Shiver (32 page)

“Do you want something?” She kept her cool, kept her chin up, and kept her voice low so as not to wake Tyler as Marco backed her all the rest of the way up against the wall until she was totally pinned in place by his weight.

“Oh, yeah.”

Their faces were so close that she could feel his breath feathering her cheek. One crutch slid down the wall to hit the carpet with a soft thud as he let it go. The other stayed upright, propped against the wall beside her, but he was no longer using it. Instead he was favoring his injured leg but standing on his own, preventing her escape by absolutely misusing his superior size and strength. He wrapped a muscular arm around her, snaking it into the space between the wall and the hollow of her back, pulling her hard up against him. Then he
started to grope her butt.
Squirming at the surprise of it, wedging both hands against the solid wall of his chest and shoving, she didn’t manage to either extricate herself or budge him by so much as an inch. Injured or not, the man was
strong.

The bad news was, she discovered that she liked being plastered up against him. And she liked the feel of his hand on her
butt. Way too much. Her body tightened deep inside in the most pleasurable way possible.
OMG, I can’t let him know.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she growled in pure self-defense. Only after she said it did she realize that she wasn’t shoving at him any longer. Instead her hands had fisted in the front of his robe and were gripping the thick toweling for dear life.

“What do
you
think I’m doing?”

Her pulse pounded. Her breathing quickened. Defiantly she threw back her head to glare up at him even while she was acutely, pleasurably aware of how big and strong and masculine his hand felt as it continued its intimate exploration. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Copping a feel.”

Looking at him had been a mistake. His mouth wasn’t that far from hers; its curve was—sexy. Just like the heat in his eyes as they met hers was sexy.

“If I was copping a feel, I’d have my hand
inside
your pants.”

That melted her bones. Her knees went wobbly, just like that. All because she could picture it—feel it—as vividly as if he really was delving inside her jeans and panties to caress her bare skin.

Just thinking about it was enough to make her squirm.

“So maybe you’re subtle like that.” But she said it without conviction. As much as she wanted to think copping a feel was what he was doing, the real answer was, it didn’t seem like something the Marco she knew would do. But then, selling out his fellow agents and joining forces with a drug cartel, and then selling them out in turn, didn’t seem like something the Marco
she knew would do, either. So the conclusion she reached was, she actually didn’t know squat about him.

“You really think that?” His voice was low, and a little husky.

“That you’re subtle? Probably not. That you’re copping a feel? Sure feels like it to me.”

“Guess again, baby doll.” He splayed his hand wide over her butt and pulled her closer still in a way that left her breathless. Her nipples reacted instantly to the sudden close contact with his chest. At the unexpected jolt of pleasure that resulted, her mouth went dry. She liked the strength in his grip, she realized, liked the sensation of being female to his male. The way he was holding her, she was practically being squashed into the cushiony layer of his robe. She could feel the bulky knot of the belt tied at his waist. Beneath the toweling, she could feel the firm muscles he had everywhere.

“Let go of me!” She squirmed in a halfhearted attempt to get away. “Are you on those stupid pills again?”

“Nope.”

Whether his purpose was to cop a feel or not, that was definitely what he was doing. She could feel his hand palming first one cheek and then the other—and her body’s instantaneous reaction did not bode well for her determination to leave sex out of the equation where he was concerned. He caressed the rounded curves, slid his fingers along the indentation between them all the way down between her legs, and as she felt him touching her there she was rocked by a flash of desire so strong
it shocked her. Her lips parted as her breathing went all uneven. She could feel her body softening. She could feel his hardening.

“Then what the
hell,
Marco?” The objection probably would have been more effective if it hadn’t sounded so breathless—and if she had been trying harder to get away from him. She wasn’t even squirming in protest (or otherwise) any longer, not that the squirming she had done there for a minute really counted as an attempt to get him to stop. If he had been anyone else in the world, if she had meant business, she would have kneed him. Or, second option, grabbed his injured leg and squeezed. One thing she had learned over the years was how to take care of herself. If she had really wanted to get free, she could have made it happen like
that.

Instead she was going all buttery inside even as she let—and face the truth,
let
was the right word—him get all touchy-feely with her butt.

“Did you really think I wasn’t going to notice the brand-new addition to your ass?” he asked on a note of grim triumph.

That was so unexpected that Sam frowned. Then she realized: he hadn’t been feeling her up. He’d been patting her down. As he spoke, his fingers were digging down deep inside her back pocket, and he was pulling out her cash.

“Way to prove you’re spending way too much time staring at it!” Indignation stiffened her spine. When his hand came into view holding the ninety dollars she had stashed away in her back pocket, then waggled the tightly folded square in front of her nose, she met his gaze belligerently.

“Want to explain this?” His eyes would have been hard if it hadn’t been for the heat at their backs.

He’s turned on, too.
The realization made her want to start stripping off her clothes. Then she remembered that both of them had resolved to keep sex out of it—for very good reasons—and determinedly focused on the folded bills he was still holding in front of her face instead.

“It’s mine. Give it back.”

“Yeah. No. You got something hidden in your front pocket, too. I can feel it pressing against me. Are you gonna pull whatever it is out and show it to me, or do you want me to pat you down all over?”

An honest answer to that question, even if given silently, was not in her best interest, so she thrust it out of her mind. Bottom line was, if he patted her down all over, she would probably end up dissolving into a steaming little puddle at his feet. At the very least, she would get even more turned on than she already was, and that would not be good. Or smart.

