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“Maybe that’s the truth. Or maybe you’re lying to me. I’ve got no reason to believe a single word that comes out of your mouth, Duchess. So until we get where we’re going, I’m keeping you in my sights. Understood?”
She huffed, crossing her hands over her chest. “This is ridiculous. I’m supposed to just stand there and watch you shower?”
“Watch whatever you like, but yes—youwillbe in there. You want to talk to Hayley, want to find Arrieta? You’ll do as I say.”
Lips compressed, she pushed to her feet, mumbling curses as she started toward him.
“Happy now?”
“Not by a long shot.” He tilted his head toward the bathroom. “In you go.”
“Go to hell,” she said as she passed.
“You wish.” He regretted his weak comeback as he stepped into the small room behind her and shut the door. Even with her perched on the closed toilet seat, they constantly brushed against each other, but what other choice did he have? Kyle wasn’t about to let her or the notebook out of his sight. Not until he found out about these complications she’d mentioned. Grumbling, he maneuvered to the shower and flipped on the faucet.
Steam soon filled the air, adding to the already crackling sexual tension between them. He reached above her head to grab his toiletries, and her gaze landed straight on his semi-hard cock.
With her sitting and him standing this close, he’d merely have to lean a tad closer and press the sensitive tip to her soft, warm lips, ease it inside her wet mouth…
Kyle bit back an angry groan, and Natalie looked up at him, one brow quirked. “Looks like I’m not the only one wishing.”
* * *
Damn, damn, damn.
Why had her handler insisted she sneak into his motel room?
Because your team said you need both notebooks to have all the data, that’s why.
Natalie sat in the steamy bathroom and did her best not to ogle Kyle’s muscled form through the shower curtain. The guy was a walking billboard for hotness, all cut lines and sinew and masculine protectiveness rolled into a tanned, toned package.
Nick had been cute and funny and honorable to the core, but Kyle…
Kyle Matthews was another kind of beast entirely.
Shaking her head, Natalie did her best to get her brain back in the game and out of forbidden territory. No matter how delectable she found the man, there was no way in hell she’d ever get involved with him.
It would be too weird, too wrong, too incredibly hot and sexy and wet and wild and…
“Duchess?” Kyle asked over the hiss of running water.
Every time he called her that, it was like a sweet knife stab to the heart.
Sweet, because she still remembered the day he and Nick had started using the nickname. It had been mid-November, and though there hadn’t been much in the way of brilliant, color-changing foliage yet on the Matthewses’ Virginia farm, Thanksgiving had been around the corner.
The whole Matthews clan had gathered, and everyone seemed so open and loving and happy. She and all three Matthews brothers were playing a game of touch football in one of the recently harvested fields, and they were making fun of her for not wanting to mess up her hair before the big dinner later in the day.
Truth was, she’d been nervous about meeting Nick’s extended family—cousins and aunts and uncles. Sure, his mom and dad and brothers had seemed to take her in as one of their own without question, but she didn’t want to press her luck.
It wasn’t like she had the best example of how normal families interacted. Her own family had been…messy. She had no memory of her dad, who died when she was two. Maybe it was that loss that set her mom on the wrong path, or maybe she’d been heading that way anyway—Natalie didn’t know for sure. But for most of Natalie’s childhood, her quality of life was on a constant downward spiral.
There were frequent moves, always to an apartment that was a little shabbier than the one before. A steady string of new boyfriends, each one a little rougher around the edges. A growing number of bottles around the house, both booze and pills. A decreasing number of hours during which Mom was able to handle going to work, buying groceries, holding a coherent conversation. By the time Natalie turned fourteen, there were whole days at a stretch during which her mother would live in a haze, unaware of the world around her. And her then-boyfriend had taken advantage of that to try to get a whole lot closer to Natalie. After the night when she had to lock herself in the bathroom to avoid him, she decided enough was enough. Stuffing as much as she could carry into a backpack, she’d walked away. She hadn’t had anywhere to go, but she’d felt that anywhere would be better than where she was.
That was the last time she’d been a part of anything at all like a family—until Nick brought her home to Virginia.
Anyway, Nick had thrown a Hail Mary pass, and for some reason Natalie had made a play for it, lunging to the right and straight into Kyle’s path for an intercept as he moved in to capture the ball. They collided in midair, and he’d wrapped her tight in his arms, turning to take the brunt of the fall with his body.
She’d landed atop his chest, the wind knocked out of her but her competitive spirit intact. While Kyle recovered from the tackle, she’d managed to keep hold of the ball, raising it weakly over her head in victory.
