Until now.
She shivered.
She should have been shuddering in revulsion. What kind of man went to a strip joint to get his jollies anyway? Only the lowest sort. The sort that couldn’t get a woman any other way perhaps?
But that man could easily get a woman. Hell, he could have almost had her.
She barely held back her moan of mortification, aware that Dyson was already watching her with an edge of violence in his expression.
And here she had taken such pride in the fact that unlike her friends, she was not ruled by her hormones. She did not come unglued by pesky desires. She controlled her needs, not the other way around.
Well, she had sure as hell come unglued today.
And those pesky desires? They were torturing her, wetting her expensive French lace panties and causing her clit to throb and beg for more. Just one more hard breath. Just one more of those pulsing, heat-radiating little climaxes that only made her hungrier.
She pressed her thighs together, wincing at the incredible sensitivity of her swollen clit. Right where he had breathed on her. Where his breath had touched her. It might as well have been his fingers, the results had been so devastating.
He was bad to the bone. She had seen it in what little of his expression had been visible. His eyes had been hidden by the dark glasses, but his lips . . . She licked her own lips. Those lips had been expressive. Full of sensual hunger, but with a restrained, taut appearance that suggested utter control over himself and his environment. His muscles had been tense, his body restrained. Like a panther coiled and ready to spring.
She could have sworn she heard him growl at one point.
Oh God, this is so not good. So not good, she thought as she pulled at the long jacket she had literally stolen from the dressing room. She would have to mail it back to Cherry. But she couldn’t have taken the time to find her clothes. To actually dress. He had jumped for her, started to chase her. There had just been no time.
She cranked up the air conditioner further, hoping to alleviate some of the heat burning inside her body, and pushed back the regret tearing through her even as she ignored Dyson’s further mutterings.
The ultimate bad boy. The man of her sexual fantasies, and she had no choice but to run from him.
This was a wake-up call. A warning, she decided. Fate was telling her to watch herself because she was beginning to step into dangerous territory. That wannabe slut that tried to run rampant inside her needed to be reined in before she messed up beyond any possible chance of repair.
Because God help her if she actually went to bed with a man like that. Her heart was the least of what could be broken.
Breathing in deeply, she had to forcibly remind herself that she was safe. Her suddenly traitorous hormones might be going crazy, but there was no way the bad boy with sizzling breath was ever going to find her.
Cherry didn’t know her real name. Neither did the owner of the club. She was confident there wasn’t a chance in hell she was ever going to meet him again.
She ignored her hormones’ howl of regret. They could just chill out and forget it. She could dream of bad boys. She could write about them. Well, try to write about them anyway. But in real life . . . Well, a person had to realize reality started somewhere. Right?
She wiped the sweat off her brow as she turned to look at Dyson. He was pulling his cell phone from the clip on his belt.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling your father.” For the first time since he had moved into her home his expression was almost interesting. It was stamped with male arrogance and command. A little bit too late, but it was there.
“Why?”
“Because he needs to have a talk with you. I’ve had enough of this—” He froze when the Trailblazer swerved with a jerk, then righted itself, his narrowed gaze piercing into her.
“Nothing happened,” she stated calmly. “I got spooked. That’s all.”
“Spooked taking dancing lessons?” he snapped.
“No, spooked giving a lap dance,” she stated calmly.
The silence that filled the Trailblazer then was scary. She risked another glance at him. He was staring back at her with a cold, assessing gaze.
“There was no one there but the club owner, that dancer, and two bouncers,” he said with obviously forced control. “I checked.”
“Well, he must have come in after you checked.” She swallowed tightly.
He inhaled harshly. “And you didn’t let me know?”
“Umm, I didn’t know until I was dancing.”
He turned his head to the back window, watched, turned back, and stared at her with harsh contempt. She nearly flinched under the look before jerking her eyes back to the road.
“Why do you have a bodyguard, Ms. Stanton?” he finally asked.
“Well, because Daddy stresses after that last kidnapping?” she asked with false innocence, restraining her own disgusted wince at the words that slipped sarcastically from her lips.
Okay, so she had been kidnapped once because of his work against that damned drug cartel. But he had told her, as long as she kept the bodyguards, it wouldn’t happen again. That she would be safe.
“Did it occur to you that you could be in danger?”
“I’m sure I would be if I didn’t have a big tough marine watching over me,” she said, trying to placate him.
“Don’t give me your bullshit,” he ground out. “This is going in my report. Go ahead and wreck the damned truck, see if I care. The injuries would be nothing compared to what your father will do when he finds out how I’ve let you run over me. I’d be ashamed of myself if I weren’t fairly certain he’s going to kill me.”
He sounded disgusted with himself and with her.
Emily winced. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”
“Forget it.”
“I promise to be good. No more strip clubs. I swear.”
His expression didn’t waver. “Not on your life. Not on my life. Sorry, kid, your gig is up.”
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t the wuss she thought he was after all.
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she realized she was going to have to endure another of her father’s lectures. How she had to be careful to stay safe. He was a senator. He had made enemies.
