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He was going to break her heart. He was going to rip her soul from her body.
"I'm sorry I bothered you." How she managed to control fee shaking in her voice, she didn't know. But
she did. Pride firmed it, chilled it, and drew her upright as she stared at the wall across from her.
"Emily "
"Goodbye, Daddy." She hung the phone up softly as she blinked back her tears and realized that she
never should have called him to begin with.
"Scared, Emily?"
She swung around and there he was. He had opened the door soundlessly and now leaned lazily
against the frame, one ankle crossed over the other, one broad forearm leaning against the doorframe.
"Of you?" she asked with a sneer. "Not hardly, Kell. Not ever. Now if you'll excuse me, I need a
shower." She began to move around the bed when she saw the panties, crumpled at the end of the bed
rather than lying in the middle where she had tossed them.
She picked them up gingerly, stared at them then turned and tossed them to him coldly. And of course,
he caught them, with one hand, with no effort.
"You can have them," she stated harshly. "And enjoy them, because it's the closest you'll ever come to
that particular part of my body again."
Turning on her heel, she forced herself to move slowly to the bathroom, to enter it and close the door
softly before locking it behind her and swallowing her scream of fury.
Kell Kreiger wasn't a man that a woman played with. A little light teasing, harmless kisses, or
whispers in the dark. He was a male animal in the truest sense of the word and she suddenly felt
helpless, like a prey.
What was it she had wished for earlier? A man she couldn't control? A man who didn't whine but took
the reins?
She had to have been insane.
Kell stared at the closed bathroom door and let a frown work across his brow. She was scared. He
had seen it in her eyes when she ran from him, had heard it in her voice. But it wasn't the fear of a
woman who sensed physical danger, it was the fear of a woman facing something unknown, something
uncertain.
He shook his head, his lips tightening at the memory of her voice when she had begged the senator to
take him off the assignment. The cry of a child to its father, a plea for understanding, and evidently the
senator hadn't bothered to heed that cry.
The senator had never heeded her cries though. He had :old her to "buck up," he had encouraged her
to dry the tears and work harder. He was proud of her. Confused by her. But in the end, he did as he
wanted, not as Emily needed.
Shaking his head, he stepped back from her doorway, closing the door gently behind him as his hands
clenched around the silk and lace panties. He had to fight to keep from bringing the soft material to his
face, to restrain himself from drawing the scent of peaches and cream into his head. If she thought she
was getting them back, she was wrong. But he would see her in them again. And he promised himself
he would pull them off with nothing but his teeth and devour the silky sweet flesh they covered.
As he moved through the living room the cell phone at his belt rang demandingly to the tune of
AC/DC's "Hells Bells." Grinning, he pulled it from the holder, checked the number coming through
then flipped it open. "Good evening, Senator," he answered. "What the hell is going on?" the other
man snarled into the phone. "You haven't been alone with her an hour and she called me nearly in
tears begging for a replacement. What the hell did you do to her?"
"We're just getting our ground rules established, Richard," he assured the senator calmly. "She's a
little upset over it."
"Don't try to pull shit over my eyes, son, I'm not a fool."
"No, you're not," Kell answered firmly. "You're a father answering to your daughter's anger. If you
want me off this assignment I understand that." Like hell. "But as long as I'm on it, then I'll protect her
as I see fit."
"Did you hurt her?"
"Do you really need to ask me that question?"
He could hear the silence in the background, he could practically hear the senator's mind churning.
"Emily is an intelligent, cunning woman. We both know that," Kell said then. "She twists her
bodyguards around her little finger as easily as she would a ribbon. She's frighteningly brave, as she
proved today at the strip club and in the excursions she's dragged her bodyguards into. I won't be
conned, twisted, or convinced to let her endanger herself needlessly. It will take us a few days to
establish the ground rules, but once we do, she'll settle in fine."
That was his story and he was sticking to it.
The senator remained silent. Kell followed suit. He checked the patio door locks, then the windows,
working his way through the house and into the room he had been assigned.
"She's a good girl," the senator finally said softly. "Her feelings are easily hurt. Don't run roughshod
over her, Kell. You could hurt her more than any of the others. She's always been infatuated with
you."
And strangely enough, the senator had never pushed that infatuation and he had never pushed Kell
toward her.
"I don't run over anyone, Richard. I simply convince them of my way."
Senator Stanton grunted at the comment. "If she calls me again, I'll consider her request. Whatever
you're doing, fix it."
"You promised no interference," Kell reminded him.
"That was before the woman who's already halfway in love with you called, nearly in tears, begging
for something she's never begged for before. Fix it, Kreiger, and do it gently. Or we'll have words.
And you don't want that."
He would prefer to avoid them, but he could handle it.
"That's your choice, Richard," he finally answered as politely as he could. "Just let me know when I
need to pack and I can be ready to roll. Until then, please refrain from calling to take me to task over
your daughter's anger. It's detrimental to the assignment and creates a tension neither of us needs."
"Lieutenant Kreiger, you are testing my patience."
"And you should remember how well I excel at testing everyone's patience," he pointed out. "I guess
you'll just have to forgive me for it again."
"You better hope I do," he snapped. "Now fix this. And that's a damned order."
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