Hemingway - Zoe Dawson Page 0,27

she would soon be on another, probably far from here. He wasn’t the only one who would be globetrotting.

She wanted to keep this simple, but she wasn’t sure she could and that caused more than enough anxiety. She couldn’t get bogged down. She had more than a job to do…she lived and breathed the need for revenge against the man who had murdered her sister, a man who should have been upholding the law. There would be no rest for her until she put a bullet in him.

She pulled into the condo complex and parked the car. With a jingle of her keys, she opened the door and slipped out of the driver’s seat. Heading up the path into the lobby of the building, Hemingway followed. Up the elevator to her suite, she unlocked the door and stepped inside the spacious condo. The first thing she did was pull open the balcony doors. The view was stunning, even at night. A hop and skip away lay the beach and beyond that the always moving ocean.

The cool breeze didn’t do much to bank the fire burning against her skin.

“Gorgeous,” he murmured, his voice low and whiskey-hoarse as he came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his face in her neck.

“Who would you be letting down?” she whispered, wanting to know what drove him beyond his patriotic aspirations and testing his own mettle. There was always more. There was always the emotional, deep-seated need that pushed people to do the things they did. She was well aware that sometimes those ingrained desires got people killed.

“Plenty,” he whispered back.

She had to smile. He didn’t want to be any more vulnerable to her than she wanted to be to him. She guessed that was her fault for trying to keep everything uncomplicated. So why was she trying to complicate this? It was about sex. That’s why they were here. It had nothing to do with his dreams of becoming a Navy SEAL. Her mission simply led her here to this place for this revolution in her career. A career she had loved and still did. When she killed the man who had murdered Madison, she would lose that too. But her vendetta had nothing to do with her. It was all about Maddy.

She pulled her top over her head and shimmied out of her pants and underwear until she was standing bare-assed naked in the moonlight, but even though he couldn’t see it, she was covered in armor.

“You and me, sandman, having fun. Yeah?”

“Hell yeah,” he murmured. “I can’t stop thinking about what it was like to be inside you.”

Shea moaned, sinking into the memory, and turned her face toward his.

“And how you tasted.” He ran his tongue down her throat to her nipple, sucking gently. Her head dropped back. “Everything,” he said darkly and scraped his teeth over the sensitive nub, then took her mouth in a hard, demanding kiss, increasing her desire.

“Bedroom?”

“Down the hall to the right.” He picked her up, his clothes rough against her sensitive skin. She wanted him naked. Just looking at him caused a primal hunger to have him closer. She didn’t need a seduction and yet craved it.

He moved down the hall and turned into her bedroom. He set her down on the mattress, but she reared up and stripped off his shirt, his skin smelling clean and delicious.

His hands spanned her ribcage, pulling her near, and on her knees, she reached for his waistband. His stomach flexed when she touched his skin. His hands mapped the curve of her butt as she unsnapped and unzipped, pushing the jeans off him. He worked them and his briefs down and off while she took in her fill of hard, delineated muscles, wanting him so much. Then he dragged her into his arms, his mouth devouring her until kissing wasn’t enough.

She met his gaze and felt something shattering between them, pieces cut, a few falling away, and when she reached between them, he stopped her, catching her hands.

“Oh, no, not so fast,” he murmured.

He didn’t give her a choice and kissed her with slow deliberation, drinking in more than a kiss with a man she’d just found. His arms closed slowly around her, drawing her against him, and she could feel his heart in it, trying to deny that her heart was anywhere near his. Something was different than all the throwaway men she’d had ever since Maddy’s death. The heat between them steadily