seedy strip club, about to have wild, rough, against-the-wall sex. Anyone could walk in on them at any moment. Busir and Minyawi were likely still close by, and if they found them, she and Pete were no better than dead. On top of that, though Pete was obviously sporting a massive erection and was kissing her back, she knew deep in her heart he would only regret it later.
It nearly killed her to break the kiss and pull back, but she did. Breathing heavily, she dropped her head to his chest and held on to his coat to steady herself. Just for a minute. Just until she was sure she wasn’t going to hit the floor.
His heart thumped hard against her ear, and he drew in ragged breaths like a man starved of oxygen. One of his hands was still wrapped tightly around her waist. The other had slid into her hair, where it was rubbing tiny circles against her scalp as he held her against him and tried to regulate his breathing.
Oh, she wished that was what he was doing. Just holding her tight because she mattered.
Her eyes slammed shut. “I’m sorry. God, that was…,” stupid, idiotic, the best sex I’ve had in longer than I can remember, “…not what I meant to do.”
His hand suddenly stilled in her hair. Then he quickly released his hold on both her head and her waist. “Yeah. I’m sure you didn’t.”
His voice was thick and gravely, but there was a clip to it she hadn’t heard before that made her grimace. She was almost afraid of what she’d see on his face when she glanced up.
But she didn’t see anything. When she stepped back and looked, he was scrubbing both hands over his eyes. And when he dropped them, it was like a wall had come down.
Though his body still sported signs of arousal, his eyes were flat. She didn’t think it was possible to make him think any worse of her than he already did, but after that little nympho attack, she was obviously wrong.
“Pete—”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said again in a nonchalant voice. “We should go.”
That was it?
She stood stock still as he picked up her backpack from the floor and headed for the back stairwell at the end of the hall. He was going to act like nothing had happened? Part of her was shocked. Another part was weary. Weary from fighting the emotions brewing inside her. One minute he was the man she remembered, holding her close, kissing her with a burning passion she’d never felt from anyone else, saving her life when he could have easily looked the other way. And the next he was like a stranger, cold and calculating and brushing her off like she meant nothing to him.
She struggled to put the two together, had no idea if she ever would. And couldn’t help questioning why he’d come back for her in the first place.
As she watched him walk away, she knew she was back at square one with no one to turn to, wondering who she could trust.
So what do you do now, Kat? What have you always done?
She reached up to grip the St. Jude medal at her chest and thought back over her life. Her goals had always saved her. As long as she’d had something to work toward, she’d been able to get through anything.
When she’d been an orphan, flitting from foster home to foster home, she’d paid attention and learned as much as she could so that one day she could make her own choices. When she’d been working on her doctorate and professors had told her she didn’t have what it took to be an Egyptologist, she’d muscled in and studied harder. And when she’d gone into hiding, decided to give up her entire life in one heart-wrenching moment, she’d taken it one day at a time, knowing that by staying in the shadows, she would keep the people she loved safe.
Goals. That was what she turned to when she needed strength. That was what she’d turn to now.
Her mother was gone. Marty wasn’t an option any longer because he was compromised. And her head screamed she couldn’t trust Pete either, no matter how much her heart wanted to.
“Pick up your pace, Kat,” he said from the end of the hall. “We need to make tracks. That goon’s probably still hanging around.”
Make tracks.
Suddenly, she knew just what she had to do next. Yeah, it would tick Pete off,