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“You’re hyperventilating,” he said, voice taut. “You’ve got to slow your breathing.”
“I can’t.” She clawed at him. “I can’t breathe.” The air wasn’t enough. Her vision swam. Dizziness washed over her. She was suffocating. The desert would swallow them whole.
The edges of her world dimmed. She closed her eyes, bracing for the dark.
CHAPTER 16
“Hannah, you have to calm down,” Tom said urgently. “There’s not much dust in here. You can’t panic.”
She didn’t respond. He could feel the fear pouring off her in waves. She was on the verge of tearing the scarf off her face and sucking in a lungful of dust. He had to distract her—fast.
So he kissed her.
At first, it was soft, just his lips brushing hers. Maybe it would shock her into stillness. Maybe it would ground her, remind her she wasn’t alone in this chaos. He felt her freeze, the tremor in her limbs. Then she began to kiss him back.
It worked.
But something shifted.
The longer his mouth moved over hers, the more he stopped caring about the reason behind it. Her lips were warm and pliant, her breath shallow against his skin. He could taste her panic fading, being replaced by something else. Something hot. Something that stirred in him like a wildfire breaking past every firebreak he’d tried to build.
She kissed him again, deeper this time, and he responded before he could think better of it. She opened for him, and he slidhis tongue between her lips. The scarf clung tight around their heads, but it didn’t matter. In this tiny cocoon of darkness and dust, her scent filled his lungs. Her hand clutched his shirt. Her other arm still hooked around his back. His body burned.
Damn it.
He shifted his weight, pressing her down just a little, bracing himself on one elbow. Her soft curves molded against him—her breasts pressed to his chest, one of his thighs settling between hers. She didn’t pull away. Her fingers tangled in his shirt. Her lips moved with his. He couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to.
Not until a sharp pebble whipped by the wind slammed into his cheek.
He flinched. The pain snapped him back to the present. Sand still screamed across their rock shelter, pelting the scarves, trying to rip them away. He pulled back slightly, just enough to break the kiss. Breathing hard, he eased off her and lay beside her instead, every inch of his body humming.
He needed to get his shit together.
This couldn’t happen again. Not now. Not with her.
His CO’s words echoed in his skull.
If we can’t have her, no one else can.
He shut his eyes. Orders were orders. If he couldn’t get her out, he’d been told what to do. And now he’d just kissed the one person he might have to kill.
Fuck.
They lay still under the cloth barrier, his arm still around her. Her hand stayed on his side, her breath brushing his collarbone.
He should move. He needed space to think, but the moment he shifted, the wind roared louder. Exposure was a risk. He stayed put.
Then she whispered, “Tom, why did you kiss me?”
Because I’ve wanted to since the day I met you.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” he said instead. “You were starting to panic. I needed to distract you.”
A beat. Then softly, “I thought so. But then…”
Her voice faded. But he knew what she meant. He’d felt it, too—the heat, the pull.
“It was just a distraction,” he murmured, lying to them both. He had to get his head on straight. He’d already let things go too far. “Don’t read too much into it.”