Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(85)

She sat up, wiggling back down into her own seat and buttoning her jeans. She pulled her sweater down and her blanket back up. Val tucked his cock into his pants, adjusted his clothes, and fished a bottle of mineral water out of the seat pocket. He presented it to her.

Nice touch. The least he could do. She drank deeply and pulled her blanket back up to her chin. As if it were any kind of protection from his seductive power.

“Proud of yourself?” She forced some sharpness into her tone.

He shook his head. “Humbled,” he said softly. “And destroyed.”

She was getting embarrassed now, which always made her irritable. “I need a bath in the worst way,” she whispered. “And we have hours of travel time to go. Nor do I have clean clothes to spare.”

“Sorry, Tamar.” The sympathy on his face was fake. “When we get to Italy, we will buy you more clothing. And the hotel room I have booked in San Vito has a magnificent bathroom. A deep tub, with hydromassage. A beautiful marble shower, for two.”

“Why are you calling me that?” she demanded. “Nobody calls me that. It’s Tam, if you please.”

“I like it that nobody calls you that,” he said quietly. “And I like it that it is your real name.”

“Real.” She snorted. “What’s real?”

He reached out, slowly drew his fingertip over her upper lip. Then the tender inner part of it. Her mouth trembled in response. His finger smelled of her.

“This was real,” he said softly. “No comfort zone. I loved it.”

She blushed idiotically. “Hmph. Whatever. I want that shower. Your gooey gigolo sweet talk won’t help me with that. The bathroom in San Vito is still five thousand kilometers away. And you still trust me with your credit card?”

“Fuck, no,” he said, with feeling. “This time, I choose what you buy.”

She startled herself by giggling. He took advantage of the unshielded moment to grab her hand.

She stiffened. Her first instinct was to yank it back, as if she’d been burned. She stopped herself, by force of will, her nerves on edge.

Their hands were both a bit sticky, but it wasn’t as if either one of them had cause to complain. She had never actually held a man’s hand in her life. Other parts of a man, yes. But not hands.

It was uncomfortably, weirdly intimate. Almost, well…nice. In a way that was dangerously different from sex.

But then again, what did it matter if she indulged in a silly lovey-dovey fantasy? Even if it blew up in her face. Who would it hurt?

You, she told herself. It’ll hurt you. You’re letting the man literally f*ck your brains out, and the end result will not be pretty.

She acknowledged that brutal truth, she accepted it, she swallowed it down…but she did not let go of his hand.





Chapter


16




If Val had not been so worried about Imre, so conscious of time, he would have actually been having fun with Tamar. He enjoyed her caustic wit, her sharp honesty. She stimulated him on every level.

They checked into the beautiful, baroque-era hotel in San Vito, and he hurried her up the grand staircase and down the high-ceilinged corridor to their room with unconcealed impatience. He had paid a ridiculous sum to reserve this particular room. It had a loggia, with three arches on the terrace, a spectacular view of the town rising steeply out of the azure sea and clinging to the mountain slopes, and of La Roccia, the huge rock formation that cut the town into two parts.

Not that he gave her time to look at it. He slammed the door shut and fell upon her, like a beast. True to form, she shoved him back, with a strength that still surprised him from such a slender woman.

“Do not take me for granted!”

He advanced on her. “I’m not,” he said. “I’m taking you, period.”

“The cave man game only goes so far, Val,” she warned.

Ah, sì. She was calling him Val, at last. Something inside him capered for joy. “Far enough for my purposes.” He grabbed her, heedless of her swatting hands, and flung her down onto the bed.

She struggled, but if she hadn’t been having a good time, he would be on his back, fighting for his very life. As it was, her eyes glowed, her color was high, she shoved, flailed, and slapped at him with high energy, but no lethal intentions. His body knew the difference.

He risked letting go of her wrists for long enough to unbutton her jeans, and got a couple of sharp slaps for his trouble. He snatched her hands and flung himself on top of her, his face red and tingling pleasantly from the blows. The bed rocked and bounced. He pinned her wrists and grinned into her furious face.

“Finally, a bed,” he said. “I thought it would never happen.”

“What makes you think it will happen now, porco?” she shot back. “After twenty-four hours of travel and no bath? Dream on!”

“Twenty-four hours of foreplay,” he countered, pulling down her jeans. “Fuck the bath. Bathe later. Trust me, you will need a bath later.”

They wrestled and writhed and struggled. He was on the verge of coming in his jeans, before he finally got her naked beneath him. He got a painful, two-fingered jab to his throat when he spared a hand to open his pants. The blow could have been lethal, had she cared to make it so. He wouldn’t take such a harmless version of it personally.