And then he’s kissing me.
Not the tentative, hesitant kisses I’ve experienced with academic colleagues. This is something else entirely—claiming, demanding, completely overwhelming. His mouth moves against mine with the same confidence he applies to everything else, and my brain simply—stops functioning.
His hand at the back of my head controls the angle and depth of the kiss, while his arm around my waist presses me against his body until there’s no space between us. I feel every hard plane of his chest, the heat radiating through his clothes, the way his heart pounds against mine. And lower, pressed against my stomach, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal growing harder with each second our bodies remain locked together.
When his tongue sweeps across my bottom lip, seeking entrance, I open for him. The taste of him—something dark, something dangerous—fills my senses. I grip his jacket, partly to steady myself and partly because I never want this to end.
The kiss goes on forever and ends too soon. When he finally pulls back, I’m breathless and dizzy, staring up into those intense green eyes that are watching me with something that looks like satisfaction.
“Phoenix team. Twelve o’clock,” he murmurs against my ear, his voice rough. “Two operatives walking past. Keep your head down.”
Phoenix. Right. People trying to kill me. The kiss was camouflage, not passion. A necessity to hide me from surveillance.
Except the way his thumb strokes across my cheek suggests it was more than tactics.
“Are they gone?” I whisper.
“Almost.” His arm remains around my waist, keeping me pressed against him. “A few more seconds. Grope me this time.”
Grope him?
He leans down and kisses me again, slower this time, more deliberate. Where the first kiss was claiming and urgent, this one is explorative—his mouth moving against mine with the patience of a man who’s decided to take his time. The intensity hasn’t diminished, but there’s something deeper here, something that makes my knees go weak.
His lips leave my mouth, travel to my ear. “Either grope me now, or I’m copping a feel of your breasts.”
Holy … What the fuck?
When his hand slides up from my waist, I immediately loop my arms around his neck, fingers threading into his dark hair. I lift up on tiptoe, lean into his kiss, meet his passion with my own, and lose myself in the heat building between us. This is what I’ve fantasized about—being claimed by a warrior, dominated by a man strong enough to simply take what he wants.
And he wants me to grope him.
Sure. I can do that.
I shift my hands down, over his shoulders, around his waist, lower still. Hands splayed against his ass, I yank him against me. At least that was my plan. He’s immovable, which means I fall into him and press right against the hard, rigid length of his arousal.
A soft moan escapes my throat, and the sound snaps me back to reality like a bucket of cold water.
Oh God. What am I doing?
I’ve just thrown myself into kissing a man I barely know, in broad daylight, on a public street, while people are trying to kill me. The realization hits me like a physical blow, and I try to pull back, but his hand at the back of my head keeps me exactly where he wants me.
“Don’t pull away. That’s an order.” His rough command sends liquid heat straight through my core, making my knees go weak and my heart flutter against my ribs. “I’m going to touchyour breasts. I have to sell this.” The authoritative tone liquefies me from the inside out, and I find myself melting against him instead of resisting.
He spins me slightly until my back hits the car, then leans over me, his body pressing flush against mine. There’s no mistaking his arousal now—the hard length of him pressed against my stomach—but he doesn’t seem to care about discretion. He just keeps kissing me, pulling me closer, as if this is about much more than keeping me alive. Then his hand cups my breast.
Those seconds stretch into an eternity of being held against Cooper’s chest, feeling his strength and warmth, breathing in his scent. When he finally releases me, I feel cold and strangely bereft.
“Clear.” He steps back, professional distance returning like a wall between us. “Car. Now.”
He opens the door for me. The gesture is so perfectly gentlemanly that it creates a jarring contrast with the warrior who just claimed my mouth like he owned it. He waits while I settle into the seat, then closes the door quietly, as if he hadn’t just kissed me senseless against the side of the vehicle.
As he walks around to the driver’s side, I catch him glancing at my lips through the windshield. That kiss affected him as much as it did me. He pauses at the driver’s door and makes a subtle adjustment to his trousers, apparently unfazed by the evidence of his arousal. The casual way he handles his body’s response only reinforces how different he is from every other man I’ve known.
The car settles and shifts with his weight as he slides into the driver’s seat. The interior feels like sanctuary after the exposure of walking across campus.
“Where are we going?”
“Safe house. Virginia.”
