Saving Liberty (Kissing #6) (15 page)

“Somebody has to do something!”

“But not
you!”
Concern for her was fueling my anger. My head spun as I imagined the field day the press would have humiliating her. She’d be paraded on national TV, forced to make apology after apology….
“
You’re the one who’s always saying you’re the President’s daughter and things are expected of you. Think how it’ll look if this gets out!”

I glared down at her and she glared back up at me, her jaw set. I loved her stubborn streak. I loved that she was so
good,
so determined to stop someone evil. But, dammit, couldn’t she see I just wanted to protect her from everything... even herself? And did she have to look so damn kissable when she was mad?

I looked away. I was frustrated, turned on, and a hair’s-breadth away from doing something stupid.

“Is there anything else you want to lecture me on?” she asked in a strained voice. When I looked back at her, she was still staring up at me... but now the anger was mixed with something else. Like me, she was teetering between rage and lust, both of them fueling each other. All I had to do was lean in and kiss her….

It took all the willpower I had. “No, ma’am,” I said. I withdrew, shutting the door behind me... and let out a long breath. Her naked breasts and then our first fight, all in the space of a few minutes. This was getting out of control. Unless I could find a way to back off a little, we were either going to dive on each other or kill each other.

And then Miller found me and told me the First Family was taking a trip to Camp David. A few days in the country, away from the prying eyes of the press.

And I was going with them.

Emily

I brushed my hand down the stallion’s side, sweeping my palm over his rich, tan coat and reveling in his warmth. I’d been standing there stroking him for ten full minutes and every pass of my hand made me feel better. Rudy stood much taller than me, his whole body packed with muscle. He’d been a police horse, many years ago, trained to keep his footing no matter how much a crowd was pushing and shoving at him. He gave a very relaxing ride as long as you didn’t try to stop him eating daisies.

Big, powerful, protective and stubborn. He reminded me of someone.

I finally looked across at Kian. “How are you doing?” I asked. I was trying to sound grumpy because I still hadn’t completely forgiven him for our fight, but I was cheering up despite my best efforts. “Have you bonded yet?”

Kian was standing beside a beautiful white mare named Snowdrop. She was enthusiastically eating apple chunks out of his palm and he was gaping at her and trying to look unconcerned each time she turned her head and snorted in his ear. I tried not to laugh. “I didn’t realize what a city boy you were.”

“I forgot you were a cowgirl,” he grumbled.

I put one foot into the stirrups and pushed myself up onto Rudy. When my ass landed in the saddle, it was right at Kian’s eye height and the way he stared at the tight denim made a wave of heat roll through me. I kept thinking back to how he’d walked in on me topless, his eyes roving over my breasts for what felt like hours before he’d backed out of the room. That night, I’d brought myself to an arching, thrashing orgasm playing out a scenario where he’d kicked the door shut behind him, grabbed my semi-naked body and tossed me on the bed.

“Come on,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “Saddle up.”

I swear I didn’t mean anything by it. I meant, literally,
time to get on the horse.
But he glanced up and met my eyes just as I said it and I was sitting there with my legs wide….

There was so much tension between us, now, that
everything
was coming out sexual. I flushed and looked away. A moment—and a bit of uncertain jumping—later, he managed to swing himself up into Snowdrop’s saddle. She gave a snort and shuffled back and forth a little. Kian clutched at the reins. He didn’t look scared, exactly, but he definitely wasn’t in his element. And that was sort of endearing in itself. It was the first time I’d seen him anything but stoic and unflappable.

And I’d seen something else. As he’d settled himself in the saddle, the hem of his plaid shirt had been trapped under his ass for a second, pulling the shirt down at the back of his neck. In the second before he fixed it, I’d gotten a glimpse at that tiny tattoo between his shoulder blades: a shamrock. It seemed weird that he’d have something so tiny there, given how much smooth tan muscle was available as a blank canvas. It was almost as if that was a statement in itself: as if it was so important, he didn’t want anything else to obscure it.

“We’ll keep it slow,” I told him. And clucked my tongue to get Rudy moving. The horses moved off down the winding forest path that surrounded Camp David, with me in the lead.

Horses were the best thing about Camp David. There weren’t stables on site, but there were enough quiet paths to ride on and a local riding school had been more than happy to lend us Rudy and Snowdrop for the day. My dad had raised an eyebrow when I’d asked if we could get
two
horses. “I need a bodyguard with me everywhere I go, right?” I’d countered. “What do you want him to do: drive alongside
really, really slowly?
”

He’d given in pretty easily: the truth was, I knew he’d probably take Rudy out himself at some point. You can take the man out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas out of the man. The same went for me. Riding reminded me of home: happy days spent riding, hiking and shooting guns with my dad. I was noticing things I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing, like the rustle of trees and the birdsong. The fear was still present, but it felt like it had been held back at the perimeter of the camp. I could feel the outside world and its constant threats just beyond the trees, but as long as I didn’t focus on it, I felt as if I could escape it for a few days. It was the happiest I’d been since the attack.

Plus, it was a chance to spend a couple of hours alone with Kian.

Was that selfish?
Wrong?
I knew nothing was going to happen. He wouldn’t let it; I wouldn’t let it. But I wanted to be near him and it not be about protecting me, for once. It honestly wasn’t about lusting after him.

