“The person we’re guarding changed his schedule at the last minute,” he said. “We had to scramble. But thank God I was here.”
She pressed her back against the wall. In the dim red light, he could see her processing. But she wasn’t scared, just considering.
Goddamn it. He was fucking scared enough for the both of them.
“You can’t keep doing this.” The fear in his chest had nowhere to go, so it came out hot. “Do you understand what I just watched? I watched you walk toward a target with a guy twenty feet away who would havehurtyou. Broken bones, Fallon. That’s what they were bragging about. You would have made your move and smiled your way through it the way you always do, and ten seconds later you’d have been in a back hallway with men who think hurting you would be fun.”
“I would have?—”
“You would have what? Fought them off? Guys who outweigh you by a hundred pounds each? With no gate opening for you to squeeze yourself through?” His voice was climbing and he couldn’t stop it. “You can’t keep doing this. Sooner or later you’re going to walk into something you can’t get out of, and nobody is going to be there to pull you out. You need to think about what you’re doing. You need to think about a different line of?—”
She reached for his belt buckle.
Everything in the universe stopped.
His voice cut off mid-sentence. His hands, which had been moving while he talked, went still at his sides. The sound of the event through the walls faded to nothing. The only thing in the world was her fingers on his belt, pulling the leather throughthe buckle with a slow deliberation that had nothing to do with haste, fear or panic.
“Fallon.”
She didn’t stop.
He grabbed her wrist. Held it. Her pulse hammered against his thumb, fast and hard, and her eyes came up to his in the dark.
“You’re sexy when you’re all alpha male protective, Isaac.”
“We can’t do this.”
Her hand reached through the elastic of his boxer briefs. “I think we can. I think we should. I think we both want this more than we want anything else.”
That was the truth.
He keyed his radio with his free hand. “Ryder.”
A beat. “Yeah.”
“I need you to handle things for a few minutes.”
The pause that followed was loaded. Isaac could practically hear Ryder choosing his words.
“Copy that. We’ve got it under control. Good luck with your side quest.”
Isaac pulled the earpiece out and shoved it in his pocket. He had no idea if Ryder had seen him with Fallon or not, and right now he didn’t care. All he cared about was that her talented, nimble fingers were already driving him crazy.
Her mouth found his. Their kiss was hard, open, without patience or tenderness. His hands found her hips and lifted her against the wall before his brain finished catching up to his body.
Her legs wrapped around him. He shoved her dress up her thighs, bunching silk and fabric between them. He pulled her silk panties to the side, his knuckles dragged against skin that was hot and damp, and she made a sound against his mouth that wiped every rational thought from his head.
“Condom,” she breathed. “Please tell me?—”
“Wallet.”
She pulled it from his back pocket faster than he could have. Tore the wrapper. Rolled it on him with shaking hands while he held her pinned against the wall with one arm.
He pushed inside her and she buried her face against his neck and said his name in a way that undid him completely.
This was nothing like Boston. Boston had been slow and careful and tender, two strangers learning each other’s edges in a hotel room with harbor lights on the ceiling. This was need stripped raw. He took her hard against the wall of a utility closet while a mop bucket rattled beside them and his team ran the operation without him, and he didn’t care. None of it mattered even a little.
She’d been twenty feet from a man who wanted to break her hands, and she hadn’t known, and if Isaac had been positioned anywhere else in that room he wouldn’t have seen it in time.
