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His lips found the throbbing pulse at the base of her neck. Who’d have thought anyone could have so many nerve endings in one patch of skin? Her head lolled back and she sighed. She inhaled the warm sunshine scent of his hair as Max inched the zipper down on her flight suit, following the revealing path with his mouth.
If only she wasn’t so aware of how long it had been since she’d put on that flight suit. How unfair that he smelled like coconut oil, sunshine and a hint of musk while she likely reeked of sweat and smoke.
She clasped his hand. “Max, wait.”
Groaning, he dropped his head to her breasts. “You’re gonna make me be honorable, aren’t you? Okay then.”
“No.” Definitely not. “I need to shower first. I know it’s probably unromantic of me to want to delay, but man, Max. A girl only has one first time and—”
He hooked an arm behind her knees and swung her up against his chest. “You want a shower, lady, then let’s shower.”
Excitement tingled along her spine even as she wondered why she hadn’t thought to make the suggestion. As much as she and Max might be equals in the work world, his experience lovemaking arena left her in the dust. His past included women who likely wore lace or silk and not a green flight bag with white athletic socks.
She hated encroaching insecurities, especially when she prided herself on conquering in any field she chose. Hang tough and be bold. She wanted this. She wanted Max.
And she intended to have him.
* * *
An hour later, Darcy curled against Max’s side in her bed and wondered where her will to argue had gone. She wanted to hide in this room and make love to Max until the sun rose. Being with him had been incredible, every caress tender as he was careful to give her a first time to treasure.
She trailed her fingers along hard muscle and Max, down to his hip, where she’d discovered another tattoo. Poseidon’s trident sliced across a hard hip, launching a tingle up her arm. She’d spent her life around men, had stumbled into more than a few locker rooms with minimal privacy situations on the road. She might have been innocent, but she wasn’t naive about the male physique, and man, oh, man, did this guy have a body to make her go weak-kneed.
Of course, she wasn’t sure she could manage more than a few steps at the moment after her bone-melting release in the shower. Max had carried her back to bed, so she still hadn’t tested her legs yet and couldn’t see herself rolling out of his arms. Not yet.
Too bad real-world worries and concerns didn’t respect closed-door boundaries. She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What was she like?”
“Eva?” His eyes closed, he didn’t even pretend to misunderstand as he stroked roughened fingers along her stomach. “Emotional.”
Jealousy sucked. An overachiever all her life, Darcy couldn’t swallow down the thought of coming in second. She needed to know the competition, the stakes suddenly too high. “I was looking for a little more from you than that, Max.”
The backs of his fingers continued their lazy dance across her waist. “We never could figure out how we ended up together, both so different. But we spent so much time together working ops—”
“Working together?”
“She was CIA. I guess I never told you.”
Shock pinched right along with the increasing sting of jealousy over a woman who’d shared so much more of Max than she ever would. “Nope, that wouldn’t have come up in the past few weeks.”
“Eva wanted out.” Max’s low voice rumbled in the cinder-block room. “Even before the baby, she’d been thinking about leaving the Agency.”
His muscles contracted across his chest. She rested a palm against them until they relaxed under her touch, then traced up to explore the scar on his shoulder. “How did you feel about that?”
“It was her choice.”
“And?” Her finger etched down the white line of scar tissue slashing through his dark tan. A knife wound. No question.
How had he gotten that scar? Could he even tell her the circumstances if she asked? Given his job, there were things about his life, pieces of this man she could never know. Another obstacle to consider.
“Eva wanted me to get out, too.” He opened his eyes and turned his head toward her. “I couldn’t do it, Darcy. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t buy into a scenario where we both taught Marine Biology 101 for the rest of our lives. I sure tried. How ironic that I ended up playing the professor to find her killer. Why couldn’t I have just made the change when she was alive?”
Her hand curved over his scarred shoulder. “The Dr. Keagan thing is a part of you, but it’s not all of you. Not like being an agent is.”
“So it would seem.”
And how sad that the understanding should have brought them closer but only widened the gap. No way could she envision him following her around from base to base, swapping university appointments. Max wasn’t a follow-around kind of guy. And she respected him for it, even as she wished they could both be different.
* * *
