She shrugged. “Of course I’m not nervous.”
“Good.”
His hand shot out, cupping the back of her neck and pulling her close. Before she had any idea what he was doing, Aric’s mouth crushed against hers. The kiss was shocking, searing. Intensely sensual. As his lips moved over hers, a lick of fire spread quickly through her body.
Kaya moaned before she could stop the sound from forming. As soon as she realized the pleasured noise came from herself, she jolted. Her eyes flew open and she let out a startled cry.
Aric’s lush mouth muffled the feeble protest. His kiss was full of confidence, as if he already knew her lips and understood just how to seduce her. The fact that her body seemed eager to allow him to only made her outrage more explosive.
Kaya brought her hands up to his chest in flustered reflex, ready to shove him away.
But Aric was already backing off. He released her just as abruptly as he’d taken hold of her, a knowing gleam in his eyes.
“What the fuck?” Kaya sputtered the indignant curse, even while heat ignited inside her, powerful and uninvited. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, asshole?”
“Getting that out of the way in case we need to do it once we’re inside. We can’t have you reacting like that in front of our target.” He smoothed the pad of his thumb over his lower lip, wiping away the trace of her pink gloss that lingered there. “Ready, Mrs. Bouchard?”
He didn’t wait for her reply. While Kaya struggled to find her breath again, Aric pivoted away and climbed out of the vehicle. She reached for the door handle on her side, but before she could take hold of it he was already there. Smoothly, he opened her door and reached in to offer his hand.
“My lady,” he said, those mesmerizing green eyes lit with an arrogant gleam.
Rather than answer with the reply burning the tip of her tongue, Kaya clamped her molars together and pasted a pleasant smile on her lips as she accepted his assistance. What she wanted to do was slap his hand aside and drop him on his smug ass in the parking area. But she’d need an arsenal of weapons and more than a couple weeks of training to pose much of a threat to a Breed male, particularly one built as solidly as Aric Chase.
She might have been tempted to try anyway, had it not been for the possible notice of more arriving guests in the parking area nearby.
Instead she returned the smiles of the other attendees alighting from their vehicles, then linked her arm through Aric’s as he walked her across the brick-paved drive toward the entrance of the grand estate.
CHAPTER 5
Another round of security checks waited for them inside, although the guards posted in the opulent foyer were garbed more discreetly than their counterparts manning the main gate. Aric nodded to the men in black suits and wireless earpieces, noting without reaction that each carried a sidearm holstered beneath the smoothly pressed fall of his jacket.
Kaya’s steps slowed as they entered, her gaze drawn to the urns overflowing with fragrant ivory flowers and lush greenery. Garlands festooned with champagne-colored ribbons and delicate lace dripped like gilded froth from the curving bannisters of the foyer’s twin stairwells.
“Look at this place,” she murmured. “It’s incredible.”
“This way, if you would, please, ma’am,” one of the guards said to Kaya. The muscular, red-haired man gestured toward the metal detectors and full body scanners temporarily erected in the elegant entry of the Rousseau mansion.
Aric lingered behind her as she placed her small handbag on the conveyor then glided through the gauntlet of cold machinery, a vision in shimmering, diaphanous blush-colored silk. His veins throbbed as he watched her graceful, unrushed gait, his blood still pounding from the aftershocks of that impulsive kiss.
To say nothing of the rest of his anatomy.
Kissing her had not been in the playbook for this mission, but once the idea took root in his mind, there had been no ignoring it. Yes, he’d done it for the good of their cover, as a means of breaking the ice between him and the fake Mrs. Bouchard. But now she had regrouped flawlessly and he was the one knocked off his game.
Damn.
So not what he’d intended.
It took concentrated control to keep his body’s reaction in check. His fangs ached to punch out of his gums. All over him, his dermaglyphs prickled to life in response to watching Kaya while the memory of their kiss still scorched his lips.
Desire tinged his vision with the first hints of amber as she raised her arms and waited for the scanner to clear her for passage. The stretch lifted her already buoyant breasts and thinned her slender waist to an hourglass curve that made his hands itch to be wrapped around it.
He groaned low under his breath. It wouldn’t take more than a backward glance from her now to transform his irises from gold-flecked green to an unearthly molten glow.
He’d better check himself fast, or he was going to blow this operation before it even began. Nothing like turning full-on Breed to put the brakes on a gathering of perfumed and powdered humans.
“Sir?” The guard standing beside him in the foyer gave him an expectant look. “Please, step forward and proceed to the scanner.”
“Oh.” Aric cleared his throat and nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
He followed the path Kaya had taken before him, then joined her where she waited on the other side of the machines. With the stern discipline of his warrior training, he somehow managed to tamp down the Breed side of his nature by the time he and Kaya approached the short line
