skills, she actually smiled. “I graduated top of my class. I’m a Phi Beta Kappa. I had personal recommendations from two senators for my appointment—”
“Yeah, yeah. But can you kiss a man and make him forget what he was thinking?”
With a magical snap of invisible fingers, he zapped her confidence and took her into uncharted territory. “I beg your pardon?”
“When it comes down to it, can you turn all that brain power into a seductive smile that Harris Mitchell will find irresistible?”
“I—”
She felt the heat of his lips brushing against her ear. “Can you do this…?” A vise clamped around her waist—Logan’s arm. She snatched at his leather sleeve to free herself, but froze as he pulled her back against him. Shoulders to chest. Hips to belt buckle. Bottom to…Grace squirmed at the vee of pure masculine heat that cupped her buttocks, not yet understanding the lesson he was teaching her. The long, strong fingers of his free hand seized her hip and stilled her struggle. “Without flinching?”
His lips moved to the column of nerves that ran down the side of her neck. “Can you let a man do this to you…?” She tilted her head to the side, straining away from his hot, moist assault on her senses. His tongue joined the foray, supping at an undiscovered indention where her neck met her shoulder. The electric current that had tingled beside her ear now shot out to the tips of her breasts, hardening her nipples, making the tender globes feel heavy above the restricting band of his arm. “And pretend you enjoy it?”
Pretend?
A damp mix of pleasure and pain gathered between her legs. Her hand, which had once tried to push him away, now tugged at his arm, unconsciously begging him to ease the friction gathering in the breasts it cradled.
Grace turned her jaw to his mouth, struggling to speak, fighting through the current of unaccustomed electric heat consuming her. He was making a point, she tried to remind herself, teaching her about working undercover.
“I should—” she stuck out the tip of her tongue and licked the circle of her parched lips, trying to regain control of the conversation—and her traitorous body “—be taking notes.”
He shifted his attention to the movement of her tongue and traced the same circle around her lips with an erotic rasp of his own tongue. The electric current humming through her transformed into an outright jolt. Her thighs clenched together and she lifted her bottom, rubbing herself against his bulging heat.
“Logan?” The sensation was too much. He was too much.
She was drowning. Falling. Building. Rushing.
She was alone.
Logan had released her and stepped far beyond her line of vision. He left her cold and exposed and swaying in the center of the room, counting silently to herself as she retrained her lungs to breathe in, then out, all over again.
As she gathered her senses, she could hear his measured breathing across the room. Was he sneering at her inexperience? Laughing at her combustible reaction to a simple embrace? Shaking his head over just how ill-suited she was for this task? His voice, which had rumbled in such a seductive pitch beside her ear, now clipped with all the command of a military officer. “That’s what you’ll have to do. If Mitchell suspects for one moment that you’re not sincere, you’ll be dead.”
Logan’s first lesson had bordered on virtual heaven. But the reality of his harsh words chased away the haze of sensual awareness and reminded her that he had yet to agree to work with her on the case.
“I’m aware of the danger, Agent Pierce. I’m not so naive as to believe there’s no risk involved in this assignment. That’s why I asked for your help.”
Reaching over her shoulder, he plucked the steno pad from her fingers.
“Hey!” She heard it land on something soft as he tossed it aside. The bombardment of man and lingering sex and unexpected actions made her jump when she felt his hands at her nape. “What are you doing now?”
“Seeing if I can help you.”
Logan’s deft fingers seemed to have had plenty of practice unfastening pins and rubber bands. He loosened her hair from its constrictive wrap and it fell around her shoulders down to the middle of her back. It had grown long and untamable, so she never wore it free. Even at night, she wove it into a braid to sleep.
But there was something…distracting…in the way he sifted the long strands through his fingers. Lifting it to test its weight, easing the pressure on her scalp. Something…soothing…in the way he draped it along her shoulder blades.
She should write this down. This feeling of being tended. This…
“It has a natural wave in it. Lots of potential—if you do something with it. We’ll cut it so the weight doesn’t pull it straight.”
His impersonal tone snapped her out of her foolish observations. It seemed he was doing his job. At last. She should remember her job, as well. “I’m prepared to alter my appearance.”
“I hope so.” He released her hair and stepped away. “The only way you’ll turn any man’s eye with that outfit is if you take it off. Let me have the jacket.”
“Agent Pierce, I hardly think—”
He was already tugging at the shoulders. Grace quickly unhooked the buttons before it ripped and he pulled it off.
“You want me for my expertise. I need to see what I have to work with.”
A whisper of wool gabardine landed in the corner somewhere. “This is a two-hundred-dollar suit, Agent Pierce.”
“You’ll have to cut the ‘agent’ crap. Call a man by his name.”
She felt the tug on the top button of her blouse before she saw his hand there. Grace swatted it away. “What do you think you’re doing—” she swallowed hard and forced herself to say his name “—Logan?”
“That’s better.” His hands returned, resuming their path down to her waist. “All of this has to go so I can assess what you’re asking of me. I’m all for getting Mitchell, but I don’t like impossible missions.”
“Impossible?”
Plain white cotton seemed no barrier for the man, either. He pushed the blouse down her arms and pulled it free of her waistband. It joined the jacket. In a self-conscious habit learned by the age of fourteen, she crossed her arms in front of her, laying her left hand on her right shoulder, her right hand at her waist, forming a shield of armor to mask every plump inch from an unkind word or critical eye.
His fingers moved to the zipper on her skirt.
Impossible, he’d said. That hurt. She had never flaunted her body. Not intentionally at any rate. Not once. She forced her mind away from the taunts and teasing of her adolescent peers. She shut down the memory of grown men leering at her, speaking to other parts of her anatomy instead of making eye contact.
At least Logan was denigrating her for the right reasons, not casting her aside as inconsequential because she’d managed to inherit one inescapable thing from her mother.
Make
