Page 41 of Deep Cover

Still, she didn’t look at him. She circled the far end instead, keeping the table between them.

He moved with her.

Slowly. Neither of them speaking. Neither quite walking away.

Her fingertips trailed along the table’s edge. Then she turned for the door.

Rivers was moving before he made the decision.

His boots struck the concrete as he went after her. She quickened her steps but didn’t look back.

In a few strides he’d caught her wrist and pulled her to a stop. “Ryss.”

She fixed her stare on his shoulder, his chin, his chest. Anywhere but him. “I have work.”

Yet she didn’t move.

“Give me two minutes of your time. All I’m asking for is two minutes.”

Two minutes. His mind was already working out how to make every second count.

His thumb found the inside of her wrist, and he felt her pulse leaping under it. He traced a slow circle there, and she looked down at his hand on her. But she didn’t pull away.

He turned her hand palm up and found the thin white line across the base of her thumb that he’d know blind. The scar from a can opener that slipped years ago, back in the first months they were together, back when she still lived on canned soup and hadn’t yet let him teach her how to actually cook.

He ran his fingertip along the mark in a slow swipe, the years between them compressed into one small ridge of scar tissue.

“You still have this,” he said, voice quiet.

“You still remember it.” It wasn’t a question but was still echoed with surprise.

“I remember everything.” His voice was a rough rasp. “Every scar. Every mark. I memorized everything about you, Ryss.”

Her expression shifted. It wasn’t quite a softening, but damn close to it. Close enough that his chest squeezed with hope he had no right to feel and all the desire to grasp hold of.

She reached for his hand in return. His breath hitched as she turned it over the same way he’d turned hers. She traced a line of callus along his palm, and he tried to remember if he had this much wear and tear on his hands back then—back when they were together.

She ran her fingertips upward and found a scar along the side of his forearm—pale, puckered, old but clearly unfamiliar to her.

She paused with her finger over it, emotions warring in her face. He watched questions float to the surface and get swallowed back down, and he realized, with a fresh ache, how much he wanted her to ask.

He didn’t remember closing the distance between them. One second there was air between their bodies, and the next she was crushed against him, one hand anchored on her hip and the other sliding into her hair.

She fisted the front of his shirt and went on tiptoe, surging upward for his kiss at the same time he bowed to meet her lips.

Then they were kissing, slower than in the shower. Less like a dam breaking and more like two people who finally realized they didn’t have to drown.

She murmured a sound against his lips that went through his entire body at once.

He didn’t think, just moved. He tightened one arm around her waist and hooked the other behind her knees, lifting her off the ground in one smooth glide. She gasped, hands flying to his shoulders, and her short laugh burst against his throat.

“Reid—”

“I’ve got you.” He was already moving down the hall toward his room, and thank god she didn’t fight him, because he didn’t know if he’d survive if she did.

He got the door open one-handed and kicked it shut behind them. He set her down and walked her against the wall, pressing her back to the cool concrete. His body crowded in after her as if it couldn’t last another second without her.

Her hazel eyes were a mix of emotions—sparks of want woven with glimmers of sadness. Searching his eyes for a long minute, she reached up and ran her fingers over his stubbled jaw.