Heated Pursuit (Alpha Security #1)(81)
Her baseball cap–wearing stranger stood in the same spot, but instead of leaning against the wall, he stood erect, newspaper tossed to the side, and was looking straight at her, twitching smirk nowhere to be seen.
“Keep up.” Elle’s captor tugged her closer to the exit.
She dragged the tips of her toes in hopes of slowing him down even the slightest bit. When she looked back to her looming stranger, he was gone.
Panic seized her throat, making it nearly impossible to breathe. Even though her life plan was currently one big question mark, she knew it didn’t involve ending up in an unmarked burial plot somewhere near LaGuardia Airport.
The second she felt the cool January air slide through the glass exit doors, she locked her legs and forced both herself and her captor into a stumble. A small bit of space was all she needed to plow-drive a fist straight into his man goods.
He released her arm to deflect the blow. Thank God for those hospital-sponsored defense classes. Anticipating her new freedom, she snapped her tennis shoe straight across his kneecap. The man howled, his legs buckling for a split second when a whir of black zipped by her shoulder.
Sounds of flesh on flesh sent her gaze backward just as her wall lounger’s fist connected with her captor’s jaw. Much to the horrified fascination of nearby travelers, the two men exchanged punch after punch. People stopped and stared. Across the lobby, the uniformed cop finally looked their way. But with one final blow, her stranger put Mr. Attitude down on the ground—and then Elle found herself in a completely different set of hands.
“Walk faster.” Her stranger hustled her through the sliding doors and into New York’s as-fresh-as-can-be air, one hand resting on the small of her back. The tingling touch was far better than the other’s bruising grip.
She opened her mouth to object, but he cut her off. “Save the questions for when we’re not about to become target practice.”
Elle’s head spun around and she realized her savior had a point. Her would-be abductor stood in the airport lobby, sunglasses off and gun twitching at his side. She’d seen those eyes before…and the scar that slid down his cheek.
Cold dread licked up her spine. She couldn’t pull her gaze away, watching as the man from the Thai alley lifted a cell phone to his ear.
Her stranger turned her focus back to him and the looming SUV half-parked on the drop-off zone’s sidewalk. “Get in the car.”
Elle’s feet screeched to a stop. “Yeah, I may be blonde, but I’m not stupid. What makes you think I’d get into a car with you any more than I would with him? Thanks for helping me back there, because I’ve obviously landed in the Twilight Zone instead of LaGuardia, but if you want me to get in there”—she gestured to the door he held open—“then you’re going to have to physically toss me in there and sit on me.”
Elle met her rescuer glare for glare, except hers was directed into his mirrored sunglasses. He was larger than he looked even from across the room, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulders.
“If you think that would be a deterrent for me, sweetness, you’re mistaken. And as for manhandling you into position, I’d be more than happy to cover your body with mine, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting on you. Now get. In. The. Car. Now.”
That voice. His smell. Familiarity tugged at her memory while her body shifted into a pheromone-driven DEFCON 1. Elle’s eyes widened in recognition, but she didn’t know how it was possible. Or why. First the man from the alley and now…him.
She teetered sideways, would’ve face-planted on the sidewalk if it hadn’t been for the hands pulling her against a strong, wide chest that didn’t belong to a stranger. She didn’t need to imagine what he looked like beneath his clothes. She knew. She knew how his body felt against hers, knew that each touch felt like she’d touched an exposed electrical wire. Those hands especially had given her a lifetime’s worth of happy-place memories.
With trembling hands, Elle slid the sunglasses off her wall lounger’s nose and stared into the same green eyes in which she’d allowed herself to get lost in a dingy Thai bar.
And in the room above.
And in the bed in that room.
Elle Monroe, humanitarian nurse and ever-responsible daughter of a United States senator, stood in front of her one and only—and forty-eight-hour recent—one-night stand.