Page 15 of Echo, the Sniper (Men of PSI #2)

A Convenient Amnesia

––––––––

A KISS.

I was... being kissed.

And I was kissing back.

I didn’t even think to stop my stunned internal babbling, because my tough-guy, don’t-fall-for-me bodyguard had apparently decided to throw away his professional manual on how to keep his client at arm’s length, and was freaking kissing me.

For a heartbeat I expected my every nerve to perform its usual physical recoiling, because being married to Dane had taught me that I didn’t like kissing.

Like, at all . The hard grinding of mouth to lipless mouth, teeth hitting together, tongue slithering in and out like a snake’s.

.. ugh. Gross. I didn’t like the taste, the smell, the invasion of it all.

Everything about kissing gave me the ick.

Or so I thought.

Everything was so utterly different when it came to kissing Echo.

His lips were unbelievable—firm, yet soft enough to melt against mine, a velvet-wrapped-in-steel texture I couldn’t get enough of.

Seriously, I could stand there kissing him forever and never get tired of it.

My own lips responded without conscious direction from me; while my brain still insisted I hated kissing, my mouth was busily nuzzling against his, reveling in how good he felt.

Maybe it wasn’t kissing I hated.

Maybe I just hated Dane’s kisses.

Yeah, that tracks.

I held my body still out of sheer force of will, when all I wanted to do was melt against him.

Another first for me. I wasn’t a big fan of being close to anyone, and that was putting it mildly.

But Echo’s kiss had every fluttery, womanly instinct I had clamoring to know what the rest of him felt like.

If I moved, the handful of inches separating us would vanish, and I’d know everything I needed to.

Only...

In the business, it’s called the bodyguard crush.

Frustration hummed beneath the surface of my skin until I could hardly stand still.

I wanted to close the gap between us. God, I wanted that.

I felt feverish, my heart doing a never-ending bungee-jump in my chest while his soap-and-leather scent seduced me, and the hot slickness between my thighs made me dream of kicking off my panties.

But Dane had taught me early on to never take the initiative when it came to intimacy. It was wrong. Common. Whorish.

Was it, though?

My racing thoughts scattered into nothing when Echo raised his head a mere inch or so, barely breaking contact. I could still feel him on my lips, and my tongue swept out to gather the taste of him before I looked up into his eyes.

Oh, wow .

If I hadn’t heard my pulse thundering in my ears as I stared up into those mesmerizing gray eyes, I would have sworn my heart had come to a stop. Looking at him from this close range was so intimate I was sure the excitement of it would kill me.

I loved it.

“Rory.” I thought I heard him whisper my name, a mere breath that caressed along my thrumming lips.

Talk about intimacy. To feel his breath on my lips was almost as good as a kiss itself, and I couldn’t stifle a shiver in response.

I leaned toward him like a flower seeking the sun, my fingers coming to rest on his forearm while his hands still framed my face.

I tilted my mouth up, offering it in wordless invitation when I’d never done that before in my life.

The breath backed up in my lungs while my lips seemed to swell in anticipation of being covered once more by his. ..

“I never thought I liked kissing,” I heard myself whisper, and I could hear how shaken I was. “But you just might make me a convert.” All it would take was a few more mind-blowing kisses...

The text chime of his phone crashed into the atmosphere with all the subtlety of a meteor strike.

He blinked, and I could feel the muscles in his arm stiffen a half-second before his hands dropped away from my face.

Like that, the gulf between us loomed as large as the Grand Canyon.

“Gotta get this,” he said gruffly, his expression turning to stone while his eyes wouldn’t meet mine. In one smooth move of rejection, he stepped back, reached for the phone in his pocket and turned his back on me.

Oh.

Okay, then.

Head held high, I retreated to the other side of the room, which meant the striped couch by the door and a ridiculous half-wall between us. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I sat down, tugged out my new phone and made myself focus on the mundane task of its setup.

Face recognition, yes or no?

I didn’t care. What I cared about was the possibility of Echo’s face showing regret and coldness every time he looked at me from this point on.

Which wouldn’t be fair. He was the one who’d kissed me.

But no doubt he’d find a way to blame me for what he probably saw as a breach of professionalism.

