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.”