Dare Me, page 3
T minus 1day:9hours:14minutes:02seconds
"No more," Danica protested, as Jon tried to force her to drink yet another cup of far-too-strong Colombian coffee. The stuff not only looked nasty, it was thick as syrup, tasted vile as sin, and was strong enough to grow hair on her chest.
"Last one." He stood over her, cup poised at her lips. "Promise."
"Which means there's another gallon," Danica said tiredly, rubbing, not scratching, a bite behind her ear. There wasn't a muscle, a bone, a joint, or a cell in her body that didn't hurt or itch. "Hello? Tea drinker, remember?"
Of course he didn't. Jon Raven had always been one hundred percent focused on what Jon Raven wanted to the exclusion of all else. Oh, she'd always believed he cared about her in his self-possessed, it's
all-about-me way. Jon was around when he wanted to be. When he wasn't working. When his schedule permitted. She'd always felt as if she was little more than a footnote in his life.
Well, she'd wanted more than the few crumbs he tossed her way when it suited him. Not that Jon's crumb tossing had been anything to sneer at. Five minutes of his undivided attention equaled a year with any lesser man.
And that was the problem.
It thrilled her and annoyed her in like amounts. When he made time for her—for them—it was nothing short of spectacular. Especially in bed. In bed they'd been—Danica dragged her already soggy brain away from that minefield. Sex had never been a problem with them.
Everything else. But never sex.
He took her hand, wrapping her fingers around the cup, pushing it inexorably toward her mouth. His dark hair had grown since she'd seen him last— twelve months, one week, three days ago—and now brushed his collar. His eyes, blue as Mediterranean waters, looked bruised and intense. And his mouth— God, his mouth. The mouth that used to take her to places of intense delight was now narrowed with poorly veiled—what? Anger? Annoyance?
Fear?
No way. Jon Raven wasn't afraid of anything. "Buck up and drink," he said tightly. Using a finger, he tilted the cup to her mouth. "These bastards have been drugging you. You have to wake up and get with the program."
Because he wasn't giving her multiple choices, and because she knew the caffeine would clear her brain, Danica chugged the coffee like bad medicine—worse now that it was lukewarm—and thrust the cup back at him. Making sure this time to avoid any skin con-tact. "I understand the principle. Stop bullying me."
"I'm not bullying you, I'm saving you."
"Well, don't save me so loudly, okay?"
She felt at a distinct disadvantage as he loomed above her. Still a tad foggy on the details, she knew he'd dragged her up, somehow positioning her against a mound of pillows before force-feeding her the coffee. Looking down, she realized the sheet was bunched in her lap, leaving the entirety of her torso revealed, clad in a rather flimsy nightie she didn't recognize at all. White was too blah for her taste, but that wasn't her major objection.
Jon's repositioning of her body had pulled the thin silk taut so it now strained against her like a second skin. As armor the nightie was useless. The lacy cups, meant to conceal her breasts—sort of—were low enough that the areola of each nipple showed. A fact made crystal clear as she felt his gaze drop to admire the view.
Not even attempting to be subtle, she pulled at the stretchy lace so it at least covered her nipples. She would have yanked the sheet up too, but he was sitting on it. Danica hated that despite suffering the trauma of a plane crash and being drugged for God knew how long, Jon don't-you-dare-smile-at-me-that-way Raven had only to look at her to inspire that sudden rush of need inside her. He was warm and solid, and smelled of Lever 2000 soap, a heady, aph-rodisiacal fragrance that reminded Danica of long steamy showers and hot sex.
Sadly, she knew that when she was ninety, in a wheelchair and half blind, a mere flash of his attention would still have the same effect on her.
He glanced, she melted. Nothing changed.
But she could cover up. She had to if she wanted to protect her dignity. Not physical dignity—she liked her body just fine. Emotional dignity. She didn't want Jon to see that even in her weakened state she still responded to him in the same old way.
Nerve endings sat up and begged for attention.
Melty parts melted.