It totally was, but I hadn’t minded it. Obviously he did, so the blame game was now on the horizon, and I would inevitably wind up being the loser.

I always was when it came to this stupid male-female song and dance.

Password for Spotify?

Passwords were easy to remember. Just like it was easy to remember how Echo’s lips felt against mine.

Honestly, who knew kissing could make panties so darn wet I wanted to shimmy out of them?

Far from being repulsed by his kiss, I’d wanted more.

If Echo had come into my life before Dane, I had a sneaking suspicion I could have been made to love kissing more than I loved chocolate, and that was saying something.

Welcome to your online file-hosting server, Digilife...

I typed in the password, trying to look busy and unruffled, when I was anything but. Seriously, if I became any more aware of this man—and the ginormous bed no more than a few feet away from either of us, even though we were on opposite sides of it—my head would explode.

“Rory.”

By some miracle I didn’t jump out of my skin.

Yay, me. “Yes?” I finished typing and looked up.

He remained where he was, on the opposite side of the room, phone still in hand and emotionless mask in place.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was about to ask if I’d ever considered investing in Treasury Bills as a safe, long-term investment option.

Instead, he held up his phone. “I was just told there’s a B-and-B that’s going to be available for us in a couple days, if not sooner. If you need anything done here in Denver, now’s the time to do it.”

He probably meant something like calling an insurance adjuster for my torched house. I had bigger fish to fry. One way or another I had to regain some semblance of control over my life, and there was only one way to do that—find out who was trying to kill me.

“Let’s go see a big blue bear.”

*

I T WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO miss the forty-foot-tall brilliant blue bear standing on its hind legs peering into the front of the glass-fronted convention center.

The gigantic, playful art piece was supposed to have been temporary, but its popularity was so instantaneous it became the Mile High City’s unofficial mascot, and had been standing there ever since.

In an earlier life, I would have been the first to take a selfie or two in front of it, but I was not that person anymore.

Now, there was only one thing on my mind.

Echo’s kiss.

No, I corrected my stupid brain that was apparently stuck on reliving every second his lips had been locked onto mine.

What I needed to remember was that someone wanted me dead.

Dead by fire . Dead in the most horrific way.

I had to be the one to figure it out, because no one else was going to do it.

The cops had shown they didn’t care if a criminal’s wife wound up in the morgue sporting a toe tag.

But I cared. One way or another, I would keep myself alive by hunting my own hunter.

Along with Echo , my brain helpfully added. You know, Echo? Echo, of the velvet-over-steel lips? Yes, indeedy. That Echo.

Sometimes my brain was a real jerk.

“What exactly are we doing here?” Brilliant sunshine poured into the convention center as Echo and I walked side by side along a deserted concourse, our footsteps echoing softly against the polished concrete floor.

“I’d like to think I remember everything about that stormy summer day, but I need to walk through it in case I’m forgetting something important.

” I was glad to be in motion, because it made me feel like I was on my way to accomplishing something.

Or, maybe it was the distraction I needed to keep myself from drool-staring at Echo’s lips like they were the solution to all my problems. “The biggest thing I remember is that the day started out weird. Dane wanted me to ride along with him because he wanted my company.” My stomach squeezed with remembered horror until I feared I’d throw up.

“You have no idea how much I wish I’d stayed home that day. ”

“My abuela says that all things happen for a reason,” Echo said softly after a long moment.

“It was terrible what you witnessed, and I hate that you saw that shit go down. Absolutely hate it. But for all you know, that day was the day fate put you on a different path. A better path to a better life.” When I didn’t answer—because from where I stood, the path that I seemed to be on was on fire and probably heading off a cliff—he changed the subject. “Who was your ex meeting up with?”

“A man by the name of Warrington Coates, head of a medical supply company. Dane had been hoping to get Coates as a client. You’d like Coates,” I added, daring to spare him a glance.

When neither of us spontaneously combusted, I saw it as a win.

“He’s retired military, and you can tell.

Crew cut, rigid spine. He doesn’t walk. He marches. ”

“I’m not like that.”

“Trust me, you’re all that and more.”

There was a beat of silence before his shoulders shifted. “Why do you say the day was weird?”