Page 6

T he door clicked shut behind them, muffling the distant hum from the street. Inside, the safehouse was dim, only a single light left burning in the corner. Chase bolted the door and held up a hand to Alyssa, indicating she should stay right there while he had a look around.

In general, safehouses were…well, safe. But he never took chances. He edged his fingers over the warm steel of his weapon where it was concealed along his spine while making a quick circuit through the small rooms.

When he returned to the front of the house, he met Alyssa’s gaze. Her eyes were wide, just as they were the other times he performed a sweep of the place. She might travel with a security detail, but dangers probably didn’t come this close to her on a daily basis. Knowing that threats existed in the world was much different from experiencing it firsthand.

He gave her a small nod that all was clear.

Alyssa moved past him into the simple living area. A worn rug, a low table and the sofa that wrecked his back were the only furnishings. The bedroom featured a double bed and a shuttered window.

As he watched her, he couldn’t shake the feel of her, the press of her lips against his. He hadn’t planned to kiss her—it just happened. Not for show, he’d told her. He’d wanted to.

He wanted to again.

Why did he feel like that kiss had shaken something loose in him?

She walked to the sofa and touched the faded, thin blanket he’d left neatly folded and draped over the back. “Cozy.”

He smiled at her attempt at a joke. “My spine says otherwise.”

She issued a subtle noise of amusement.

“It’s not the Ritz, but it’s safe.”

“That’s all we need, right?” She swung to face him. Though she was average height, nothing else about Alyssa was average. From her thick dark hair that glinted with copper streaks in the sun to the confident way she carried herself.

She sank to the sofa, elbow propped on the arm. She threaded her fingers through her hair. “Hard to believe we’re here to untangle mysteries that are years old.”

He took a seat next to her. “And we’re walking into it blind.”

“How deep do you think we need to dig to find out what really happened to that helicopter?”

“Deep. Military secrets are buried because they’re not supposed to be unearthed.”

“I can’t make sense of all these events or how they’re tied together. If they’re tied together.”

“That’s because we only see what’s on the surface right now.” When he shifted his shoulders, his arm glanced off hers.

The hitch of her breath made his gut clench. It was the same sound she made when he leaned in and claimed her lips.

He turned his head slightly, studying her out of the corner of his eye. She was close enough that he could see the shadows of fatigue under each eye. Despite the hours of sleep she managed, she was still jetlagged.

He also saw how she went taut when he looked at her, almost with anticipation.

“You hide it well, Julian.”

He twisted his head to look at her directly. “Hide what?”

“The weight you carry.”

“You bear your share of weight too.”

Silence descended again, thicker. The kind that buzzed with unspoken thoughts.

Like how they could each relieve some of their burden through pleasure.

He moved his arm again, purposely grazing it against her smooth skin. The honeyed silk rippled with goose bumps.

He reached for her at the same time she turned to him. She cupped his jaw and kissed him with a barely harnessed urgency that he felt rolling like a quake inside him.

With a low groan, he wrapped his arms around her, yanking her across his lap. Slipping his tongue out, he applied a light pressure to the seam of her mouth, coaxing her to open for him.

He needed to taste her.

It had been a long time since he’d been with any woman, but he’d never felt this drugged by one either.

When she parted her lips on a quiet gasp, he dipped his tongue inside her hot mouth, tasting her sweetness. They shared a moan, and he went deeper, taking, maneuvering her until she was lying underneath him on the couch.

She looped her arms around his neck, tugging him closer. Long minutes passed as they explored each other. The dark pressure of lust built in his groin until his cock swelled to full length and felt like it might burst against his fly.

Suddenly, she tore away, chest heaving as she stared up at him. “I know that kiss wasn’t part of our cover.”

“No.”

A sigh escaped her, wispy and uneven. “Julian…”

The few times she used his name felt like a punch to his solar plexus. He rarely heard his name. His teammates called him by his last name or Cobra. Most of the names he was called in the course of his life were insulting.

But hearing it roll off Alyssa’s tongue in that soft, breathy way tugged at him.

He stared down at her, lips hovering inches away from hers. The desire burning in the depths of her eyes damn near ripped away his control. The air grew charged with a thick heat.

“Tell me to stop,” he murmured, voice low.

She didn’t.

Instead, she hooked her palm around his nape and pulled him down again.

Their lips collided with a hungry need. His growl mixed with her sigh, and the kiss shot past the starting line and was halfway around the racetrack before he could get a grip on himself.

The feel of her curves where they pressed under him had him throbbing hard. When she rocked her hips upward to meet his, a shudder of need stole through him.

Their kiss wasn’t the tentative kind that strangers shared on a first date. It was slow and deliberate, the kind that unraveled something fierce.