Rational thought took a vacation.
Damn him.
Body parts shrieked as Danica moved, and she couldn't help a moan of pain. He reacted as if she'd screamed at the top of her voice. Gentle hands shot out to grip her shoulders as he searched her face with eyes that glowed like the hot coals of hell. "Where does it hurt?"
Everywhere. But body aches were overshadowed— in spades—by the ache in her heart caused by seeing him again. She realized that she'd been a whole hell of a lot more immune when he wasn't in the same geographical area as she was.
Clenching her teeth, Danica put up a hand in a wait-a-second motion. "I'm okay." Of course she was okay. Pain meant she was alive. She gritted her teeth and tried to push herself higher on the pillows. "A few muscle relaxants aren't druggi—Hey! What are y—" He slid his palms under her arms to help her sit up straighter, then held her carefully by bracing a hard, muscled arm across her chest as he leaned her forward, readjusting the pillows behind her back.
She closed her eyes, trying not to breathe in the achingly familiar scent of him. They were close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body, close enough for his breath to wash over her upturned face. She felt the memory imprint of his fingers skim-ming the sides of her breasts. Her nipples grew tighter and harder. She fought it for all she was worth. No. No. No.
Jon lifted his head. With just scant inches between them, his eyes held hers. And asked a question.
Yes. God, yes. "Forget it," she told him flatly.
He straightened, his mouth curved slightly in a slappably smug smile. He, better than anyone, knew her body. Frequently better than she did herself. He knew how his touch affected her. Knew that breathing against her ear would force a groan from her lips. Knew how, when, and why her breath caught.
He indicated the pillows behind her. "Comfort-able?"
"With the pillows? Yes. With you looming over me? No. Mind giving me some room to breathe here?" She kept both her gaze and tone steady.
He rose, hands up in surrender—as if!—and took an elaborate step back. "Good enough?"
"D.C. would be better." Right here in my bed would be best. She gave herself Brownie points for sticking to her promise to herself. No physical contact with him again. Ever. It was a life sentence. But for self-preservation she had to stick to it.
"You've been dealing with the wrong kind of people too long," she told him. "The pills were to help me sleep so I can heal. I might not have broken anything, but every muscle and tendon was traumatized by the—the—" Spiraling out of control, heart stopping— "crash." Her stomach lurched as her memory filled in the sounds of screaming, the hideous rending noise as the body of the craft ripped and twisted in the air like tinfoil. The stench of jet fuel—the screams.
"Yeah?" Her ex looked furious as he raked his fingers through his too long dark hair and stalked around the room like a caged panther. "Well, my every muscle and tendon was traumatized when I heard about the crash as well. And until I get you back Stateside, have you seen by every conceivable specialist, I'm going to make damn sure you don't get near anything that's going to hurt you."
"Yeah? Guess you'd better leave then, huh?" She didn't say it with as much heat as usual. Despite her every mental protest, she was overwhelmingly happy to have him here in South America with her. Besides—she wanted to go home. Even if it meant being escorted by her surly almost ex. "News flash, buddy," she added, working up a bit more heat. "This is about me. Not about you."
"No shit it's about you, Dani." He shoved both hands through his hair again, stalked to the window on the far wall, then spun around and came back again. "I heard about the crash, and all I could think about was finding you."
She refused to be moved. Refused to be touched. "You found me. I'm alive."
"Yeah, and you're gonna stay that way. So get used to me. Until I've got you home and medically cleared, I'm your goddamn shadow."
She'd take his help. She'd even take his concern, because she knew that once life was back to normal, Jon would fade away again. Disappear back into his life on the edge. And she'd go back to her life alone. But at least this time she had a life to go back to.
Her chest ached with unshed tears. All those people—why had they been dealt the death card, and she and Rigo hadn't? And here was Jon. Big and strong. Solid and familiar. She needed, craved, the feel of his arms around her. Needed to hear the steady - beat of his heart. Needed to feel alive.