So she folded.

Giving him a sulky look, she delved into her pocket and produced the knife.

“Happy now?” she asked.

He took the knife, shot a pointed look at her cleavage. “Is that it?”

Just the idea that he might start searching where he was looking made her heart thump.
Forget about it. Not going to happen.
“Yes.”

He gave her another hard look. “You give me your word?”

“You can do a strip search if you want.” A little bit of aggression, she figured, was the best way to back him off. Because she was able to see, now, that the heat in his eyes wasn’t the only sign. That, plus the flush that had risen to stain the tops of his high cheekbones, the heavy-lidded look to his eyes, the barely perceptible quickening of his breathing, were all signals that, as a woman, she knew how to read: he wanted her bad.

If she’d let it, the knowledge would have made her dizzy. But instead she forced it out of her head, and managed to summon a mocking smile for him.

His lips thinned. As she’d been almost positive he wouldn’t, he didn’t take her up on her offer. Instead, with her cash and knife still in hand, he levered himself off her, reaching for the crutch that still lay against the wall beside her, wedging it into place, bracing himself with it, surprisingly solid on his one good leg. The net result was that there were now a few inches of space between them, for which she tried to tell herself she was glad. She stayed where she was, back against the wall, her hands flattened against the cool plaster.

To keep herself from doing what she really wanted to do and reaching for him.

He looked at her grimly. “The knife I can understand. You want something to protect yourself with. Under the circumstances, fair enough. The money—that’s what’s got me worried. Especially since I watched you spend the afternoon checking out the doors and windows, locating the car and house keys, and memorizing the code to the security alarm. You’re thinking about taking Tyler and striking out on your own, aren’t you?”

Sam thought about lying. She certainly hadn’t been expecting him of all people to be so observant, but apparently he had missed very little, which told her that he had been watching her closely while he hadn’t appeared to be watching her at all. He’d observed enough to lead him to the money and the knife, too. The idea that she had just been the subject of a very thorough if partial pat-down was finally starting to work its way through her brain, and she was thinking that she ought to be at least a little mad at him about it. What complicated the whole thing was remembering how it had made her feel. Sexy enough to make her start to burn all over again at the recollection.

You need to get laid,
she told herself firmly. Then, in a hasty corollary, she added,
just not by this guy.

But it was too late. She had an instant mental vision of the two of them naked and in bed, and practically ground her teeth as her pulse went tremulous and her stomach seemed to quiver. The tiny stress muscle below her eye started to twitch, most annoyingly. Pressing a calming finger to it, she glared at him, and gave up all attempt at pretense.

“So what if I am?”

His eyes narrowed. “That would be the dumbest thing you could possibly do.”

She huffed. “Says you. The guy who screwed up his life so badly that he’s got an army of assassins combing the country looking for him, and if he doesn’t get himself and everybody around him murdered is going to wind up spending the next twenty years or so in jail.”

For a moment Marco didn’t say anything, just looked at
her. She realized that throwing what he was in his face was her way of asking him to deny it if he could. But what he said was, “Who’s been talking to you? Not Sanders, I’m willing to bet. One of the other three.”

“What does it matter? It’s true, isn’t it?” Although she was giving him one last chance, she did not expect him to say no, and he didn’t. Instead, he looked at her without saying anything at all for a moment, then slowly inclined his head:
yes.
Okay, well, now she’d had it straight from the horse’s mouth. “The point is, I have to judge this for myself.”

“I’ve kept you safe so far, haven’t I? You and Tyler. I’ll see you through this, I promise.”

“Wait a minute. What happened to that whole ‘if I can’ thing?”

The slight flicker of his eyelashes told her that he remembered his qualified promise when they had first met:
I’ll keep you alive. If I can.

She had no doubt that he was telling the truth: he would do his absolute best. It was the “if” part that was bothering her.

“Have a little faith in me, Sam.” He said it very quietly. His eyes had gone dark. His face had changed in some subtle way that she couldn’t quite pinpoint, but he looked tough and capable and like somebody she could absolutely rely on in a pinch.

Have a little faith in me.
Oh, God, she wanted to. But if she had learned one thing over the years, it was that the only person she could rely on was herself.

“I have to think of Tyler,” she said. “He only has me to look out for him.”

“I’m thinking of Tyler, too. On your own, you two would be sitting ducks.” His eyes raked her, and then when they met hers again they had turned hard. “Look, we can do this one of two ways. I can dog every step you take until the danger’s passed, and by that I mean from here on out I sleep on the floor outside your bedroom door, I eat when you eat, I stand outside the bathroom while you’re in it—” He broke off to give her a malicious smile. “I see from your expression you’re getting my drift—or you can convince me that you’re not just going to grab Tyler and bolt because something spooked you and you think it’s a good idea.”

She glared at him. “You say that like you think I’m not capable of making a sound judgment about what to do. I am, I promise you. What’s it to you, anyway?”

“I got you into this. I mean to get you out. And yes, I do think you’re capable of making a sound judgment about what to do. I just don’t think you completely understand the situation.”

“What don’t I understand?”

He shrugged. “How ruthless the Zetas are, for one thing.”

“So, bottom line, I should just trust your judgment and do what you tell me.”

The faintest suggestion of a smile touched his mouth. “There you go. Bingo.”

Her lips pursed. She eyed him. “Here’s what I don’t think
you
understand. Sanders—the marshals—have no interest in protecting Tyler and me. If you were to have to go to the hospital, say, to get your leg treated—”