Code Name: Ghost - Sawyer Bennett Page 0,44

mine out of the way, then it’s his hands on my face.

Holding me in place as his head tilts and he deepens the kiss. I feel it all the way down to my soul. Now, I can do nothing but grip onto his shoulders and hang on for the ride, my life suddenly turned into a roller coaster of emotion.

Then, a noise penetrates through the fog of lust… voices.

Two men, laughing about something, near the front of the gym.

Malik and I spring apart from each other as if we’d been shocked with a current. When I glance over my shoulder, I see Saint and Cruce walking in with gym bags in their hands. They don’t see us as they head toward the basketball court.

I turn back to Malik, dismayed to see a thin veil of unease creep back into his expression. How he can have doubts after that kiss is beyond me…

I guess now is the time to actually use my words.

Well, not “now”. We have work to finish out for the day.

Reaching out, I grab his hand and give it a quick squeeze. “Will you come over for dinner tonight so we can talk? I think it would help.”

“Help what?” he asks… his voice cracking.

“You to be okay with this,” I reply gently with another squeeze to his hand. “I want you to know I’m okay with this. I want you to be, too. I think we have something, Malik, but we need to talk, okay?”

He merely gives me a nod with so much emotion written all over his face. Fear, doubt and yet… there’s one thing I decide I’ll hold on to… hope.

CHAPTER 15

Malik

I am not an indecisive man, yet I’ve vacillated on whether to go to Anna’s apartment tonight a good twenty times. I feel like I have solid reasoning as to why I should stay away, but fuck if it isn’t that kiss that has me standing outside her door right now.

But not just the physicality of the kiss. That’s not it.

I’ve kissed a lot of women in my life. From the playground when I was five to the last woman I was with just two nights before I had shipped out to Syria. I’ve kissed them in a lot of different places. Romantic kisses on a rain-drenched street to making a woman come with the power of my tongue between her legs. I’ve tasted it all with my mouth, yet what we shared in the gym today—just fucking mere hours ago—tipped my world sideways.

Scared the shit out of me, actually.

Anna almost brought me to my knees with that soft but insistent display, and I fear what else she might force me to do because I want to feel her mouth on mine again.

I remember my mother and I having a conversation many years ago when I was fourteen. Admittedly, I was a mama’s boy, and I had experienced my first broken heart. While I loved my father dearly, I could have never turned to him for solace and advice the way I could her.

My mother, Marilyn, is a speaking coach and has a way with words. I hadn’t cried over the breakup of my very first love, but it didn’t mean my heart wasn’t shredded.

I remember her saying, “Malik… take stock of how you feel right now. Remember the pain and the misery of it all. Never forget how badly you feel in this moment, for, one day, it will seem silly. There will come a day when you meet a woman who will make you feel such amazing things that you will wonder how you could ever be feeling this badly right now.”

She was talking about the proverbial soul mate people of romantic persuasions believe in. And back then, listening to her talk, she made me believe in them, too.

But then I grew up. And in all the women I had dated or been with, I’d never met one who made my first heartbreak seem silly. It doesn’t mean I obsessed about that heartbreak. Quite the contrary.

I think it goes more to the power of feeling, and I’ve never met someone who could evoke such a visceral response, pleasant or awful, good or bad.

Until Anna.

While I knew I genuinely liked her—as a coworker, friend, compatriot—I never could have guessed how deeply she’d possibly touch me.

To most, I bet it would seem a no-brainer that given the force of these feelings, I’d show up for dinner and be happy for the invitation.

But no one can