“Are you sure your heart is as fragile as you pretend?” she asked dryly. “It looks as if bullets bounce off it from here.”
“Kevlar.” He thumped his chest with his knuckles, where he was, in fact, wearing a vest. “But underneath it’s pure mush.”
“So aim for your throat?” She hefted the left-hand knife.
He beamed at her and opened his hand over his heart in civilian pledge position. “I’d unzip my body armor for you, honey.”
She sighed heavily. But her lips twitched.
Yes. He pulled a victory fist. “Now about those drinks. I don’t want to keep you all night, sweetheart—” He paused. Grinned. “At least, not all night here. So—”
“No?” she interrupted, disappointed. “Because I’ve always had a fantasy about this counter.”
Oh, hell, yeah. He sprang to attention. Coming away from the wall, a part of him rising up eagerly, and—
She held up that butcher knife, point straight toward him so he’d ram himself on it if he kept coming.
He sagged and scowled. “Was that necessary? That was cruel and unusual.”
She gave a very smug, mean smile, like Catwoman licking her lips.
He regrouped. “Now I have a fantasy about that counter.” He gave her a smile back. “I’m even down on my knees in it.”
She checked. Her eyes widened just a tad, and then flickered to the counter. And back to him. She pressed her lips firmly together, but her throat moved as she swallowed.
Yeah. Now they were getting somewhere. He took a step toward her.
“You are like some Jack-in-the-box on steroids,” she said, exasperated. “You just bounce up again, and again, and again.”
“Yep,” he agreed. “All night long.”
She thunked her own forehead with the haft of her knife. “Look, just tell me what you want.”
“Oh, honey, you don’t want me to get started on everything I want from you right here. You want to be lying down for some of that.”
She gave him an utterly exasperated evil look, and he laughed. “It’s your own fault, you know,” he said.
“That you’re an idiot?” She raised an ironic eyebrow.
“The—sproing.” He shielded his crotch with his hand and then made that hand spring up at attention. “You seem to have that effect on me.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, it’s always the woman’s fault. Tell me what you want before I kill you.”
“To inspect you from top to bottom.”
She gave him a fulminating glance.
“I mean your kitchen. Did I say you? Slip of the tongue.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s not always this clumsy.”
A knife buried itself in the wall behind his head, but at least she left a generous foot of distance this time. He must be growing on her.
“I don’t really need to inspect you for my job, to be honest,” he said. “Our files on you are so thorough, I could probably tell you what kind of underwear you’re wearing.” He closed his eyes a second. “Black lace,” he said firmly, cupping his hands at his chest. “Push up. And then…definitely a black thong.”
She gazed at him a long moment, with that narrowed look to her eyes that just excited the hell out of his entire body. “So the peekaboo pink lace would be a real disappointment to you.”
He took a hard breath, as that one got in past his body armor and hit him right in the belly.
“With the little slit down the middle…?”
“Okay.” He held up both hands in surrender. “I’ll be good. I promise. And I’ll do the dishes all seven days a week, okay? That’s on top of always taking out the trash and changing the oil. Just don’t tell me more about your underwear right now, okay?”
Because he had a really creative brain, and right now it had just paired that nice ass in peekaboo pink lace arched just so on the back of a motorcycle, and…yeah, he might explode before her eyes.
“I’d better focus on work for a minute,” he said.
“No, really? You can do that?”
It was too good to pass up. He gave her a slow smile. “Honey, I can focus like you wouldn’t believe.”
***
The good thing about leather, Vi thought, was that it really gave no clue as to how much a woman was letting a certain full-of-himself idiot get to her. Panty-dampening get to her. If anybody found out, it would totally ruin her cred.
He sure as hell didn’t need to know. He was too cocky already.
All the other men she had crushed were just fantasizing about being him in video games? Ha.
Unless…he really was an ex-SEAL or something, in which case…nah. He was just another braggart, right? The number of men in bars who had tried to pretend to some mysterious SEAL affiliation the year she worked in New York was probably greater than the number of SEALs in existence.
“Now, about this saving the world issue,” her intruder said. “I’ll admit it’s niggling at me. Honey, if you would just let me get that out of the way, after that I’m all yours.”
“Ri-ight.” She sighed. “Because you have to do that in my kitchen. Of course you’re not just a thief sneaking into the hotel from here.”
He shook his head at her with grave disappointment. “Sweetheart, you’re going to have to trust me more if we’re going to make this relationship work.”