Ryder shook his head, cursing under his breath without making eye contact. “Thirty seconds. Then the den.” He left as quickly as he’d interrupted.
“Think a casual ‘anyway’ would have worked on him?” I teased, trying to relieve some of the tension. “I know. Crappy joke. But at least he came in after you’d removed your hand from between my legs.”
Alex squeezed his eyes closed while adjusting himself. He was probably internally swearing, blaming himself for losing control.
“Should we talk about what happened before we join them?” he asked once he’d fixed his attention back on me.
“Mm. I think that conversation involves more than thirty seconds.” I pointed to his crotch. “So, um, does it always take you that long to ...”
“You really are dangerous,” he whispered, then hit me with a much-needed smile. “And no, this is an all-your-fault problem.”
“I kind of like being the cause of that problem.” I set my hand on his chest, finding his heart beating strong and steady.
“I bet you do.” He murmured something in Spanish that sounded entirely too sexy when we needed to wrap this up. “Well,” he said while leaning in, dropping his forehead against mine, “just so you know, when we do have time for that talk, I’ll be ready for it. No disappearing on you. We’re in this together.”
“Together and now in the same boat, from where I’m standing.” I worked my lip between my teeth, my emotions suddenly all over the place as the reality of what happened between us kicked in. “I don’t know if we’re still at the bottom ... or making our way back to the top.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Alejandro
Eyes on my reflection, I stared into the mirror while washing the sweet smell of that woman from my hand.
How’d I let things go that far, risking Ryder walking in on us like he wound up doing?
I clearly couldn’t think straight when it came to her, as already established a few times back at the lodge. And what happened today was also the first time in a long damn time where I’d put my feelings above a mission. Also something I rarely did.
The problem? She was my mission. The priority had to be keeping her safe.Notexploring this thing between us.
Dangerous, all right.
There were half a dozen reasons why I needed to behave and focus up.
And none of them had mattered the second she asked me to take a look at her panties and touch her.
I turned off the water and dried my hands before slamming them onto the counter, shaking my head, needing to get a grip before I faced everyone.
It took me five minutes beyond the allotted thirty seconds Ryder had given me to get my ass to the den.
The TV screen glowed with overlapping data streams when I joined everyone.
Audrey was situated on the couch, and Ryder was on a knee in front of the laptop by the coffee table, an unreadable expression crossing his face when our eyes locked.
Yeah, I deserved a lot more than that look. And now I couldn’t remember if I’d had a chance to finish that promise I’d planned to make to him to stay away from Audrey. The morning had been a blur of lips, heat, pink lace, and now guilt.
Ryder stood when Gwen and Natasha appeared on the screen, and I was all for a distraction so I wouldn’t have to deal with any tension with my team leader.
Audrey was right. We couldn’t “anyway” our way through this when it came to what he’d walked in on. I was still reeling as it was.
“Hey, I think we’ve met.” Gwen waved at Audrey. “I’d say it’s good to see you, but clearly not under these circumstances.” She offered a small shrug, then shifted straight into mission talk. “We figured it’d be faster to upload every relevant unredacted file we now have our hands on into a program I built instead of going through it all manually ourselves. It’ll scan for patterns, red flags, recurring names—stuff like that. We’ll let AI do the heavy lifting.”
“So, we’re being replaced by machines,” I muttered.
“Would you prefer to go through Beth’s stuff from your boxes yourself?” Natasha asked, but not in a condescending way.
I gripped the back of the couch, noticing Audrey was a little too close to my hands now, but I couldn’t back away. I was already there. In deep. In over my head. All the damn things.
“I’ll take the algorithm, thanks,” I said, unable to erase the bitterness from my tone since we were discussing my ex. “No need to visit Betrayal Lane.”
