Page 71 of Blood Stone

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The gun. You stepped in front of me.”

His frown smoothed out. “That wasn’t heroic.”

“Yes, it was,” she insisted. “You could have been shot — what is it?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Kate, heroes are the ones who go into battle scared out of their fucking minds about dying, but doing it anyway because they want to serve their country, or fight for a cause they know is just, or just the right side of the war. What I did was simply…expedient.”

“Not to me, it wasn’t.”

He blew out his breath and looked at her. “I give up,” he said, ruefully.

“Do that.” She slid the hand she still had resting on his chest up to stroke his cheek. “For a sex toy, you argue far too much.”

“I thought you were sick of that joke?”

“I think you stopped being a sex toy three days ago, Adrian.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice low.

“Garrett kissed me.”

She smothered his quick inhale with her fingertips, and hastened to add, “He kissed me and I realized how much I’d have to give up, if he did more than that. And I knew I wasn’t willing to give up you.”

He drew in a deep, slow breath. His expression didn’t change, but she felthimchange. It was there in his eyes. An intense sort of focus. Behind it lay all sorts of emotion. And it was for her.

She shivered. “Kiss me, Adrian. I’m sick of you not kissing me. It’s time.”

“You’re going to be very bad for me, Kathrine Lindenstream,” he whispered, just before his lips touched hers.

It was everything she had hoped Adrian’s kiss might be. His lips were surprisingly soft, but there was a driving force behind them – call it passion, lust, or just the iron will of his personality. His arms tightened around her and his body became her prop as she melted against him like butter in July. His tongue swept into her mouth, thrusting. Kate throbbed with renewed need at the implied promise.

The kiss may have lasted for seconds or minutes. Kate wasn’t sure. But when Adrian finally released her lips and lifted his head from hers to look at her, she had genuinely lost track of time. She found herself smiling broadly. “I can’t believe I waited so long for that.”

His mouth curled up in a smile, too. “That’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever told me.”

She reached for the fastening on his jeans, her throbbing body too primed and ready for her to ignore.

Adrian caught her hand. “I need to take care of Gunther,” he said. “Terry is watching him, but dealing with him permanently is a two-man job.”

“Permanently?” she repeated, all sorts of horrible possibilities occurring to her.

“Nothing illegal,” Adrian assured her, his thumb stroking her cheek. “But you shouldn’t know the details.”

“Plausible deniability? You’re joking.”

He grimaced. “I wish I wasn’t.”

“Now you’re really worrying me. Who is Gunther if he has nothing to do with my movie?”

“You really don’t want to know, Kate. Trust me on this. If you keep asking, you’ll end up with information you really wish you didn’t know about. It won’t let you sleep nice at night.”

She licked her lips. “I already don’t sleep.”

“You do, if I’m there,” he replied. “So let me go fix this so I can be there.” He kissed her again, a quick, but not light, press of his lips to hers. Then he turned her and pushed her toward the tent entrance. “Go on. Go do what you do. Be normal.”

She snorted. “Define ‘normal’.” But she kept walking, anyway. A few steps on, though, she nearly stumbled and turned back to ask a thousand more questions. Only one thing kept her moving toward the tent entrance: the fact that Adrian had shielded her. There was no way to ascribe any motive to that single action other than a desire to protect her. Ergo, he meant no harm to her. She had to trust him.

But she longed to turn back to demand to know why there was blood on the temporary flooring at just about the same place where he would have been when the shot had been fired.

And she hadn’t seen his back since that moment. He had kept it turned away from her.