"Walker—"
"I said no.” The small room suddenly feels like a cage. "I can handle this.”
"How?" she challenges. "You're going to walk in there and take out everyone in the diner? The truckers? Maude? The whole town? Because that's what it would take for you to get everything we need alone."
I look at her, really look at her. The determination in her eyes, the set of her jaw. This is the woman who was brave enough to hold me at gunpoint, knowing she could never pull the trigger.
But she’s so much more to me now.
“It’s too dangerous.”
She stalks toward me. “It is. It has been since I opened those files and didn’t leave well enough alone. But it’s my fight.”
“I told you, it’s mine now too.”
“Yeah, you said that. But why, Walker? If I’m just a person you're trying to help, why are you treating yourself like a human shield?”
“Because I have training you don’t?—”
“Bullshit!”
“It’s not bullshit. You’re capable in the field, but it’s not thesame?—"
“Bullshit. That’s not why.” She puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head.
“Naomi, I don’t?—”
“What am I to you?” Silence. I know what she’s asking, but I don’t answer. I can’t answer. I hang my head. Her voice drops, going from harsh to a raw, open whisper. “What did that kiss mean?”
My head jerks up. Her face is no longer hard. It’s as open and honest as her voice. “Because you’re making me feel crazy by denying it. I thought it was just on my end. But I know you felt it too.” She places her hands on my chest. I grab them roughly but not painfully with my own like hers will burn me.
“I’m just trying to complete the mission,” I grit out. It’s so barely a sliver of the truth that it might as well be a lie.
She doesn’t push me away. She doesn’t grow angry again. She remains soft. “Then I’m going to steal that credit card reader on my own. With my own plan.”
“No,” I growl.
She moves her face closer to mine, but I don’t look away. “Why?” Her face is an open flame, intense and unyielding, demanding my answer.
I take a jagged breath. "Because I can't lose you." The words tear out of me before I can stop them.
“Why?” she presses. She wants the whole, painful truth, and my little hellcat won’t stop until she gets it.
"Because I want you." The admission feels like jumping off a cliff. "I don’t deserve to, but I do." I put her hands back on my chest and step closer to her. "Christ, Naomi, you're all I think about. You make me feel things I thought were dead in me." Her lips part slightly, her breath catching. "I've been a ghost for so long, I forgot what it was like to be a man.” I let go of her hands and place mine on her face. “Until you."
“I want you too, Walker,” she breathes. And that’s all it takes. Her admission and my name on her lips break and shredthe last vestiges of the discipline that has defined me and my life.
I lean down and press my lips against hers.
This time, there's no pretense, no audience watching. Just us in our own little world.
Her lips are soft beneath mine but respond with a hunger that matches my own. I kiss her like a drowning man finding air, desperate and grateful all at once. Her hands grip my shoulders, then slide up to tangle in my hair.
Our hands are then everywhere on each other. I’m palming her breasts and ass, she drops hers to rub them over the bulge in my pants, and I gasp into her mouth. She pulls at my shirt, and I rip it over my head. I do the same with hers, revealing the simple white bra beneath. I slide the straps down, then the cups.
Her bare breasts rise and fall with shaky breaths, so perfect I have to pause just to look and drink her in. "God, Naomi..." My fingers trace the swell of flesh reverently, thumb brushing one pink peak until it tightens. Her answering gasp fires straight to my cock.
She arches into my touch even as her hands paw at my belt buckle. The leather slides free with a hiss, our lips crashing together again between frantic breaths. It's all teeth and tongue and too many clothes between us. I want to go slow—she deserves slow—but I can’t. Not just because the dam has broken but because if I don’t move quickly, all the doubts I’m outrunning will catch up to me. That I'm too old for her. Too broken.