But as she knew only too well, it was good to want things. But that didn't mean the things she wanted were good for her. Before her stood six feet three inches of sexually charged male to prove it.
Waking up to find herself not only in a strange bed but in a strange country had been discombobulating enough. Waking to find her ex-husband standing over her, with an unreadable expression on his hand-some face that she had never seen before, had almost finished off what the accident hadn't.
While he'd force-fed her coffee to get rid of her mental fog he'd told her how he'd heard about the accident and flown directly from D.C. to Miami and then chartered a plane to come to San Cristobal. Most of his words had drifted inside her like smoke on a hazy day. All Danica cared about was that she'd needed him. And, for once, he was there.
Jon Raven was her drug. And she'd been addicted to him from the moment they met.
Going off him cold turkey—the move from D.C. to Florida—had resulted in nothing more than severe withdrawal pain. Seeing him again, without the buffer of a conference table and two suited lawyers, brought the clawing desire to the forefront. When she was near this man, every sensible preservation instinct flew out the window.
So—she'd let him escort her home. Politely thank him. Not touch him. And say good-bye. The sooner the better. "Oh, shoot—"
He scowled. "What?"
"They're giving me the keys to the city on Saturday."
"Two days from now?" He gave her an are-you-out-of-your-fucking-mind look. "Forget it! You don't need the keys to this city."
She lifted a brow, which would go unnoticed under her bangs. "Hello? Who made you the boss of me? The president wants to honor me for bringing his son home safely. He's already tried offering me more money than I'd see in my lifetime."
She kicked back the covers and swung her feet to the floor, then had to rest a minute as her body pro-tested and the room did a weird dip and sway before settling again. She glanced down at the unfamiliar nightgown someone had put on her. She wondered who and shuddered, rubbing the chill from her arms.
"Damn it, Dani, I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Yeah, me too." She swung her hair out of her eyes and looked up at him. "Probably because of the crash and all."
He glowered at her.
"Jon." His name came on a sigh. "The president wants to thank me for his son's life. The least I can do is stand there and be thanked."
"Be thanked long distance. I'm telling you, some-thing's not right here. Trust me."
Her hair brushed her bare shoulders as she shook her head. The movement made her feel a little woozy. "Oh, that's good, coming from you."
"Fine. Don't trust me. But trust my instincts."
She was a little taken aback by his fervor. Jon was a lot of things, but an alarmist wasn't one of them. His instincts had always been good. Who was she to not pay attention now? "I don't have any clothes. I can't very well walk out of here in my borrowed virgin-slut nightie."
His expression softened slightly. "I threw some stuff together for you at the airport. I figured you'd need clothes at some point."
When did Jon—her Jon—take notice of such things? But he wasn't her Jon. Not anymore. "You did?" She stood unsteadily.
"Yeah," he said gruffly, stuffing his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans when she shot him a back-off look. "Doing laps?" he inquired mildly. "Or are you heading for the chair over there?"
"Right now I just need to stand. Right here." She'd wanted to pace off the rest of the lethargy, because Jon was right. She needed to get her brain clear and her stiff and sore muscles working again before she tried boarding another plane.
If she could board another plane. The thought made her press a hand to her midriff. Of course she could, she told herself firmly. Law of averages— She absently straightened the pale peach silk sheets and pulled up the peach-, rust- and cream-colored Egyptian cotton comforter. She smoothed the wrinkles out of a pillowcase, then placed the pillow precisely so back on the bed. Then turned to look at him. Oh, God. What a sight he was. A MIAMI DOLPHINS long-sleeved navy T-shirt, a size too small—which looked perfect on him—hugged his broad shoulders and snugged across his chest and was tucked into new jeans. His hair was too long and wildly disheveled, dark circles smudged his blue eyes, and the sharp planes of his cheekbones were pale under his tan. He looked like hell.
He looked like heaven.
"I can't just leave, Jon. The man is the president."
"He's not your president. Tell him you're wiped. You need to be home. Hell, tell him anything."
Stubbornly, carefully, she shook her head.
