Page 18 of Nothing to Fear

Willow eased into the narrow space beside him with her back to the wall.

A gentleman would’ve moved away, not taken advantage of her raw emotions in the wake of the car crash, but he was no gentleman. And she was a job.

She’d listed classified operations, and he needed to know why.

He faced her, almost bringing their bodies flush. His physical awareness of her was so palpable, desire was a live wire crackling through him. But after reading the ASD card, he was reluctant to lay a finger on her. Better to let her initiate contact in the same manner he’d let her determine their proximity.

“I don’t want you to have the wrong impression about me from my emergency responder card.” She wrung her hands but met his eyes. “I don’t want you to think you can’t touch me. You can. I want you to, if you want to. I-I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”

She put a palm flat on his sternum. Her slender fingers feathered across his chest, stroking him like he was a piece of fragile glass that might break.

The gentleness was startling. With a target, he stayed numb. Impervious. But when she touched him, a tenderness he didn’t know he possessed—and couldn’t afford to keep—bloomed.

This was just a means to an end, nothing more. He couldn’t forget that.

“In your journal,” he said, keeping his tone curious rather than accusatory, as gentle as he knew how, “why do you have missions written down?”

The color bled from her face. She lowered her head, curling her fingers against her chest. If only he had a playlist of moves to loosen her up. Maybe he needed to act naturally but take everything down from a ten to a two. He brushed his knuckles up her arms, forcing himself to go slowly, and looked for the subtlest indication that his advance was unwanted.

She relaxed in degrees—her clenched hand opened, and lowered, fingertips skimming his thighs, and she looked up at him. “There were whispers Novak’s death wasn’t suicide. A couple of nights ago, I started thinking about other missions where something had gone wrong.”

“Why all the drawings?” he asked.

“I have trouble sleeping.” Her voice was a whisper. “Doodling relaxes me.”

Inching higher, he caressed her shoulders. Her genuine warmth and vibrancy reeled him in, daring him to act on baser impulses. “But why a maze with the head of a bull at the center?”

“It’s from the Greek myth about Daedalus and the Minotaur. The king of Crete had Daedalus, a brilliant architect, construct a labyrinth the Minotaur—a violent monster, half bull, half human—could never escape. Those missions are pieces of a puzzle, like working your way out of a labyrinth. Only I’m missing a clue.”

What if with enough time and resources, she could find the mole?

He reached up and hesitated, giving her a chance to retreat, and when she didn’t, he cupped her face. The silkiness of her skin sent a jolt through him.

She gave a shy smile and shivered with an enticing vulnerability that made him ache. Made every muscle in his body tighten with an appetite that was both familiar and foreign.

Ah, hell. He needed to rein things in, not take this too far, so he dropped his hand and propped his forearms on the wall above her head. She ran a palm up his torso, angling her face toward his shoulder and—with a long, deep inhalation—smelled him.

06

Wolf Trap, Virginia

Thursday, July 4, 8:40 p.m. EDT

With Gideon standing close, his arms resting on the wall above her head, the urge to smell him was overwhelming. Before she could stop herself, Willow drew her nose to the crook of his shoulder and inhaled.

God, he smelled good, warm and lemony. Not a sharp citrus, but closer to the mellow freshness of the citronnelle soap Ivy and her wife had brought on their last visit, and there was a manly hint of musk that made her toes curl. There should be dryer sheets that smelled like him.

Her cheeks burned hot with shame. Whenever she stood too close to someone, she had that mortifying compulsion. Crammed elevators were the worst. She avoided them at all costs.

“Did you enjoy that?” Gideon asked.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she couldn’t bear to look at him and see ridicule, or worse, pity. “Smelling you? Or the way you smelled?”

“Both.” His breath licked her face, sending a rush of tingles through her.

She wanted to absorb the air, taste him on her tongue. Pressing her lips together, she risked looking up at him. A bright smile spread across his mouth. Lightness filled her like helium in a balloon, and she laughed, comforted he wasn’t staring as if she were a weirdo.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it when I’m in very close proximity to someone.”