Facing Fear Read Online Free PDF Page A

should be watching her closely. He didn’t hide his interest. She walked in because he was here. What did she want from him?
    Her profile showed small and delicate features, and he wished she had chosen to sit facing him. He wanted to see her without that veil of hair. It distracted him. A woman could possess a man with hair like that. But that was just a faded memory. Just like the lingering dreams that left him unsatisfied this morning.
    Nikki Taylor’s hair could cover his whole body easily. He wondered what it would be like, with that curtain around them, wrapping his limbs with hers. She could hide her nakedness behind it, and he would part its thickness to reveal her secrets, starting from the top.
    Rick’s eyes traveled down her body. Small. Delicate. One couldn’t trust small or delicate. He knew that from the past. What was Nikki Taylor hiding from him? Why did she ask Agent Jones those questions? And why was she following him?
    He kept staring at her, as if his will alone would compel her to turn toward him, but she continued to ignore him, her whole attention on her meal. She was enjoying it with a singular delight that amused even the headwaiter, and Dakkarwasn’t an easily impressed man. Still she ignored him, asking for the dessert cart when she was finished. Watching her made him hungry. He wanted to taste her. He wanted to look into her eyes again, as he had the night before.
    So he forced her hand, calling the waiter over to send her that daiquiri. Satisfaction welled up inside when she finally gazed at him. Liquid dark eyes. The kind that saw too much. They didn’t flare with recognition, didn’t show any sign of fear at all. He waited for her to accept his offer, to acknowledge him.
    The tip of her tongue teased the corner of her mouth briefly. The merest hint of a smile. Her lips touched the straw. Her hand caressed the chilled glass. And her eyes never left his face as she took her time finishing the whole daiquiri.
    Rick didn’t open his briefcase to read his notes. His lunch didn’t whet his appetite. A man his age shouldn’t get a hard-on by watching a woman suck on a straw. She hadn’t flirted with him. She drank the daiquiri like she ate her meal—with a sensual intentness that bordered on intimacy. He was still hard when he paid his bill. On the way out, Dakkar quietly handed him the paper bag with the glass in it.
     
    “Love me,” she whispered, twining pale sallow arms around his waist. “You promised to love me forever.”
    His hands were lost in her familiar long hair and he parted it, looking for her face. His heart thundered as if he had been running hard, and his breathing came out harsh and uneven. He started pulling the hair out of the way. Nothing. He couldn’t see her.
    “Liar!” he screamed out, and he saw that his hands were bloodstained.
    “You promised! You promised to love me forever!” her voice accused over and over. “Liar! Traitor!”
    He tore at the hair, looking for her. Her arms lifted, and long strands of hair gathered around him, swallowing him in sensual heat. “Love me,” she demanded again.
    “You’re the one who lied to me. You betrayed me.” He fought the cold hands that seemed to move all over his nakedness, his own limbs tangling with hair that snaked around his body lovingly.
    “Love me again.”
    “Never.” He pushed off as he made the vow, but her hair imprisoned him to her. He had once loved its dark brown thickness so much. Now she hid from him, and her hair mocked his attempts to get away. And still he couldn’t see anything. He roared, “Show yourself!”
    Her laughter, as always, was scornful, derisive. He resisted the pull of her arms this time, roughly tugging the hair away from his body. His breathing was as loud as his heartbeat echoing in his head. The more he fought the thickening need to give in, the more he thought he saw her shadowy face. Gathering fistfuls of hair, he strangled her, and her seductive caresses turned to