Page 3 of Hidden Agendas (Tempting SEALs 4)

She wasn’t safe. And the way she wrapped her bodyguards around her slender fingers, they would be of no help to her when Fuentes decided to take her again, as the information suggested he would. She wasn’t safe, but she thought she could protect herself. She was just smart enough to be dangerous to herself, and too gentle to ever be a danger to the evil stalking her.

They thought she was safe. God help him, he had believed Fuentes would adhere to the rules of the game and leave her be after her rescue from the first kidnapping. And perhaps he would have, if the spy codenamed Mr. White hadn’t grown increasingly worried about her father’s efforts to track him down.

Now, here was Emily, fighting to find a life despite her father’s overprotection and the shadow of danger. For seven years she had lived with one bodyguard after another, had endured her father’s overprotective love, and had tried to balance her needs against his fears.

From the look of things, she had grown tired of the battle, though.

Today, she wore the disguise she had been using for the past week before heading from her condo on the outskirts of Atlanta to the strip joint on the other side of the large town. The long brown wig and makeup adjustment would only fool someone who didn’t really know her. Kell would have recognized her in a second, no matter what her disguise.

His conversation that morning with her father when he gave his oral report had been telling, though. The bodyguard Dyson was ready to break, if the report he sent in the night before was any indication.

Chet Dyson had warned the senator that the situation wasn’t working out and his daughter was becoming too confrontational for him to effectively protect her, especially considering that the senator refused to allow Dyson to tell her of the renewed threat. Dyson was getting nervous. It was time to pull him out.

Damn, she was good in this traffic. She flipped in front of an eighteen-wheeler with plenty of room to spare but with a move that nearly caught him off guard and kept him from advancing with her.

Horns blared and he was sure there were men cursing her from one lane to the next. Men got nervous when a woman drove like that. It made them unpredictable. Few men could handle a woman that aggressive and unpredictable.

Kell loved it. The challenge fired his blood and had a smile of anticipation curving his lips. Never had he met a woman whom he found exciting outside the bed. But this one, she would keep a man on his toes well beyond the age where it should be possible. And he had known that since the night she celebrated her eighteenth birthday and turned his little world upside down with a smile.

She was a woman who enjoyed life. It sparkled in her eyes and showed in her smile. She was a woman guaran-damn-teed to drive him insane and he wasn’t even officially her bodyguard yet. He was just the dumb shit ordered to follow her and her present bodyguard around until gears were put into motion and Durango Team could be rounded up from their various locations. God help him when he had to stay in her home under the cover his commander had informed him he would be using.

Because he had lusted after Miss Emily Stanton for seven years. The only thing that had saved her was the fact that he was rarely around her. Living in her home, sleeping under the same roof with her, pretending to be her lover was going to break him and he knew it. Soon, he would have her in his bed; the only battle would be keeping her out of his heart.

As he fought to keep up with her in the traffic, Kell found himself cursing along with all the other men in vehicles around them. If he hadn’t been trying to follow her, he would have acknowledged her cunning and daring. But he was trying to follow her, and she was making it damned hard to do so.

It happened every time he trailed her anywhere. He cussed her for hours. Swore he was going to tie her up and stuff her in a closet. That he would find a nice little uninhabited island to stick her on where she couldn’t endanger herself or others.

It made a man glad he had a will, even if he didn’t have an heir.

Who knew an SUV could move like that? He was on his Harley and he couldn’t gain the momentum she had on an interstate packed with four lanes of prerush-hour traffic.

He was reciting every curse he had learned, in Arabic, in a Middle Eastern prison three years ago. Then he tried the Russian versions that he had learned in a cold little jail in some back mountain province he didn’t want to even think about.

But he made it, with only inches to spare between the back tire of his precious Harley and a four-by-four pickup as wide as a barn.

But he was back in place on her ass, and snarling as she zipped and whipped through the inner-city traffic.

Because it was obvious her bodyguard couldn’t do a damned thing with her. He wasn’t even smart enough to call in backup to contain her. As though backup could do anything with a slippery little fox, he thought with a spurt of amusement.

Keeping a careful distance between his Harley and her SUV, he flattened his lips once again and promised himself that the minute he took over her security he was locking her in a room with no escape routes and throwing away the damned key.

Then his lips quirked in amusement. Hell no, he wouldn’t lock her up. The first thing he was going to do was see how damned fast he could get all that restless fire and passion between the sheets.

He had waited long enough for her. She was older now, mature. She could go to bed with him and not be destroyed when it was time for him to walk away.

As she pulled into the back lot of a strip club, he amended the previous idea. He wasn’t locking her in a room. A room was too good for the hell she was getting ready to put him through when he pulled her out of Timbo’s. He was locking her in chains and finding a hole deep enough to contain the little witch. Because sure as hell, if he dragged her out of this place, he was going to end up pissed off, bruised, bloody, and maybe with a few bones broken. And for that, he was going to demand a bit of satisfaction.

No, not just a bit. A lot. And likely more than either of them needed. Definitely more than he should be thinking. Because he kept imagining her, not in a hole, but in a bed, her arms stretched over her head, her legs spread, open and inviting. And that lush little body panting for him.

Damn, a hard-on sure as hell wasn’t what he needed right now.

He pulled the Harley into an alley alongside the back parking lot, concealing it behind the trees that struggled to live amid the rot and decay that surrounded them, and watched as Emily and her bodyguard moved from the vehicle.

He was going to end up in a fight before this was over with.

Not that Kell cared to fight. Hell, he loved to fight. But he didn’t think the senator would appreciate the fact that his little girl had been to a strip club, not with the danger facing her now. And the senator wasn’t going to be happy either. Kell wondered about Emily’s present bodyguard and his obvious lack of sanity.

Chet Dyson was a former marine, tough, supposedly fearless, but that was fear Kell saw on his face. Desperation. He was looking around for an escape route, not an attacker, even as he argued with his charge.

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