I glanced over my shoulder. The forest was so close on either side that we were in a green tunnel, with shafts of sunlight lancing down between the branches. Kian was trying—and failing—to look relaxed as he bounced up and down atop Snowdrop. It was difficult to look at him like that, sitting high in the saddle with his plaid shirt stretched tight over his chest (I’d insisted he lose the suit for once) and
not
think about him on top of me, with me lying back in the long grass as he smoothed those big hands over my breasts…

Okay, it was a little bit about lusting after him. But mainly, I wanted to get to know him better. I was hoping that being alone would give him a chance to relax... and maybe lower his defenses a little.

Ten minutes into the ride, he coaxed Snowdrop to come almost alongside Rudy and said, “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time about Kerrigan. I just didn’t want you to get in trouble.” He kept his eyes straight ahead as he said it, too embarrassed to look at me. But right at the end, he glanced my way and I saw the concern in his eyes. He really was just worried about me.

And there was something else: he hadn’t finished with
ma’am.
Each occasion when he’d missed it off was lovingly transcribed in flowery, girlish script in my mind. I hated that I did it, but I did: I couldn’t help it. Each time he forgot to say
ma’am,
I could kid myself that he wasn’t my bodyguard, that maybe something could happen. And pride of place in my little mental book of
The Utterances of Kian
, in purple ink and silver glitter, was the time he’d called me
Emily.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You were right. It would be really bad for my dad if it got out that I don’t trust the VP. I just didn’t like feeling like... you thought I was the little rich girl playing Nancy Drew.”

He coaxed Snowdrop on a little so that she was right up alongside Rudy. “I didn’t think that,” he said, and there was just a hint of Irish silver edging the roughness of his voice. It made me unconsciously press myself down into my saddle a little. Our eyes met and, like a switch had been thrown, all the nervous, wonderful tension between us was back, rising and swirling in the air around us, drawing us together.

My eyes flicked down to his lips. I was still getting used to the new, clean-shaven Kian: without the stubble, those gorgeous lips seemed to stand out even more, rugged and very, very kissable. It was utterly quiet and there was no one in sight. The horses were practically touching: all we had to do was lean towards each other….

And then Kian was blinking in surprise as Snowdrop passed by Rudy, taking the lead. He’d sped the horse up to catch me, but, “Um... how do you slow it down?” he asked with fake nonchalance.

I tried to tell him, as Snowdrop began to trot off into the distance, but then I heard him mutter, “Slow.
Slow down. Slow, you daft feckin’ mare!”
and I started laughing too hard to speak. I tossed the reins, Rudy gamely sped up and I caught them a little way down the path and showed Kian how to slow down.

A half mile further on, he was getting the hang of it. And while he was focused on riding, I threw in, “So... why
did
you leave the Secret Service?”

I’d meant it to sound casual but I’ve never been good at this stuff. I’m not a diplomat like my dad or a master manipulator like my mom. It came out loaded with curiosity and Kian gave me a look that told me he was onto me. I felt my face flush. I went red
a lot
around this guy.

“You didn’t read it in my file?” he asked after a moment.

He didn’t say “ma’am” again.
“Nope. I just saw there was trouble and you left,” I said. “I wanted to hear it from you.”

He stayed silent as we passed the next tree and the next. Four trees, five.
Say something!
I could see his body tensing up, that famous anger coming back. I just wasn’t sure whether it was me he was angry at. At last, he ran his hand down his cheek and over his jaw. I wondered if it felt weird, to feel the smooth skin after so long with stubble.

“We were in New York,” he said. He faced front as he talked, eyes on the path ahead. “A group of ambassadors were over for a UN conference. I was assigned one from some tiny country in central Europe you’ve never heard of. Pretty typical day: take him to the UN building, pick him up, take him out on the town, keep him safe while he gets wasted on five hundred dollar bottles of brandy... I get him back to his hotel and into his room. But a half hour later, a woman shows up.” Kian sighed. “He’d arranged an escort, sometime earlier that day, probably slipped some cash to the concierge at the hotel. Pretty little thing. Black hair. About your age. I don’t like it, but she promises she’ll be very discreet and he whisks her into his room.”

I was watching him intently, but he didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes firmly forward and, as Rudy pulled ahead a little I suddenly saw why it was: the rage was boiling away inside him and, with his body motionless, it was escaping in the only way it could: as a bitter, hate-filled stare. He wasn’t looking at me because he didn’t want to turn that look on me.

“I give it ten minutes,” he said. His voice was strangled, now. “Then another five. I’m pacing the hallway outside his door because I can
feel
something’s wrong, but…”—I saw his knuckles turn white where he gripped the reins—“...but I knew if I burst in on them, he’d go to my boss and I’d get torn into. We’d all had it drilled into us that the ambassadors had to be kept happy, no matter what. So I
waited.”

His whole body had gone hard as rock—he was almost shaking with anger and it was agonizing to watch because I knew the anger was directed at himself.

“Then, after maybe twenty minutes, I hear a noise. A sob. I don’t bother pounding on the door: I kick it in and run in there and she’s…”—he swallowed—”she’s on the bed, naked, with him on top of her and his belt around her throat. Her lips are turning blue. Tears are running down her face and she’s got...
marks
on her breasts. Cuts. I don’t know what he used, a knife, I guess. And instead of looking shocked that he’s been caught, the ambassador looks angry that I’ve interrupted. He honestly doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong.”