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“I get that.” He kept his tone even, and I caught a flicker of pain in his eyes. He was as confused as I was, as messed up over all of this. We were two men with impossible consciences in a situation out of our control.
“I hate that I’m the lucky one with my son safe asleep in his bed when the rest of the world is so fucked up,” I admitted softly.
He nodded. “I understand.”
I held out a hand. “But I need you to touch me again. I need you to hug me and tell me it’s all okay. Help me get my head around this, Ethan.”
Help me.
ChapterFourteen
Ethan
I needyou to hug me and tell me it’s all okay. Help me get my head around this, Ethan.
The battle inside me was fierce. I wanted him so much, but I had to stay away from Josh, keep myself focused on the case, sift through the intel Sanctuary had sent over to me, and fix things.
But Josh was right there, and maybe I needed comfort as much as he did, but for very different reasons. I’d messed up so bad by letting my conscience impede taking down the bad guys, and as a result, he and Ben were here, and even though they were safe for the moment, what would happen to the rest of their lives? How would this case play out? Would they be stuck in limbo—in this witness protection thing that Sanctuary did—for a long time?
If he’d moved toward me, then perhaps I could have eased him away and explained that I was there to work the case. Only he didn’t move, the same as when I’d gone back into the hotel room. He stared at me with such confusion my chest hurt. He was strong for his son, but alone with me he was comfortable in being honest about his fears, and it scared the shit out of me. Who was I to deserve that kind of blind faith? It wasn’t as if my future looked golden, or that I was a good person.
Seriously. Why did he trust me?
Josh sighed. “It’s stupid to ask you, I know. But sometimes I just… need… ” He shrugged. “Everything is such a battle… ”
I sat forward and rested my elbows on my knees, and considered him for a moment, and then something untwisted inside me, and I sat next to him instead. I didn’t hug him, but I was there, and I needed him to be the one to make the first move. I needed to know that hereallywanted me to hold him.
“I’m not the right person to make anything better,” I murmured.
“Yes, you are.” He curled into my side as best he could. It felt natural to lift my arm so he could go under, and he felt good against me. I’d denied I could help, but the second-guessing back at the hotel, the lust, the way we’d fit together, and the way he’d said my name, had evolved into a thing that was new and dangerous.
It felt as if affection and need had collided and become something more than I could have ever imagined. He’d been a job, nothing more. He was supposed to be a step on to bigger things, but that damn photo in his wallet, and the way he’d thanked me… it hadn’t been right for me to carry on then, and it wasn’t right now. I must have stiffened or made some movement that showed I might leave because he laced one of my hands with his and held on tight.
Small touches were becoming something more—a brush of our fingers as we shared a cup of coffee, or the subtle graze of his hand against mine as we sat with Ben. These simple gestures spoke volumes, expressing emotions that I couldn’t express in words. Each touch carried an electric current, igniting a fire within me that burned brighter with every passing day. We might have started in a way that defied logic but Josh was more than I’d expected. Stolen kisses, soft brushes of our lips were promises of more, but with each of them I felt more grounded with him—as if this was somehow meant to be.
We shared laughter and with every gentle touch I knew he was settling in my heart and the gradual process of him becoming everything to me had begun.
In hindsight these few weeks, since the night I met him in the bar, had somehow become the foundation of a love story, and there were moments when I wanted to tell him that. I felt vulnerable around him, as if I was opening myself up to something I’d never felt before.
Somehow love had found its way to me, and with every stolen kiss and shared moment I was falling hard and fast. He sighed in my arms and something about that sound pulled me out of my daydreams. This was forced proximity and couldn’t come to anything more. I untangled him from me.
“I need to go through today’s intel,” I threw out the excuse and he frowned at me.
“Don’t go.”
“I need to work.”
“I need sex,” Josh said, clear as day.
Wait. he wanted more than a hug; he wanted sex. Now? When my heart was going on some crazy journey where I thought I was falling for him? His statement hurt, and it shouldn’t have done, because he was just a job.
Just a job.
“That’s not happening,” I murmured, keeping my tone light.
“You owe me one. We started out wrong,” he said. “And it’s sex. Hell, you fucked me in a cheap-ass hotel. At least we have a good bed here.”
“We’re not doing that—”