Yes, he was a senator, and she was hellaciously proud of everything he did and had done. He had raised her alone since she was five, since her mother’s death, and he had taught her to be careful. But he had also taught her about adventure. How to shoot, how to hunt. How to be strong and how to look for strength.
Until she turned eighteen. Suddenly, he wanted her in dresses and makeup and married and with babies. He didn’t understand that core of adventure he had placed in her soul that now had no place to go.
She had given up the idea of joining the armed services the day he paled when she mentioned it. His hands had actually shaken as he pushed them through his short hair and stared back at her in horror.
She didn’t want her dad that scared for her. She didn’t want him worrying. So she had tried to settle down, tried to ignore the need for adventure.
She went to college and looked for a husband.
She graduated and found a job at a very exclusive private school, and began to hope just for a lover. Hell, a broken heart would be bearable if she could find a man worth letting her heart get broken over. And she appreciated the candidates he sent her in the form of bodyguards. She really did. But she was sick of them. And unfortunately the only time she had refused to have one, was the time she was actually kidnapped. Go figure.
“Emily, your father isn’t playing games with you,” Dyson said long moments later, his voice serious, full of warning. “He doesn’t make you accept having a bodyguard just for the hell of it.”
She blinked back the sudden, burning warmth behind her eyes.
“I’m his daughter. His only child. He worries.”
“Have you considered that he worries for good reason? You were k
idnapped once already. Do you understand the effort it took to rescue you and the other girls?”
She tightened her hands on the steering wheel before flashing him an angry look. “Have you considered that I try not to get in trouble? That I try to be nice and prim and proper and all the things he wants in a daughter? That I try to stay safe?” She laughed mockingly. “Forget it, Dyson. You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re not a man, Emily. You’ve got balls, I admit, but you’re never going to make him see you as anything other than his little girl.” Maybe he understood more than she gave him credit for.
“I’d settle for that,” she whispered. “It beats being the brood mare he keeps hoping I’ll become for some dimwit male with less sense than morals. And it doesn’t even matter anymore. Tell him whatever you want to. I don’t give a damn. But don’t think you’re hurting me when you do. Because I promise you, unless you’re a sperm donor for the grandkids he wants, then he’ll just replace you like he does everyone else.”
Just as he always had. Even when she was a child. As soon as she started getting used to a housekeeper or nanny, they were replaced. As soon as she found someone she could talk to, they were gone. She had stopped trying to care years ago. She wasn’t going to care now.
Strangely, Dyson didn’t say anything more. She noticed he kept looking behind them, kept playing with his cell phone, but he stayed silent. And so did she. She had stopped explaining herself years ago. And until her father gave her a better reason than he had given her over the years for making certain she didn’t have a life, then she was going to have just that. A life.
As soon as she stopped shaking. As soon as she stopped remembering a bad boy in leather who there wasn’t a chance in hell could stand up to her father. Eatable lips, a hard body, and the breath of lust vibrating on her clit.
Hell, forgetting that one just might take a while.
THE SENATOR’S PRIVATE PLANE LANDED and taxied into its hangar at Atlanta’s airport as Durango Team moved from the limo awaiting him and waited patiently while the senator disembarked.
The unscheduled trip from D.C. had come as a surprise as the final team members returned to the naval base and prepared for the operation with the senator. The information that Diego Fuentes was targeting him and his daughter once again had come as a surprise to them all, considering the fact that Fuentes usually played by a different set of rules. Best him in one of his games and he walked away. He didn’t retaliate and normally he didn’t strike again. Unless, apparently, one got away with memories that she shouldn’t have, as Fuentes suspected the senator’s daughter had done. Add that to the senator’s investigation into the government mole known only as Mr. White, and it placed Emily and the senator in Fuentes’s sights once again. Durango Team had been after Diego Fuentes for over three years, ever since his name had been connected with the elusive Sorrell, the terrorist arms dealer they had come up against in the Middle East.
As the senator stepped from the plane, Kell watched him carefully. The senator had taken him under his wing nearly fifteen years ago. He had helped train him. Helped Kell to achieve the goals he had set for himself. This was the man whose daughter was a demon on Atlanta’s highways and danced like a fucking wet dream. He couldn’t see anything of her wild impulsiveness in Richard Stanton’s closed expression and gray eyes, but he knew it was there. As a younger man, the senator had been just as wild, but with a steel core of control that only a Navy SEAL possesses.
Stanton was barely six feet, but still a powerful man at the age of fifty-five. His deep voice and commanding presence managed to get things done in the capital. He was serving his first term, and making a name for himself there just as he had in the SEALs. He was a man to depend on, but he wasn’t a man to cross.
“Kell, it’s good to see you again, son.” The senator returned his salute quickly before directing his gaze to the rest of the team.
“Chavez. Men. Thank you for meeting me here. If you’ll get in with me, then my assistant will drive.”
He nodded to the interior of the limo.
Minutes later, the five men of Durango Team were in the limo, waiting silently as the senator removed a bottle of water from the tiny refrigerator and took a long drink before pinning Kell with an accusatory stare.
“That girl is going to make me crazy,” he muttered as he capped the water and turned his gaze instead on Reno. “Do you know what she was doing?”
