right now, and they will move that bomb or they will find a way to ensure that it doesn’t go off. They’re the best. They won’t let me down.”
“But there’s no way for them to stop the bomb that’s five feet away from us.”
She glanced over at it and sighed. “No. I don’t think they can, and they know what their priorities are. I’ve already assessed this and the most likely outcome is that my team takes out the big bomb and we die in here anyway.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.” He wasn’t going down like a desperate rat. He’d known this would be his fate. He would die on a mission, trying to save his country—the world, really. He reached out and did what came naturally. He touched her, touched that spun-sugar hair of hers. It was ridiculously soft against his skin. “I wish you weren’t here with me.”
“That’s funny because I was thinking that there was no place I would rather be.” She stepped in closer, tilting her head slightly up. “You took your time, Ben. You’re not good at reading signals because I’ve been sending them out forever.”
He let his hands sink into her hair, the sense of anticipation flooding his system. Yes, this was the way he would spend the last moments of his life. With her. Warm and happy with her. “Your signals suck, baby. All you ever had to do was this.”
He lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers. So long. He’d waited forever to feel those velvet-soft lips under his. He moved slowly despite the fact that there was a bomb ticking down the time. It didn’t matter anymore. That clock could move on and he would stay here, doing this, kissing her and exploring her like he’d wanted to from the first moment. Oddly enough, now that he was here, time seemed to slow and the destination wasn’t half as important as the journey. If the world blew up, at least their bodies would mingle. No one would be able to tell the difference between them. In that moment, he was all right. It was a better fate than any other he’d been offered.
She moved with him, her mouth flowering open at the mere hint of his tongue. She welcomed him inside, her hands going to his hips. He felt her sigh as he deepened the kiss. Their bodies brushed each other and then she moved against him, bringing her breasts to his chest as she wrapped her arms around him.
Had they been anywhere else, he wouldn’t have trusted the moment. He would have been on his guard, thinking she was trying to distract him. She was, but he wanted this distraction.
No. It wasn’t the distraction he wanted, and he hoped she wasn’t using sex simply to get her mind off the fact that they were going to die.
“Maggie, I’m crazy about you. I’ve wanted to touch you since the moment I saw you. Well, most of the time,” he whispered against her mouth. He dragged his tongue across her lower lip, loving the way she shuddered in his arms. “Sometimes it’s like you’re a different person.”
She shook her head. “Don’t think about that. That was all work. This is different, Ben. I want you so badly sometimes I can’t stand it. My friends know it, too. They know you’re the reason I haven’t had a damn boyfriend in a year.”
He kissed her again, drugged by her softness, the feeling of being able to lose himself in her. He took her mouth over and over again, thanking Huisman for being so slavishly devoted to his own comfort that he would have a bedroom built for sex even on this remote mountain.
He let his hands roam over her back and down to that perfect ass he thought about all the time. Maggie was fit and strong, but she had curves in all the right places. Her backside fit into the palms of his hands like it’d been made for him. He pulled her close, letting her feel what she did to him. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to work with you? I get this any time you’re around.”
She frowned at him. “Even when I’m busting your balls?”
“Okay, so there are times when you seem more pissed off than others.” Sometimes she seemed deeply dismissive of him, as though she didn’t remember or care about the times when they’d talked and worked together in harmony. Those tended to