She melted against him. There was no resistance anywhere in her body. In her whole life she’d never felt so limp and needy. Wanting this, wanting him, she moaned into his mouth.
Marc heard the sound like a roar of white water across slickened rocks. She tasted sizzling hot, icy sweet. When he felt her hands tentatively touch his shoulders, it was as if the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.
Passion and power. He’d found all of that and more in her kiss. Feasting on her softness, he filled his hands with her rounded jeans-covered bottom.
He broke the kiss, needing to taste the rest of her. Licking his way up her jawline, he found her sensitive earlobe and suckled. What fascinating sensations she had stirred in him. He kissed his way down her neck, restlessly moving his hands up and down her sides, eager to fill his palms with her breasts.
Finally covering one breast with his hand, he lasered his mouth back across hers, letting the beast inside the man go free. He wanted to taste every inch. He wanted to go on, licking and lathing, until he could bury himself deep inside her welcoming body.
Somewhere, back in a still-rational part of his brain, he knew this was not how a man kissed a woman for the first time. But this was the kind of kiss—the kind of woman—that he’d dreamed about for all of his life.
Dana was so much more than anyone before. So strong, yet so tender. Passionate, vibrant and real. She was everything that Alicia had never been.
That shocking thought brought him up abruptly. The pain of remembering Alicia’s betrayal threw ice water against his heated skin and numbed his desire. What in God’s name was he doing?
Clutching lamely at Dana’s shoulders, he levered himself away from her and tried to catch his breath. She reached out to him and opened her drugged eyes, silently pleading with him to come back.
Heaven knew that’s what he wanted, too. He wanted to go on kissing her…and much more.
He shut his eyes and cursed through gritted teeth.
Dana found herself blinking furiously, but at last she cleared the confusion from her brain. “Where the hell did that come from, Danforth?” she demanded with a shaky voice. “What were you thinking?”
Marc opened his eyes wide, but took a step back. “I’m not sure. But whatever it was, you were thinking it too.” The look in his eyes held the same accusations and disorientation that she was feeling.
Many inadequate images ripped through her, but she wasn’t positive she could articulate any of them. She’d definitely wanted him to keep on kissing her. But the rational side of her knew it had been right for them to stop.
From deep in her gut, she tried putting up an invisible shield around her emotions. But her fingers wouldn’t obey her brain and automatically went to her swollen lips, tentatively touching the still-pulsing flesh there.
It had never occurred to her that she might ever kiss a man like that. And for it to be this man—the man she was supposed to be using to get to the head of a dangerous cartel….
Well, she supposed there was just no explaining it. Not to him and certainly not to herself.
Clearing her throat, she pressed her lips together and tried to think. “Let’s get inside the house before we’re spotted,” she finally managed. “Do the gates on your fence actually close and lock?”
Marc had been standing there, studying her in the glare of the automatic yard lights. “Yeah,” he answered with a drawl. “At least they did a year ago when I first moved in. The chain-link is mostly just for Laddie, not for protection. But the dog has never needed fencing. Outside the house, he knows where he belongs.”
“Go lock the gates then,” she ordered. “I’ll get a couple of things out of my trunk and meet you inside after I disarm the security system.”
Her words seemed to shake him from his sensual stupor. “Make sure Laddie is inside the fence before I lock the gates,” he told her before spinning around and heading off into the crisp autumn night.
After he’d gone, Dana finally took a huge deep, cleansing breath. She stood five foot eight and sometimes towered over men, but Marc’s six-two had made him seem like a giant standing next to her.
Shaking the cobwebs from her head, she dug the duffel out of the trunk. Ridiculous. Men simply did not make her nervous. Never had. And she was determined that Marc Danforth would not be the first.
In all of her life…first in high school while walking the dangerous streets of her neighborhood, then in college taking law enforcement courses with tough ex-marines, and finally at Quantico during FBI training…she’d turned men into friends or enemies. But every single one of them had kept a respectful distance.
She’d never allowed any of them to push her, and she’d worked hard at being one of the guys. It had been important to her to maintain that professional distance.
Always managing to keep her sexual naiveté quite well-hidden, in high school and college it had been a matter of self-preservation. No dates meant no sex. No sex meant no chance of ending up with a scoundrel like her father.
Eventually, though, she’d stopped thinking about men as anything but friends, co-workers or suspects. And at this point in her life, it would be just too embarrassing to admit that she was inexperienced at something so basic as relations between men and women.
Dana threw the duffel over her shoulder and went to the back porch, calling Laddie as she went. Finding him standing on the step, eagerly awaiting her arrival, he made her smile.
“Good boy.” Dana reached down and roughed-up the fur around his neck.
While disarming the alarm on the back of the house, she couldn’t help wondering why she’d let Marc kiss her. Not only let him, but encouraged him.
When she opened the door, Laddie bolted around her and headed through the lighted kitchen into the darkness beyond. Nothing in the house seemed to be out of place. But because she trusted the dog to know when something was amiss, she instinctively touched the weapon holstered under her jacket.
Crossing through the kitchen and into the foyer, she flipped on the overhead lights. When she heard Marc unlocking and opening the front door, she headed toward the sound and motioned for him to come in quietly.
When he stepped into the glow of the house lights, the sight of him took the breath right out of her lungs. The man was one gorgeous hunk.
He was also extremely rich and quite the ladies’man, if grocery-store tabloids could be believed. The two of them were definitely not from the same universe, let alone in the same league.
Their kiss had been an aberration. A one-shot miscalculation. Nothing more. She vowed to keep her mind on business, and her eye on the goal of taking down Escalante.
“Stay where you are a minute,” she whispered in her most professional tone of voice. “I want to check out the rest of the house.”
He stopped, but his eyes sparkled with amusement. “Yes, ma’am. There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
“Just checking. When I opened the door, the dog took off like he was chasing something.” She flattened herself against the wall, drew her weapon and stealthily headed toward the bedrooms.
“Oh, no.” Marc suddenly brushed past her down the hall and dashed through the first doorway on the right.
So much for him doing whatever she told him to do.
From her cursory inspection of this afternoon, she knew he’d turned into the guest room. “Marc, wait. Let me check…”
“No!” At his loud exclamation, Dana tensed.
Just as she reached the doorway, she heard him issuing commands. “Down, Laddie! Bad dog!”
“Do you need assistance?” It was pretty clear that Marc was okay. She couldn’t