“I’ve only just met Ryan, but I think it’s safe to say he likes to shake things up.” She cut him a reprimanding stare. “Namely me.”
“And you like it,” Ryan assured her with a wink, before tugging the door shut, darkness consuming them as the overhead light shut off. Ryan’s thigh melted into hers, a shiver of awareness shimmied up her spine and back down.
Marco tapped the back of the driver’s seat, sparing Sabrina a witty comeback her brain simply wasn’t producing. “Drive like you were me,” Marco ordered. “I have a plane to catch.”
“If I could drive like you,” the man behind the wheel said, “I wouldn’t be shuttling you around. But I’ll give it my best shot.” The man hit the accelerator, and the car jerked into motion.
Sabrina jerked with it, her oversize purse with her notepad, pen and recorder tumbling to the floor at Ryan’s feet. Instinctively, she reached for something solid to keep from falling. That something solid turned out to be Ryan’s jeans-clad leg, the one she’d been admiring earlier. Instantly, his hand came down on hers, holding it captive. Her gaze snapped to his, and the twinkle of his eyes cut through the inky shadows.
“I assume Ryan warned you my sister is a big fan,” Marco commented from her left.
“Big fan?” she echoed, the question barely permeating the lusty Ryan-formed clouds muddling her brain. “I’m sorry. What did I miss?” She glanced between the two men, all too aware that her hand remained trapped beneath Ryan’s bigger, stronger one—on his thigh, impossible for Marco to miss.
“Sabrina and I didn’t get much time to talk,” Ryan replied, releasing her hand and settling into his seat.
“What didn’t we talk about that we should have?” she asked, wondering why her hand still tingled where Ryan had held it.
“It seems today is all about deals,” Ryan said, no mistaking his meaning. “Marco’s sister was with him at the Hotzone when I brought up the interview,” Ryan explained. “She knew you instantly from your column in the New York Prime.”
“And the bargaining began,” Marco said, with a disgusted snort. “She might as well be a politician. Oh, wait. She is. She’s on the city council with aspirations of more.”
Sabrina’s stomach tightened. “Oh, really,” she said, trying to fight the tension in her voice.
“Here’s the situation, Sabrina. My sister’s been trying to convince me to speak at some political fundraiser—and I won’t mention for which party because I try not to talk preferences. It gets me in trouble with the press.”
“Like drinking Red Rock Cola?” she asked, trying to change the subject from anything that involved politics and where his sister was headed.
He laughed. “Exactly like drinking Red Rock Cola. That’s what I get for being thirsty and drinking what someone pushed into my hand.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
“Wait for the interview,” he said.
“So this isn’t the interview?” she asked, frustrated they were back to his sister, and a bargain for an interview with him. As in, Sabrina speaking at that political fundraiser in his place.
“Marco’s not asking you to take his place or I wouldn’t have brought him here, Sabrina,” Ryan said, seemingly reading her mind. “You have my word.”
His word—a loosely given vow uttered by many a politician. But Ryan wasn’t a politician, she reminded herself. He was a darn good kisser, and the man who’d gotten her in the car with Marco Montey.
“All I promised Calista was a chance to talk to you,” Marco assured her. “Speak or don’t speak at that engagement of hers. It’s of zero consequence to me. I did my part by arranging a call. In return, she stops pestering me about you, and you get your interview. As in a full, no-time-constraint interview—by phone, if you can deal with that. I’ll talk to you like no one else I talk to, on one condition. No politics. I know that’s your thing, but I don’t talk politics. Like I said, it pisses off my sponsors. Hell, I don’t even vote.”
“You don’t vote?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Marco pointed at her. “No politics, remember?”
Okay, fine. Good actually. She tested him to be sure. “I won’t speak at your sister’s political event.”
Marco smiled. “Then don’t,” he said. “And yes, you still get your interview.” He reached into his bag on the floor and pulled out a can of Can Cola and popped the top. “Be sure you mention I was drinking this when you met me.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Your interview request was well timed. I need some good press right now.”