His steadied himself before he took things too far. Resting his forehead against hers, he breathed heavily. “Alyssa…”

“I want this, Julian. I want you.”

“Christ, Alyssa.” Her statement along with the blossom of desire in her eyes was all he needed.

He rolled off the sofa and pulled her up with him. Catching her by the hand, he led her the few steps to the bedroom.

“Bed or wall?” he ground out.

Surprise lit her eyes. Her plush lips bowed upward in a knowing smile. “Bed?”

“Is that a question?”

“I’m wondering what the wall option looks like.”

He flashed a grin. “I’ll have to show you another time.”

When they stood at the side of the bed, facing each other, he realized with a jolt how different this encounter with Alyssa was from any others he ever had.

There was no frenzy to get laid, no desperate need to get his dick out. Just the quiet shedding of layers while they watched each other’s every move.

Each inch of skin she bared to him was trust given. When she dropped her bra to the floor, her light honey-colored nipples shriveled to tight buds.

With his mouth watering for a taste of her, he stepped out of his cargo pants but purposely kept his boxer briefs on. If he was going to retain control, he needed that barrier between them.

Reaching out, he cradled one full breast in his palm. Her eyelids drooped.

Watching her close, he swished his thumb over the crest of her beaded nipple, and her eyelids slipped shut, her head falling back on a silent moan.

Watching the pleasure he could give her simply by a simple touch had him achingly hard, his cock surging and leaking precum.

Slowly, he ducked his head to capture her nipple between his lips.

Alyssa bent into him, crying out, her fingers digging into his hair as she crushed him closer to her.

A growl built in his throat. In one swift move, he had her on the bed, anchored beneath him. Using sucking pulls, he explored her nipple, learning how much pressure she enjoyed and how to push her closer to the edge.

When he released her nipple, he raised his head and caught her stare fixed on him, her eyes hazy with lust.

“Nobody’s touched me in a long time,” she whispered.

He took her hand and placed it over his stiff cock threatening to tear a hole in his boxer briefs.

Her eyes flared wider.

“Me neither.”

He dived for her other breast, pressing tender kisses around the tip until she writhed under him. Her hand slipped between them, down the length of his cock, until he thought he’d blow if he didn’t stop her.

He settled a hand on her hip, memorizing the curve that fit his hand so perfectly that he’d never look at her the same way again.

Alyssa explored him with a light, pattering touch, her fingers dancing over a scar that ran across his shoulder blade, a reminder of a bullet he took his first year on Echo. The day he learned never to turn his back on anybody.

“You’ve been through hell,” she rasped out.

He stared down into her eyes. “Still standing.”

“Actually…you’re lying down.”

He huffed out a laugh and settled his lips across hers with a new brand of hunger.

Suddenly, he got it. How Con had fallen for Sophie, and Henner for May. Having a shared goal with Alyssa was intoxicating.

And Denver was right—he did think she was cute. More than cute.

If he was honest, he’d been attracted to Alyssa since the day he saw her walking into a building in Syria, oozing with confidence as she faced an armed gunman to free those hostages.

Fuck.

He couldn’t quit touching her. He kneaded her hip, tracing a line down to her outer thigh.

She arched beneath him, her intoxicating scent filling him with a pounding need he couldn’t stop.

Then she parted her thighs, wrapped them around his waist, and he felt the slick heat of her pussy pressed against his cock.

“Julian…I want you. I want this.”

“That’s all I need to hear, Ambassador. But first…” He eased his hand between her legs and buried his fingers in her soaking wet folds.

* * * * *

Alyssa cried out as extreme pleasure crashed over her. She sucked in ragged breath after ragged breath as Julian’s callused fingertip rode down the seam of her pussy. He teased her entrance, gathering her juices, before making the return trip back to her clit.

As he swirled his finger around and around her nubbin, her small shivers morphed into full body shakes.

He braced himself easily on one arm. The bulging muscle was too good to look away from—except his fierce expression was everything.

This must be how he looks in battle. Consumed by one solitary goal.

That goal was to pleasure her, and the thought filled her chest with a new kind of heat.

His mouth slanted over hers with a hunger that felt like his restraint had shattered. Each pass of his tongue across hers pulled another moan from her, louder, more out of control.

She splayed a hand across his broad, chiseled back, clinging to the edge of bliss as he strummed his fingers over her slick pussy. The coil of heat low in her belly licked upward to encompass her chest too.

“Julian!” She clutched at him as the kiss grew explosive, turned breathless. It was fire and softness, command and surrender all at once.

Her insides clenched tight, tight, tighter. One hand flailed in the air, trying to find something to grasp on to, something to ground her and keep her from floating away.

