Page 40

Then slowly, slowly, they both began to settle.

She sighed and sat back, making Jonas hiss in a breath as another jolt of sensation moved through him. He would have said it wasn’t possible.

Bethan sat upright, a lithe demonstration of the sorts of things she could do with that body of hers. She shoved her hair back, out of her face. Jonas had no intention of making this worse but there he was, reaching over to take a chunk of it and wind it around his finger.

She did nothing to change the fact that he was still deep inside her.

Yet as they gazed at each other, he had to assume that the wariness he saw in her eyes was mirrored in his.

He remembered too much—that was the trouble.

What a gift it would have been if he’d been knocked into a coma. If the trauma had taken his memories from him, but it hadn’t.

He’d been messed up after their vehicle exploded, but not so messed up he couldn’t remember her. And the way she’d looked at him when she’d huddled down next to him and checked his injuries. She hadn’t cried, but her eyes had gone glassy. Something about the way she looked at him now reminded him of that, when neither one of them was hurt.

Or at least, neither one of them had survived a deadly explosiontoday.

At least not the kind that came with physical scars and six months of rehab.

Jonas found himself sitting there with one hand resting in the crease of her thigh, the other in her hair, like he’d forgotten who he was. Because that could be the only explanation, even if he had the distinct sensation that for the first time, maybe ever, he was the opposite of lost.

But Jonas knew better than to let himself go too far down that road.

The silence dragged out between them. He realized he was expecting Bethan to jump in the way she did, into anything and everything. To say something smart. To saysomething.

But she didn’t.

All she did was regard him as if it were the first time she’d ever seen him. As if it were that terrible day in that godforsaken desert where he should have died. And then slowly, as if she expected him to block her, she reached over. And instead of helping herself to his hair, she smoothed her fingers over his mouth.

Solemnly, as if she were learning him. Committing himto tactile memory. As if it were an act of great significance, and all of this was—

“I guess this was always coming,” he gritted out, though his voice felt harsh in his throat. And sounded worse, hanging there in the air between them.

Bethan sighed with her whole body, though notably without an actual release of breath. “Are we doing this? Now?”

Everything inside Jonas protested, but it was time for action. Setting his jaw at how little he wanted to leave the hot clasp of her body, he lifted her off and set her aside, then rolled up to his feet. He zipped himself up, ordered himself to get a grip, and it was like it never happened.

Until he turned around and saw that Bethan was just... naked. Kneeling on the couch where he’d put her, looking perfectly at her ease. And watching him with a kind of knowledge in those distractingly green eyes of hers that he did not like at all.

“I accept that this was likely inevitable,” he said, as coolly as he could. “I think we can both be grateful that this happened when there were no other Alaska Force members around. Easier to keep a lid on it that way.”

“And keeping a lid on it is our goal here?”

He didn’t like her tone. Because it was too much like a drawl with something like humor in it, and it took an act of supreme will to keep his hands from curling into fists.

“I’m not in the habit of sleeping with people I serve with.”

“Good news, then. We’re not serving.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“I think you know it’s not.”

His jaw ached. He stopped gritting his teeth. “That’s a debate with no end. Alaska Force is what you put into it. For me, it’s the same.”

“I’m not surprised to hear that,” she replied quietly, and he wished that she would get up and put some clothes on.That she would show any hint of the storms that were going off inside of him, one after the next, like a chain of apocalyptic events.

But instead, she just knelt there. Beautifully naked. He could see the flush on her skin. Her nipples were still hard. But while he was wound so tight he thought he might detonate, she looked... relaxed.