track her movements, and let’s review any other female guests that have been loitering where they shouldn’t.” How the hell had I missed this?
“Copy,” Harm confirmed.
I glanced at my watch. I wanted this information ASAP, and I wanted a plan in place to relocate Sanaa, but realistically, I needed to give everyone time to get this right. Moving her on impulse could be as dangerous as staying. “Thirty minutes, I want us all up here for a sitrep. We’ll decide then if we need to move her.”
“Ten-four,” Harm stated.
“Thirty minutes,” I reiterated.
“I got it.” Harm hung up.
I walked back into the suite.
He strode back into the bedroom in a flurry of tension and untapped energy. Immediately feeling the shift in his mood, I regretted my nakedness.
Covering my breasts with my arms, I glanced over my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes a mixed storm of intensity and anger, he only met my gaze briefly as he unholstered the gun on his hip. “Did I tell you to move?” Setting his gun on the dresser, he added his cell phone.
When I first saw him on the private jet, I didn’t think I would ever get used to seeing him carrying a gun as if it was merely an accessory. But after the past couple days, the weapon on his hip had become a part of him as much as his reserved demeanor.
Feeling exposed and vulnerable, I didn’t drop my arms. “No, you didn’t.”
Peeling his shirt off, he tossed it on a chair.
My gaze cut to his chest, and my heart stopped.
The angel wing necklace I’d given him that night before everything went to hell hung from his neck.
“You still have it.” I’d saved for over a year to buy him that. Back then, it was the most money I’d ever spent on anything.
Stepping behind me, the heat of his bare chest covered my back, and he skimmed his fingers down my arms.
My pulse jumped, and my nerves thrummed. “You kept it,” I whispered, my heart both breaking and soaring as I tasted the cruel touch of hope that this was going to be more than sex. I’d given him that necklace and told him it would keep him safe. All these years, and he still had it. That had to mean something.
“We have thirty minutes.” His deep voice so quietly beautiful it was its own song, he didn’t acknowledge what I’d said. Instead, he pressed his lips to my shoulder, then he broke me. “The fact that I’m wearing the gift you gave me isn’t going to alter the way I’m about to touch you.” Taking my wrists, he gently but firmly pulled my arms from my chest. “However, I will give you a choice.” Holding me in his tight grip, he skimmed his nose along my neck. “I can fuck you now or later. Either way, you’re going to come hard in the next thirty minutes.” His grip intensified. “But know this.” Abruptly letting go, he stepped back. “I will fuck you later. It will last longer than thirty minutes, and it won’t have any other intended consequence other than exactly what it is—us doing what we never had a chance to ten years ago. Choose.”
My heart breaking, my head spinning, my traitorous body pulsed with need. My core was wet from the simple truth of his hands on me, and I was in over my head.
I always had been with him.
Which made me think that maybe a part of me had signed that contract all those years ago in self-sabotage. Maybe a part of me wanted him angry with me. Maybe I’d unconsciously wanted an out from his intensity.
Mentally shaking the errant thoughts away, I forced myself not to turn and look at him.
He’d given me a choice, and I wanted to make it for me. Not for what I would see in his eyes that contradicted his words, not for him, not for what I thought he wanted me to do.
I wanted to make the decision just for me, and that meant there was only one choice.
I knew what I wanted. “Take me.”
The air conditioner hummed, the distant sound of the angry waves twenty stories below pounded at the shore, and my own heartbeat echoed in my ears as my pulse raced. But he didn’t make a sound.
For three breathless heartbeats, he was so deathly still behind me that nerves rushed across my skin and chilled the heat between my legs.