“I had a bad feeling.” John finally spoke up. “Our gut is everything in this job.”
“Well, then what happened?” June leaned forward on the edge of her seat.
“At least fifty cartel were waiting for us like rats in the grass,” Keith snarled. “If we hadn’t stopped when we did, we wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
“To brothers ’til dust, in instinct we trust.” Mark raised his glass in lieu of a toast.
“Hear, hear,” Cole chimed in, and we all joined him.
After dinner, the team left to debrief with Frank via video chat, while we spent the next hour cleaning up and preparing for tomorrow’s breakfast. I found myself alone with everything done. At a loss as to what else to do, I shrugged my coat on and headed out into the cold. A layer of frost blanketed the ground and muted my footsteps as I walked to my cabin.
“I don’t want to scare you.” His voice came from somewhere above. He stood with his back against the door, his face in a shadow. I loved how attractive he was. No man would ever compare from here on out.
“I thought you were still with Frank.”
“Wasn’t a lot to debrief about. I just had a bad feeling.”
I took two steps and admired the view in front of me.
“So, you’re a hero?”
“Only because of you,” he whispered.
Huh?
“I’ve had a pretty strange last seven hours.” He stepped into the light and held out a hand for me to take. “I’d really like to spend the next seven with you.”
As soon as I closed the door, he hovered above me again. He brushed my hair back and cupped my face.
“They call me a hero, but really, it was you, Sloane.” He leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth. “You had my instincts on high alert, and when I felt that kick in my gut just before we descended, everything inside of me screamed it wasn’t safe.” He paused. “I have to question myself. Would I have stopped my team if you hadn’t honed my senses with your questions?”
“But you did.” I returned the kiss and craved more of him. “Focus on that, John.”
“All I could focus on was you, Sloane, getting back to you. I saved my team, my brothers, the people I would die for, and all my mind wanted to think about was you.”
“Lust is a bitch.” I tried to give him a sloppy out, but I didn’t really want him to take it.
“No.” He pulled his lips from the slope of my neck and gently held my chin in his hand, so I was forced to look at him. “Not lust, need. There’s a difference.”
I couldn’t recall the last time someone had spoken to me the way John had. Maybe never.
“I’ll ask you this once. Are you dating anyone?”
“No.”
“Good answer.” He grinned.
An ache settled in the center of my chest then plunged straight down between my legs. I shifted my weight to the other foot to find some kind of relief. A storm brewed inside my veins, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. Heat and hunger bubbled to the surface, and my clothes suddenly felt too hot.
Both his hands pressed above my breasts and slowly slid upward to remove my jacket. It fell to the ground as his fingers inched to trace my collarbone.
“Now I know how Cole felt,” he whispered more to himself. “Sometimes it only takes one look to be captivated by someone.”
I wished I had something to say, but I was lost in the moment, so I reached for his sweater and held on to the bottom of it. He stepped back and reached over his head to tug it off.
The low light cast shadows in the grooves of his stomach, and when he took a breath, his chest puffed up, and I wanted to cry. No man should be this good looking.
“This…” I ran my fingertips over his tattoo that spread across his shoulder and half his chest. A lion was nestled between some swirls, and a scroll had been inked over his pec. It was John 14:6. “It’s my favorite verse.” I smiled warmly. “Yours too?”
His eyes moved away for a moment, and when they returned, I saw it was raw topic. “I lost my way once, and now I won’t again.”
I nodded and let the topic go.
Slowly, I worked the buttons of my blouse through the tiny holes while his hands flexed at