Chapter 15
Emily was breathless by the time Christian kicked the door shut on the yellow bedroom. Strange, becauseshewasn’t the one who’d run up the stairs.
Then again, Christian had stolen her breath the first time they were introduced, and he’d been stealing her breath on a daily basis ever since. Something as innocuous as seeing him playing catch in BKI’s back courtyard withlittle Franklin, the son of one of their coworkers, or polishing his weapon so it shone as fresh and crisp as the clothes he had tailored to fit him like a glove was enough to have her stopping in her tracks, grabbing the nearest solid surface, and searching for the air that had deserted her lungs.
So, yeah, being in his arms, being carried up a flight of stairs like a heroine in a romancenovel, wascertainlyenough to have her fighting for oxygen.
When he set her on her feet, caging her between his big body and the door—his hands flat on either side of her head, his eyes promising naughty delights and unspeakable intimacies—emotions exploded inside her. They shot up a mushroom cloud that made it impossible to swallow.
There was fear.
There was uncertainty.
Therewere second thoughts.
Of course, there was desire.
It was all too much. She fell back on the familiar and teased him. “Oooh, what a display of testosterone! Where do you keep it all?”
“Ninety-liter drums in a storage unit back in Chicago.”
She blinked and sputtered. “Did you just make a joke?”
“Mmm.” He leaned forward to brush a finger across her chin, his brilliant-green eyesglued to her lips with laser-like focus.
That’s all it took for the fear and uncertainty and second thoughts and desire to reassert themselves. To swirl around inside her in an amorphous blob that throbbed like a beating heart.
“Christian?” His name was out of her mouth before she realized she wanted to say it.
“Yes, Emily?”
“A-are you sure about th-this?” She hated the vulnerabilitythose halting words revealed. She wanted to project toughness, but in that moment she didn’t know how. The look he gave her was so hot, so hungry, that her knees began to shake.
Damn mutinous things!She was going to have to have a talk with them. Too often recently they’d been failing her when she needed them most.
I am abso-bloody-lutely sure, his expression assured her. Aloud, he said,“I want you.” Those three simple words sounded as sweet the second time as they had the first.
Would they sound as sweet the hundredth time? Or the thousandth time? Or the millionth time?
Whoa, Nelly! That kind of thinking was totally crazy-pants. There wouldn’tbea hundredth time, much less a thousandth time or a millionth time. This was going to be casual. And that meant it was goingto be over quickly. A few slam-bam-thank-you-ma’ams, and he’d grow tired of her.
Why that thought should bother her was a mystery she dared not explore.
“And you want me,” he continued, such arrogance, such confidence in his tone as he lifted her hair away from her shoulder and grazed the callused pad of his thumb over a bruise on her neck. Her skin was so sensitive that his touch burnedlike fire. “So stop overthinking things. And simply”—he leaned close, putting his mouth next to her ear—“give in to me. Give in to this. You know you want to.”
His hot breath swirled inside the shell of her ear, making her toes curl.
“Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise me you won’t fall in love.”
Slowly, languorously, he pulled back to study her from beneath hooded lids that didnothing to hide the predatory light in his eyes. “I won’t fall in love,” he swore, and even though she knew she should breathe a sigh of relief, it felt more like her lungs were squeezed in a tight fist. “Can you say the same?”
Could she? A sliver of doubt appeared where none had been before. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and his gaze snagged on the move. He rumbled, deep inhis chest. It was the sound a hungry lion might make.
Dear, sweet baby Jesus, he was so unspeakably sexy, and he was going to kiss her. She saw his intent. Waited impatiently for the feel of those diametrically opposed lips, for the press of that insistent, uncompromising tongue. But one second stretched to two. Two quickly became ten.
“Christian?” There it was again. His name ripped fromher lips without her consent.
Answer me, Emily, his eyes said.Can you say the same?