Julian caught it and brought her wrist to his lips, pressing a tender kiss there before he guided it over her head…and pinned it to the mattress.

His hands were driving her crazy. His finger over her clit sent jolts of pleasure through her. Each place his steely body touched hers electrified her. One muscled thigh trapped hers against the bed. His hard chest tormented her breasts, which he’d just teased, stroked and sucked until she thought she’d lose her mind.

Now she really was losing it.

Her release built, doubled, tripled. Her mind blanked to anything but this moment with her lover. Skin to skin and heat to heat.

A wave struck her hard out of nowhere. Her inner walls contracted as her orgasm ripped through her. His name was bottled in her throat, only a muted cry bursting past her lips.

Then his hands were on her again, exploring, worshipping. He took her mouth in what felt like a promise. And Alyssa matched him stroke for stroke, gliding her hands over the muscled planes of his back to grip his carved buttocks. What she wouldn’t give to spend an hour drinking in his appearance. The man was walking sin poured into tactical clothing. She could admire the way his mouth moved when he talked and those dimples popped in and out for hours on end. Just sit back, sip some white wine and watch Julian Chase in action.

She skimmed the planes of his ass. “Get…these…off,” she panted.

He planted a hand on the bed. Performing the sexiest pushup she’d ever seen, he one-handedly shoved his underwear downward. When she felt the thick length of his cock spring free and land on her lower belly, her insides clutched with need.

She jumped in to assist. When he was completely naked, she stared down at his impressive length. She drank her fill of his thick, veined cock and the flare of its mushroomed head, purple with lust.

When she lifted her gaze to his again, she caught the smirk teasing around the corner of his sensual mouth and the damned dimple that had been driving her crazy since the minute she set eyes on him.

She rolled her hips, making him groan low in his throat. He dropped his face to her neck. “You’re gonna kill me,” he muttered against her skin.

She arched, lips featherlight on his ear. “Not before you make me forget everything else.”

His mouth found her breasts, worshiping them with his tongue, and her back came off the bed. The sounds she made—needy, breathy—only spurred him on. He slid his hand down, fingers trailing up her thighs until he found the slick heat waiting for him again.

“Fuck, Alyssa,” he whispered, voice frayed. “You’re perfect.”

She gasped as his fingers slid over her, gentle but insistent. Her hips moved of their own accord. “Julian…”

“Say what you want, sweetheart.”

“You. Now.”

He kissed her again, slower this time, and she felt the shiver in him. He pinned her hips with his own, pressing against her, skin to skin, heat to heat.

He paused, breathing hard. “I’ve got protection—”

“My bag’s closer. Side pocket.”

He kissed her again before climbing off the bed to grab a condom. She watched him, chest rising, already trembling with the anticipation of him inside her.

When he returned, he kissed her with a reverence that made her eyes sting.

“You sure?” he asked again, eyes locked on hers.

She nodded. “I’ve never been more sure.”

And then he was inside her—slow, deep, stretching her in the best way—and the world narrowed to the space between their bodies. The tension broke on a low moan that echoed in the quiet.

He moved slowly at first, giving her time, watching her face like it was the map to everything he’d lost.

The exhaustion stemming from her previous whirlwind of a day, followed by a transatlantic flight and stumbling bleary-eyed into a safehouse, must be affecting her more than she thought.

She rocked up to meet him, nails biting into his shoulders. “Harder.”

His breath caught. “You feel so good. So damn good…”

He thrust deeper, harder, a rhythm building between them to a cataclysmic end. The creak of the mattress, the sound of skin on skin, the ragged noises she made—it filled the room like music.

When she came, the release hit her like a wave—hot, sharp, stars behind her eyes. She cried out his name, and Julian held her through it, murmuring against her skin, kissing her like he couldn’t get close enough.

He followed her over the edge moments later, face buried in her neck, her name grit on his lips. The safehouse was still, only the wild gallop of her heart filling her ears.

They lay tangled together afterward, sweat cooling on their skin, breath slowly settling.

Never in a million years could she have guessed she would land in bed with a special operative with the body of a god.

He stroked her arm absently, fingers light.

She traced the line of the scar on his shoulder that she felt earlier. “Was that…?”

“Sniper round. Afghanistan.”

“Jesus.”

He chuckled, low and rough. “Told you. Getting shot—zero stars.”

She tossed his words back at him. “You’re still standing—or lying down.”

He leaned in and kissed her again. Slow. Honest. Real.

And for the first time in a long time, Alyssa let herself believe she wasn’t all alone in this world. Someone else understood the stress, the commitment…the weight of making the world a better, safer place.