Reno’s gaze shifted to Kell. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant Krieger was following her this afternoon and reported her whereabouts. It seemed her bodyguard is a little overwhelmed by her.”
“A little overwhelmed?” Senator Stanton asked rudely. “Chet Dyson, remember him?”
“Yes, sir,” Reno answered severely, but Kell caught the gleam of amusement in his eyes.
They had all read Dyson’s record. He was one of the toughest marines the corps had had at one time. He still would have been if his kneecap hadn’t been blown to hell and back by a sniper in Baghdad.
“He quit.” The senator scowled.
Kell wasn’t in the least surprised.
“Excuse me, sir?” Reno stared back at him in surprise.
“Dyson called an hour ago from his cell phone and gave me twenty-four hours to find a replacement. He called her a danger to herself and every sane man in existence.” His jaw worked furiously. “I had hopes for that boy. He would have made a damned fine son-in-law.”
Once again, the senator pinned him with a gaze that screamed in accusation.
Kell arched his brow in question. He was aware of the others watching the senator with hidden shock. Kell watched him with silent amusement. Hell, everyone who knew Emily knew that her father carefully selected her bodyguards. He wanted a son-in-law, and he was determined to be the one to choose him.
The senator was trying to direct his daughter’s life the same way he had directed his SEAL team when he was still in the Navy. Someone needed to remind him that he was no longer an active SEAL but a senator, and his daughter wouldn’t have any problems finding her own man.
Hell, no. All she had to do was put in half the effort of that dance she had given Kell and they would be lined up on her doorstep.
AFTER HIS SEAL CAREER HAD ended, courtesy of a mission that went to hell and nearly killed him and the team he led, Captain Stanton had returned home and entered politics. With the backing of a personal fortune, courtesy of his parents and his wife’s inheritance, he had moved quickly up the political ladder and begun providing his daughter with a steady supply of bodyguards from the day she turned eighteen.
Potential sons-in-law.
It was no damned wonder his daughter was a wild child looking for escape.
“She was involved in a relationship with Dyson?” Reno asked.
“No!” the senator snapped. “The girl is too damned picky to even go that far.” He sighed then. “That’s beside the point. He faxed me the reports she had convinced him to hold back while we were on the phone.” He ran his hand over his face. “God help that child, she’s going to get herself killed. Fuentes’s man won’t have to lift a hand to hurt her, she’s going to do it on her own.”
She wasn’t that bad, Kell thought silently. He had been watching her for days. She was impulsive, intelligent. And haunted. He had seen her face when she thought no one was watching, in the middle of the night when she sought sanctuary in the little courtyard outside her condo. She had looked lonely. Lost.
“She’s going to be a problem?” Reno asked. “Lieutenant Krieger’s cover depends on her cooperation. Without it, he’s no more than another bodyguard they have only to wait out.”
“She goes through bodyguards like water,” Stanton griped. “Two months max and she has them wrapped around her little finger. They would die for her, but the problem with that is that they start getting enmeshed in her little fiascoes and adventures. The girl hasn’t realized yet that she needs to settle down.”
“Sir, the question remains, will she cooperat
e?” Reno asked again.
“One thing about Emily Paige is the fact that she has the heart of an adventurer,” he growled. “She’ll go along with it and try to twist your man into so many knots he won’t know if he’s coming or going. For a girl who refuses to find a husband or a lover, she sure has a way of making tough men melt in a puddle at her little feet.” He glared at Kell.
Kell refused to flinch. He respected the senator, he was damned wary of the power the man held, but he had never agreed with him where Emily was concerned, and he hadn’t hesitated to inform him of that fact several times.
“You think you’re tough enough to handle her, don’t you, Kell?” The senator’s smile was understanding, if disdainful. “You’re sitting there telling yourself you’re tough enough. You’re hard enough and you’re cold enough. I give you a week before you’re panting after her like every other male I put in her vicinity. And like all the others, she’ll wave with a smile when you walk out the door.”
No, he was smart enough. That was the difference.
Kell allowed the corner of his lips to quirk at the senator’s words.
The senator shook his head pityingly in reply. “I’m going to do you a favor, son, simply because I hate to see a good man go down too fast and because I like you. Do whatever it takes to keep her safe. I don’t care if you have to lock her in her own damned closet, because God help you if you let anything happen to my daughter. Do you understand me?”
“No interference,” Kell said then, ignoring his commander’s warning look. “If she calls crying, you don’t pull back. If she gets pissed because she doesn’t like my rules, you don’t change them.”
Stanton’s gray eyes narrowed at the challenge in Kell’s voice. He stared back for long moments, his expression thoughtful.
“No rough stuff,” he finally stated. “I won’t have her mistreated.”
“You know better than that, Richard. She won’t be mistreated.” He was a lot of things but Kell didn’t hurt women.
Stanton watched him a moment longer before nodding slowly. “Agreed. You have control.”
Something Stanton had never given any of her bodyguards. Kell restrained his feeling of triumph but he had to admit to a twinge of wariness at the satisfaction that filled the senator’s gaze.