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He pinched his nose and looked up at the ceiling where silvery gray stingrays were flapping their wings and thought of bad things. Of his last commander, aiming at a pregnant woman on the streets of a dusty town and firing. Aiming at the woman’s pregnant belly and shoutingTwo for the price of one!Grinning.
Only he and Pierce saw that one and they’d looked at each other, horrified. Knowing they were going to have to report it. Knowing they were in for a world of hurt, but not as much as the poor woman writhing on the ground, whose movements were becoming slower and slower until she stilled.
Yeah.
That brought his woodie down.
The song was coming to an end. Emma and her partner were only a few feet away. The guy wrapped her up in that complicated embrace that led to a spinout and let her go. But instead of holding her hand to stop the spin, he let go and Emma spun right into his arms, perfectly, as if they’d rehearsed this a thousand times.
She was warm, panting with the exertion, so very alive in his arms. With that last spin she landed hard against him. Instinctively his arms went around her. It felt like he’d caught her, that life had thrown her at him, his very own prize. His.
There was no thought and no planning. If he’d put a little thought into it, he might have stopped. Or not. Right then, stopping seemed insane. He was aware of the reasons for not kissing her. He was here on a job, or rather a mission for friends, which made it even more important to do it well. On missions you kept your head, you didn’t get blindsided by a woman. He was overstepping bounds … those thoughts were like pesky flies in his head, completely overwhelmed by the heat as he brought his mouth to hers, like iron filings to a magnet.
She tasted wonderful. She’d been laughing, her mouth uptilted so their mouths were not quite aligned. But then she got into the kiss, and oh yeah, she was kissing him back. Raul licked inside her mouth and felt her tongue touching his and it was electric, almost painful — a line of heat running straight from his mouth to his dick.
Emma was clinging to him and he was clinging to her harder, as if someone were trying to wrench her away from him and he was set on never letting her go. Holding her tightly, he plunged into her mouth like finding salvation there, the source of heat and light. Needing to breathe, he thought briefly of lifting his mouth for a second from her but then tossed that idea aside as ridiculous. What was breathing next to kissing Emma Holland?
Nothing.
And anyway, somehow he was breathing through Emma, and she was breathing through him.
There was some weird sound he couldn’t place. The part of him that wasn’t a man but a soldier – a part that would be with him for the rest of his life – forced him to open an eye. He didn’t want to. Eyes closed was the way to drink in Emma, so he could focus on the taste of her, the feel of her. But he was hardwired to pay attention to strange noises so he cracked one eye open and then the other.
He stepped back a little, enough to make her step a little back too.
They were surrounded by clapping club goers. The guy who’d danced with Emma gave a sardonic salute off his forehead. Most were smiling, some were laughing. He and Emma had been a momentary distraction, but there were many others and they drifted off after a moment or two. A few smiling over their shoulders at them.
Heaven clearly approved of romance.
“Whoa.” Emma looked a little stunned, off balance. “That was, that was –”
“Something,” Raul said. “Yeah, it was something.” He looked at her narrow-eyed. “You okay? I mean, did I overstep –”
“No!” She huffed out a breath and lowered her voice. “You didn’t step out of line. Maybe I did. Got too much into the spirit of tango.”
“Well, I am really grateful.” He grinned at her. He thought she was with him every step of the way during the kiss, but maybe that had been his hopeful dick talking. He sketched a little bow. “You are amazing. Where’d you learn to tango like that?”
“Buenos Aires,” she said. “Viví allí un par de años y me encantó. No puedes vivir allí y no tanguear.Todo el mundo lo lleva en la sangre.
I lived there for a couple of years and loved it. You can’t live there and not tango, it’s in everyone’s blood.
Something shorted in his brain, sparks flying. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, incredibly brainy but fun, a good friend to his good friends and …she spoke Spanish? This was just too much.
She’d spoken Spanish to him. He should answer. Yep, he should. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. She cocked her head, those brilliant blue eyes fixed on him like blue headlights.
“Raul?”
He shook himself, cleared his throat. He needed to answer her, but the truth was that his Spanish sucked. It didn’t suck if you were white bread because you couldn’t tell. But she could.
“Ah, that’s amazing. Ah, that you lived in Buenos Aires. That your Spanish is so good. And you also speak Chinese. That’s, uh, amazing.”
Her head cocked the other way and she studied him. No other word for it. Like he was a spreadsheet she had to figure out. Trying to understand why he didn’t speak Spanish to her. She was smart, she’d get there. He’d spoken in English because her Spanish was better than his.
She was going to point this out and he’d be embarrassed.
But all she did was smile at him, touch his arm and change the subject. “Raul. It’s past eleven. Do you think we should check the second shift bartenders? We need to find someone who knows Toby.”
That snapped him back to the present. They were here for a reason. Not for him to admire her tango or for him to kiss her – though that had been fantastic – but to find Toby and begin to understand what was going on. Because there might be a danger to Emma here. And if, before, he was determined to protect Emma because she was Felicity and Hope’s friend, now it was his absolute priority. To keep Emma safe.
