Yardley crossed her arms with an audible huff that was more like a suppressed scream. “Complicated.”
Causing an ear-splitting screech, KC scooted her chair toward Yardley and leaned forward into her face. She could smell her skin, her French lavender soap, and it was outrageous for Yardley’s smell to be so arousingly familiar, still, in the middle of this mess, thousands of miles from home, after they’d lost everything. KC gripped the arms of Yardley’s chair. “I said what I said,” she bit out. “Sometimes things are complicated. Sometimes there isn’t a debutante’s stack of silk pillows to fall back on. Sometimes things are hard. Sometimes you’re getting six different directions from twelve different sources and no time to think. Sometimes you’re surprised your chest hasn’t split open with a bloody squelch from all the secrets you’re stuffing in it. But none of that has to mean I didn’t want to give you a fucking watch and a key! For fuck’s sake. That was the only thing I’d been sure of for a long goddamned time.”
She wasright there. It made KC furious to be stonewalled and disheartened when Yardley Whitmer was right there, close enough to touch, close enough that KC could count every single one of her ridiculous dark, thick eyelashes against the clear sapphire blue of eyes that KC had spent nearly a thousand days memorizing. They’d given up, and the agency had screwed them over, and the actual fucking president had made it so KC had to be here, where she could almostseethe temperature of the place under Yardley’s jaw where it curved into her neck, how warm it always was against her lips, then sanded with goosebumps as she would kiss back up to her mouth.
“Dangit,” Yardley said, but so softly, it meant something entirely different.
KC hit the end of her rope and let go. There wasn’t anything to do but skip the apology on the tip of her tongue and whatever else she’d spent three years failing to say in favor of grabbing two handfuls of Swedish sweatshirt.
Yardley hooked her hand into the collar of KC’s hoodie and yanked, and it was all the permission KC needed to start in the middle.
They both knew how good the middle was.
She pulled up Yardley’s shirt just as Yardley slid her arms out of it, and KC grabbed Yardley’s waistband to drag her to the wool rug so it was easier for Yardley to slide her hand straight down the front of KC’s joggers.
Her fingers were fast and rough and speedily slick where she found KC ready, lifting her hips to ease the way. “Fuck.” KC tipped her head back as Yardley’s fingers, her palm, found just the right place at the same time she bit KC’s neck. Had she been this hot and wet the whole time they were fighting? Were they fighting or saying good-bye?
KC didn’t know, but whatever this was, she was taking it. She needed it.
Yardley shoved up the hem of KC’s sweatshirt and applied her tongue to KC’s aching nipple while she pushed two fingers up and down alongside KC’s clit, building a rhythm that forced KC’s hips to plead for just a little bit more than she was getting. More pressure. More speed. More. And when Yardley closed her teeth around KC’s nipple and pushed her wicked fingers a fraction harder, KC knew, sheknew, that this was penultimate to a move between her legs that would force her up and over into a fast, furious orgasm that would fist her hands and cord her neck and barely take the edge off. But if they were going to bad-idea-sex their way out of this fight, she was determined to wring more than thirty seconds of pleasure from it.
She hooked her leg over Yardley’s and rose up over her, pushing her thigh between hers, caging her with her forearms, looking into her eyes.
This gorgeous, imperious, singular woman. KC had never, ever known what to do with her, but she sure as fuck knew how to make her come.
She pressed hard with her thigh where Yardley was hot, damp through her jeans, and watched Yardley’s eyes close as she bit down on her lower lip.
KC freed that lip with her thumb. “You’re not going to look at me?”
Yardley’s mouth came open, her hips lifting in a grinding movement so explicit, it made the seam of KC’s joggers slick over her clit where Yardley’s knee was applying constant, exquisite pressure. The hit of that pressure forced a deep pulse through her clit and sent her right to the edge, and they both made a noise she knew meant that one hot, open kiss would put them out of their agonizing, fucking perfect misery.
“Please,” Yardley begged against KC’s mouth, and KC didn’t know what would make her hesitate on this precipice, but she did.
She was.
She wanted to kiss Yardley more than anything—her entire body was enraged with her that they weren’t kissing right now—but a part of KC that had kept quiet since she and Yardley hit the floor had picked this moment to remind her of all the times, when she and Yardley had been together like this, they’d said how much they loved each other.
That wasn’t what this was.
Thiswasn’t anything they’d ever done. It felt like it was, her body knew how to move as though it was, but her heart was hitching, aching, and, worse, the corners of her eyes had started to burn.
Then, three pounding knocks rang against a door no one in Sweden was supposed to know was there.
No one anywhere.
CHAPTER NINE
KC pulled up to all fours, her blood gone cold in an instant. Yardley rolled silently across the floor and leapt up to press herself flat against the wall to the side of the entryway. She signaled to KC to move out of the path of the door, and KC crab-stepped over, fear and confusion so crowded in her body that she could taste blood at the back of her throat.
Yardley caught KC’s eye and signaled confidently with a hand.Stay back, say nothing, but be ready to fight.
“Vem är det?” Yardley sounded like a harassed Swedish mother of three trying to change a diaper while soothing a toddler, but not remotely suspicious. Not afraid or even concerned. “Om du har mitt paket, lämna det vid dörren tack!”
Everything went quiet.
Yardley reached up and pulled a few locks of hair from her ponytail, scrubbed her hands across her face, and, to KC’s dismay, undid the bolt and chain on the door and opened it a crack. “Jag försöker få bebisen att somna, kan du komma tillbaka senare?”
“Sorry, I thought—” KC heard a woman’s voice, a little husky, neither old nor young. British?
