Page 23 of Zorro

Just her voice, breathless and betraying everything she swore she didn’t feel.

She swallowed. “I…I should shower first.” Her brain was screaming at her mouth now to shut up, but it was too late.

He stepped back slightly, eyes dark and gleaming. “I don’t know. You smell pretty good to me.” Zorro’s grin crooked at the corners, half-smirk, half are you kidding me right now. But before he could tease her?—

She swallowed. Her lips parted. “Do you…want to wait for me inside?”

His pulse hit the throttle so fast he felt it in his fingertips.

Had he just won the fucking lottery?

No, screw that.

He’d just been personally handed the keys to heaven by the woman who’d spent all their deployment in Niger verbally sniping at him. Now? Now she’d just tackled him in a hallway, laid on top of him like she belonged there, and invited him into her hotel room with a look in her eyes that was two sips shy of take me now.

Zorro’s entire body flexed with uncontained energy.

“Fuck, yeah,” he said, voice low and thick. “I’d wait a lifetime for you.” The words came out like a growl of permission and promise.

Her breath caught.

Her eyes flicked to his, then away, then back again, like even she couldn’t believe what she’d just said. Maybe she couldn’t. But he didn’t care. Not now. Not when every cell in his body had just roared awake like it had been waiting for this exact moment since Niamey.

He watched her fumble the keycard again, because of course she did, and he didn’t move to help. Not because he was being smug. But because watching her hands shake slightly as she unlocked the door did things to him.

Things he was trying real hard not to do in the hallway.

The lock clicked green.

She opened the door. Her eyes met his.

That nervous, brilliant, insane woman who’d stitched up his team and kissed him in a haze of need now stood in front of him, skin still humming with the aftermath of full-body contact.

“Come in,” she said, barely audible.

He stepped over the threshold, every nerve keyed up, every inch of restraint on standby. He was going to sit on that couch like a goddamned gentleman.

Or try to.

Unless she changed her mind…

He had just been invited to wait inside Everly Quinn’s sanctuary, and if he played this right this time…she wouldn’t run. That was so important to him. Watching her bolt out of that hospital, then take comfort in Bear’s warm stoic presence had hurt in a place he’d never allowed to surface. The woman was in his bones, his muscles, and in his head. She was wrapped around his aching dick and heart. Two places a man had no damn control over when it came to someone so right for him, he couldn’t breathe

The door clicked shut behind him with a soft snick.

She disappeared into the bathroom with a barely muttered word and the sound of the water came on a few seconds later, a gentle hiss that echoed through the quiet room. He kept his overactive mind neutral, working at avoiding what soft skin looked like, felt like under that spray.

Zorro stood for a second, unsure what to do with his hands. His brain was still catching up, trying to process how he’d gone from blonde missile collision to invited guest in less than ten minutes. Plant it, he told himself, wait. Yet the patience he had tried to instill was wearing so damn thin. Men like him didn’t stand around when there was an objective. They assaulted. Damn, Joker had trained their tactical asses so hard yesterday, then briefed them hard. He’d been up since before dawn, wrangling his excited family onto a first-class flight, then made it in time to take a C130 with his team.

So he moved to the armchair near the balcony doors, muscles still humming from the adrenaline crash, and sat.

Just for a minute.

Just to rest his eyes.

The warmth that ghosted across his jaw felt like a memory.

But the second time it came, it was unmistakably real.