Relief washed over her. This interview was going to happen and she had Ryan to thank for it. Ryan whom she had kissed. Ryan who was daring and dangerous. Ryan who made her hot, and considering they were in the same car—was most likely going back to her apartment with her.
A FEW MINUTES LATER, the short ride to the airport was over, the call to Calista and the interview with Marco had been arranged.
“The driver will take you back to your place,” Marco told her with a smile. “Talk to you soon.” Marco exited the car, leaving her and Ryan alone. Sitting next to each other. Close. Her mind raced—okay, stumbled—over what to do next. Move? Don’t move? Why wasn’t she moving? Wouldn’t moving be running? She couldn’t run. This was supposed to be the life she took charge of. This was the life in which she dictated what came next.
Ryan’s cell rang, and Sabrina said a silent thank-you for the reprieve. She slid to the other side of the car to give him space to snatch his phone off his belt and glance at the ID. She wasn’t running. She was simply being…courteous.
Ryan silenced the ringer and ignored the caller, then snatched her purse and held it out to her about the time the muffled ring of her cell radiated through the black leather.
“That’ll be Jennifer,” he said, as she accepted her purse. “I’m sure she wants to know how the meeting went with Marco.” He settled his back against his door again. “And if I managed to keep my hands off you as ordered.”
That was a conversation she wasn’t about to have in front of Ryan. And he knew it. She set her purse down. “I guess I’ll call her and let her know about Marco. And we both know you already failed the hands-off promise.”
“I didn’t promise,” he said. “She talked. I listened. Guess she’s afraid I’ll offend the delicate sensibilities of the politician’s daughter.”
“I do not have delicate sensibilities.” Sabrina bristled, folding her arms across her chest.
He arched a brow. “Jennifer appears to think you do.”
“Maybe she simply thinks you’re trouble,” she said.
“Then maybe you should run,” he suggested.
Run. That darn word again. “I don’t run.”
“Then why’d you leave New York?”
Now he was making her mad. “Why’d you leave the Army?”
He stared at her and chuckled. “I had my reasons.”
“And so did I.”
His lips twitched. “Copy that. Then I guess we understand each other.”
Understand each other? “I doubt that.”
“No?” he asked. “Highly improbable.”
“Because of your delicate sensibilities,” he teased.
She leaned forward and pointed. “Don’t push me,” she chided.
He leaned forward, close. “Can’t help myself.” His eyes twinkled with mischief. Sexy, wonderful mischief that made her feel more alive and turned-on than she had in a very long time.
A few seconds ticked by. Gray and white shadows swirled with passing reflections. It occurred to her she wanted to kiss him. Her. Kiss. Him. Not the other way around. If they held their positions much longer, he’d kiss her and then she’d never know if she had the courage to go first.
She leaned back and crossed her arms again. He mimicked her position, arms in front of his broad, gorgeous chest. Silence ensued as did an outright stare-off. Sexual tension inked a path from him to her. Or maybe it was her to him because everything about the man,
from his demanding personality to the scar she had just located right above his top lip—that really full, sexy lip—did a number on her. Proven by the damp tingling feeling in the V of her body. A sensation she found downright unnerving, considering the man was several arm lengths away.
She wanted to forget everything with Ryan and just experience him. To let go. But how could she after the political attachment that had come with Marco, through him? Ryan, who had kissed her. Ryan, who she wanted to kiss her again. Ryan, who she’d considered dangerous because he excited her, scared her, made her want to toe some invisible line that felt erotic and daring.
Yet, she’d never considered he could have a political agenda, or that he might sell her out to someone who did. He seemed too true-blue for that. Still…
“Do you vote, Ryan?”
“Call me paranoid,” he said, “but it seemed a bad idea to vote for, or against, anyone who might later be assigning me a death mission.”
The last thing she’d call Ryan was paranoid. Or safe. Was he teasing her again? “Soldiers get secret ballots like the rest of us.”
“I wasn’t just a soldier,” he said. “In fact, for all practical purposes, I didn’t exist. If I went on a mission and didn’t come back, I just didn’t come back.”
