saving to savoring. When he stopped worrying about her breathing and struggled to control his own. Her body, all lean muscles and sexy curves, fit against him as he knew it would. The slow, sensual torture as she blew soft puffs of air against his throat confirmed one thing he knew before the private plane had taken off to bring them here—he was fucked. That was the only explanation for breaking into a sweat in these temperatures.
He cleared his throat and inched back so he could look into her eyes. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
The haze had gone, and something else replaced it. Something he couldn’t think about for more than two seconds or he’d be rationalizing how fucking her could warm her right up.
He waited until she nodded to drop his hands and reached around her to shut off the water. The brush of his arm across her ass was pure accident but pretty damn great. “Good to hear it.”
Her fingers relaxed against his shirt, but she didn’t let go as she glanced down between their bodies. Focused on the bulge in his wet and confining jeans. “Is that still nothing but harmless reaction?”
“Depends on how you define ‘harmless,’ but yeah.” The bigger worry was that he’d be in this state until he delivered her back to civilization.
What qualified as worse than being fucked? He was that.
• • •
She tried to swallow as he moved away from her. She’d been cold, too cold, and every action he took made sense. Brought her back to sanity faster. Even now her mind clicked into gear. Reality crashed into her right after.
Big, sturdy, commanding and so rough around the edges—she wanted it all. They’d met back before she left the CIA. Him hovering at the fringes of her life. The limited space between them had taken a toll.
Blame the adrenaline rush or the blanket of danger she’d been under for so long, but she wanted this—him. For her. Not pretty, not a commitment, not even a date. Just hot, out-of-control sex. Abandon her hang-ups and forget everything sex. Get-lost-in-him sex.
But it couldn’t happen, or so she kept repeating in her head, hoping her body would catch up to her brain. Not if they were stuck out here, always on watch. Not if he saw her as a job. She had to rein in the need pumping through her and find a kick of self-preservation or she’d be crawling all over him.
She was about to point out that the whole cold, wet clothes thing had been his fault when he started to strip. Stood right in front of the sink and peeled the wet shirt off. Dropped it to the floor and let it slap against the hardwood. Then he reached for the Henley underneath and pulled it up, revealing miles of broad back with muscles carved into every inch.
Like everything else about him, his back, all that skin, wasn’t perfect and pretty. Faint white scars marked his upper back as if he’d been lashed. A jagged line stretched along the right side of his back and disappeared around to his front. Likely from a knife. The wounds of a warrior. Of the man who went in first, took on the most dangerous jobs.
The ripping sound of a zipper cut through the room and her mental inventory. He shifted his hips, then the wet jeans dropped, taking a tight pair of gray boxer briefs with them. Her gaze slipped from the dip in the small of his back, down his ass cheeks, so round and firm. No fat, just perfectly formed and muscled.
His shoulders stiffened for a second then fell again. “I don’t care if you look.”
That comment had her fumbling as she reached for the closest towels, and not from the cold this time. She wrapped one around her chest and folded the end against her skin for a snug fit. Tucked her wet hair up in the other.
Somewhat dressed and feeling a bit more sturdy on her feet, she tackled the bigger issue. “This isn’t going to work.”
The door to the cabinet under the sink slammed as he reached for a towel. They’d somehow managed to use three of the total four available in a five-minute span. Still, him with a towel balanced on those hips, turned away from her, showing off that broad back and the outline of every muscle, proved potent enough. Naked and facing her might cause her to make a humiliating scene.
Which brought her right back to the topic he seemed