He stepped closer to her. “Because somewhere between tracking you and knowing you, this assignment stopped being a mission.” He cupped her cheek in his hand. “You matter, Keira. What happens to you matters to me."
She covered his hand with hers, her heart squeezing hard in her chest. “Damn it, Rogue. You matter to me, as well.”
He laughed, smiling down at her. “You make that sound like a problem.”
Her eyes welled with tears. “It is.” She swiped at a stray tear coursing down her cheek. “I’m supposed to be an assassin, a tough, take-no-flak person who can operate on her own. Not a blubbering woman who can’t control her emotions—especially when those emotions concern you.”
Rogue stepped closer and pulled her into his arms. “I’ve wanted to do that all day.”
She laughed, her fingers curling into his shirt. “Then why haven’t you?”
He tipped her chin up with his thumb and stared down into her eyes. “I don’t know. But I think it’s time to kiss the woman I find myself falling madly in love with.”
Keira closed her eyes, shocked to hear Rogue’s confession. “How can you be certain it’s love?”
He brushed his thumb across her chin and lip. “When you know, you know.” He pulled her into his arms and claimed her lips with his. When he came up for air, he admitted. “I care for you, Keira.”
She shook her head. “I care for you, too. And that terrifies me,” Keira said.
Rogue frowned down at her. “Why?”
“Because everyone I’ve ever cared about in the past has been taken from me. My parents in a car crash. My sister drugged to death. I don’t know if I could handle losing someone else.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t know if I could handle losing you.”
He stepped closer and pulled her into his arms. “Then we make sure no one gets lost. We get Lily out. We take down Viktor, and we survive, together.” His mouth descended, taking hers in a kiss so tender and defining that Keira shook with the intensity of her reaction to him.
She raised her hands to lock them behind his neck, pulling him closer, opening to him and giving as much as she took from the kiss.
Keira pressed her body against his, wishing she could feel all of him, skin to skin, nothing between them but air and sweat.
His hands slid beneath her shirt, skimming across her back, searing a path from her waist to her shoulder blades.
She lowered her hands to the hem of his shirt and slipped her hands beneath, wanting to feel the warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips. Wanting him to take her, to make love to her like she was special, not just a convenient vessel to be used and cast aside.
Rogue raised one of his hands to her cheek, cupped it, kissed her tenderly and then stepped back. “I want you, Keira.”
“I want you, too,” she whispered.
“But not here. Not now.”
Keira moaned. “Why not here. Why not now?”
He brushed his lips across hers. “I want to give you more time to know me, to trust me, before I take you to my bed and make sweet love to you.”
“I know what I need to know about you, Rogue,” she said, her hands skimming across his chest, beneath his shirt. “I know you would be gentle.”
He nodded. “I’d show you how beautiful it can be between a man and a woman. That you could set the pace, tell me what you wanted. I wouldn’t take you as if I owned you. I’d worship your body, take you to the brink and make you cry out your release before I ever satisfy myself.”
His words stirred her body into a heated frenzy. She wanted him to do all that and more. “Take me now, Rogue. I want all that.” She drew in a shaky breath and let it out. “I want it now.”
Rogue captured her cheeks between his palms and kissed her long and hard. “You tempt me beyond reason,” he whispered.
“Then please. Give in to that temptation,” she begged.
Rogue stared down into her eyes. “I can’t guarantee I’ll be gentle enough. I don’t want to hurt or frighten you.”
“I’ll take my chances,” she whispered and kissed him. Then she took his hand and led him into the cabin, past the living room, the bedroom she’d assigned to Jade and to the rear of the cabin, where a king-sized bed took up most of the bedroom and a starlight shone through the window.
Once they were through the door, Rogue closed it and pulled her into his arms. “Keira, this might be too soon.”
