But that wasn’t all. She was suddenly aware of the significant bulge hard against her hip and experienced the overwhelming urge to press herself against it.
He must have been having the same idea because the hand on her bottom suddenly grew a little more insistent. He was lifting her, pressing her... or maybe that was her lifting and pressing. She didn’t know.
And she didn’t really care. Her body was getting that heavy, languid feeling. That insistent pull towardpleasure that made her limbs limp, her pulse quicken, and the place between her legs warm and melty.
One little press wouldn’t hurt. But it did. It sent a flood of wanting racing through her.
She was saved from doing somethingreallystupid by the bell. Or in this case, the phone.
She thought it was hers, but then realized it wasn’tHawaii Five-0and her phone was on the way back to DC.
John swore and gently eased himself out from under her. “I’ve got to take this.”
She pretended to be half-awake, unaware of what was going on, and grumbled sleepily as she rolled onto her side facing away from him.
Freedom!
“Yeah,” she heard him say. Someone must have started talking, but John stopped them. “Wait. Give me a minute.”
She heard him fumbling with clothes, presumably putting his shirt, socks, and shoes back on, and shortly after that, the door clicked shut.
She wondered who was calling him. Was it another survivor?Werethere other survivors? Who else knew he was alive? Someone had helped him with that e-mail account.
Whoever it was, John obviously didn’t want to talk with her around.
Normally that would make her even more curious, but right now she was just grateful to have escaped major—major—stupidity.
This had been a wake-up call. Big-time. Obviously she needed to be much more careful around him if she didn’t want to end up another notch in Mr. Donovan’s never-ending bedpost.
One notch was enough.
Although, apparently, given her reaction to being on top of him, not all of her was on board with that plan.
Maybe they could just do the sex thing? He was good at that.
But she didn’t think she could handle the meaningless aspect that went along with it, and she quickly discarded the idea. It would only confuse things, and with her luck she’d end up falling for his shenanigans again. Which would put her right back where she was five years ago: all alone with nothing but a broken heart.
No, thanks.
The best thing to do would be to get far away from him, but as they were stuck together until they could find out whether someone really was trying to hurt her—and who—that wasn’t an option.
In the clear light of day, after a solid twelve hours of sleep, she had to wonder if she’d let John get to her and overreacted by fleeing Vaernes like that. He’d clearly wanted her away from Nils and the air base.
But even if going on the run to protect her from bad guys fit with his objective, she couldn’t completely discount the possibility that the attack in the parking lot and the ransacking of her apartment were related.
She would give it a few days. Maybe she’d try to get in touch with Mac and see what she could find out.
Until then she’d concentrate on her next article. She wished she had been able to meet Nils’s friend, but his confirmation of the platoon’s presence at Vaernes closely before the “missile test” in Russia was a good start in tying the two together. If her brother was killed on a secret mission to Russia that the government now wanted to cover up, Norway made sense as the place from where they’d launched the op. It might even be enough to satisfy her editor.
She pulled out the small laptop she carried with her everywhere from her messenger bag. She felt bad that she’d lied about it to John, but she knew he would have made her get rid of it, and she wasn’t going to be withoutthe means to write her story. But she wasn’t stupid. She had it in airplane mode, and she would keep it that way.
She took it, along with her bag, a change of clothes, and her toiletries into the bathroom. She wanted to get started on her next article before jumping in the shower.
She wasn’t hiding it from him as much as avoiding an unnecessary confrontation. As much as he might want to think differently, he wasn’t her master or her commander, and she didn’t have to take orders from him.
Although she didn’t relish reminding him of that.
But one thing was for sure: no more sharing beds.
