“Your concern is touching.” He tilted his head. “Does this mean we’re friends?”
“What?” She jerked back, eyebrows pinching.
“I’ll be honest.” He tugged on the rope. “This doesn’t feel very friendly. Unless you’re into this sort of thing. Which I am. But only when I’m the one playing with the rope.”
“Mm-hmm.” She narrowed her eyes, her accent laced with sarcasm. “We both know how many times you’ve played over the past seven years.” Holding her hand up between them, she made her fingers and thumb form the shape of a zero.
“You want to be the one.” He wet his lips, his mouth inches from hers. “The one I break my celibacy with.”
“No,” she said too quickly. “You’re…just…” She made a sound of frustration. “You’re smarter than this, Cole. Smart enough to know the guards were baiting you.”
“Smart enough to know you are baiting me.”
“Sometimes, I wonder…” Her gaze dipped to his lips and returned to his eyes. “Who’s baiting who?”
Intelligent sea-green eyes stared out of the face of a Gothic angel. Enraptured, Cole stared back, knowing eye contact with this cursed creature was treacherous. Lydia didn’t just look at him. She looked into him as if she knew his darkest desires.
But that was impossible. While he couldn’t resist his attraction to her, he made damn sure he didn’t show it. He’d been trained to disguise emotion, a skill that had served him well throughout his career.
Without averting her gaze, she reached for the bottle of soap beside him and squirted a cold glob on his chest. She edged closer, pushing into the V of his legs, and boldly perched on his knee.
With her featherlight weight on his lap came the smooth touch of her hands on his flesh, fingers splayed, just the right balance of caution and assertion as she spread the gel to his shoulders and throat.
He sank into the warmth of her caress, fixated on her unreadable expression. What sort of woman was she? Heartless? Tender? Promiscuous? Complicated? He didn’t know enough about her to make a judgment. But goddamn, she knew how to touch a man.
Her fingers swept across every inch of his upper body, rubbing gently, working in the lather, unselfish with the soap. With the bucket, she rinsed away the grime, leaving no part of his exposed skin unwashed.
When she reached his hair, her fingernails dug in, scraping his scalp and combing him clean.
He fucking groaned.
It felt surreal, like a day at the damn spa. Not that he would know. He’d never been to a spa, never been pampered or massaged into a pleasure-drunk coma.
He didn’t trust the feelings it evoked. She had an agenda. A nasty one. But he let himself, just for a moment, indulge in the sublime ecstasy of her hands on his body.
She spent a lot of time on his facial hair, scrubbing and soaping with rapt concentration. Christ, how he must’ve reeked. The hair had grown too long, venturing into lumberjack territory. He preferred a quarter-inch military beard.
With his head tipped back, he stared down the length of his nose. “Have you found any creatures crawling in it?”
“No.” Her luscious lips crooked up at the corner, amusement glowing in her delicate features. “I’m trying to imagine what you look like without it.”
“I’ve shaved it off many times over the years. I’m sure you’ve seen photos.”
Images of him didn’t exist on the Internet or dark web. He made sure of that. But he pretended otherwise as a way to fish for clues and subtly nudge her into giving something away.
“No photos.” Her hands moved on to the upper part of his face, cleaning around the contusions he’d incurred during the fight. “I didn’t know what you looked like until the night I met you in the desert.”
Shock jolted through him, but he maintained a bored expression. “You met me that night because I allowed it. Because I deliberately activated your bug.”
She pressed closer, lathering soap around his eyes and cheeks. “Your breath smells good. Minty. You’ve been using the gifts I sent.”
If she wanted a thank you, she could eat a dick.
Biting her lip, she stared at his mouth. “I planted those bugs in Rylee Sutton’s house, knowing you would take them and eventually lure me to your location. You met me that night in the desert because I allowed it.”
“They’re not just bugs. You planted customized tech, designed for the NSA.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” She slid a hand into his hair and pulled, yanking his head back. “The only way you would recognize that tech is if you worked for them.”
Or if he worked for something deeper, darker, and more clandestine. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. “What does Rylee Sutton have to do with this?”
“A few months ago, you showed up in Texas, stalking her.” She released his hair and leaned to the side, her attention on his hand.
With his arms fastened to the pallet on either side of his head, he opened his fingers and let her look at his palm. The gash from the rock had healed cleanly over the past two weeks, thanks to the supplies she’d provided.
She gently washed the area around the wound and moved to his other hand. “After vanishing off the map for seven years, here you were, riding into the desert on your motorcycle. You went straight to El Paso, then Eldorado, monitoring Rylee’s old and current residences. She was your only focus, seemingly the only reason you came out of hiding. So naturally, she became a target for your pursuers.”
“I wasn’t in hiding, and I didn’t realize I had admirers.”
“Pursuers.”
“Same thing. I see the way you look at me.”
“I see the way you look when I mention your pretty dancer.”
He didn’t blink. Not a twitch.
Danni had never been involved in his affairs. He’d always kept her in the dark, completely separated from his career. Now, she lived a safe, happy life, doing what she loved. Dancing. She married the man she loved. A powerful businessman and billionaire, who had the resources and unparalleled desire to protect her.
Her photos were out there, her personal information available to anyone who wanted to investigate her. That didn’t matter since she was no longer connected to Cole.
It wouldn’t have mattered if an eleven-year-old assignment hadn’t come back to haunt him.
“You’re still in love with Danni,” she said, her accent straining. “But you came to Texas to stalk Rylee. Who is she to you?”
“Since you were stalking me, you should know this.”
“I think, initially, she was a threat to your friends. While you were digging into her background, she was off in the desert with Tomas, getting stabbed with a hot dog.”
“Stabbed with a hot dog,” he deadpanned.
“His hot dog. It’s a fitting analogy, given your diet over the past month.”
“You’re a twisted bitch.” His nonchalant tone made her smile.
“I’m right about Rylee. Whatever her connection was to you and your friends, it was personal. You wouldn’t have returned to the states, otherwise.”
She wasn’t wrong, but he kept his face unexpressive.