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And, still, a part of him actually longed to let her try. To see if Elle could be the one person to help him heal the pain of how he’d let his mother and sister die. How he’d let Janine think he didn’t care about her, or about their unborn baby before it, too, had been lost. He was selfish, just like his father. He had to push Elle away, for her own protection.
He grasped at the only life raft he could see.
‘Careful, Major.’
She stopped, blinked. Then shook it off.
‘Oh, no, Fitz, that’s not fair.’ She almost managed to disguise the quiver in her tone, but he was attuned to her. ‘You don’t get to pick and choose when to follow the rules here. I was ready to show you to your office and walk away, to leave things on a professional footing, on a military footing. But you ordered me to come in and you made things personal when you brought up our intimate past. You made this about Elle and Fitz, woman and man, not Major and Colonel. So right now you don’t get to pull rank like that. If you don’t want this then you tell me to stop as Elle. Don’t use excuses.’
The air practically crackled around them, tension twisting his insides as the blood pumped around his body. She was unmistakeably determined to stand her ground. So it turne
d out that life raft was actually an old naval mine.
She was no closer and yet he felt she was all around him. She was all he could see, all he could hear, all he could smell. The more he resisted, the softer she seemed to make her tone. Not harsh, or in his face, but the most feminine of challenges tumbled out of her tempting lips. She didn’t have to say the words. He knew it was on him. He could turn around and walk away.
But he didn’t. She was so close he could almost taste her.
‘Even if I kiss you, it won’t change anything.’
‘So you say.’
She lifted her other hand. Both palms were flat on his chest and he felt another rush of intoxicating need.
He dipped his head, stopping millimetres before making contact. So close her breath rippled along his cheek.
She tilted her head up a fraction further, angling it perfectly without making contract. A silent power play, but instead of claiming it for themselves they were each offering it to the other.
‘Last chance,’ she whispered.
He had to push her away now.
Instead, he sneaked one hand around her waist, hauling her to him. Then he dipped his head and claimed her mouth with his, revelling in the sensations that cascaded over him at her touch, her feel, her taste. As if he’d been stranded in the barren wasteland outside for far, far too long, and she was his oasis.
She tasted every bit as heady as he recalled, her body fitting to his like she was made for him, her teeth grazing his bottom lip with the lightest of touches, her soft sighs sending his willpower scattering.
With a low groan, Fitz angled his head, deepening her kiss to something much more urgent and demanding, revelling in the way her lips parted for him, and the soft sound that came from somewhere in the back of her throat. He forgot that he was meant to be warning her to safeguard herself. He forgot that he would inevitably hurt her as his father had hurt those around him.
He forgot everything. He simply indulged. For what seemed like an eternity, his mouth slid over hers. When he pushed, she pushed back. When he held back, Elle sought him. He trailed kisses down her jaw, her collarbone and to the hollow at the base of her neck. Her shivers of pleasure stoked his need. And each time he returned to those plump, pink lips, her mouth reached for his and her tongue met his in the same sinfully sinuous dance.
As he gave himself up to the sensations, as each kiss from Elle threatened to undermine every defence he’d spent years putting in place, the plink of those warm droplets on his ice-block heart grew more insistent.
Before he could help himself, he’d released the curtain of reds and golds from its military bun, inhaling its familiar fresh, floral scent as his hands buried themselves in its luxuriant depths. He could recall exactly how it had felt brushing over his naked skin that night and his body tightened.
She felt it instantly; he could feel the sweet uplift of her smile against his lips, and then she rocked against him.
‘Gabriella,’ he groaned, unable to make up his mind whether it was a groan or a warning growl.
And still he kissed her, sometimes gently and reverently, other times hard and greedily. As though he never wanted to stop. He didn’t know when he backed her up so that she was sitting on his desk with him standing between her legs, or when his fingers crept under the hem of her tee, or when he lifted it over her head and dropped it in a puddle on the plans he was supposed to be going through.
He just knew his hands were sweeping over velvet skin he’d been dreaming about for a week, running over her ribs and circling her body so that his thumbs were grazing the lower swell of her perfect breasts.
He needed to stop. Needed to remind her—remind himself—what kind of a man he was. How he would inevitably hurt her.
‘So, what now?’ he managed harshly, shocked by the sheer force of his own driving desire. ‘We give in to this thing between us? Here, now? Tell me, Elle, do you want it on the uneven floor or on the rusty metal desk?’
Any other woman would have fled, intimidated by the tone, let alone the words. Elle merely sparkled brighter, as though she enjoyed the push-pull of it. He couldn’t work it out.
‘So this is what the real Fitz looks like,’ she murmured, moving her hands down his body. Though he could hear the quiver in her voice. ‘Not quite as cool and utterly in control as everyone might think. I like this side of you, the side behind the mask.’
