashes in no way veiling her worry. She was worried for her son, and he was rooted unproductively. He wanted to tell her it was safe. To take the worry from her eyes and heart, but he couldn’t make that guarantee.

“Parker James Reese, you come down this instant,” Talon said, hands on hips. Her voice shook.

“No way. I can see forever. I’m a hawk.” Parker spread his arms wide and began to swoop around the platform.

“Parker!” Her voice held panic.

“It’s mine.” He whined. “I found it.”

Damn
.

Colt didn’t need a psych degree to know Talon was about to lose her mind. Her skin was pale and her breathing accelerated. She twisted her long fingers together almost compulsively. The same fingers that had brought him such peace as they’d soothed over his skin and hair last night. Her touch had been sexy and reverent and something had broken inside him.

“Is it safe?” She demanded again. “Sturdy?”

There was no way he could answer to reassure her.

Shit.

That place held nothing but bad memories. His sanctuary destroyed.

“Let me check it out.”

He strode over to the tree.

“Wait.” She caught his arm, and he was surprised by her wiry strength. She was slim and didn’t look the type to be a gym rat. She just kept getting better and better, which meant he had to move on faster.

“What are you doing? You’re not going to go up there are you?” She broke off and nibbled at the side of her lip, a habit that was definitely not putting any G or PG thoughts in his head. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He looked up at the platform not even twenty feet above the ground. “I’ve climbed higher. A lot.” He shrugged off her arm. How was he supposed to check if the platform was sturdy from down here? Psychic energy?

“But…”

He blew out a breath. “Not a lot of options, Talon. It’s you or me and my money’s on me.” She was ghost white, shaky, and had a sheen of sweat on her forehead.

She still looked unconvinced and his pride took a hit.

“Look at me.” He held his arms wide. “I don’t exactly have a desk job.” No, he’d hauled around so much equipment in his packs over the years; weapons, ammunition, water, food, supplies, survival gear. Up mountains. Down. Through swamps. Ravines. Deserts. Climbing a tree was nada, and his team would have laughed their assess off to see her so worried, but that was nothing to how much they would have harassed him for his missed opportunity for a little horizontal time with the hot mom last night. He’d had her so she couldn’t even stand or remember her own name, and he’d just backed off and walked her home.

Noble was the dumbest move ever. But last night it had seemed like survival. She did something to him. Something he couldn’t explain, didn’t want to think about but, like a rubbernecker at an accident scene, he couldn’t seem to look or to walk away.

Tree. Kid. Climb
.

Back to the scene where all the torment had started. The time when his uncle had discovered him up here, trying to nail in gnarled branches to create a railing for the platform in the sky he’d found. And how he had seemed to morph from a cold, silent man who issued short commands in between hours of silence into a raging monster.

“Be careful.” She stood toe-to-toe with him, radiating anxiety as he’d reached out to grab a branch above his head to swing himself up.

If he stepped into her, he’d feel her tall, slim body with just enough curves to make him anticipate feeling their differences, where she’d be soft where he’d was hard.

“I’ll be fine,” he said and swung himself up.

The trick with climbing, everyone knew, was to not look down. Colt was good with that. He didn’t look up, down, or around. He’d built his life like that. Moment by moment. So he didn’t think about the history of “tree house.” Didn’t think about his childhood discovery, dashed dreams, fear. He just climbed, liking the way his muscles felt as he reached and pulled. And then he pulled himself over the edge, holding on to a limb, while he felt the floor.

He folded himself next to Parker, who had sat, feet dangling over the edge while he watched Colt climb.

“Parker,” he said, not really sure what he should say now.

His experience with kids was next to zero, watching them run around at a backyard barbeque, handing out gum and candy on the streets in South America or Iraq or wherever he was sent. Didn’t matter. His job was the same. Scout. Set up. Position. Wait. Go. Pack up. Get out like a ghost. No one seeing him come or watching him go.

“I think you’re scaring your mom.”

He felt stupid sitting here talking to this kid. He had no authority. No knowledge.

“Yeah.” Parker sounded completely unrepentant. “But this is my spot. Mine.”

The simple words, spoken with satisfaction, finger-walked down his spine like the chilled hand of death. He’d said the same thing many years ago. Had believed it. Until it was so clear that he’d been wrong. Always wrong.

“Because you found it?”

He was very aware of Talon watching them from below, going up and down on her toes with anxiety.

While he’d been trying to think of the right thing to say to Parker, he’d been feeling the platform, expecting far more loose nails than he was finding. He looped his finger in the belt loop of the kid’s jeans.

“No,” He said, “Mr. Meizner said it.”

Colt forced himself to breathe in and out. To not think. Not react.

“He wanted to tone.”

“Tone?”

“Like music, you know a song note only he didn’t say it like that.”

“Huh.”

“He said we could fix it. That it had been broken. Mom, come up.”

“I think she wants us to come down,” Colt said. “I don’t think she likes heights.”

“Mom says the best way to conquer fear is stand up, look it in the eye, and say hi.”

Colt bit his cheek, surprised by the urge to smile. “That’s good advice.”

“Do you have a cellphone?” She called out.

“Yes.” He peered over.

“Okay, you know what to do if I bite it.”

And then she began to climb. “Shit,” he said. “Oops. Sorry. Excuse me.”

Parker was looking over the side, smiling. He waved his hand airily like a prince to a peasant. “I’ve heard way worse in the diner. And mom said Mr. Meizner was creative with his language.”

Jesus. He still couldn’t believe Parker had had contact with that monster and was still whole, smiling. Talking about him like he had been remotely human.

“I bet he did.”

But he had been sick. Illness must have tempered him a bit.

“Hold on to this.” He instructed, handing Parker a rope that he’d used to use to climb up and shimmy down. He yanked it hard, and it held. “Right back.”

He climbed down flush with Talon, who’d only made it up a third of the distance so far. He wedged himself into the crotch of the tree so he had at least one arm free. She had her eyes squeezed shut.

“It’s easier if you look.”

“I don’t think it is.” She risked one eye open. “What exactly do you think you’re going to be able to do? Catch me? Think you’re Superman?”

“Yes.” Not bothering to hide the twitch of his lips because, despite the place, she made him feel…what was that? Lighter? Was that happy? “And yes.”

She scowled.

“Want me to prove it?”

“No.” She wrapped both arms around the tree.

“I’m fine.” She chanted. “I’m fine. I can totally do this.”

“Yes.” He leaned closer and said calmly, “You can. If you reach up, you can pull yourself to the next limb. Or if you want, I’ll take you.”

“You can’t.”

“Can.”

She opened her eyes and, again, he had a close up of her sparkling irises that seemed to swirl with different shades of blue. Like his world fused in a glass orb, he realized suddenly, feeling punched in the stomach with that realization. The whole time it had been as if she’d been familiar, and that was why. It was as if even after so many years, his brain still remembered the swirls of blues in the fused glass orb of the necklace.