"Dani, think, for God's sake. These guys took you off American soil, without notifying anyone. They kept me out there for hours while they fed you some sort of narcotic—and you want to stay here?"
Okay, so that bothered her. She didn't much care for being kidnapped by a grateful parent and then being doped to the gills. But she wasn't about to roll over and let Jon dictate her life just because he'd shown up in the nick of time. If she needed saving, she'd do it herself, thank you very much.
"First," she told him firmly, "whether I want to stay here or not isn't the point. The point is I'm twenty-seven years old. And single. I make my own decisions. And no, I don't particularly want to stay, but I'm going to anyway because it's the right thing to do. I refused the money, but I can't just blow off the president, Jon. It would be rude. I'll leave after the ceremony on Saturday. You, however, can hie your bossy self back to D.C. and remember we're divorced." "Almost."
"Almost is good enough for me." "For God's sake, Danica—"
"Don't Danica me. I'm leaving on Saturday and that's that." Unfortunately, the more insistent he became that she leave, the more insistent she would be to stay. Perverse. But there you go. Her typical, if not always logical, knee-jerk reaction when Jon pushed was that she shoved back. But the reality was she wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. She was scared because he was scared.
She had to get over this reaction to his action cycle if she ever hoped to live peacefully without him. She'd thought she'd mastered that little personality quirk, but apparently not. Of course, her willpower and resolve worked just fine when they were thousands of miles apart.
Annoyed that he was close enough for reinfection when she was still under quarantine, Danica started the million-mile walk to a pair of chairs across the cream-and-rust-colored, inches-thick, big-as-a-footballfield area rug. Her legs were shaky. Hell. Her entire body trembled from the tension in her muscles.
"Need help?" he asked, quietly coming up to walk beside her.
Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. "I want to do this on my own." "Don't you always?"
She shot him a puzzled glance, noticing the tightness of his jaw and the way his hair brushed his broad shoulders. "No. I enjoyed doing things with you. Whenever you were home. Which wasn't often. I learned pretty damn fast to be independent."
"Dani—"
"I know." This was an old argument, and one she really wasn't up to having at the moment. "You were starting the security business and had to baby it to get it off the ground. Wasn't it off the ground when you cleared your first million? How about the second? No? What about the third? How many millions did you need to make to prove you could do it? And do it well? How many damned millions did you need to remember our big fancy house and me there waiting? Alone. Ten? A hundred? A billion?"
"You always came first with me."
She snorted. "Yeah. And pigs fly. Even if I believed you, that's small comfort. I walked around a six-thousand-square-foot house decorated by a New York decorator flown in especially to surprise me, and I felt nothing but alone and lonely."
"I thought it was what you wanted."
"I wanted you. And—never mind. That part of our lives is mercifully over." Him. He was what she'd wanted. And his babies to love.
Instead, over the three years the houses and the cars had gotten bigger and bigger, and the lonely place in her heart had become an aching cavern that not even spectacular sex could fill.
She finally reached the chair and clutching a fabric-covered arm, lowered herself into it like a little old lady with chronic arthritis.
He sat in the chair beside hers, then stood again and started to pace, his long legs moving with animal grace as he walked off his—what? His mad?
"You're making me dizzier. Can't you sit down for a second?"
"Yeah. Sure." He sat. She'd never known a man with so much energy. Intense. White-hot. Burning. He was always in motion. Always—doing.
"Relax," Danica said dryly.
"I am relaxed." He rested his forearms on the silk-covered arms of his chair. His booted foot tapped, his finger drummed on the chair arm, his eyelids moved as he scanned the room. Danica gave a mental sigh. All that lovely energy going to waste.
Stop it, she warned herself. Just stop thinking about what it would be like— Aw, come on! One more time. A little devil sat on her shoulder, egging her on. No fair when I promised myself I'd never— Go on. Double-dare you. Just one quick— Stop!
All she had to do was move her elbow and they'd touch. She stayed exactly where she was.
