Free The Survivor by Rhonda Nelson Page B

do you think he might have caught wind that we’re after him and he’s changing up his strategy?”
    With a final wave at Chester, Lex aimed the car down the drive. “I don’t know. He probably knows that you’re calling people because at least one of them—Gus, was it?—was ready for him. Would he assume that you were chasing him or had gotten someone else to do it?” He released a breath. “I don’t know. I do know that I’m hungry, so I think our firstorder of business is to find somewhere to eat and then we’ll plot our next move.”
    â€œI don’t want to leave Honey in the car,” Bess said, shooting a look at the sweet dog. Honestly, the way Lex’s dog followed his every move was nothing short of incredible. Honey didn’t just love Lex—she was intensely protective of him. If Lex moved, Honey moved. For whatever reason, she’d appointed herself his guardian and took the job very seriously. That sort of devotion was hard to ignore and Bess knew the animal would be miserable locked in the car away from Lex.
    Lex’s smile was grateful. “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t like leaving her in the car, either. She gets anxious.”
    She’d noticed. “It’s not a problem. We can go to a drive-through and pick up something or maybe find a hotel with room service.”
    She’d expected this to take several days and had packed accordingly, but somehow when she’d considered being on the road with one of Brian’s security experts for several days, she hadn’t considered that she might be attracted to him. Or that he might be attracted to her.
    She’d sensed his interest from the start, had watched it flare in his eyes a couple of times and would even go so far as to say they’d flirted quiteshamelessly with one another. But sensing it and feeling it were two entirely different things…?.
    And she’d felt it.
    High on her belly.
    That unmistakable nudge, the thick ridge of his blatant, panty-scorching erection.
    Mercy.
    She wanted . More than anything, she just wanted . She wanted to kiss that unbelievably carnal mouth, to know how his lips felt against her own. She wanted to slide her hands all over his body, to feel his skin beneath her greedy palms, mapping his warm flesh. She wanted to kiss his injured shoulder and nibble her way along his neck. She wanted to kneel behind him and rake her aching nipples across his back and listen to him hiss with pleasure, with wanting. She wanted to watch his eyes darken and droop, to feel his powerful fingers sliding over her rib cage and curving along her hip and to feel them in darker places, hidden places she instinctively knew he’d expertly explore.
    She wanted to slip her fingers into his hair while he fed at her breasts and feasted between her legs and she wanted to welcome him into her body with a sigh dredged from her very soul. She wanted him to take her long and slow and then hard and fast and every variation in between.
    She. Wanted.
    And this need, this ache, this desperation, was so out of the realm of her understanding she didn’t even try to make sense of it. There was no point.
    There were half a dozen legitimate reasons this shouldn’t happen between them, why they shouldn’t act on this attraction. In the first place, they were supposed to be catching a criminal bent on harassing her customers. In the second place, he was Brian’s friend. In the third place, this was his first assignment. For all she knew he could lose his job over an affair with her.
    And, perhaps even more importantly…she didn’t do this kind of thing.
    She didn’t fall into bed with men she’d just met. In fact, she could count her sexual partners on one hand. On two fingers actually. She’d never been much of a dater. Before her grandfather had died she’d spent all of her time with him, and then later, after he’d