“Are you saying you were afraid to vote?”
“Careful now,” he warned in a teasing voice. “Us tough-guy soldiers take issue with being called afraid. Besides, most of the time, I was so deep inside enemy territory, I couldn’t be found if you wanted to hand me a ballot. Only a few people knew of my missions.”
“A person can’t just disappear,” she said softly. “Your family would miss you. They’d ask questions.”
His lashes lowered to half-veil, a split second of heavy silence falling before he replied, “The Army was my family.”
Translation. He was alone. As in, no parents to drive him crazy, but still love him insanely, as hers did. No matter how she tried to escape her family’s craziness, the insane-love part was never in doubt and always comforting.
A million questions flew through her mind, but she settled for, “Yet, you left.”
“Like I said,” he replied, “I had my reasons.”
Suddenly, he moved, and he was leaning over her, his arms framing either side of her shoulders. “Ask me the question that’s on your mind. The real one. Not something you say because you’re on the spot.”
She inhaled a sharp breath, laced with the spicy, warm scent of him, his mouth close. His kiss a promise she wanted to make reality. And she didn’t play coy. She hated coy. She liked straightforward. She liked direct. She liked what you see is what you get. And she needed to know if that was what Ryan was going to give her. So she asked the question he wanted to hear, the question she most wanted answered. “What do you want from me, Ryan?”
“You,” he said. “Just you.”
The claim, spoken in his deep baritone voice, de livered raw sensuality. A shiver raced down her spine, and it was all she could do not to pull his mouth to hers but…the driver. She squeezed her eyes shut as she accepted the part of her life that relocating could not change. She hated that she cared about gossip, hated that even with a man like Ryan so close she could taste him, she remembered how easily a third party could spread rumors, how easily those rumors could become poison to a political career like her father’s. Sabrina ached to feel free.
“Sabrina, look at me,” Ryan ordered, his tone rough with a low command, his breath warm on her lips.
She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.
Instantly, his hands framed her face, his mouth slanting over hers, his tongue gently parting her lips. He tasted her deeply, sensually, drawing her into the moment. Coaxing her to forget everything but the way his tongue drew on hers. The way his body felt beneath her palms that had somehow come to rest on his broad shoulders. Another caress of his lips, another slide of his tongue. Her hands slid around his neck.
His hand rested on her hipbones, long fingers wrapping around her waist, fingers that slid intimately over her ribs. Brushed the curve of her breast. Her nipples tightened, she clenched her thighs, suddenly realizing Ryan was between them. Crazy panic overcame her. A picture, a tabloid story. She had to get up. She… Ryan kissed her long and hard, driving away the thoughts before announcing, “We’re here.” She glanced around to realize they had, indeed, arrived at her condo, and, with their arrival, she had escaped the dilemma of the driver, and found another. The moment of truth. There were no barriers, no cameras, no hiding inside her apartment. Not with Ryan there with her.
6
RYAN HELPED SABRINA out of the Town Car and barely contained a chuckle as she darted away. He’d never known a woman so conflicted in so many ways. And difficult. And sexy. He couldn’t wait to unravel the secrets beneath the prim and proper politician’s daughter. And the idea that he’d be the only man to know those secrets well…
“If I’m not back in thirty minutes, leave without me,” Ryan ordered the driver before slamming the door shut.
He turned to find Sabrina gaping at him. She opened her mouth and then snapped it shut, before turning on her heels and marching toward her building. Ryan’s pursuit was instant, and while he could have caught up to her before she entered the building, he waited until she was striding across the fancy black-and-white marble floor toward the elevator inside. Then, and only then, did he grab her hand and pull her around to face him.
“Do you not understand discretion, Ryan?” she huffed out instantly, her cute, pointed chin tilted up, green eyes flashing with warning. Voice urgent but hushed. “My father plans to run for President. If that driver tells the tabloids I’m off in Texas, whoring around, he’ll never get there.”
Ryan scrubbed a hand over his face. President. Okay. He didn’t see that one coming. “The driver doesn’t know who you are. We never mentioned a name, just an address.”
