“Well, I want to feel your touch.” Allie sat up and stripped off her shirt, tossing it to the side. She couldn’t believe she’d been too caught up to even finish getting naked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Shank said with a devilish expression. Sure enough, when she lay back down, he went right for her breasts, cupping one gently before he started rubbing the nipple with his thumb. The friction sent pleasant little tremors through her. “This doesn’t mean I won’t do what I have to in the field,” Shank said.
“Of course not.” Allie snorted. “You can be dynamic in the bedroom and still shoot people dead, and if that idiot ex of yours didn’t understand that, she’s a real moron, and I’m very disappointed in you for falling for an idiot.”
Shank laughed. She leaned in, and he returned her gesture so they met in the middle and shared a long, slow kiss.
Chapter Eleven
Shank watched her warily. Allie had tried to ignore it for as long as she could, especially since she had her own issues to deal with, but it was unsettling. Shank was supposed to be the steady one. He was the one to calm her down when she got pissed. Instead, he sat cross-legged on the bed and touched his data pad often enough to give the illusion of reading. But actual reading would require him to at least glance at the screen.
“We need to talk.” She watched him over the back of the couch. After all, there was only so long she could stare at her own blank vid screen without feeling a little crazy.
“About what?” Yep, that would be paranoia and worry showing up in Shank’s voice.
“About how your mother is going to eat us both for breakfast if we can’t pull our heads out of our asses.”
“Oh. That.” Shank didn’t even have the decency to tell Allie that she was wrong and overreacting and putting a pessimistic spin on everything. That made it all the worse. Shank was panicked, and Allie didn’t know how to handle it. “I shouldn’t have encouraged that.” Shank grimaced as if to say he’d fucked up.
“Don’t do that,” Allie said.
“What?”
“That.”
Shank dropped his data pad on the bed and gave her a truly pissed-off glare. “Would you like to be a little more specific?”
“Don’t pretend it was a mistake. That was the best sex of my life, and that’s saying something. I mean, I thought I understood my own sexuality, and you pretty much blew that theory out of the water. I’m twenty-three years old. I should know if I’m into dynamic play. Really into. Seriously ready to swear off the nondynamic play as long as I get to do that with you again.”
Shank studied her, and she had to swallow down a litany of stupid words that wanted to fall out of her mouth. She hadn’t been this nervous since she’d gotten off the ship at basic training. “It wasn’t play,” he said softly.
“I get that. I really do, and clearly I don’t understand dynamic as much as I should.” Allie rubbed the spot between her eyes where a headache was threatening. “I’m too old for this sort of sexual confusion.”
Shank came toward her and sat on the far end of the couch. “Jacqs is probably in his forties or his late thirties at the very least, and he thought he was heterosexual.”
“Yeah, but he’s an idiot,” Allie said. She had a lot of respect for Jacqs and the way he stood up for what was right and even his tactical abilities, but when it came to general intelligence and education, the man had issues, and potentially he had starvation-induced mental deficiencies. There were days he had acted like it.
