Page 90 of Killer Secrets (Tempting SEALs 5)

"No. You don't." She pushed her fingers through her hair, clenched the strands at the nape and felt the tension tightening in her body until she wondered if she would break. "You can't love me. Loving me is stupid, Ian. Just ask my ex-husband. Hell, I'll even give you his number."

Because she would have to betray him. Just as she had betrayed her husband by not allowing him to know her alternate life. Now she was betraying Ian by not allowing him to know the agenda DHS had contracted her to see through.

She reached behind her, gripped the doorknob, and pushed the door open as he stepped toward her. "Just ask him. He'll tell you. Loving me is the worst mistake you could make."

She watched his expression, watched the glimmer of amusement that lightened his whisky eyes and the emotions that softened the savage features of his face.

He wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, he was rough, dangerous. The features of his face were too sharp and well defined for handsome. And now, they were even more rugged as he stared back at her, obviously holding back, watching her curiously.

"It's hard to find a woman who can walk beside a man like me," he told her softly, stalking her as she backed out of the bathroom. "I'm a prick on a good day, and I have all those male faults that keep telling me I should push you behind me, cover you, shelter you. We'll never bore each other, Kira."

She shook her head, her heart lodging in her throat as she fought any idea that what he could feel for her went beyond lust and a need to find solace amid the life he had been living.

Love was for later, she told herself. It wasn't for now. Not until he knew the truth of her, the truth of what she had been sent to do, and she couldn't tell him that now.

For the first time in her adult lif

e the woman was overshadowing the Chameleon and she was regretting. Regretting the mission, regretting the woman she had become and the deceit she had learned too well. She was regretting the years she had held back, forcing herself back from Ian, forcing distance between them.

She was learning parts of herself she hadn't imagined existed. The sensual woman. The hunger and the needs Ian called forth from her. The tenderness. The insight the woman had into the man she had claimed for her own.

She could excuse herself by saying that she was protecting him until hell froze over, but in the end, she knew he would never believe it. A man should never have to face killing his own father, no matter what a monster he might be. And the honor that was so much a part of him would never be able to accept that his own government had held information back from him.

She retreated further, aware that she was shaking her head repeatedly, that some part of her brain was rejecting the thing she wanted the most, that she had dreamed about for so damned long.

Ian's love.

"Why are you so scared, baby?" His hands flashed from his sides, locked around her wrists, and held her still as he brought his body to hers.

He didn't drag her into his embrace, he stepped into hers, pressing himself against her as he pulled her arms to the small of her back and surrounded her with his warmth.

She used to hate being restrained. Hated being held, until Ian. Now, it sent a heated response streaking through her as a core of once-unknown femininity came violently to life.

She tugged at his hold, a distant part of her aware of the fact that the struggle wasn't about being set free. She didn't want to be free, she wanted to be held tighter, closer. She wanted the world to retreat until nothing mattered but the reality they created with their passion. Until the danger and the deceit swirling around them disappeared and left her free to reach out to the one man who completed her.

"You haven't answered me, Kira." His lips lowered to the corner of hers as he arched her against him. "What are you scared of? You can love, but no one can love you?"

"That's exactly how it works." She had to force the words past the constriction in her throat.

"Why, Kira?" His lips moved over hers, ignoring them when they parted in hunger, when her tongue stroked across his. "Why can't anyone love you?"

"Because they don't know me." She almost felt lost again, as lost as she had felt when her husband had walked out on her. "I'm the Chameleon. Always changing. How can you love someone like that?"

He lifted his head to stare down at her.

"And yet, always Kira," he guessed.

Always Kira. Always alone. She had never recovered the feeling of security and sense of balance that she had known before her parents' deaths. She had lived with the knowledge that her family had died because they had fought against the specter known as Sorrell. Because her father had taken up one lost child's battle and searched endlessly for her and her abductor.

Her father had been a lawyer, her mother had been a child services representative. When one of her children had gone missing and the trail had led to a white slavery organization, she and her husband had followed that trail.

Sorrell had struck back. He had killed her parents and Jason's fiancée and it probably hadn't even blipped on his radar that he had destroyed two more lives in the process. And made two enemies determined to bring him down.

Until Ian, love hadn't been a part of her life. Neither had true security. She realized, in his arms, she felt safe, she felt warmed. And only now did she realize how frightening that was. Because she could lose him so easily.

"We'll talk about love when this is over," she told him desperately. "You'll see then, you don't love me. It's the situation. It's being in this world, having it wrap around you, smother you. You don't love me, Ian. You love the normalcy you think I represent. That's all."

And she knew better. If any man knew what he was about and who he was, then it was Ian. And he was terrifying her. Shaking her resolve. She couldn't let him do that.

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