“You either trust me or you don’t, baby. Make the choice,” Tate growled.
“Done. I have the files on my laptop at the resort.” She’d made her decision. Her gut trusted Tate. Even if Marcus was his brother, he wasn’t going to allow him to kill innocent people. He’d spent years of his life trying to stop that very thing from happening.
“We’ll check out the hangars and the airstrip first. I need five minutes to take a shower and change.”
“I’ll make some breakfast,” Lara agreed. “We have to eat.” The investigation had taken this long; it could wait another hour.
“Lara?” Tate called her name as she headed for the kitchen.
“Yeah?” She turned back to him.
“I’d trust Marcus with my life. We’re going to find out this is all one big misunderstanding,” he told her huskily.
She nodded. Her heart wrenched for him. “I hope we do, Tate. I really do.”
He turned and strode to the bathroom without another word.
“Why did you fuck me last night? Was it because you wanted to, or because you wanted information?” Tate asked Lara casually.
She glanced at him. The questioning and slightly vulnerable look in his eyes belied his nonchalant question. They had come back to the resort so she could change clothing and grab her extra gun, a compact Glock 27 that she was currently strapping to her ankle with her foot propped up on the bed.
“Regardless of what you might think, I don’t screw people for information,” she told him defensively as she pulled the denim of her jeans over the compact gun. “I wanted you. It’s actually not a good thing to get involved with a suspect’s family in any intimate way, and I shouldn’t have done it as a federal officer on a case, but I haven’t wanted to be with anybody in so long.”
“So you were just hot for my body? You couldn’t resist me?” he asked with a boyish grin. He looked up at her from his supine position on her bed, his hands behind his head as he watched her.
Lara actually felt her face turn red. Cocky, obnoxious man! He drove her crazy. One moment he looked so unguarded, and the next he spewed comments like the one that had just come out of his mouth. “Don’t flatter yourself¸ Colter. I’ve been having a dry spell.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining. I’d be more than happy to make your dry spell wet again. Feel free to use me to get you wet any time you want,” he shot back at her with an innocent expression.
You already make me wet!
Tate Colter was far from angelic, even if he might look that way occasionally. She studied him. Her core flooded with heat as she openly stared at his ripped body. He was dressed in a pair of faded jeans that hugged his body like a lover, and an old T-shirt that matched his eyes. She could see every defined muscle of his abdomen and chest through the thin material, and his biceps flexed as they stretched to accommodate the position of his hands behind his head.
Sweet Jesus. With the amount of testosterone his body emanated, all she wanted was to straddle his body and wallow in him until his hotshot attitude turned into white-hot passion. He challenged her, tugged at everything feminine inside her. And she wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.
Sure, she worked in a male-dominated profession, and a lot of the men thought they were hot. But they weren’t anything like this man laid out on her bed. They might be similar to Tate in their overconfident, swaggering persona. But Tate had more inside him than any man she’d ever met. His confidence was real, and his underlying compassion and kindness were human. And his rare moments of vulnerability were heart stopping. There were so many facets to him that Lara’s head spun and her body hummed with need. She wanted to take him apart layer by layer, and figure out who the real Tate Colter really was…or if he was all of those things rolled together into one hot male.
She’d never been sexually aggressive, mostly because she’d never seen the sexual desire in a man’s eyes the way she saw it in Tate’s every time he looked at her. She knelt on the bed carefully and boldly cupped his groin. Her heart raced as she felt his hard erection beneath her fingers. She traced over it as she looked him directly in the eyes. “I wasn’t using you. Last night was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I didn’t know it could be…like that.”
All traces of humor left his face as his expression became intense. “You mean you never came that hard?” he asked in a voice harsh with passion.
“I mean I never came at all. Not with a man.” She sighed as he gaped at her. “I’ve been with two guys in my life: my cheating ex-boyfriend and my first crush in my senior year of high school. The high school experience was painful and then it was…rushed. The cheating ex wasn’t much into anybody’s pleasure except his own.” That made Tate special to her. He’d been so damn intent on making her come, focusing on her pleasure first. Sex like that could become highly addictive.
His strong hands wrapped around her waist and flipped her onto her back with one smooth motion. His body instantly covered hers. “Baby, a woman’s pleasure should always come first.” His expression became fierce and covetous.
“I’m different. I guess my ex saw me more as a federal agent,” she whispered breathlessly.
“You’re also a woman. All woman. I should know. I felt all of those soft, sexy parts last night. My only regret is I didn’t get to taste you, bury my mouth in your pussy until you screamed for mercy,” he answered huskily. His eyes searched her face. “Were you dressed to meet Marcus in the bar the other day? Were you trying to get his attention?”
“Yes,” she admitted honestly. “My objective was to meet up with Marcus in any way possible and have him notice me. Then I wanted to get close to him and get any information I could get.”
“How close?” Tate growled.
She sighed. “Not that close. I love my country and the citizens here, but my job stops after flirtation. I don’t fuck men for information. This is an unusual assignment for me. Usually I’m not trying to attract a man’s attention.”
“You attracted me instead of Marcus,” Tate rasped. “I still regret the things we didn’t do, but I’ll put my head between those soft thighs later.”
Lara’s eyes fluttered closed as she imagined that visual; her body vibrated with need. What would that be like? With Tate, it would probably be a surreal pleasure like she’d never known. “Be careful. I’m armed,” she reminded him as her eyes flew open again.