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He’d changed into a pair of khaki pants and an olive-green polo with a dark brown shirt over it. She opted for a sexy body-shaping tank top and rolled shorts. Wrapping a hoodie around her waist, she knelt to lace ankle boots. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Without glancing at him, she said, “Don’t be looking at me like that, Preacher. I’m barely hanging on to my own professionalism when I want to get you on your back and explore every inch of your body.”
“Goddammit, woman. Why the hell would you have to go and say something like that? I’m on the verge here and we have a mission to complete.”
“Because it’s the truth and I like pushing all your buttons.”
Even as he took her mouth with his, Preacher cursed the circumstances. He still couldn’t, at this moment, give a flat damn. He needed another taste of Luna Shimora. And from the moment his lips brushed hers, he knew it was going to be worth the hard-on and frustration it was going to cause him.
He caught her as off-guard today as she had him last night. The significance of that one tiny breath caught at the back of her throat rolled through him like a Mack truck on the heels of a locomotive.
Now he knew what he’d been missing.
The woman was a sledgehammer.
He wanted to overwhelm them both, so neither of them would have a moment to think or react until it was too late, the next level of this relationship achieved. He’d thought that with last night, his lust no longer taunting him with its inevitability, he might have a fighting chance at focusing on the job at hand…and not getting her on her back.
But then there was that little hitch in her breath. And those incredibly soft lips beneath his. And just like that, the image of the sassy assassin, so cool, so collected, her hold over him since the moment she’d attacked him…all of it gone, vanished. In its place burned the image of how she’d been last night. Reckless, insatiable, demanding, her guard down, her armor off. What little cool she’d managed to collect had come from sheer willpower.
That one little hitch, and he’d immediately found himself gentling his kiss, soothing rather than inflaming, caretaking rather than conquering. She tasted so damn sweet. She didn’t feel perfect, or poised, or much like a badass. She felt fragile and vulnerable, and damn if he didn’t want to save her.
He brushed his lips against hers before taking her mouth once again. He was unhurried in his exploration, reveling in the moment, knowing it had to end soon. He kissed her with a gentleness he didn’t typically express, and carefully avoided examining any further why that particular side of him had surfaced now of all times. The fragility he’d sensed was probably temporary at best, no matter what his jacked-up libido wanted him to believe. But he quickly discovered kissing her like this wasn’t just soothing her, it was soothing something deep inside himself, too.
When she sighed into his mouth, urging him on with a little moan deep in her throat, the part of him that wanted her growled and howled to take what he wanted, take her racing to the edge with him. But the man he was found a different kind of contentment, skimming his fingertips over her cheeks, sliding them around the long, sleek braid, pulling her head back, and taking in her breath with his own.
She was no longer some deeply closeted ache he couldn’t touch. She was a flesh-and-blood woman, who, in all truth, was a stranger to him. A woman whose plight should matter to him only in the strictest professional sense. She shouldn’t matter to him at all.
And because he was very much afraid she mattered more than he even realized it, he broke the kiss and tipped her head back just enough so he could look into her eyes. He forced a smile and a casual tone. The haze of desire still clouding her brown eyes didn’t make it any easier. “We’re fucking complicating everything.”
“Kinda fun, scary, and weird.” She cleared her throat.
He nodded. “It is, but I can’t imagine taking an easier route, not with you.”
“You are quite the outlier,” she murmured, her gaze dipping from his eyes to his mouth, then back again.
His body twitched hard at that telltale slip. He had to fight not to follow its lead, and it took a lot more effort than he liked to admit. “I’ve never been conventional.”
“No.” She caressed his face with her eyes. “I suspect you never have.”
“You need me.”
She stiffened and tried to pull away.
He held on to her. “And I need you.”
Her quick retreat behind cool brown eyes triggered that thing in him it had in the past. He found himself grinning in the face of her aloofness, as cocky as he’d ever been and completely unrepentant. She’d been right in there with him on that kiss, participated enthusiastically with him last night, and cuddled up to him like they’d been doing this for years. “I don’t think I can fake that after what happened between us last night.”
To her credit, a hint of a smile briefly curved her lips, but the light didn’t reach as far as her eyes. “Me, either. It would make blatant liars out of us both.”
“I’m a SEAL. Rescuing people is what I do best, especially if they understand that rescuing only means support. You’re no damsel in distress.”
“Ooh, I’m lucky you’re an enlightened male.”
He sighed inwardly, feeling like a jerk for baiting her. There was a lingering ghost or two between them, and he’d be wise to remember that. “It would have, but there’s another layer of emotion here. You can depend on me, tell me anything, ask me anything.”
There was a flash of something across her face that tipped dangerously toward fear, then she was rolling her eyes, her tone when she spoke dust-dry, and he wondered if he’d misread her.
“No, not a damsel,” she assured him. “Just a woman who had her share of tough breaks.”