“Maybe he knows who I am and maybe he doesn’t,” she said. “But I don’t have the luxury of taking that risk. My private life has to be my private life. That I can’t change by moving. I wish I could but I can’t. The minute a politician runs for higher office, people crawl out of the woodwork to tell their stories, truth or fiction. I don’t want to be one of those stories.”
He stopped, checked himself. He didn’t want to leave and that was where this was headed. He wanted this woman next to him, beneath him, wanted her calling his name. He vowed to do whatever it would take. It didn’t matter that she was finding herself and would, no doubt, carry her fine little backside right back to New York. There was here. There was now. And there was a father running for President.
Another silent curse followed, as he reined in his control, and gained a new respect for Sabrina in the process. He’d chosen to be a soldier and chosen when not to be. She was hungry to have choices and still felt without them.
“I’ll leave.” But he didn’t let go of her hand; he couldn’t make himself. Instead his fingers gently stroked her palm.
A conflicted look flashed across her face, torment showed in her gorgeous green eyes before her dark lashes swept low on ivory cheeks, lingered and then lifted.
“Right,” she said softly. “You’d better.”
Disappointment, regret, laced the words. And she didn’t move any more than he did. Didn’t make any effort to distance herself from him. She swallowed, her delicate neck moving with the action, her hand—tiny and delicate—still in his.
Ryan studied her, searching for answers with the same intent he would the members in a mission. Analyzing the emotions he saw in her. Understanding. She didn’t want him to go. She didn’t want him to let her go so easily. She wanted an escape. And now, she expected him to turn around and walk out the door. Well, Ryan had never been one to do the expected. He wasn’t going to start with Sabrina. Not with his blood pumping liquid fire.
He tightened his hand on hers and led her toward the stairwell.
“What are you doing?” Sabrina whispered be
hind him. “Ryan!”
He didn’t reply. She’d find out his intention soon enough. There was something about Sabrina he likened to the adrenaline rush he got the minute the plane door opened and he knew the world was about to explode around him in some mad, uncertain, amazing way. Just once in her life, Sabrina needed to feel that feeling. And he was going to be the man to show her how.
Ryan yanked open the stairwell door, scanned for cameras and found none. Tugged Sabrina forward and pressed her back against the closed door, framing her legs with his. Nuzzled the thickness of his erection against her stomach. He could smell her, damn near taste her. Oh yeah, he was gonna taste her all right. In all kinds of ways.
Her hands went to his chest. “Ryan! Are you crazy?!” Her green eyes glistened with flecks of amber warmth. It wasn’t normally a woman’s eyes he got lost in, but then, he was normally restricted to a dark bar and a quick goodbye before another mission. This time, the woman was his mission.
“Daring,” he corrected, wrapping a hand around her neck to bring her to him. “Like you want to be.”
“What are you doing?” she demanded, raspy, aroused, sexy as hell.
“Someone will see us! What about cam—”
He kissed her—no, he drank her as he had the cool, perfect water that had saved his life not so long ago, in a place he’d rather forget. This kiss, this woman—neither one did he want to forget, nor did he expect he ever would.
“NO CAMERAS.”
Sabrina had barely processed Ryan’s statement before his lips once again possessed hers in another drugging, impossible-to-resist kiss, sweeping her into a deep, lust filled haze. She struggled for sanity, willed her hands to shove Ryan away, instead losing herself in the rich, male taste of him. Desperately, she struggled to remain stiff and unyielding, failing miserably. Every slow, sensual stroke of Ryan’s tongue against hers drew her deeper into a spell, and slowly, slowly, her fingers softened against his hard muscle rather than trying to press him away from her.
A tiny part of her brain continued to scream with the fear of being caught, with the frustration of having to worry at all. But Ryan’s touch, his tongue, his taste—it was all too much to resist. With a moan, she arched into his touch, his hands sliding across her back, caressing her into a burning need she wasn’t sure she could fight, wasn’t sure she wanted to fight.