of the cushions. “You’re standing there as though you should be doing something. There’s nothing left to do anymore.” And the regret in her voice echoed through his entire being. As did the loss. He could hear it, feel it. The loss of something neither of them had been allowed to experience.
No, there wasn’t anything left to do.
He felt his jaw tighten as he fought back the need to go to her, to push her back along the leather cushions as he came over her.
Five seconds, he thought. He could have her laid out on the couch, that piece of nothing gown she wore pushed to her hips and his dick buried between those luscious thighs in less than five seconds.
And he would be making the biggest mistake of his life.
She was essentially a coworker. He was her superior, even though the Ops were, for the moment, disbanded. She was a woman that needed more than he could give her, more than he could allow himself to give any woman. She already had more of him than he was willing to admit to.
“Jordan, if you don’t stop standing there staring at me as though you’re ready to strangle me, then I just may begin to worry.”
She didn’t sound in the least worried. She sounded irritated, restless, a bit frustrated. But worried wasn’t in there.
“Do you need help packing?” he finally asked.
He wasn’t ready to walk away. Come dawn, the transport detail would be here to load her belongings and ship them out. She would be following behind in whichever of the expensive, fast little sports cars was still parked in the base garage. He’d given her a choice of the vehicles, something he hadn’t offered to the other members of the unit.
“I don’t need help packing.” There was a snap to her voice now, a sense of impatience and frustration that threatened to light a fuse to his already short temper.
“You’ll leave it to the last damned minute and have the transport detail packing boxes and running late while you bark out orders,” he ground out as that frustration began to eat at him, to get the better of him. “Dammit, Tehya, they’re on a schedule.”
“As if I’m ever late getting anything done.” Her eyes narrowed, an assessing, curious light glittering in them as she watched him. “Tell me a single instance in the past six years that I have ever been late.”
He hated it when she stared at him like that. As though she suddenly glimpsed something in his gaze or in his expression that was another piece of a puzzle she was putting together.
He wasn’t a damned puzzle. He was a fucking horny man and he was trying damned hard to keep a handle on the lusts raging through him.
What the hell did she expect from him?
“Do you want me to help you pack?” His arms folded over his chest as he glared at her now, channeling all the frustrated lust into irritated anger.
Anger was a hell of a lot easier to deal with than a redheaded little rogue determined to drive him insane.
“No. Actually, I don’t need your help.” She came to her feet slowly, like a cat unwinding from a favorite bed.
She didn’t stretch, but she didn’t have to. Laziness wasn’t a part of her demeanor at the moment.
“You need someone’s help,” he growled as he stared around the living area once again. “What about the other rooms? Are they ready to load?”
Her eyes narrowed further. “Everything but the living room. Would you like to check, daddy, and make certain I’m following orders?”
The sweetness of her voice almost had his balls shrinking. Intimidation from a five-foot-four piece of dynamite? It shouldn’t be possible.
But he knew this little piece of dynamite could pack a wallop when it wanted to.
Unfortunately, common sense didn’t seem to be his forte tonight.
“Don’t call me ‘daddy,’ Tehya. I’m well aware of your feelings when it comes to fathers.”
She distrusted them. She even watched the men she had worked with for years with a suspicious gaze once they’d become fathers.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jordan,” she replied with a cute little drawl that in no way detracted from the danger glittering in her gaze. “I have no feelings one way or the other where fathers are concerned. I never had a father, so how should I know how they’re supposed to act? Sperm donors don’t count.”
She had had little more than a sperm donor. One that had kidnapped her mother, impregnated her, then attempted to