“I’m trying to save your sweet ass.”
Her attention shifted back to him as her head angled his way once more. “I meant when I was sixteen. You saved me then.” As if she’d ever been able to forget that day. The day of their first kiss. “You came flying out of nowhere, and you threw me off that road.”
“I tackled you,” he corrected. “Slammed you into the ground.”
The ground on the side of the road. He’d tossed her there so that she’d be safe.
“Then you kissed me,” she added. It had been her first kiss. She had not told him that fact. You didn’t tell the older boy you were trying to impress that you hadn’t known how to kiss, that you’d only practiced against a silly pillow until he’d pressed his mouth to yours and shown you how it was really done. “Until that moment, I’d always thought you hated me.”
Silence.
She swallowed. They were hurtling through the dark, he’d just stolen a car to keep her safe, and she was as twisted up for him as she’d always been. Her problem, not his. “Thank you,” Delaney managed to say.
“What are you thanking me for now?”
“For helping me.” But, “Even if helping me is putting you in danger.”
He laughed. The sound was deep and rumbling and, yep, sexy. Most things about Nash were sexy, though. “My life is about danger,” he confessed. “That’s nothing new.”
Because he was a spy. She was still trying to wrap her head around that new truth. Back at the motel room, when he’d attacked the guy who’d broken into her room, Nash had moved with savage strength and power. “Are you involved in lots of life-and-death situations?”
“You have no idea.”
She’d take that as a yes.
“You can sleep,” he told her.
Um, doubtful. Adrenaline poured through her body.
“When you wake up, we’ll be at a safe house. I’d planned for us to head there at first light, but, seeing as how we were ratted out by the night clerk at our motel, our arrival at the safe house will just happen a little earlier than I originally anticipated.”
A safe house sounded like heaven to her. “Once we are there, I can talk to the authorities, and you can get back to your life.”
“Sure.” Flat. “My life.”
She bit her lower lip. There was something else they needed to talk about. Oh, who was she kidding? There were a million things they needed to address. But one very big elephant in the vehicle was taking up a whole lot of space. “Nash…”
“Getting turned on by you is as natural as breathing for me.”
She knew her eyes had just doubled in size. She’d been trying to think of a tactful way to bring up her reaction to him. A reaction that had not lessened in intensity, despite all of the years between them.
Every man she’d met since him had never compared. Nash had left too big of a mark on her.
“When we were pulling away from the diner and I pushed you down, that was probably not the best move,” Nash admitted.
Her brows rose. “Do tell.”
“Your mouth was close to my dick. You were on my thigh. No way my dick wasn’t going rock hard in that situation.”
Um, okay.
“But you are in no danger from me. I’m not going to jump you, Delaney.”
It was suddenly way too hot in the interior of the vehicle. “I didn’t say that you were.”
“I get that you’ve moved the hell on from me.”
Her hands fisted harder in her lap. Her nails bit into her palms.
