His mouth watered at the idea of slipping his hands around to cup her breasts and pressing his lips to the base of her neck. She’d become imprinted on his psyche at age twenty-two, so despite her recent duplicity, being in such close quarters was wreaking havoc on his hormones.
He forced himself to scan her skin and lingerie for stuck-on devices or wires and willed his inconvenient erection to settle.
“No,” he croaked. “All clear.” Facing the wall again, he said, “Check me?”
“Yeah.” She sighed deeply, but was otherwise quiet for a long moment.
He could feel her heat, so close. Reciting old football plays helped bring his response mostly back under control. “Any concerns?” he asked, desperate to cut the tense silence.
A cool finger skimmed across his lower back and he jerked in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I— What happened?”
His scar. Of course. “I was hit by shrapnel from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.” The physical injury had been fairly minor actually. He’d been treated and released back to work within a couple of weeks. The mental fallout from losing teammates…maybe he still hadn’t fully recovered.
“Oh,” she breathed.
Desperate for some kind of barrier, he ripped the sales tag off a T-shirt they’d bought for him on the way over, and slipped it over his head. The thin cotton was gray with a distressed Swiss flag on the front. Total tourist bait.
From less than a foot away, the murmur of cloth sliding across skin stirred his senses anew.
“That must’ve been scary,” Emma said quietly, the sound of her voice echoing off the far corner.
It had been, but mainly because it had rendered him useless for tending to those with more serious injuries. “Let’s get on with this,” he said.
She didn’t press him further, and they finished dressing in silence.
When they both turned around, Emma wore dark jeans, low-profile sneakers, and a thin white sweater over her blue tank top.
“You have a full wardrobe in there?” he asked, only half teasing. At this point, he should probably assume she was carrying a magically expanding bag.
She shrugged. “I like to be prepared for anything.”
“So, no bugs?”
“Nope. You?”
He shook his head.
“All right, let’s get to work on our new looks.”
Emma went first, making quick work of a shoulder-length honey-blond wig that worked well with her fair skin and blue eyes. Staring into a compact mirror, she used an eyebrow gel to subtly lighten her brows and added winged eyeliner.
“Wow. You look like a completely different person.” The transformation was stunning. “I’m definitely going to be the weak link in our subterfuge.” Hard to hide his size or skin color.
She clucked her tongue. “We’ll see.” After adjusting a few of the soft waves around her face, she turned her attention to him. “You okay to let me do this?”
He swallowed hard under the full power of her gaze. “Definitely.”Wrong. He hadn’t accounted for the torture of having her concentrate so fully on him, her breasts at eye level while he kneeled on a stack of paper towels, her fingers stroking his scalp as she put on a wig liner and then adjusted the wig.
Stifling a groan, he surreptitiously pressed the heel of his hand to his crotch in a vain attempt to control his body’s response to her coconut scent and soft touch.
Or maybe he made a noise after all, because her gaze crashed into his, eyes wide, pupils dilated. “All done,” she whispered, but her palms still cradled his cheeks, her fingers pressing lightly against his skull. Her tongue snuck out to wet her lips, drawing his attention to her pink, plush mouth.
New appearance aside, she was all Emma underneath, and he strained toward her, drawn by an invisible thread of desire.
A knock on the door brought him crashing back to reality. What was he doing?
She’s a liar.And he couldn’t afford to forget it.
